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Group Publisher and Editor-In-Chief, Rich Tehrani ([email protected]) Do You Webinar. . . ? EDITORIAL Group Editorial Director, Greg Galitzine ([email protected]) Executive Editor, Richard “Zippy” Grigonis ([email protected]) Lately, I can’t help but notice the increasing Associate Editor, Erik Linask number of Webinars making their appearance ([email protected]) on the Internet, and with good reason. TMC LABS Executive Technology Editor/CTO/VP, Tom Keating Once upon a time, you paid big bucks and had to physically travel to a semi- ([email protected]) nar somewhere, to hear some windbag recite facts that would have been out of

ART/DESIGN date 20 years ago. To add injury to insult, the session ultimately culminated in Senior Art Director, Lisa D. Morris some short, precious moments allowing seminar attendees to ask said windbag a Art Director, Alan Urkawich few questions. Graphic Designer, Lisa Mellers Later, when the first dial-in bulletin board systems (BBSs) appeared, people could post questions and respond to each other, mostly on an ongoing basis, EXECUTIVE OFFICERS which diluted their efficacy a bit. Small seminar-like chats quickly evolved into Nadji Tehrani, Chairman and CEO bloated message boards and entire “forums” with gazillions of messages posted by Rich Tehrani, President people who continued to chew the fat over a topic long after the original discus- Dave Rodriguez, VP of Publications sion ended. With the rise of the Web, Webcasts appeared, but these were one-way and Conferences broadcast-like presentations. Still, they had some educational value. Kevin J. Noonan, VP of Business Development Now, with the continued development of more sophisticated IP Michael Genaro, VP of Marketing Communications, it has become possible to combine both the Web and seminar Tom Keating, CTO, VP formats, yielding the Webinar, which is generally a live group discussion, complete with audience interactivity. Speakers talk to everyone over a standard phone line ADVERTISING SALES Sales Office Phone: 203-852-6800 (but even that is slowly changing to VoIP) while flicking through slides or anima- Senior Advertising Director — Eastern U.S.; tions that are synchronized on the screens of the attendees. With larger Webinars, Canada; Israel attendees can post questions to the bottom of the screen; very small Webinars can Anthony Graffeo, ext. 174, ([email protected]) be run just like small Web conferences, and so voice may be used entirely. Advertising Director — Midwest U.S.; Here at TMC, we’ve grown to love the Webinar format. As a way of dissemi- Southwest U.S.; EMEA nating information, it stands along side our print magazines and the various divi- Robert Pina, ext. 120, ([email protected]) sions of our Web site. Advertising Director — Western U.S.; APAC For example, on February 27th at 2:00 pm, TMC and IBM will be conducting a Bob Johnson, 978-337-3828, ([email protected]) Webinar, hosted by our own distinguished Greg Galitzine, Group Editorial Director for TMC’s IP Communications Group, and ‘master and commander’ of TMCnet. SUBSCRIPTIONS Circulation Director, Shirley Russo, ext. 157 IBM’s Webinar will discuss such things as the convergence of voice, data, and ([email protected]) video networks, culminating in IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and how we’re Annual digital subscriptions to INTERNET TELEPHONY®: free evolving from unique, vertically integrated silos to support different services to qualifying U.S., Canada and foreign subscribers. Annual print sub- scriptions to INTERNET TELEPHONY®: free, U.S. qualifying (which results in costly, complex network infrastructures) to a single, all-digital readers; $29.00 U.S. nonqualifying, $39.00 Canada, $60.00, foreign qualifying and nonqualifying. All orders are payable in advance in U.S. infrastructure. dollars drawn against a U.S. bank. Connecticut residents add applica- The Webinar will also discuss such things as how this new next-gen world also ble sales tax. For more information, contact our Web site at www.itmag.com or call 203-852-6800. leverages inexpensive COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) hardware and middle- ware. This results in an operating environment that creates new opportunities for EXHIBIT SALES service providers, along them to adapt rapidly to market shifts, competitive Sales Office Phone: 203-852-6800 threats, and consumer demands. Things like IMS, COTS and convergence in Global Events Account Directors Companies whose names begin with: general provide the flexibility to deploy applications in various environments and A-G or #s: Maureen Gambino ([email protected]) they yield significant cost savings by reducing complexity, and duplication. IBM, of course, has already established a strategy enabling providers to exploit H-P: Chris Waechter ([email protected]) convergence. Its IBM BladeCenter family of systems, for example (discussed at Q-Z: Joe Fabiano ([email protected]) length in my January “Nitty Gritty” column) delivers a single unified platform Conference Sales Manager, Frank Coppola ([email protected]) architecture that spans the entire, end-to-end NGN infrastructure. Hardware such as IBM’s will continue to evolve and adapt, with the integration of servers, ABOUT INTERNET TELEPHONY® storage, and networking capabilities into a single chassis, thus allowing for signifi- Internet telephony is revolutionizing telecommunications through the convergence of voice, video, fax, and data, creating unprecedented cant CapEX, OpEX, and TCO savings, not to mention a reduction in time-to- opportunities for resellers, developers, and service providers alike. market for new, revenue generating services. INTERNET TELEPHONY® focuses on providing readers with the information necessary to learn about and purchase the equipment, But enough of what I think IBM will be talking about. Join us on February software, and services necessary to take advantage of this technolo- 27th, at 2:00 pm EST, to catch up on what interesting things IBM and its part- gy. INTERNET TELEPHONY® readers include resellers, devel- opers, MIS/networking departments, telecom departments, datacom ners are doing these days. IT departments, telcos/LECs, wireless/PCS providers, ISPs, and cable companies. Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s IP Communications Group.

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The IP Communications Authority Since 1998TM Volume 10/ Number 2 February 2007 Contents “ IN EACH ISSUE QUOTE OF THE MONTH: “ 8 Publisher’s Outlook “It looks like there’s a battle brewing with Communications in 2007 IMS, between the IMS architecture and By Rich Tehrani the unified communications platform. Microsoft really put its stake in the unified communica- COLUMNS tions ground, and the carriers are clearly trying to deploy 20 Inside Networking IMS, using that as a way to help enable or grow hosted Power to the People services and so forth, to the customer who By Tony Rybczynski wants to get an application that’s cus- tomized and fits for their business.” 22 VoIPeering — Brian Metherell, page 44 Defining the Future “ By Hunter Newby EDITORIAL SPONSORSHIP SERIES 18 The SMB Value Proposition for IP 24 Enterprise View Microsoft Enters the Voice Messaging Market FEATURE ARTICLES By Bud Walder 58 Presence and Contect Based Communications By Walter Kenrich 26 Regulation Watch Safety Check! 60 Enterprise Network Management By William B. Wilhelm, Jr By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis

30 Next Wave Redux 64 Internet Communications Administrator: Convergence? Delayed by the User Experience The New Hi-Tech Career Covering Both Email and Voice By Brough Turner Communications By Jon Doyle 32 Integrator’s Corner IP WAN Optimization — Caveat Emptor (Let the Buyer 66 Delivering Converged Communications Beware) Services Profitably By Darrell L. Epps By Francois Depayras 34 Disaster Preparedness 68 The FMC Game The Role of the Business Continuity Specialist By Mads Lillelund By Rich Tehrani & Max Schroeder

36 For the Record 70 Middleware Takes Center Stage Lowering Operational Costs. . . An Industry Movement By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis By Kelly Anderson 74 Testing ATAs, Gateways, VoIP PBXs, and other 38 Nitty Gritty Signal Processing Elements in VoIP Networks PIKA’s New Family of Boards By Vijay Kulkarni and John Phipps By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis DEPARTMENTS 1 The Zippy Files 14 Industry News 42 Rich Tehrani’s Executive Suite: Toshiba’s Brian Metherell Most Active Visitors to TMCnet by Global Region 46 Product Round-up: IP Testing Tools 1. North America 6. Middle East 50 Special Focus: 2006 Product of the Year Award 2. Western Europe 7. South America 56 Special Focus: Effective Marketing of VoIP Services 3. Asia 8. Northern Europe 79 VoIP Marketplace 4. Australia 9. Southern Africa 79 Ad Index 5. Eastern Europe 10. Pacific Islands 80 The VoIP Authority

4 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index 20664AR1_01

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Project#: STA-1086 File Name: BCS_PP060595_A R1 Approval Job #: PP060595 Fonts: Helvetica Neue Client: Samsung Software: Quark 5, Adobe CS C.D.: ______Product: BCS (Convergence) T.S.: Amy Friend 1.201.229.6038 A.D.:______Description: BCS A.D.: Noelle DeCoro 1.201.229.6083 C.W.: ______Date: 6.2.06 C.W.: client supplied A.E.: ______Headline: Convergence, meet the new guy. C.D.: Tom McManus 1.201.229.6060 Pub.: Internet Telephony, Communications News, P.A.: Noelle DeCoro 1.201.229.6083 P.A.: ______Phone + (all July 1, 2006) P.M.: Dan Eigen 1.201.229.6072 PRF:______Space Description: FP4C Mag A.E.: Michael McClure 1.972.761.7820 Size: Trim: 8”x 10.75” 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Safety: 7”x 10” 20664-001-01 TMCnet (www.tmcnet.com)

TMCnet EDITORIAL Group Editorial Director, Greg Galitzine Assignment Editor, Patrick Barnard Associate Editor, Stefania Viscusi Associate Editor, Mae Kowalke Contents Contributing Editorial, Johanne Torres, WHAT’S ON TMCNET.COM RIGHT NOW David Sims, Cindy Waxer, To stay current and to keep up-to-date with all that’s happening in the fast-paced world of Susan Campbell, Anuradha Shukla, IP telephony, just point your browser to http://www.tmcnet.com for all the latest news and analysis. With more than 16 million page views per month, translating into more than Niladri Sekhar Nath, Divya Narain 1,000,000 visitors, TMCnet.com is where you need to be if you want to know what’s hap- pening in the world of VoIP. TMCnet PRODUCTION Director of Web Production and Online Services, Here’s a list of several articles currently on our site. Manuel Lirio Webmaster, Robert Hashemian Telecom Manufacturers Round Out System Portfolios Web Developer, Hsin Yang Lu A look back at business telephony system introductions in 2006 indicates that leading Web Designer and Analytics Manager, Laura Parisi telecommunications manufacturers are rounding out their telephony system portfolios and focusing on growing businesses. http://www.tmcnet.com/449.1 Web Designer, Maxine Sandler Web Designer, Karen Milosky Critical Success Factors in Enterprise Communications Everywhere Assistant Web Designer, Darvel Graves Gaining full access to enterprise voice services on mobile phones is an important step toward the full world of enterprise communications everywhere. By enterprise voice serv- Advertising Traffic Manager, John Sorel ices, I mean the sophisticated features typically available with IP PBXs — such as speed ([email protected]) dialing, contact lists, call logs, forwarding and conferencing, and other features. http://www.tmcnet.com/450.1 MARKETING VP of Marketing, Michael Genaro Unified Communications Progress Report and User Demand Creative Director, Alan Urkawich Well, it’s about time that the unified communication “industry” has moved up the technolo- Marketing Manager, David Luth gy food chain to the real point of visible value from converged communication of UC, the end point device interfaces that every UC user will need for their personal (consumer) and Marketing Manager, Jan Pierret business needs! Up till now we have been just laying the infrastructure groundwork for the real payoff of UC, the end users and the different applications they will personalize UC for. FINANCE Controller, Kevin Kiley http://www.tmcnet.com/451.1 Accounting Manager, Frank Macari Remember Me? Personalization in IP Contact Centers Senior Accountant, Renata Bednarz Personalization in customer service is a concept that has been around for quite some Accounts Coordinator, Mary Hodges time. To date though, few companies have put it into practice in the contact center. And now, with the emergence of the IP contact center, the level of personalization that’s possi- READER INPUT ble is even greater and more affordable. But, will it push more organizations to personal- INTERNET TELEPHONY® encourages readers to contact us ize their customer interactions? http://www.tmcnet.com/452.1 with their questions, comments, and suggestions. Send e-mail (addresses above), or send ordinary mail. We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity and brevity. All submissions will be considered Building an Event-driven Application Using CEP eligible for publication unless otherwise specified by the author. In addressing business process automation challenges, event-driven application usage is nothing new. These applications are ideal for processes that are triggered externally by IDENTIFICATION STATEMENT INTERNET TELEPHONY® magazine (ISSN: 1098-0008) is business activity and are often found in the areas of anti-fraud, compliance, and customer published monthly by Technology Marketing Corporation, One acquisition and cross-sell. http://www.tmcnet.com/453.1 Technology Plaza, Norwalk, CT 06854 U.S.A. Annual print subscrip- tions: free, U.S. qualifying readers; $29.00 U.S. nonqualifying, $39.00 Canada, $60.00, foreign qualifying and nonqualifying. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and at additional mailing TMC’s Whitepapers of the Month offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to: INTERNET TELE- Visit TMCnet’s Whitepaper Library (http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/whitepapers), which pro- PHONY®, Technology Marketing Corporation, One Technology Plaza, Norwalk, CT 06854 USA. vides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies, and other docu- INTERNET TELEPHONY® is a registered trademark of Technology Marketing Corporation. Copyright © 2007 Technology ments that are free to registered users. Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without permission of the publisher is prohibited. Next Generation Network Series: The Evolving Network The network is evolving into an intelligent repository of content, functions, and applications REPRINTS AND LIST RENTALS — a distributed computing utility and the foundation for a global computing grid. When its For authorized reprints of articles appearing in INTERNET TELE- PHONY®, please contact Reprint Management Services at 1-800- full potential is understood, the network can be seen as a vast array of integrated hosting 290-5460 • [email protected] • www.reprintbuyer.com. centers, intelligent edge devices, dynamic routing logic, and embedded business rules. For list rentals, please contact Glenn Freedman at [email protected] http://www.tmcnet.com/454.1 or call 516-358-5478, ext. 101. Succeeding with SMS Today A Technology Marketing Publication, The expansion of mobile network services as well as subscriber growth is as vibrant as One Technology Plaza, ever. Today’s challenge continues to be delivering signaling platforms with ever richer fea- Norwalk, CT 06854 U.S.A. Phone: 203-852-6800 ture sets and improved performance at a lower cost. This paper focuses on an important Fax: 203-853-2845 and 203-838-4070 mobile network service application, Short Message Service (SMS), and solutions from equipment vendors and building block suppliers that meet the challenges facing SMS service providers who constantly require new and improved signaling strategies because of increased competition. http://www.tmcnet.com/455.1

6 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index

By Rich Tehrani

Communications in 2007

Any look at the future of any industry would not be complete without analysis of recent events. In the case of communications, 2006 seems like the transitional year of all time for a number of reasons. January 23-26 marked this year’s first continental US communications trade show, Internet Telephony Conference & Expo (http://www.itexpo.com) in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. This article is intended to discuss the debates and discussions that took place during this event.

Money remains to be seen how AT&T and Verizon (quote - news - alert) There is more money floating around in this and every (http://www.tmcnet.com/438.1) will compete with triple play other market than at any time during recent memory. As long offerings from cable companies. In addition it will be interest- as the money keeps flowing, the transformation and consoli- ing to see how the phone companies leverage mobile services dation of the communications industry will continue to take as a differentiator from cable. place. The positives of this consolidation will be a smaller One also wonders what will happen to single play providers amount of stronger companies. The negatives will be less like satellite (who can in reality provide expensive and relative- competition and less choice. ly slow broadband as well) and Vonage. (quote - news - alert)

Incumbents: AT&T/Verizon iPhone This is the first full year that AT&T is back together and it A few years back (December 2004 actually) I introduced remains to be seen how the world will react to the competitive (http://www.tmcnet.com/445.1) the concept of the VoiPod or pressures of this massive telecom provider. In addition, a VoIP phone by Apple. Apple did release an iPhone Cingular (news - alert) (http://www.tmcnet.com/436.1) as a (http://www.tmcnet.com/439.1) but it seems to be downplay- brand will disappear and AT&T will be able to sell true ing the device’s ability to use WiFi telephony. In fact I would quadruple play services under one single unified brand. guess Apple will downplay the device’s ability to use wireless In addition this is the first full year since the FCC made it VoIP as long as Cingular doesn’t allow wireless song down- easier for phone companies to gain national franchise rights to loading to compete with Apple’s iTunes service. In short, it provide video programming. seems Apple made a deal to preserve GSM voice minutes in exchange for Cingular preserving iTunes downloads. Cablecos Get Spanked The important question for the entire telecom industry is It seems the FCC has had it with the cable companies as it whether this device will change the telecom landscape. It is has forced the industry to accept the CableCARD standard in possible the iPhone could be a runaway success, stealing an effort to ensure more competition from the consumer elec- massive share from Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry and tronics market. The goal is to allow consumers choice by not Microsoft. I predict it will. In a few years this may put forcing them to lease set top boxes from cable companies. Apple in a position where the wireless carriers will have to Any way you look at this, negotiate to get Apple devices it shows the FCC is focusing on their networks. This idea has more on consumer needs. The iPhone could be a runaway success, interesting ramifications. Many still believe the agency is The Motorola Razor slanted towards the ILECs but stealing massive share from Nokia, (http://www.tmcnet.com/440.1) if this was the case, things have Samsung, Blackberry and Microsoft. (quote - news - alert) showed us changed recently. Read below how a consumer electronics for more on this topic. device could drive the public I predict it will. mad and get them to switch service providers. I have suggest- Network Neutrality ed the VoIP industry take advan- AT&T was forced by the FCC to accept net neutrality tage of these trends. On the one hand, the iPhone may have principles in exchange for the right to merge with BellSouth. closed this opportunity — not leaving room for VoIP compa- AT&T says they will abide by these principles for two years nies to come up with killer devices. On the other, the iPhone — except where it applies to their IPTV (http://www.tmc- may not be VoIP-enabled at first. This means consumers may net.com/437.1) service. Some have suggested that the IPTV still want a dual mode device. loophole should not have been allowed at all. This will be a pivotal year to see how AT&T (quote - news - Unified Communications alert) abides by its net neutrality promises. In addition it This is the first full year since Microsoft, Cisco and others

8 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Internet Telephony February 1 2007 8.125” x 10.875” CMYK Q71273-02 GCV CBS Q71273 Q71273-02 Glory12/14/0611:10AMPage1 covadalliance.com visit For more detailsonourfullsuite ofbusinessvoice andbroadband solutions, customers. commission plusrecurring monthlypayments for anindustry-leading thelife ofyour hero’s pay: Berewarded witha without thedisruptionandfinancialinvestment from scratch. ofstarting a VoIP solutiontheycansimplyaddto theirexistinginfrastructure ClearEdge Integrated Access: Be thehero whosaves your clientsupto 20%onphoneandInternet billswiththenewCovad BY ALLMEANSSELLOURAWARD-WINNING VoIP SOLUTIONS FOR THE GLORY. © 2006 Covad Communications Company. All Rights Reserved.The Covad nameandlogoare registered trademarks ofCovad Communicatio Reserved.The AllRights © 2006Covad Communications Company. Please refer to your Agreement with Covad for complete commission details. Products and pricing subject to change. Service notav Service to Products change. and pricingsubject Please refer to your Agreement withCovad for complete commission details. AND NOT FOR THE NOTICEABLE INCREASEIN YOUR EARNINGS. ailable inallareas. sGop Inc. ns Group, have declared they are serious about unified communica- nologies. According to both companies, the goal is to use a tions. Now that the announcements have been made it single identity across phones, PCs and other devices. remains to be seen what will come of them. Will enterprise The announcement took place with an energetic Steve customers buy new equipment that is unified communica- Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, and Mike Zafirovsky, CEO tions enabled? of Nortel. After an hour spent waiting in line and going Some smaller PBX players have already told me their cus- through rigorous security, customers, analysts and the press tomers know what they want and it isn’t unified communica- were ushered into studio 8H in New York’s Rockefeller Plaza. tions. They buy PBXs, IVRs and ACDs, according to one While waiting, the energetic crowd was treated to breakfast prominent industry source. Is more education needed before accompanied by a range of new wave classics from Depeche CFOs open their wallets? Let’s see what 2007 brings. Mode to the Smiths. Steve Ballmer explained that Microsoft and Nortel have VoIP Prices Increasing both been in the communications business. Nortel was play- This is the first year in which Skype (news - alert) has had a ing in the voice and video space and Microsoft was in the price increase. This is dramatic news. It changes the landscape business of authoring documents, emails, etc. of telecom. It signals a shift in how this eBay company works Ballmer stated that it was inevitable that the two areas (disclosure — I own eBay shares) and shows Skype is under would eventually converge. He continued by saying they are pressure to generate more revenue. This is the news that com- trying to accelerate this convergence. “We are trying to sim- panies who make money from voice calls wanted to hear. This plify, enhance and extend VoIP,” Ballmer said. can only be seen as a Christmas present for Vonage. It remains Ballmer mentioned the need for smart unified clients with to be seen if Skype will be forced to continue to raise process separate PBXs. What needs to happen is enough integration to generate revenue. If so, this leaves much more breathing to pull together these smart unified clients. room for other players in the market. Ballmer sees a transformed world of unified communica- It should be noted that Skype didn’t raise prices technically tions where the PBX becomes an easier platform for the devel- — they stopped a free promotion. opment of unified communications. This means Microsoft developer tools will integrate with Nortel and potentially IMS other PBXs. This is a pivotal year in the world of IMS and vendors are Ballmer emphatically exclaimed, “We will move to a single going to have to figure out how to sell products to a market notion of a user, their name and their presence.” which evolves so rapidly. Challenges include interoperability Three new solutions were introduced at the meeting, as well as coming up with services consumers will pay for. including UC Integrated Branch, a product alliance between the two companies which is a single piece of hardware allow- IPTV/WiMAX ing VoIP and unified communications in the branch office. These markets are poised for rapid growth. IPTV may face Unified Messaging was the second introduction and increasing pressure from Internet TV solutions and WiMAX although the technology is 10 years old the adoption of uni- may see challenges from congestion on unlicensed frequencies. fied messaging has been underwhelming over the past decade. This may change now as the announcement calls for Nortel’s Conclusion Communication Server 1000 and Microsoft Exchange Server But I introduce these concepts as a framework for discus- 2007 Unified Messaging to interoperate via SIP or Session sion only. During our Expo and Conference in Florida there Initiation Protocol. was much more discussion (http://www.tmcnet.com/441.1) Conferencing was the last introduction and consisted of about these and other topics. allowing the features of Nortel’s 2007 promises to be a year filled Multimedia Conferencing to be with excitement in telecom and available to users of Microsoft I am more enthused than ever at Ballmer emphatically exclaimed, Office Communicator 2007. the prospects for customers, There will be an on-premise vendors and the industry as a “We will move to a single notion of a user, solution available in the fourth whole. their name and their presence.” quarter of 2007. according to Zafirovsky. Why is this move logical for Microsoft and Nortel Stop both companies? Well, Nortel is the Messaging Madness looking to get back in the limelight of communications after a The average employee gets more than 50 messages every financial scandal a few years back. Since Zafirovsky has day on up to seven devices. Not so coincidentally, Microsoft become the CEO, Nortel seems to have delivered in a mean- (http://www.tmcnet.com/442.1) and the telecom giant Nortel ingful way by selling off underperforming divisions and focus- (http://www.tmcnet.com/443.1) recently came together under ing on areas of strength. the banner of the Innovative Communications Alliance to For Microsoft this move is about 10 years late. They dab- announce to the world that new software will help us manage bled in this space back in 1996 but never took the full the deluge of messages across devices, media modes and tech- plunge. What they did do is launch a telephony interface

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® called TAPI or telephony services application interface, allow- ment where the PBX vendor becomes unnecessary. In other ing open control of PBXs through Microsoft servers. words, will this initiative be looked back on in a few years as The company then launched NetMeeting which at one the first step in turning the PBX into a very cheap commodity point was the world’s most popular VoIP software package. with zero margins? After all, with HMP, SIP and VoIP you can build a PBX on Microsoft lost interest in telephony when the Internet Linux with limited hardware costs. Will an Asterisk server be became more strategic and the company never fully decided the equivalent of a Nortel PBX as they both interoperate with to come back into the space until their recent unified commu- the Microsoft front-end? nications initiative. Of course, Microsoft has been focusing on Nortel as of late The logic in this alliance is undeniable as both companies so it is unclear whether other vendors will be able to interop- need each other. Microsoft needs to find more ways to lock itself into the infrastructure of organizations so they cannot be erate so closely with the Redmond Giant. I would imagine replaced by Linux or hosted solutions. Microsoft will eventually allow other PBX vendors to interop- Nortel needs the added shot in the arm of being on center erate more closely as well but today it’s Nortel’s day. stage with Microsoft. This exposure is invaluable and levels So while the meeting was educational and the two CEOs the playing field between Avaya put on a great performance and were very convincing, it is up (http://www.tmcnet.com/444.1) and Cisco almost instanta- to the enterprise customer to decide whether these solutions neously. are what they need. Certainly this entire meeting is in line The question is how the relationship with Avaya, Cisco and with the concept of just-in-time communications and should Microsoft might sour as a result of this initiative. hopefully get all the players in the communications space to It is probably good to have Microsoft more involved in the communications market as Microsoft holds a great deal of focus more on adding value to communications. weight in corporations. If the company says you need Unified There is more, much more to discuss, but a lack of time Communications, many CXOs won’t need much more con- and space keeps me from delving deeper. You see, while the vincing. average person might get 50 messages a day, I get far north of The challenge for the communications industry is to part- 1,000. And until we get all this technology working, I still ner with the software leader while not developing an environ- have to go and answer each of them one by one. IT

