Internet Telephony Digital Magazine March 2007

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AAllworxllworx 0071367->Internet71367->Internet TTelephonyelephony 33-07-07 TTwo-Pagewo-Page SSpreadpread AAd.1.inddd.1.indd 1 22/13/07/13/07 111:08:341:08:34 AMAM By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis

Group Publisher and Editor-In-Chief, Rich Tehrani ([email protected]) Win-Win Situation EDITORIAL Group Editorial Director, Greg Galitzine ([email protected]) Executive Editor, Richard “Zippy” Grigonis ([email protected]) One of the few downsides to being a journalist is to be Associate Editor, Erik Linask forever precluded from winning corporate contests, partic- ([email protected]) ularly those held by one’s own corporation. It’s got some-

TMC LABS thing to do with Journalism being a sacred trust, which it Executive Technology Editor/CTO/VP, Tom Keating actually used to be when I was a kid and got to read real newspapers such as the ([email protected]) two greatest of them all, the dearly-departed New York Herald Tribune and New

ART/DESIGN Jersey’s Newark Evening News. Now, of course, we’ve got Anna Nicole in the head- Creative Director, Alan Urkawich lines, and I could be appearing on American Idol if I just had the gumption. Senior Art Director, Lisa D. Morris In any case, Yours Truly was present at TMC’s ITEXPO East show in Fort Graphic Designer, Lisa Mellers Lauderdale, Florida, patiently waiting for the last event of the last day, when Rich Tehrani, with his usual aplomb, presided over the Grand Finale of the show — the EXECUTIVE OFFICERS drawing for a sunny yellow Toyota FJ Cruiser SUV. The lucky fellow who won it Nadji Tehrani, Chairman and CEO turned out to be from my home state of New Jersey: Ari Zoldan, of Launch 3 Rich Tehrani, President (http://www.launch3.net) a company that invests in communications companies Dave Rodriguez, VP of Publications worldwide. (See the camera phone photo that accompanies this piece.) and Conferences In a sense, however, everybody at ITEXPO East was a winner. Exhibitors loved Kevin J. Noonan, VP of Business Development the attendance traffic, a big increase over our previous show in San Diego. Michael Genaro, VP of Marketing Attendees got to meet and greet a host of new up-and-coming companies. Analysts Tom Keating, CTO, VP and venture capital people were poking about everywhere. And corporate types intent on purchasing one of those new-fangled IP phone systems showed up with ADVERTISING SALES Sales Office Phone: 203-852-6800 their “short lists” and asked lots of questions. ITEXPO East had all the hallmarks Senior Advertising Director — Eastern U.S.; of a successful show. Canada; Israel Expo/conferences are funny things. Some of them go through life cycles, like a Anthony Graffeo, ext. 174, ([email protected]) living organism, or move in lock-step with the current robustness of their industry. Advertising Director — Midwest U.S.; One mistake (or a series of them) can lead to a death spiral — take Computer Southwest U.S.; EMEA; Europe Telephony Expo, for example, which was once the hottest thing going in telecom Allan Brown, ext. 278, ([email protected]) and is now just a quaint memory. (Of course, if it hadn’t vanished along with Advertising Director — Western U.S.; APAC Computer Telephony magazine, Yours Truly wouldn’t be here, dutifully enlightening Bob Johnson, 978-337-3828, ([email protected]) our readership.) In the case of the ITEXPOs, we’re now on a roll, one which doesn’t appear to be SUBSCRIPTIONS Circulation Director, Shirley Russo, ext. 157 ending any time soon. Many denizens of corporate America as well as the telecom ([email protected]) industry come to our ITEXPOs to be educated, informed, to spread some gossip, Annual digital subscriptions to INTERNET TELEPHONY®: free to chat up some new item, and ultimately to do some business. Representatives of to qualifying U.S., Canada and foreign subscribers. Annual print subscriptions to INTERNET TELEPHONY®: free, U.S. qualifying both enterprises and service providers can be found at an ITEXPO, talking, nego- readers; $29.00 U.S. nonqualifying, $39.00 Canada, $60.00, foreign qualifying and nonqualifying. All orders are payable in advance in U.S. tiating, buying and selling. I’ve been in telecom media since 1994, and I must dollars drawn against a U.S. bank. Connecticut residents add applica- admit that TMC is the most accommodating, make-the-customer-feel-good com- ble sales tax. For more information, contact our Web site at www.itmag.com or call 203-852-6800. pany in this business — they’re also the nicest bunch of guys I’ve ever worked for, which is not too surprising, if you’ve ever seen my resume! EXHIBIT SALES Our next big show will be at the Los Angeles Convention Center, a big futuris- Sales Office Phone: 203-852-6800 tic building that regularly appears as a backdrop in commercials and science fiction Global Events Account Directors Companies whose names begin with: movies such as Starship Troopers. I have no doubt that things will be even more A-G or #s: Maureen Gambino ([email protected]) busy there than they were in Fort Lauderdale, which is good. More happy buyers

H-P: Chris Waechter ([email protected]) and sellers. IP Communications is on the march! I don’t even mind not winning the Toyota — after all, I don’t drive! IT Q-Z: Joe Fabiano ([email protected]) Conference Sales Manager, Frank Coppola ([email protected]) Richard “Zippy” Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s IP Communications Group.

ABOUT INTERNET TELEPHONY® Internet telephony is revolutionizing telecommunications through the convergence of voice, video, fax, and data, creating unprecedented opportunities for resellers, developers, and service providers alike. Lucky winner Ari Zoldan of INTERNET TELEPHONY® focuses on providing readers with Launch 3 luxuriates with the information necessary to learn about and purchase the equipment, software, and services necessary to take advantage of this technolo- his new Toyota FJ Cruiser gy. INTERNET TELEPHONY® readers include resellers, devel- SUV, won at ITEXPO East in opers, MIS/networking departments, telecom departments, datacom departments, telcos/LECs, wireless/PCS providers, ISPs, and cable Fort Lauderdale, Florida. companies.

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Three industry leaders, one comprehensive solution. The IP Communications Authority Since 1998TM Volume 10/ Number 3 March 2007 Contents IN EACH ISSUE EDITORIAL SPONSORSHIP SERIES 10 Publisher’s Outlook 16 Having the Right “Touch” for Resellers A Breakthrough Month in IP Communications By Rich Tehrani 24 How Voice Application Developers can Surmount Interoperability Problems COLUMNS 46 Network Operator Trends and Opportunities 26 Inside Networking Business Convergence: The Path to Enterprise FEATURE ARTICLES Transformation 62 Meeting the Challenges of WiFi Telephony By Tony Rybczynski By Ben Guderian 28 VoIPeering 66 Architectural Options for Converged Cellular Nature and Networks and WiFi Services By Hunter Newby By John Spindler

30 Enterprise View 70 IP Contact Centers and the Open Source IP PBX The Ft. Lauderdale ECA Update By Gary Barnett By Mary Bradshaw and Max Schroeder 72 Beyond Triple Play In Quadruple Play, Delivering Exceptional Customer Service is More Critical (and 32 Regulation Watch Difficult) Than Ever Is This the Year for Broadband over Powerlines? By Michael Roy By William B. Wilhelm, Jr 76 The State of Session Border Control 36 Next Wave Redux By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis Telephony Web Services 82 Choosing Development Platforms DIY Voice By Brough Turner By Sanjeev Sawai 38 Disaster Preparedness 86 Location-Based Services Florida — Disaster Preparedness and Business By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis Continuity Planning Workshop By Rich Tehrani & Max Schroeder 88 Fixed Mobile Entertainment: The Evolution to Mobile IPTV 40 For the Record By Brian Caskey IPDR — What a Difference a Year Makes 92 Converged PC Softphones Provide Critical First Step By Kelly Anderson toward Fixed Mobile Convergence By Mike Mulica 42 Nitty Gritty Bus & Board 2007 DEPARTMENTS By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis 4 The Zippy Files 18 Industry News 48 Rich Tehrani’s Executive Suite: PowerNet Global’s Bernie Stevens 50 Rich Tehrani’s Executive Suite: Natural Convergence’s David Cork Most Active Visitors to TMCnet by 52 Rich Tehrani’s Executive Suite: North American State Siemens Communications’ Harald Braun 1. California 6. Mass 54 Product Round-up: WiFi Handsets 2. Virginia 7. Ontario 58 Special Focus: IPTV in Carrier Ethernet Networks 3. New Jersey 8. Washington 95 VoIP Marketplace 4. New York 9. Florida 95 Ad Index 5. Texas 10. Illinois 96 The VoIP Authority

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

convergence, meet the new guy.

With the new OfficeServTM 7400 platform from Samsung, the converged work environment just got bigger, better and faster. In the tradition of the OfficeServTM 7200, the new OfficeServ 7400 provides wireless functionality along with wireline, analog voice, VoIP and data capabilities. Unlike its predecessor, however, this new platform offers more ports, a gigabit Ethernet backbone and 64-channel IP cards. It also boasts a more robust infrastructure for more powerful applications for more users. All deployed simply in a standard office environment or data center. And all thanks to the new guy.

Formore information visit www.samsungbcs.com/OS7400

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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 Associate Editor, Spencer Chin 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 IP Susan Campbell, Anuradha Shukla, 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 1,000,000 visitors, Niladri Sekhar Nath, Divya Narain TMCnet.com is where you need to be if you want to know what’s happening in the world of VoIP. Here’s a list of several articles currently on our site. TMCnet PRODUCTION Director of Web Production and Online Services, Looking Into My Crystal Ball, I See Video on the Horizon Manuel Lirio While most of the world’s enterprises are still grappling with VoIP transitions for PBXs and IVRs, and service providers are still trying to define what they mean by IMS, video technology Webmaster, Robert Hashemian is quickly coming on to the scene, promising to further shake up how we define customer serv- Web Developer, Hsin Yang Lu ice and communication. http://www.tmcnet.com/460.1 Web Designer and Analytics Manager, Laura Parisi Web Designer, Maxine Sandler Mobile Device Makers to Discuss UC Needs — Here are the Questions! I don’t need to tell you what is going on with mobile “smartphones” because your e-mail box Web Designer, Karen Milosky must be loaded with reports and announcements, just like mine is. Of course, I have always Assistant Web Designer, Darvel Graves seen multimodal mobile devices as being key to driving end user demand for UC and UM, because that’s where the UC need and benefits will be greatest. http://www.tmcnet.com/461.1 Advertising Traffic Manager, John Sorel ([email protected]) Wireless Communication Test and Measurement Market Will See Growth The global wireless communication test and measurement market is growing as a result of ris- MARKETING ing demand for enhanced applications such as gaming, video and music download, multimedia VP of Marketing, Michael Genaro messaging, ringtones, mobile Internet, and Bluetooth. http://www.tmcnet.com/462.1 Creative Director, Alan Urkawich Marketing Manager, David Luth Instant Messaging for Enterprise Communications Everywhere Five years ago, when my oldest child left home for college, I was introduced to the joys of Marketing Manager, Jan Pierret instant messaging. About the same time, I noticed that my colleagues were using instant messaging in the same way. We’d coordinate meetings, get quick answers, and figure out when FINANCE others were free to talk. Controller, Kevin Kiley http://www.tmcnet.com/463.1 Accounting Manager, Frank Macari Dominican Call Centers Serve the U.S. Hispanic Marketplace Senior Accountant, Renata Bednarz As Hispanic-American consumers become more affluent, they represent a rapidly expanding sector of the business-to-consumer market. American businesses are starting to realize that if Accounts Coordinator, Mary Hodges they want to reap sales from this increasingly valuable market segment, they need to offer marketing and customer service in both Spanish and English.. READER INPUT http://www.tmcnet.com/464.1 INTERNET TELEPHONY® encourages readers to contact us with their questions, comments, and suggestions. Send e-mail TMC’s Whitepapers of the Month (addresses above), or send ordinary mail. We reserve the right to Visit TMCnet’s Whitepaper Library (http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/whitepapers), which provides a edit letters for clarity and brevity. All submissions will be considered selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. eligible for publication unless otherwise specified by the author. The library offers white papers, case studies, and other documents that are free to registered users. IDENTIFICATION STATEMENT INTERNET TELEPHONY® magazine (ISSN: 1098-0008) is The Essential Guide to Fax over VoIP published monthly by Technology Marketing Corporation, One Learn about VoIP Fax technology, terminology, and SIP T.38 protocols for more reliable faxing Technology Plaza, Norwalk, CT 06854 U.S.A. Annual print subscrip- with VoIP systems. This guide explains how integrating “VoIP Fax” and “Fax over IP” with VoIP tions: free, U.S. qualifying readers; $29.00 U.S. nonqualifying, networks will leverage and add value to converged network architectures. $39.00 Canada, $60.00, foreign qualifying and nonqualifying. Periodical postage paid at Norwalk, CT and at additional mailing http://www.tmcnet.com/465.1 offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to: INTERNET TELE- PHONY®, Technology Marketing Corporation, One Technology 3G Mobile Network Security Plaza, Norwalk, CT 06854 USA. Mobile operators need to recognize their newfound role as ISPs. No longer do they just provide cellular voice services; now they also provide high-speed Internet Protocol-based (IP) data INTERNET TELEPHONY® is a registered trademark of Technology Marketing Corporation. Copyright © 2007 Technology services. So as to offer a wider array of services and content to their data subscribers, mobile Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or operators are opening up their formerly closed networks to numerous other mobile operators, part without permission of the publisher is prohibited. data networks and the public Internet. http://www.tmcnet.com/466.1 REPRINTS AND LIST RENTALS For authorized reprints of articles appearing in INTERNET TELE- TMCnet’s Channels and Global Online Communities provide the latest, most comprehensive PHONY®, please contact Reprint Management Services at 1-800- news, analysis, and case studies for all your IP Communications needs. 290-5460 • [email protected] • www.reprintbuyer.com. TMCnet’s Call Recording Channel For list rentals, please contact Glenn Freedman at [email protected] or call 516-358-5478, ext. 101. The Call Recording Channel on TMCnet features the latest news and information to explain the importance of integrating call recording features into your VoIP platform. Check back frequently for the latest feature articles and case studies on how businesses can meet their call recording A Technology Marketing Publication, needs: http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/call-recording. Sponsored by Telrex. One Technology Plaza, Norwalk, CT 06854 U.S.A. TMCnet’s Presence Channel Phone: 203-852-6800 Presence helps employees know the changing status and availability of their colleagues at a Fax: 203-853-2845 and 203-838-4070 glance from their desktops. Unifying your communications enables presence and provides the flexibility for users to decide when, how and where they wish to communicate. Presence helps users overcome communications overload, provides business process improvements and increases productivity, making the workforce more efficient and positively affects the bottom line. Learn more at http://www.tmcnet.com/channels/presence. Sponsored by Mitel.

