Lucent incites application evolution

Lucent Technologies' Full Circle program is gathering disciples and marching toward its quest for an open application environment. Three months after the program's introduction, more than 400 attendees gathered last week for the first Programmable Networks Conference in San Francisco.

The conference, which grew out of the Full Circle program, was designed to foster new application development in next generation networks. Lucent is working with more than 100 application developers to extend the current capabilities of the communications network.

Service providers, computer manufacturers, and hardware and software makers gathered to discuss future revenue opportunities made possible through programmable network architectures. "It's all about wealth creation," said Mark De Simone, vice president of global marketing at Lucent. "This effort will be successful because software houses and service providers see this as a way to make money."

A key theme among the speakers was the strength and value of partnerships. "The marketplace is moving so fast that companies are becoming specialized in certain technologies," said Regis McKenna, CEO of The Regis McKenna Group. "We now have to rely on one another and make alliances."

Carrier representatives also waved the partnership banner. As broadband carriers described their network developments, they appealed to the audience of application developers to help them create new services. NorthPoint Communications is actively seeking partners within the development community to build new services, said a NorthPoint executive.

WinStar's Mandy Schuyler, vice president of business development, mentioned her desire to see developers create fourth generation Web sites that include rich customer databases that can analyze a customer's actions while guarding privacy.

Lucent has set a development timeline to keep the initiatives moving forward. The application programming interfaces for the Lucent platforms will be published on the Web in October, and new applications could be available as soon as March 2000, De Simone said.