Nortel invests $10m in middleware supplier

Nortel Networks has pumped $10 million into Talarian, which develops so-called Smartsocket middleware to allow applications to communicate across Lans, Wans and the Internet.

The Canadian networking giant also plans to standardise its technology on Talarian's multicast protocol, which lets users exchange information in real time. This forms the basis of an industry standard multicast protocol, which the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) is expected to ratify within the next 12 months.

Paul Callahan, Nortel's vice president of strategy and technology investments, said the company plans to ship routers and switches based on the protocol to the financial sector by the end of the year.

Nortel and Talarian already have mutual customers in the financial community, including the US Securities Industry Automation Corporation, which manages networks for the New York Stock Exchange.

"Traders need to get quotes within 10 milliseconds of each other and this creates demand on the infrastructure," said Callahan.

The multicast protocol will allow traders to move information around with a "very short or indistinguishable time lag", he added.

Talarian's deal with Nortel follows last month's alliance with Novell, which is integrating Smartsocket into Novell Directory Services (NDS), so that applications can communicate according to policies set on NDS.