8 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index

By Rich Tehrani

A Breakthrough Month in IP Communications Skype, Google, Verizon, Vonage, and Other Happenings

The last few weeks have been among the most newsworthy in IP communications since this magazine’s first issue in February 1998. If you have any doubts about the VoIP (define - news - alert) market’s strength and power, consider that Skype has recently petitioned the FCC for something amazing. They want to apply the Carterphone rules to the wireless industry. These are the same rules that were applied to break up the AT&T monopoly on devices, allowing anyone to make products for the AT&T network — as long as these products did not harm the network. Innovations like the fax machine and vibrant competi- Steve Jobs on AT&T Wireless. You see, AT&T wanted to sell tion in the handset market ensued. It is tough to imagine this device so badly they gave up full control of the iPhone’s what the world would be like if we still had only a few development, branding and distribution channel. phone models to choose from — provided by a single What this shows is that the network operator is actually less manufacturer. powerful than Steve Jobs! Obviously the Carterphone ruling was 100% in the best So my take on this Carterphone situation is that con- interest of consumers. sumers will be helped if the FCC forces operators to allow Now Skype (news - alert) is hoping the FCC will apply this outside devices to run on their networks. The flipside is, ruling to the wireless industry. Verizon Wireless and Sprint could be in terrible trouble if It is absolutely obvious that such a ruling applied to the they don’t have completely open devices to compete with wireless market would be great for consumers. On GSM net- the iPhone. works in the U.S. there is already some flexibility allowed via Consumers are already lining up to take numbers for the the use of SIM cards, but in the case of Sprint and Verizon, chance to buy an iPhone and jump from their current opera- the networks are as closed as closed gets. Moreover, Verizon tors. Talk about a major spike in churn. Apple’s iPhone will has crippled Bluetooth functions of devices, forcing customers cause more churn than any other device since the Motorola to rely on the network or a data cable for certain data trans- RAZR. Operators will be absolutely forced to offer best-offers to devices. breed devices on their networks or perish. But then again, if I want to buy my own device, I can if I In fact, in my confidential discussions with equipment choose to operate on a GSM network. The way GSM manufacturers, they believe operators will be forced to stop providers get around this open market is by subsidizing hand- crippling their devices and user interfaces. sets that are locked to keep cus- So, I believe FCC Chairman tomers hooked to a specific car- Kevin Martin and company can rier. probably choose to let the wire- Of course, if you want a way Obviously the Carterphone ruling was less carriers do business as usual, around this, you can purchase a as the free markets will soon. pay-as-you-go calling plan. 100% in the best interest of consumers... So if you look at the matter Now Skype is hoping the FCC will apply Google Applications carefully, there actually is open- Google (quote - news - alert) ness and competition in the this ruling to the wireless industry. has been quietly building and wireless market. I wouldn’t call it acquiring many of the compo- vibrant device competition, but nents needed to compete there is definitely competition. against Microsoft Office. But Besides, many wireless devices, such as Windows Mobile instead of software, the company has focused on providing devices based on the popular Microsoft operating system, hosted applications based on AJAX allow you to have a Skype client installed today. So again, here (http://www.tmcnet.com/468.1). This technology allows are more signs of competition. Web-based applications to behave more like desktop soft- Perhaps the most problematic argument against Skype is ware. While a typical Web page needs to continuously the recent AT&T/Apple iPhone relationship redraw the entire page, AJAX applications allow drag-and- (http://www.tmcnet.com/467.1) which forced the will of drop functionality and only sections of a page to be

10 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index redrawn at a time. This past week, the search leader made a big splash by iPhone/iPhone packaging a number of AJAX-based applications together into Google Applications Premiere Edition The Apple/Cisco dispute over the iPhone name is (http://www.tmcnet.com/469.1) at a cost of $50/year/user. now over and most people believe Apple got the This compares to a street price of between $150-$200 for the better of Cisco. Others say it is a win/win as both latest Microsoft Office. companies will use the iPhone name and the two At first glance, Google’s new offering amounts to a poor companies have announced that they will cooperate value, as the average version of Office will last you about three to provide some degree of interoperability. If years and offer superior functionality and access to applica- Apple’s iPhone takes off this could put Cisco in an tions Google doesn’t have competing offerings for, such as enviable situation. But many say Apple doesn’t PowerPoint and Visio. adhere to agreements made in such negotiations. Google realizes this and subsequently ups the ante by Time will tell. offering as part of this package Gmail storage per user of 10 GB, APIs to integrate into your current applications, online support and 24/7 assistance including a call center. In addition, there are 3rd party applications and services available. made by the Redmond/Canadian duo. Having used the Google word processor and spreadsheet It will be a number of years before Google gains any serious applications provided in this offering, I can’t help but won- Office application market share in my opinion but still this is der why they are so stripped down. Word, for example, a very smart move for Avaya. offers limitless features for line spacing while Google’s offering does not. Then again, Google’s word processing applica- Verizon Takes on Vonage in Court tion allows you to insert images, tables, and links. In addi- In June of 2006 Verizon (quote - news - alert) presented tion it allows easier collaboration as the documents are (http://www.tmcnet.com/472.1) Vonage (news - alert) with a stored centrally. lawsuit saying it has infringed on seven of its patents. At the In my opinion, a small business is still far better off with time, Vonage argued it had developed its technology itself and Microsoft’s Office but the benefits of going with Google when using outside technology, did license it properly. In the include easier collaboration and less worry about doing back- latter half of February 2007, the two companies ended up in ups as Google handles this for you. court presenting (http://www.tmcnet.com/473.1) open argu- In fact, using Google’s applications could save serious ments. money on storage and servers, making life that much easier In a nutshell, Verizon has a slew of broad patents making for small businesses. it difficult for virtually any company to provide competing VoIP service. Based on discussions I have had with experts, Avaya Teams with Google some, if not all, of these patents should perhaps never have If there is one area in which Avaya (quote - news - alert) has been granted. differentiated itself these past years, it is in its developer pro- This gets us to the patent system in America and why it is gram. The company has been far ahead of all other larger so easy to acquire patents. In telecom, I have seen companies communications players as it realizes that an ecosystem of develop amazing technologies for many years and many of partners is the best way to add value to corporations. these companies do not apply for patents on their innova- It is for this reason we tions. Instead, a much larger shouldn’t be surprised to hear company applies for patents on the company has decided to the same innovations many years integrate Using Google’s applications could later and receives them. (http://www.tmcnet.com/470.1) save serious money on storage and Simply stated, the patents in its phone systems with the latest the U.S. are awarded much too paid software offering from servers, making life that much easily without the USPTO doing Google. Although Avaya’s inte- easier for small businesses. enough due diligence. So the gration news doesn’t disclose all courts and shareholders spend of its details, we can hope for billions and billions of dollars things like toolbars in Google each year to defend against applications, allowing single-click calling. In addition, I hope patents on innovations the patent holders did not create. for the ability to have full call control from Google’s applica- I am not targeting any companies in particular here, but I tions and screen pops when incoming calls arrive. do think the USPTO can be improved. I wish the govern- In a way this sort of integration makes sense for Avaya as ment would spend significant resources on hiring more the company is probably not thrilled with the experts at the USPTO so we would avoid these problems. Microsoft/Nortel partnership (http://www.tmcnet.com/471.1) Additionally, now that so many companies have amassed and sees this announcement as a way to counter the move broad patent portfolios, the small player in virtually any mar-

12 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Internet Telephony March 1 2007 8.125” x 10.875” CMYK Q71273-03 GCV CBS Q71273 Q71273-03 Knight12/14/0611:07AMPage1 ieyu let h raste edwt oa laEg r,afullyhosted voice anddata Give your clientsthebreaks theyneedwithCovad ClearEdge Pro, n rabn ouin,visitwww.covadalliance.com. and broadband solutions, ourfullsuite ofaward-winning voice For more detailson customers willbeincentive enough. productivity their say in commission thattheindustry-leading andrecurring monthlypayments for thelife ofyour boost the realize they Sufﬁce itto Once astatueinyour beerecting honor. they’ll space. and improvement to line, theirbottom and money time, them save will that solution © 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. BE REMEMBEREDAS THE VoIP DEALER WHO SAVED THE DAY. EVEN IF EVEN YOU ONLY DIDITFOR THE BIGBUCKS. ailable inallareas. sGop Inc. ns Group, ket is in trouble if they too do not have an arsenal of patents they can cross-license in order to avoid a lawsuit. Speaking of Development So instead of preaching a culture of innovation in the U.S., we are promoting a culture of patent hoarding and lawsuits. The VoIP Developer show now in its fourth year This is obviously not in the best interest of consumers by any has become the Communications Developer con- means and this problem should be addressed at the highest ference (http://www.tmcnet.com/voipdeveloper) to levels of our government. more accurately describe the scope of the event. As Getting back to the Verizon/Vonage lawsuit, I believe the concepts like SOA, open source, SIP, IMS, and FCC should not have allowed as much telecom consolidation as it has. For the last 25 years or so I have been in this busi- wireless evolve, there needs to be a single place for ness, telecom companies have proven they are not good at the world’s telecom developers to congregate to innovating. Creating a handful of large telecom companies is learn how to develop applications and devices for very obviously not in the consumer’s best interest if these companies use this power to sue smaller VoIP players into the next generation of users. oblivion. Moreover, there will be more of an emphasis on Vonage is responsible for a tremendous amount of innova- learning about ecosystems, allowing developers to tion in the telecom market. We need to protect companies take advantage of strong partners such as Skype, like Vonage to ensure more telecom innovations are launched Digium, and Avaya. in the market. This show has been held in August for a few years Sure we want a strong counterbalance to cable companies and it has now moved to May 15-17, 2007 in Santa and this is a great reason to allow telecom consolidation, but Clara, CA. If you are a developer in the communi- potentially eliminating thousands of VoIP players overnight is cations space you must be there and, if you know of a nightmare scenario for consumers worldwide! Of course, this lawsuit may not amount to much, but at any communications developers, please alert them the end of the day, we need the FCC to weigh all options to this conference and the earlier-than-usual date. before allowing merger after merger. Using a patent portfolio to eliminate competition is a lose/lose for consumers. IT

A New Logo For A New Era

In October 2006, TMC and the INTERNET We remain committed to helping enterprises, serv- TELEPHONY team published with great pride the ice providers, SMBs, resellers, and developers under- 100th issue of this magazine. Since our launch in stand how best to take advantage of IP communica- 1998, the magazine has been the reliable voice of tions. Our editorial focus has expanded from topics the evolving Internet telephony, then VoIP, and now of the late 1990s, like early interoperability trials, to IP communications market. emerging standards protocols such as SIP, to the For our first nearly ten years of publishing INTER- first-generation IP PBXs to include new opportuni- NET TELEPHONY, the magazine carried a similar ties like IP video, IMS, and Quad Play. The market look with the familiar yellow box logo atop each is changing, and INTERNET TELEPHONY maga- issue. I’m sure you noticed when this March issue zine remains your best source of news and product arrived on your desk that the yellow box has been analysis. replaced by our new logo. We simply felt it was time So, with this new image we continue our quest to for the look of the magazine and for the logo that issue #200 and beyond. Thanks for coming along represents it to mark the evolution of the publication. for the ride.

14 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index

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cate directly with the Allworx team (e.g. tech Having the Right “Touch” support, product development, marketing, sales, and training) and to all other authorized Allworx resellers with portal access. Our By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis for Resellers partners share their stories, ask technical questions, discuss marketing concepts, and Allworx (http://www.allworx.com) and its product. That’s why it’s important that muse over ideas for future products. Allworx feature-rich, fully integrated IP phone and Allworx is there to support the reseller employees at our Rochester headquarters data communication system have taken the throughout the entire process of capturing monitor these forums and respond in real SMB (Small and Medium Businesses) by and closing early sales.” time. The sales training and support, mar- storm. Each Allworx system includes a “Many resellers are attracted to Allworx keting programs and private reseller portal phone system that works in both IP and because of how well-designed our products are just a few of the ways we focus on posi- analog environments, and a network server. are for the SMB market. The Allworx prod- tively impacting the success of our resellers.” One reason this inexpensive yet highly uct line is ideal for replacing the millions of “In addition to sales training, technical advanced business communication system aging TDM systems and allowing the flexi- training, the private portal, and extensive makes such an impact among SMBs lay in a bility for the customer to easily integrate reseller tools, each department within remarkably innovative and successful reseller VoIP into their business. Once the reseller Allworx contacts the reseller and introduces program: the Allworx Reseller Start Strong becomes a partner with Allworx, we have a him or herself and welcomes them into the Program. specific Reseller “Start Strong Touch Point” Allworx family,” says Gault. “In fact, we pro- Sandra M. Gault, EVP of Marketing at program where the reseller gets ‘touched’ vide a ‘Welcome Kit’ to every reseller that Allworx, says, “Allworx prides itself on multiple times throughout their partnership contains a number of items: brochures, mar- understanding the arduous process a reseller with us. These “touch points” come from keting materials, Allworx premiums, and, goes through to carry a manufacturer’s various parts of the company: from sales to more importantly, detailed information system engineering, technical training, mar- about what activities we will do with them keting, and even helping them with their to jump start their business in the next 90 business.” days. For example, we offer free telemarket- Gault continues: “First the reseller is ing if they provide us with a list of end users, offered an excellent price on a demo kit — and we have a process that makes it very easy usually getting an additional 40 — 50% in for them to create and submit such a list. savings. For investing in a demo kit, the Our salespeople make calls on their behalf, reseller can send two people to our four-day, acquire leads and make joint calls to help comprehensive technical certification train- them close deals. As the reseller begins to ing class for free. We hold a class every week close deals, our customer support team and in various cities across the country. The in-field System Engineers ensure they are training certifies them to install and service well prepared for a smooth cut-over. If need- all of our products, including advanced trou- ed, we’ll be on site, to help assist the reseller bleshooting, and gives them specific knowl- with their first few installs. We realize that a edge on managing and servicing multi-site smooth and quick install directly translates installations, remote users, complicated con- into a satisfied end user and profitable figurations, and connecting with VoIP serv- account for the reseller. But our support ice providers.” continues after the install. We offer free case “In parallel to our technical certification study development. We’ll do a full case training classes, we immediately conduct study, which usually includes four pages with sales training with the reseller”, says Gault. topology diagrams and examines such things “Our sales training is designed to quickly get as the expected ROI for a customer, the the reseller successfully selling Allworx. The advantages of the system, and so forth. We training helps focus the reseller on key mar- also highlight the reseller that installed the kets, shows them how to leverage their cur- particular unit within the case study. There rent base, and what is needed to attract new are many fascinating stories out there as to customers. As part of our sales and market- how customers are using Allworx voice-over- ing support, each reseller is given access to a IP systems and a reseller can effectively use private portal on the Allworx website where these stories to sell more units.” they’ll find everything from extensive mar- “Additional sales support comes in the keting and technical information, to sales form of assistance in customer proposals and tools. One of the more interesting compo- quotes” says Gault. “If a reseller requires help nents of the private portal is a live message with the topology diagrams, call-flows, or board that allows the reseller to communi- pricing, Allworx can help work on their

