IP Unity has announced the opening of its new software and solutions development centre in Bangalore, India. The focus of the new centre is the rapid development of new enhanced services features that include audio/web/video conferencing, voicemail and unified messaging, speech recognition and innovative collaborative communications features. These features will be delivered via IP Unity’s flagship service platform, the HMS6000™ Media Server.

“We have recruited the best and brightest developers throughout India, with carrier platform and application development skills, to staff this new centre,” says Dr. Arun Sobti, CEO and Chair of IP Unity. “Our India team will develop innovative, unified communication and collaboration-enabling core platform modules, and integrate the best third-party peripherals in messaging, speech recognition, video, data collaboration and presence capabilities.” IP Unity, a mobile resource and telecommunication company, is building platforms. This one is not just text and voice message enabler from a service provider. Rather it’s a new age or the next generation platform that enables service providers to offer innovations like never before. Call it the network agnostic, or seamless mobility; IP Unity has built its platform on the lines of the VOIP (voice over internet protocol) architecture.

“Thanks to VOIP,” says Piyush Modi, Vice President of Applications, “our media manipulation application platform is a decomposed version of VOIP’s.” This platform is a full-fledged application that enables a service provider to host services that are centered on the media. And this media not only makes communication easier by converging multiple platforms into one, but also provides video and information, he says.

Until recently only text and audio message could be communicated over gadgets like cell phones, landlines and IP phones. But now this platform enables transfer of video, audio, text and information from one system to another irrespective of the device you have and the platform you’re operating. “Today’s telecommunication is drifting towards the age of convergence. Users demand more; they want their service provider—wireless, wire line and voip, cable provider—to enable them to access different platforms and different services in real time. And all these in a seamless manner,” says Modi.
To host all the content, information and entertainment media facility in their network in an intelligent way, platform developers need to develop a dynamic session control application as the users start accessing the services. This application should also be highly scalable coupled with carrier paths and interoperability with the various open standards “to create a network agnostic device in an agnostic manner,” points Modi.

In a high-speed environment of information-thirsty users everything needs to be done in real time. Mobility is of utmost important to everyone. No matter where you are and what you are doing, your accessibility to information should be unrestrained,” he says. IP Unity has efficiently established DSP resources allocation layer which allows immediate accessibility by mediating between different services, so that you can use the resource to the full extent. And the resource allocation layer, depending upon the peak hour of the service allows to leverage these expected resources across services.
To service both enterprise and consumer market IP unity had initially begun with outsourcing work to India-based vendors. But today while mobility and convergence are becoming the keyword in the telecom industries, IP Unity too has established a facility in Bangalore, India to maintain its services aloof in a highly scalable and carrier grade environment.

Long Distance Coverage
To establish shop in India was IP Unity’s recent decision. Although their outsourcing tradition in India was two-years old, IP Unity just recently decided to handle it all inhouse, with a fully-owned office. “We were working through a vendor till the summer of this year and now we have gone captive,” says Modi. According to him, to set up the Indian operation was one of the most challenging tasks his company took up. Basically their intentions were: build a scalable and loyal team that is commited in its approach, and deliver the real value to the best skill sets available in India.

But as time elapsed—4 months since its operation in India—IP Unity started to see some very simple, but yet important, business facts that is usually overlooked by most of the outsourcers. “When operating in a country outside your domain, it is not only important for you to have a good management and mangers in that respective countries, here in the U.S you should employ a manager with clear understanding of the Indian scenario,” Modi says. “Given the charm of its talent pool and market, one should also learn that Indian employees need a lot of in-house training and practical learning within their domain.” Building companies elsewhere also includes pooling resources, training that resource and leveraging that over a period of time.

IP Unity in India is bringing in a new sense among its engineers, by providing them the end picture of the product. “This is unlike the services type of work culture followed extensively across India. In IP Unity we expose technology from its conception and the end value of solution,” says Modi. “The complete exposure an engineer gets is unique to us.” On the other hand, IP Unity’s employee base—which is still twenty and might increase fivefold shortly—covers a whole variety of engineers from different backgrounds. Since the company’s platform comprises of application engineering, domain engineering, embedded hardware and so on, it creates employment from varied fields like the electrical, computer, telecommunication and electronic engineers, says Modi. This approach of IP Unity not only provides voluminous exposure to its employees in the telecommunication space, but also to the Java enabled J2C, J2E, and web services type of open future leaning environment. It also provides full exposure to the best of both worlds: application facing technology as well as the telecom facing technology, says he.

Company’s culture exchange
IP Unity’s adjustment to Indian work climate has been quite smooth. Discovering what India wants and how much to expect from its Indian employees were well-learnt lessons to this company during its outsourcing period. “Since we had a substantial amount of micro coding done from India, through a third party vendor, transition was not a big corporate-culture shock to us,” says Modi. “There’s actually no dearth. Indeed it’s a question about handling the excess.” Initially, IP Unity’s concern was to build an application team around the web technology—that is used extensively for its application. The company had lots of requirements in customization and localization, but it still managed to find the right resource.

“Even before we could set shop there (India), we had a great set of telecom companies like Lucent and Cisco already functional from India. So resources, for one, were not lacking,” says Modi. But to get the right set off employees in a pool of talents was worth the recruitment pain. Today IP Unity’s workforce consists of 20 employees—a chosen list of people from the 10,000 applications which were flown in. This it achieved with the help of the best of industry experts and technocrats of both India and the U.S. Today, it is planning to expand its manpower to 100 for its newly built facility of ten thousand square feet in the suburbian Bangalore.

“Resources was never a constraint, but, once we moved to our very own facility, it was more of transfer of equipments or infrastructure problem,” says Modi. “Given the nature of work, as we go deep into the media server and application technology, it is very important that we have the equipments in place in our Banaglore office.We are now in the process of moving that equipment as well as procuring new one.”

To cope with progress
In the recent mergers and acquisitions taking place in the world’s telecom industry, IP Unity’s growth has been rapid, says Modi. Today, most of IP Unity’s customers have global presence. We have customers in China, Japan, America; our focus is now widening and we plan to have major clients in India as well. Right now, Comcast and Cable Vision (cable providers), Bellsouth and SVC (telecommunication giants) and VOIP providers like Global3 are our notable list of our customers, says the Vice President of applications.

To leverage this growth of customers; IP unity’s offshore operation in India will help in developing world-class applications. “At this point in time, our delivery across the world is managed from the U.S., but later we might consider the Bangalore operations for delivery,” says Modi.

Modi, a staunch believer in customer satisfaction,says, “After securing the market we ought to provide the best of services. Our scalability is the first priority; we must scale as company in delivering the challenge: convergence or the platform to handle multiple applications independently. By this we can foray into the markets across the world and increase our customer hold worldwide.”

As the India team ramps up, Sobti and Modi are expecting to enhance IP Unity’s global delivery and service capabilities.