http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=143775
Open services networking (OSN) seems to be the buzz word among the enterprise router vendors. This is understandable as more and more vendors started focusing creating augment features of the product as they are facing heavy competition from their competitors on the core & actual product features. Even though these vendors say it is open service networking, it is interesting that they only offer the API for the application developers to develop applications e.g., 3COM claims that people can create a IP PBX “application”. This is different from other initiatives like Asterix open souce PBX where the whole source code is available for the applicaiton developers. Controlling the core and opening up the API for application development seems to be catching up with industry segments e.g., Android platfom from Google again is based on a similar concept (does it resemble long tail?) What does this mean for the developers? How will the core product company manage its software updates for bug fixes and enhancements? What would be licensing models that these companies would be looking at when an augmented product becomes a killer product? Shall do some more investigation on the value chain that 3Com and Vyatta are doing in their open-source model.