12 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Project1 11/9/2006 10:23 AM Page 1 Packet Island Unveils New Micro-Appliance Zultys-BandTel Partnership By Patrick Barnard Back on Track Packet Island (news - alert) introduced its first VoIP “micro-appliance,” a nifty little device By Patrick Barnard that lets network operators, service providers and VARs monitor and troubleshoot VoIP net- Like the Phoenix from the ashes, VoIP works with speed and ease. equipment maker Zultys Technologies (news - Housed in a 4” x 4.5” silver-colored, brushed aluminum case, the micro-appliance is based alert) is set to rise again. The company — on Packet Island’s “PacketSmart” network monitoring and troubleshooting solution, which which appears to be getting back on track after helps operators properly prioritize voice packets over other data. The Software-as-a-Service filing for bankruptcy in July 2006 and then (SaaS) solution (which is hosted at a Tier 1 data center) is also used for pre-assessing net- being purchased by Pivot VoIP during a liqui- works for VoIP readiness. dation auction for about $2.65 million late last Among its key features, the micro-appliance offers “fail-safe operation” (no network disrup- year — announced that it has re-established tion even during power failure); the ability to work in front of NAT firewalls; the ability to work its relationship with SIP trunking solutions with mirrored switch ports; VLAN support; and an LCD display for easy use. Geared for the provider BandTel. SMB market, the device also includes several firmware enhancements to further simplify “plug- More exactly, BandTel (news - alert) and-play” operation in a plethora of network environments. announced that Zultys’ MX30 and MX250 IP “Deploying VoIP over pre-existing data networks is a big challenge that many of our VoIP PBX media exchange systems are now fully service provider and VAR customers face today,” said Praveen Kumar, co-founder and president compatible with its fault-tolerant, scalable SIP of Packet Island. “Troubleshooting VoIP quality problems adds even more complexity to this Trunking architecture. The interoperability rep- challenge, because of the need to understand the SMB customer’s internal network. Since our resents a re-birth of the fledgling relationship micro-appliance is essential in this troubleshooting process, we’ve taken extra effort to make it between the two companies — which both pri- easily deployable in a vast variety of SMB network configurations.” marily serve VoIP service providers, value- http://www.packetisland.com added resellers, contact centers and enterprise customers. The interoperability between Zultys’ MX30 LCG Releases Worldlink Pro Web Conferencing Solution and MX 250 voice systems and BandTel’s SIP By Patrick Barnard trunking architecture means BandTel’s enter- Live Conference Group (LCG) has introduced a new Web-based video conferencing and col- prise and contact center customers can now laboration solution called “Worldlink Pro.” (news - alert) The fully integrated solution combines use Zultys’ solutions to save money and gain audio, video, and Web conferencing into a single interface. With the appropriate hardware, new efficiencies. Conversely, it also enables including PCs, Web cams, and monitors, Worldlink Pro lets users “run sales and product infor- Zultys’ channel partners to expand their VoIP mation meetings, train large audiences, collaborate over critical business issues, communicate capabilities, using BandTel’s SIP trunking solu- with dispersed groups, and record real time demonstrations locally, nationally and around the tions, and thus provide consumers with fail- world through computer-to-computer technology.” safe, cost-effective and flexible VoIP solutions. The software sports many essential features, including automated and full screen PowerPoint “By merging our fail-safe architecture and presenter; built-in hands free, full duplex VoIP technology; integrated VoIP; live meeting audio high Quality of Service with Zultys’ powerful IP and video recording; and synchronized Web page scrolling. Session recordings can be stored communications systems, we can provide cus- and later accessed on an as needed basis. tomers with a cost-saving solution and Worldlink Pro comes with technical support and training provided by LCG. Best of all, com- enhance our VAR’s service offerings while panies can scale the solution to meet their specific needs — and pricing is based on the num- simultaneously increasing their profit mar- ber and size of the meeting rooms needed. gins,” said Chris Dunk, CEO of BandTel. http://www.worldlinkpro.com http://www.bandtel.com http://www.zultys.com Faster Access for Mobile Users from UTStarcom By Erik Linask UTStarcom (news - alert) has been developing handsets and other IP access products for more than a decade. Its popular PC5740 PC card has enabled millions of users to use access the Internet and business Please tell networks while on the train, at an airport, or from a hotel room. Building on the success of that card, UTStarcom has announced the availability in the United States of a faster and higher capacity version, the the vendors PC5750. The PC5750 is a dual band (800/1900 MHz) CDMA2000 1xEV-DO wireless Type II PC card that is com- you saw it in patible with EV-DO Rev. A. The new card boasts a 30% increase in download speed — up to 3.1 Mbps — as well as a memory capacity of 64 MB Flash/32 MB RAM, which is eight times that of the company’s previ- INTERNET ous cards. The PC5750 also includes the latest in security features, including a CDMA wireless technology authenti- TELEPHONY® cation and identification security system, and Mobile Identification Number (MIN) and Electronic Serial Number (ESN). Combined, these features virtually guarantee unauthorized users will not be able to intercept Magazine valuable information. With the lightweight PC card, which fits into a standard laptop PCMCIA slot, wireless customers do not have to wait to find a WiFi signal for connecting. Instead, they can connect to their wireless carrier’s data net- www.itmag.com work — to check email, sure the Web, access their office network, and make VoIP calls — wherever they are. http://www.utstar.com

14 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Polycom Enhances Meetings with HD Telepresence Solutions Panasonic Intros 2-Line Hybrid By Stefania Viscusi Landline/VoIP Cordless Phone In a bid to make meetings more life-like and productive, Polycom has announced By Johanne Torres the Polycom (news - alert) RealPresecnce Experience High Definition (RPX HD) telep- Electronics manufacturing giant Panasonic resence solutions. announced its Globarange hybrid 2-Line cordless tele- The solution makes both the audio and visual aspect of communications clearer phone with VoIP broadband technology, a device which and more personal and is able to display on lower bandwidths. will provide free calling between users globally. With a full cinematic view of the other room, including wall displays (8-16 ft. wide) Panasonic’s (quote - news - alert) Globarange in each room and utilizing special blending of images from multiple HD cameras as phone is a Hybrid 2-Line, which allows calls to be well as EyeConnect technology, so people are looking directly at the person they are made and received via both the VoIP line and regular speaking to, the technology makes it as though users are in the same room during a landline connection from any of up to eight cordless meeting. This is especially important when mergers and acquisitions occur or meet- handsets. The new device seems to be a good option ings where face-to-face interactions are necessary. for users wanting to keep a landline service for 911 Microphones in the ceiling of the rooms and acoustic walls combined with access or fax compatibilities. Polycom’s Siren22 StereoSurround sound technology help perfect sound delivered “Our Globarange phones offer a new option for con- during the meetings and enhance the lifelike aspect by directing sound as it does in sumers by unifying both technologies. With the actual room. Globarange, users can seamlessly make and receive With the solution, users are also able to send multimedia content to attendees vir- calls as well as screen and record incoming messages tually via personal content monitors integrated into the conference table. on either line from a single handset,” said Panasonic’s “Polycom RPX HD systems erase the distances between teams, making them telephone national marketing manager Wayne Borg. highly efficient and productive,” said Robert Hagery, chairman and CEO at Polycom. Globarange’s phone base is comprised of a standard “Polycom RPX HD provides video conferencing customers with an interoperable phone jack for regular phone service, as well as an telepresence solution that uses bandwidth efficiently, adds value to their existing Ethernet jack to connect to Broadband service. The investments, and a solution that can call the million other video conferencing sys- device needs not to be connected to a PC in order to tems in use today.” work like any other phone. http://www.polycom.com http://www.panasonic.com VoIP Users Should Be Alarmed IBM Unveils Virtual Fabric By Erik Linask Architecture for BladeCenter NextAlarm, (news - alert) which enables alarm systems to work over broadband connections By Niladri Sekhar Nath — which has traditionally been an issue for alarm system owners without a POTS line — has In a bid to help increase speed and efficien- widened its reach. Its new VoIPAlarm program allows resellers to private label the NextAlarm cy of data transfer across blade servers and service — both its front-end ATA as well as its back-end monitoring infrastructure — so the networks, IBM (quote - news - alert) has end user gains the benefits of NextAlarm’s services without having to switch service providers introduced ‘Virtual Fabric Architecture’ — the (or alarm systems, as NextAlarm is compatible with most existing systems). latest interconnect technologies and manage- NextAlarm has also enhanced its services with its new V-Notify service, which is essentially ment tools for the BladeCenter H system. an inbound customer access service combined with an industry first, an outbound IVR system Web 2.0, IPTV, online gaming, and business that contacts the user at a specified phone number when an event occurs, whether it’s an emer- technologies such as quad-core processing gency or non-emergency event. Then — and this is particularly useful for the company’s and virtualization are fast becoming quite pop- NetAlarm customers — the system provides the option of connecting the user directly to local ular. Such services need high-bandwidth inter- emergency services. connect technologies to move data traffic “Our goal at NextAlarm has always been to put the customer in control of their security sys- across high-capacity networks. IBM tems and give them more options to choose from,” said Alex Elliot, NextAlarm’s founder and BladeCenter H offers that much-needed CEO. “Our new automated IVR system certainly helps give the customer control over their increased bandwidth needed by providing home’s business’ security system.” businesses up to ten times the capacity to The inbound feature allows users to dial in from any phone to access their system. They can move data across their networks. hear whether their system is armed or disarmed; they can enable or cancel test mode; and they “IBM has installed more than half a million can listen to their recent alarm activity. In addition, ABN customers can actually interact with BladeCenter systems for customers and main- their system to arm, disarm, listen in to a room, and more. tained a durable infrastructure platform by These features are offered as an electronic system that is not only cheaper for the user, but delivering new technology advances that also offers considerably more control over who gets contacted and how, and under what cir- remain compatible with IBM’s original design cumstances. In fact, in addition to the traditional emergency notification features, NextAlarm’s innovation,” said Doug Balog, vice president IP-based system enables additional functionality, such as presence monitoring. and business line executive, IBM BladeCenter. http://www.nextalarm.com “With this announcement it is clear that IBM has uniquely architected all facets of I/O to work as a central nervous system for IBM BladeCenter, delivering the optimal intercon- Sphere Partners With CXtec to Expand Distribution of Sphericall IP PBX nection between blades, chassis, switches and By Mae Kowalke our client’s external networks.” Sphere Communications (news - alert) announced a partnership with network equipment http://www.ibm.com provider CXtec, (news - alert) which will expand distribution of Sphere’s Sphericall product to the education, healthcare, and enterprise markets. CXtec chose Spehre’s product to expand its networking solutions portfolio thanks to Sphericall’s multi-vendor compatibility, which makes it very adaptable to customer needs. Of particular significance to CXtec, Sphericall is certified interoperable with Polycom’s IP telephones, another product line that forms a key part of the company’s portfolio. When com- bined, Sphere and Polycom’s products deliver an integrated desktop unified communications solution. “The ability to now deliver flexible busi- ness communications on top of integrated networking products, allows CXtec to pro- 8x8 Launches FoIP Service vide complete solutions tailored to the needs By Johanne Torres of each customer,” Sphere president Graeme 8x8’s (news - alert) residential subscribers will now be able to send faxes over IP Robinson explained. (FoIP). The voice and video provider officially launched the Packet8 Freedom Fax serv- “The unified communications capabilities ice for the residential market. will increase our efficiency and improve our Freedom Fax subscribers can now send up to 300 minutes of outgoing faxes and customer service,” said Tom Brown, director receive unlimited minutes of incoming faxes for less than 10 bucks a month, with a of finance and IT at Clyde Bergemann EEC, one-time activation fee of $29.99. Additional U.S./Canada outgoing fax minutes cost 3.5 which is already experiencing the benefits of cents per minute with outgoing International faxes billed at Packet8 international rates. the combined solution. “Sphere’s flexibility The new service is based on the T.38 International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and pricing model will allow us to grow our standard for sending faxes across IP networks in “real-time” mode. The company says system as we grow our company.” its new service also offers increased fax transmission speeds. http://www.spherecom.com According to 8x8, the Packet8 Freedom Fax level of transmission it’s much more reli- http://www.cxtec.com able than other VoIP services which utilize the G.711 voice codec to transmit faxes. The company pointed out that G.711 codec, which has mainly been used for voice rather than data communication, is usually associated with latency and jitter. http://www.packet8.net

16 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index SpectraLink Extends WiFi Telephony with Skype Founders Launch Joost Internet TV NetLink Softphone Application By Johanne Torres By Johanne Torres VoIP (define - news - alert) service provider Skype co-founders Wireless telephony provider SpectraLink (news - alert) announced it Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis introduced Joost, (news - alert) a has extended its WiFi telephony capabilities to third-party mobile new Internet-based television service. The new company, which was devices by introducing the NetLink Softphone (NetLink SP) application. formerly known under the code name “The Venice Project,” is now The NetLink SP application allows voice-enabled mobile devices to currently available in private beta testing. work as full-featured business phones integrated with an enterprise Joost can be accessed with a broadband Internet connection and phone system. NetLink SP operates as a thin client, which works both offers broadcast-quality content to viewers for free. According to the over the wireless LAN and on the handheld device. company’s news release, Joost is powered by a secure, “piracy- The mobile application runs on both Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0, proof” Internet platform, which guarantees copyright protection for and PocketPC operating systems. It works in conjunction with content owners and creators. SpectraLink’s NetLink Telephony Gateway using SpectraLink Radio “People are looking for increased choice and flexibility in their TV Protocol (SRP), a protocol which provides voice over converged wire- experience, while the entertainment industry needs to retain control less networks. over their content,” said Fredrik de Wahl, chief executive officer of The NetLink Telephony Gateway’s digital interface technology extends Joost in a statement. “With Joost, we’ve married that consumer the features and functions of a company’s telephone switch, such as desire with the industry’s interests.” call transfer, conferencing and voicemail integration, to the end-user It looks as if the service will be concentrated on interactivity, as it device. The NetLink SP softphone also supports text messaging will be a very community-driven environment where members pick through SpectraLink’s Open Application Interface (OAI), integrating with and choose what they watch. Members will also be able to chat applications such as customer service call boxes and inventory man- while they pull up and watch their favorite programs. agement systems. http://www.joost.com http://www.spectralink.com

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 17 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index A Special Editorial Series Sponsored By Allworx Innovative Ideas from the “VoIP for Small Business” Experts

phones. Indeed, even with VoIP trunks, we The SMB Value Proposition put individual line appearances on the phones, not just pool keys. Call Announce with hands-free answerback is another kind By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis for IP of key system functionality to remote phones that we can do. Also, when an Allworx Today’s small and medium-sized business- station installed, which is a very low price for phone is used as a remote phone it can have es (SMBs) face considerable communications an IP system entry point. Plus, you’re getting all the same features as a local phone — challenges; namely, how to move to a mod- all of the benefits of IP, such as remote phones DSS, BLF, intercom, conferencing, call ern IP-based phone system smoothly and and the ability to tie systems together and queuing, etc. They appear and behave the inexpensively, yet have access to the familiar, other innovative things that you never same as a local IP phone. Many IP phones still-useful functions of more expensive lega- encounter in the purely TDM world.” don’t do that; people have to ring phones cy PBXs and key systems. “A second key element of our proposition that aren’t local. But that’s a key system Perhaps the most impressive all-in-one- is that we have the most key system features function we decided to duplicate. In fact, box SMB solutions for telephony, PC net- of any IP telephony system out there,” says that’s probably one of the biggest features working, and group productivity are the Grinde. “We started down the path, like that sell our systems.” offerings of Allworx (http://www.allworx.com), everybody else, of building an IP PBX, creat- “In short, our systems are very easy to an East Rochester, New York-based company ing pool line keys, using transfer to move use,” says Grinde. “You replace your existing dedicated to the idea that SMBs should have calls around, call parking, and so forth. But, key system with one and life goes on. It’s inexpensive access to advanced communica- we kept in mind that, whereas IP telephony business as usual, except now you’ve got all tions functionality. systems are replacing key systems, people are of the advantages of VoIP, such as VoIP There are many reasons why both a used to working with older interfaces; (define - news - alert) trunking, remote sta- reseller and an end user would choose to buy they’ve been doing things like ‘pressing line tions, multiple sites, and so forth. Even set- Allworx systems. 1’ and ‘putting line 1 on hold’ for 20 years. ting up an Allworx remote phone is easy. No “We make IP appliance-based products for They don’t want to re-learn how to transfer a additional hardware is required. The phone SMBs,” says Tom Grinde, Allworx’ VP of call from station to another. They want to be knows how to automatically manage sales. “The first key element of our value able to put a call on hold and have some- through existing firewalls, ‘phones home’ to proposition is that we have the lowest installed body else push a button on another station the main Allworx system, and automatically cost of any appliance-based IP system out and answer the call. That’s why we’ve engi- starts functioning.” there. Our boxes and proprietary phones have neered a true key system ‘feel’ to our IP “Thirdly, we offer the easiest transition to a price very competitive with plain old TDM product, with line appearances, DSS/BLF VoIP,” says Grinde. “We have analog trunk- [Time-Division Multiplex] key systems. At the [Direct Station Selection/Busy Lamp Field] ing gateways built into our product mix. entry level, our 6x model costs about $400 a appearances on the phones, even remote Our entry-level 6x system has six analog line ports on it, and several analog station ports. It supports up to 30 users. You can start with an all-analog line key system, then add VoIP — thus, you can become comfortable with VoIP before eliminating the analog lines. Or, you can use both simultaneously for as long as you like. Some users rely on POTS lines for inbound calls, and VoIP trunks for outbound calls.” “Our larger 10x system has nine analog trunks and supports up to 100 users,” says Grinde. “And now, our new 24x has a PRI/T-1 interface on the inbound, and it supports up to 100 users. [Note: 100 user extensions with voicemail and 100 system extensions without voicemail. The base 24x system comes configured with up to 24 users and 24 system extensions. Optional software upgrades are available for 25-48 users/exten- sions and 49-100 users/extensions.] With the 24x, we’re seeing people mixing PRI with VoIP trunks to achieve call cost advantages, particularly on long distance.” “The forth element of our value proposi-

18 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index IP and SMB — Perfect for Each Other tion is that the system is very easy to install By Tom Grinde, VP of Sales, Allworx and implement,” says Grinde. “But, it’s not a self-install or a pure turnkey system. Instead, about 300 certified resellers nationwide sell the As a reseller, you have to be careful about how you apply your sales efforts. With all product and install it. We use them because the choices available today, you have to pick wisely. Here’s why the SMB market and we need to ensure that everyone has acceptable IP go together: quality of service [QoS] on their lines and their networks are up to par. As far as 1. Smaller businesses readily adopt new technology. Small businesses look for a installing the box itself, it’s very simple. We say competitive edge. They need ways to do things better and cheaper. Many small to the resellers that if they can install a Linksys businesses are entrepreneurs and are more likely to embrace a complete IP-based router, they can install this phone system.” system. They’re tuned in to new technology, not 15 year-old TDM. Grinde elaborates: “Most phone systems are still sold by traditional interconnect com- 2. Build your customer base faster. Every reseller’s measure of success is how panies, who may not be up to snuff on IP quickly they grow their customer base. Selling IP to the SMB market has shorter technology, so we’ve really simplified things sales cycles and quicker installations, so at the end of the year, you can add three for them. The installation procedure resem- times as many customers selling to SMBs instead of slugging it out in the enter- bles what the reseller is familiar with. Plus, prise space. we build troubleshooting tools and self-diag- nostics into them to make installation easy. 3. It is not all about price. There is margin in SMB sales. The secret is not selling A data VAR will have absolutely no problem on price. IP offers all kinds of benefits, like remote phones and SIP trunks. They installing an Allworx system. The biggest are standard on IP systems, not expensive add-ons. Further, because IP systems sellers of our product still tend to be tradi- like Allworx serve as both a phone system and a data server, your average sale tional interconnect companies because, at the end of the day, it’s a phone system.” will be 50-75% higher. The result? Higher margins on the initial sale and future Allworx (news - alert) has two phone service revenues. Selling TDM quickly dissolves into a price-based sale. Selling models. The 9112 has 12 buttons — 12 soft IP is an investment in their future. keys for line appearances, station appear- ances, features, etc. They’re all programma- 4. All small customers become large customers. Every large phone customer starts ble. The 9102 has two call buttons; it’s typi- out as a small business. If you sell that customer the first system, you will sell cally used in a PBX “call 1, call 2” environ- him every additional phone and upgrade. It is a lot easier to sell them when they ment. are small and grow with them instead of competing against an incumbent serv- “Interestingly, about 90 percent of ice company. Allworx’ station set sales are of 9112s,” adds Grinde. “It proves that people want the key 5. Become a specialist. The SMB market is large, so you can rapidly build your system functionality.” business with strong referrals focusing on key markets, such as medical, legal, or “Allworx systems work with off-the-shelf financial services. Customers are comfortable buying products that their peers SIP phones too,” says Grinde. “But, if you purchase. When a doctor asks for a reference, a list of doctors will get you the don’t use our Allworx phones, you’ll lose the key system functionality. That’s because deal better than a plumber. we’ve extended the SIP stack to enable line 6. IP makes you multi-dimensional. Many resellers sell only phone systems or appearances, Call Announce, and all the other key system-like features.” only sell LAN/WAN services. Smart resellers recognize that selling both brings “Obviously, you can put other phones on them more customers and more revenue and profits. How many times have you Allworx systems, such as conferencing heard, “I don’t need a phone system, but can you help me upgrade my net- phones,” says Grinde, “since we don’t make a work”? Doing both opens many more doors. ‘conference room’ phone. All of our phones are full duplex speakerphones and have very 7. Implementation of SIP generates additional revenue. Any business with a good sound quality, but when you’re in a broadband connection can easily add low-cost SIP trunks without any additional conference environment, you need a hardware cost. SIP service providers offer many different agency programs that Polycom phone. You can plug a SIP-based Polycom directly into our system, or you can will provide a recurring revenue steam ever time you install an Allworx system. take an analog Polycom and tie it to one of our analog station ports.” 8. Selling old technology makes you a dinosaur. Asking “how many lines and sta- Allworx inexpensive, easy-to-use systems tions do you have and what do I have to do to be the lowest price?” ensures you will doubtless bring many SMBs into the will eventually put yourself out of business. Like so many other traditional inter- modern world of IP Communications. IT connects that started in the era of post AT&T divesture that are no longer around, if you don’t quickly find ways to sell the benefits of IP, you will seal Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of your own fate. TMC’s IP Communications Group.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 19 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index By Tony Rybczynski

Power to the People

As IP telephony enters the mainstream of enterprise IT strategies, Power over Ethernet (PoE) becomes an increasingly pivotal infrastructure technology that not only is key to this environment, but also to wireless LAN and IP surveillance. In fact, Dell’Oro forecasts that 254 million PoE ports will be shipped worldwide over the next five years. This represents a bigger swing for telephony than when it went from analog to digital. The drivers behind the development of PoE are twofold: Secondly, purchase only PoE switches going forward as an Firstly, to power phones (eliminating the need for a separate AC insurance policy, since you can’t add PoE with a software change. plug), and secondly, to provide continued telephone operation IP phones typically draw 4 to 8 Watts. Some Ethernet switches in case of power failures (a regulatory requirement in some envi- cannot deliver PoE on all ports or full power concurrently on all ronments). Given this important role, let’s deep dive into the ports; others are specified to deliver PoE on a subset of ports. technology and identify some important deployment strategies. With high density IP Telephony deployment, and increasing penetration of WLAN APs and IP cameras, this could drive the PoE — Standard or Forget It deployment of additional switches in the wiring closet to meet We have all experienced the challenges of finding the right power demands, while leaving ports unused on existing switches. AC power plug and contending with 110 vs. 220 Volt stan- In addition, power levels delivered to the wiring closet will be dards when traveling internationally, and the value of having a higher with PoE, in some cases driving the need for DC power. single standard across North America. PoE standards have, for Thirdly, roll out GigE Switches supporting the GigE PoE the first time, created a single globally deployed physical and standard, given the fact that most desktop PCs and laptops electrical standard for the delivery of power for electronic are being shipped with Gigabit Ethernet capabilities. devices, such as IP phones, wireless LAN Access Points, and Additionally, in order to allow one Ethernet jack per desk, IP video surveillance cameras. phones should support integrated GigE QoS-enabled switch- The PoE standard is called IEEE802.3af. The standard was ing. Today, many IP phones will force the PC to slow down completed in 2003, so enterprises can deploy the technology, to 100 Mbps speeds, negating the value of GigE operation. since it is well known and there are many interoperable prod- Fourthly, remember that PoE alone does not provide ucts from which to choose. This standard provides 48V over telephony continuity in the case of power failures, so you two out of four available pairs over a Category 3 or 5 cable, need to plan for UPS in the wiring closet. What is needed is a with a maximum load of 15.4 Watts. This level is adequate for backup strategy driven by a business case, to either provide most, though not necessarily all, IP phones, WLAN APs, and battery backup for some period of time or optionally to pro- IP cameras, though it is generally inadequate to drive laptops vide some form of longer term power generation (e.g., a diesel and PCs. A common practice is to use the Link Layer generator). For example, a hospital will opt for the latter, Discovery Protocol (IEEE 802.3ab) at start-up to determine while a school may have a policy for one-hour backup, after one of four power classes to which a particular device belongs. which children are sent home. In the event that there is insuf- While 10/100 Megabit Ethernet (i.e., 10 and 100BASE-T ficient backup power, a priority scheme could be used, along respectively) only requires two pairs for data transmission, the with 802.3ab, to optimally allocate power to devices. standard allows powered pairs to be used for data transfer, as is Finally, your PoE business continuity strategy should take required by Gigabit Ethernet or GigE (i.e., 1000BASE-T). The into account wiring closet space and environmental require- powering source is the Ethernet Switch in the wiring closet, ments. For example, you don’t want to blow your budget by which dynamically detects whether the device at the end of the discovering too late the need for wiring closet air conditioning. line requires powering or not (thus protecting devices that do not support the standard) and the supported power levels. PoE — Power to the People and Beyond The number of devices connected to the network is explod- Avoiding Deployment Shocks ing, not only because of multiple devices per employee, but While electrical shocks are not a concern with PoE, there are a also because of everything is being networked opening up new number of strategies that need to be followed, if post-deployment asset and environmental monitoring and tracking, security shocks are to be avoided. By planning in advance, your network and surveillance, and location-based applications. While driv- can meet today’s requirements and be prepared for the future. en by IP Telephony, the global PoE standard is becoming a Firstly, decide on a strategy for the deployment of PoE, key technology enabler for many of these applications. with a multi-year view of the deployment of IP phones, access Plan for PoE and you’ll have a powerful technology that not points, surveillance cameras, and any other PoE devices. The only brings power to the people for IP Telephony, but is also a absence of such a plan could result in not having enough PoE critical infrastructure for in-building mobility, environmental- ports to cover demand. That said, many enterprises take the ly-aware business applications, and enhanced security. IT opportunity when moving to GigE in the wiring closet to pre- Tony Rybczynski is Director of Strategic Enterprise Technologies at equip all ports with GigE PoE, arguing that a less than a $20 Nortel. (quote - news - alert) He has over 20 years experience in per port price premium is easily offset by reductions in the the application of packet network technology. For more information, ongoing OPEX cost of network engineering. please visit http://www.nortel.com.

20 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index 10916 Corp AD 206.375x276.225 ITM AW 21/12/06 11:59 Page 1

Why hear, view, browse and be mobile tomorrow...

