As service providers look to upgrade their infrastructure and build new networks, they have many decisions to make. One of these has to do with the revenue producing applications which currently exist on their network. Do they all need to be rewritten to work with the new network?In many cases they do but if one company has it's way this will no longer be the case. A company named AppTrigger is looking to bring the old applications into the new world of next-generation networks while simultaneously allowing many of the next-gen services to be available to subscribers on legacy networks.
The company even rolled out a new program called the Application Session
Controller Advantage Program, a new integrated program that provides a construct for evaluating current application business models as service providers examine the risks and rewards of advanced network migration strategies.
Of course this begs the question, what is an Application Session Controller or ASC? To answer this question I travelled to Richardson, Texas where the company is based to learn more.
While there I spoke with Tamye Oshman Dir of Marketing, Wally Beck (blue shirt) Senior Director of Marketing and Patrick Fitzgerald (white checkered shirt), Senior Vice President Sales and Marketing and in my meeting on a scorching Texas day I got to learn about how the company evolved from a media gateway company into what they are today.
Moreover, I learned about how the company has partnered with Unisys and now Microsoft and their focus on North America, EMEA and APAC and Latin America.
But I promised to tell you about the ASC - it is a pre-IMS network element which sits between the application layer and Network Element.
The ASC allows an application such as enterprise VPN currently running on an IN network to be introduced on an IMS network without rewriting or repurchasing of the application.
I am told the ASC supports all the APIs (a bold statement but check with the company for details) and some media such as record, playback and SMS.
So should service providers work with a company like AppTrigger? It depends really. In a world which is getting more and more complicated for carriers, do you need to keep your applications more organized and maximize the revenue of each of them by allowing users on all networks to use them? Of course the decision is up to you but it seems logical that going forward, ASCs will become common network elements in many service provider networks. Once this happens, we should hopefully see more revenue potential for carriers and more opportunities to use disparate services regardless of the network they are on.
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