Continuous Computing aims to speed time to market

Continuous Computing today announced a new family of systems that integrate Trillium software and Advanced TCA hardware, along with a unified management system, to enable telecom equipment manufacturers to more rapidly develop solutions for IPTV, security and mobility. The new FlexTCA products are part of the company’s expanded strategy of supplying fully integrated computing platforms for next-generation telecom products.

“We looked at the requirements for IPTV, security and the wireless core and found a commonality and built specific platforms for those three market areas,” said Mike Coward, Continuous’ chief technology officer. “What we have seen is a reduction of the time to market down to 12 months for developing, testing and getting products out into the market. The discussions are less technology-centric and less price-centric and more about time to market. With carriers as consolidated as they are, if you miss a market window for one large carrier, there goes half your market.”

By integrating Trillium software and ATCA hardware under a common management interface, Continuous intends to eliminate manufacturers’ need to take off-the-shelf hardware and develop their own software on which applications will run, he said. That process often takes longer than expected and can dilute the attention paid to the applications that will run on the computing platforms, especially as video services rapidly increase the demand for computing capacity.

“We have done the integration,” Coward said. “It used to take us six months to a year to do that for a customer, but now it is available off the shelf as a standard product. That cuts out the integration specification time.”

With its new platform, Continuous hopes to get an edge on other system integration vendors such as HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems. The company is also offering expert program management and other resources, including customer program managers, customer architects,
field sales engineers, technical support personnel and Trillium professional services.

Its Unified Management Interface (UMI) provides a single point of access for managing system hardware, Trillium protocols and middleware, which is compliant with Service Availability Forum specifications. The UMI provides a consistent interface for monitoring and managing the system and making system-wide upgrades to save time and money.