GENBAND has moved quickly in the wake of its acquisition of the Nortel (News - Alert) CVAS assets. The company, which closed the transaction May 28, has visited more than 100 customers in the last few weeks to discuss the deal. It's held various meetings to bring both new and existing employees around the world up to date on how it will impact operations. And, today, GENBAND is publicly unveiling its product roadmap, while pressing the message that it's ready and able to offer end-to-end solutions to service providers of all sizes.

The centerpiece of GENBAND's product portfolio is an IP platform called GENiUS. With GENiUS, GENBAND executives explain, the company is delivering an open, standards-based architecture that will help carrier customers simplify their networks.

"GENiUS is an ATCA platform/chassis on top of which we have added our unique middleware, which is coming from CVAS," says Micaela Giuhat, vice president of product marketing with GENBAND. "This is a middleware in which they've invested tons of money to be really the premier middleware for this type of platform. [It] provides carrier-grade reliability, resiliency, redundancy, scalability."

The first products to be based on this new blade-based platform are the C20 (the softswitch from Nortel CVAS formerly called the CS 2000) and the S9 security gateway (which GENBAND introduced on an ATCA-based platform about a year ago, but which now has been adapted to run on the CVAS middleware). GENBAND expects to introduce additional products based on GENiUS over time.

"We will rapidly add the application blades as well as some call control blades," says Giuhat.

In addition to introducing the new GENiUS platform and the first products to employ it, GENBAND today is renaming a number of products.

A wireless call continuity application formerly known as WMG 6000, going forward will be called the A6. The Adaption Application Engine (aka A2E) henceforth will be the A2. Both products, which came from Nortel CVAS, will be hosted on GENiUS in the future. These products fall into GENBAND's A-Series.

As for the C-Series, in addition to the C20 news above, the Nortel CS 1500 now will be known as the C15. Meanwhile, the CS1600 product for rural markets is being renamed the C16.

For IMS networks, both the C15 and C20 support access and media gateway control functions. The C3, meanwhile, supports IMS media gateway control functions. The C3 is GENBAND's call control platform and will come onto the Genius platform at a later date. That will complement nicely the capabilities of the C20, which is a full-size Class 5 softswitch, says Mehmet Balos (News - Alert), executive vice president and chief marketing officer with GENBAND.

"As you know, we never touted our softswitch capabilities officially or very aggressively because, remember, we sold to tier 1s through our OEM partners," says Balos. "Our media gateways became the best of breed" via GENBAND's partners like Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) and Ericsson. However, he adds, GENBAND's C3 softswitches are robust solutions that have been deployed widely by including Leap Wireless and many others.

"So we are very experienced at doing these end-to-end solutions," he emphasizes.

"Now, with the leading, No. 1, softswitch from Nortel, we are addressing all Class 5 as well with the tandem switching," Balos continues.

Jumping to the G-Series, GENBAND's flagship product, the G9 gateway, remains a key player. It supports fixed, wireless and emerging solutions such as IMS voice and video transcoding as well as fixed mobile convergence. And the G9 product roadmap includes adding to it integrated session border control functionality, video, and enhancements to its existing high-definition voice capabilities.  

The G-Series also includes the G2 and G6 Universal Gateways as well as the former Nortel CVAS MG 9000 and MG 15000 media gateways.

The S-Series session border controller portfolio covers the new GENiUS version of S9, which GENBAND says now provides the highest scalability in the market; the S2 Security Gateway, a building block of FMC solutions such as femtocells, and Wi-Fi-based mobile data offload and coverage solutions; the S3; and the SR3 session router products.

With Nortel CVAS under its belt, Balos says GENBAND now calls 600 service providers around the globe its customers. That includes two-thirds of the world's largest service providers, including AT&T, Verizon and PAETEC (News - Alert), he says. And GENBAND's customers strongly endorsed its pairing with Nortel CVAS, which turns the company into an organization with $800 million in pro forma revenues this year, Balos continues.

Not only does GENBAND have a well-rounded product portfolio, it also now brings to the market a strong, global professional service organization, he says, adding that Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks (News - Alert) are the only other telecom equipment suppliers with comparable assets on that front. GENBAND's professional services include things like maintenance service as well as consultation around network topology, network optimization, capacity planning, disaster planning and more.

"So this is going to be a very important element as we're selling services to our tier 1" customers, he says, adding that GENBAND is supported by the leading bank, JPMorgan, which gives big customers an added level of comfort

"Definitely, we are more than capable of servicing large carriers ourselves directly at this time," Balos says.

"We are going to be a formidable force to rule the carrier VoIP market globally," he adds.