16 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Allworx Expanded Features — quotes. In the near future, we’ll be providing Perfect for SMB Market an easy-to-use quoting tool. A reseller merely plugs in the numbers, customer information By Sandra Gault, EVP of Marketing, Allworx and the pricing for hardware, software, services and maintenance. The tool automatical- To maintain our leadership position as the premier and award-winning communication ly will calculate a breakeven analysis and IP-PBX/Key phone and data system provider, we are continually expanding the function- produce a proposal printed with their logo.” ality of our systems. These improvements are based on direct feedback from Authorized “Probably of most interest to new resellers Allworx resellers and valued Allworx customers. is our ‘Start Strong’ promotion,” says Gault. Our strategy is simple. We will continuously build the most complete set of small busi- “The ‘Start Strong’ promotion is designed to ness communication features combining traditional and VoIP capabilities, while adding help a reseller become successful in selling features normally found only in enterprise class systems. These new features, when com- Allworx within the first 90 days after they bined with our unique key-system capabilities and our industry-leading price points, have completed their Allworx technical certi- strengthen our strategy to replace the millions of aging TDM phone systems with Allworx fication class. The program allows a reseller versatile solutions. to get a free Allworx 6x system (MSRP of $1800) after they have successfully sold and Listed below are highlights of the new features: installed two Allworx systems (6x, 10x, or 24x) within their first 90 days. We know 1. Call Assistant 2.0 — This Windows PC-based tool, fully integrated with Allworx that if the reseller quickly closes sales and VoIP phones and designed to bring ease and efficiency to the operator/receptionist task, experiences smooth installation for the first has been strongly enhanced with new views of the company directory, AA status, parked three or four installs, they make Allworx calls, and call queues. New transfer and dialing capabilities have also been added. This is their premier product line for the SMB perfect for a live attendant answer position. market. The results from a recent poll we 2. New Multi Site Extensions — Setting up and using a convenient 3-digit dialing conducted with over 420 Allworx resellers plan across Allworx systems in multiple sites (up to 100 sites) has never been easier! revealed that 6-8 percent of those resellers Allworx systems can now automatically discover and route extension plans. Excellent fea- decided to drop all other product lines and ture for seamless site-to-site calling. are now solely selling Allworx systems. The other 92-94 percent sell other systems for 3. Enhanced Conference Call Capabilities — Allworx introduces the most affordable their enterprise customers, but Allworx is enterprise-class conference bridge solution for the small business VoIP market. This user- their main product line for the SMB mar- friendly option includes full security, scheduling, and moderator features. The Allworx 24x ketplace.” supports four (4) — eight seat conference calls and the Allworx 6x supports one (1) — Although we feel we provide extraordinary eight seat conference call. support to our partners, each quarter we do a survey wherein we review sales and query 4. Enhanced T1 Provisioning Capabilities — T1 voice services have been expanded all our resellers to rank us on how we’re with support for Robbed Bit Signaling (RBS)/CAS lines. Service providers now have maxi- doing and what we can do better,” says mum flexibility in building small business voice solutions with support for virtually all Gault. “Additionally, our annual reseller forms of T1 voice and fractional voice (PRI & CAS) trunks in addition to VoIP SIP council brings a group of resellers together trunks and traditional CO lines. Allworx is now a preferred Customer Premise Equipment so that our senior management team can (CPE) provider for several VoIP service providers. hear firsthand from our partners. This annu- 5. IMAP4 Support — With Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4) added to our al meeting is so popular we have a hard time existing POP3 support, users can easily access and synchronize their voicemails and emails accommodating everybody who wants to across multiple inboxes on PCs, laptops and handheld email clients using popular email attend. As a result, we’re contemplating clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla/Thunderbird, Opera, and holding regional reseller councils so that Eudora. more partners can participate in this important annual event.” 6. User Phone Greeting — Unique voice mail greetings can be tied to each user’s pres- “Our philosophy is that our resellers are ence status — In Office, At a meeting, On Vacation, On Business Trip, At Home, Away partners and that we are both going after the and Busy. Now users can easily customize their phone to match their personal work envi- same customer — the one that buys,” says ronment. Gault. “We want them to get those customers and Allworx is dedicated to making Allworx’s family of VoIP systems includes the award-winning Allworx 6x, 10x, & 24x our resellers successful in this endeavor.” voice and network systems, and the 9112 and 9102 VoIP phones. Key differentiators sepa- Although already a hit with resellers, rating Allworx from other VoIP systems for the SMB market include: the industry’s lowest Allworx continues to take reseller relations to installed cost of any full-featured VoIP PBX/Key-system; the richest SMB feature set avail- new levels of innovation. IT able; the flexibility to enable SMBs to transition risk-free to VoIP at their own pace; and the industry’s most straightforward installation procedures. Richard Grigonis is the Executive Editor of

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 17 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index The New SBC For More Than VoIP MetaSwitch Brings IMS to the By Erik Linask Great White North Traditionally, voice traffic across networks has been managed and controlled using stan- By Erik Linask dard session border controllers (SBCs) — like Covergence’s (news - alert) Eclipse product As it continues to focus on bridging the — that were well-suited for enabling voice peering between relatively small numbers of users gap between legacy TDM and next generation of known and trusted providers. But, as the IP communications world continues to grow at IP worlds, switching solution provider record rates, the number of providers and the number of users and endpoints both continue MetaSwitch (news - alert) has now also to increase at least as rapidly. bridged a national divide, becoming the first The “old” SBC simply is not equipped to handle such high traffic volumes of varied non-Canadian softswitch provider to be select- traffic and session types across new IMS-based multimedia networks. For that very rea- ed by a Bell Canada affiliate. son, a new type of session management product is required in order to ensure perform- Québec’s Télébec has partnered with ance of many of today’s real-time services — something that can be deployed at the MetaSwitch as it seeks to deploy a new IMS subscriber or access edge. infrastructure to launch new services, includ- To accommodate this need, Covergence has adapted its Eclipse solution and has now ing VoIP. The multi-year partnership with released its new Eclipse aSBC (access edge SBC), which is specifically designed to scale, MetaSwtich will ensure that Télébec is proper- secure, and manage performance at the network access edge. The Eclipse aSBC has to ly prepared to launch new unified communica- process and manage registrations traffic, secure tions services, including FMC and presence- connections, provide protection from intrusion based offerings, hosted solutions, and Web- and attack, effectively enforce user poli- based provisioning, which will enable it to cies, and encrypt and decipher con- upgrade its presence among business cus- tent between millions of end- tomers. points, without sacrificing ses- “Télébec is committed to delivering highly sion quality. Essentially, the innovative IP-based services to our business aSBC ensures their services and residential customers,” said Sylvie meet the quality thresholds Couture, Télébec’s chief technology officer. defined by the most demanding “MetaSwitch is at the heart of this transition of business customers as they roll out our business. Thanks to its core technologies increasingly more sophisticated services. and deployment experience, we will have the http://www.covergence.com service options and flexibility we need to build customer loyalty and stay ahead of potential competitors.” http://www.metaswitch.com

India Holds Great Promise for Telecom Growth By Rich Tehrani Last year, the U.S. Department of Commerce engineered the largest trade mission hoping to boost commerce with one of the world’s fastest-growing economies in India — a total of 239 participants from 189 companies participated in the mission, which included a business summit in Bombay, followed by meetings in Kolkata, New Delhi, and other Indian cities. Companies represented on the mission include such well-known firms as GE, FedEx, and UPS, as well as smaller companies from sectors including health care, industrial machinery, and telecommunications. During the past several years of the mission, only large multi-national companies participated, but this time, the U.S. Government recognized that many smaller companies, like EagleNet, which believes in a free trade market for services and products, are also making significant contributions to bilateral economic growth, and invited a number of them to participate. India represents a significant opportunity for telecommunications vendors and investors — its 175-million line telephone network (fixed and cellular) is among the top five networks in the world and the second largest in emerging markets, trailing only China. It also has one of the fastest growing telecommunications segments in the world, with total connections growing at an average rate of more than 20 percent annually. The total subscriber base of cellular subscribers is currently at 130 million, and a number of subscribers added this year alone is more than 50 million — that is the highest growth rate in the world. The industry is considered to have the highest potential for investment in India and the growth in demand for telecom services in India will be the highest in the cellular services, basic telecom service, national long distance, followed by international long distance. Based on the size and current growth of the market, EagleNet, (news - alert) for one, envisions significant opportunity for growth in India. http://www.egl.net

18 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Sylantro Expands IMS Partnerships Avaya Enhances IP Office Suite for SMBs By Erik Linask By Johanne Torres Sylantro Systems (news - alert) has announced two new partnership agreements to Wanting to target small and medium busi- further support its claims that it is making significant strides in the market and is focus- nesses, Avaya (quote - news - alert) ing heavily on enabling service providers globally to build out new IMS-based infrastruc- announced new enhancements to its IP Office tures. suite. The company added on a new software The first is an extension of Sylantro’s previously announced relationship with and modular hardware package, SIP trunking Swisscom, (news - alert) which is anticipating the launch of its new IMS network early for reduced calling, and remote diagnostic next year. The new network will feature Sylantro’s Synergy application feature server inte- tools. The company introduced two versions grated into the infrastructure. With the services enabled by Sylantro, Swisscom will be of enhanced software for the suite: one for able to roll out new enhanced services to its residential customers, including potential very small businesses and serves up to 32 converged fixed and mobile (FMC) services. users; and the Professional edition which sup- In this deployment, Ericsson is the IMS infrastructure provider and will deploy and ports up to 270 users. integrate Sylantro as part of its offer, which will give Sylantro a presence in the three The company also expanded its current service provider segments it views as being strategically important: Hosted VoIP, portfolio of servers by introducing the IP Mobility, and Application & Web Services. Office 500 communications server. The IP Sylantro has also announced a key partnership with Korea Telecom, (news - alert) a Office 500 features a more compact design. project that has been underway for a year, having been launched because Korea Telecom The new server supports telephony, voice was in search of an IMS-compliant feature server. Knowing that Sylantro had previously messaging, and a customer service suite. In completed interoperability testing with several vendors, KT requested the Sylantro do the addition, Avaya also introduced a new set of same with Samsung, the main IMS core provider for Korea Telecom’s WiBro network. remote diagnostic tools, which will allow Having successfully completed interoperability testing with Samsung, the Synergy fea- resellers to proactively identify and resolve ture server will become part of Korea Telecom’s WiBro network offering, which is on schedule to deploy during Q2 2007. KT will offer an integrated Microsoft Hosted problems remotely. Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) solution with the Sylantro Synergy Application “We built IP Office from the ground up for Feature Server running on the Samsung IMS platform. small businesses. That means it has the right http://www.sylantro.com entry-level price, ‘big business’ communica- http://www.swisscom.com tions capabilities, and options for companies http://www.koreatelecom.com to add more capabilities, capacities or locations as their business grows,” commented Geoffrey Baird, vice president and general manager, Appliances, Mobility and Small Dialogic Announces First PCIe Products Systems Division, Avaya. http://www.avaya.com By Erik Linask Media and signal processing technology developer Dialogic Corporation (news - alert) has announced its latest series of products — seven PCI Express compatible media boards. These latest boards are, essentially, sister products to the company’s PCI universal boards in terms of features and functionality, but also provide for complete backwards compatibility enabling solution providers to integrate the new boards into their existing systems and applications with little modification. The new PCIe boards will provider developers, OEMs, and integrators even greater choice of servers on which to build their communications solutions for service providers or enterprises, integrating the latest converged communications applications into those solutions. The new 12-port analog and dual span T1/E1 Dialogic JCT series boards, as well as single span T1/E1 Dialogic Diva series boards are available now, and are designed to easily integrate with existing Dialogic PCI boards. “While our main development focus is on media and signaling products that enable IP, wireless, and video communication solutions, we recognize the importance of keeping our existing media board products compatible with the latest platform technologies,” said Jim Machi, vice president of product marketing at Please tell the vendors Dialogic. Dialogic says it plans to introduce you saw it in additional versions of its PCIe boards, also backwards compatible with its other INTERNET existing boards, throughout the year. ® http://www.dialogic.com TELEPHONY Magazine www.itmag.com

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 19 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index NEC Launching CX2600/200 Series Switches for Mobile Backhaul Cbeyond Offers New Combined Voicemail By Patrick Barnard Box for Mobile and Landline Messages NEC (news - alert) announced that it will soon be launching its new CX2600/200 By Divya Narain series of Service Aggregation Switches designed for mobile backhaul. These new hybrid Cbeyond (news - alert) has released its new switches incorporate a single switching card which allows them to simultaneously provide Integrated Voicemail service that bundles up packet switching for Ethernet/ATM traffic and low-latency circuit switching for TDM traffic. its mobile and landline voice messaging into In addition, the new PWE (Pseudo Wire Emulation) function provides TDM/ATM emulation one convenient voicemail box. The innovative over IP networks. service also has a unified messaging capability The new series is designed to enable a smooth transition from TDM to all-IP. Carriers using that allows customers to access, save, worldwide can carry out smooth mobile infrastructure backhaul area migration, as they forward, and back-up their voice messages gradually change over to an all-IP network. This is accomplished through a phased intro- from their email inbox. Among other utilities of duction of the IP changeover in existing TDM infrastructure. This is key for carriers seek- the service are zero-out for assistance and ing deploy 3G/3.5G services or who plan to introduce WiFi/WiMAX technologies (e.g., real-time message notification. With the zero- quadruple play services) in the near future, since there has been increased demand for out option, customers can let callers exit mobile backhaul solutions that can realize both effective use of existing infrastructure voicemail by dialing zero instead of having to facilities and upgradeability toward all-IP networks. leave a message. Moreover, the real-time mes- http://www.nec.com sage notification feature sends an email, SMS and/or IVR alert to the customer’s mobile phone when a voicemail is left on the landline phone. http://www.cbeyond.net

T-Mobile Picks Alcatel-Lucent to Enhance its GSM Net By Johanne Torres Alcatel-Lucent (quote - news - alert) has been picked by T-Mobile (the mobile business arm of Deutsche Telekom) to enhance its GSM network with GSM/EDGE technology in order to increase its speed. EDGE technology report- edly enables data rates of up to 220 kbit/s. The move will enable the mobile operator to offer its German subscribers with more advanced multimedia services and expand the availability of its “Web ‘n’ Walk” mobile Internet service. Making Quad Play Services Work Alcatel-Lucent expects the GSM/EDGE net- By Erik Linask work to be upgraded and operational by the Convergin, (news - alert) which provides fixed and mobile telecom operators with a end of this year. Alcatel-Lucent has agreed to service interaction/service continuity solution, is taking its offering to the next level, replace thousands of existing GSM base sta- adding IPTV integration into its Accolade WCS Service Capability Interaction Management tions in T-Mobile’s network with its latest 9100 (SCIM) product. Essentially, this will enable wireless, wireline, and cable operators to inte- Multi-standard Base Station product line. grate IPTV into their existing service offerings — effectively allowing them to offer the Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will man- quad play of services — and, importantly, maintain control over the interaction between age the project overall, including the integra- their different services to maximize the subscriber experience. tion of the network, the old equipment removal The Accolade WCS is a network node that sits between the session control and switch- and the installation of the new equipment, as ing layer and the application and service layer. “Its main role is controlling the action of well as the management of all subcontractors. multiple applications and services for a single session according to the services each user http://www.alcatel-lucent.com is subscribed to and should be receiving,” explained Tal Zoller, vice president of business development at Convergin. What that means is the WCS manages the operator’s various services and the way they interact with each other on their paths from various application servers — whether head end servers, SIP applications servers, IMS application servers, Web applications, or legacy ATTENTION VENDORS! infrastructures, any combination thereof. Significantly, in addition to enabling the roll-out of IPTV and SIP- or IMS-based applica- Send your News and Product tions and services, Convergin’s latest advance allows service providers to do so while still Releases via e-mail to in the process of migrating to an IMS infrastructure. With the latest release of Accolade, [email protected]. they can continue their current migration path and not lose ground in the services game. Whenever possible, please http://www.convergin.com include high-resolution (minimum 300 dpi) color graphics (.BMP, .EPS, .TIF, or .JPG).

20 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index If you’re thirsty for a way to drive new revenue at attractive margins, improve retention and win more customers, look to VoX. We can help you private label a digital broadband phone solution in 30 days or less. Your customers will delight in our high quality, full-featured service while you take refuge in the know-how, flexibility and manageability that only comes with wholesale focus and experience. Teltronics Launches Cerato VoIP Products ADTRAN Looks to Grow VoIP Sales with Enhanced Channel Program for Small Enterprises By Erik Linask By Johanne Torres ADTRAN, (news - alert) which supplies routers, switches, and VoIP equipment to the Teltronics (news - alert) has launched SMB and carrier markets, has expanded its North American channel sales program, Cerato SE, a new suite of VoIP products for through which it addresses the SMB market (it has a direct sales forces that handles the small enterprises. The suite features an inte- carrier accounts). grated automated attendant, voicemail, unified With the addition of a new mid-tier partnership level, ADTRAN hopes to attract new messaging, call recording, as well as voice partners, thereby expanding its own presence as well as providing those new partners compression for VoIP traffic. Cerato SE’s fea- with a reach into the SMB market — specifically, the 20 to 50 seat business, which it says tures are comprised in an executive digital is its sweet spot. phone, or an executive VoIP phone — both “The goal is to not only increase our presence in that segment, but to increase our part- models offer an optional Button Expansion ners’ ability to win so that they can get incremental business by incorporating ADTRAN Module (BEM). The suite features PC dialing, products into their solution,” said ADTRAN’s vice president of channel sales Ted Cole. The most obvious enhancement is the addition call routing, remote extensions, SIP trunking of the new mid-tier partner level — to comple- and remote maintenance. ment the ADvantage Plus and Registered part- The suite’s Automated Attendant feature is ners. Combined, ADTRAN has more than capable of handling customer calls with inter- 1,000 partners, more than 250 of which active voice messages and menus. The offer- have been added during features Secure Encryption Algorithm ing the last three (AES) and comes pre-configured for an easier months, including at least 85 Advantage installation, utilizing a Web-based interface. partners, the new tier. Administrators can also make system changes, configuration modifications and www.adtran.com extension programming from the Web-based interface. http://www.teltronics.com

TalkSwitch Intros VoIP Phone System for Small Business By Johanne Torres TalkSwitch (news - alert) introduced the 244vs, a new VoIP-enabled phone system, SIP-based VoIP Platform Enables Online which the company wants to target at small and multi-location businesses with up to four Whiteboarding telephone users. The company says this system is the “most affordable hybrid telephone By Erik Linask system on the market.” SIP-based platforms and hardware are The new system is the latest addition to the TalkSwitch line of hybrid IP/PSTN PBXs. enabling a new era of communications, which 244vs has room for two incoming phone company (CO) lines, offers four local extensions, are not only easier and more efficient, but also and supports four VoIP trunks. The system is compatible with other TalkSwitch systems. offer countless new features and functionality http://www.talkswitch.com to enable colleagues, friends, and family members to communicate in a more collaborative fashion than ever before. damaka (news - alert) is bringing many of those efficiencies to users by way of its patent pending SIP-based Personal Softswitch, which is revolutionary in that it brings the VoIP platform to the end user, meaning that anyone, whether in the office, at home, or in a hotel, can take advantage of the benefits of SIP- based communications, regardless of what other equipment is available. Now, in addition to phone and video calling, Vocalscape’s VoIP Load Balancer Distributes Calls More Evenly including presence features and IM capabili- By Patrick Barnard ties, and desktop sharing and file transfer, Vocalscape Networks, (news - alert) which provides VoIP telephony solutions and com- damaka is introducing a secure whiteboard munications software for service providers, has introduced a load balancer for VoIP sys- feature. With it, users can draw freehand with tems that includes a new algorithm that distributes calls more evenly. online contact globally, just as they can speak, The Vocalscape Load Balancer began as an open source project which was adopted by share files, and instant message, enabling real- — and then improved upon — by Vocalscape. Specifically, it was made Asterisk compati- time collaboration on technical projects, docu- ble, plus the algorithm was revised to allow for more even call distribution between all ment editing, or anything else that can benefit available servers at all times, allowing for greater availability. The Load Balancer also has from live mark-up capabilities, like distance been endowed with new failover capabilities, so that calls can be routed around an unre- learning facilities and designers. sponsive server. http://www.damaka.com http://www.vocalscape.com

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

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“How’d they know?” A Special Editorial Series Sponsored By Dialogic Innovative Ideas from the “IP Media Gateway” Experts

switching infrastructure is related to the sup- How Voice Application plementary services. And they’ve always been a bit of a gotcha. Whether it’s seemingly insignificant things like desktop message Developers can Surmount waiting indicator control for voice mail, or more important things like making transfers Interoperability Problems reliably and efficiently so you don’t drop cus- By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis tomer service calls, integrating voice applications reliably to PBX infrastructure has IP media server platforms have helped bring operable with today’s crop of IP-PBX and always been a challenge for the independent about the shift to IP infrastructure in the hybrid IP-PBX systems on the market or development community.” enterprise. IP media servers are a key com- being deployed, Machi says that developers So what’s a developer to do? Should voice ponent for delivering such pervasive applica- must do system-by-system SIP interoperabili- application developers wait for SIP standards tions as unified messaging, IVR, speech ty testing, which ultimately leads to necessary to evolve more fully? Should they wait for servers, contact centers and more. Such changes to the SIP signaling implementation some 3rd party to figure out how to interop servers use SIP instead of TDM interfaces to on one side of the equation or the other. via SIP to all the IP-PBXs on the market and connect these typically adjunct applications “If you’re Microsoft, making huge waves license that knowledge or the related SIP to the core real-time call control and switch- in the enterprise communications system stacks? Is there still value in deploying an ing system in the enterprise — the PBX. space and partnering up with Nortel and enterprise application on an IP media plat- But there are few perfect scenarios. As Jim others,” says Machi, “you may stand a pretty form near term, or is it better to wait until SIP Machi, VP of marketing for the Dialogic® good chance of influencing changes on the implementations really become normalized Corporation, tells it, “Unfortunately, virtual- IP-PBX side of the SIP stack to make your across vendors? And will that ever happen? ly all first-generation IP-PBXs relied on pro- stuff work. And in fact Microsoft and Nortel One solution is offered via IP media gate- prietary IP signaling stacks. Subsequently, as just announced Exchange Unified Messaging ways, as Microsoft discovered. As Machi SIP was anointed as the signaling standard and CS1000 SIP interoperability as the first says, “Migrating an application to a pure IP for VoIP, it has often been implemented by deliverable of their agreement to collaborate platform has many benefits beyond direct IP PBX manufacturers with proprietary exten- on unified communications. But for most interoperability with an IP-PBX. And cer- sions, or at best, disparate interpretations of ISVs and voice application developers, the tainly over time there is the opportunity to RFC3261, particularly when functions task is daunting and you’re not likely to get work through the SIP implementations of beyond ‘connect and disconnect’ are the big PBX players to make changes to the various IP-PBX manufacturers, and starting with the market share leaders is the obvious approach, as Microsoft exhibited by “Dialogic is the only enterprise gateway provider that going direct with Cisco, and now moving on cut its telephony teeth on adjunct voice applications to co-operate with Nortel. In advance of that process, and to interface back to all the lega- and knows their needs and nuances inside out.” cy switches, an IP media gateway is the solution, providing the translation to TDM required. Where does that leave voice appli- accommodate your needs.” interfaces required to make the solution fly.” cations developers seeking to deploy their So is Machi slamming SIP and the way Unfortunately, most gateways have been applications on an IP media server platform? that IP-PBX manufacturers implemented it? designed for applications such as SIP trunking It leaves them suffering from IP, which in “Yes and no,” replies Machi. “The deeper and other forms of toll bypass, so not all gate- this case means ‘Interoperability Problems’.” issue in integrating voice applications to ways have been designed or developed with a Machi’s point is well made as is evident by Microsoft’s (quote - news - alert) entry into the unified messaging space with Exchange Server 2007. Although Exchange Server 2007 utilizes SIP and RTP as the signaling and transport protocols, for all but one PBX integration Microsoft recommends IP media gateways such as those from Dialogic to translate SIP signaling into a language the PBX is sure to understand. The landscape for true SIP interoperability from the PBX manufacturers to IP media applications is one that is evolving, but to be sure, it doesn’t ‘just work’. In order to make most applications inter-

24 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Get Flexible with a media application in mind — again, not Hybrid Media Server Platform readily capable of handling the supplementary features and functions that a messaging, By Bud Walder, Enterprise Marketing Manager, Dialogic Corporation IVR or contact center application needs. “However, Dialogic® IP Media Gateways Virtually all market research on enterprise communications systems will tell you are actually designed expressly for this pur- that IP-PBX and IP station shipments have surpassed traditional PBX systems and pose, on both sides of the network,” says traditional station equipment in the last year or so. Dig a layer deeper in the analy- Machi. “Dialogic is the only enterprise gate- sis, and it will show that the ‘IP-PBX’ market segment is split between two architec- way provider that cut its telephony teeth on adjunct voice applications and knows their tures, one that pushes all digital and analog connectivity to the perimeter via gate- needs and nuances inside out. So Dialogic way devices, typically described as client / server and represented primarily by Cisco, started its gateway design process by borrow- and the other more dominant architecture which integrates IP, digital and analog ing technology from its market leading and telephony interfaces into a central server (or series of servers). The second architec- unique PBX integration boards.” ture, known as a hybrid IP-PBX is a migratory architecture adopted by most tradi- Such boards emulate digital PBX station tional PBX players. By some research the hybrid IP-PBX accounts for about 70% of equipment with separate digital audio and the IP-PBX market share in the past few years. data paths, and whose proprietary signaling This mix of new system architectures and the existing installed base of tradi- had been decoded for the major PBX and tional TDM PBX systems present a challenge to value added application hybrid key system manufacturers over many providers. Now more than ever, platform flexibility is crucial for a company years — sort of like working through today’s that bases its business on deploying adjunct media servers connected to the SIP implementations. . . “By interfacing to the PBX in this way,” enterprise switching system. From one enterprise location to the next, you will says Machi, “a tight signaling and audio path find a range of connectivity requirements from basic analog interfaces through is established enabling fast and reliable trans- to well implemented and documented SIP interfaces. Your media server platform fers and data signaling, just the kind of thing provider needs to give you all the flexibility to deal with this diverse connectivity you need for messaging and IVR applica- landscape. tions. Dialogic used this technology to devel- Enter Dialogic®. As a leader in media and signaling technology for enterprise op a series of IP media gateways to enable media server platforms, Dialogic has developed a rich environment for developing these applications.” and deploying hybrid and pure IP media servers into today’s enterprise communica- “The Dialogic SIP implementation in the tions landscape. Dialogic® Host Media Processing (HMP) software, IP-Media gateways takes the supplementary service Gateways, Diva SIPcontrol Software, and T1/E1 HMP Interface Boards provide information from the PBX port and trans- developers with a way to migrate applications to an IP platform, while maintaining lates it into a well documented SIP interface for the IP media application,” says Machi. a full range of TDM network interface options to connect to any infrastructure “And Dialogic has carried that through to its encountered. digital T1/E1 series of gateways as well, Market leading Dialogic (news - alert) HMP Software is well equipped as a starting with a strong implementation of technology for enterprise IP and hybrid media servers. Dialogic has ported all the Q.SIG and other line side digital ISDN and traditional media functions to the host processor, and then some. Multi-media CAS protocols, all translated to SIP.” video resources now round out the suite of voice, conference, speech pre-process- “Most IP-PBX architectures on today’s ing, and fax resources. RTP, enhanced RTP and secure RTP are available transport market are hybrid TDM — IP,” says Machi, options and Dialogic offers resource licenses for H.323 and SIP signaling stacks, “so digital station ports and line side T1/E1 interfaces are still standard fare, even on or any 3rd party signaling stack can be used. And today’s host processors can newly deployed systems, providing the con- easily manage rich media applications at a range of densities suitable for enter- nectivity for Dialogic gateways to perform prise deployments. their translation magic. So while the land- Once an application is developed on Dialogic HMP Software, it can be deployed scape remains jagged with respect to SIP as an IP media server with a direct SIP interface to the IP-PBX, or into a hybrid interoperability, especially for functions ® beyond basic make-call/disconnect-call func- environment with a Dialogic IP Media Gateway. Dialogic HMP Software also can tionality, Dialogic has delivered a transition be used to deploy cost efficient hybrid architectures in a single server using compati- solution for IP application providers enabling ble T1/E1 interface boards, or with the upcoming release of Diva SIPcontrol soft- them to make the move with assurance.” ware enabling Diva analog and BRI interface board support. It’s like they are a little pill for IP, alleviat- ing SIP interoperability problems. IT For more information on getting flexible with IP and hybrid media server products, visit http://www.dialogic.com. Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s IP Communications Group.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 25 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By Tony Rybczynski

Business Convergence: The Path to Enterprise Transformation

Gartner estimates that over the next 5 years, enterprises worldwide will waste $100B by taking the easy road and following outdated networking design practices, as opposed to focusing IT investments on transforming the business by spending money where it matters most. Just because you can do something, should you? What matters most? In their survey of 400 CIOs, the four top CIO business priorities for 2006 were: improving business processes, lowering operating costs, attracting and growing customer relations and supporting competitive advantage. In short, what matters most is ensuring that IT’s strategic plans align with the strategic plans of the business. Through Business Convergence, the enterprise is transformed by allowing the enterprise to accelerate decision-making and business processes, to rebalance operational expenses towards strategic initiatives, to enhance customer engagement, and to apply IT resources to strengthen competitive positioning.

