Trillium plans to make dedicated service centers a part of its sales offices in Boston and in Vancouver, British Columbia in the first half of this year, and plans additional offices for the United States and Europe later in 1999.

Jeff Lawrence, president of Trillium (Los Angeles), said that a trend already evident in Signaling System 7 and H.323 conferencing markets is likely to accelerate as more complex protocols like the Media Gateway Control Protocol come to market. Signaling and mediation for mixed packet/circuit worlds is a hard problem to solve, and both chip-set vendors and OEMs need more than standard software modules, he said.

The business model of the Trillium Professional Services Organization bears a resemblance to the design center concept of ASIC vendors, though Trillium sees its business unit as involving an even tighter integration of software and services. The service bureau model has been adopted to some extent by Trillium's competitors, ranging from ATM specialist Harris & Jeffries Inc. (Dedham, Mass.) to the IP-centric Telogy Networks Inc. (Germantown, Md.).

Trillium's strategy will not de-emphasizing the release of standard software modules which can be incorporated into hardware products by either OEMs or semiconductor suppliers. In mid-April, for example, Trillium released its protocol stack for General Packet Radio Services, the advanced packet service for GSM (Global Systems for Mobile telecommunications) cellular networks. GPRS is the first of many modules Trillium will be developing as current digital cellular and PCS systems add "2.5 generation" or true 3G packet data services, Lawrence said. And the advent of new IP/SS7 mediation protocols means that Trillium will be keeping busy with wireline signaling and packet protocol packages as well.

But customers who demands only standard software packages may become a minority as marketing pressures add to time-to-market woes, Lawrence predicted. The expectation by many OEMs that chip vendors should supply all protocol middleware will likely drive more deals between Trillium and semiconductor companies, while OEMs' own desires to avoid hiring large software staffs will accelerate the interest in professional services, he said.

"A key aspect in expanding the combined consulting and product services is getting close to the available labor pool," Lawrence said. "You can expect to see more service centers open in locations where the available telecom talent is high."