Open That Platform!!

A few weeks ago I wrote about Broadsoft Xtended, Broadsoft's effort to open its Broadworks call control platform for hosted telephony services.  Broadsoft's hope is to allow developers to integrate Broadworks features into their Web 2.0 applications.

Broadsoft appears to have started a trend.................

In the last few weeks we've seen two other significant announcements of vendors opening up their previously closed platforms to third party application developers.  The first is Cisco, who released their Application eXtension Platform (AXP), a Linux-based module for running third-party applications directly on Cisco branch routers. 

Yesterday, AOL joined the fray announcing an open API for those wishing to write applications to interface with its AIM Call Out  service.

I'm fascinated by these developments, what we're seeing is a clean break from the "build everything in-house" model that has dominated most application development, and instead we're seeing major vendors embrace the community/open source approach of delivering an open platform to enable developers to innovate on their own.  It will be interesting to see what comes out of these initiatives in terms of applications and new services.