Network hardware vendors have long enjoyed differentiation in the marketplace, by designing and controlling their own lines of proprietary hardware. All of that has been changing over the last couple of years as development costs have steadily risen.

Many will recall the aftermath of the Dot Com boom, when R&D dollars and investment capital dried up, virtually overnight. ISVs and software companies have faced intense competition to deliver products and services, at an ever accellerating rate. The big boys had the same problem as smaller tier II vendors. Neither could distinguish themselves by middleware alone. Lawrence said that the key to today's telecommunication industry is 'time to market' and that Open Source Software is helping redefining that term.

According to Lawrence, large providers, like AT&T have been steadily moving toward Open Source for quite a while. Open Source has also helped small vendors by facilitating development and testing, at low cost. Reducing barriers to adoption is a prime objective of OpenClovis. The company offers a GPL type license for free/community use and an OpenClovis style license for commercial use.

The company has worked extensively with the Service Availability Forum to help define common standards of hardware and interoperability, among telecommunication and software vendors. Other forum members include Intel, Motorola, Ericsson AB, Alcatel, Wind River, Sun, and Symantec. The forum also seeks to foster broader component supplier choice and an expanded market for standard products.

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