Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) has come out with trio of new offers aimed at helping network operators and developers more easily enable and create new applications that are manageable, reliable, scalable and secure. New are the Application Exposure Suite, the Open API Service and Transformation Services.

 

The Application Exposure Suite allows service providers and enterprises to accelerate application innovation by outfitting them with a simple way to expose various APIs to the developer community. The idea behind the suite is to enable service providers to monetize their capabilities by allowing developers to access and use functionalities such as billing, location or connection optimization in their applications.  

 

Johnson Agogbua, vice president of Alcatel-Lucent's global application enablement solution, explains to TMCnet that the suite allows for the composition of and normalization related to various APIs. For example, APIs can be created around things like certain legacy interfaces in the network, and interface definitions within various standards, as just two examples. There are also systems management and reporting components included in the suite to allow for end-to-end visibility into application performance, user experience and resource use, he says.

 

The Application Exposure Suite, which is offered by Alcatel-Lucent as a cloud-based service or can be set up within a private cloud for a given network operator, already has been commercially deployed and is in advanced trials with various major service providers worldwide.

 

Alcatel-Lucent’s new Open API Service, meanwhile, is being sold primarily to application developers, which can use the service’s Web-based portal at http://developer.openapiservice.com to access network enablers such as SMS, location and more. Alcatel-Lucent is working to make these network enablers available by partnering with various service providers, Agogbua explains.

 

The company expects to partner with multiple service providers over time on this service, but it has launched the Open API Service in partnership with Sprint (News - Alert), which initially is exposing location and geofencing capabilities, he says. The benefit to service provider partners, according to Alcatel-Lucent, is thatthe Open API Service eliminates the expense of registering, provisioning and supporting multiple developers.

 

Agogbua was not immediately able to provide pricing details on this service, but added that application developers receive test and simulation environments as part of the package. Developers including 1020 Placecast, 3Cinteractive, Agent511 and Gamma Engineers “have extensively accessed” the Open API Service context information, specifically location data, to create applications, according to Alcatel-Lucent.

 

“The Open API Service enables us to easily incorporate network capabilities into our applications,” says Alex George, managing director of Gamma Engineers, a contact center developer. “With these APIs we can differentiate our applications and deliver improved customer service for our enterprise customers.”

 

Finally, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled what it calls Transformation Services, which are a collection of professional services around integration of multivendor networks and applications; migration to IP-based networks; and the automation of processes.

 

Alcatel-Lucent provides Nucleus Connect of Singapore as a case study of its Transformation Services. The company is providing a turnkey billing and operational support system solution -- including software, hardware and professional services -- to facilitate the bundling and rapid introduction of new services via an online virtual mall for this customer.

 

All three of the news items from Alcatel-Lucent today support the company’s Application Enablement Vision, which aims to help both mobile and wireline operators leverage their networks and other assets in new ways to enable Web 2.0 applications including mashups. While various telecom suppliers have in the past come out with category-specific service development platforms, Agogbua says these new tools from Alcatel-Lucent are much more scalable in terms of both their ability to break down silos between different types of networks, services and devices, and in their ability to bring a broader number of service providers and developers together.