Four Strategies for Business Convergence Communications capabilities are embraced by end users for There are four key strategies that can help CIOs execute on maximum business advantage. their priorities and move their enterprise towards business Secondly, communications enable your business processes. convergence. Are human delays slowing down your business processes, Firstly, adopt Unified Communications. (news - alert) Your impacting customer service, ship dates, new product devel- people are your key strength, but what percentage of the col- opment, and problem resolution, and, in turn both top lective knowledge across your organization is being used? and bottom-lines? Communication-enabling your business Your answer is very likely closer to 20% than to 80%. One of processes is targeted at eliminating these delays. These the major impediments is that communications has become processes can take the form of person and application-initi- ineffective across an increasingly mobile workforce, with ated interactions. In the first case, presence and directory multiple phone numbers, email addresses and inboxes. information are embedded in the application allowing the Unified Communications simplifies the end user experience user to initiate instant messaged, email, voice or multime- by bringing these different communications modes together dia session directly from the application. For example, a and enhancing them through presence and location services, nurse using a clinical application could easily check the multimedia conferencing and personalization. Unified availability of a patient’s doctor and initiate communica- Communications enhances customer service delivered tion, eliminating lost time associated with voicemail tag through contact centers by allowing end customers to engage and missed calls. In the second case, the application can with the enterprise over their preferred self-serve or agent- initiate alerts and notifications, or schedule conference calls assisted channel (web, telephony, email, chat, and video). based on presence and calendar information. For example, Unified Communications a supply chain application, on allows knowledge workers to detecting a shortfall in supply, collaborate more effectively could send notifications and anytime, anywhere over any relevant data to key stakehold- device; information workers Partnering is a key strategic step ers and even schedule collabo- to reach out to subject matter towards business convergence. ration for faster resolution. experts to accelerate decision Working with key stakeholders making; and service workers (lines of business and enter- to address issues more quickly. prise-wide application owners) Unified Communications also for both customer and employ- unifies the supporting communications infrastructure onto a ee-facing applications and adopting Service Oriented common software-based platform, which is easier to engineer Architecture (SOA) frameworks will provide the required to meet security, compliance and disaster recovery and busi- agility in meeting business needs. ness continuity requirements. Working with end user com- Thirdly, deploy an application-aware network. This strate- munities of knowledge, information and service workers, and gic imperative addresses this challenge, while recognizing that with lines of business will ensure that these Unified the underlying IT infrastructure must meet the need of three

26 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index key stakeholders. Firstly, it must meet the implicit or explicit are strategic and should be staffed internally and which could service level agreements for end user Quality of Experience be out-sourced in the form of integration (design, deploy, (QoE). Secondly, it must meet the needs of CXOs in areas support, evolve), managed and hosted services. Any risks asso- such as security, regulatory compliance including privacy and ciate with accelerating enterprise transformation to meet busi- financial control, business continuity and disaster recovery, ness needs can be minimized through judicious use of services and performance needs of enterprise-wide applications from trusted partners. Partnering is a key strategic step (finance, HR, ERP). Thirdly, it needs to meet the needs of IT towards business convergence. to optimize network performance while reducing the total Business convergence is a compelling vision, resulting in cost of ownership. Broadly speaking, the keys to achieving the alignment of IT and business priorities. These four strate- these objectives are appropriately distributed application- gic imperatives enable your enterprise to transform itself with awareness for consistent QoE and application performance low technology and business risk, to accelerate time to X optimization, and autonomic operation to dynamically adjust across the enterprise- time to customer service, to problem to changing traffic, threat and failure conditions. The result is solution, to revenue and more generally to meeting new busi- overall simplification while meeting business needs, thus free- ness needs. IT ing up resources to address new strategic initiatives such as Unified Communications and communications-enabled busi- Tony Rybczynski is Director of Strategic Enterprise Technologies at ness processes. Nortel. (quote - news - alert) He has over 20 years experience in Fourthly, partner for success. Is your IT staff too busy the application of packet network technology. For more information, maintaining your current network, server and storage environ- please visit http://www.nortel.com. ments to undertake new initiatives to move the business forward? Are you concerned about managing risk in your busi- If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either print or PDF for- ness? You are not alone. The above strategic imperatives mat), please visit Reprint Management Services online at require new skills that transcend voice, network and applica- http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a representative via e-mail at tion skills. In addition, enterprises need to decide which areas [email protected] or by phone at 800-290-5460.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 27 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By Hunter Newby

Nature and Networks

PTC 2007 Conference in Hawaii has just ended and as usual it delivered a great learning experience about the laws of networks. The learning takes place in both a classroom style setting and in business suites all throughout the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort. Various aspects of the networking world are analyzed and discussed ranging from how the networks are built and operated to how they are maximized and priced. One thing is very clear, not all networks are carrier networks in the business of selling services. There are many other types of networks with different economic models. The one common bond that they all share though is the need to be physically connected somewhere to each other. The PTC is a tremendous event supported by a great Common Peering points with established connections are the organization with a history of being a proponent for change. key to seamless rerouting of course, but in every instance it is The theme for PTC 2007 was “Beyond Telecom” and as Ken the physical layer that that comes first. Since many of the Zita, PTC Conference Chairman and Board of Governors undersea cables were physically cut, or their network equipment Member put it, “The theme was spot on”. It has been said damaged, what was required was a physical restoration plan of that the only constant is change. Telecom as we all know it action to go in to effect. This did not happen as quickly as can now be referred to as telecom as we knew it. everyone would have liked. It seems that due to the lack of a The change was crystallized in the types of attendees that defined, common, physical layer of interconnection points with were present this year, including major search engines that a network critical mass representing those major cable systems, have certain video interests and others from the once film a manual restoration was not possible. Since the proximity that industry now going through its own digital transformation. network meet points bring was not available or even in exis- The “networks” carry much more than voice, or Internet traf- tence, there was no plan to immediately deal with this outage. fic. It’s not only telecom, but “everycom”. All types of traffic Even if there were a plan, it’s not an easy task to execute, are riding over various types of media with distances great and given that so many routing calculations need to be determined small, and the importance of underlying fiber and/or wireless manually versus through the routing intelligence of software. networks has become very clear. That said, having fiber panels with cables terminated to them Because of a December 26, 2006 earthquake resulting in leading back to each of the wet and dry transport networks in the failure of nine undersea cable systems off the coast of and out of a region, along with a whole lot of fiber jumper Taiwan, the importance of the underlying fiber and transport cables, can help solve the problem. Having a lot of available networks could not have been made any clearer. The cable capacity to quickly throw at an outage like this helps. outages were not primary topics of discussion at the confer- Getting to the point where there are defined, common ence since they happened only a few short weeks prior to the meet points throughout the affected region will take a long event and could not have been scheduled, but there was cer- time. It is a major construction and collaboration project that tainly talk of the situation in the halls and sitting areas of the requires capital, and cooperation from network operators and Hilton Resort. The disruption of voice, VoIP and all sorts of governments. The political aspect will probably take the IP applications caused instant longest to sort out, but given the packet rerouting and congestion Because of a December 26, 2006 fallout from this disruption, the and started a massive physical path to physical restoration pre- layer repair project for almost earthquake... the importance of the paredness may be on a fast track. every major undersea cable underlying fiber and transport networks The Taiwan cable cuts and those operator in the region. parties they affected go well beyond On the switched and routed could not have been made any clearer. telecom and into the realms of side of IP the Any2 Exchange at finance, education and commerce 1 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles experienced a tremendous in general, and should be the impetus for a change in the way things have been built and spike in traffic immediately after the earthquake hit. As IP traffic operated in the region in the past. We would all be well advised looked for anyway around the cuts network operators had many to look at this example of a natural disaster and envision what a inherently planned protection schemes go in to effect. The Any2 restoration project would look like on this scale around other and several of its 84 members were able to use this peering point parts of the world. History repeats itself, so learning from the past as a means to keep the applications up and networks running. is the best way to prepare for the future. As John Savageau, Managing Director CRG West said, “About Hunter Newby is chief strategy officer for telx. (news - alert) For 20% of the traffic on the exchange right now is VoIP and we more information, please visit the company online at saw a major increase in all traffic in a matter of 4 seconds.” http://www.telx.com. IT

28 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index UUNI_JNNI_JN HH1616 IIMS_FMCMS_FMC IInternetTele.PagenternetTele.Page 1 1/30/071/30/07 1:12:161:12:16 PMPM

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The Ft. Lauderdale ECA Update

The Internet Telephony Conference & Expo Conference in Ft. Lauderdale this past January (January 23-26) was definitely a resounding success. The mix of conference sessions was well received and the exhibit floor handled even more traffic than in 2006. There was also a shift in the focus from previous IT Expos in that the attendees were not focused on “Is VoIP and converged IP right for my company?” but “What can we do to further enhance our converged deployment?”. One thing that remained the same was the close working of our offers with Eicon. We wanted to feature our partners relationship between TMC and the ECA. The Ft. Lauderdale here and we look forward to featuring our partners even more event marked the third year in a row that the ECA has hosted in coming events.” Maureen rated traffic as “serious.” Reseller Live and the second year co-hosting the Disaster and Cantata: Marc Costa, Program Manager OPS: “It’s been a good Business Continuity Workshop with TMC (see review in sep- show. We’ve seen NSPs, VARs, and users. The attendees have been arate column in this issue). of good quality. The response our SR140 FoIP product line and The three hour Reseller Live session of January 24 delivered our integrated media and signaling gateway (IMG1010) received a full array of reseller training tools. Of key interest was the at the show was tremendous. This demonstrates the acceptance shift in focus of this session from previous years. The atten- of FoIP as a necessary element of any VoIP rollout and the dees were less interested in overcoming the challenge of cus- IMG1010 as a critical component of a converged IP deployment.” tomer objections to implementing VoIP and more focused on Another ECA show participant was Ingate Systems that ran a pure selling skills. This is definitely great news as resellers are series of seminars throughout the week. The seminars were a the feet-on-the-street and their shift in focus demonstrates huge success as demonstrated by several standing-room only that end-users have finally accepted VoIP. (define - news -alert) sessions. Ingate also invited thought-leaders in the field, well- Panel participants were: known IP-PBX vendors, SIP trunking service providers and Moderator: Max Schroeder, Sr. VP FaxCore, Inc. even customers who shared their success stories and knowledge. Panelists: “These seminars were a compelling draw for IT EXPO Wendell Black, Vice President Sales, Oracle attendees thanks to the participation of industry leaders in Bob Nicols, AXIOM Sales Force Development SIP trunking,” noted Olle Westerberg, Chief Executive Don Gant, VP Business Development/Channel Marketing, Officer, Ingate Systems. “For instance, Ericsson’s and Iwatsu Voice Networks BandTel’s perspectives on the Latin American market provid- Steven J. Johnson, President, Ingate Systems Inc. ed important, timely information. Our case study session with The presentations were excellent, as demonstrated by the Sterling Bank offered the audience a first-hand look at a suc- fact that the attendees stayed focused for the full 3 hours and cessful SIP trunk deployment.” ShoreTel, another ECA mem- continued to participate in the questions and answer period ber, participated and conducted workshop demonstrations. past the scheduled finish time. To review the presentations, The interest for SIP trunking is enormous. As Rich Shockey, visit the ECA site (http://www.encomm.org) or go to Director and Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff of (http://www.tmcnet.com/339.1) to view them on the TMC NeuStar, Inc. and ENUM IETF working group Founder and site. Co-Chair aptly said, “2007 is the year for SIP Trunking.” Several ECA member companies were exhibiting, partici- “Another factor that contributed to the success of these pating in conference sessions and running workshops at the seminars was the partnership between Ingate and TMC,” con- event. We would like to share some of their observations. tinued Westerberg. “TMC is an innovative media company Todd Walker, Sales Vice President of Iwatsu stated “Good that truly understands the importance of new technologies quality traffic. Everyone’s interested in the value wheel that is such as SIP trunking.” where the technologies we offer can add value to their opera- SIP trunking is new but already a proven solution. Also, tions. It’s a great time to be in the industry: most SIP trunking deployments pay for themselves in six 1. Technology can deliver more value than ever before. months or less, so keep it on your radar screen. 2. There are lots of customers needing upgrades. As a closing note, the ECA would like to thank TMC for 3. Users and VARs are seeking help as never before.” all their cooperation and support. They are a good partner in Todd’s comments suggest to us that activities and energy at promoting industry growth and, together with the ECA, rep- the show reinforce the view that there’s lots of opportunity for resent a strong voice for the enterprise. IT new players with new energy. Mary Bradshaw is Executive Director of the Enterprise Dialogic was back in a big way and we asked Maureen Communications Association (http://www.encomm.org). Tusim, Partner Marketing Manager, to share her views on the Max Schroeder is a board member of the ECA, Media Relations event. “It’s been a great opportunity to re-introduce Dialogic’s Committee Chairman, and liaison to TMC. He is also the Sr. Vice legacy customers and partners to the new depth and breadth President of FaxCore, Inc. (http://www.faxcore.com).

30 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index

By John Cimko

Is This the Year for Broadband over Powerlines?

