Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, NJ) has many businesses within its structure. These areas are developing solutions to internal technology and communications challenges on a regular basis. Lucent has charged one of its groups to identify the software tools used in addressing this development, then to push these software solutions out into the commercial marketplace.

The big ideas don't necessarily sell themselves. Inevitably, someone needs to nudge them out into the arms of someone who can make use of them. The Software Solutions Group (SSG) is the software sales and marketing arm of the Intellectual Property (IP) Business of Lucent Technologies. SSG is charged with seeking out internally developed software, defining the raw software into commercial product, then distributing and licensing these products commercially.

SSG works closely with all the Lucent divisions, including Bell Laboratories, which serves as Lucent Technologies' research and development organization.

Paul Fillinich, senior manager for product realization, heads up the team. At the request of ISD Magazine, Sherri Davis (The DEM Group) asked Paul for some specifics on how he and his team go about mining for new technology and products.

Sherri: How do Lucent's business units get their internal technologies to market?

Paul: To select which products are likely to succeed in the marketplace, SSG has a product realization team who work with developers and researchers inside Bell Labs and other Lucent business units. This team seeks out in-house software packages, reviews, and evaluates them for commercial viability and overall compatibility, then recommends which products would best benefit from SSG assistance.

Sherri: Can you give me an overview of SSG?

Paul: The SSG team is comprised of individuals with business, technical, sales, and marketing experience. Since our establishment in 1975, SSG has been building relationships with internal customers and working with both the media and industry to provide technology updates and information.

Sherri: How does SSG identify or mine for new technologies and products?

Paul: We present periodic IP awareness programs, focused on our software licensing capabilities, to various business units, primarily at the developer or product manager level. We also do internal e-mailings to this audience as well as to their upper management. We ask product hopefuls questions such as whether they think someone would buy the application they developed. Were they ever asked by a customer for a copy of a program they developed? And have they thought about the revenue that could be produced by selling their software to another company?

Sherri: What are the determining factors in deciding if a product will be viable in the commercial market?

Paul: We have a business matrix that we use to determine if there is commercial potential for a product. An initial consideration is if there has been any external interest in the products and if that interest has been expressed in a request for pricing information. That is always a good sign. We look at other areas such as competitive positioning, product finishing requirements-making the product suitable for other than Lucent use, along with developer support and dollar valuation.

Sherri: Once identified, how do you promote these new products and technologies?

Paul: We develop and implement marketing strategies, which includes sales and trade show promotions, conduct market research, and negotiate license agreements. As part of our ongoing initiatives, we publish and distribute product literature, run advertising programs in industry publications, operate a toll-free telephone number and maintain a website. We have recently embarked on an e-commerce method of software technology licensing. In addition to these programs, we continue to expand and develop working relationships with a variety of OEMs, distributors, and resellers.

Sherri: Give me an example of adding value to your reseller relationships?

Paul: SSG wants to be more than a distribution center so we put started a co-marketing program for our resellers. We invite select resellers to join trade shows, co-host a seminar series, and place content in trade publications. Other features of our program include an online repository of materials our resellers need to do their jobs, including collateral materials, graphic files of logos, white papers, and so forth.

Sherri: Does SSG have any restrictions from Lucent when it comes to getting these products and technologies commercialized?

Paul: No. Our services range from the licensing of source code for an external organization to customize for their own markets, to licensing packaged products that may have been discontinued by Lucent. For instance, our organization executed the first commercial source code license for the Unix operating system.

Sherri: How many potentially viable products or technologies come across your radar screen per year?

Paul: In a year, we would have between 50 and 75 products to evaluate.

Sherri: How many make it out the door?

Paul: Well, of these initial 50 to 75, roughly 20 make it through our filter and are actively pursued. We anticipate about 10 of these will prove to be viable and one or two will make real money.

Sherri: Any territorial issues within Lucent?

Paul: I can't say territorial with developers, but possibly with other units. Lucent has another organization, the New Ventures Group, which takes promising products and evaluates whether the product has the potential of creating a business. It then funds the business and moves it into a venture that may be spun off eventually. Since this is a very speculative activity, with only a small percentage of high-value successes, we often benefit from the ventures that don't make the financial cut. That isn't to say that the product isn't good, only that the creation of a new venture wasn't appropriate. In this case, we may be asked to take over the licensing responsibility for the product.

Sherri: How do you ensure that products will work outside of the Lucent environment?

Paul: The Lucent environment isn't unlike most corporate environments. However, part of our initial filtering determines if the product is so tied to the Lucent environment that isn't suitable for the external market. Beyond this, we try to test the products in "friendly" hands to make sure that it has suitable characteristics for the external market.

Sherri: Can you tell me about some of the latest technologies you've brought to market?

Paul: Yes. We just announced the commercial availability of HSI Designer. It's an application-engineering environment specifically designed to streamline the development of hardware/software interface (HSI) circuitry and software. The Switching Solutions Group within Lucent's Service Provider Networks business unit developed this product for internal use.

Sherri: So, what was HSI Designer originally designed for?

Paul: HSI Designer was developed to improve consistency and efficiency in the software specifications generated by the hardware developers creating chip level products. At the time, no commercial tools available were available on the market.

Sherri: When did SSG recognize the HSI Designer market potential?

Paul: When we first began working with the Lucent developers of HSI Designer, they told us of interest in their products by external companies, both end users as well as software integrators. Our studies of the market and the product indicated that there was a niche for the product, and we moved on it. We put the product into the hands of the initial end-user licensee (a former employee who had used the product when he was with Lucent) and had him evaluate the product for such things as suitability to his external environment. We also asked him to identify areas that required modifications or that were particularly Lucent-oriented.

Sherri: What are the features that made this product worthy of further interest?

Paul: HSI Designer facilitates the rapid capture of information associated with hardware components, such as registers, bits, fields, and memory and its partitioning. From the captured information, HSI Designer automatically derives or synthesizes various outputs for downstream hardware and software processes. These outputs include documentation of the hardware and software header files.

Sherri: At what stage is it now?

Paul: Fully developed and ready for use. HSI Designer allows hardware and software engineers to work from a common, unambiguous interface specification. By automatically generating various outputs for downstream development processes, while providing input to existing hardware development tools from a common data source, human error is reduced.

It's a wrap

The SSG team helps resellers, integrators, and OEMs license software from Lucent and Bell Labs. SSG's product line is diverse-ranging from software packages and components that make a business more productive, to solutions for imaging and document management, fault tolerance, IT asset management, source code versions of C++ compilers, expert system and knowledge-based languages, and various development tools.

SSG continues to develop relationships with a variety of OEMs, distributors, and resellers. In some instances, resellers have licensed Lucent source code and adapted it for their own proprietary use. This adaptation of technology and software allows SSG to participate in new markets, while enabling the reseller to enhance an existing or new product that may be valuable to the end user. One company licensed Lucent's help desk operation software technology and transformed it into a commercial product. This reseller added its own functionality to create a help desk product that is marketed to large corporations in various markets.

SSG offers a number of opportunities for developers to license its technology. They offer both binary and source code versions of software, depending on the reseller's needs and business objectives.

Few internal products or technology get the green light. As Paul says, "We're gently guiding a tried and true technology solution out the door. Each product is placed into the arms of a reseller who will nurture it through its commercial life."

Paul Fillinich has been with Lucent Technologies since 1993 and is currently a senior manager for product realization.

Sherri Davis is director, Marketing Research for The DEM Group.