...when you can experience tomorrow today? By Hunter Newby

Defining the Future

It has been a very interesting and productive year in the world of VoIP Peering. One of the most helpful developments came by way of definition and was con- tributed by the efforts of Steve Heap from Arbinet setting forth the question, “What is VoIP Peering versus Voice Peering?” This led to intelligent discussions in and around a couple of industry events where structured panels of experts debated and generally agreed on the following: VoIP Peering is where a call origi- nates as IP, is transported as IP, and terminates as IP. Voice Peering is where a call either originates as TDM, terminates as TDM, or both, but is converted to IP in between for transport (provisioning) purposes. Since true IP-to-IP calls are, in the big picture of total calls, few in number these days, it is a popular belief that most peered calls are actually voice peered. This assumption will change over time, of course. Within the VoIP (define - news - alert) Peering discussion TDM calls may be a better extension of the definition of there arose speculation over an intriguing limit to the depth voice peering. of an IP call. The question may be better stated as, “How far The root of the difference between VoIP and Voice is really down the line can an IP call be identified?” IP-to-IP is not about the money and the players. Who are the Peers? Are they limited to PC-to-PC over the Internet and, basically, for any carriers with similar business models looking to continue enterprise network operator, that is not an architecture making money from minutes? Or, are they end users and bound for implementation anyway. What there has been businesses that control their own endpoints looking to peer all more of most recently is the use of media gateways that sit of their calls because they are the ones that are otherwise pay- in front of the enterprise PBX. As long as the PBX can out- ing for them? put a T1, the media gateway can convert the circuit- For most “minutes” carriers, VoIP is just a better way to switched call to an IP call. The black phone on the desktop trunk voice between their own nodes and those of other carri- has not changed in this scenario, and neither has the invest- ers. This is big money savings for them, but doesn’t really ment level in those devices. This is a very important compo- change their business model to the buyer. On the other hand, nent of VoIP and one that more and more businesses are VoIP for enterprises (and even the flat-rate VoBB offerings for finally figuring out. The challenge, in terms of definition, is: end users) is seen as a way around the higher costs. Internally, Where does the call originate? Is it at the actual device, or routing calls as VoIP over the WAN is a primary way for busi- does it still count if it comes off of the LAN, essentially as nesses to begin saving. Peering that WAN with the WAN of an IP call from an old digital phone? another business for InterWAN calling is the next logical step. For the purposes of technical definition, I’m content to Now, that’s VoIP Peering! say that an IP-to-IP call, whether over the Internet or a pri- Looking back on 2006, with so many implementations and vate IP network, is VoIP, since that relates mainly to the actual live traffic, it really was the breakout year of VoIP application of voice over Peering. Some very big names Internet Protocol. Just because stepped in and some very capa- there is a T1 port switching the ble operators moved up the lad- call out of the PBX to the Looking back on 2006, der in terms of customers and media gateway does not change with so many implementations traffic. 2007 is already set to do the fact that the call didn’t more of the same as it builds on touch the PSTN in the process. and actual live traffic, this momentum. Let’s see what As far as a definition based on happens. IT economics goes, I believe it really was the breakout year PSTN avoidance is the most of VoIP Peering. Hunter Newby is chief strategy offi- important root element and cer for telx. (news - alert) For more what everyone is really striving information, please visit the compa- ny online at http://www.telx.com. for. If the call was originated as circuit-switched on a PSTN carrier network and converted If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either print or PDF for- to IP through a media gateway, then it is somewhat safe to mat), please visit Reprint Management Services online at assume that there is a rate per minute and potentially other http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a representative via e-mail at fees associated with it. PSTN origination or termination of [email protected] or by phone at 800-290-5460.

22 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index

By Bud Walder

Microsoft Enters the Voice Messaging Market

At the end of November, Microsoft Corporation (quote - news - alert) launched a triumvirate of new products and, in so doing, entered the unified messaging market in what should amount to a very big play. For the first time ever, it announced the simultaneous availability of three major software product releases: the new Windows Vista operating system, Microsoft Office 2007, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Of course, the enterprise communications industry has been very attentive to Microsoft activity since its much-publicized announcement of its unified communications strategy for the successor to the Live Communications Server product last June. Office Communication Server 2007 is moving into the field trial phase as we enter 2007, and really is big news for the industry. But, somewhat hidden in November’s launch of Vista, Office, and Exchange was the hard fact that voicemail is now being offered by Microsoft for the first time.

attractive pencil sell component to sway many CFOs. This is The addition of a voice component to Exchange Server 2007, well before they buy into the significant productivity gains which allows your voicemail to drop into your desktop that unified messaging really can offer. Speech recognition and Outlook window, will likely have a significant impact on the text-to-speech for anywhere, any mode access to your Outlook messages and calendar adds sizzle that mobile users enterprise messaging industry. Of course, unified messaging will love. The location independence of VoIP enables site con- integrated with Outlook is not new; many current voice mes- solidation of disparate voicemail systems over the enterprise saging offerings have it. But it has really underperformed WAN too, adding more ROI points to the proposal. All this expectations year in and year out since its introduction in the adds up to a pretty compelling alternative to a separate voice mid- to late 1990s. There’s been lots of analysis about the whys messaging system. and wherefores: ‘too expensive’ and ‘difficult to integrate’ often In short, Microsoft is making it easy for enterprise cus- bubble to the top. And it didn’t eliminate the need for a sepa- tomers to just say yes to unified messaging and, in so doing, is rate voicemail system to manage. But this time it’s different. poised to make a huge impact on the how the enterprise voice This time it’s the company that owns at least 50% of the messaging market segment is divided over the next few years. enterprise email server market globally that has said “How Initially, it’s the large enterprise customers that will likely scoop up this offering and run with it. That will impact the about we just add voicemail to your email server so you can top voice messaging products from the top PBX manufactur- eliminate that old school voicemail system altogether?” ers first, but it’s hard to see a reason why its practical appeal To be sure, unified messaging in Microsoft Exchange Server would not run wide and deep within the enterprise in short 2007 is not an old school voicemail implementation. As you order, touching all segments of the voice messaging market. would expect, it is VoIP-based using the SIP protocol and There’s lots of news and hype today around unified com- resides on the enterprise IP network in a data (ok, ‘multime- munications and how Microsoft may very well change the dia’) server. So that’s great if you have a new converged voice enterprise PBX (define - news - alert) landscape in the com- and data IP PBX installed with an interoperable SIP interface. ing years with Office But, if you don’t, no worries, Microsoft has addressed the Communication Server, and need for integration with the In short, Microsoft is making it easy rightly so. But, in the short installed base of legacy PBXs for enterprise customers to just term, my money is on the suc- too. It established strategic rela- cess of its immediate, incremen- tionships with a select few say yes to unified messaging. tal strategy of adding something VoIP/SIP gateway providers, old, but new to my desktop such as Dialogic, to ensure that Outlook window — a voice. IT its Exchange customers can upgrade and benefit from the unified messaging features. Microsoft has done extensive plan- Bud Walder is the Enterprise Marketing Manager at (news - ning and certification of PBX-to-IP media gateways that will alert) Dialogic Corporation (http://www.dialogic.com) and 20- year telecom vet. Dialogic is a leading provider of open sys- provide the critical link between traditional circuit-switched tems platforms for the converged communications market. The voice and Exchange Server 2007. platforms enable service providers, developers, and systems From an ROI perspective, the unified messaging option is integrators to deliver services, content, and applications using offered as an incremental license cost to the standard cost of multimedia processing and signaling technologies to enterprise Exchange Server 2007, so the option will likely have a very and service provider markets.

24 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index

By William B. Wilhelm, Jr., Esq.

Safety Check! DC Circuit Upholds FCC’s E-911 Rules

On December 15th, the DC Circuit Court issued an opinion denying the peti- tion for review of the FCC’s Order that applied E911 obligations to providers of “interconnected VoIP services” in Nuvio v FCC. While the appeal ultimately forced the FCC to recant its initial decision that would have required providers to disconnect service to certain legacy customers, the Court ultimately upheld the FCC rules, including the 120-day implementation deadline.

In upholding the FCC, the overall thrust of the Court’s the FCC’s predictive judgments, overcame the weaknesses opinion is to give the FCC wide discretion in determining highlighted by Petitioners. The Court stressed that it was the how to enforce public safety requirements, and to avoid sec- FCC’s predictive judgment that the bulk of national VoIP ond guessing as long as the agency has given some reasonable E911 access could be achieved within 120 days and such a explanation for its choices. prediction was within the scope of the FCC’s authority. The Court recognized that the FCC’s VoIP E911 require- The Court similarly dismissed the Petitioners’ claims that ments present unique challenges to interconnected VoIP serv- the FCC failed to properly distinguish between the unique ice providers (“IVPs”) that enable customers to use the service technological obstacles faced by nomadic or non-native VoIP nomadically and also to obtain non-native telephone num- providers and those faced by fixed, native providers, finding bers. However, the Court observed that the FCC did not dic- that the FCC did consider the unique challenges of nomadic tate a specific technological solution for IVPs to provide VoIP, and did not require that IVPs determine the actual loca- E911, but instead allowed them to directly interconnect with tion of nomadic VoIP users. Instead, the use of a registered ILECs, indirectly interconnect through a third party, or location demonstrated the FCC’s flexibility with respect to undertake any other solution that would result in E911 access nomadic VoIP services. consistent with the FCC’s rules. The Court addressed and The Court also found that the FCC properly explained that rejected the three primary arguments made in the petition for it balanced its concern for public safety against the economic review: that the FCC’s selection of a 120-day deadline was cost of the 120-day deadline and found that this cost was out- arbitrary and unsupported by the record, the lack of ILEC weighed by the public safety threat of further delay in E911 obligations to provide direct access was in error, and the implementation. FCC’s notice and comment procedures did not meet the The Court also rejected the claim that the FCC’s 120-day requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”). deadline was an unreasonable departure from the longer and In examining Petitioners’ claims that the 120-day deadline more graduated implementation schedule it had used for was arbitrary, the Court cited record evidence that the nation’s other new technologies. While the FCC gave more time for largest “nomadic” interconnected VoIP (define - news - alert) wireless and satellite phones and other new technologies to provider had already procured a implement 911 capabilities, the technical solution to meet the Court held that these precedents 120-day deadline, and that a The Court stressed that it was the FCC’s did not bind the FCC because of third-party service provider was predictive judgment that the bulk of national the differences in technologies at prepared to offer a technologi- issue. cal solution that met the VoIP VoIP E911 access could be achieved The Court next addressed E911 Order’s requirements, even arguments that the 120-day for providers of nomadic, non- within 120 days and such a prediction was deadline was unreasonable native IVP services. The Court within the scope of the FCC’s authority. because the FCC failed to also noted the FCC’s IVP trials impose a duty on ILECs to pro- that demonstrated E911 access vide access to E911 infrastruc- was possible for providers of nomadic, non-native VoIP serv- ture. The Court found that the FCC’s choice was not arbi- ice in King County, Washington, Rhode Island, and other trary, because the record contained evidence that major ILECs locations. were cooperating with nomadic IVPs and increasingly offering While acknowledging that some of the particular elements E911 solutions that allow VoIP providers to interconnect of these market tests made them an unreliable basis for a 120- directly to the wireline E911 network through tariff, contract, day deadline, the Court found that the general success of or a combination thereof. While the Court acknowledged that these tests, combined with the substantial deference owed to there was evidence suggesting that ILECs were not always so

26 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index cooperative, the Court sided with the FCC’s predictive judg- the FCC’s authority necessarily includes the lesser power to ment that the increased levels of ILEC cooperation obviated ban such sales beginning in 120 days. The majority found any need to impose any duties on the ILECs. that it was inappropriate to address this issue, because the Finally, the Court held that the IP-Enabled Services FCC did not claim broad authority to outlaw non-compli- NPRM provided sufficient ant services in its Order. notice of the purpose, extent, In sum, the Court found that form, and timeframe of any the Commission adequately con- pending VoIP E911 regulation. IPVs are well advised to take sidered not only the technical The Court found that the IP- the utmost care to ensure they are and economic feasibility of the Enabled Services NPRM gave deadline, but also the public interested parties a reasonable in compliance with the FCC’s rules. safety objectives the opportunity to present relevant Commission is required to information on the central achieve. As a result, IPVs are issues, and observed that many parties submitted comments well advised to take the utmost care to ensure they are in on all aspects of VoIP services through that proceeding. compliance with the FCC’s rules. IT Notably, the Court did not address several arguments made by the Petitioners, including the argument that there was not William B. Wilhelm is a partner at the global law firm of Bingham record evidence to suggest that PSAPs were not capable of McCutchen LLP. For more information, please visit them online at deploying VoIP E911 within the 120 day deadline. http://www.bingham.com. The preceding represents the views of In a concurring opinion, Judge Kavanaugh suggested that the authors only and does not necessarily represent the views of the FCC could justify the E911 requirement, even if IVPs Bingham McCutchen LLP or its clients. could not feasibly meet the FCC’s 120-day deadline. Judge Kavanaugh argued that the FCC has the statutory authority If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either print or PDF for- to address public safety threats by banning any voice service mat), please visit Reprint Management Services online at that does not ensure adequate 911 connectivity, and that http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a representative via e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 800-290-5460.

28 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index intervoice_webinar.qxp 1/18/2007 1:35 PM Page 1

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Convergence? Delayed by the User Experience

Fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) has been a hot topic for several years. Korea Telecom launched its “One Phone” service in 2004. British Telecom launched “BT Fusion” in 2005. Then the flood gates opened in 2006, with numerous WiFi-enabled mobile phones and a plethora of companies offering converged voice service platforms. Certainly, the hype is substantial. But is there any adop- tion? Would you want to use any of these services?

So far, the answer is ‘not much’ — not much adoption and and the cost is low or free, but, in each case, the critical dif- no overwhelming desire to adopt. Early service offers haven’t ference is an absolute minimum of fuss. It just works. There been compelling and user experiences have been cumbersome. are no support issues. There’s no doubt many of the pieces are in place. We have For a consumer FMC service to “just work” means trivial proven VoIP (define - news - alert) telephony infrastructure software installation or pre-configured handsets, a compelling from multiple vendors. Now we have dual mode phones from user interface, but also seamless roaming across unaffiliated major suppliers including the market leader, Nokia. But the WiFi hotspots. Preconfigured handsets are feasible today, but associated hype cycle would have us believe VoIP over WiFi is that’s not what’s being delivered. User interface software is an about to sweep the market, destroying traditional mobile busi- art, but one that’s been mastered in the past, so it will appear ness models. In fact, the revolution will take time. Practical sooner or later. However, seamless roaming will take some user problems remain, like complexity in configuring handsets doing. Many hotspots, even if free, require a browser-based and service profiles, limited talk time (WiFi power efficiency is login. And once connected, there’s a question of capacity. still playing catch-up), and difficulty in accessing any but the Public WiFi hotspots provide 11 Mbps or 54 Mbps connec- home WiFi hotspot. There are two classes of customer and, tions over the air, but frequently use a DSL line with perhaps thus, two paths forward. only a few hundred Kbps of upstream capacity for Internet connectivity. So, multiple VoIP calls in one hotspot simulta- Corporate FMC neously is problematic. Further, while my residential wireless The first is FMC for corporations. In this market the user router provides upstream priority for VoIP’s UDP packets, experience must be acceptable, but isn’t the deciding factor, if that hasn’t been an issue for commercial hotspots, at least the value proposition is compelling and the support burden is until now, so an outgoing email from the next table is likely not too great. Many companies are pursuing this path, from to glitch any VoIP conversations. small startups to British Telecom, which has launched its Finally, there’s an extra problem in the U.S. — our mobile Corporate Fusion service in the UK and Spain and is investi- handsets are ppre-copnfigured by our mobile operators to gating service launches in other countries, including the support just the services that mobile operator specifies, lock- United States. ing out features the mobile operator doesn’t wish to support. Given the high costs incurred when employees use mobile This blocks 3rd party services, likely stalling consumer FMC phone minutes at work instead of free PBX services, work- in the U.S. place FMC has the potential to provide significant savings. The situation in Europe is much better. Handsets are open. Corporate IT departments can pre-configure handsets and Startups are introducing new services. I have yet to see hand- roaming can be limited to WiFi hotspots on the corporate set-based software that automatically detects unaffiliated network, so an acceptable user experience is within reach. hotspots, figures out how to connect, and does so, but I fully Thus, we can expect to see growth in enterprise FMC during expect such software to emerge. Similarly, today’s software download and installation procedures seem to require dozens 2007 and 2008. of clicks, but someone will figure out how to automate this (or will offer pre-configured handsets). Consumer FMC In short, there is quite a bit of innovation still required The second opportunity is consumer FMC. That’s a lot before VoIP over WiFi is a done deal, but the window is now harder. Consumer products and services can afford fewer open. It may take a year or two, but someone — probably in glitches. A 1% problem rate swamps any support budget and Europe — is going to figure out how to deliver the needed an even mildly cumbersome startup procedure blocks the user experience: launch a service that just works. IT majority from ever adopting a service. Consider the success of Skype, or rising Web 2.0 services Brough Turner is SVP and CTO of NMS Communications. (news - like YouTube. In each case, the user experience is simple — it alert) For more information, visit the company online at just works! Okay, it doesn’t hurt that the service is compelling http://www.nmscommunications.com.

30 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index When it Comes to Awards, Toshiba's Strata CIX is Best in Show And Now it’s also Internet Telephony’s Product of the Year! The winner of more than a dozen industry awards, Toshiba’s Strata CIX delivers: • Unbeatable Adaptability and Flexibility • The Most Dependable VoIP Solution for SMBs • The Industry’s ONLY Seven-Year Manufacturer’s Warranty

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Toshiba is interested in adding channel partners in selected areas. For more information, call: 715-212-9071 or email: [email protected]. By Darrell L. Epps IP WAN Optimization — Caveat Emptor (Let the Buyer Beware)

Read through just about any trade magazine dealing with information technolo- gy these days and you are likely to find articles, product evaluations, and adver- tisements for an emerging class of products that perform WAN optimization functions. This is a very “hot” area of product and technology development at present, and for good reason. Numerous industry trends are helping to drive the need for such technology and the plethora of products now on the market. Among these trends are the following: • Temendous pressure to get the most out of “high-profile” Before choosing or deploying a WAN optimization product, the IP networks that now regularly carry extremely delay-sen- prudent network manager or IT director needs to have a thorough sitive traffic, such as IP voice and video; knowledge of his or her network and application environment. • Increasing complexity of network architectures and associ- This implies that he or she needs to know what constitutes ated corporate network infrastructures; normal network and application behavior. In other words, • Growing number of applications being deployed on a typ- what applications are running on the network, who uses these ical corporate network and the “mission critical” nature of applications, how and when are they used, what constitutes many such applications; normal application traffic volumes and patterns for a given • Rising complexity of the applications themselves; time of day or day of the week, month, or quarter, and how • Increasing threat from worms, viruses, hackers, malware, etc.; do the various applications and network components interact? • Greater focus on data protection/privacy and regulatory It also means that he or she must already know how the appli- compliance. cations and the network are performing against an established In response to these trends, many organizations are looking baseline, and, where there are problems or issues, exactly what for ways to consolidate, centralize, and simplify their opera- is causing them. In a nutshell, there is a need for real-time vis- tions, while improving their ability to manage and secure vital ibility across the entire network and all of the applications information. WAN optimization is probably the most common that traverse it as well as historical knowledge and perspective means of facilitating consolidation and centralization while of past network and application performance. Undeniably, it minimizing or negating impact to application performance. is a very challenging goal to achieve! Other organizations are simply looking for ways to improve One way to gain this level of knowledge and visibility is application performance and response times across existing through the use of another emerging set of technologies and high latency WAN links. Still others are trying to delay or products classified as network behavior analysis (NBA) tools. avoid additional investment in WAN bandwidth deemed nec- These products can provide the real-time network-wide visi- essary to alleviate oversubscription problems. bility necessary to allow the network manager or IT director WAN optimization products can certainly be used to address to make informed decisions about the appropriateness of each of these issues, but that does not imply that any WAN WAN optimization technologies as well as which specific optimization product will do the job for a given environment. optimization methods or techniques will work best for his or As a class of products, WAN optimization devices employ her particular circumstances. numerous techniques or technologies to achieve their stated Once the decision has been made as to which optimization purpose. Some products implement traffic shaping, prioritiza- methods or techniques are appropriate and which product or tion, and/or Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms to enhance products have the desired capabilities, the prudent network performance. Others rely on data compression and caching manager or IT director should insist on a non-binding pilot techniques. Some provide generic protocol optimization for or trial of each of the designated products. Better still, if pos- common protocols, such as TCP and HTTP. Still others offer sible, conduct a side-by-side performance comparison (“bake- protocol- or application-specific optimization for things like off”) of the competitors. In this way, the best overall solution Citrix applications or Microsoft’s Common Internet File for the organization’s specific needs can be determined and System (CIFS). And some even offer products that focus on the chances of achieving desired application performance WAN optimization in the presence of VoIP infrastructure. To enhancements can be maximized. complicate the choice, some products or solutions only offer Only when true performance enhancements have been one of these mechanisms, while others may offer several. achieved can the full promise of IP technology be fulfilled. IT Given this dizzying array of options, how is a network man- ager or IT director to know if employing WAN optimization Darrell L. Epps, director of network solutions for Forsythe Solutions products is the right approach? And if so, whether an explicit- Group, has more than 20 of experience in networking and IT and ly VoIP-focused product is best, or even appropriate, for his or numerous manufacturer certifications. His broad experience her specific network and application environment? includes network and IP infrastructure project management, imple- The answer is quite simple to state but not so simple to achieve. mentation engineering and operations support.

32 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Com Dev Conf House Ad_11-29-06.qxp 11/29/2006 3:05 PM Page 1 By Rich Tehrani & Max Schroeder

Continuity Planning 101 The Role of the Business Continuity Specialist

An interview with Michael Croy, Director, or server consolidation or any other piece of the infrastruc- Business Continuity Solutions, Forsythe Solutions ture. It’s all interconnected. Group, Inc. (news - alert) MS/RT: Many organizations think of major disasters when the term business continuity/disaster preparedness is The adage, “you only have one opportunity to make a good mentioned. Is this a correct association? first impression” is certainly true. Since a significant percent- MC: One of the biggest misconceptions about business con- age of businesses do not survive a major business interruption tinuity/disaster preparedness used to be the idea that it’s just (bankruptcy or worse), the proverb for contingency planning for physical crises — fire or flood or, in more recent times, could be, “if you don’t have a solid contingency plan in place hurricanes or terrorist attack. But, other business interrup- for your first business interruption, you will not get a second tions, such as power outages, data security breaches, hardware chance.” This is a primary reason that business continuity/dis- or application failures, or even ordinary business events, such aster planning specialists are so valuable, and is the reason we as mergers and acquisitions or business process failures, can be selected Michael Croy for this interview. Some basic facts on just as disruptive. Forsythe: Another big misconception is that business continuity is • Established in 1971 just about technology. In fact, business continuity, just like • Over 718 employees in 38 locations throughout the U.S. business, involves people, places, and things. Anything that • $517.6 million in 2005 Revenues interrupts a business is a potential threat. What if the technol- Although Forsythe offers a variety of services ogy is working fine, but no one can get to work — maybe (http://www.forsythe.com), this interview will center on because of a major blizzard — as we’ve seen this winter in Forsythe’s IT Advisory Solutions that focus on IT strategy, Colorado — or something like the pandemic threat we heard business continuity and disaster recovery, information security, so much about in 2006? and data center services. MS/RT: Many small enterprises feel they cannot afford to MS/RT: Forsythe has been in operation since 1971. At what have contingency plans in place and many large firms feel point in time did Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery their internal IT staffs can handle planning. What are the become part of your business offerings and why? top three reasons an enterprise should seek the help of a MC: When I joined Forsythe in 2002, the company provid- specialist firm like Forsythe? ed some elements of business continuity and disaster recovery MC: Whether you are a small organization or a large organi- consulting services and hardware to its customers, such as net- zation, fiscal and fiduciary responsibilities must be balanced to work and server availability make the most cost-effective assessments, storage needs assess- Business continuity is not so much business continuity decisions. ments, enterprise systems man- For small or large organizations, agement support, and network, something to “implement,” as it is a the business decision is based on server, and storage hardware. the expected impact to the busi- Since then, our business conti- mindset for how to ensure that your ness. The critical factor is under- nuity practice and all of our technology optimally supports your standing the organization’s advisory solutions offerings have potential exposure not only in expanded tremendously. As with business everyday and at time of crisis. terms of dollars, but also in every evolution in our business, terms of market exposure. Once new approaches and offerings have been developed in risks have been identified, smaller organizations should take a response to what our customers tell us they need, based on lesson in Risk Management 101 and make the business deter- the new challenges they face. mination of whether to accept each risk, assign that risk exter- A key to all of this is that successful business continuity nally, or mitigate it to an acceptable level. planning views the enterprise and the organization as a That said, there are three fundamental reasons to bring in a whole. You cannot approach business continuity as a separate specialist firm to assist in your business continuity planning. endeavor from storage management or network optimization The first is that business continuity planning is not like net-

34 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index work maintenance. You don’t do it every day and get better ensure that your technology optimally supports your busi- and better at it. Other than DR testing, which, by definition, ness everyday and at time of crisis. can never be absolutely complete — you’re never going to know whether you got it right until you face a crisis. So, it To Sum Up pays to make use of the experience of those who’ve done it As Michael points out very clearly, there are a lot of mis- before, over and over again, and gotten better at it. conceptions regarding business continuity planning that need The second reason is that the essential first step in business to be addressed if a company is to take on the task of a conti- continuity planning is to close the gap between what the busi- nuity project. By bringing in outside expertise, the project ness needs in a time of crisis and what IT can provide in evaluation can get off to a rapid start and a decision can be terms of information availability and business functionality made quickly. Plus, a professional evaluation will allow a com- during that crisis. But, it can take a great deal of honesty, pany to make long range plans for a converged awareness, and communication across the organization to continuity/business requirements program. In the long run, close this gap. An outside specialist can often minimize politi- this will also hold down costs. IT cal snags and drive the process forward more smoothly. A reminder: visit http://www.tmcnet.com/339.1 to view The third reason is that an outside expert can provide a additional information provided by DPCF members, TMC, more holistic view of the organization. This is critical to and the ECA. truly understanding the business context of your IT and enables technology decisions that integrate business continu- Max Schroeder is a board member of the ECA, media relations ity improvements into the day-to-day business requirements committee chairman, and liaison to TMC. He is also the Sr. Vice of an organization’s IT environment. Many organizations President of FaxCore, Inc. (news - alert) that think they can’t afford to invest in business continuity Rich Tehrani is the President and Group Editor-in-Chief at TMC and “implementations” fail to understand that the same tech- is Conference Chairman of Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO. nologies and increased enterprise awareness that support business continuity also optimize day-to-day IT support of If your organization has an interest in participating in the TMC/ECA business functions. Business continuity is not so much Disaster Preparedness Communications Forum, please contact something to “implement,” as it is a mindset for how to [email protected] or [email protected]. By Kelly Anderson

Lowering Operational Costs. . . An Industry Movement

The buzz today in the communications industry is definitely IP-based multi- media services. With IPTV taking the stage at most trade shows in the past year, and now being offered in markets nationally, I think it is fair to take a look at what kind of expense a communications provider can expect as IPTV is rolled out as a mainstream service.

According to a recent report by Yankee Group, the opera- line, it furthers technology and gives overall better products to tional costs may just be the largest ongoing line item in the consumers. The certification of the IPDR-based solutions by IPTV cost model. Yankee Group estimates the ongoing sup- the Prosspero initiative gives IPDR international recognition port costs may exceed $28/month for every subscriber. Add as an efficient carrier-grade technology. that to more than $60 in support costs for the first 30 days, There has been significant talk this year about capturing and then an estimated $360 set-up cost, and it may be hard data and metrics produced by users in the home network. As to see how this service will become profitable while remaining service providers consistently monitor the network leading to competitively priced to current cable services. User acceptance the home and maintain appropriate bandwidth, the home of the service is greatly dependent upon uniquely good service network also needs the same monitoring to assure the cus- and products while getting a fair price that is comparable to tomer is getting appropriate service and to determine any what they currently see on their cable or satellite bills. potential issues in the programming and performance. One of the key elements to maintaining support costs for Throughout 2006, IPDR.org worked on protocols and the providers will be saving money wherever possible. This service specifications that enable operators to gather impor- will include automated customer account maintenance and tant data about the performance of each user. In addition, trouble ticketing, setting customer expectations and providing many of the changes that were introduced included making useable FAQs, and being proactive to potential issues in serv- our streaming protocol capable of being bi-directional, which ice that the customer may experience. This is a little talked gives providers the capability of getting data from the home about initiative — lowering operation costs seems to be a environment, and also to be able to respond back in an inter- “back-end” issue in services. Finally, the industry is looking at active fashion. This would allow applications such as voting issues that can mean a lot when talking about the P&L of and interactive performance checks. new services. As the industry moves toward consolidation of services, the A few industry organizations have dedicated considerable need to make standards and “best practices” usable to an oper- work to lowering expenses for their providers. One such ator’s bottom line greatly increases. Addressing operational organization is the TeleManagement Forum’s NGOSS initia- bulkiness and high cost is a necessity in today’s marketplace. tive. This initiative is important The industry will work together in developing standards that as long as the work is relevant give service providers a frame- and measurable as far as the bot- work for developing, procuring, One of the key elements to maintaining tom line is concerned. The and deploying operational and future of next generation services business support systems and support costs for the providers will be depends on making profitability software. It is working to bring a number one industry goal. IT the best tools and standards to saving money wherever possible. the industry to create peak Kelly Anderson is President and operational efficiency. IPDR.org COO of http://IPDR.org, a collabora- recently met with the tive industry consortium focused on TeleManagement Forum at TMF World to submit the IPDR developing and driving the adoption of next generation service specification for consideration in the NGOSS framework. usage exchange standards worldwide. After some preliminary reviews, it looks like we will begin the process for NGOSS integration and Prosspero™ certification If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either print or PDF for- of IPDR. We are excited about what the impact will be to the mat), please visit Reprint Management Services online at industry. I am a firm believer that when the industry comes http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a representative via e-mail at together and works on issues that really matter to the bottom [email protected] or by phone at 800-290-5460.

