The move towards IMS and ATCA drives research and development

22 May 2007, Berkeley, CA – Signaling infrastructure vendor, Adax, is marking its 25th anniversary this year by launching 10 new boards during 2007. This record number of product releases is being driven by the emergence of IMS and ATCA as the technologies of choice for developing next generation networks. These 10 boards expand Adax’s reach beyond its original foundation in signaling, to include a new 8 trunk HDC3 for SS7 and ATM, the clear channel and channelised ATM4 for ATM-IP interworking, and the SDCIII for SCTP, IPsec and general/other IP signaling protocol acceleration.

In 1982, President and CEO Dr. Barry Zuckerman founded Adax as a small start-up. At the time, Adax was selling X.25 data communications solutions to Unisys, and the OEM arrangement required Adax to supply TCP/IP for the Defense Department’s Data Network. Since then, Adax’s product line has evolved along with the networks, expanding from a focus on packet networks and narrowband SS7 to GPRS, 3G, SS7/IP convergence, and IMS security and signaling. Over the past 25 years, Adax has provided high-performance SS7, ATM, and IP communications controllers, software, and signaling gateways to the world’s leading TEMs.

Although Adax is best known for signaling, the emergence of ATCA and IMS has driven the company to develop new boards with functionality far beyond its original foundation. Beginning with the release of the HDCII-AMC at Globalcomm 2006, Adax has launched four AMC cards to support SS7, SIGTRAN, ATM, and IP protocols, including the ATMIII, SDCIII, and HDC3, with additional cards scheduled for release this year.

ATCA was developed to eliminate the high costs and slow time to market associated with traditional proprietary platforms. Telecom companies have been developing commercial off the shelf (COTS) strategies for network equipment as a more efficient and cost effective means of bringing products to market quickly. ATCA helps to address these requirements by providing the foundations for a flexible, scalable, high performance architecture. It can help to lower CAPEX and OPEX by reducing the time to market for new services, and by significantly lowering development costs. This is a key consideration when factoring in the costs associated with a constantly evolving network.

One of the most compelling examples of ATCA’s benefits is its role in facilitating IMS. IMS is centered on the flexibility to enable operators to provide customers with the very latest revenue generating IP-based services. The open standards-based architecture of ATCA can be used to facilitate this requirement by enabling telecom companies to reuse the foundation of their products.

"ATCA is likely to reach volume shipments within the next 2-5 years and all telecommunications networks are moving towards IP. With this in mind, Adax has developed high performance solutions for these technologies with new PMC and AMC boards for ATCA and MicroTCA architectures" remarks Robin Kent, Director of European Operations at Adax Europe Ltd. "However, with 25 years of experience in the signaling industry, we understand that it will take time to fully transition to ATCA and IMS. Therefore, Adax will continue to provide the full range of signaling requirements for SS7, ATM and IP, across all form factors, all supported by a common architecture with a single driver and uniform API. This is what truly differentiates us from any of our competitors.”

To ensure continued technology leadership, Adax has always focused on strategic partnerships with leading software developers and platform vendors such as Aricent, IBM and Sun Microsystems. By combining its skills with the expertise of each partner company, Adax offers its customers the benefits of superior solution performance, pre-integration and testing. These partnerships facilitate a faster time to market and assist the rapid roll out of new services via pre-integrated, highly flexible network components.

“We are very excited about the eventual transition to all IP-based networks and have invested heavily in our market-leading product set,” continues Kent. “We have worked with leading companies worldwide to ensure that our customers have best of breed products now and in the future. We understand the market, our customers, and the challenges facing them, and will continue to invest in R & D to ensure that we will always have the flexible, scalable and cost effective solutions that telecom companies need.”

About Adax
Adax offers a complete set of protocol controllers, integrated software and signaling gateways for SS7, ATM and IP protocols for PSTN, GPRS, 3G and IMS networks. These products are sold to some of the world’s premier telecom equipment suppliers, value added services (VAS) providers and systems integrators.

Adax signaling products enable customers to deploy and manage any application, node or system quickly and efficiently, irrespective of the underlying network interface or architecture. In turn, customers can reduce capital and operational expenditure by creating a high-performance and future-proofed signaling infrastructure that is flexible and scaleable to meet new demands.

Adax customers include Alcatel-Lucent, Apertio, Bharti Telesoft, Ericsson, IP Access and Motorola.

For more information, please visit www.adax.com