Azaire Networks recently announced a deployment and a demonstration of its fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) solution. In a VoIP Planet article published today, I looked at the announcement, their technology, and the company's prospects in the FMC market.

The company's converged network solution, the IP-CNP, authenticates and authorizes users, then secures and routes traffic as needed.What makes Azaire's product different is that it's technology-agnostic: it can work with any technology currently available, and should be able to accommodate any new solutions that get added to the mix.

"It has a long life, because it evolves as the operators' networks evolve in offering different fixed-mobile convergence services," says Naveen Dhar, Azaire Networks' Vice President of Marketing. "On the access side, today we're showing it working with Wi-Fi, but it could work easily with any other access service, like WiMAX."

But Yankee Group analyst Phil Marshall cautions that that kind of flexibility could also be a weakness, since flexibility requires increased complexity -- and he warns that companies like Azaire may be coming to market too early. "There's a potential that some of these companies are going to be the incubators of the market, but not the beneficiaries," he says.