MICROSOFT OPENS SS7 WINDOW

After years of aiming at the public network industry but never quite pulling the trigger, Microsoft found its resolve last week.

The software giant, accustomed to trumpeting its advances, slipped in through the SS7 networks—the foundation of future network interconnection and enhanced services—to position itself to respond to several key carrier needs.

The SS7 initiative partners Microsoft with DGM&S Telecom, a Mt. Laurel, N.J., signaling software developer. DGM&S is porting its OMNI Soft platform to Microsoft's Windows NT server, enabling NT to host and deliver SS7-based services on public networks, said Bill Anderson, director of telecom industry marketing at Microsoft. The integration, to be completed later this year, will curb carriers' cost and development time for such applications, he said.

Hardware vendors such as Tandem and Data General are embracing the new product integration, and third-party software developers are expected to support the NT functionality soon. Amdahl is developing applications to support local number portability and caller ID, said Rex McWilliams, president of DGM&S Telecom.

"We look to see a relative explosion of applications after that," he said, adding that NT's SS7 environment will be especially helpful for carriers such as PCS providers that need functionality at low cost.

OMNI Soft applications programming interfaces target the high end of the SS7 protocol stack, including the Advanced Intelligent Network and intelligent network user part, the GSM mobile applications part, the ISDN user part and TIA/EIA IS-41 mapping.

"Network intelligence will continue to move off the switch, and a wide range of services will be supported by SS7," said McWilliams.

The integration also represents one small step for Microsoft in the public network area. NT has been criticized for failing to support the scalability or interoperability of broad public network applications. But Microsoft began to change that last week by demonstrating its Wolfpack clustering solution. The clustering of NT servers creates the system availability and scalability carriers require, said Anderson. Microsoft is making NT interoperable with Unix platforms, meaning that carriers can start moving NT into their legacy server environments.

"People say telecom is the last bastion for complete Unix environments. We don't want to suggest that carriers try to drop everything to deploy NT," said Anderson.

Microsoft and Vertel also have made progress in their management technology partnership. A key element of Microsoft's chances of succeeding as a public network vendor is acquiring TMN expertise.

"TMN is more of a check-box item right now for carriers in the U.S., but they will be asking for it," Anderson said. "In Europe and Asia, the demands for it are already there."

Microsoft Corp. joined asymmetrical digital subscriber line vendors last week to promote a single architecture for point-to-point protocol over asynchronous transfer mode over ADSL. The ADSL vendors are Alcatel, Cisco Systems, Fore Systems, U.S. Robotics and Westell Technologies.

Although the alliance marks the first time Microsoft has publicly joined an ADSL industry movement, the company has been involved in GTE's trial in Redmond, Wash. Microsoft corporate users have been using ADSL at work and home since last year. At the Networld+Interop show in Las Vegas last month, GTE said it would add 1000 Microsoft employee users to the trial.

The group has agreed on a platform outlined in a white paper. Its goal is to speed ADSL deployment by a defining a scalable, standards-based system. Although many ADSL vendors are committing to the ATM-over-ADSL system desired by large telephone carriers, PPP, in which Internet protocol is encapsulated, is the standard for Internet access and remote data connections.