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Intech and CPqD are two of Ericsson's application developer partners in Latin America. Although different in business focus, they have one thing in common: a belief in the future of OSA/Parlay.
Intech's Antonio Hernandez explains that there are sound reasons for choosing the standard. "First, it makes application development faster, easier and more flexible," he says. "This means we can deploy new applications in a shorter time, which in turn makes it cheaper. There are also more development tools for OSA/Parlay compared to other standards. The open platforms and fixed interfaces also make it easy to implement an application in different networks or markets."
Intech has a background within the intelligent networks (IN) area and was founded by former Ericsson employees. The company has 40 employees and Ericsson is an important customer, mainly in Latin America.
Brazilian CPqD has been in the telecommunications and Information Technology market since 1976 researching and developing solutions concerning operation support, business support and software development in areas such as number portability, voice over IP (VoIP) services, public payphones, location-based services (LBS), MMS and features for enterprise exchanges (PBX). Out of more than 1000 employees, around 20 people work with OSA/Parlay development.
Marta Duran Fernandez, who is responsible for business development, says that the customers are primarily operators who have both fixed and mobile networks. "We see the convergence of telephony and IT and the convergence of fixed and mobile networks as the main drivers for OSA/Parlay," she says. "The market has substantial potential."
"Compared to IN applications, OSA/Parlay applications can be developed at significantly lower cost. They are also network independent and easy to integrate with the IT world. Operators need simple and flexible service creation because it facilitates the development of new business models."
Mobile data is still in its infancy in most Latin American markets, and even though GSM has been launched in most of the continent's countries, penetration is still low. "One of our challenges as application developers is to wait until the markets get more mature," Hernandez says.
Another challenge is to better meet competition from European developers, who are strong when it comes to OSA/Parlay and have grabbed a substantial piece of the pie in Latin America. Local developers, however have a strong advantage because of local knowledge.
"Our strategy is to develop specific applications for specific markets," Hernandez says. "We can do this better because we know the language, the culture and the local market."
"Our experience shows that local operators prefer local developers," Hernandez says.
One of the main challenges for OSA/Parlay business is to spread the word to the market. Even though there are a number of operators that have implemented OSA/Parlay gateways ? or have decided to do so ? some operators are still reluctant. "I believe operators in some cases are a bit anxious about the convergence trend," says Fernandez. "Notably, those with a long-established history in telecom might see a merger with the IT world as a threat. Therefore we must explain the benefits of OSA/Parlay."