In the third quarter of 1997 seven computer telephony (CT) vendors joined forces to develop a new computer telephony value-adding interface specification. Executives from BICOM, Inc., Calibre Industries, Inc., Centigram Communications Corp., Cole Technical Services, Commetrex Corp., Pika Technologies, Inc., and QNX Software Systems, Ltd. believed the CT industry would benefit from a software specification that decouples host- or DSP-based media-processing technologies from the underlying hardware resources. Several months later three additional companies -- Computer Communications Specialists, Inc., MiBridge, Inc., and ECI Telecom, Inc. -- joined the group. The working name for the specification was the Media Stream Processor (MSP). Upon release of the intial draft for comments it was designated as The MSP Consortium M.100 Specification.
"What this means", Mike Coffee, MSP Evangelist and President of Commetrex said at the announcement of the formation of the Consortium, "is that companies can choose to develop MSP-compliant hardware or media-processing software (firmware), they don't have to do both."
Jim Pinard, CTO of Pika Technologies, added, "Until now, a hardware resource was usually sold with proprietary media-processing facilities, such as voice or fax. Our objective with the MSP specification is to create new competitive space by separating the hardware from the software. We want to make voice, fax, data, text-to-speech, speech recognition, and video, all produced by different companies, capable of coexisting on the same hardware resource. This philosophy has been successful in the PC world, and we think it can be achieved at the CT resource-board level."
Tony Blake, VP, Development, at Centigram, added "We are interested in reducing the cost of meeting the imminent market demand for integrated media. We believe the MSP Specification can put us in better control of our strategic platform, while reducing our costs. A successful MSP Specification will allow us to separate the decision to make or buy boards from the decision of where to get the best media-processing technology. We can easily put our TTS technology on an MSP-compliant board. Plus, we should have multiple sources for MSP-compliant media-processing products."
"Since it is hardware- and OS-independent, the MSP specification makes for a truly open system." said Greg Bergsma, Corporate and Technical Communications Manager at QNX Software Systems. "We are pleased to contribute our experience in implementing OS technology that follows open standards (such as POSIX). Our QNX/Neutrino product offers the MSP implementer exceptional reliability through features like memory protection and a true microkernel architecture during development and at runtime. And its embedded TCP/IP stack will enable vendors to provide Internet connectivity and integrated streaming media on a single board."
Lenny Gorczyca, President of Calibre Industries, echoed QNX's Bergsma: "As an ISP, we are concerned about the CT industry's response to the need for integrated-media platforms. The MSP can eliminate one of the biggest barriers we see to our market's embrace of additional media. ISPs need cost-effective support for integrated media, but it's no good unless businesses have it as well. That's what we and our customers are looking for in the MSP." Terry Vaught, of Cole Technical Services, said his company will bring the perspective of the applications developer to the MSP Consortium. "Too much of our time on a development project is spent working out the complexities of multiple fixed-function boards from different vendors. With today's powerful DSPs it makes no sense. Separate boards cost more and take development resources away from the meat of the application. Integrated-media systems is the only way to go considering today's technology. MSP will hasten that day."