Siemens Communications today announced that Tut Systems has been tabbed as an authorized reseller of its Surpass Home Entertainment middleware.

The deal goes beyond simply allowing Tut to resell Siemens middleware, which it acquired with the purchase of Myrio. It also will include development of new IPTV applications, said Ryan Petty, vice president of product line management for Siemens Surpass Home Entertainment group.

Just as significant, the deal gives Tut a replacement product for customers that have been using Tut’s Astria video encoders with Alcatel’s iView middleware. Alcatel essentially exited that business when it signed an alliance with Microsoft.

“Even with the iView product, there was quite a bit of cooperation between Tut and Myrio, and there was quite a bit of success between the two companies,” Petty said. “This move by both companies demonstrates our continued commitment to this independent market. In a number of instances we will be replacing [iView]. And there are instances where customers are satisfied with the current capability. I think eventually all the customers will move over.”

Siemens’ current middleware customer count in the U.S. is slightly more than 75, with most of those being small independent telcos. Outside the U.S., the company has announced KPN Royal Dutch Telecom, Belgacom, Advanced Datanetwork Communications (Thailand) and Shanghai Telecom as customers. The Myrio software suite consists of Myrio Interactive for set-top boxes and TotalManage, a back-office subscriber and content management solution.

The company plans to develop a number of new applications for its middleware with a heavy concentration in video-on-demand and migrating to network-based personal video recording. Initially, that PVR functionality will be handled as a function in the set-top.

“We’ve applied the logic of a phased implementation of PVR,” Petty said. “The approach we’re taking is where we build the basic functions and then add features. Dropping a full PVR capability with photo sharing and all this other stuff leads to confusion for the user.”