Network features to be made available to developers as a service

Nortel Networks has entered the service oriented architecture space by expanding its partnership with IBM.

The two companies plan to tie together communications and application departments within corporations through the use of web services.

Nortel will enable web services on its existing softswitches and session initiation protocol (SIP) application servers. The vendor also vowed to enable its SOA services on networks that use third party switches by the first quarter of next year.

The network SOAs, for instance, will allow developers to craft applications within Lotus Sametime that offer online presence information about a user or indicate if somebody is on the phone. An application also will be able to initiate a VoIP conversation.

Service oriented architectures allow developers to piece together applications from pre-built components. This allows for a dramatic reduction of application development time and costs.

Over time, applications are expected to be built by dragging and dropping services. It would allow educated users to create their own applications and thereby ensure that new tools meet their needs.

The IBM-Nortel alliance expands the focus of SOAs from software development to include network infrastructure.

Networking giant Cisco too has been beating the SOA drum under the Data Centre 3.0 banner. Cisco is using XML to tag network data, allowing the network to prioritize important information and perform simple tasks within the router.

Cisco also has been offering its IP telephones as an application platform, allowing developers to develop and run software on the devices.