Nokia Siemens has a new strategy that focuses on hardware-independent switching solutions for core networks. It means that Nokia’s MSC mobile softswitch will be able to run on standard blade servers.

This isn’t NS’s first step in that direction. Other products, such as hiQ VoIP softswitch/application server, have been able to function on standard servers for some time now.

This isn’t a new approach for the industry either. Other companies’ softswitches and application servers (e.g. those from Cisco and Broadsoft) have been designed to run on standard servers from the very beginning.

It’ll be interesting to see how this technology change affects costs of MSC-based solutions .