This is the year when everybody in America will have broadband service — that is, if government policymakers and the marketplace keep pace with the universal broadband goal set by President Bush. When the President announced that goal in a June 2004 The FCC acted three years ago to address interference speech, he focused special attention on broadband over pow- issues by adopting operational and technical requirements for erlines (BPL), saying that, since powerlines go everywhere, BPL aimed at avoiding harmful interference and resolving they provide a “great opportunity to spread broadband interference issues when they do occur. The requirements, throughout America.” which were affirmed by the FCC in an action taken last year, BPL has long been a promising technology that has never also include emission limits for BPL equipment. The FCC’s quite turned the corner. But the FCC has taken some actions have been viewed as a shot in the arm for BPL entre- aggressive actions aimed at spurring BPL deployment and preneurs, largely because the FCC concluded that its rules turning BPL into a viable competitor against DSL and adequately protect licensed spectrum users from harmful cable modems in broadband markets. Bringing a third com- interference. In addition, companies like Motorola have been petitor into the broadband field would be great news for designing BPL delivery systems that substantially reduce inter- consumers, and would also benefit VoIP service providers ference, and the American Radio Relay League has been who, for example, would have the opportunity to partner working with utilities, equipment manufacturers, and regula- with electric utilities to use BPL as a pipe for mass market tors to address interference issues through cooperative prob- delivery of VoIP. lem-solving efforts. BPL involves an overlay of equipment, software, and man- The other problem has been coming up with a winning agement services folded into the electric grid without altering business plan. Several factors make it difficult for BPL to physical electrical paths. A number of features make BPL a gain a foothold in the broadband market. The entrenched potentially attractive competitor. It supports “triple play” serv- incumbent cable and telephone companies have a very ices (VoIP, high-speed Internet access, and video on demand) strong market presence. Electric utilities lack expertise in and other broadband services over existing powerlines. And running consumer telecommunications businesses, and the BPL doesn’t require any additional wiring at customer premis- utilities have not often been inclined to embrace and es. Users can access the Internet and broadband services sim- invest in new technologies like BPL. So far, comprehen- ply by plugging into any electrical outlet. sive, uniform standards and protocols have not been estab- BPL runs as an Internet Protocol network, making the BPL lished for BPL systems. And, even though BPL makes use systems robust, scalable, and flexible. IP makes the configura- of existing infrastructure at customer premises, electric tion of BPL networks easier, and bypasses expenses for large utilities still face equipment and labor costs in order to head-end or central office facilities. BPL currently provides deploy BPL systems. end user speeds of between 1 But the picture may be get- Mbps and 4 Mbps (for both ting brighter. The FCC adopted downloads and uploads), with an Order in November 2006 some deployments reaching BPL involves an overlay of equipment, classifying BPL as an interstate speeds up to 10 Mbps. software, and management services information service, rather than So — Why hasn’t BPL taken as a telecommunications service. off? And what has the FCC folded into the electric grid without This mirrors an action the FCC been doing to try to jump start had taken in 2005 classifying the technology? altering physical electrical paths. DSL the same way, following a BPL has grappled with two U.S. Supreme Court decision main problems — solving inter- upholding an FCC ruling that ference with licensed spectrum users, and working out an eco- cable modem services should be treated as information serv- nomically feasible business plan. ices. Information services are subject to less regulation than Electric lines used for broadband, it turns out, act as huge telecommunications services, so the FCC’s action makes it antennas, because of their length and their height above easier for BPL to compete with DSL and cable modems in ground. The lines radiate radio frequency energy over the air- broadband markets. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin noted waves, causing potential interference to licensed spectrum that classifying BPL as an information service will help fos- users at considerable distances. ter the development of BPL and promote broadband com-

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www.dialogic.com petition, saying that “[b]y encouraging the development of promise as a ubiquitous broadband solution that would offer new technologies, such as BPL, we can best achieve the a viable alternative to cable [and] digital subscriber line . . . .” President’s goal of universal broadband by the end of And maybe 2007 will prove to be the year in which con- 2007.” sumers, along with VoIP In addition, electric utilities providers and other IP-based are looking at approaches that As Chairman Martin has said, BPL “hold[s] service providers, begin to reap would use broadband not only the benefits of BPL in the for Internet access and IP-based great promise as a ubiquitous broadband broadband marketplace. IT services, but also for “intelligent grid” applications like automat- solution that would offer a viable alternative John Cimko served for 15 years at ic meter reading, faster identifi- to cable [and] digital subscriber line . . . .” the FCC, and currently practices law cation of electrical problems, at Greenberg Traurig LLP. He can and automatic distribution be reached at [email protected]. switching, which facilitates power restoration. The utilities The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author are also considering partnering with companies having and should not be attributed to his firm or its clients. Greenberg expertise in delivering consumer telecommunications prod- Traurig is an international, full-service law firm with more than ucts and services. This approach can involve a “landlord” 1,200 attorneys and governmental professionals in 24 offices in model, where the utility rents the grid to an outside party for the United States and Europe. For additional information, visit the a percentage of profits the outside party obtains by providing firm’s website at http://www.gtlaw.com. BPL over the grid, or a “joint venture” approach, where the utility is more directly involved with Internet service If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either print or PDF for- providers in providing BPL. mat), please visit Reprint Management Services online at The FCC deserves credit for trying to advance the prospects http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a representative via e-mail at for BPL. As Chairman Martin has said, BPL “hold[s] great [email protected] or by phone at 800-290-5460.

34 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index The missing piece to the complicated CSR puzzle.

Call recording and review are the most effective and efficient ways to ensure your customers receive high quality treatment and accurate information. How your business manages customer “touch-points” will determine the overall success of your call center. ECHO™ provides the vehicle for focused customer experience management through real-time monitoring and agent performance evaluations. These bundled applications along with Teleformix’s industry experience make ECHO™ the ideal recorder for any customer looking for a competitively priced, feature-rich recording solution. Based on IBM® hardware and software solutions, ECHO™ includes System x™ hardware, Tivoli® Storage Manager, IBM Information Management Software, Rational WEB Developer and WebSphere® Application Server. • Browser-based recording, quality monitoring and CRM platform • Synchronized voice and screen recordings • Screen Capture file footprint requires a total of only 1 - 2 Mb in size for the average four minute conversation, including audio and video • “Over-the-shoulder” screen clarity • Screen Capture • Unlimited scalability, Express and Cluster solutions • Service Oriented Architecture • Enterprise Integration Enablement

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™ Teleformix™ is an IBM® Business Partner that has demonstrated success in delivering solutions to meet the needs of call center customers. ECHO runs on IBM on demand infrastructure including Tivoli® software, WebSphere®, System x™ and Linux®. This proven technology is tailored to address the business and IT needs of companies like yours. To find out how you can leverage IBM’s on demand technology for success, visit: www.ibm.com/software/data

IBM, the IBM Business Partner emblem, Tivoli software, System x and WebSphere are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the ® United States, other countries, or both. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and other countries. By Brough Turner

Telephony Web Services

Today, most major Internet applications provide public programming interfaces. Mapquest introduced an API in 2004. Then when Google introduced their Maps API in June 2005, there was an explosion in applications, called Mashups, integrating data from other sources into Google maps, or integrating Google maps into other web services. Today it’s hard to surf the web without running into third party applications that leverage map services. But maps are just one highly visible example of the burgeoning field of mashups based on web services APIs. Amazon, Flickr, eBay, YouTube, Facebook — all offer APIs. These APIs benefit consumers by allowing entirely new services to be easily concocted while helping service providers grow their communities of users (and their ad revenue!). But parallels in the telephony world are extremely limited. tial VoIP (define - news - alert) service package. Abbeynet Indeed, using Google (quote - news - alert) to search for the also focuses on VoIP services, with an optional pre-paid phrase “telephony web services” finds only one of the compa- billing platform and a presence server. nies discussed later in this article. This is a nascent field. As an example of what’s possible, LignUp did a mashup Traditional fixed and mobile operators still run highly con- using their telephony services API and the popular hosted strained voice networks. Yes, you can have your computer sales management system, Salesforce.com. A significant prob- place and receive calls, but if you want to overlay a private lem with any sales force automation system is getting field numbering scheme for use between phones in your far-flung sales folks to actually input data. The Salesforce.com-telepho- offices (a voice VPN) — such services are only available from ny mashup took two days to implement and the result is slick, your operator. Likewise, if you want to integrate your cus- handling everything you’d expect, including, calling customer care software with call center functionality, you start tomers, capturing telephony information and filling in with PBX technology, as public networks are not open. Even Salesforce.com forms for both incoming and outgoing calls. access to your own call history requires scraping data from Each of the platform vendors has companies providing itemized bills. hosted services on their platform. For example, Streamdoor Does the new world of VoIP do any better? Not much. Ltd. provides hosted contact center services on a LignUp Major VoIP operators, like Vonage, use VoIP to reproduce platform. It’s configured and controlled via web service APIs, traditional fixed-line services — basically “digital POTS” — but the work is principally by Streamdoor on a customer- no open APIs there. Skype offers PC-based APIs for the specific basis. Skype client and you could argue that’s all that makes sense The closest I’ve found to customers doing their own for a peer-to-peer service. There are no central services to mashups is with hosted service provider M1 Global. They expose through web service APIs. But the test is what can focus on business process automation for enterprise customer you do with their APIs and the answer is client extensions. care, i.e. the intersection of business policies and procedures Since Skype clients run as a single instance per PC, you can’t with call centers and front line employees, and they provide easily implement a multi-channel back-to-back user agent not only web service APIs, but a set of business process mod- (B2BUA) and a VPN. eling and application development tools based on the Eclipse open source development platform. Telephony Web Services Technology The good news is a number of companies are developing Prospects telephony web services technology and a few offer hosted Telephony web services technology is in place today. What’s services directly or through partners. None of this is free and lacking is the widespread low cost access that web services no service is widespread, but it’s a sign of things to come. from Google or Amazon offer. The problem is business mod- LignUp Corporation, Abbeynet S.p.A., Ubiquity Software els — PSTN calls still involve per-minute charges. But that and Angel.com offer SIP-based VoIP service platforms that won’t last. Costs are falling and other funding models will can be controlled via web services APIs and they each allow appear. Then we can expect telephony to join the word of access at several levels including some fairly high-level func- web services mashups, with an accompanying burst of services tionality. For example, LignUp offers basic media server and innovation. IT call control functionality but also complete PBX and messaging systems that are configured and controllable via web Brough Turner is Senior VP of Technology, CTO and Co-Founder of APIs. Angel.com is more focused on call center applications NMS Communications. (news - alert) For more information, please while Ubiquity offers conferencing and a complete residen- visit the company online at http://www.nmscommunications.com.

36 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index

By Rich Tehrani & Max Schroeder

Florida — Disaster Preparedness and Business Continuity Planning Workshop

The first official Disaster Preparedness Phase 4 Plan Development Communications Forum (DPCF) meeting was held Phase 5 Maintenance, Testing and Audit one year ago at ITExpo East 2006. This was followed Howard Lubert of SafeHatch and DirectorForce covered in October with our first West Coast meeting in San Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and positioned SasS as the ulti- Diego at ITExpo West. The second East Coast meet- mate disaster avoidance model. He also reviewed how SaaS ing and workshop was held in Ft. Lauderdale on functions well as a security and compliance tool and is currently the darling of the private equity marketplace. February 25, 2007. During the past year, the DPCF Howard shared some impressive information that he has evolved into a much larger group and our partic- obtained on the Interned and compiled by Gartner: ipating workshop panelists reflect this growth of both • Software as a Service will be the business model of choice numbers and diversity. TMC’s Greg Galitzine also by 2008 • The North American on-demand market will grow from hosted a separate panel session on January 24th which (estimated) $7.5B in 2003 to $41B by 2008, a 41% CAGR demonstrates the high interest in business continuity. • One third of all new software will be delivered on- demand by 2010 The speakers for the January 25th session were: Moderators Wendell Black of Oracle (quote - news - alert) opened his • Max Schroeder, Senior VP — FaxCore, Inc. presentation with this definition of business continuity: “The discipline of managing an enterprise under adverse conditions. • Richard “Zippy” Grigonis, Executive Editor, TMC IP This is done by implementing resilience strategies, recovery Communications Group objectives, and crisis management plans as a key component of Panelists an integrated risk management initiative.” Source: The • Mike Emerson Senior Manager Security & Business Business Continuity Institute. A key subject of Wendell’s pres- Continuity Services, Citrix entation was call/contact centers as a hosted or managed service. Two factors he emphasized were 1) “How much data can • Wendell Black, VP Sales, Oracle you afford to lose?” 2) “How long can you afford to be down?” • Howard Lubert, Safehatch He then outlined some questions to ask vendors that are seek- • Joe Gaughan, Product Manager, Iwatsu Voice Networks ing a hosted solution. You definitely need to review the full • Craig Tony, Cantata presentation if your company is looking to employ hosted or • Camilo Garcia, Telefonica managed services. • Bernardo Schneiderman, Telematics Bus. Consultants An interesting addition to Wendell’s presentation was a brief • Tim Himes, Arise Virtual Solutions, Inc. (formerly overview of the operations of Arise by Tim Himes. The home- WillowCSN, Incorporated) based sales, customer service and technical support concepts have become some of the fastest-growing business segments in All of the session presentations are posted on the Enterprise America. The phrases Homeshoring... Virtual Call Center... Communications Association (ECA — http://www.encomm.org) Work From Home... all describe a professional yet unique or at (http://www.tmcnet.com/339.1) on the TMC site. Some suite of Arise services using home-based professionals. The fact workshop highlights: that these people are also spread over a wide geographic area provides for a built-in business continuity model. Arise’s oper- Mike Emerson of Citrix (news - alert) opened his session ations are based on Oracle’s contact center application and with this quote by Albert Einstein “By failing to plan, you are they one of the largest operations of it’s type in the USA. planning to fail”. Another key point he made was “When Joe Gaughan of Iwatsu Voice Networks (news - alert) planning for Business Continuity always plan for the worst offered excellent guidance on just what defines a “crisis” as and the unexpected — Anything less becomes a subset.” Mike opposed to a “disaster” and provided these examples: also outlined a 5-step business continuity plan as listed below. • Crisis — A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turn- Please visit one of the above sites for full details. ing point. Phase 1 Project Initiation - Lose your T1/PRI/Power Phase 2 Business Impact Analysis - Hackers Phase 3 Continuity Strategies

38 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index - Server/Equipment failure of the Global VSAT Forum. VSAT is an acronym for Very • Disaster — An occurrence causing widespread destruction Small Aperture Terminal, but more simply put it describes a and distress; a catastrophe small satellite terminal that can be used for one-way and/or - Flood interactive communications via satellite. Combined with wire- - Terrorism less communications, you have the ultimate business continu- - Pandemic ity communications network. Bernardo’s presentation outlines Later in his presentation Joe emphasized that it is “More the two types of Satcom that are available and the various likely that risk will come from someone inside your compa- operators. ny!” When putting your plan together you need to carefully review your internal controls, policies and procedures to be Lastly, Camilo Garcia of Telefonica provided an overview of fully protected. the global and Latin American markets with respect to business continuity and disaster preparedness. Craig Tony of Cantata presented a short questions and answer scenario to dispel some myths regarding IP and circuit As evidenced from the above, the workshop covered a wide switched communication. For example, for the question “Is IP range of topics but all roads pointed back to IP and mobile or circuit switched communications technology perceived as a solutions. Please visit the sites listed above for full details on better network architecture for failover?” 70% of the respon- the presentation. IT dents selected circuit switched when, in fact, VoIP is more reliable given that: Max Schroeder is a board member of theECA, media relations com- • Internet Protocol / “IP” has “survivability” designed into it mittee chairman, and liaison to TMC. He is also the Sr. Vice • IP Networks for VoIP are designed with load balanced nodes President of FaxCore, Inc. (http://www.faxcore.com) to avoid cascading failures resulting from partial failures • Success is dependent upon best network design practices Rich Tehrani is the President and Group Editor-in-Chief at TMC and — which should be a part of the strategy regardless is Conference Chairman of Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO. Bernardo Schneiderman provided us with a brief overview By Kelly Anderson

IPDR — What a Difference a Year Makes

It was one year ago that IPDR.org set out to tackle accounting challenges for IPTV with an open meeting in San Jose. We had over 50 companies represented at that meeting drawing around 90 representatives. It was quite an impressive meeting. We were able to define issues and subsequently create an aggressive work plan that would be done by the end of the year. After extensive reviews from multiple organizations, we released in December of this past year, Service Specifications and modifications to our Streaming Protocol to support any type of content accounting and metrics management requirement.

