Niche apps in demand at carriers

Telecommunications carriers want to spend more capital on software rather than hardware as demand rises for flexible service upgrades, a specialist distributor has claimed.

Gerry Forsythe, product manager at telecommunications distributor Hagemeyer Communications, said telecommunications OEMs were moving to software-based platforms.

"Carriers want to spend more of their capital on versatile software rather than hardware because they want more flexibility in future service upgrades," Forsythe claimed in a statement.

Hagemeyer Communications, a division of Dutch parent Hagemeyer, is itself increasing its focus on software, releasing a portfolio of development tools to telecommunications service providers in the Asia-Pacific.

Dubbed the NMS Open Access framework, the software package is supposed to make it easy for service providers develop new media-processing applications running on PCs or digital signal processing platforms, the company said.

"Open Access supports rich applications such as IP conferencing, speech-activated services and wireless entertainment content and applications," Hagemeyer said.

The framework can be used to build network services, messaging, CRM, video-conferencing, security and media server applications, the company said.