RadiSys (News - Alert) Corporation has teamed with Enea, a provider of network software and services for Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs), to release a new management solution both companies say will dramatically alter the ATCA space.

 

The Enea (News - Alert) System Manager is an entirely new product category,  providing  TEMs with an out-of-the-box level of integration with the RadiSys Promentum ATCA platform not previously available.

 

What makes the Enea System Manager unique, says Robert Monkman, director of Corporate Alliances for Enea, is the comprehensive design and its pre-integrated, pre-modeled platform management application for the ATCA platform.

 

“This is a substantial new product category,” Monkman told TMCnet. “It is the first time a pre-integrated, pre-modeled TEMs solution will be delivered out-of-the-box to the marketplace. It is going to have an impact on adoption rates in the whole ATCA market.”

 

The solution is significant on several fronts, but foremost it marks the first time TEMs have access to a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) platform providing configuration, monitoring, control and platform software upgrade for the entire ATCA system.

 

That could translate into a lot of time saved for TEMs. In fact, Monkman estimates it will save up to 54 man-months in development time.

 

RadiSys believes the reduction in research and development costs, when factored in with time saved and risks mitigated, will allow TEMs to determine how to best leverage savings to accelerate time-to-market or allocate critical resources elsewhere.

 

“Service providers are demanding more elements with new capabilities more quickly from TEMs,” said Eric Gregory, ATCA product manager for RadiSys. “In turn, TEMs are looking to streamline. So they are asking providers to deliver more and more complete solutions. We are taking a task that can be done ahead of time and continuing to add to that.”

 

The integrated solution also leverages the RadiSys Promentum APIs and HPI (News - Alert) interface, and as a result is ready for integration into an overall Element Management System for TEMs.

 

If TEMs can ultimately eliminate the often complex integration efforts they traditionally employ over and over on a per case basis, it makes sense to deliver an ATCA solution that is already  fully managed and easily upgradeable, according to Gregory.

 

Eric Heikkila, director of the Embedded Hardware & Systems Practice at VDC Research Group, agrees.

 

"As more TEMs adopt ATCA, the key issue becomes standardizing and outsourcing not just the hardware, but also the software stack up to the application layer," said Heikkila. "The promise of ATCA is that it enables TEMs to obtain compute platforms effortlessly, cost effectively and quickly through outsourcing, reserving their development efforts for applications. “

 

In addition, System Manager can be customized and extended with a unique Software Development Kit to include custom management of applications and/or other software in a network element, according to the companies.

 

According to the RadiSys, this allows a single, unified management model for the deployed network element including the underlying RadiSys ATCA platform and end user application. IN the past this has been costly and time consuming and a task performed by TEMs. Now, RadiSys is hopping to change that process.

 

“With System Manager, Enea and RadiSys have hit the mark in the realization of that promise, and we see this as an important step forward to drive ATCA adoption," said Heikkila.

System Manager provides the following capabilities: