Sylantro Systems (News - Alert), which develops feature servers for advanced carrier networks, has recently announced several partnership agreements to support its claims that it is making significant strides in the market and is focusing heavily on enabling service providers globally to build out new IMS-based infrastructures. In fact, partnerships with companies like Huawei (News - Alert) and Swisscom, and the underlying agreements with network equipment providers like Nortel, Alcatel, Motorola, and many others — and, of course, the opportunities those relationships present — are what attracted CEO Marco Limena to Sylantro back in November.

 

“Sylantro has a group of best-in-class partners that any organization would like to have and to leverage,” he told TMC (News - Alert) then. “The objective is to build on those relationships and serve those partners and their customers more and more and continue to innovate and leverage the voice opportunity.”

 

Limena can look back on those comments knowing that objective has again been met, as Sylantro has now announced two new partnerships, which really translate into four, as they include both the service providers and the underlying network providers.

 

The first is an extension of Sylantro’s previously announced relationship with Swisscom, which is anticipating the launch of its new IMS network early next year. The new network will feature Sylantro’s Synergy application feature server integrated into the infrastructure. With the services enabled by Sylantro, Swisscom will be able to roll out new enhanced services to its residential customers, including potential converged fixed and mobile (FMC) services.

 

“This is a customer that has already deployed some of our technology,” said Limena. “This is further confirmation that customers like what we deliver and come back to us for additional needs.”

 

In this deployment, Ericsson is the IMS infrastructure provider and will deploy and integrate Sylantro as part of its offer, which will give Sylantro a presence in the three service provider segments it views as being strategically important: Hosted VoIP, Mobility, and Application & Web Services.

 

Added Limena: “Swisscom is an example of a customer that has executed across all three business opportunities, and it is an example of how Sylantro can provide benefits across all three segments of service provider offering.”

 

Swisscom had previously used Sylantro to enable residential hosted VoIP; then Microsoft (News - Alert) and Swisscom launched a set of IP and desktop voice services using Sylantro; and now Sylantro is part of Swisscom and Ericsson’s IMS infrastructure deployment that will enable new mobile services.

 

“Swisscom has had a very positive and successful partnership with Sylantro over the last two years and we determined that Sylantro was the best solution for the transition to the new IMS infrastructure,” said Wolfgang Weber, CTO Mobile, Swisscom. “We were impressed with Sylantro’s track record in integrating the Synergy platform with the widest range of IMS core network systems.”

 

In addition to building on the Swisscom relationship, Sylantro has also announced a key partnership with Korea Telecom, which is, in many ways, akin to the Wateen Telecom WiMAX project in Pakistan. 

 

“It is somewhat similar to the WiMAX deployment in Pakistan with Motorola (News - Alert), but uses WiBro, which is the Korean version of a higher speed mobile WiMAX,” said Ron Raffensperger, senior vice president of marketing for Sylantro.

 

This project has been underway for a year, having been launched because Korea Telecom was in search of an IMS-compliant feature server — which Sylantro had. Knowing that Sylantro had previously completed interoperability testing with several vendors, KT requested the Sylantro do the same with Samsung, the main IMS core provider for Korea Telecom’s WiBro network. 

 

“We did that, and KT was pleased with the way everything came together and with our ability to take a standard product and hook it up to an IMS software that Samsung was writing as we were testing,” added Raffensperger. “So, it has progressed from there, and it’s been a very good relationship.”

 

Having successfully completed interoperability testing with Samsung, the Synergy feature server will become part of Korea Telecom’s WiBro network offering, which is on schedule to deploy during Q2 2007.  KT will offer an integrated Microsoft Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) solution with the Sylantro Synergy Application Feature Server running on the Samsung IMS platform.

 

“The missing element in many next generation networks is a high performance application server platform to host value added services and content,” said Berge Ayvazian, chief strategy officer, Yankee Group and conference chair of WiMAX World. “With the Sylantro Synergy Application Feature Server, KT is integrating a highly scalable and robust service platform which has emerged as the leader in hosted voice for WiBRO/WiMAX .”

 

Beyond the obvious benefits of adding to its customer base, these two latest partnerships continue to fulfill the growth opportunities to which Limena eluded when he came on board.

 

“The opportunity is happening now, and we can leverage our technology because we are talking about the same technology and the same product, and that’s part of why I was originally excited about the opportunity to come to Sylantro,” he said. “The beauty of the opportunity is that some of the services that we can enable will be leveraged through IMS technology, but you don’t need to wait for the full IMS deployment.”

 

Leveraging both its technology and its growing list of partners, Sylantro appears well positioned to continue growing its market share as service providers increasingly look for ways to migrate to IMS infrastructures and offer new communications services. 

 

“Our relationships with the network equipment providers is going to be the way to execute and scale,” confirmed Limena.