Ubiquity Brings Together SIP Developers, SIs, SPs With UDN

In an effort to drive the pace of SIP-based application creation, Ubiquity Software on Tuesday launched the Ubiquity Developer Network to bring together the SIP community of developers, Ubiquity partners and customers.

The UDN Web site provides developer forums, technical information, tips and training, software developer tools, libraries, code samples and templates, and testing facilities.

More than 30 companies have signed up to be charter members of the UDN, including network equipment vendors, system integrators, complementary technology partners, independent software vendors and service providers. That list includes Borderware; Cantata; CGI; Convedia; Counterpath; Followap; Huawei; HP; JBoss; Magpie; MDS; Movial; New Heights; Nokia; Qualphone; Radvision; Sandcherry; SipStorm; and United Online.

Developers who are UDN members also gain access to business development opportunities, such as business cases and RFQs/RFPs issued by carriers for applications development and integration services associated with planned trials and commercial deployments. The involvement of service providers is key because it lets developers know what they’re looking for, said John Hart, vice president of product management and marketing at Ubiquity, which sells SIP application servers.

Among the service provider participants in UDN so far are Bell Canada, BT and T-Systems, he said. Hart said system integrators such as CGI involved in the UDN might also bring together enterprises and service providers that can support their SIP-based applications.

The time is ripe for the kind of industry pollenization the UDN allows because the market for SIP applications – which makes way for real-time Web services – is ready to take off, said Gary Gray, senior director of corporate marketing at Ubiquity. He said that’s because all the small competitors in SIP applications are gone, and the market it now populated by larger players such as BEA Systems, IBM Corp., Oracle Corp. and Ubiquity.

The worldwide market for SIP infrastructure and software is expected to exceed $5.5 billion by 2007 with a compound annual growth rate of 36.1 percent according to estimates by Venture Development Corp.

Joe McGarvey, principal analyst at Current Analysis, said service providers are application-hungry, so Ubiquity is doing the right thing in establishing the UDN to advance the acceleration of IMS-based applications and its own application server. But he added “It's just not clear if those efforts will be enough to give Ubiquity an advantage over competitors – some of which are Ubiquity partners, as well – with much deeper resources.”

He said many of Ubiquity's competitors, including Oracle and BEA, have significant development communities that are primarily connected to the IT world, and there’s no reason why those communities couldn't be leveraged to support both of these companies' recently introduced SIP-based service delivery platforms.

Through UDN, Ubiquity builds on its SIP Center effort. SIP Center is a Web portal focused on the commercial development of SIP. To date, more than 8 million SIP calls have been placed by thousands of developers around the world through the SIP Center Network Server, a hosted SIP testing platform using Ubiquity’s SIP A/S.

Borderware www.borderware.com
Cantata www.cantata.com
CGI www.cgi.com
Convedia www.convedia.com
Counterpath www.counterpath.com
Followap www.followap.com
Huawei www.huawei.com
HP www.hp.com
JBoss www.jboss.com
Magpie www.magpieti.com
MDS www.mobilitydatasystems.com
Movial www.movial.com
New Heights www.newheights.com
Nokia www.nokia.com
Qualphone www.qualphone.com
Radvision www.radvision.com
Sandcherry www.sandcherry.com
SipStorm www.sipstorm.com
Ubiquity Software www.ubiquitysoftware.com
United Online www.untd.com

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