There is not a question of SS7 taking off. Everytime you make a credit-card call, you are reaping the benefits of the SS7-based telephone network. There are a host of other benefits that the SS7 telephone network has provided that today we take for granted.
In regards to SS7 players, TsDesign is another provider of SS7 SCSA boards and SW. Trillium is a SW only SS7 vendor (messaging layers). Also, Inet makes a very nice SS7 protocol analyzer (and very expensive). As far as I know, Dialogic does not currently have any SS7 products. If you want to implement an SC-bus SS7 solution, you would use Dialogic voice boards, and DataKinetics or TsDesign NW interface board (there may be other HW SW vendors) for the SS7 Network interface. Datakinetics also makes an MVIP solution for NMS and other MVIP card vendors. The boards provide MTP 1,2& 3 (the transport layers similar to TCP-IP). The upper layer's (i.e. ISUP, TUP, NUP, etc), are quite expensive SW products.
SS7 is not a simple protocol. NMS is attempting to provide SS7 products, but they are not experts in NW sw, and neither is Dialogic. Most users will want robust proven SW for their SS7 network.
Concerning Microsoft and SS7, they want to replace Unix as the OS of choice for the SCP's (Service control points). They want Sequel as the SCP database, and NT as the SCP OS. In short, they want to move NT into the highest end of the mission-critical enterprise arena. They want it all. |
