Middleware vendor ANT Software announced today that Siemens Home and Office Communication Devices (SHC) has licensed its Galio Client to create TV services across a range of devices. What makes the deal slightly unusual is the fact that Siemens already owns a middleware vendor in Myrio.

Andrew Bovingdon, head of marketing and product management for ANT said the agreement with Siemens is specific to the SHC group and doesn’t include the German giant’s telecom access group, but that that ANT and Myrio are talking about ways to work together.

“It’s a fairly open ended partnership we’ve entered into,” he said. “Galio is more of a TV platform than a browser.”

Indeed, Galio tends to focus more on application management and presentation of IPTV products while Myrio’s base product is geared toward back office usage. Siemens, though, plans to integrate Galio into a range of products for both the IPTV and hybrid TV markets. Among the potential products are set-top boxes, televisions, portable devices and PCs.

For ANT, the partnership could result in a huge boost in terms of both raw sales as well as stature. While the company claims its middleware is being used in 70% of the current worldwide IPTV deployments, it is battling against much larger players like Microsoft as the largest tier-one carriers step into IPTV. The deal also gives ANT a signature consumer electronics customer at a time when the large CE players are looking at direct-to-consumer broadband TV strategies.

“There’s quite a potential big deal for us,” Bovington said. “If you look at who are the name players, this strategy is really starting to pay off for us.”