Software offers all-in-one message access
Lucent and Sun hope to enable access to any message from any network-attached device anywhere in the world.
As voice, paging, fax, and email messaging continues to explode, technology that unifies these various forms of communications and allows access from a single point is thought to be a huge opportunity for service providers, particularly those that cater to business customers.
Lucent and Sun intend to sell a jointly developed set of software based on Sun?s email systems and Lucent?s Octel messaging division technology. The package is expected to provide third-party carriers with a series of applications they can turn into services for customers.
The software is an outgrowth of a partnership between telecommunications equipment giant Lucent and systems player Sun announced last August.
The so-called AnyPath Messaging Platform is intended for carriers with traditional circuit-based voice networking schemes as well as those that are developing networks based on the Internet protocol standard, or IP. It is expected to be available in the third quarter of this year.
The move furthers Lucent?s recently stated commitment to build various voice-based services software for third parties to use. The company, known best for its high-end telecommunications equipment, announced a division dedicated to voice products for carrier networks last month.
Lucent also announced application development software called ToolBox Pro that allows carriers and service providers to build applications on top of the basic set of functions offered in the AnyPath product. Unsurprisingly, given Sun?s role in the technology, the development tool is based on the company?s Java programming language.
Two other product elements, Unified Mail and Visual mail software, round out the set of software Lucent plans to offer. The company will demonstrate the technology at a telephony-focused trade show in New Orleans this week.