Very siginificant, very real, potential negative impact to CSCO.
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February 15, 1999, Issue: 752
Section: Bandwidth
Platform Blends IP, ATM With Intelligence
Chuck Moozakis
Lucent Technologies and Sun Microsystems have taken the wraps off a
unified messaging system they say will let customers communicate with any
device attached to the network.
The AnyPath Messaging Platform is the first product emerging from an alliance
announced last August. The goal is to develop a scalable, IP- or ATM-based
messaging system with enough horsepower to deliver information to everything
from wireless phones to Web browsers, according to Larry Frank, vice
president of marketing management for Lucent's Octel messaging unit.
Boryana Marova, a research analyst at Frost & Sullivan, said, "It's a very
significant development. Large service providers are looking for carrier-class
offerings that will let them develop more robust services."
AnyPath, to be released in the third quarter, will initially include three
applications: Unified Mail, a multilingual app that serves as a single point for
e-mail, messages and faxes; Visual Mail, an app that gives Web or PC users a
tool to review and manage voice and fax messages; and ToolBox Pro, a
Java-based development API.
The platform will use Bellcore's Intelligent Networking (IN) concepts, which
should increase the comfort level of Lucent's traditional telco customers. IN
"will allow carriers to offer a wider array of enhanced services," said Paul
Stockford, a director at Cahners In-Stat Group. "This is bringing a lot of
capabilities previously only available on an enterprise-class server and porting
them to the network." |
