BridgePort - Siemens deal... does it change the landscape?

Interesting to see BridgePort and Siemens announced a major reseller deal today. (Not a huge surprise, as the two companies were looking pretty friendly at 3GSM in February). I've been following BridgePort for some time, and the company has consistently had the largest mindshare among the horde of SIP-based fixed-mobile convergence vendors. In particular, it has probably been the loudest advocate of VCC (voice call continuity) which has all the signs of being the major carriers' favoured approach to knitting WLAN and cellular together. It has probably been helped by its decision to set up the MobileIGNITE industry group, and then subsequently "set it loose" as an independent entity.

It will be interesting to see how the other convergence vendors step up to the plate, partnering with other Tier 1 equipment providers. I've been quite surprised that haven't been acquisitions in this space already.

Other FMC collaborations that I'm aware of:

- NewStep is a partner of Cisco's (albeit not quite at the level of the BridgePort/Siemens deal)
- Convergin is working with Tekelec
- Kineto (UMA, rather than SIP) OEMs to Motorola & Nokia
- Azaire has done some data-oriented integration work with Nortel
- LongBoard (not quite in the same space) lists various infrastructure partners including NEC

Among the others:
- Stoke gets lots of comments but remains a fairly shadowy, semi-stealth organisation
- OutSmart seems to prefer selling direct to carriers for niche applications
- Cicero seems to be focussing more on the handset client side of things these days
- Accuris is still a relatively new entrant
- Tatara is focusing mostly on WiFi/cellular data roaming rather than voice