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Recently, RadiSys acquired assets from Intel’s modular communications platform business. What impact will this have on RadiSys and the customers you serve?
We’ve been delivering ATCA compliant solutions for several years and the combination of our Promentum® family of products with the Intel assets will help us accelerate our product strategy. Essentially, we will offer more solutions to more customers worldwide. With this new announcement RadiSys is now the leading provider of ATCA blades in the market according to Eric Heikkila at Venture Development Corporation.
Today we deliver common, managed platforms that help TEMs reduce their product development time by as much as 50 percent, while significantly lowering lifecycle and equipment costs. As we integrate the Intel assets into our product portfolio we expect to continue these trends on a broader scale.
What assets were included in this deal?
The Intel products are all complimentary to RadiSys solutions and include ATCA compute and packet processing blades, ATCA chassis, chassis management hardware and software modules, AMC modules, as well as cPCI blades, cPCI chassis and other legacy systems products.
Some feel ATCA hasn’t taken off as promised. Can you comment on why, and, where you see the industry going?
Although met with early market enthusiasm, there were growing pains related to initial deployment, which included interoperability and compatibility issues. However, resolving those roadblocks lead to better standards work and closer collaboration between hardware, middleware and OS vendors.
While these products were getting ready to roll out, the telecommunications industry was struggling to manage a new wave of capacityhungry applications. Fortunately, while firstgeneration ATCA products were being developed, faster connectivity rates were already in the works. As a result, today’s telecommunications systems designers demand ATCA blade and server platforms with up to 10 Gb/s capability, to support current and future needs.
According to Simon Stanley, analyst with Light Reading, “ATCA is now established as a key standard platform for telecom equipment providers. Almost all Tier 1 vendors have introduced at least one system based on AdvancedTCA, and most are now developing a range of AdvancedTCA-based products covering multiple application areas.”
We believe that ATCA is a proven form factor that will fuel the transformation from proprietary technologies and vertical implementations to an open standards environment in telecommunications.
Besides 3G communications, are there other market segments that can benefit from ATCA?
While 3G wireless infrastructure was the initial target application for ATCA, implementations are already being planned or deployed for IPTV services platforms, IMS infrastructure, security platforms, military, high performance embedded and test and measurement applications. The convergence of telecommunications and computing has blurred the lines between products and applications; therefore the possibility of ATCA becoming the architecture of choice in other market segments is easy to conceive.
What are the challenges facing the telecommunications market?
Today the telecommunications industry is facing a significant challenge: how does it bring on the next billion users of telecom services with a significantly lower cost and environmental impact than the first billion?
To step up to this challenge, TEMs have to fundamentally rethink the approach to developing new products. Gaining efficiency and economy of scale are no longer “desired,” but is an absolute “requirement” driving the need for open-standards based and modular solutions.
The modular nature of ATCA allows it to address the needs of rapid deployment, low cost, and low environmental impact required today.
What sets RadiSys apart in the ATCA landscape?
RadiSys has enjoyed a successful, 20-year history as a technology leader in communications and embedded markets. Through close collaboration with customers and ecosystem partners, we’ve become experts at developing and integrating modular building blocks and platforms that help our customers design better products faster and more economically. We are continuing that heritage in ATCA with industry-first, flexible, scalable solutions that can be used in multiple applications. Better economies of scale and long life support combined with the latest technology, means our customers can design products that enable their customers to deliver new services to more users at lower costs.