Today's grand opening of AT&T's Foundry in Palo Alto, Calif., gave some smaller companies a chance to shine, but AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan made it clear that it's not just a "show and tell" type of facility but one where work is going to get done.
In an event that was webcast, Donovan welcomed visitors to the facility, which is designed for maximum utility – with furniture on wheels – and minimal impact on the environment. The facility is a showcase in and of itself – it's a LEED Platinum building – but more importantly, "this is about where the work gets done," he said.
The foundry gives developers one place to link up with AT&T and test their applications on the network. Already, 106 projects are under way and in the past 12 months, AT&T has launched more than 80 APIs, or access points so that others can use its network.
The Palo Alto center is sponsored by Ericsson, and it's the third permanent AT&T Foundry facility to open. A center in Plano, Texas, is sponsored by Alcatel-Lucent and another one in Ra'anana, Israel, is sponsored by Amdocs. The new California location joins two temporary facilities that were in the Bay Area and is unique in that it sits in the technology epicenter that is Silicon Valley.
Håkan Eriksson, Ericsson Group chief technology officer and president of Ericsson Silicon Valley, was on hand to celebrate the opening and took to the stage with a device on his wrist to measure his heart rate and send it to his phone. "I was very calm this morning ... might be different now," he quipped.
Eriksson went to Stanford in the mid-'80s, returned to Sweden and relocated to Silicon Valley in early 2010, an indication of how important Stockholm-based Ericsson views the region.
Ericsson expects pretty much everything will be connected in years to come. In the future, a device that is not connected will be seen as dead, Eriksson said, with people expecting to be able to do things like check to see if an iron was turned off after they leave the house and then turn it off remotely by phone if necessary.
AT&T executives said the foundry is about speed and innovation, with AT&T working with startups and others to get the best products and services on its network first. One project under way to help developers more quickly build apps involves opening the network through services such as messaging, location, payments and advertising accessible via HTML5.
Sencha, provider of HTML5 frameworks and tools for desktop and mobile apps developers, collaborated with AT&T to develop the HTML5 interface. They're also working with Apigee and Amdocs, and on the mobile ad side, Amobee, to offer better ways for developers to make money.
As Sam Ramji, vice president of strategy at Apigee, explained during a webcast Q&A, the most successful monetization is Apple's App Store, but outside of that, it's basically broken. Apigee started working with AT&T about a year ago to open the APIs and offer better monetization for developers so they can write an app, have it run pretty much on any platform and lessen the headaches they otherwise would have working on their own.
AT&T joins others in highlighting their commitment to working with developers in a more open format. Verizon Wireless, which is holding its developer conference in Las Vegas this week, opened its Application Innovation Center in San Francisco last month.