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Lucent Technologies Expands Its Market Advantage Program (MAP) to Support Creation of 'Blended Lifestyle' Services

Posted on: Monday, 14 March 2005, 09:00 CST

NEW ORLEANS, March 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- At the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) Wireless 2005 trade show and exhibition today, Lucent Technologies unveiled its Market Advantage Program (MAP) for Application Partners, an expansion of its MAP program designed to promote the creation and commercial introduction of new applications that blend traditional voice and data capabilities to deliver enhanced multimedia "lifestyle" services. Lucent's MAP for Application Partners provides application developers with software tools, access to Lucent application platforms, training and accreditation programs, testing and demonstration resources and marketing support.

The MAP for Application Partners program is an incubator intended to foster the development of a vast array of applications that can enable service providers to deliver new services that take advantage of the increased speed and capacity of next-generation networks, in turn helping them capture new revenue from the burgeoning blended-lifestyle services market and increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. With this program, Lucent is leveraging and expanding upon years of sustained expertise in working with application partners to deliver compelling value-added solutions to operators. The partners program is built around Lucent's Application Solutions portfolio, a comprehensive set of platforms and software-based, plug-and-play applications that are designed to support enhanced voice, data and video services over next-generation networks, including systems based on Lucent's IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) solution.

"Lucent is committed to fostering a vital and dynamic ecosystem of developer partners to bring new services to market," said Sandip Mukerjee, vice president for marketing and business development with Lucent's Applications Solutions business. "The Market Advantage Program for Application Developers is a one-stop shop for companies that want to partner with Lucent to build and market next-generation services, providing a host of resources to speed the creation and marketing of new applications, and single point of contact to make the program easy to navigate."

Lucent's Applications Platforms

Lucent's Accelerate(TM) Next-Generation Communications portfolio includes a set of service delivery platforms that service providers can deploy in their networks to support a wide variety of services, including services hosted on their network, or offered through third parties. The initial platforms included in the program -- Lucent's MiLife(R) Services Platforms and the AnyPath(R) Messaging System -- are designed to support applications developed by the service provider, by Lucent, or by third-party application developers. Both the MiLife Services Platforms and AnyPath are key elements of Lucent's IMS Solution, and offer an ideal launching pad for developers who are looking to integrate their applications and services into IMS-based networks.

Today, service providers have the opportunity to harness the intelligence in their networks to create more robust, more personalized services for their subscribers. The task of accessing and managing this intelligence is handled by the MiLife Intelligent Services Gateway (ISG) -- an OSA/Parlay standards compliant mediation gateway and key element of Lucent's MiLife Services Platforms portfolio -- that offers a rich set of mediation and policy management capabilities designed to enable application developers to easily incorporate network presence and availability, call control, location, messaging, billing, and authentication functions into their applications. The MiLife ISG enables operators to deliver personalized services to end users based on their location, preference and a variety of other criteria. The ISG runs on Lucent's MiLife Application Server, a combined server and service node that helps operators bring services to market more quickly and cost- effectively.

The AnyPath(R) Messaging System is a next-generation platform that integrates multimedia, video messaging, multimedia messaging service (MMS), speech-enabled applications, unified messaging/unified communications and mobile messaging all in one solution. AnyPath is access independent and network agnostic -- meaning it can support a variety of networks and devices -- and because it is designed around open standards, it provides an extremely supportive environment for the development of new applications.

Additionally, the program will be extended to support additional service delivery platforms in the future as market requirements evolve.

Service Development Tools

To simplify the creation of applications that can be offered via Lucent's service delivery platforms, Lucent has assembled a compilation of software tools including developers' kits (SDKs) and applications programming interfaces (APIs) that make it easy for developers to implement applications using open programming models including Parlay, Open Services Architecture (OSA), VoiceXML, Service Initiation Protocol (SIP) and other standards that support the delivery of services in IMS-based networks, as well as existing mobile and wireline systems.

Use of these software tools helps reduce the time and cost associated with developing new applications, in turn reducing the time it takes network operators to bring these new services to market.

Lucent also offers software-based solutions that allow for the prototyping and testing of services by simulating key network capabilities and network elements, enabling developers to test their applications in a lab environment, without having to access a service provider's network. This approach also offers significant time-to-market benefits for developers and operators alike.

Lucent's Application Partners

Lucent is already collaborating with a wide variety of application partners on new service development efforts, and is actively reaching out to the developer community to ensure that Lucent's service provider customers have a broad selection of applications and services from which to choose. Lucent's Application Partners include: Appium, Clique Communications, Covansys, Ecrio, FollowAp, HeyAnita, KnowledgeWhere, Lagadere Active North America (LANA), Nuance, the PhonePages, ScanSoft, Sun Microsystems, Terraplay and more.

One of Lucent's Application Partners, Appium, has benefited from its collaboration with Lucent, and the integration of its service delivery platforms and broad portfolio of applications with Lucent's solutions.

"Joining forces and actively collaborating in the open services market space is necessary to bring new and exciting services and solutions to market," said Nils Holmqvist, vice president, Strategic Partners, Appium. "Joint initiatives with global infrastructure providers such as Lucent help Appium to streamline the development process and increase speed to market for joint solutions, such as mobile gaming."

Go-to-Market Support Programs

As part of the MAP for Application Partners initiative, Lucent's development partners could qualify for a range of marketing and sales support programs, including co-marketing programs, joint collateral, presence on Lucent's Applications Solutions Website, participation in Lucent's customer- focused communications programs, sales referrals and tradeshow collaboration. These programs will help Lucent's application partners expand their sales channels, and at the same time help Lucent's service provider customers more easily connect with developers that can address their unique market requirements.

For more information on Lucent's Market Advantage Program for Application Partners, please visit the MAP Website at http://www.lucent.com/map/applications.

About Lucent Technologies

Lucent Technologies designs and delivers the systems, services and software that drive next-generation communications networks. Backed by Bell Labs research and development, Lucent uses its strengths in mobility, optical, software, data and voice networking technologies, as well as services, to create new revenue-generating opportunities for its customers, while enabling them to quickly deploy and better manage their networks. Lucent's customer base includes communications service providers, governments and enterprises worldwide. For more information on Lucent Technologies, which has headquarters in Murray Hill, N.J., USA, visit http://www.lucent.com/.

Lucent Technologies

CONTACT: Kurt Steinert, +1-973-386-8438- office, +1-908-285-1641 -mobile, ksteinert@lucent.com, or Ichiro Kawasaki, +1-973-386-3479 - office,+1-973-477-4173 - mobile, kawasaki@lucent.com, both of Lucent Technologies

Web site: http://www.lucent.com/http://www.lucent.com/map/applications

Source: PRNewswire-FirstCall

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