Southborough, Massachusetts-based Chipcom Corp claims it has the first intelligent switching hub vendor to open up its hub architecture to third parties, with the launch of its OpenHub Programme. The idea is to allow third party network product vendors to incorporate their technology into Chipcom’s family of switching hubs. The principle advantage from their point of view is the speed of integration, says Bob Cushing, Chipcom’s director of marketing for Northern Europe, adding that he hopes to recruit around a dozen manufacturers over the next year. Chipcom has already won support from IBM Corp, which will use the Programme to integrate third party technologies into its own, as well as Chipcom’s products. The two companies will also work jointly to recruit members, but have already signed-up BinTec Computersysteme GmbH, Cisco Systems Inc, Sync Research Inc and 3Com Corp. The OpenHub Programme is based on the company’s OpenHub Platform, which consists of a motherboard supporting any number of daughterboards and providing a common interface to the Chipcom architecture, and an application programming interface for integration of management capabilities between the two technologies. Participants also receive a Developers’ Kit containing hardware and software specifications, documentation, software and application programming interfaces. Chipcom is promising participants engineering and technical support and compatibility testing. Cushing said that the initiative aimed to extend the company’s recently-announced collaboration with Cisco Systems (CI No 2,481). We will be using this as the method for delivering the Cisco functionality, he averred.