36 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Dr. Alan Greenspan Carrier Roundtable: Sanjiv Ahuja, CEO – Orange Group • Len Lauer, COO – Sprint Nextel Corporation • Stan Sigman, CEO – Cingular YOUR

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PIKA’s New Family of Boards

PIKA Technologies (http://www.pikatechnologies.com), headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, was founded 20 years ago by Jim Pinard and Peter Karneef, with money out of their own pockets. Jim was the technical guy with a background in hardware design. Peter was the entrepreneurial guy. Jim and Peter are still around — they act as PIKA’s board of directors and are still very committed to the business. Terry Atwood, PIKA’s (news - alert) VP of Sales, Marketing, “Second, as a result of Intel and AMD and others constant- and Customer Care, says, “Our business is primarily is what ly multiplying the processing power of their standard CPUs,” you’d call ‘voice boards’ and software that goes with those says Atwood, “those CPUs have the cycles, these days, to run boards that plug into computers. They’re used by my cus- the applications that used to require the expensive DSPs that tomers to connect telephone lines or to connect voice to com- are mounted on PIKA’s and other vendors’ boards. The shift is puter applications that run on those computers.” from running voice applications in every instance on expen- “Over the last four or five years we’ve focused on four verti- sive DSP-based boards, to running them on those boards in cals in this marketplace that are technology verticals or appli- some situations and in other situations being able to run them cation verticals,” says Atwood. “One of the strongest for us, on the host processor, which is a less expensive proposition.” especially recently, centers on people who take a PC and make “These two shifts, either taken separately or together, are some kind of special purpose telephone system out of it, per- creating lots of excitement in this marketplace,” says Atwood. haps using something like Asterisk. Then there are those who “We connect voice applications to the PSTN using analog are taking PCs and are making audio recording or logging sys- or digital lines,” says Atwood, “and our voice applications tems, either for use in call centers to monitor and improve have been powered by DSP-based media processing hardware. customer communication quality or to log such things as We’re now migrating to a world where voice is transmitted stock or purchase transactions or the like. Third, the IVR mostly via VoIP (define - news - alert) and voice applications business has been very strong for us, especially in the last are powered mostly on host media processing. Between now three or four years and especially in the European territory. and a few years from now, there will a mix of these technolo- IVR is used for everything from checking your account bal- gies. We’re focused on the mix of these technologies, provid- ance at the bank to ordering custom ring tones for your cell ing our customers with a way to build the bridge so they can phone. Fourth and finally, over the last few years we’ve gotten walk from today’s world to the future.” more into the high volume outbound fax marketplace. We’re “At the moment we sell primarily to computer telephony giving companies like Cantata a run for their money.” application developers,” says Atwood. “But, since hardware “There are PIKA products in 34 or 35 countries around the will no longer be required, at least in an all-IP application, globe,” said Atwood. “But we focus our marketing sales and many more people will decide to get into voice application technology development efforts on North and South America, development than have in the past. People who never thought Europe — primarily the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the of adding voice to their application will do it now because Netherlands — and then countries in the Middle East.” their customers don’t have to open a box and plug in a board, “Our customers are primarily and it’s much less expensive, software developers,” explains too.” Atwood, “people who write a “It’s great when you have a card like ours “We decided, when the bubble software program and run it on burst, that we would base a good a PC and a server, and they with two connectors: One accepts an part of our selling proposition need to use something to con- analog expansion module and the other and our selling story on respon- nect that application to the siveness,” says Atwood. “We call PSTN or to whatever network accepts a digital expansion module.” it customer intimacy. We didn’t it’s going to communicate on. move support or sales to distri- Most of them sell to the enter- bution. We’ve been willing to prise market, although we definitely have a growing number co-develop with our customers in many different cases.” of service provider customers. We’ve seen the VoIP prolifera- tion across the globe, which has boosted the service provider PIKA’s New Gateway Boards market, and we have customers there.” Although PIKA’s new “family” of gateway boards can be “There are two major shifts in telephony today,” says considered different products, they’re all members of the new Atwood. “One is from analog and digital voice transmission AllOnHost hardware suite, which consists of four boards: the to VoIP. There is no doubt that VoIP is better. We believe Digital T1/E1 Gateway board in PCI format supporting up to that, ultimately, 90 percent of voice in the world will move four spans, the Analog Trunk/FXO Gateway Board that’s PCI via VoIP.” Express compliant and supports up to 16 analog trunks, the

38 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Analog Station/FXS Gateway Board supporting 12 analog sta- “Cards will be around for along time,” says Petty, “not so tion ports, and the PCI Express version of the existing PIKA much because they’ll be the thing that you run audio process- Digital (T1/E1) Gateway Board. ing on, but because you’ll still need to connect with the Doug Petty, PIKA’s VP of R&D and CTO, says, “Back in PSTN and traditional analog and digital interfaces. That’s 1996 we developed our AllOnBoard product family. We really what these cards do for customers: You can design an introduced a DSP-based architecture that was fairly unique application that works really well both in an IP-only world back then and, to this day, has served our customers well. The and when you need connectivity to the PSTN, which we philosophy behind the architecture was that every card had a think, for many customers, will be a long time.” DSP, every DSP could run every DSP application, and all “These cards are expandable so you can add modules to the DSPs could be configured at run-time by the application, boards,” says Petty. “The analog cards have an analog expan- which means that you didn’t have a different card for confer- sion interface and so, for example, you can add to the trunk encing or fax or voice. One card could do all of that, and it card an eight-port trunk module, so the card as a whole can was very flexible in terms of the way the DSP applications still be 24 ports, even though it’s constrained to run in a PCI were being processed and run on the DSPs. It was the result nine-inch slot.” of us creating our own operating system to run on the DSPs. “Our new boards also have digital expansion module sites,” That was our first goal.” says Petty. “We’re not sure right now what we’ll put on that “Our bread and butter product family for the last five years digital expansion module. When designing this two years ago, has been Version 2 of the AllOnBoard family,” says Petty. “It’s we knew we wanted the flexibility to do this and we were based on a significant upgrade to the DSP architecture, the thinking that what might drive adding more silicon on the Motorola 56303. A lot of R&D effort got us very good digital cards would be things like the G.729 codec for VoIP. But processing. Our product family was very good at both analog now, a host can handle a couple of hundred channels fairly and digital. A few years after the introduction, we introduced easily. However, other things might require more silicon, such our initial VoIP offerings.” as voice encryption. That being the case, we have the provi- “This past year we’ve introduced our AllOnHost family,” sion to expand the cards.” says Petty. “It’s based on doing media processing on the host “It’s great when you have a card like ours with two connec- and we’ve got a lot of R&D effort going into VoIP — not at tors: One accepts an analog expansion module and the other the exclusion of analog and digital, but in addition to them. accepts a digital expansion module,” says Petty. “Right now, We feel that customers will want to deploy applications that CPUs are strong enough to run most applications. But, when can ride across a mix of network interfaces.” the pendulum swings the other way and DSP-based boards “The AllOnBoard family has four boards,” says Petty. are again required for large applications, all you’ve got to do is “There’s a low-density analog card called the InLine MM. It’s plug a DSP module onto a connector and now you’ve got a a half-length PCI trunk card that can have either four trunk board very similar to today’s DSP-based boards. We don’t bur- ports or three trunk ports and a headset port. We also have a den the cost of the assembly with the processing power. We high density PCI analog card that supports a mix of station can add that with the plug-on module.” IT and trunking ports adding up to 24 ports. On the digital side, we have a PCI single and dual quad span and a CompactPCI Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s IP Communications variant that comes in quad and octal span configurations.” Group.

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USD.10.06.04_r3_ITMag.indd 1-2 11/8/06 1:26:56 PM Toshiba’s Brian Metherell

Rich Tehrani’s Executive Suite is a monthly feature in which leading but also in the hybrid enterprise busi- executives in the VoIP and IP Communications industry discuss ness. We really are getting a lot of their company’s latest developments with TMC president Rich multi-location enterprise customers who love that same investment protection. Tehrani, as well as providing analysis on industry news and trends. RT: How do you see Toshiba compet- Last January, Toshiba (quote - news - alert) announced the appointment of ing with new competitors, like Digium Brian Metherell as Toshiba America Information Systems’ vice president and and Asterisk, and general manager of its Telecommunications Systems Division. Now, one year hosted solutions? later, Rich took time to speak with Brian about his first year and what the BM: The Digium/Asterisk (news - alert) company has accomplished since he joined the firm and why Brian feels open source model does show that there Toshiba is well positioned to take advantage of the continued emphasis on IP are a lot of people out there who want Communications. to develop applications in the IP space, and that’s great. It’s creating sort of a RT: You’ve now reached your one-year focus more on interoperability and petri dish for applications to be cultivated anniversary with Toshiba. What do openness — that’s a market demand. and nurtured. you feel you’ve accomplished in your The other thing that I continue to focus Frankly, right now, we don’t see real first year? on is delivering training and education large numbers of end users going down in an easy, easy format. the road of downloading open source BM: One of the most significant accom- software and building it themselves and plishments in my first first year is that RT: Who do you see as your key ordering the line cards online and trying we’ve moved the entire product line over competitors today, now that the to piece it together. We don’t see a large to VoIP. As of August, we launched the market has changed so much? trend like that yet. I think more compe- CIX40, and now the whole product line tition will come from those vendors that is VoIP-based. (define - news - alert) BM: The industry has changed. From use the software and roll it into a com- We really got focused on scaling our the data side, the big primary competi- plete solution that they actually package systems down, including all the applica- tor would be Cisco. From the legacy along with installation and customer tions, so that they fit into the smallest side, of course it’s Avaya and Nortel support. customers, so even a 10 or 20 person (quote - news - alert). In both cases, Most businesses rely heavily on their telecommunications, and to have to enterprise can now get fully featured Toshiba’s current advantage is the fact build it themselves seems to be a chal- ACD mobility, remote worker capabili- that we’ve got this huge authorized deal- lenge. On the very small end, I’m not ties, mobility and more. We packaged it er network, with over 800 locations, in sure there’s an economic justification for down to really address the SMB market fact, approaching 900 locations, here in the resources you have to put in to keep at an appropriate price point that deliv- the U.S. your phone system going if you do total ers the productivity gains they need. We’ve also got the Toshiba quality open source. On the enterprise side, reputation and migration advantage. they tend to want to deploy the same RT: What’s your vision going forward? Being able to consistently provide a thing right across dozens or hundreds of smoth migration path is something locations, and with open source, there’s BM: We want to continue to deliver the that’s helped us continue to get terrific risk once you get all of that out there. features at the right price point, and traction, specifically in the SMB market, That makes it a little tough.

42 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index RT: What about the hosted side? RT: What advantages do you think where for the training. We can give Toshiba has over its competition? them training essentially on the fly or BM: Certainly, we see the market for on demand. We’ve also invested in a hosted solutions growing, but they typi- BM: There are advantages in two specif- Web site where training is available, and cally are still aimed at the smaller busi- ic areas. First, on the product side, we there’s a full Toshiba University where ness. If you look at businesses with really have this solid reputation, and it’s techs can do self-paced training with between one and five phones, that’s a hard earned. It’s a reality of our high tests. We even have monitors in every real sweet spot for hosted providers. But quality and our reliability. We also have region to monitor the tests, and we have that’s less than 5 percent of the busi- a track record of product evolution and custom developed certain VoIP certifica- nesses in America. cost protection. tion training, where we make it real life There are tons of businesses, but, as a The other piece of it is the dealer net- — that’s what our dealers are telling us market segment, in terms of the number work, and that may even be the more they want. of end points, number of units, it’s valuable piece, which includes more We’re setting up training systems about 4.7 or 5 percent of the whole than 800 locations for us. We’ve got a locally, and that works and, as we have market. So, what we’re more concerned dealer in every territory in the U.S. and dealer techs who go through training, about it is if hosted providers start to go every major city, so we really do have trying to fix problems or set up systems, upscale and into the larger, bigger sys- tremendous coverage. our trainers go around “breaking” tems. There, we think that we’ll be able When you’re looking to deploy a sys- things, tweaking them or putting some- to deploy much better applications tem that you want to have serviced, thing else on the LAN that wasn’t previ- focused around call center solutions and have some service level agreement with ously there. So this is real life stuff that mobility, and be able to have the com- contracts and payment terms and so really trains them. Our training is not petitive advantage. forth, we can manage all of that for you designed to help them pass the test; it’s The other thing that the hosted play- through the national accounts, because designed to help them be better techni- ers haven’t seemed to be able to get we have that tremendous dealer net- cians and be better prepared to deal their hands around is how to deliver work. with problems in the field. We’re also service and how to wrap their service letting them have this training in synch around the exact needs of the cus- RT: Toshiba has been recognized by with the whole IP philosophy: where tomer. We’ve got a significant dealer the Yankee Group (news - alert) as you want it, when you want to do it, in network, and they really know how to having the best dealer channel in the a mobile fashion. do that. Our dealers have custom built industry, and dealers are notoriously systems over the last 30 years to deploy difficult to train on new technologies. RT: So, the goal is to get them com- services down to that 10, 15, even What’s your strategy to get these fortable with the technology as they eight person office, and they can do it dealers up and running on VoIP? learn about the same technology? economically often with a truck roll and training. Hosted players just BM: That is a significant challenge. It’s a BM: Right, and the other goal is make haven’t seemed to crack that equation challenge for everybody in the industry it easy to do business with us, and yet... they don’t know how to deliver to get their distribution channels — make it easy to learn by providing mul- that service piece. whether they are internal or external tiple environments — a classroom envi- channels — and we looked at it that ronment, a classroom that comes to RT: Do you think resellers will way from the beginning. So, for more them, Webinars, Web-based online embrace the hosted model, where than five years, Toshiba has been offer- training, all of these things. We also, by they may receive service revenue ing training and certification on IP the way, have application support over time instead of receiving the technology, and VoIP specifically. groups, so if they’re in trouble with majority of the revenue up front? Our systems have offered VoIP as part respect to how to develop the solution, of the converged platform for the last they can call us on that. BM: I think we’re seeing a trend like several years, and now we’re 100 percent Of course, we also have tech support that, so yes, I do think that there’s an VoIP, so it’s critical for us to be success- and, most recently, have provided LAN increasing risk from that area. Once ful in this area. We’ve made an invest- assessment product and tech support. again, I still see it as probably getting ment in the WebEx Webinar technolo- We also offer our own Feature Flex bigger than Centrex. You can’t dismiss gy, so that we can literally pull techni- adaptability tool, which allows our cus- any competitor — you would be foolish cians onto Webinars and walk them tomers to even design their own pro- to do that — but we still think there are through training sessions so they don’t grams and build their own additional challenges in that hosted market. have to uproot themselves and fly some- IP-type applications.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 43 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index RT: What is Toshiba seeing, in terms was the most valuable thing they got out connectivity. It’s part of the core culture of VoIP adoption among its SMB, of it in their ROI. at Toshiba, and we think the trend is enterprise, and national accounts So that’s going to continue to drive it, going to grow. customers? but the next big wave we’re seeing now Overall, there are issues around band- is business process integration. We think width, quality of service, security, and BM: Well, it’s table stakes. Nobody that’s key to driving a real ubiquitous we need to do more before we get wire- wants to buy a system without VoIP, so deployment of IP and real value to the less networks fully deployed and gain we’re seeing the adoption level go up. end customer. Customers being able to some huge traction. Not every cellular We get a lot of accolades in the real end integrate your ACD with their remote company is in a huge hurry to deploy customer world, but sometimes we get agents and then putting it into their high-speed wireless so that you can run kicked in our own intra-industry, let’s back office systems or inventory systems your voice through it on the WiFi net- say, but it’s the fact that we’ve got to makes it all one integrated business work for free. They want those minutes converge solutions. Customers want to process. for which they’re charging. I think that’s make sure they’re IP enabled but they perhaps one of the areas that are slowing can do it their way. RT: Do your other divisions come into down real broad deployment of WiFi. Specifically, customers want to make play in this particular area? There’s a negative incentive for the main sure they can get involved in the mobili- carriers who can deploy it. It’s going to ty solutions, or do a number of the BM: Yes, they do. The division we are pull paying traffic off of their minutes things, especially around mobility, that part of at Toshiba is the PC and Server plans. IP enables. We also have fairly cost-con- division, so we share technology and scious customers, specifically in the leverage off each other’s innovations. RT: What is the future of VoIP, SIP, SMB market, but frankly, everywhere. Our PC group actually was the original and WiFi? So, to have a choice of where they can designer, and still shares design responsi- use a digital phone and do the VoIP bility with us, for our softphone. They BM: The future looks bright for all of installation in stages tends to make wanted a Softphone for the laptops, and those things. VoIP is here to stay, clearly them very happy. it’s a great application. That was a joint as the dominant player. TDM is going Some customers have looked at a pure development, and it accelerated the away, or is considered gone for the most IP solution and realized, because of the development because, they had done a part, certainly in terms of any new busi- impact on their LAN, that they would fair bit of work already. ness opportunity. The industry has have to incur the cost of a complete So there’s leverage there, and we see seemed to kind of ratify SIP as the stan- LAN upgrade, and they can’t do that. more leverage down the road. We’re a dard to go after, which is good, because But, they have a phone system that’s huge cell phone manufacturer, and are we’ve got direction now. But, there’s still reached its end of life, so, to come in very innovative with our cell phone and a lot of difficulty around SIP because of with a converged system is a great solu- WiFi technology. We have tremendous all the different flavors and different tion for them. market share in cell phones — not so vendors. We think our specific converged solu- much in the U.S. — but still, this tech- I’m concerned that it’s going to be tions actually are an advantage, because nology exists, as we’re a global business another ISDN situation, where every- since when is giving a choice to the cus- and we can take advantage of it. body has their own flavor. What we’d tomer viewed as a weakness? like to see, what would be great, is a RT: How do you view the VoIP/ really good certification body, a SIP cer- RT: What do you think the compelling wireless connection? tification body, like there is for WiFi, so applications are going to be in a that the industry could actually have a world of IP communications? BM: Let me put it this way: I work with standard and vendors could work quali- it every day. Toshiba’s camp here in ty improvements around that standard BM: We did a survey with our customers Irvine is 100 percent wireless equipped, and get the reliability to go way up. where we asked them what they thought so we can go anywhere on-site and use was the most compelling application and our laptops with our softphone plugged RT: Where do you see IMS going, and what was really driving them to look at in and communicate, take calls, have do you have a strategy in that area? and buy IP. They told us it was mobili- conferences, have joint meetings, and ty: office anywhere, softphone. Hands we can do it sitting outside or in the BM: It looks like there’s a battle brewing down, mobility and remote offices are cafeteria or in anyone’s office. Your with IMS, between the IMS architecture the number one drivers. That’s what our phone can reach you on your laptop via and the unified communications plat- customers said going into the sale and your softphone wirelessly. We’re com- form. Microsoft (quote - news - alert) post-sale, and even more of them said it pletely engaged in this VoIP/wireless really put its stake in the unified com-

44 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index munications ground, and the carriers are tions going over IP. I think you’ll see a that was not designed, built, or opti- clearly trying to deploy IMS. They are drop-off in the inflation of PRI’s, and mized for carrying voice. So there’s a lot using it as a way to help enable or grow it’s going to be replaced with SIP of work to be done on quality. hosted services to the customer who trunking over broadband. I don’t think I think that’s really going to help wants to get an application that’s cus- you’re going to see a wholesale shift deployment and that’s where we’re quite tomized and fits for their business. from CPE to hosted equipment, but focused, as well tools to ensure quality, What I think is going to happen is a you are going to see some more building chips, and technology — any lot of great products are going to be growth in hosted — probably at the technology that helps us deliver ever- developed around both of these areas. lower end, because a hosted environ- greater voice quality, because voice is To the degree that there’s good interop- ment at the very small end will allow still the number one application on erability and quality, it’s going to benefit them to afford some of the applica- Voice over IP. everybody. We’re watching that process, tions, certainly like IMS. You couldn’t and we intend to play in it. Certainly, set that up in your own CPE environ- RT: Will we be seeing more from our perspective, unified communi- ment, especially if you’re an SMB announcements from Toshiba? cations is going to come first to our company. enterprise-type business. I think that’s We also see, and I think this is a criti- BM: Yes, you will. I can’t say a lot more where we’re going to be in the beginning. cal one, much higher quality VoIP, about that, but Toshiba is an innovative because I think it’s still a hindrance to company. IT RT: Where do you see enterprise installations. There’s still work to be communications going over the next done to have ubiquitously deployed Rich Tehrani is President and Editor in Chief five years? high quality VoIP, because we’re still at TMC. BM: We see enterprise communica- running primarily over a data network

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 45 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Brix Networks IP Communications Testing http://www.brixnet.com Brix Networks (news - alert) gives service and Monitoring Tools providers and large enterprises the ability to assure any IP service, over any network, to As IP becomes the default technology for business — and soon residential — any endpoint — all from the same extensi- voice services, voice quality concerns continue to present the greatest barrier to ble platform. adoption. Most customers can accept, and even forgive, occasional delays in data The Brix System, a seamlessly integrated networks, but the same delays in a voice network are likely to be rather disturbing. hardware and software solution, delivers Indeed, most customers expect PSTN quality from their VoIP networks. end-to-end network visibility and continu- ous real-time IP service verification and Thus, ensuring consistently high levels of voice quality has become a primary con- monitoring. Built on a distributed architec- cern for IT managers at enterprises and service providers alike. In order to effectively ture, the Brix System ensures the success- do so, they need to tools to ensure call quality is not degraded by inadequate network ful launch and ongoing, profitable operation infrastructure, traffic congestions, traffic spikes, or other mishaps. This includes both of all types of IP-based voice, video, and pre-deployment network assessments to ensure readiness for voice traffic, as well as data applications and services. ongoing network monitoring and analysis to certify that QoS levels are met and to identify and resolve issues immediately, and today, it also must include security Catapult Communications http://www.catapult.com measures to eliminate threats from worms, DoS attacks, and other malicious events. Catapult (news - alert) offers testing The following is a listing of more than 30 vendors offering solutions for ensuring expertise for IMS, 4G/3G/2.5G/2G UMTS, IP networks are adequately provisioned for the implementation of packet-based GPRS, ATM, WiMAX, VoIP, SS7, and ISDN. voice applications — some designed for specific network elements, others with With a portfolio of testing products for over end-to-end testing solutions. Ultimately, they are all designed to ease the deploy- 900 protocols and protocol variants, ment and maintenance of IP networks and to ensure the highest possible call Catapult provides testing solutions for quality. Many of the solutions have been enhanced to include testing SIP-based design & feature verification, conformance testing, interoperability testing, load & networks, triple play services, or fixed/mobile services. stress testing, installation and acceptance, We encourage you to use this listing to initiate your search for a communica- and DCT2000. tions test solution. Slightly longer descriptions can be found online at http://www.tmcnet.com/voip, but please be sure to contact these vendors directly Clarus Systems for more specific information. As always, we also encourage any vendors that http://www.clarussystems.com have been inadvertently excluded from this list or are new to the space to contact ClarusIPC Certification and ClarusIPC us ([email protected]) so that we may update our information. Operations are available to validate that all functionality aspects of a Cisco IPT telephony environment meet actual user requirements Agilent Technologies Ameritec Corporation at deployment and throughout the life of the http://www.agilent.com/comms http://www.ameritec.com network. Clarus (news - alert) enables net- (news - alert) In communications testing, With Ameritec’s (news - alert) Allegro work administrators to gain management vis- Agilent sells products and services for the Network Load Generator and Voice Quality ibility into and confidence in the network with following types of networks and systems: Tester, it is possible for developers to place deployment and operations configuration ver- fiber optics networks, transport networks, a T1/E1, SIP, and analog load generator at ification; true end-to-end IPT functionality broadband and data networks, wireless their workstations. All of the flexibility and testing; automated, scheduled, and cus- communications, and microwave networks. features required to ensure the highest tomized testing; automated, standardized General purpose test products include gen- quality are included. The unit performs tra- reporting; open APIs for integration with net- eral purpose instruments, modular instru- ditional bearer traffic simulation, 3rd gener- work management and reporting solutions; ments and test software, digital design ation Voice over Packet testing, QoS testing remote troubleshooting; and trouble identifi- products, parametric test products, high complete with GMOS, G-PSQM, G-PESQ cation and isolation tools for the enterprise frequency electronic design tools, electron- and R-Factor scoring. help desk. ics manufacturing test equipment, thin-film transistor array test equipment, nano-posi- Arcatech Limited Empirix tioning systems, atomic-force microscopy, http://www.arca-technologies.com http://www.empirix.com and scanning probe microscopy. The emutel|Harmony platform is Empirix (news - alert) Hammer DEX is an Arcatech’s (news - alert) premier test solu- advanced and flexible IMS and NGN Device Allot Communications tion and forms the basis for addressing Emulation Platform. Hammer DEX is http://www.allot.com the converging telecommunications tech- designed to reduce cost and speed up the Allot Communications (news - alert) pro- testing, validation and verification of IMS and nologies. It is a highly efficient, cost- VoIP devices, applications and networks. vides intelligent IP service optimization effective and flexible tool, invaluable for solutions based on deep packet inspection Created to meet the emerging test require- use in the development, performance veri- ments for IMS and NGN devices, Hammer (DPI) technology. Allot’s NetEnforcer fication and pre-deployment testing of devices monitor and shape broadband traf- DEX provides developers, QA labs, service fic; Allot NetXplorer Management centrally many types of VoIP, ISDN, and analog provider labs, system integration, and rollout collects and reports usage statistics and equipment. emutel|Harmony combines teams a cost effective emulation platform that defines control policies, while the Allot comprehensive load testing and network is extensible, multi-user capable, and easy to Subscriber Management Platform provides simulation capabilities, detailed protocol use. subscriber awareness needed to customize analysis, extensive call statistics and qual- Hammer DEX allows for emulating spe- service offerings and maximize service rev- ity of service measurements in an easily cific device functionality, behavior and con- enues. affordable and user-friendly package. figuration eliminating the need for real

