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DDJ: With us today is Jim Lawrence, who recently joined Enea, a software and engineering services company in the telecommunications industry, as chief software standards officer.

Jim, your new role at Enea is that of "chief software standards officer". What does that mean? What will you be doing?

JL: Standards are the glue that binds together the many building blocks that make up the communications network. Generally, standardization facilitates interoperability, encourages innovation, creates trust and confidence in products, brings down costs, increases competition, reduces project risks, and helps prevent the duplication of efforts. Specifically for Enea, standards enable portability of our software products across multiple network elements with significantly reduced time to market. For Enea customers, we insulate their applications from the complexities of the network element base platform by implementing standards-based interfaces and specifications defined by the Service Availability Forum (SA Forum), SCOPE Alliance, and the Communications Platform Trade Association (CP-TA), and by adhering to many recommendations published by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

My role is to identify the relevant standards in the industry and ensure Enea has an optimal strategy for contributing to those standards, and to guide the execution plan for implementing the appropriate standards at the appropriate time in our products. I also have the pleasure of collaborating with some of the brightest minds in the industry working within these standards groups to shape the industry and ultimately accelerate deployment of next-generation network equipment.

DDJ: So how does a business -- particularly in the communications arena -- adhere to standards, yet still have enough product differentiation (or uniqueness) to maintain a competitive advantage?

JL: The standardization process within the communications industry is truly an interesting one. When the industry identifies interface points between different building blocks that are typically integrated from multiple sources, we seek to standardize those interface points. For example, how could a cell phone from one vendor connect to the equipment from a different vendor if the air interfaces were not standardized? Or how long would it take to integrate the application that routes that call on equipment from several providers if the interface to that equipment were different for each?

Note that we are primarily talking about interface points and basic behaviors of the building blocks. Beyond that there are significant opportunities for value add -- cost, performance, scalability, scope of features and availability among them. In fact, a product can differentiate itself by being standards compliant. Who wants to buy a building block from vendor A that only works with vendor A? Can you imagine a world where there is a cell tower for every service provider and handset manufacture? Or imagine the time and expense to port an application to many different platforms? You can simply look at the variety of handsets available that all communicate on standard platforms to see how much differentiation there is in our highly standardized industry.

Enea is a good case in point. As an example, our standard interfaces as defined by the SA Forum and middleware profiles as defined by the SCOPE Alliance are being implemented in our Element middleware product which is at the core of our Accelerator Platform for next-generation networks. Further interoperability clarity is defined by the CP-TA. Adhering to the standards offered by these key organizations ensures that our Element middleware is portable across many different platforms and that our customer's have a well-defined interface to write their applications to. Of course, our competitors have the same opportunity to implement these standards, but Enea Element middleware is distinguished by its significant differentiation in performance, scalability, feature breadth, and carrier-class quality.

Ultimately, the industry requires standards to glue all the building blocks together in a reliable and predictable manner. At the same time they demand differentiation via feature richness, performance, and carrier class quality.

DDJ: Forgive me for asking, but there's all the buzz that Apple's iPhone is going to shake up the mobile phone market. As a long-time leader in the telecommunications industry, what's your take on that?

JL: The industry is at an inflection point. We've just surpassed 2 billion mobile users and at the same time the next billion users are poised to come on line. New subscribers in India, Africa, and parts of Asia are expected to drive the future growth of the mobile market. For these end-users affordability will be a decisive factor. The next billion subscribers may have a capacity for perhaps $5 per month to pay for subscription and calling charges -- as compared to the $40-$60 a month we (in the U.S. and Europe) are accustomed to paying.

At the same time, the next billion users have a built-in expectation around the quality of service and the quality of experience that has already been set by today's subscribers. The introduction of the iPhone only serves to re-enforce that expectation. Ease of use, highly reliable connectivity and advanced messaging and multimedia capabilities have become the norm.

The challenge to the industry will be to develop and deliver the software intensive applications that provide the desired consumer experience at a price point that preserves margins and profitability. To keep costs down while preserving functionality, OEMs will need to improve the efficiency of product development. Standardized software platforms that can span multiple product categories (for example low-end feature phones all the way to smart phones) have already become a key requirement for mobile phone manufactures.

It's also helpful to keep in mind that the mobile handset is no longer a gadget. It is in effect, the terminating piece of network equipment. And, it's expected to perform with the same reliability and availability as the infrastructure equipment that provides the end-to-end services. As a result, we are seeing a demand for standardized software platforms that can also span the distance between network infrastructure equipment to edge devices.

Enea is one of the few companies uniquely positioned to service this rapidly changing market. Our software solutions are at the leading edge of technology and our innovations enable customers to develop many of the new multimedia services that are emerging in the market. Last year, for example, our software shipped in over 200 million mobile phones. We are already powering over half of all the worlds 3G base stations and by our estimates, over 1 billion mobile phone calls a day are made using Enea software.

DDJ: Is there a website readers can go to for more information involving standards-based software platforms for communications?

JL: Readers are certainly welcome to visit the Enea website to see how standards-based products can be differentiated. In addition, I would recommend a visit to the following standards organizations websites that provide some great insight into the value proposition for standards:

• Service Availability Forum (SA Forum) for high availability middleware interface standards.
• SCOPE Alliance for network equipment base platform profiles.
• Communications Platform Trade Association (CP-TA) for interoperability compliance standards.

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