Freedom of Choice Through Best-of-Breed

Tag : for cots

The market for Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture(ATCA), Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) and MicroTCA products haschanged over the last year. Vendors and customers both have gonethrough a consolidation phase, with new companies forming to takeadvantage of open platforms and compete for market share.
Two examples of this are the acquisition of Intel's ModularCommunications Platforms business by RadiSys, and the purchase ofMotorola's Embedded Communications Computing Group by EmersonNetwork Power.

I ndustry standard platforms like ATCA provide a flexible, openfoundation that enables telecom equipment manufacturers/NetworkEquipment Providers (NEPs) to leverage a common hardwarearchitecture across multiple network elements. Industry standardplatforms also foster a competitive, interoperable ecosystem thatgives NEPs easy access to best-of-breed technology and enables themto quickly and cost effectively deliver new features and servicesbased on choice and innovation.

The Tier-1 telecom market has already undergone significantconsolidation with Nokia and Siemens forming Nokia Siemens Networks(NSN), and Alcatel and Lucent forming Alcatel-Lucent. Thesecombinations benefit the ATCA space, as both large entities havebeen expanding their common platform approach. NEPs like NortelNetworks are leading the adoption with common ATCA platforms thatwork across multiple solutions. In other words, these NEPs aredriving forward by consolidating product lines across common ATCAarchitectures. Such ATCA platforms provide a base set of functionsthat, together with other commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) buildingblocks, can be adapted readily to create a broad range of networkelements delivering highly differentiated services for applicationssuch as 3G Wireless, IPTV and IMS.

Note too that industry consolidation does not signal a lack of ATCAmarket uptake, but rather a natural strengthening of industryleaders to increase and defend their competitive position.Consolidation is an indication of market maturity where the COTStechnology is moving from an 'enabling' to an 'established' statewith widespread adoption across the telecom industry. In support ofthis, the SCOPE Alliance , founded and headed by the major NEPs, is clear evidence of theNEPs' strong commitment to using COTS building blocks such as ATCA.The group has released a number of open specification profiles toguide vendors to produce the products that they need. As Tier-1NEPs consolidate, so too will the supply chain for those companies.For example, the number of ATCA suppliers for Nokia SiemensNetworks and Alcatel-Lucent, assuming dual sourcing, has been cutin half from eight to four. The remaining building block supplierswill thus need to become larger themselves in order to accommodateincreased demand from a smaller base of healthier, more dominantNEPs like Alcatel-Lucent and NSM.