46 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index devices in test setups. It can be used in service level monitoring, be easy to install Net Latency conjunction with other Empirix functional and monitor through comprehensive dash- http://www.netlatency.com and load testing products for the isolation board views of the infrastructure and appli- (news - alert) SwitchMonitor is designed test of IMS and VoIP devices. The Hammer cations, along with immediate alerting. to monitor the performance and utilization DEX platform provides users with a full of all network interfaces, giving insight into range of device templates that work ‘out of Keynote the health and performance of an organiza- the box’, which can be easily customized to http://www.keynote.com tion’s entire LAN and WAN. Error statistics meet changing test requirements. Keynote (news - alert) VoIP and stream- are collected for all interfaces and are eval- uated for severity and criticality to give you Fluke Networks ing test and measurement products let you experience what your customers are experi- ultimate awareness of a network’s weak http://www.flukenetworks.com encing and ensure that you are providing points, which is critical for VOIP implemen- Fluke Networks (news - alert) provides the best service quality possible. Its prod- tations where low incidence of errors and solutions for the testing, monitoring, and ucts measure voice, audio, and video serv- high throughput are required to insure that analysis of enterprise and telecommunica- ices using Keynote’s global test and meas- quality of service does not suffer. tions networks and the installation and certi- urement network. Agents in the network SwitchMonitor for service providers fication of the fiber and copper foundation of connect to your streaming and VoIP servic- offers ISPs and other network service those networks. Its comprehensive line of es in residential locations or devices all over providers information about their network’s Network SuperVision Solutions provides net- the world. Measurements are taken at regu- performance that can help improve their work installers, owners, and maintainers lar frequencies to ensure accuracy and reli- customers’ network experience. Fully cus- with necessary vision, combining speed, ability at multiple levels of detail. Keynote tomizable customer pages are built for each accuracy, and ease of use to optimize net- Voice Perspective a comprehensive product interface so customers can track their own work performance. network utilization and help justify upgrades. Since no two networks are identical, for benchmarking and monitoring the end- to-end VoIP service quality from the actual Fluke Networks offers several NetTool mod- Netcordia els to match your individual requirements end user perspective over any communica- tion media — DSL, Cable, and Wireless. http://www.netcordia.com and to maximize the value of your NetTool Netcordia’s (news - alert) VoIP analysis investment. From our top-of-the-line module, together with its NetMRI appliance, NetTool Series II Pro VoIP to the entry-level NetHawk http://www.nethawk.fi is a comprehensive, automated network NetTool 10/100, you will find a NetTool that diagnostic tool, analyzing wireless, VPN, fits your network troubleshooting needs and NetHawk (news - alert) Analyzers are VLAN, IP, and VoIP problems. NetMRI gath- your budget. scalable testing, troubleshooting, and opti- ers VoIP Call Detail Records (CDRs) from mization tools for GSM/GPRS/EDGE/UMTS GL Communications leading IP PBX manufacturers and analyzes networks. NetHawk provides advanced those records and creates a Path Diagnostic http://www.gl.com applications for protocol monitoring, call & Chart. Call information and call perform- GL (news - alert) provides a variety of session tracing, QoS, and radio optimization ance, together with IP network analysis, solutions for network-wide monitoring and measurements. NetHawk Analyzer products provide an overview of VoIP processing surveillance. The solutions consist of intru- are focused for system integration, func- throughout the network — from routers to sive and non-intrusive probes for TDM, tional testing, load testing, network roll-out, switches to endpoints — and can be used to help troubleshoot specific VoIP problems, VoIP, and wireless networks. These probes and network operations. They are designed deployed at strategic locations in a network for multi-interface and multi-technology can transmit and collect voice, data, proto- NetIQ network monitoring, optimization, trou- http://www.netiq.com/solutions/voip col, statistics, and performance information, bleshooting, and KPI gathering and can be and relay this information to a central or NetIQ’s (news - alert) VoIP solutions integrated into a fully automated test sys- enable successful deployment of IP telepho- distributed network management system tem. (NMS) ny and ensure availability and security of The NMS may be client server-based or Ixia voice and data applications. With NetIQ, clients can also maintain QoS and measure Web-based system and consists of a data- http://www.ixiacom.com and report on metrics and service levels base and applications for controlling, col- Ixia’s (news - alert) scalable solutions while mitigating security risks. NetIQ offers lecting, and analyzing the information pro- generate, capture, characterize, and emulate a solution that integrates systems and secu- vided by the various probes network and application traffic, establishing rity management so clients can easily GL’s current NMS solutions include: digital definitive performance and conformance implement, manage, and protect against T1/E1 line monitoring, test, and diagnostic metrics of network devices or systems threats in their VoIP environments. system (intrusive and non-intrusive probes); under test. Ixia’s Triple Play test systems With NetIQ’s AppManager, you can manage SS7, ISDN, and wireless protocol monitoring address the growing need to test voice, VoIP solutions, including IP phones, call and surveillance system (non-intrusive video, and data services and network capa- servers, voice mail, and IP contact center probes); wireless, wireline, and VoIP voice bility under real-world conditions, utilizing a applications, as well as the underlying IT infra- quality monitoring system (intrusive probes); range of industry-standard interfaces, structure — all from a single integrated con- and packet and VoIP monitoring and surveil- including Ethernet, SONET, ATM, and wire- sole, maximizing performance and availability. lance system (non-intrusive probes) less connectivity. IxVoice is a comprehensive hardware and Network General Integrated Research software test framework that provides uni- http://www.ir.com http://www.networkgeneral.com fied VoIP and PSTN test solutions for the VoIP Intelligence from Network General (news - alert) PROGNOSIS IP Telephony telecom/network equipment manufacturer, Manager is a solution designed to provide (news - alert) delivers expert network analy- carrier, and enterprise markets. It addresses sis, VoIP troubleshooting, and monitoring network readiness assessment, testing, and all major VoIP protocols: SIP, SCCP (Skinny), assurance, performance monitoring of VoIP capabilities to this increasingly important H.323, MGCP, H.248 (MEGACO), as well as element of the enterprise communications servers/applications and the network TDM and analog telephony services. (including gateways, phones, routers, infrastructure. VoIP Intelligence leverages switches), ongoing capacity planning and and extends the underlying functionality of

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 47 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Sniffer InfiniStream, Sniffer Distributed, and toring across the network protocol, applica- Sniffer Portable, to ensure QoS on packet tion, and security services layers of a VoIP Shore-Tel voice networks. With VoIP Intelligence, the network, including Call Managers, IP PBXs, http://www.shore-tel.com quality of converged networks is enhanced and voice gateways. (news - alert) ShoreWare System Monitor and voice, video, and data can be easily QRadar’s VoIP module provides a set of provides a monitoring capability that alerts managed over a single network. With real- security event correlation rules, application IT the moment it detects a problem, while time expert analysis and decoding capabili- signatures, and specific VoIP security reports enabling proactive troubleshooting for ties, an IT manager can determine if con- designed to help customers better monitor improved quality of service and network verged networks are delivering the toll-qual- their voice application traffic, correlate events availability. ShoreWare System Monitor ity voice services their users demand. from security devices protecting the network, delivers a blend of continuous vendor-neu- while detecting and reporting on specific tral monitoring, diagnostics, and alerts to Network Instruments threats to VoIP servers and applications. provide real-time monitoring of all network http://www.networkinstruments.com devices. As a standard, SNMP-based soft- Network Instruments’ (news - alert) Qovia ware solution, ShoreWare System Monitor Observer VoIP Expert is designed to help http://www.qovia.com can be installed and running in 15 minutes, manage, troubleshoot, and maintain VoIP Qovia (news - alert) monitors live calls in traffic across your network. Regardless of automatically recognizing network devices real time and alerts IT operators before call and providing Web-based, remote monitor- whether you are interested in the big picture quality is affected, enhancing reliability and or in a specific conversation, Observer ing. offers real-time statistics, Expert analysis, end user experience. Qovia can help track and reports for all levels of VoIP traffic. VoIP assets on the network, optimize VoIP Shunra With Network Instruments Distributed networks before calls are made, and trou- http://www.shunra.com Network Analysis (NI-DNA) architecture, bleshoot call quality problems, increasing Shunra (news - alert) VE is a robust, VoIP Analysis is an integrated part of Expert network reliability. comprehensive network simulation solution Observer and Observer Suite, which allows Qovia’s flagship IP telephony monitoring that creates a virtual network environment management of VoIP traffic and the rest of and management system monitors and man- in your pre-deployment lab, enabling testing the network with one solution, decreasing ages VoIP call quality. Qovia sensors are network performance under a wide variety the learning curve while increasing ROI. placed on the VoIP network to collect call of network impairments under real world quality information about calls as they occur. conditions throughout the development life- Opticom Information is sent to the Qovia Service cycle. Shunra VE allows an understanding http://www.opticom.de Manager software center for analysis and of the impact the network and applications (news - alert) The OPERA Voice/Audio management across the entire voice network. have on each other and on remote end Quality Analyzer represents the latest devel- users’ experiences, and uncovers and opments to objectively evaluate and assure RADCOM resolves production related problems — the quality of compressed voice and wide- http://www.radcom.com before rollout — and provides a wide range band audio signals, based on modeling the RADCOM’s (news - alert) VoIP solution of reports and drill-down capabilities to iso- human ear. With OPERA, you can achieve a late and resolve the root causes of network includes both active and non-intrusive and application problems. comprehensive analysis of the end-to-end probes. The active probes provide link qual- quality of today’s and next generation net- works, such as VoIP, VoDSL, VoATM, ISDN, ity and performance measurements by cre- Spirent Communications GSM, POTS. You can also test the audio ating test calls between probes. Users can http://www.spirentcom.com quality of compression formats, such as define a flexible automated scheduling Spirent solutions ensure that your hard- MP3, AAC, AC3, Windows Media, from the regime, or execute ad hoc test calls. ware and software will perform as expected studio source to the receiver, or from the Creating automated test schedules is an by testing and assessing four critical areas: server to the client. important component of proactive monitor- network planning, network validation, voice ing in a VoIP solution. The probes provide Psytechnics quality, and security. With Spirent’s availability (signaling), performance, and Architecture for Converged Network Testing, http://www.psytechnics.com voice quality (PESQ) measurements on the you can thoroughly analyze the interaction Psytechnics (news - alert) provides tools test call session. After activation, the active for equipment manufacturers, network and between voice, data, and video traffic, thus applications providers and end users that Omni-Q probes perform scheduled test reducing the risk of performance issues and provide simple, yet powerful and accurate calls, while the non-intrusive probes moni- outages by testing new network devices and information about real experiences for voice tor all traffic and perform scheduled actions software components before deployment, and video services, which is supported by a on the target populations. verifying that your security infrastructure host of advanced diagnostics about the voice enforces your policies without impacting and video content as well as more familiar Scientific Net IP Communications performance, measuring the performance performance metrics — all of which can be http://www.scientificnetip.com/voiptest- and capacity of new and existing network used to speed diagnostics and rapidly identi- tools.html devices, and “exact-sizing” the network. fy the root cause of service affecting prob- Scientific NetIP’s (news - alert) VoIP lems. assessment certifies networks for Avaya or SyncVoice Communications The VoIP Solution Set consists of three Cisco IP telephony systems and determine http://www.syncvoice.com Service Assessment Modules (PESQ, quickly and easily how well VoIP will work on SyncVoice (news - alert) provides unified Psytechnics Speech Monitor(PSM) and a network prior to deployment, including cus- management solutions that provide a single Psytechnics Speech IP Monitor(PSI)). tomizable reports detailing the network’s VoIP readiness. Its VoIP call generator and analyz- view of the network across disparate sys- Q1 Labs er products monitor and analyze live video tems, while normalizing and correlating http://www.q1labs.com and voice conferencing networks, giving a data to provide actionable information. “big picture,” as well as the ability to drill Q1 Labs’ (news - alert) new QRadar VXTracker simplifies the complexity of down to packet level detail to accurately pin- hybrid networks and provides the sophisti- module is specifically designed to offer point trouble spots. It also simplifying overall security monitoring for VoIP networks. cated analytics that customers need to management of IP phones, call servers, voice understand the impact on cost, perform- QRadar combines network behavior analy- mail, and IP contact center applications, as sis and security event correlation for moni- well as the entire underlying infrastructure. ance, and quality of service.

48 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index VXTracker’s call accounting system col- 3G/4G mobile, and other real-time services. downstream results for packet loss, latency, lects call detail records (CDR) to produce Telchemy’s products provide real-time visibil- and jitter, with an algorithm-generated powerful historical and real-time drill down ity of service quality, accurate estimates of MOS. The second test, based on ICMP, uti- reports to help you manage costs, agent user perceived QoS and QoE (MOS scores lizes any network device on the system and performance, and isolate important network and R-factors), and detailed analysis of the produces round trip results for packet loss, lost packet ratio, latency, and jitter. trends. The VXTracker VoIPToolbox is a root cause of quality degradation. VQmon is software based QoS monitoring package integrated into IP Phones, VoIP gateways, Viola Networks that monitors your packet performance and residential gateways, SLA monitoring sys- http://www.violanetworks.com applications on your converged network. tems, routers, OSS, Probes and Analyzers — Viola’s (news - alert) NetAlly Lifecycle providing perceptual quality scores and Manager combines the use of active and Tektronix problem diagnosis information for every call. passive testing technologies in a single http://www.tektronix.com/communications service management system to provide a Tektronix (news - alert) provides network Touchstone Technologies holistic view of the VoIP environment. The operators and equipment manufacturers a http://www.touchstone-inc.com solution is entirely software based and comprehensive suite of network diagnostics (news - alert) WinEyeQ now provides includes pre- and post-deployment assess- and management solutions for fixed, support for HTTP, SMTP, POP3, FTP, RTSP, ment designed to detect potential network mobile, IP, and converged multi-service net- SNMP and TELNET protocols, affording a problems before they affect end users; pin- works. These solutions provide both active clear, concise, and intuitive portrait of all of point the source of degraded network per- and passive testing and monitoring, cover- the components your network. It also now formance; and definitively determine ing a full range of legacy and next genera- incorporates Data Scopes, which are graphi- whether a detected problem is rooted in the tion protocols and services, including IPTV, cal representations of logical groups of network or the application. NetAlly is an VoIP, broadband wireless access, triple play, components, allowing the user to drill down open and scalable architecture designed to and FMC applications. on any category, revealing ever-finer levels operate on industry standard hardware plat- Tektronix’ Spectra2 passive conformance of details. Each Data Scope can be repre- forms, as well as integration with third- testing solution provides a full range of sented as either a bar or a pie chart and party systems. VoIP and converged network testing fea- includes histograms for every metric, allow- tures in one system; its DirectQuality R7 ing you to examine the recent history of any WildPackets active test platform provides complete end- and all activities on the network. These data http://www.wildpackets.com to-end service quality test coverage for scopes enhance the user experience by pro- (news - alert) The OmniAnalysis Platform NextGen, VoIP, PSTN, and mobile networks viding a natural interface to network analysis gives network engineers real-time visibility hosting voice, video, fax, Internet, and con- techniques. into every part of the network — simultane- ferencing services. ously and from a single interface — includ- Tektronix recently acquired Minacom to Trilithic ing Gigabit, 10/100, 802.11 wireless, VoIP, become further enhance its comprehensive http://www.trilithic.com and WAN links to remote offices. Using the test solutions for both active and passive (news - alert) The modem-equipped 860 OmniAnalysis Platform’s local capture capa- testing of VoIP and IP data services and DSPi cable analyzer performs all of the criti- bilities, centralized console, distributed equipment. cal transmission and signal quality tests engines, and expert analysis, engineers can needed to install and maintain analog, high rapidly troubleshoot faults and fix prob- speed data, and VoIP services, providing all lems, restoring essential services and maxi- Telchemy of the capabilities needed for certifying ana- mizing network uptime and user satisfac- http://www.telchemy.com log and digital installations. tion. OmniPeek enables network engineers Telchemy’s (news - alert) VQmon technol- The 860 DSPi has two different VoIP test to monitor multiple parts of the network ogy enables service providers and major functions. For the RTP test, the 860 DSPi simultaneously and independently — an enterprise to monitor and manage the per- communicates with a server side applica- important capability when engineers know formance of VoIP, IPTV, video conferencing, tion. This test produces both upstream and there’s a problem but not where it is. IT

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 49 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index 2006 Internet Telephony Products Of The Year

You see before you the list of Internet Telephony magazine’s 2006 point for individuals seeking solutions Product of the Year award winners. Each year, the editors of Internet that will help them achieve their goals, Telephony pore over hundreds of applications submitted over the be it to save money, grow their business, course of the preceding several months. And each year we are treated or embrace the hottest telecommunica- to seeing the very best of what the industry has to offer. tions technology out there. And so, we present to you the best of The list, in our view, has never been and classes of product. 2006. While hardly exhaustive, this list about selecting a single product. It is an For us the list has always been about is a great place to begin your search for impossible task to choose one product providing our readers with a group of the solution that will ultimately serve to across multiple categories and multiple products that merit their consideration. fill your unique needs. We remind target audiences that should be consid- Pure and simple. If one of our readers is everyone to do their homework, ered “the best.” For example how does in the market for an enterprise IP research these companies thoroughly, one compare an IP telephony headset telephony solution, then there will follow up, and most importantly: Check with a softswitch with an operator’s con- appear among this list of vendors several out those customer references! sole with a development toolkit...? providers of such a solution. The pur- There are too many different categories pose of this list is to provide a starting – The Editors

COMPANY WEB PRODUCT

3Com http://www.3com.com 3Com NBX IP Telephony Release 6.0 911 Enable http://www.911enable.com Enterprise 911 Solution AccessLine Communications http://www.accessline.com SmartVoicePlus Aculab http://www.aculab.com Prosody S Alliance Systems http://www.alliancesystems.com EX-6000 Expansion Chassis Allworx http://www.allworx.com 6x AltiGen Communications, Inc http://www.altigen.com IP 705 VoIP Telephone Aperto Networks http://www.apertonet.com PacketMAX 5000 Base Station ASC telecom AG http://www.asctelecom.com EVOip for Windows AudioCodes http://www.audiocodes.com Transcoding Resource Blade (TRB) AVAYA http://www.avaya.com Avaya One-X Deskphone for 9600 Series IP Telephones BlueNote Networks, Inc. http://www.bluenotenetworks.com SessionSuite SOA Edition Brekeke Software, Inc. http://www.brekeke.com Brekeke JTAPI SDK Brix Networks http://www.brixnet.com BrixVision BroadSoft Inc. http://www.broadsoft.com BroadWorks Call Center Cantata Technology http://www.cantata.com IMG 1010 Carrier Access Corporation http://www.carrieraccess.com Adit® 3500 Trunk Gateway and Router with Release 1.4 Centillium Communications http://www.centillium.com ARION family (CO and CPE chipsets) Cisco http://www.cisco.com Cisco Unified Personal Communicator Citel Technologies http://www.citel.com EXTender IP6000 Citrix Systems, Inc. http://www.citrix.com Citrix Application Gateway™ with the Citrix® Voice Office Application Suite ClearMesh Networks http://www.clearmesh.com The ClearMesh Metro Grid Codian http://www.codian.com MCU 4500 CommuniGate Systems http://www.commuigate.com CommuniGate Pro 5.1 Convergin http://www.convergin.com Wireline SCIM Solution. CopperCom http://www.coppercom.com Content Manager CosmoCom http://www.cosmocom.com CosmoCall Universe 4.6 CounterPath Solutions http://www.counterpath.com eyeBeam 1.5 Covad Communications Group, Inc. http://www.covad.com Covad ClearEdge Integrated Access

50 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index

COMPANY WEB PRODUCT

Covergence, Inc http://www.covergence.com Eclipse™ model CXC-50 Critical Links http://www.critical-links.com edgeBOX CTI Group http://www.ctigroup.com SmartRecord IP cylogistics http://www.cylogistics.com Trueline Billing Solution deltathree, Inc. http://www.deltathree.com Hosted Consumer VoIP Solution Dialexia Communications http://www.dialexia.com Dial-Centrex Dialogic Corporation http://www.dialogic.com Dialogic® Multimedia Platform for AdvancedTCA® Dirigosoft Telecommunications, Inc. http://www.dirigosoft.com Dirigo iQueue™ EdenTree Technologies http://www.edentreetech.com EdenTree Lab Manager 5.0 Emerson Network Power http://www.gotoemerson.com NterpriseIP™ Solution Empirix Inc. http://www.empirix.com Hammer FX-Blade Engate Technology Corporation http://www.engate.com Engate MailSentinel™ Ensim Corporation http://www.ensim.com Unify 3.0 Envox Worldwide http://www.envox.com Envox 6.3 Communications Development Platform Espial IPTV http://www.espial.com Evo IPTV Service Platform Extricom Inc. http://www.extricom.com Extricom Wireless LAN System F5 Networks http://www.f5.com BIG-IP LTM (Local Traffic Manager) SIP Load Balancing Solution FacetCorp http://www.facetcorp.com FacetPhone FaxCore http://www.faxcore.com FaxCore Integration Server (FIS) FirstHand Technologies http://www.firsthandtech.com FirstHand Enterprise Mobility Solution Fonality http://www.fonality.com HUD for PBXtra Forum Communications International http://www.forum-com.com Consortium VIP Global Crossing http://www.globalcrossing.com VoIP On-Net Plus GlobalTouch Telecom http://www.globaltouchtelecom.com ASP VoIP Solution Grandstream Networks, Inc http://www.grandstream.com GXW-410xv Analog IP Gateway HBF / 911 Services http://www.hbfgroup.com i-911 HelloSoft, Inc. http://www.hellosoft.com HelloDual-Mode I.S. Associates, Inc. http://www.isassoc.com TeleCount Billing iBasis http://www.ibasis.com DirectVoIP Transcoding IBM http://www.ibm.com IBM System i IP Telephony IDT Telecom - Net2Phone http://www.net2phone.com SAMSUNG SMT-W6100 Wi-Fi Phone Ingate Systems http://www.ingate.com Ingate SIP Trunking Software Module Intelliverse http://www.intelliverse.com Talking Planet Business Interactive Intelligence, Inc. http://www.inin.com Vonexus Enterprise Interaction Center Inter-Tel, Incorporated http://www.inter-tel.com Inter-Tel 7000 Intertex http://www.intertex.com Intertex IX68 iotum inc. http://www.iotum.com IOTUM ’s Pronto Conferencing Iperia http://www.iperia.com IperiaVX Ixia http://www.ixiacom.com Ixia triple Play test Solution JDSU http://www.jdsu.com QT-50 Software Agent Jungo LTD http://www.jungo.com OpenRG/OpenSMB - JPBX Juniper Networks http://www.juniper.net MX960 Ethernet Services Router KoolSpan, Inc. http://www.koolspan.com SecurEdge Legerity http://www.legerity.com Legerity VeriVoice Test Suite Software Lucent Technologies http://www.lucent.com Lucent Subscriber Data Optimization Solution Mediatrix Telecom http://www.mediatrix.com Mediatrix 3531 / 3532 Mera Systems Inc http://www.mera-systems.com MERA VoIP Transit Softswitch II Mitel http://www.mitel.com Mitel Live Business Gateway Network Instruments http://www.networkinstruments.com Expert Observer® and the GigaStor Probe Appliance NewStep Networks http://www.newstep.com CSN 30 NexTone Communications http://www.nextone.com Dynamic Policy Management™ (DPM) Nominum http://www.nominum.com Nominum Navitas Nortel http://www.nortel.com Business Communications Manager 50/200/400 Objectworld Communications http://www.objectworld.com Objectworld Unified Communications Server (UC Server) Pactolus Communications Software http://www.pactolus.com SIPdev.org and RapidSTART SIP Services Suite Pangean Technologies http://www.pangeantech.com insta-REACT!

52 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index COMPANY WEB PRODUCT

Paradial AS http://www.paradial.com RealTunnel FW/NAT traversal 2.0 Patton Electronics http://www.patton.com SmartNode™ Model SN4960 Performance Technologies http://www.pt.com ATC6640 Personeta http://www.personeta.com Personeta Mobile Office (PMO) Plantronics http://www.plantronics.com Voyager 510-USB Protus IP Solutions http://www.protus.com MyFax Psytechnics http://www.psytechnics.com Unified Comunications Experience Manager pulse http://www.pulsevoice.com pulsescp Qwest http://www.qwest.com/wholesale Qwest Wholesale IP Voice Solutions Reef Point Systems http://www.reefpoint.com Universal Convergence Gateway RightNow Technologies http://www.rightnow.com RightNow Voice™ RingCentral http://www.ringcentral.com RingCentral Online RNK Communications http://www.rnkcom.com SubjectTalk Ruckus Wireless http://www.ruckuswireless.com Ruckus MediaFlex NG Sagem-Interstar Inc. http://www.faxserver.com XMediusFAX SP Release 5.0 Samsung BCS http://www.samsung.com/bcs OfficeServ 7400 Seawolf Technologies, Inc. http://www.seawolftech.com XRainbow ShoreTel, Inc. http://www.shoretel.com ShoreTel 6.1 Shunra http://www.shunra.com Shunra Virtual Enterprise (Shunra VE) Siemens Communications Inc. http://www.enterprise.siemens.com/open Siemens OpenStage SightSpeed http://www.sightspeed.com SightSpeed 5.0 SignalSys, Inc. http://www.signalsys.com SP400 Simton Technologies Inc. http://www.simton.com Simton IPX H500 Sipera Systems http://www.sipera.com Sipera IPCS 310 SITEL http://www.sitel.com SystemOne snom technology AG http://www.snom.com snom 320 Solegy LLC http://www.solegy.com Solegy ServicePDQ Sphere Communications http://www.spherecom.com Sphericall Spirent Communications http://www.spirentcom.com Spirent Protocol Tester SPIRIT DSP http://www.spiritdsp.com TeamSpirit™ Mobile 2.0 Strix Systems http://www.strixsystems.com Strix Systems Edge Wireless System (EWS 100) Super Technologies, Inc./DIDXchange http://www.didx.net DIDXchange Switchvox http://www.switchvox.com Switchvox SMB SyChip, Inc. http://www.sychip.com SyVoiceTM SV1000 Sylantro Systems http://www.sylantro.com Synergy 4.1 SysMaster Corporation http://www.sysmaster.com Tornado M10 Digital Media Center Tekelec http://www.tekelec.com Tekelec 7000 Enhanced VoIP Solution (T7000 EVS) Tektronix Canada, Inc. (formerly Minacom) http://www.minacom.com MTA Loopback VoIP Test Telco Systems http://www.telco.com Access500 Teleformix LLC http://www.teleformix.com ECHO Digital Call Recorder Telenity http://www.telenity.com Canvas LES, Location Enabling Server (based on Canvas CSP, Converged Services Platform) TeleTech http://www.teletech.com TeleTech OnDemand Retail Voice Portal Toshiba America Information Systems, http://www.telecom.toshiba.com Strata CIX40 Telecommunication Systems Division Trolltech http://www.trolltech.com Qtopia 4.2.0 Truphone http://www.truphone.com Truphone UCN, Inc. http://www.ucn.net inContact/Workforce Management Unimax Systems Corp. http://www.unimax.com 2nd Nature, Rel. 6.2 VoiceObjects, Inc. http://www.voiceobjects.com VoiceObjects 6 Voxpath Networks http://www.voxpath.com Harmonica Connect VozTelecom Sistemas SL http://www.voztele.com Outsourced Hosted VoIP Applications Whaleback Systems http://www.whalebacksystems.com Whaleback Systems CrystalBlue Voice Service WildPackets Inc. http://www.wildpackets.com OmniAnalysis Platform v4.0 XConnect http://www.xconnect.com XConnect Direct Route Outbound & Inbound Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com Yahoo Messenger with Voice 8.1

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 53 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index TMC - full page bleed 8.375x11.1Page 1 1/10/2007 5:33:42 PM

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K ntd tts n/r te cutis Te ae o ata cmais n pout mnind een a b te rdmrs f hi rsetv owners. respective their of the trademarks in the Inc. be Communications, may Stealth herein of mentioned products trademarks and or companies trademarks actual registered of either names are The PEERS“ countries. YOUR Peer other Voice “KNOW Market, and/or ASP VPF and States Registry, ENUM WorkshopUnited VPF Market, Peering Minutes Voice VPF VPF, Fabric, Forum, Peering Voice ing reserved. rights All Inc. Communications, Stealth 2007 © 1 Visit thevpf.com for puzzle solution. KNOW 2 3

YOUR 4 TM PEERS 5 6 7 8 9

10

11 The Voice Peering Fabric (VPF),the

preferred platform where enterprises 12 13 14 and service providers converge to BUY, SELL & PEER telephony services, is 15 pleased to announce its 2006 year end traffic volume:

16 17 18 19 2006 Annualized Run-Rate: 139 billion minutes 20

Who are some of the members and 21 22 23 partners that made 2006 an amazing year for the VPF? 24

25 26 Solve the puzzle to find out! 27

28 29

30 -

ACROSS DOWN 2. Headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda, this global telecom company has network 1. This VPF Member based in Mountain View California operates a diverse array of services coverage in more than 300 cities in 29 countries. It recently joined the VPF as a including two of the thirteen root name-servers, the .COM and .NET top-level Internet domains, Carrier Alliance Partner. and is one of the largest SS7 signaling networks in North America. It currently provides SS7, interoperability, and intelligent database/directory services on the VPF. 8. Headquartered in San Jose, California, this 20-year old company is the largest manufacturer of routers & switches with a market share exceeding 70%. Their 3. Established in 1998, this Maryland based company produced the first Session Border CallManager software product has built-in support for ENUM. Controller with built-in ENUM support. Their products are currently used by dozens of VPF Members to route voice traffic. 9. This VPF Member company was formed in 1987 from a division of the New Zealand Post Office and privatised in 1990. It is also New Zealand’s second 4. This company is currently the only Session Border Controller company to be publicly listed largest mobile operator and the largest company by value on the New Zealand on the NASDAQ. It produces hardware-based Session Controllers and has integrated Least- Exchange. (3 letter acronym) Cost-Routing, ENUM, SRV and Transcoding support.