Not only did this mark a significant capability in making does not have access to necessary information that could IPTV services operational as well as profitable, it has also explain or fix the problem, the customer is going to be dis- marked a significant increase in industry-wide adoption. satisfied. Add in the information gleaned from viewing Late January, the Internet Protocol Detail Record habits, recorded and live television, remote functions and Organization (IPDR.org) announced that CableLabs® adopt- the like, and monitoring the home network is set up to be ed IPDR.org technologies into its OpenCable™ Application a crucial part of a successful IPTV launch. Platform (OCAP™) Version 1.1 initiative. Specifically, the The IPDR.org technologies included in the CableLabs set-top box (STB) API for metrics gathering — a critical specifications are the IPDR/Streaming Protocol (IPDR/SP) function of the OCAP 1.1 release — will be an application transport and the IPDR/XDR encoding specifications incor- of JSR 190, the Java Community Process (JCP) specification porated by reference, along with a full open source code of an API for metrics gathering. IPDR.org technologies are implementation of production-ready development tools to embedded in JSR 190; they will be the specification for integrate the technology into vendor solutions. This avail- encoding metrics messages and transporting them to a collec- ability of code will quicken the industry adoption and tion point. This means all OCAP 1.1 set-top boxes will have usability of this solution to near-term IPTV launches. This is integrated into them the IPDR.org technologies. This new incredible news for a competitive industry that requires development is not just exciting for the adoption of IPDR quick marketplace integration. specifications, but it addresses the major issue of monitoring I am excited about the developments over the past year. the home network that has plagued service providers for With so many standards efforts going unnoticed and decades. unused today; I am thrilled to As with all customer-related be part of efforts that will trouble reporting issues, noth- enable big changes for the mar- ing is more frustrating than All OCAP 1.1 set-top boxes will have ketplace and big dollars for its being on hold with a customer integrated into them the IPDR.org adopters. IT service representative that can- not duplicate your specific technologies... it addresses the major issue Kelly Anderson is President and issue. I know my breath is held COO of IPDR.org, a collaborative the whole time hoping not to of monitoring the home network that has industry consortium focused on hear the words that will end plagued service providers for decades. developing and driving the adoption the phone call, “It’s your of next-gen service usage exchange phone, outlet, house wiring, standards worldwide. etc. . . .” that gives you no resolution to your last 50 minutes on the line. Imagine that If you are interested in purchasing reprints of this article (in either print or being a customer with IPTV. Unlike the phone where calls PDF format), please visit Reprint Management Services online at are placed to repair after the call and trouble, calls will be http://www.reprintbuyer.com or contact a representative via e-mail at placed while the trouble is happening. If a service provider [email protected] or by phone at 800-290-5460.

40 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index

By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis

Bus & Board 2007

I’ve said it many times: of all the expos, conferences, seminars, and assorted mass-gatherings the Zipster has encountered over the years, his Number One favorite — aside from TMC’s own ITEXPOs, of course! — remains the yearly Bus & Board Conference. It’s a show that’s not too big (350 attendees and about 45 sponsors) but not too small either. All of the right experts and Elma Electronic, Inc. — (news - alert) They announced a analysts show up every year, along with just about every ven- new 5U MicroTCA shelf, featuring pluggable fan trays and an dor I’ve written about over the years who makes high avail- air filter. It comes with the 14-slot Dual Star backplane. Elma ability systems for telecom (and other markets) and the com- also announced a new AdvancedTCA handle that incorporates ponents that are used to build them, such as backplanes and a slide-motion button to latch the handle shut and to activate boards. an optional micro-switch. The ergonomics of this latching I’ve attended every Bus & Board Conference since the first feature reduce the amount of force required to disengage the one was held in 1999 in San Jose, California. Interestingly, handle. The user also gets an audible confirmation that the the latest Bus & Board, held January 15-16, 2007 in Long latch is closed and that the PCB is fully inserted. Beach, California, is the last of its kind. The show is changing (http://www.elma.com) its name to “Critical Embedded Systems”. It will still be run under the auspices of the VME International Trade Association (VITA) led by the inimitable Ray Alderman. The Emerson Network Power — (news - alert) Their new new Critical Embedded Systems show will be an amalgam of Embedded Computing business, formerly Artesyn Bus and Board and two other VITA-sponsored events: Communication Products, announced a new high-speed Military Embedded Electronics and Computing Conference switched fabric interface for its KAT4000 AdvancedTCA and CoolCON, which is devoted to the liquid cooling of (ATCA) telecom blade. The enhanced interface provides dual electronics. 10-Gigabit Ethernet channels for accessing the ATCA High- At this latest show, some interesting hardware appeared. . . . Speed Fabric, and the blade ccan accommodate up to four AdvancedMC modules. To maximize system throughput and ACT/Technico — (news - alert) This well-known supplier flexibility, the KAT4000 provides separate control/manage- of embedded products and CompactPCI (cPCI) and ment and data planes, each with its own independent switch- VMEbus solutions had on display their rugged, 3U high ing capability and ATCA fabric connection. cPCI Gigabit Ethernet switch that enables full management (http://www.artesyncp.com) via an on-board processor. The 661x series of switches is suited for various embedded network switching applications, GE Fanuc Embedded Systems — (news - alert) These guys including ground mobile, shipboard, airborne and homeland acquired Radstone Embedded Computing, announced three security. (http://www.acttechnico.com) new 3U high VPX boards and at the show announced the 3U VPX MAGIC1 Rugged Display Processor. MAGIC 1 is a Aitech Defense Systems — (news - alert) These guys usu- ruggedized integrated subsystem consisting of the 2.0 GHz ally develop products for harsh environments, particularly Intel Core Dual processor-based SBC340 single board com- defense, aerospace and astronautics applications. Their prod- puter and GRA110 graphics processor. ucts can also function in other mission critical areas, of course. At B&B they announced many new items, including (http://www.gefanucembedded.com) an environmentally sealed, 2-slot 3U high CompactPCI enclosure with a modular and removable power supply. They also announced a high density PMC (PCI Mezzanine Card) that provides up to 64 GB of NAND Flash memory in two banks with DMAC. Called the enhanced M222, its new FPGA-based DMA controllers can sustain data transfer rates of over 45 MBps as well as a power consumption of less than 7 Watts. (http://www.rugged.com)

Elma Bustronic Corporation — (news - alert) This major force in high performance backplanes announced a new 14- Bus & Board is no more. slot Dual Star MicroTCA backplane, featuring 10 AMC slots, Ray Alderman (pictured) and dual redundant power module and MicroTCA Controller is changing the name of Hub (MCH) slots in a 14-slot backplane. the show to Critical (http://www.ElmaBustronic.com) Embedded Systems.

42 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Project1 5/2/2006 12:23 PM Page 3 1.4 and 1.8 GHz with a high-performance Intel E7320 chip set. It supports up to 4GB of DDR-II memory (PC400) as well as AMC.1 (PCIe), AMC.2 (Gigabit Ethernet), AMC.3 (Serial ATA) and ComPort connections. (4) the Kontron AM4301 Quad GbE Module (Mid-Size) is an AdvancedMC unit for network applications demanding multiple ports directly from an AdvancedTCA processor blade. Based on the Intel 82571EB Gibabit Controller, the AM4301 features 4 x 10Base-T/100Base-Tx/1000Base-T ports and supports PCI-E x8, x4 and x1 link and remote management via IPMI v1.5. When offered in combination with AdvancedTCA platforms, TEM (Telecom Equipment Manufacturers) clients literally conserve valuable system slots, as the AM4301 maximizes communications I/O for Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet networks with four independent 10/100/1000 ports from a single slot. Hybricon Corporation — (news - alert) The masters of (http://www.kontron.com) computer modeling and simulation of signal integrity to the backplane design and manufacturing industry announced that MEN Micro — (news - alert) They had on display their it would become a member of the Motorola Communications D6, a 6U high CompactPCI single board computer for Server Alliance, “an ecosystem of technology, service and solu- embedded systems demanding high performance. The D6 can tion providers aligned to provide standards-based solution ele- be used for Windows or Linux applications in a wide range of ments for Motorola’s communications servers”. As an Alliance telecom and datacom equipment. The single-slot D6 is a 64- participant, Hybricon will receive access to Motorola embed- bit, 66 MHz system board based on a Pentium M processor ded communications computing product roadmaps, develop- with up to 2 MB of L2 cache, up to 533 MHz front-side bus ment systems, and participate in marketing activities with frequency and up to 2 GHz clock frequency. MEN Micro also Motorola. (http://www.hybricon.com) offers a single-slot 3U cPCI wireless LAN interface plug-in board (called the F209L) for safe wireless communication in Kontron — (news - alert) One of the largest embedded harsh and mobile environments. It supports 802.11b, which computing companies, was displaying four new includes 40 or 128-bit WEP encryption and data rates of up AdvancedMC (Advanced Mezzanine Card) modules for to 11 Mbps with auto-fallback and an output power of 20 security, processing, I/O and storage configurations of pre- dBm. (http://www.menmicro.com) integrated open modular equipment designed for a multitude of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem), 3G and wireline Optima EPS — (news - alert) An Elma company, network applications. Two of the four new AdvancedMC announced at the show what’s said to be the industry’s first units — the Kontron AM4330 IPSec module and the MicroTCA cabinet enclosure. The 19-inch wide cabinet Kontron AM4301 Quad GbE module — are based on the accepts 10 MicroTCA single-width subracks, accepting 120 new Mid-Size (4HP) form-factor, recently introduced by the full-size modules or 240 compact modules plus power modules dissipating a total of about 6KW in a closed loop heat PICMG (PCI Industrial Computing Manufacturers Group) exchanger system. (http://www.elma.com) as a flexible and complementary option to the existing Full- Size and Compact sizes. Mid-Size AdvancedMC modules Pentek — (news - alert) For those of you VMEbus fans out (4HP) are intended to accommodate the design of a wider there, Pentek released at the show its new Model 7141-703 range of modules that match both AdvancedTCA and PMC/XMC module. It features two 14-bit, 125 MHz A/Ds MicroTCA system solutions. The new Kontron and a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA. It is configured as a AdvancedMC modules are as follows: (1) the Kontron ruggedized module and is fully compatible with both cPCI AM4330 IPsec Module (Mid-Size), designed to dynamically and VME baseboards. (http://www.pentek.com) handle both IPsec and SSL VPN processing applications deployed within mobile communications infrastructure sys- PLX Technology — (news - alert) a global supplier of PCI tems, including Media Gateways, Radio Network Express (PCIe) solutions, introduced 3 new switches at the Controllers, and Serving GPRS Support Nodes. The show. Shipping today, the PLX ExpressLane PEX 8525 (24 AM4330 may be integrated with AdvancedTCA carrier lanes, 5 ports), PEX 8533 (32 lanes, 6 ports), and PEX 8547 boards and CPU Nodes, as well as in MicroTCA-based sys- (48 lanes, 3 ports) joint the recently introduced PEX 8548 tems. (2) the Kontron AM4520 SAS Storage Module (Full- (48 lanes, 9 ports) as next-gen PCI Express switches, based on Size) which offers up to 73GB storage capacity. It has a PLX’ “Cut-Thru” architecture, which drops latency down to a MTBF of 1.4 million hours. (3) Kontron AM4002 mere 110ns in both host centric and peer-to-peer modes, Processor Module (Full-Size/Mid-Size) is equipped with the thereby increasing throughput. (http://www.plx.com) latest Intel Pentium M technology for high performance Richard “Zippy” Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC’s IP computing within a small footprint. The core component of Communications Group. IT the AM4002 is an Intel Pentium M processor available at

44 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index

A Special Editorial Series Sponsored By CommuniGate Systems

Innovative Ideas from the “Service Provider Applications” Experts

Media Applications for providers, as we Network Operator Trends and know that infrastructure and connectivity- based services will become a commodity far more quickly than what happened to email.” By Richard “Zippy” Grigonis Opportunities “There are two different types of customers,” says Doyle. “To start with, let’s say you and I are customers of AT&T and we’re consumers. There are things that you and I can pay for on that network above and beyond the DSL connection, such as ring tones, sharing music files, movie files, and in particular pay per view [PPV], because the connectivity will be fast enough so that movies can be streamed to you at home. Then there are community-based games where people on the network can share and use the game together — that will be a new revenue stream in the future as broadband itself becomes commoditized.” “On the business side, if you’re buying Service providers, Mobile carriers and it could be KDDI, or Tele2. They used to be broadband from a provider, what are the other broadband network operators continu- a telephone company, then they became a applications that you would be willing to ally search for new and exciting services to DSL-and-telephone company. They do $85 pay for?” asks Doyle. “Our argument is that attract and hold subscribers. Since 1991, billion in business a year, with the lion’s such applications must be very tailored CommuniGate Systems (news - alert) share of that money coming from ‘minutes’ applications for the business environment or or “toll-based” traffic — billing for how long (http://www.communigate.com) of Mill processes. We’ve done a lot of research on people talk on the phone to some “location”. Valley, California, has been the acknowl- But once DSL is installed in your home and four distinct enterprise segments: medical edged leader of developing scalable, feature- mine, we can talk together over the Internet offices, dental offices, law firms and architec- laden solutions for the Internet because we’ve paid for that DSL connection tural/graphic arts studios. We sampled Communications industry. to the “network” for a flat fee. That’s a big around San Francisco and Los Angeles and CommuniGate’s VP of Business dilemma for a big carrier such as AT&T, talked to these businesses and asked them, Development, Jon R. Doyle, says that his where most of their revenue isn’t coming ‘What are some of the things that would be company’s expertise is based on its long from the DSL connection, but from the beneficial to you VoIP-wise?’ As it happens, experience dealing with network operators minutes spent by people talking on their it definitely wasn’t cheap phone calls or toss- around the globe that demand services house phones. Adding to that, AT&T and ing their PBX out the window. They told us others also have the same dilemma on their which create revenue with a new idea of they needed applications that fit into their “wireless network” for mobile phones, as combining Internet Communications tech- those fees for traffic become flat. So, what business model or their business practice. nology with traditional business operational will happen over time, as AT&T has 100 Two examples: Law firms generally bill services.” million subscribers, nearly 1/3 of the U.S. clients for phone time spent on their behalf. “We encounter and work with all kinds of population, and begins to use the new Thus, they want applications that tie the operators in Japan, Brazil, Sweden, Turkey, “Unity” service? Seems per minute fees will VoIP system into their billing applications. Russia, Netherlands, you name it,” says become less and less a part of a carriers’ busi- When a lawyer talks to someone, the system Doyle. “We’ve gathered and shared a wealth ness model but new services or Rich Media must look at the Caller ID, automatically of information about the market as a whole. Internet Communications will drive rev- register how many minutes have gone by It’s almost as if we’re a market research com- enues on the consumer side, and value-add and put that information into some kind of services like scheduling and mobility for the pany. And this in turn enables us to leverage database Legal Industry-specific application business subscribers.” innovative ideas for applications which carri- so the client can be billed.” “What does this mean for the future?” ers need to build up their portfolios and Doyle continues: “When we asked the asks Doyle. “Everything is just racing to a what the operators can do to cope with mar- medical offices about VoIP, they said it price of near zero for toll and location-based ket changes.” sounded nice to have free and/or cheap services like voice calls. My hypothesis is that “For example, the growing trend toward phone calls but they were very skeptical. big carriers will have to start delivering rich commoditization network access and toll- They thought it would be disruptive, neces- applications attractive to consumers like you based business models can be found every- sitating them getting rid of their PBX, and me, as well as businesses. That’s why we where in this industry,” says Doyle. “Let’s installing other stuff, and doing it all with- take a provider or carrier such as AT&T, but at CommuniGate Systems develop Rich out a big IT department. They didn’t see a

