Mail bonding

Bridgewater Systems and the Sun Microsystems-Netscape Alliance have teamed up to offer service providers more robust messaging opportunities. And though e-mail is a perennial value-added favorite, until recently it has been difficult to manage new - and evolving - accounts.

By integrating Bridgewater 's WideSpan system with Sun-Netscape's messaging platform, carriers can provision, bill and administer their e-mail accounts more easily. WideSpan is an open system technology that allows service providers to quickly create and deploy new services over an Internet protocol (IP) network.

Bridgewater and Sun-Netscape used their lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) interfaces to integrate the two products. "WideSpan was designed for smooth integration," said Russ Freen, vice president of research and development at Bridgewater. "Since Sun-Netscape and Bridgewater support LDAP as an open interface to systems, we were able to extend the provisioning user interface in a couple of weeks."

During the last six months, GTE has offered its customers integrated mail services using the combined technologies. Although basic e-mail satisfies many customers, the demand for unified messaging is on the rise. WideSpan, with its ability to access the SS7 network and port intelligent public network qualities to the IP network, will help carriers deploy unified messaging to their customers.

"These types of services will appeal to residential and enterprise customers, but the larger market for service providers will be from the enterprise side," said David Schwartz, senior analyst at Dataquest.

With market demand for integrated e-mail offerings increasing, partnerships such as these are powerful packages for service providers. They include known industry players and new technology that enables more elegant IP management.

"Sun-Netscape can leverage its branding and market credibility, and Bridgewater makes for additional sizzle because of its intelligent approach to managing IP-based services," said Ron Westfall, research analyst with Current Analysis.