Emergent ENTICE’s service providers

Emergent Network Solutions this month plans to introduce its software for service providers that helps bind together various components of carrier networks needed to deliver services.

Emergent Network Solutions this month plans to introduce its software for service providers that helps bind together various components of carrier networks needed to deliver services.

Called Emergent Networks Telecommunications Infrastructure Control Environment (ENTICE), the software is a call-control and device management platform that can be added onto to create new service offerings. With APIs, providers can write new service applications to expand their service offerings without having to wait for vendors to do it for them.

The core of ENTICE then handles call control and the management of specific network devices needed to deliver the services described by service applications.

In addition to its core software, Emergent also sells a set of software add-ons that expands the capabilities of ENTICE. These are ENTICE Softswitch, ENTICE Session Controller, ENTICE Enhanced Services Platform, ENTICE Tandem Switching/International Gateway and ENTICE Protocol Translator.

Emergent will install and maintain the software or train an internal staff of service providers to do it themselves. The company also licenses its source code to developers that want to write applications that are compliant with ENTICE.

The strategy of offering the core software needed to bind network services together over circuit and packet networks using disparate signaling is a byproduct of the company’s history. The company is run by Nathan Franzmeier who formerly worked for Lucent and started Emergent in December of 2001. As Lucent was about to lay off the team that worked on Lucent’s ExchangePlus switch, Emergent hired them. The switch supports circuit and packet interfaces that handles voice, fax and data traffic over IP networks.

Emergent now supports ExchangePlus for Lucent and taps into the ExchangePlus customer base. The company has written its own code for ENTICE, so the product is separate from ExchangePlus, Franzmeier says. The company is funded by Franzmeier himself, and he claims it is already profitable.