Software technologies for future telecommunications systems

The telecommunications industry is in a period of tremendous change driven by an increasingly open market, and the phenomenal growth of the Internet. The World Wide Web increasingly influences users' perceptions and application requirements. The challenge for software developers is to shorten development times without any loss of quality. This article discusses two software technologies, components and extensible markup language (XML), which are being used in large-scale distributed systems, and highlights potential benefits in the rapid development of robust future applications.