10. This company was the first consumer VoIP service provider to offer videophone 5. They are the manufacturers of the ONX (Open Network Xchange) voice gateways and service in the U.S., and was also one of the six initial members of the VPF. signaling solution system; and produced the first media gateway with built-in support for ENUM. 11. This company was the first consumer VoIP service to connect calls between PCs and phones, and was also one of the six initial members of the VPF. 6. This VPF Member recently purchased KPN’s International Voice Wholesale Business and is now one of the five largest voice wholesalers in the world. They provide services to over 100 12. This VPF Member company merged with US LEC in mid-2006, creating one of countries and has a combined annual run-rate of 20 billion minutes. the largest CLECs with a combined revenue of $1.3 billion. They currently provide nationwide U.S. IP origination (DID) service. 7. Established in early 2004, this Virginia-based VPF Member was the first company to offer an annual flat-rate $199 VoIP calling plan in the U.S. and is often referred to as the “no gotcha” 15. It operates the internationally known One Wilshire building in downtown Los phone company. Angeles, home to over 200 telecom service providers and recently opened Wilshire Annex in Los Angeles & acquired the Miami Exchange building. This VPF 12. They are the organizers and host of the annual global telecom conference in Hawaii with over Partner was also the local host to the Voice Peering Forum Winter 2006. 2000 visitors from 60 countries. 2007 will be their 29th conference. (3 letter acronym)

16. This multinational telecom voice wholesaler based in Newark NJ re-purchased 13. Founded in 1990, It is one of the world’s leading providers of fast and reliable data Net2Phone in Q1 2006. It sells more than 33 million calling cards per month, communications services for the transaction-oriented industry. This VPF Member & Partner carrying more than 24 billion minutes annually and is publicly traded on the operates one of the four independent SS7 networks in the U.S. and provides SS7 services to NYSE. the VPF community. (3 letter acronym)

17. Name of a bi-weekly publication focusing on the service provider industry. 14. Based in Washington D.C., this organization has a 25-year history as the leading trade Featuring articles written by Gary Kim, a well known journalist and commentator association for the competitive U.S. communications industry. They advance its member’s in the telecom industry since 1983. businesses through policy advocacy and through education, networking and trade shows.

21. It is an international inbound VoIP Provider, based in Belgium, providing local 15. This VPF Member was the first international PTT to join the VPF. It is the largest fixed service phone and toll-free numbers. It recently joined the VPF as a member. telecommunications provider in China.

25. They are the pioneers in 10 Gigabit-Ethernet Switching and have revolutionized 18. They are a premier provider of voice directory transaction services, processing over 1 billion the switch/router market with their E-Series products - The same products used requests a year across the globe. They were the first VPF Member to provide enhanced 411 within the VPF to carry more than one-half billion minutes daily. directory service to the VPF community.

26. This organization is a combination of Brooktrout Technology and Excel Switching. 19. This young company based in San Diego, California is the manufacturer of the VSX VoIP Its products include a compact 1U Media Gateway with built-in SS7 and ENUM Session Controller with built in Least-Cost-Routing, ENUM and SRV lookup capabilities. support. Its products have been deployed by over 70 organizations worldwide and used in various applications from wholesale voice, contact centers to E-911 applications. 27. It merged with SBC and Bell South, retaining the brand that was founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. Being the first RBOC to join the VPF as a 20. Servicing 75 markets, this Reston-VA based company is one of the largest CLEC’s within the member and partner, it provides wholesale voice termination and SS7 services United States. It recently completed a build-out of its next generation nationwide inter-city fiber to the VPF community. network and was the first nationwide CLEC to join the VPF.

28. This VPF Member & Partner is one of the ten largest cable companies in the North 22. Name of a monthly publication from Virgo Publishing’s Telecom Division. The magazine is East USA. It recently aquired the telecommunications division of Con Edison. focused for facility-based carriers that include incumbents, wireless telcos to cable operators. It is a source of strategic intelligence and provides the essential information on operations, 29. Their facilities at New York 60 Hudson Street and Atlanta 56 Marietta are data center management, service provisioning and networking facilities considered two of the most densley populated “core” interconnect sites in North America. This VPF Member & Partner was recently acquired by GI Partners and 23. They are the organizers of Internet Telephony Conference & Expo, and publisher of Internet is a founding member of the Carrier Hotel Alliance. Telephony, SIP and IMS Magazine. (3 letter acronym)

30. It is one of the 10 largest competitive carriers in Germany and was one of the six 24. Since its inception in 1997, this Chelmsford, Massachusetts based manufacturer provides a initial members to the VPF. wide range of IMS based products to Tier-1 and Tier-2 carriers worldwide, from soft-switches to session controller products to application servers.

WORD BANK: XO XCHANGE, VOXBONE, VERISIGN, TNZ, TNS, TMC, TELX, SUNROCKET, SONUS, SENTITO, SANSAY, RCN, PTC, PAETEC, PACKET8, NEXTONE, NET2PHONE, 3UTELECOM, ACMEPACKET, AT&T, CANTATA, CHINATELECOM, CISCO, COMPTEL, CRGWEST, FORCE10, GLOBALCROSSING, IBASIS, IDT, INFONXX, IPBUSINESS, IPBUSINESS, INFONXX, IDT, IBASIS, GLOBALCROSSING, FORCE10, CRGWEST, COMPTEL, CISCO, CHINATELECOM, CANTATA, AT&T, ACMEPACKET, 3UTELECOM,

TMC -Puzzle -full page bleed 8.31 1 1/10/2007 6:45:59 PM Effective Marketing of VoIP Services — Catch the Small Business Wave or Be Swept Aside

By David Cork

While traditional service providers are busy defending mass con- huge in aggregate, but it is also highly sumer markets, the silent majority of the small business market fragmented, resistant to change, and cost conscious to the extreme. To even could be an even more lucrative target for nimble operators that rec- begin to understand the small business ognize and act on the opportunity. With small business, you will mindset, a vendor or service provider win a customer for life if you get there first — but only with the needs to have spent time in the trenches right combination of technology know-how and a commitment to a and learned the important lessons first hand. For example, even when a small long term relationship. business believes in your technology and can see its value, often cash flow con- The Opportunity From the service provider’s stand- straints can cause your deal to fall For the past 20 years, customer prem- point, a key piece of the right solution is through. A service provider with small ises-based key systems have been the an effective channel program that business smarts knows that eliminating overwhelming choice of small businesses blends a direct sales force with an indi- start-up costs or offering financing for their voice services. But as consumers, rect channel model. Each geographical options is a prerequisite for this market. small business owners are bombarded market is unique and the key is to In addition to money constraints, with information about new Voice over secure those local channels that small small businesses lack the on-site IT Internet Protocol (VoIP)-based solutions, businesses already value and trust. From resources to install and manage cus- and many are curious if this can also be the small business perspective, they buy tomer premises equipment. They clearly cost effective for their businesses. With locally, generally within a 50-mile radius lack the expertise to evaluate new tech- 32 million aging key systems in the U.S. of their own offices. Small business nologies, so most small businesses stay alone, the replacement wave in the small owners want local relationships with real with the tried and true systems and business market has begun. However, people, not an automated system that service providers that they have used for harnessing this burgeoning market seg- directs their concerns when they need years. However, the tried and true sys- ment is more than a technical challenge service. Most of all, they want to be able tems have an overwhelming set of fea- or a marketing mission. Failure to under- talk to their providers on demand. tures that are complex and unnecessary. stand the right marketing mix for small VoIP (define - news - alert) is a com- In small business, more is not necessari- business has been largely responsible for pletely disruptive technology for the ly better. Any service provider that previous failed attempts to address it, existing telecom channel model. Today’s wants to succeed with small business which in turn has led to an undeserved common model has the network guy needs to deliver a simple set of features reputation as an unprofitable market for living comfortably on his side of the that are intuitive, easily accessible, and service providers. “demarc” point and the telecom VAR require no training. The right blend of technology and residing quietly on his side. In the brave For small businesses, vendor relation- powerful mass market channels presents new VoIP world, service providers have ships are even more important than they savvy service providers with an opportu- to reach all the way through to the end are for larger enterprises. It’s paramount nity to aggressively pursue growth user desktop to deliver the bundle of that you be a partner that small busi- strategies — largely at the expense of services that users need and want. To nesses can trust. Second only to cost the vulnerable incumbent telephone reach this market profitably, service savings, the next most important issue companies. The prize is securing three- providers need to find and secure rela- for small businesses is control. This is to five-year contracts earned through tionships with successful channels that why their relationships are overwhelm- long-term partnerships that are vital to understand how to serve the unique ingly local and the connection among retaining small business clients. For small business market. you, your channel, and your customer is their part, small business owners gain a central to your success. Small businesses trusted advisor to effectively manage The Challenge look for value for money, proximity, their communications. The small business market may be responsiveness, and respect from their

56 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index vendors. If you can match your strength tem replacement wave swells. small businesses are and are not using to an indirect channel that already There is a clear link between success- can identify the most important pain understands this, you’ll be in a better to ful products and successful channels. points and messages for the customer position than your competition to catch For example, complex products matched and the most valuable training curricu- the key system replacement wave. with highly skilled VAR channels have lum for your sales team and resellers. been proven successful for large enter- There is evidence that even those service The Right Product prises, but at a high cost of entry. The providers that are successful with direct Hosted VoIP technology offers the right product for small business opens sales to small business can ramp up a right economics for this market, but not the doors to simple, effective, mass mar- targeted channel program faster and all solutions are created equal. The ket channels — which is only possible if more cost effectively by leveraging an wrong product choice for this market is the product is extremely simple to sell experienced vendor relationship. a repackaged residential play or a diluted and service. Given the range of legitimate large enterprise offering. The right prod- demands on the time of most service uct choice is one that is simple to sell, The Right Channel providers, it’s no surprise that most deploy, and support. It is more impor- Given the importance small business operators don’t have the in-house tant to provide capabilities that are actu- places on current and local vendors, the resources to research, prepare, and ally needed and easy to use than it is to right channel for you to engage is the launch a successful small business mar- offer a product that is overly complex channel that already has these relation- keting campaign. This is one of the and guaranteed to drive up support costs ships in place. These channels may not invisible barriers you can face when try- over the lifetime of the service. sell voice services today and would see ing to introduce new services or tech- The right hosted voice services prod- VoIP as purely incremental business. nologies. Acquiring the necessary know- uct for small business must have the fol- When coupled with the right product, a how through an experienced vendor lowing key attributes: simple channel model that reaches the partnership is simply good business • Products must be self provisioning small business market in a two-call close practice. to address the lack of IT support. In a can give service providers growth rates In challenging times and with disrup- small business it is often the owner, of 35% quarter on quarter, with larger tive technologies, your traditional ven- office manager, or receptionist that is margins within that growth. dor relationship must be far deeper than managing the telephone system. To achieve this magnitude and pace just a technology transfer. Rather, it • A hosted solution that can be deliv- of growth, you also need to embrace should now include sharing all of the ered without on-site technical support is small business expertise within your associated knowledge for a complete essential. Complicated customer premis- marketing, sales, and partner teams. To business model from demand creation es equipment leads to an unwelcome do so, you need a technology vendor to service delivery to profitability. In combination of truck rolls, capital cost, with street experience and proven pro- effect, your technology vendor becomes and operating expenses for you and your grams. These assets need to include the a trusted advisor and partner who shares customer. following: your business objectives because success • The product must be able to adapt • Recruitment expertise — Teach your is defined the same way for both of you. to changing business needs. Whether it business development representatives is part of a bundled solution or deliv- how and where to hunt for the right The Perfect Storm ered à la carte, flexibility is a must have prospective channel partners. As a service provider, you will either for the service provider. From your cus- • Marketing communications — catch the replacement wave in small tomer’s perspective, every small business Messaging and collateral that works for business key systems or be swept aside. The process is already underway and is is planning to grow, and your technolo- small business and speaks to their con- unstoppable. To service this surge in gy needs to be scalable to meet the cerns. business, you need to choose both the expansion. • Lead generation — Direct mail, right technology and the right blend of The kind of simplicity required by email, and brochure content. channel partners to grab the biggest this market benefits you as well as your • Sales training and support — piece of the market you can, as quickly customer. A simple product is quicker Courseware, sales tools, rewards, and as possible. The rewards are significant to deploy. Today, some pioneering serv- performance measures. and sustainable if you invest the neces- sary time and effort to build the right ice providers can get their small business • Reseller support and training — For relationships from day one. IT package up and running on site within developing the local channel relation- 30 minutes. This is a huge change from ships that are central to success with the current situation, where even simple small business. David Cork is CEO of Natural Convergence changes can take weeks. A successful vendor with history and (http://www.naturalconvergence.com). Product simplicity is the competitive deployed product in the marketplace (news - alert) He has over 20 years of expe- rience in the telecom industry. Prior to co- advantage that guarantees satisfaction will have the proven models and opera- founding Natural Convergence, he served in for your customer and fast ROI for you. tional data to help you create the most a variety of leadership and executive roles It allows you to add more customers targeted, most effective channel pro- with Bell Northern Research, Mitel with less effort in less time — a virtue gram. The same data that informs its Corporation, ObjecTime, and Nortel. of increasing importance as the key sys- product design choices on what features

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 57 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Presence and Context- based Communications Emerging Communications: The Next Wave

Presence technology has been around for many years and is finally gaining traction in the marketplace. A new paradigm of context- based communication that is the evolution of presence is beginning Mobile or remote users require the to emerge. It will be exciting to see how this new paradigm of same level of access as their corporate- ubiquitous communications develops over time. based counterparts to stay connected to the enterprise and within easy reach of Communications methods have In the never ending work cycle of the their clients, suppliers, and colleagues. I undergone tremendous changes over the Internet, physical proximity and time am sure just about everyone reading this past few years. Only 20 years ago the constraints are diminished because users article has worked remotely at some “big iron PBXs” (define - news - alert) that can be virtually anywhere. Whether at time and wished they could find out served as companies’ switchboards were home, at a client site, on the road, or in quickly and easily if a particular col- considered state-of-the-art. Today, we different time zones, users and cus- league or team might be available and take voice mail for granted in our busi- tomers need and expect more options what was the best way to contact that ness and personal lives. But, when it from their communications platforms individual or group. first appeared, early voice mail systems than ever before. They require the abili- The first wave of enhanced communi- were proprietary and very expensive ty to communicate anywhere and any- cations, seen a handful of years ago, had and, consequently, voice mail was only time. limited support and lacked useful fea- available to the largest corporations. A growing number of businesses are tures and open standards. However, new Fast forward, and we find today’s geographically distributed and are now technologies of presence and context- workforce depending on and expecting employing virtual or home-based users. based communications technologies complete mobility and accessibility. Because of this paradigm shift, having now offer effective and intuitive pres- Traditional communications models the capability to let users choose where, ence management tools, which also have evolved into more fluid and flexi- when and how they communicate with minimize communications disruptions. ble ones, with many ways to organize, peers or customers is growing more and These technologies provide office and communicate, and collaborate. more complex. Businesses are coming to mobile workers dramatically improved Personalizing communications and hav- the realization that access to various access to customers and colleagues; they ing a variety of tools to communicate communications methods — voice, enhance employee productivity and help has become an integral part of operating email, instant messaging, SMS, etc. — maintain consistent, high-quality cus- a successful business and managing our is essential to remaining competitive. tomer satisfaction. personal lives. Companies large and Likewise, customers want to choose the small rely on a vast array of business most convenient methods of communi- Always-On communications tools to efficiently and cating with an organization. So, com- To meet the new requirements for effectively communicate with each other munications vendors must continually mobile and remote communications and, more importantly, with their cus- redefine new communications para- head on, businesses require a suite of tomers. digms. rich, robust features to help users stay

58 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index By Walter Kenrich

cations could play an important role in our personal and work life. You are in a sensitive meeting at a client site and do not want anyone disrupting your meet- ing, except for your boss or your spouse. With the combination of presence and Presence technology lets users context-based communications, you can instantly locate and check the status be assured that only your boss and your of co-workers, initiate conference calls, or access contact information, spouse will be able to see that you are so they spend less time searching available to discuss an important matter. for numbers and transferring calls. In this case, based on a personalized set of context rules, your boss might see, for example, that you can be reached via your cell phone, while your spouse could be alerted that you should be con- tacted only by text messaging. You could configure your profile so that all other colleagues and friends would see that you are not available to be contact- ed by any means at that particular time. When you leave the client site, you productive. Optimized presence tech- a person’s status and availability to com- can then revise your profile to make nology enables more effective communi- municate via certain modes in real time. yourself available, based on your com- cations and collaboration for a geo- munications preferences for particular graphically dispersed and mobile work- The Next Step individuals and contact methods. force, while reducing disruptions for Presence can give us insight as to Presence combined with context- “always-on” workers. Presence allows whether a person is available, but it based communications enables users to users to instantly assess the status of co- lacks the context-based sensitivity to optimize the way different people can workers, initiate conference calls, and determine which method of communi- contact them. Using context-based con- access contact information. As a result, cation is best for that individual based tact rules, users can set up different they spend less time chasing down mul- on location, the type(s) of devices avail- preferences for the communications tiple phone numbers, transferring calls, able, and personal preferences. method by which they want to be con- or sending never-to-be-returned mes- For example, the location and pre- tacted by various peers, customers, or sages, and spend more time solving ferred communications methods of a family. They can also specify how and problems and doing creative work. sales person who is constantly on the when they wish to be contacted, The distribution of the corporate road will vary depending on ongoing depending on their location, availability workforce across time zones and loca- business and environmental factors. In status, available communications devices tions complicates the task of communi- this case, the role of a context-based or even their mood (for example: “I am cations among disparate locations. It’s communications platform would take rushed so only email me”). Users may often difficult to know what communi- into account the following: only want their most valued customers cations method is best to connect with a • Location — Is the individual in the or their boss to contact them via voice, particular person at a distant site, as well office, at a client site, in a hotel or air- SMS, or chat, no matter when or where as to determine whether that person is port, or at a child’s school play? they are, while having everyone else in a position to do what needs to be • Devices — What communications contact them only by voice mail or done. device(s) are currently available to the email during particular periods of time. Presence technology can make any individual: office phone, IM client, cell This capability substantively redefines type of communication or collaboration phone, SMS, or other device(s)? the communications paradigm that more effective while reducing communi- • Preferences/Rules — Which people existed years ago. IT cations disruptions for the workforce. and by what methods does the individ- How much more productive could your ual wish to allow access? What rules or Walter Kenrich is vice president of product workforce be if they could eliminate the preferences has the individual indenti- management, SMB Division for Vertical time wasted trying to reach someone fied or activated? Communications. (news - alert) For more who was not available? Presence tech- Let’s look at a possible real-world sce- information, please visit the company at nology solves this problem by providing nario in which context-based communi- http://www.vertical.com.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 59 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Enterprise Network Management

Network Management is a big term that ultimately encompasses all factors related to a network, be it an enterprise or a service provider performance and health. Qovia differen- network: Security, monitoring, planning, topology mapping, analysis tiates in three ways: First, unprecedent- ed real-time visibility into all calls down of network performance to safeguard against traffic congestion of to individual hand sets; second, rich real-time communications applications — the list goes on and on. analysis and correlation for meaningful alarming, root cause analysis, and capac- As IP Communications evolves into analyzing wireless, VPN, VLAN, IP, and ity planning; and third, rich and extensi- new services and continues to infiltrate VoIP problems. NetMRI gathers VoIP ble reporting.” the enterprise, network management, Call Detail Records (CDRs) from PBXs “The Enterprise Network out of necessity, evolves along with it, by such well known companies as Cisco Management field is at a point where it becoming more sophisticated and “intel- and Avaya, analyzes the records on a needs to adapt to changes in the way IP ligent” in the process. Take eTelemetry daily (or even more frequent) basis, and networks are used,” says Nardo. “The (http://www.etelemetry.com), (news - generates a Path Diagnostic Chart. Such rapid emergence of real-time applica- alert) for example, which develops prod- a combination of call information, call tions as mission critical enterprise sys- ucts that, in a sense, passively turn net- performance, and network analysis can tems is applying enormous pressure on work packets into business intelligence. be used to help troubleshoot specific IT Operations organizations to keep up. Their products provide administrators VoIP problems. NetMRI also uses Systems management vendors will need with a ‘People Layer’, or the exact name SNMP to capture data devices along and to find new approaches and solutions.” and location behind IP addresses. IP across network call paths, evaluating the One might wonder if all of these new phones can also be locked to a specific device QoS configurations. If a given approaches and solutions imply that man- switch port and the system can auto- Voice Path doesn’t have QoS configured, aging a packet network becomes more matically request verification from the or if the configurations change, an Issue difficult than a circuit-switched one. phone’s assigned user, who must con- is generated to alert the engineer or tech- “I wouldn’t say more difficult,” firm a move before a phone will func- nician. answers Norda, “but certainly different, tion at its new location. The company’s Over at Qovia (http://www.qovia.com) with its own set of issues to address. Metron product tracks bandwidth usage (news - alert) a provider of IP telephony Adding to the problem, though, is the back to each employee on the network, monitoring and management solutions, newness of the challenge to packet net- ferreting out Web surfers and chat ses- Lou Nardo, Director of Product works. IP telephony is a real-time appli- sions during working hours. Metron Management, says, “Qovia’s IP cation, and, although packet networks also detects secure sessions initiated by Telephony Manager is a software solu- have been managed successfully for employees that could potentially be used tion built from the ground up to moni- quite some time, new management to transmit proprietary company data. tor real-time IP applications (predomi- techniques are now required. Similarly, Netcordia’s (http://www.net- nantly VoIP, (define - news - alert) but Unfortunately, many network adminis- cordia.com) (news - alert) NetMRI is a expanding). The system provides real- trators assume they can continue to next-gen network management tool time monitoring on the status and apply their existing tools and trou- designed for contemporary large, com- health of all IP calls throughout the net- bleshooting techniques and successfully plex, and heterogeneous networks. work and correlates the results with manage an IP telephony deployment. Netcordia’s VoIP analysis module, other environmental parameters in the Many find out, only after significant together with the NetMRI appliance, voice ecosystem, such as signaling infor- deployment problems, that they need serves as a comprehensive, automated mation, call server statistics, as well as help. Since packet networks chop up the network diagnostic tool in the industry, application, server, and network device call streams and send them packet by

60 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis

Common IP Telephony Issues — tandem in front of edge routers. We’re Business unique in that we inspect IP traffic in Courtesy of Integrated Research’s Prognosis (http://www.prognosis.com), real time using deep packet inspection here are the seven most common issues to enterprises (as well as managed serv- — beyond Layer 4, which deals with ice providers), when it comes to IP telephony. These are issues that the compa- addresses and ports — analyze the traf- ny keeps hearing about from both their prospects as well as their customers fic, and identify applications. We are when they install IP telephony. Here’s what’s different about many of today’s able to look into a packet or series of businesses since having installed IP telephony. . . packets and identify the applications • It’s impossible to resolve whether call quality issues can be fixed on our that are carried. ‘Real time’ for enter- data network or if we should pursue a fix to the carrier’s WAN. prises ranges from hundreds of megabits • Bandwidth costs from our carriers haven’t gone down since IPT deploy- per second up to one gigabit. For service ment, but they should have. providers, of course, we handle greater • Troubleshooting issues from the help desk is a resource intensive process; bandwidths, up to five Gbps.” we are finding it difficult to recruit the new skill set required. “Our proposition is based on three ele- • We think we’re a victim of toll fraud, but we have no way to substantiate ments,” says Hada. “First, there’s knowl- or prevent it. edge resulting from monitoring. Many • We have no ability to leverage current network usage for determining if organizations, both enterprises and serv- we’re underutilizing the infrastructure or for future capacity planning. ice providers, are not aware of what their • No concrete way to track if our internal staff is meeting its service level pipes are carrying at any particular agreement with the business or if our carrier is meeting its SLA with us. moment. We break down the pipe into • The IPT project is not meeting our ROI projection or deployment plan, applications and show the enterprise the resulting in a rising lack of confidence in the new IPT system that is distribution of how much VoIP traffic is undermining our strategic direction toward convergence. there, how much peer-to-peer traffic is there, how much SIP traffic is there, how much gaming traffic goes on, how much packet, the system needs to be able to quality empowers you to see and address downloading, and so forth.” accurately reassemble the call. All of a problems before your customers or end “Additionally, our NetXplorer product sudden, minor packet loss and delay users are impacted.” does provisioning and reporting,” says issues that were easily tolerated by tradi- Allot Communications (news - alert) Hada. “It provides reports, both real- tional IP applications have become sig- (http://www.allot.com) provides intelli- time and non-real-time, and long-term nificant challenges. Network administra- gent IP service optimization solutions or short-term. It gives you information tion teams are faced with changing their based on deep packet inspection (DPI) on the distribution of applications, sta- views on network performance and their technology. Allot’s NetEnforcer devices tistics, and so forth. With our product approach to management.” monitor and shape broadband traffic; you can see traffic jams, drill down to “Maintaining quality of service could Allot NetXplorer Management centrally the user level, and see such things as be more difficult than other network collects and reports usage statistics and who’s using the network and how, and management activities,” says Norda, defines control policies, while the Allot which applications are causing conges- “but that’s why we put so much effort Subscriber Management Platform pro- tion on the network. This type of moni- into providing an easy-to-use system vides subscriber awareness needed to toring is very useful to plan networks or with plenty of built-in expertise. customize service offerings and maxi- extensions to networks. It also can be Maintaining quality of service is chal- mize service revenues. used to mitigate security attacks as they lenging for many reasons, not the least Allot’s President and CEO, Rami happen. Denial of Service [DoS] attacks of which is how subjective it can be. Hadar, says, “Allot is a sort of dual com- can be characterized by many connec- Perception is reality and often unfair, pany in that our products are relevant tions that someone opens in the net- but you need to manage it nonetheless. both for the high-end enterprise market work, and we can identify that automat- The trick is to get in front of it. Be and service providers, such as ISPs, DSL ically and react to it. We don’t need to proactive and eliminate emerging issues and cable operators, and mobile opera- specifically analyze what kind of DoS before they ever impact the user experi- tors. We employ advanced deep packet attack is being launched, but one can ence. That takes some significantly inspection or Layer 7 technology. We sit see very quickly if an unreasonable granular, real-time visibility into the in tandem to IP links, whether it’s one amount of traffic is occurring, or an health of the systems, but also the lead- link outbound from an enterprise or an unreasonable amount of connections are ing indicators to problems. Monitoring uplink from an aggregation device. If it’s taking place from a certain user.” these leading indicators and intelligently a DSLAM in a DSL network or a “Once our customers see how the correlating them with their impact to CMTS in a cable installation, we sit in network is being used, they want to

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 61 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index optimize the network, to be able to con- customer. At the enterprise level, we deal lems at the root and save time usually trol how much network resources or more with key performance indicators spent on customer interaction sessions, traffic or bandwidth is apportioned to and we correlate those with different sys- lengthy data collection and complex one application over another, says Hada. tems already in place.” diagnostics. The result: maximum net- “For example, if your enterprise has just Looking now more at the enterprise, work performance and uptime. bought a VoIP PBX, you might want to more recently, we have launched a new Gil Levonai, NextNine’s VP of give the VoIP traffic higher or guaran- line of business, which we call the Marketing, says, “We’re basically in the teed priority over any other packet traf- Service Bureau. Several different services field of service for technology. It’s quite a fic on the network, such as transactions, will be offered under that name. The wide field that has lots of verticals in it, end-of-the-day backups, or employees first has been dubbed “BroadSight,” such as VoIP and IP Communications, listening to streaming music over the which is essentially a service assurance and encompasses both the enterprise and Internet. Not only can we identify such package for DSL. It helps you to identi- carrier sides. We work in healthcare, in applications but we also enable our cus- fy different types of hidden network other technology arenas, in industrial tomers to now control just how much anomalies to ensure that the customer environments, and so forth.” bandwidth is given to whatever applica- experience is what’s expected so that an “Basically, our key component is what tion is considered important.” operator can reduce churn, particularly we call the Virtual Support Engineer,” during the first 30 days, a time period says Levonai. “This is a piece of software The Trend at Trendium known that’s used to calculate the sales that imitates what a human support engi- Trendium (news - alert) to gain ratio. neer does. It’s downloaded on demand or (http://www.trendium.com) is a global Trendium’s Service Bureau will also permanently installed at the customer provider of service assurance and per- include InfraSight™, a state of the art site. A single Virtual Support Engineer formance management software infrastructure health/performance man- can automate the service, support, and deployed in both Fortune 500 and serv- agement service and SLA Manager that maintenance of a single or multiple ice providers. Trendium’s extensive port- will provide a portfolio of business relat- installed software and hardware systems.” folio of solutions includes its ed SLA/SLO service assurance for NextNine’s Virtual Support Engineer ServicePATH™ Service Intelligence Ethernet, triple play, MPLS, WiMAX, communicates with systems via various System (manages services and service and other managed services. protocols and can access files, run com- level agreements, or SLAs) and mands and queries, scan logs, as well as PerforMAX Performance Management Leveraging Intelligence actively fix, patch, and update applica- System. The company’s new Service and Experience tions, devices, and systems. Bureau is a subscription-based “software Although we’re not yet close to devel- Levonai elaborates: “Instead of what as a service” line of business. oping fully automated, self-healing net- you find in your ‘normal’ management Tom Leh, VP of Product works, network management functional- systems — where they basically wait for Development at Trendium, says, ity is improving in leaps and bounds, events that come out of various equip- “Trendium focuses on Tier 1 service often in creative new ways. ment and process and correlate data and providers and significantly sized enter- At NextNine (http://www.NextNine.com), understand from the stream of data prise environments. We have two flag- (news - alert) its Support Automation what’s going on — we take a different ship products that have been in produc- Software, leveraged by telecom leaders approach. We recognize the 20/80 rule; tion for the past five years. ServicePATH such as Motorola Connected Homes, this is where 20 percent of the issues is a framework software platform that Comverse, OpenWave, and others, by that can happen generate 80 percent of can be abstracted into a number of dif- virtue of its automated, proactive, pre- the actual incidents.” ferent solutions and is focused more on ventive nature, empowers organizations “With companies such as Comverse the Tier 1 operators and big service to drastically improve the level of cus- (news - alert) and Motorola, (quote - providers with complex back ends and tomer service they provide, thereby news - alert) we’ve been able to help hundreds of different types of network increasing customer satisfaction and, by them reduce the amount of customer elements and OSS and BSS systems with extension, customer retention, in addi- downtime by nearly 90 percent within a which to integrate. Our PerforMAX tion to protecting service maintenance few months of deployment,” says package is more enterprise oriented and revenue and increasing profit margins. Levonai. “That’s because we take the focused more on the performance man- NextNine’s automated, proactive sup- approach of not listening to the raw agement function. From the higher layer port solution enables organizations to data of what the product is telling us in of what is typically called in the industry shift from current, reactive support the sense of, ‘okay an R&D guy is creat- ‘service management’, we look at the methods to a customer-centric, proac- ing SNMP traffic and now we’re listen- service level agreements and the service tive support approach enabling early ing to a stream of SNMP traffic and level objectives, and actually correlate the problem detection. Thus, network sup- we’re trying to figure out what’s going performance with contracts for a specific port professionals can now resolve prob- on’. Instead, we’re actually asking the

62 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index service engineers, when they go onsite able to articulate where they want to go vendor, such as Prognosis. That’s because and they try to analyze the problem, in this space and how they want to sell there are some conflicting messages that what kind problems and phenomena do value and services to their end users.” ultimately get put out to an end user. they normally encounter and how “What the last two years have shown Take a vendor that wants to sell you an IP would they go about avoiding or fixing is that there are definite issues in telephony kit. They’ll say to you that it’s them through actual understanding of migrating over to VoIP,” says Brumby. robust, it’s reliable, it’s the best of the what’s going on with the equipment and “It’s not just another application on a available vendors’ products in the market data network. It’s far more mission criti- the network by identifying the signs.” and you have to buy that product. Then cal in many cases than, for instance, an “Now, ‘identifying the signs’ can mean email heading across a network. With they’ll conflict themselves a bit and say, many things,” says Levonai. “It can be VoIP, a learning process has taken place, ‘Well, look, we offer management tools checking for connectivity in a couple of centering on just how different it has and really, you should buy them’. But units; it could entail the known behavior been or is going to be. Companies, in management tools are probably not their of a router, a PBX, whatever. It can be general, felt that, when they migrated to area of expertise. Therefore, you can performance checks on equipment, but VoIP, they were going to save a lot of obtain tools from vendors, but they’re all based on what the organization says money and they wouldn’t have to pay a generally not very comprehensive, because has normally gone wrong. In effect, this big monthly check to a carrier. That that’s not what the vendors’ business hap- approach uses ‘best practices’ of IT and cost on the infrastructure was supposed- pens to be. Their business is actually just service organizations and automating ly going to be removed and they, proba- moving boxes, selling routers, and so on.” bly quite naïvely, assumed everything this expertise. It’s not just about listening “The situation is better when third- would be fine. But, they now see how party products arrive from companies to whatever the equipment is telling us. different it is to manage VoIP as It’s an approach that works well when that have chosen to be experts in enter- opposed to the management of an ordi- prise network management,” says you have mission critical systems, as in nary data network; they now realize that data centers and high-end networks, Brumby, “and have chosen that as the they paid a lot of money to large carriers point where they’re going to compete. where basically the behavior of the sys- for a good reason — namely, if you Invariably, they do much better at it tem as a system has known issues and want to have six nines of availability, if than companies such as ordinary ven- you can find them proactively by look- you always want to have dial tone, if dors. Prognosis, for example, currently ing for variations.” you always want your message service to resides in seven of Cisco’s top ten work, and if you want to make sure deployments globally. On many occa- And the Prognosis is. . . there’s no toll fraud, then all that sions, in large deployments that are requires a specific set of tools and a spe- Integrated Research’s Prognosis highly distributed and highly complex, cialized set of capabilities that don’t Cisco will take us into those accounts, (http://www.prognosis.com) product immediately exist in a new market.” range is a broad suite of monitoring and because, at the end of the day, their key “So, a maturing process has been concern is that their hardware, their management software, designed to give going on,” says Brumby. “We’re reached an organization’s technical personnel ‘kit’, functions appropriately and they a point now where these companies that get paid for it and they get ongoing insight into the health and performance were early adopters are now starting to maintenance for it. Prognosis is part of of their key computer systems, and the realize that IP communications is com- that assurance.” business applications running on them. plicated. Secondly, because it’s a young To sum up, in the past, enterprise Nathan Brumby, General Manager, IP technology, there are certain things that network management was as good as Telephony and Voice over IP, says, the companies had in a traditional your IT staff — sometimes great, some- “We’ve been very focused on the voice telephony environment that they don’t times bumbling in nature. As networks become more dynamic and complex, component of network — the true VoIP have with IP: least cost routing, the ability to view of everything impor- component — for the past six years. automation of provisioning, and so There are some interesting data points. tant occurring in a network at any given forth. As a result, they’re starting to real- moment — identification of data bot- The first are early adopters, the enter- ize that they’re going to need more prises that adopted this about two years tlenecks, alarm information, outage experience to be able to get back to the identification, etc. — as well as the abil- ago and are now truly starting to under- guaranty of quality that they had in the ity to model and plan networks for stand what they’ve adopted, the realities traditional telephony environment.” expansion or change, will become more of it, and the set of problems that are “So that’s where we are today. There’s important than ever, perhaps beyond different or distinct from what they had this realization about what companies the capabilities of mere mortals. when they worked in a traditional truly have to do to have a good, robust Fortunately, an army of network telephony environment.” telephony environment,” says Brumby. management hardware and software “Secondly,” says Brumby, “we’ve seen “Vendors individually often offer some set companies will be waiting to help. IT on a global basis large managed service of management tools to help, but they providers that have now reached the might not be as robust as a third-party Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of point where they’ve very clearly been TMC’s IP Communications Group.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 63 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Internet Communications Administrator: The New Hi-Tech Career Covering Both Email and Voice Communications

We’ve heard for years now about so-called convergence: the fusion of the enterprise IP and telephony departments. Take a peek over the side of the desk and you can see there are two jacks in the wall. According to Insight Research Chances are that one of these jacks is for your computer’s Ethernet Corporation, IP networks promise line and the other is a jack for the phone on the desk, either for the many new capabilities but “are also far proprietary signaling of the PBX, or a POTS line in smaller compa- more complex to manage than the lega- nies. Nowadays, most companies have two separate networks and cy time division multiplexing (TDM) networks associated with the public often two separate departments managing these “systems.” Small switched telephone network (PSTN).” companies have a closet for telephony and a room for IP servers They claim this complexity arises from (i.e., file servers, enterprise applications, processing, etc.), but the several areas, including: two are not really related at all. What happens when these two pre- • Voice, data, and video traveling viously isolated departments merge as one? across the same network, • Broadband traffic replacing narrow- For about a decade now we have been the next ten years will bring as we move band, moving all of our business communica- to new forms of Internet • End user mobility across multiple tions to an open standards-based IP or Communications, such as voice, chat, wireless platforms, and “Internet” solution, such as Web servic- presence, and video. These new media • New customer premises, network es and email. Thinking back to how types still use the same Internet struc- edge, and network core architectures. business was done ten years ago, you ture of open standards and Domain (Additional relevant info can be will quickly laugh and realize that email Name Services, but will radically change found at: http://www.insight- servers, themselves, have become the our lives and necessitate the creation of corp.com/reports/manserv06.asp) dominant platform for business com- new business models for the industry, However, not everything about closed munications, and the people running especially with regard to telecommuni- networks is obsolete. Closed networks these systems are nothing short of criti- cations. have some benefits, such as accountabil- cal for daily business operations. Over First, think about the closed network ity and security. Think for a moment, if time, these systems have helped usher in of telephony today, and imagine the you started getting spoofed calls from a new way of doing business, even Internet being your phone system — a the U.S. Government on your POTS adding to our lingo and changing our scenario in which anyone, anywhere can line, with a recording to buy vegetable- behavior (note the frequency with call you, with little ability on your part based boosters for your health, or worse, which we use such terms as ‘drop me a to control it. The notion or concept of pornography. Worst case, the FBI would note’ or ‘shoot me a PDF’). Systems toll and location goes completely out track down that company and deal with became highly complex, and storage the window. Imagine how that opens up them on the PacBell Network. But now, requirements dominated IT budgets; communications for the user; converse- with VoIP, (define - news - alert) that security, regulatory processes, and flow ly, imagine the impact that it has on the caller happens to be from some sham control have become the new challenges IT department, and more so on the company in a remote country with few for IT departments. Now, imagine what telecommunications industry. commercial regulations — now you

64 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index By Jon Doyle

With time, workers

with good administrator example is the calendar and the router: The solutions that this new IT skill sets will become Based upon certain events, the inbound department must deploy are IP-based signal or message can be handled in spe- Communications for all forms of media, more available on cific ways, like going to voice mail, or voice, IM, presence, video, email, and triggering a notification, such as an calendaring (with close data and Web the market. SMS, to a device the user account has application support). Consolidation, registered. touch points with open APIs, and tight need to buy some technology, similar to Internet Communications are, by the integration will allow IT departments to spam control for your telephone system. very nature of the term, open standards- run this set of new services without This certainly presents a negative per- based. While there are various closed or many of the painful issues we saw with spective of the new generation of proprietary forms of communication on email. The key to a good IP communi- Internet communications and VoIP. the Internet in use today, such as Skype, cations solution is the Platform, and Like it or not, the whole model of MSN, and others, the notion of using having a strong scalable foundation telephony is changing before our eyes. these in a business setting is flawed. If based on open standards will allow There is no concept of location or toll you look, for instance, at how the Web adoption as the market and the business with VoIP. My phone in São Paulo is and email have evolved into an open operations change. nothing more than a Sipura box regis- standards-based environment, we believe Many certifications and trainings tered to my server in San Francisco. the same will apply to new media types, will begin to appear on the market, but People call that line in California and it specifically chat/IM, voice, video, and nothing should take the place of solid rings here, I call people there, and they presence information. hands-on experience. With time, work- see me as if I was there by the caller ID. So what does this mean for enterprise ers with good administrator skill sets If I register my soft client on my laptop, IT departments and management? First, will become more available on the mar- I can do that in Paris, Dubai, or your systems simply need to converge ket. In order to take full advantage of Shanghai, and it doesn’t matter. I am and support protocols that do IP the next generation of IT-savvy gradu- mobile and my ID is just a registration; Communications beyond email; you ates, companies moving to IP commu- I can call anyone, anyplace, just as one need to SIPify them... or as we say, nications should look for former mes- does with email. The whole concept of “teach your email to talk.” You also need saging administrators, particularly communications has changed, like it did to merge or meld your administrators those from ISPs and large universities with email; you and I have access to the into the new role of “Internet that have battle tested skills on the network and consequently, we talk and Communications Administrator/ Internet. message each other, anytime, anyplace. Director” and away from the previous Just as email has transformed our Fact is, the network is in place now, it titles of “Email Administrator” or businesses operations, increased adop- uses DNS, and transfer protocols like “Telephony Administrator.” What skills tion of comprehensive IP SIP, no different from email; just closer will this new IT role require? The fol- Communications solutions will increase to real time, and more aware through lowing are skills that are commonly seen our reach and productivity over time. presence data. in today’s IP departments, including With the migration to consolidated The concept of presence will change some prerequisites required to run an services on IP, the administrators man- our usage models by way of communi- Internet Communications solution: aging and deploying these systems and cations. It allows one to view the status 1. Understanding of call flows applications will build skills that simply of any user and to determine whether 2. Productivity and collaboration pro- did not exist, just as how the Email he is available for communications via gramming of IP Communication Administrator role was formed ten years phone, email, IM, or video. The user systems ago. This new IP Communications can have multiple devices, such as a 3. Real-time/low latency techniques Administrator will be a central part of PDA, laptop, and cell phone, distribut- of networking knowledge the organization, tying in communica- ing his or her presence information for a 4. Router and WAN QoS skills tions with business applications, and single address ([email protected]) and 5. Power over Ethernet services like customer care and sales. setting rules about what status applies to 6. Provisioning of devices (IP Phones) This new job will be one of the most which communications request (e.g. 7. IP Communiations Security (sys- sought after and powerful positions in busy, in a meeting but available to cer- tems are exposed to the Internet) the IT market. IT tain people, etc.). 8. Good UNIX/Linux skills Jon Doyle is Vice President, Business This presence information can be 9. Solid Internet skills for DNS, Development at CommuniGate. (news - determined by users or applications, email, and applications alert) For more information, visit the company providing an opportunity for integration 10. Solid Web skills for file sharing, online at http://www.communigate.com. into the business processes. A good http services, and scripting

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 65 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Delivering Converged Communications Services Profitably

The communications industry is in the midst of a major transforma- tion, driven by the need to deliver unified communications services increasing competition. However, across multiple target markets. Creating and delivering a bundle of adding services to the existing telecom- converged services, both fixed and mobile, can help service providers munications infrastructure is difficult, especially when providers must engineer attract and retain customers and create a competitive advantage. around an installed base of systems and However, there are a number of operational and business issues that equipment. service providers face in order to deliver these new services rapidly, efficiently, and cost-effectively. Overcoming the Challenges to Delivering Converged The Promise of Unified By outsourcing integrated communica- Services Communications tions through a provider that can deliver In order to capitalize on the demand The term unified communications all these capabilities, enterprises can for converged services, providers must refers to the integration of a variety of reduce costs and free up funds for ensure that they have the right technol- communications services, from voice to investment in other business activities. ogy infrastructure to meet the require- email to messaging and more, delivered Increased Productivity. Unified com- ments of the growing market. In many over a single network. The demand for munications can improve business cases, this means that providers must integrated business communications processes, simplify the sharing of infor- find or develop a solution that will portfolios that span these types of appli- mation, and help people make critical enable them to deliver converged servic- cations is growing rapidly, driven by decisions faster by integrating commu- es over their legacy infrastructures. increasingly sophisticated subscribers nications into a single user experience. Today, there are a number of com- expecting newer services delivered by Simplified Operations. mercial software solutions that are single, access-independent networks. Communications barriers for doing advertised as service delivery enablers. Market research firm Radicati Group business globally and using multiple However, only a few truly address the believes that unified communications devices are removed. Unified communi- key operational and technological chal- will represent a $10 billion market cations allows users to connect to people lenges that must be overcome to deliver opportunity by 2008. and information more efficiently and converged services profitably. It is There is no question that unified allows access using the client device that important that providers look for the communications offers great promise for makes most sense for their business. following capabilities when choosing a both subscribers and providers alike. For For providers, the trend toward uni- service delivery solution: end users, the benefits of unified com- fied communications presents a more Automated Service Delivery. It is munications are many, including: complicated picture. On the one hand, critical to choose a solution that fully Reduced Costs. Paying for separate supporting a new generation of con- automates the delivery of multiple serv- communications systems, conferencing verged communications applications ices at the same time. This means that services, collaboration applications, and presents the best hope for service when a customer orders a bundle of the people to run them are increasing providers to continue to thrive in a mar- converged services, the solution should the financial burden on organizations. ket that is rapidly evolving in the face of be able to automatically provision the

66 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index By Francois Depayras

services as a single unit of work, allow- ing the provider to manage complex provisioning workflows with a single activation request. This automation capability is critical to helping the provider achieve improved service deliv- ery times and operational efficiency. The solution should also offer the flexibility to add more services when needed. The best commercial service delivery platforms offer pre-integrated and packaged IP and application servic- es that can easily be launched as services on demand. Interoperability with Mixed/Multi- Vendor Environments. Today’s telecom environments are a collection of legacy and next generation infrastructures. Adding to the confusion, within the VoIP (define - news - alert) domain, multiple vendors supply various compo- nents of the platform. To eliminate this complexity, providers should choose a solution that provides robust integration capabilities and is specifically designed to support and interoperate with exist- ing systems. This feature helps service providers leverage their existing infra- administration — that is, by pushing today’s rapidly changing IP-driven structure investments and seamlessly service to the customer and providing world. Services will continue to become introduce new technology, helping them with automated self-help and self- commodities over time, so providers speed the delivery of hosted services to management options. Research has must have efficient ways to add on addi- customers. shown that customers are more satisfied tional services to existing ones in order Reseller Channel Enablement. The when they can help themselves. Self to prolong their life cycles. The best management also benefits providers by service delivery automation solutions solution must allow providers to reach reducing operational costs in the form include tools that allow a service more customers and maximize their rev- of customer support resources. provider to differentiate their service enues by supporting all sizes and types A good service delivery solution pro- offering by easily integrating new appli- of distribution channels and business vides delegated administration for serv- cations and delivering them as a service, models: a retail model selling applica- ice providers, resellers, enterprise admin- all managed through the same existing tions directly to end customers, a istrators, and customer service users that portals that resellers and customers have wholesale model selling applications enables each to log in through the same already been trained to use. through resellers, or a combination of portal but utilize different abilities Service providers that can address wholesale and retail applications. By according to their credentials. The solu- these operational and business issues selling through channels, carriers can tion’s Web management interface should and put the right technology infrastruc- dramatically reduce their customer emphasize ease of use, making it simple ture in place so that they can quickly acquisition costs, since that responsibili- for users to self manage and for admin- respond to customer demands and rap- ty shifts to the reseller. Platforms enable istrators to make changes to their idly create and deploy new services will reseller channel support by allowing the employees’ services — for example, be the ones who thrive in the unified reseller to have as little or as much con- adding storage or enabling features pre- world of tomorrow. IT trol over their service offering as they viously disabled — with a click of a want, from virtual resource management button. Francois Depayras is the vice president of to service configuration. Extensibility. Creating a unique serv- marketing at Ensim Corporation. (news - Customer and Reseller Self- ice offering that combines the latest and alert) For more information, visit the com- Management Features. Customer sup- most popular unified communications pany online at http://www.ensim.com. port can be enhanced through delegated applications is a key to surviving in

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 67 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index The FMC Game

Did you know that cell phone users will be able to roam seamlessly between cellular and WiFi networks without experiencing any inter- ruption in calls? This phenomenon is what we mean when we talk about Fixed/Mobile Convergence (FMC). The technology that The Game makes this possible is, in essence, available today. In fact, current Since we’re talking about moving research and ongoing demos will set the stage for rapid deployment voice instead of data from one AP to of FMC in the years to come. The ability to seamlessly roam another, FMC players need to eliminate between cellular and WiFi networks with WiFi-enabled devices is dead spots and breaks in network con- obviously appealing, as users will experience increased flexibility, nectivity. Otherwise, voice service on improved coverage, and significant cost savings. the WiFi network will be unreliable and drive people to continue to either use their desktop phones or stay on the cur- Although we will, in short order, have nologies and applications become more rent cell network — ultimately making the technological capability to take tightly integrated. Just recently, we have seamless roaming a moot point. advantage of single number/single seen eBay purchase Skype (news - alert), Working with MIMO (Multiple device convenience, we will not see Google (quote - news - alert) offer Input Multiple Output) technology to FMC technology being widely adopted Google Talk, and MSN and Yahoo! eliminate coverage problems and enable offer a version of peer-to-peer voice until late 2007 or early 2008. Why? reliable voice service, Bluesocket now communications along with calling offers enterprise class MIMO APs. The Because technology is only one piece of plans to directly access cell and landline the puzzle. Other variables that still numbers. In addition, many phone question is, as FMC moves into the need to be calculated are who the play- manufacturers are now offering WiFi deployment phase, will users be able to ers will be; the roles each will play; and phones only. The trend toward integra- control when the handoff to the cheaper which business models will be prof- tion and industry crossover is obvious WiFi networks occur, or will embedded itable. It will be interesting to see how and technologies exist to achieve success software decide for them? This is a deci- it all plays out. in these endeavors. sion that still needs to be worked out Market disrupting technologies such and may actually vary, depending on The Players as FMC always create new marketplace how the customer is purchasing the In the near future, voice carriers like dynamics. Who will take advantage of solution. Verizon, AT&T, and others, will likely the opportunity? Will new entrants partner with WiFi solution providers emerge? Absolutely. Any one of the The Rules like Bluesocket, as well as handset mak- aforementioned companies could cause With the adoption of dual mode ers such as Nokia, Samsung, and a significant market disruption, a mar- phones, the basic cell phone and Motorola. These three-way partnerships ket with substantial revenue — they’ll employees’ traditional desk sets will suf- will result in carriers creating new serv- each be looking to lock in customers. fer the strongest cannibalization, with ices for their customers; infrastructure WiFi solution providers like the exception of VoIP-based networks, providers integrating software into their Bluesocket will look to partner with which can take advantage of the emerg- solutions; and handset makers building handset makers to offer a complete ing FMC technology. Carriers are cur- WiFi-enabled devices with FMC client solution — specifically for the enter- rently evaluating the impact of flat ver- software. prise market (at least initially) as the sus service-based fees on their existing As the market develops over time, cost savings for any enterprise of any business models. With a flat fee, enter- new partnerships will emerge as tech- size can be significant. prises will be able to cap their costs at a

68 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index By Mads Lillelund

retention standpoint. By enabling cus- tomers to use one device, carriers can make it a sticky service. Customers may increase their overall cell usage by taking advantage of a single phone number feature — meaning, no more dialing into an office voice mail and having to enter a password to gain access. One phone, one number that works anywhere and everywhere; a device that can take advantage of cur- rent cell coverage as well as any WiFi location. A win-win for everyone involved, FMC technology offers customers access anywhere and everywhere using devices that seamlessly migrate between cellular minimum, and may even realize signifi- or increase their revenue streams by pro- and WiFi, home and office. IT cant cost reductions because total num- viding ‘sticky’ applications, such as navi- ber of minutes used — which can obvi- gation, customized Web content, music, Mads Lillelund is the CEO of Bluesocket. ously spike during busy cycles — will video, and more. (news - alert) For more information, visit no longer be of concern. A service-based On the whole, carriers will be the company online at fee offers carriers the ability to stabilize approaching FMC from a customer http://www.bluesocket.com.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 69 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Middleware Takes Center Stage

Middleware is one of those ambiguous terms that we all think we for example, in the telecom vertical. know, but probably don’t. Middleware actually exists at a “lower Looking at the way people have done level” in a system than most people are aware. It’s not just a bundle software development in that environ- ment, things have been pretty stagnant of services or a kind of extension to an operating system. In IP for about 15 years. It’s the same old rein- Communications, it’s a sort of applications development framework venting the wheel over and over again — — a set of services for building complex, highly available applications. go out and find an operating system, maybe buy some protocol stacks and dif- Yours truly first heard about middle- Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora Core, and ferent management applications, but ware back in the computer telephony days CentOS (Community ENTerprise basically rolling a lot of your own stuff.” of the 1990s, when you actually had to Operating System). Element also is “The whole concept of middleware, stretch an RS-232 cable between a PBX compatible with Kontron’s XL8000 as defined in the enterprise applications and a PC, and the “middleware” holding AdvancedTCA system and offers inter- space, has basically been reshaped to it all together was written in DOS. faces for AdvancedTCA and the Service apply to the more traditional embedded Today, we hear a lot about middle- Availability Forum’s Hardware Platform environment as well,” says Pearson. “It’s ware regarding IPTV and HDTV for Interface the recognition of a set of services that Video on Demand [VOD]. For exam- Enea’s VP of Product Management are above the operating system but are ple, Kasenna (news - alert) for Element, Terry Pearson, says, “The very commonly needed and are built (http://www.kasenna.com) offers a term ‘middleware’ is not very descrip- over and over again for different target- DHTML-based middleware manage- tive. It can mean anything. Historically, ed embedded environments. It’s all ment platform (software) and VOD the term was associated with what I’ll about taking that layer and essentially servers, to deliver MPEG-4 capability call ‘enterprise application middleware’. formalizing it, standardizing it, abstract- which sets the stage for HDTV. Sun, IBM, and Microsoft were involved ing it and delivering commercial imple- Enea (news - alert) and you could apply the term to every- mentations of it, so that companies such (http://www.enea.com) is known for its thing from Web Services to Microsoft as network equipment providers that are Element™ high-availability middleware foundation classes, and those sort of building these pretty complex embed- solution for telecom, automotive, indus- things. Our new offshoot of middleware ded devices having very high perform- trial control, and medical instrumenta- is really targeted more at the traditional ance and reliability requirements can tion applications. Element provides a embedded computing environment, so I essentially source it as a commercial suite of middleware services that sits would call it the telecom/embedded/ product, as opposed to building it between the operating system and appli- medical type of verticals, where you tra- themselves over and over again.” cations. It can run on DSPs, network ditionally have an embedded controller “You may be familiar with the COTS processors, and 32-bit CPUs. Element and software development type of envi- [Commercial Off-The-Shelf] hardware provides core services for synchronizing, ronment. Software gets developed for ecosystem that’s developing in the tele- instrumenting, monitoring, and estab- that type of environment in a way that’s com world around the AdvancedTCA lishing communications between appli- very different than the way software is [ATCA] form factor,” says Pearson. cations spread across multiple operating developed for an enterprise application.” “What I’m talking about is like ATCA, systems and processors. Element also “On the embedded side, you typically but for the software. When you look at provides fault management, network see real-time operating systems,” says ATCA, you see a bunch of equipment supervision, and shelf management serv- Pearson. “Even Linux has made a very providers and hardware suppliers who ices that make it easy to monitor, repair, big push into the telecom vertical, in recognize that they’ve been reinventing configure, provision, and upgrade live particular — not so much in others. the wheel for many years and that it’s a systems in the field. Element runs under Basically, the software ‘powers’ the infra- very inefficient model. Defining stan- MontaVista Carrier Grade Linux, Red structure devices making up the Internet, dard interfaces for different hardware

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building blocks allows them to mass “Enea’s middleware product has two whole ecosystem around ATCA, carrier- produce hardware more like a commod- major functions,” says Pearson. “One is grade Linux and the Service Availability ity. The hardware guys went from pro- to simplify the job of the application Forum [a consortium of companies that prietary to commercial form factors hav- developer by providing a really rich decides how to make middleware fault ing real economies of scale, and lever- foundation of services for complex com- tolerant] to provide a pre-integrated aged the R&D dollars that otherwise get puting environments where you have platform. What that means is that invested into building those solutions distributed chassis-based systems with equipment manufacturers spend a sig- across a lot of customers doing custom lots of hot-swappable blades and you nificant amount of their project time work themselves.” have to achieve five or six ‘nines’ of reli- and resources building the base plat- “Now, take those same concepts and ability and availability. When you start form, which is the hardware, the OS, apply them to software,” says Pearson. heaping all those requirements onto an and the middleware. There’s another “That’s what’s going on in the middle- application developer, the app gets pret- part devoted to application develop- ware space. It’s a set of software that has ty complicated rather quickly. The ment. The goal here is to deliver a pre- been very proprietary and developed developer ends up writing a lot of code integrated platform across these stan- over and over again, but now it’s subject to solve all of those problems. What the dard interfaces so that the equipment to the same types of forces where stan- middleware does in the first case is to providers can really focus on the higher dardization and commercialization are provide a rich set of programming serv- layers of the software, or application.” playing a big role. Frankly, that’s what ices that abstracts a lot of the difficulties our customers are telling us — they of those hard problems found in a tele- Big-Time Middleware want to get out of the business of build- com environment. That makes it easier Middleware plays a major role in ing the platform infrastructure, the to build the applications.” high-end systems used by service hardware, the OS, and the middleware. Pearson continues: “The second providers and network operators to They want to source that as a complete major thing Enea’s middleware does is bundle together deliver triple and quad integrated solution.” to leverage standard interfaces in the play services.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 71 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index A premier form of such middleware is environment. We want to bring in the operators. The operators want to open a the Connected Services Framework developer community of Microsoft, and lot of their existing environment, such (CSF), which is both a middleware the ISC community of Microsoft to as the network environment. One great “glue” and development environment contribute applications in the Sandbox example of that is British Telecom with for common service management com- environment.” the Web 21C initiative, in which they ponents and for automating interaction “For the Sandbox, we have a number want to expose much of their network between existing services. CSF leverages of what we call Foundation Services,” assets to third-party developers, so that Web service interfaces and a Service says Chu. “Many Microsoft services the developers actually build things on Oriented Architecture (SOA), so that have an open API, such as the Live top of their network assets, such as loca- operators can aggregate, provision, and Service, that we actually expose as a tion-based services, so they can expose manage converged communications component element in the Sandbox. location elements as a service compo- services for their subscribers, regardless The idea is that if you’re a developer, nent. This allows a developer from any- of the network or device (cell phones, you can enter the Sandbox environment where, say Russia, to build a service on set-top boxes, TVs, PCs, etc.). and see what services are available there. top of it, which BT can then leverage Andy Chu, Group Manager of You can see an Xbox or whatever that and actually deliver it to their end users.” Planning and Strategy, for Microsoft has the API, and you can create a serv- “A key trend for operators is definitely Communications Sector, says, “We ice based on your own idea or service. one moving away from the ‘not invent- recently announced Microsoft’s Telco 2.0 You have three ways of contributing to ed here’ approach,” says Chu. “Rather, vision, in terms of how we see the world the Sandbox. One way is to contribute the trend involves truly embracing an of network services and Web services source code. Another way is by exposing ecosystem environment that’s outside of the world of the traditional network coming together, and how Microsoft is an API. A third way is by exposing an boundary, firewall, and what-not. enabling that through three major executable file that can be placed in the Operators can now add value, because pullers. First is the screen play, with our Sandbox environment.” they do control the last mile and they mobile device, IPTV, and client soft- “So, if you’re a developer, you may can often guarantee the QoS [Quality of ware. Second is our service delivery plat- have come up with a sexy service, by Service]. From their perspective, one form, primarily our CSF. The third is aggregating three or four other services,” can make some interesting points. One bringing services together, ranging from says Chu. “That aggregated service is that they can offer hosting type serv- our Hosted Messaging Collaboration would reside in the Sandbox, in which ices. If there’s a developer or third party other people — including operators and services to Live Services to Xbox services. that wants to develop a service, they can other developers — can play around go to a BT, AT&T, or a Verizon and It all helps the telco evolve to the next with it. If some other entity decides generation, so we call it Telco 2.0.” have their service reside there in a sort they want to add features on top of of Web hosting type of environment.” “As part of all this, we also announced yours, they can do that too. It’s a sort of “A second trend is end-to-end QoS for the Connected Services Sandbox (CSS),” collaboration environment for various end users,” says Chu. “If you look at the says Chu. “One of the key promises of parties to come together, build on each Web today, or Web 2.0, sometimes if CSS is enabling operators or service other’s great ideas, and then deploy the you have too many components working providers to aggregate Web services very result in an operator environment. So together, the quality may not still be any quickly and efficiently together. The the Sandbox really is a ‘sandbox’.” good. From an operator standpoint, by ‘Sandbox’ environment is one for devel- “If you look at the Web 2.0 environ- bringing all of these environments opers, ISCs, network equipment ment, many people talk about AJAX together, having a developer and ISC in providers to contribute applications in [Asynchronous JavaScript Technology their data center, combining their net- this controlled environment. They can and XML] technologies,” says Chu, “and work assets and their network service, play with other Web services components how people use things like Virtual Earth and aggregating everything, they can and aggregate and create new services. In and aggregate those services into their provide essentially end-to-end QoS. return, the operator or service provider ‘real estate’ or Web site. We wanted to That can help differentiate the operator can pick and choose what type of services take the same idea and actually apply it versus some of the other Web players.” they find interesting, and then they can for an operative environment that they With the telecom industry at a historic leverage those services and deploy them can monetize and create new services for turning point, perhaps middleware will into their network environment.” end users. It bridges the telco network be the pivot upon which the world will “The whole idea is to cut down the world and the Web world. That’s why swing into pure IP Communications. deployment of services for operators,” we created a new term, Telco 2.0.” That being the case, it’s likely that we’ll says Chu. “Traditionally, a so-called “Telecom, in general, is evolving from be hearing a lot more about Microsoft’s ‘fast’ rollout of a service by an operator very monolithic silo approaches into Telco 2.0 in the years to come. IT can take six to ten months, or even a services,” says Chu, “and embracing the year or more. We want to cut that time new IT Web services of the world, and Richard Grigonis is the Executive Editor of by at least a third by doing a lot of the actually bringing in many components, TMC’s IP Communications Group. ‘up front’ work for them in the Sandbox some of which are not controlled by the

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Testing ATAs, Gateways, VoIP PBXs, and other Signal Processing Elements in VoIP Networks

Testing such signal processing elements as gateways, ATAs and VoIP PBXs requires tools capable of not only simulating various network ing, anomalous conditions such as conditions but also accurately measuring output performance under impairments from TDM and IP sides, such conditions. and stability testing for reliability and performance. To reliably and efficiently handle delay, dual tone detection and genera- voice communications, IP networks tion, out of band features, jitter buffer VoIP Gateway Architecture contain a myriad of signal processing loading, packet concealment algorithms, Figure 2 depicts the functions in a devices including gateways, analog tele- voice activity detection, various codecs, generalized VoIP Gateway, ATA, or phone adapters (ATA), and VoIP PBXs. and applicable protocols, such as RTP VoIP PBX. They are from left to right: A PSTN/IP gateway permits calls to be and RTCP. Signaling protocols, such as • SLIC / CODEC — This is a stan- placed between a VoIP (define - news - SIP, H323, MGCP, and Megaco, may dard PCM TDM interface and can be alert) phone and a PSTN phone. In also be required to test any interactions either 2-wire or T1/E1. In the T1/E1 essence, it provides a bridge between between signaling and media. In the case, a single VoIP session is multiplexed two different network technologies — final analysis, overall voice quality must into a full duplex single timeslot. In the TDM and IP. An ATA is similar to a be assessed with these devices performing two-wire case, PCM is converted to gateway but generally handles a few their functions. Testing should encom- analog. Other functions for two-wire lines common to a home or small office pass functional verification, statistical interfaces are also provided, such as application. A VoIP PBX may have variation such as light to and heavy load- ringing, four-wire to two-wire conver- PSTN connectivity (and, therefore, sion, battery, etc. gateway functions) or may be Figure 1 — • Echo Cancellation — Due to the totally IP. A PSTN and echo produced by the hybrid, echo can- Figure 1 shows these elements VoIP cellation function is necessary. IP delays Network in a typical PSTN/VoIP net- can cause annoying echo, even on short work. circuit lengths. The echo path may be Testing these signal very short in case of a two-wire loop, processing elements since the hybrid is within the gateway. If requires powerful and the TDM interface is T1/E1, the echo versatile tools to not path could be substantial, as the 2/4- only simulate various wire hybrid would be located at the ter- network conditions, minating end office. but also to accurately • Call Progress Tones, DTMF measure the result- Detection and Generation — Call ing output perform- progress tones are required at the inter- ance. Typical func- face to the PSTN for normal call han- tions the tools must dling. DTMF digits may need to be provide are echo, detected and transported as messages

74 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index By Vijay Kulkarni and John Phipps

packets at lower volume. GL’s RTP ToolBoxTM can simulate network impairments such as packet delay variation within a specified jitter buffer size range. This can verify the Gateway jitter buffer implementation for smooth playout. Out of order pack- ets can be simulated to test the gateway Figure 2 — Generalized resequencing function. Packet loss can VoIP Gateway be introduced with varying rate to verify Packet Loss Concealment (PLC) algo- out of band to avoid corruption by IP tional delay. PLC substitutes older pack- rithms. At the output of the PLC, pack- impairments such as packet loss, ets for lost packets. Other concealment ets can be analyzed in detail using GL’s reordering, or delay. Also, some codecs algorithms for lost packets are also used. PacketScanTM application. cannot reliably pass dual tones due to • Packetization / Depacketization — Testing Prioritization. As traffic on the voice compression scheme used. At Finally RTP, RTCP, IP/UDP protocols the Internet increases, so does the likeli- the terminating end, the messages repre- are used to reliably transport the packets hood of traffic congestion. There is a senting DTMF digits are reproduced as in IP networks. requirement to differentiate between dual tones. This out of band transmis- For thorough testing, the gateway traffic types and provide quality of serv- sion is important for IVR (Interactive should be surrounded by TDM and IP ice commensurate to requirements. For Voice Response) systems that depend on test simulators and analyzers working in example, real-time traffic, such as voice DTMF digits for banking, voice mail, concert. Below we present guidance for or video, should have a higher priority to and other automated applications. testing various functional areas. The use minimize delay than bulk files. However, • Silence Suppression, Voice Activity of GL’s PacketGen™, PacketScan™, voice or video can tolerate higher levels Detection, and Comfort Noise — To RTP Toolbox™, and SIPGen™ are of dropped packets. The IP Type of conserve bandwidth, silence between highlighted. Service (TOS) field tries to provide this speech utterances may be detected and Testing the Effect of VoIP prioritization. Differentiated Services not transmitted in packets at all. At the Impairments. Jitter, packet loss, and (DS) is an advanced feature of TOS. remote end, the silence is reproduced as packet delay are inherent impairments This feature can be verified by load- a low-level “comfort noise” to the far of IP networks. The ability of the gate- ing the IP network with RTP traffic and end listener. Low-level noise is prefer- way to handle these impairments effi- other types of traffic (like HTTP, FTP) able to pure silence, which may be mis- ciently is critical to voice quality. and verifying that RTP traffic does not taken for a “dead” connection. Testing Jitter Buffer and Packet Loss suffer any degradation. This requires a • Vocoding or Codec Functions — Concealment (PLC). A jitter buffer tem- simulation tool to generate IP traffic Sophisticated codecs are used to con- porarily stores arriving packets in order with different TOS field settings and serve bandwidth. Standard TDM to minimize delay variations. A gateway the ability to measure the flow of pack- telephony uses 64 kbps PCM ulaw or also resequences out of order packets. ets. GL’s SipGenTM, PacketGenTM, Alaw codecs. VoIP networks generally This allows the “playout” of packets to PacketScan™, and RTP Toolbox™ use 32 kbps, 16 kbps, or lower rate headphones, handsets, and speakers to be applications can perform these tests codecs, thus reducing bandwidth smooth and continuous. However, jitter when used in concert. requirements substantially at the expense buffers can introduce delay. To strike a Testing Echo Cancellation (EC). of some quality. Lately, wideband codecs balance between delay and jitter, the size Testing echo cancellation performance at 64 kbps achieve higher quality than of the jitter buffer is usually adjusted. A requires that test equipment surround PCM at the same rate. Thus, VoIP has small buffer helps minimize the delay, the Gateway or ATA from the IP and the capability to potentially provide but increases dropped packets because of TDM sides. GL’s RTP ToolBoxTM, along superior voice quality in comparison to late arrivals. Adaptive jitter buffers that with GL’s T1/E1 test equipment, pro- standard telephone service. adjust jitter buffer size based on network vides a complete echo cancellation test- • Jitter Buffer and Packet Loss conditions can improve voice quality. ing solution. This solution permits test- Concealment (PLC) — Packet delay Packet Loss Concealment (PLC) is a ing ECs from the IP side while simulta- and loss are an inherent part of IP net- technique used to reduce the effects of neously simulating echo from the TDM works. Delayed packets can be handled lost or discarded packets. PLC is gener- side (See Figure 3). ITU by either buffering or discarding if they ally effective only for small numbers of Recommendation G.168 is the specifi- arrive too late. A jitter buffer smoothes consecutive lost packets. It usually cation that addresses compliance delayed packets at the expense of addi- involves replaying previous received requirements for echo cancellers. The

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 75 Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index functions are not implemented correctly. Testing is crucial. GL’s RTP ToolBoxTM, PacketGenTM, and PacketScan™ tools can effectively test the performance of silence suppression, VAD, and CNG. Testing VAD and Silence Suppression. VAD and silence suppression can be test- ed by sending known voice files from the TDM interface and observing and meas- Figure 3 — Echo canceller Testing Process in T1/E1 and IP Network uring the packets at the IP interface. This test can be run with and without VAD enabled. The efficiency of VAD tests specified in G.168 specification are an algorithm such as PESQ. The result- can be assessed by VQT algorithms and listed below in Table 1 and are fully ing MOS score is an approximate indi- packet rate measurements. GL’s supported by GL’s test tools. cation that the specified codec was PacketScan™, RTP Toolbox™, and Testing Coder and Decoder (Codec). implemented correctly. T1/E1 cards have features for transmit- Various codecs are used in VoIP net- Another more exact technique is to ver- ting and capturing voice files and meas- works to conserve bandwidth. Some of ify that the gateway produces an exact uring packet rates at the IP interface. these codecs are also used in conjunc- output for a given test vector. Tools that Testing Comfort Noise Generation tion with Voice Activity Detection permit file playback, file capture, and file (CNG). Testing CNG involves measur- (VAD). Table 2 provides details on conversion from one codec type to anoth- ing noise level at the input to the TDM many popular codecs. er are essential for this type of testing. side of the gateway and verifying that the Several methods are available to test noise level is reproduced at the output of and verify that gateways have implement- Testing Silence Suppression, the far end gateway. Alternatively, the IP ed specific codecs correctly. GL’s RTP Voice Activity Detection side packets can be captured and ana- ToolBoxTM and PacketGenTM test tools (VAD), and Comfort Noise lyzed for proper operation. GL’s RTP provide a variety of features to test codecs. Generation (CNG) Toolbox™ includes a Spectrum Analyzer A reference file can be encoded, trans- Silence suppression and VAD are used feature that displays the content of the mitted into the gateway, and then to conserve bandwidth. CNG is used to RTP path and also reports measurements decoded at the output of the gateway. reproduce the noise that has been masked of parameters such as noise and signal level. The original reference file can be com- by silence suppression and VAD. Voice The above tests should be repeated for pared to the decoded reference file using quality is dramatically affected if these different codecs, since VAD and CNG differ for different codecs. Also, the effect Table 1 — ITU Recommendation G.168 of VAD on voice quality can be checked using MOS and R-factor ratings.

Testing of Digits / Tone Generation and Detection Digits and tones are important for Interactive Voice Response systems (IVRs), digital phones, voice mail, dou- ble stage dialing, and many other appli- cations. In essence, the IP network must provide equivalent services as the PSTN with regard to tone generation and detection. RFC 2833 provides some advanced techniques to overcome the distortions introduced by codecs. Testing should encompass both in-band as well as out-of-band digit generation/detection. Testing Inband Digits. Testing should be by generating DTMF/MF digits with varying power levels at the TDM side and detection of the same

76 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index Table 2 — Codec Details

Another technique used to assess voice quality is E-Model (G.107 Specification). This model provides a test rating factor called R-factor. The R-factor attempts to assess impair- ments, like packet delays, packet loss, duplicate packets, and different codecs into an overall rating that can be related to MOS. The above two techniques rely on two different methods for voice quality. PESQ relies on an intrusive end-to-end comparison of waveforms, while E- model/R-factor is non-intrusive and can be performed anywhere in the end-to- end path. Both methods are available in GL’s VQT software and RTP Toolbox™ to provide a comprehensive test bed for voice quality measurements in packet networks (See Figure 4).

Conclusion This article has reviewed some of the more important features of signal pro- cessing elements in VoIP networks and testing methods for verifying quality and performance. VoIP networks are quite different from TDM networks. The right test tools and thorough test- ing before deployment can save time, money, and headaches. A thorough dis- cussion of the tools mentioned in this article is provided at http://www.gl.com. IT digits on the IP side. The reverse condi- of these functions. tion should also be tested. This test Voice Quality Testing Vijay Kulkarni is President of GL Voice quality testing is both a subjec- Communications, (news - alert) and directs should be repeated for all codecs sup- product development and consulting servic- ported by the gateway. tive and objective process. In general, es. He can be reached at [email protected]. Testing Out-of-Band Digits. The clarity of voice in the presence of echo, above tests should be repeated with noise, and delay are assessed together to John Phipps is a Senior Engineer at GL RFC 2833 enabled in the gateway. derive what is called a Mean Opinion Communications, and responsible for test These tests should be performed with Score, or MOS. MOS includes both lis- and verification of Packet Products. He can be reached at [email protected]. different digit ON/OFF times to verify tening and conversa- RTP timestamps are generated properly. tional aspects in its Importantly, both in-band and RFC overall score. A 2833 digit tests should be repeated under widely accepted various RTP impairments, like packet algorithm for assess- loss and jitter. The gateway should prop- ing voice is the erly detect digits under adverse condi- Perceptual tions. For this purpose, a test tool on the Evaluation of Speech IP side should insert impairments while Quality (PESQ generating digits. Besides out-of-band LQ/LQO) per Rec. digits, RFC 2833 identifies other events P.862/P.862.1. The Figure 4 — that should be carried out-of-band. These general principle is Voice depicted diagram- Quality should also be tested. Testing RTP ToolBoxTM can effectively test all matically below.

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Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 79 Go To Table of Contents By Greg Galitzine

CALEA: Deadline Looming

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) is a wiretapping law whose intent is:

“...to make clear a telecommunications carrier’s duty to cooper- log and report of all monitoring activity is kept on file (and ate in the interception of communications for Law Enforcement kept secret), and that regular filings on lawful and unlawful purposes, and for other purposes.” intercept and call monitoring are made to the FCC. The deadline for carriers to be fully compliant with CALEA That same Responsible Party is the one who is tasked with is May 14, 2007. I decided to reach out to Gregory making sure all information requests under the subpoena are Giagnocavo, President of Dash911 (http://www.dash911.com), secretly collected and formatted for sending to the requesting (news - alert) to get a better handle on what the looming dead- law enforcement agency. This responsible party is who the law line means for our industry. The resulting interview was con- enforcement agencies will contact when it is necessary to “tap ducted via e-mail. into” the VoIP providers switch and or network to arrange for secure connections. Galitzine: Briefly describe the nature of the ruling and the upcoming deadline. Galitzine: In your opinion, how serious is the FCC Giagnocavo: In 2005, the FCC issued an Order requiring about keeping the deadline it has set? What are the all interconnected VoIP (define - news - alert) providers to penalties for noncompliance? comply with the provisions of the CALEA requirements for Giagnocavo: I have personally spoken with one of the surveillance of telephone calls. VoIP providers must be pre- attorneys at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC pared to provide detailed information on call activity includ- and he has spoken with the Department of Homeland ing not only call detail records (CDRs) for their subscribers, Security and the FCC as well. The FCC has indicated that but information on calls that were conferenced in, and, live they are very serious about the deadlines that have been set, on-demand voice call “taps.” and that they are going to be very aggressive in enforcing the There are two deadlines for CALEA compliance. February deadlines and the CALEA compliance on VoIP providers. 12th, 2007 is the deadline for the Monitoring Report, which This is not the same type of FCC Order and compliance sets out what steps the VoIP provider has so far taken and scenario that developed with regard to E911 for VoIP. In that what solution the VoIP provider intends to use to comply case, the FCC has not yet begun to go after VoIP providers with the CALEA requirements. The second deadline is May who are not in full compliance with the E911 regulations, 14th, 2007 by which time the VoIP provider MUST have its and there have been almost no instances of fines for not com- CALEA implementation in place and file a report called the plying with E911. However, CALEA involves the DOJ and System Security and Integrity report. all those federal law enforcement and security agencies as well as hundreds of local law enforcement agencies who also have Galitzine: What are the proposed obligations and reg- the legal authority to ask for on-demand wire taps and call ulations that service providers need to be aware of? information. Giagnocavo: Fines for not complying with CALEA are as much as The CALEA requirements have been in the $10,000 per day. The FCC and the law enforcement agencies works for more than four years, and this has involved the have made it clear that “smaller VoIP providers” are not Department of Justice including the CIA, FBI, DEA, and exempt. In fact, in my discussion now also the Department of with the DOJ, it was pointed Homeland Security. The end out to me that CALEA is not at result is that VoIP providers are The deadline is May 14th, 2007 by which all just about gathering informa- burdened with the same obliga- tion on terrorist activity, but is tions as the large telcos in that time the VoIP provider MUST have its even more about local crimes VoIP providers have to provide CALEA implementation in place. such as kidnapping, pornography subscriber info, detailed call rings, meth labs and so on — crimes that are planned and exe- info, and the ability for live cuted hundreds of times a day in voice call intercept, on-demand. communities across the USA. VoIP providers are also required to obtain an FCC “FRN” I want to thank Gregory for his time and effort in respond- number, to designate a Responsible Party who must be trained in CALEA requirements, to make absolutely sure that ing to my questions. I’d also like to invite you to check out a nobody besides the designated Responsible Party has access to new blog on TMCnet, authored by Scott Coleman of SS8 any of the lawful intercept requests (subpoenas) and that no Networks, called Demystifying Lawful Intercept and CALEA for other person finds out about the lawful intercept requests and more information regarding this critical subject. keeps all such info secret, and, that a detailed and confidential

80 INTERNET TELEPHONY® February 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go To Table of Contents | Go To Ad Index With over 20 years of expertise in building the most robust communications systems around the world, Dialogic now offers the broadest product family of IP-based open systems solutions. From ready-to-deploy media gateways, to market leading multi- media processing software, Dialogic products continue to create a legacy of innovation. Dialogic empowers you with the ability to leverage a worldwide industry leading sales and support organi- zation that understands your needs and wants to work with you.

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