46 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index lot of business value in it. The application they really found interesting was patient Mobile Rich Media Internet scheduling. Smaller medical practice offices spend a lot of time scheduling appointments Communications Drives with patients, who often forget about their Customer Loyalty and appointments, so the schedule has to be redone and/or the patient must be found. Subscriber Base Expansion It’s a headache. So we designed an application for them where patients can go to a By Jon R. Doyle, VP of Business Development, CommuniGate Systems website and self-service themselves. They can find available appointment times and create As IDC stated in a recent article (http://vendor.tekrati.com/research/news.asp?id=8331), their own appointments with the medical mobile services, applications and devices continue to be one of the most rapidly office. We also integrated the application evolving areas of communications, content, entertainment, and enterprise connectiv- with VoIP, so that application will see all of ity. We already see mobile handsets with SIP clients and WiFi transceivers for VoIP tomorrow’s appointments and it can place and IM. A great example of this is in the Nokia handsets for business users, but also reminder phone calls for those appoint- in the Danger devices which are the rage for consumer populations in the age group ments. It’ll play a prompt over the phone of 15-23 years. Mobility will simply be what we grow into over the next decade in such as, ‘Jessica, you have an appointment technology but also in devices. So does the carrier sell technology or applications? tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Press 1 to keep Making the life of the subscriber easier is the answer. it, press 2 to cancel it, or press 3 to speak to a representative’.” First, the whole notion of Internet Communications speaks to Mobility and “The medical people saw immediate value portability. Think about how DNS and email works, and apply that principle to in it,” says Doyle. “It turned the whole con- voice communications. The address space of Internet Communications is versation around from, ‘VoIP doesn’t seem user@domain, and it has no distinction or concept of toll or location like telephony so interesting to us,’ to ‘Wow, that’s a power- has. In telephony, my phone number is based on some city or town, and where I call ful application that can fit into my business is calculated based on their number to derive a toll, or “cost per minute”. All of that process’.” goes away in Internet Communications, because where I am, and what device I “We have also developed Rich Media have, is irrelevant, as is the person or device with which I am calling or communi- applications for mobile operators,” says cating. The devices simply register, and can be mobile all the time or sometimes. An Doyle. “Whether you’re a consumer or a example to visualize this: I have a home computer running with my server, in this business subscriber, you’re going to want the case CommuniGate Pro. It is configured with my domain, and I have a phone, a same content and rich media capabilities in your handset when you walk away from Polycom, “registered” to it, which actually is physically located in my sister’s house your desktop. Again, these telecom compa- in Burbank. I also have a laptop, on which I have a softclient also registered to that nies are evolving from just being connectivi- same server. When my sister calls me, my laptop could be anyplace. I also have an ty providers — selling you a connection and apartment in Sao Paulo; there I have a Sipura box and my cordless phone, also regis- charging you for minutes using it — to tered to this server located here. So, when people call me, that line also rings, or become communications providers and when I am there and call my sister here in California, they have no idea, unless I tell application providers. We help providers by them, where I might be calling from. placing our application server platform in So, mobility is already built into Internet Communications, with the DNS their data center and then they package it address space. In my example above, my address is user@domain, and communica- and sell it for a set fee into their subscriber tions for me are IM, VoIP, email or presence info. Now, devices also will become base. It’s basically like a channel relationship. much more flexible as we add IPv6, and mobile handsets will register no matter We’re a software company, we don’t host the hardware ourselves. Our subscription models where they are or on what network. Think about paying one fee, as you do for DSL make it much easier for ISPs and carriers to or other types of broadband; you get some devices, hard phones, softphones, mobile deploy these services, because they don’t handsets, and no matter where you are or who you call, it is all built into that one need a lot of capital or expenditures up fee. Sounds far-fetched? Well, think about how email works today! front. As they sell the service to their sub- At CommuniGate Systems we are pushing with contributions to various associa- scribers, they can pay us a royalty or tions for open standards and true mobile Internet Communications to empower the monthly fee.” IT worldwide 2 billion email accounts to full IP Communications with email, Instant Messaging, VoIP, collaboration and freedom of devices. Our Flash-based client Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of Pronto! enables users with mobility for all such today. A free copy of CommuniGate TMC’s IP Communications Group. Pro Community Edition can be downloaded at http://www.communigate.com.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 47 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index buy external antennas for their homes, which was something we haven’t seen much PowerNet Global’s of for 802.11. Bernie Stevens RT: What do you think the growth prospects are for the consumer market versus the small business? BS: The consumer market has the biggest Rich Tehrani’s Executive Suite is a monthly feature in which leading executives in potential for rapid adoption when they see a the VoIP and IP Communications industry discuss their company’s latest develop- real advantage. It’s difficult in the high tech industry, because as soon as people see some- ments with TMC president Rich Tehrani, as well as providing analysis on indus- thing that’s more desirable than what they try news and trends. currently have, the adoption rate scales The growth in the telecom industry in general, and in IP Communications, specifi- incredibly. So, as soon as they see an advantage to WiMAX over a wireline broadband, I cally, has prompted many traditional landline service providers to throw their stake think the adoption rate will rise. Until then, in the ground and enter the VoIP market — a reasonable move, as it is widely it’s going to be slower there than it is in the acknowledged that IP-based communications will soon replace the PSTN altogether. business world. But there is heavy competition in the IP space, and companies are hard pressed to RT: What are you seeing in the market differentiate themselves from their competition. Rich recently had the opportunity from Vonage and Skype? Are they helping to speak to PowerNet Global’s (news - alert) president and CEO Bernie Stevens or hurting the market? about what PNG is seeing in this space as it continues to deploy wireless BS: The consumer world gets quite fickle networks. Here is an abbreviated version of the interview. Please visit TMCnet quite easily. Any time somebody sees an online at http://www.tmcnet.com/457.1 to read the interview in its entirety. advantage, particularly a cost advantage, they’ll take advantage of it, which is why RT: Can you give a brief overview on your of interference? Skype has tremendous appeal. Vonage’s acqui- company and your product line and where BS: It’s really quite good. We have very sition costs are still pretty high to do much, you see that going in the next few years? few problems, but we’re anticipating that, as and they’re still very dependent on somebody BS: We started a transition a few years ago more and more people start using it, there else’s last mile, so that’s always going to hurt. from basically being a reseller of long dis- will be a few problems, and it will require Ultimately, I don’t know that they really tance to IP-based facilities, and we’ve been in more sophisticated gear. But I think the help or hurt at this point. Vonage, even at a that transition phase for four years now. Our manufacturers are already anticipating that. million subscribers or so, is still pretty small two most important things are trying to con- compared to the consumer universe. Skype, trol the last mile, which is broadband wireless RT: What will be the major advantage of of course, because it’s global has a broader for us, moving into the IP world for voice. going to WiMAX? Will it just be range? appeal, and that only reinforces that the new We’re starting to put more and more dollars BS: First range, then throughput. The IP world is a lower priced world than the old into the new business, which is the IP world throughput will be higher and the range will TDM world. and wireless, and fewer into our old tradi- be longer. So, from that aspect, I think it helps every- tional businesses that are phasing out. body in the IP space to justify that they have a lower cost product. If they improve the RT: Will consumers need different gear on quality of voice connections for voice, it will RT: What standard are you currently their end to be able to tap into the network. help raise adoption in the business space too. using for wireless? BS: For 802.16, it will be basically lap- BS: We’re using mostly Strix wireless gear tops, and I think that we’ll probably start RT: Will the market see growth in addi- with 802.11,until WiMAX (define - news - seeing 802.16 built into laptops, like tional benefits and services? alert) is available, which will be this year 802.11 was. So you probably won’t see BS: We anticipate that not only will serv- sometime. Some of our installs have been much need to change equipment from what ices serve as differentiators, but they will also city-wide, but we usually do hot spots, consumers already have. There may be a lit- allow providers to make money. The rest will which will be in the range of a quarter-mile, tle NIC card for people that have a couple become commoditized. The kinds of services and where we have mesh networks, it could year old notebooks, but I think there will you can provide a consumer and/or a busi- be several square miles. be a big change when people start using ness and the platforms that you can provide WiMAX, getting rid of their old laptops for for them are going to differentiate you and RT: What are the limitations in terms new ones. Then we will probably see people make you successful. IT

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support — drives the profitability for our customers, and allows them to make money.

RT: Tell me about your competitors and how Natural Convergence differentiates itself from them. DC: I think the competition comes from three different camps. The first is the tradi- Natural Convergence’s tional key system CPE vendor, which is what a lot of small businesses are used to. They David Cork are used to buying their phone system from a dealer and then getting their local access lines from the phone company. They then buy long distance and their Internet access. Rich Tehrani’s Executive Suite is a monthly feature in which leading executives in In general, they tend to buy from five or six different vendors. So, we can differentiate the VoIP and IP Communications industry discuss their company’s latest develop- against them because they can get all of ments with TMC president Rich Tehrani, as well as providing analysis on indus- these services bundled from a single vendor try news and trends. and for a lower total cost. It actually com- petes extremely well with the traditional key Service providers and hardware vendors have traditionally focused heavily on the system vendors. enterprise and consumer spaces, believing those to present the greatest opportunity. The second camp is the network equip- Recently, however, there has been an clear trend where those with service ment providers who typically provide providers and vendors have investing heavily an underserved SMB market, seeing softswitches for the larger service providers, that as a greener pasture, especially for managed services offerings. One of those who have started to add features for residen- companies is Ottawa-based Natural Convergence, which offers offers a hosted tial services, and then for the SOHO mar- VoIP key system for the small business market. ket. They are coming up into the small business market from the bottom, so we com- Rich recently spoke with Natural Convergence’s CEO David Cork about the small pete directly with those types of solutions. business opportunity and how Natural Convergence (news - alert) is taking The third group is the hosted applications advantage of that opportunity and differentiating itself in that space. Here is an group, primarily coming out of the Centrex abbreviated version of the interview. Please visit TMCnet online at market. The difference here is that they have http://www.tmcnet.com/458.1 to read the interview in its entirety. built products for the medium to large enterprise and are trying to slim them down, RT: Can you give an overview of your posi- RT: Tell me a little bit about Silhouette. and come up with a “Centrex light” tion at Natural Convergence and the com- DC: We chose to model Silhouette on the approach for the small business market. It pany’s market focus? key system model using multi-line key phones just doesn’t suit the channels. They have DC: I am the original founder and CEO with all of the feature buttons there readily round pegs they are trying to fit into a for Natural Convergence. Our company was available and don’t need any training, because square hole. started with the idea that service providers that is what those companies are used to. If would be looking for broadband applications you are delivering a hosted service, if you can RT: What is the biggest problem in terms without having to sink a lot of money into deliver the key system functionality they are of adoption of your technology? the broadband infrastructure. In particular, used to, you have a huge head start. One of DC: I think there are two things. Our we went looking for underserved markets, the key characteristics of Silhouette was to industry really does go after the big markets which has been our consistent theme from make sure that it met those needs. first, so there are huge numbers in the con- day one. The second thing, which is certainly sumer market and very large customer The small business marketplace — those something that seems obvious in hindsight, opportunities in the enterprise market. Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees — is is that the profitability of service providers is business tends to wait for technology to generally the last one to be serviced and yet, directly related to their operational expense. trickle down to them, and that has always a it’s a huge market. We know there are 32 mil- So, if you are going to be servicing a market challenge because the technology that devel- lion key system lines out there, and a lot of like small business, which is very price sensi- ops for another market doesn’t always fit the them are aged — as old as 12 to 14 years. So, tive, you have to have a good handle on small business channels. we saw a huge opportunity, as those systems operational expenses. In the small business market, the chal- were being replaced, for service providers to Our product is designed for what we call lenge is not technology. Rather, it is all bring out a service bundle to replace them. zero-touch deployment — there are no truck around the channel. Those channels that can We created a product called Silhouette, rolls and no service technicians required. The be successful and can do it repeatedly do it which allows a service provider to deliver a end user does all the configuration through a because they make money. You have to get hosted key system service that can be deliv- Web page. This gives us the lowest deploy- the economics right and then you have to ered over any broadband connection. That ment costs in the industry. Also, the ongoing help them a great deal. But the real challenge concept has been well established in the support costs are dramatically reduced from is, clearly, making sure that the product you marketplace in the consumer side, and it’s anything they have had in the past. have meets that channel’s needs and fits their now coming into the small business market- So, the combination of those three things skills. Then good things happen. If the prod- place and getting the attention, just at the — a very simple product that’s simple to uct is too complex or too costly, the channel time when we are hitting our stride as well. sell, simple to deploy, and inexpensive to tends to fail. IT

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need to figure out how to help so that I can be a part of it. Siemens Communications’ So, it is very important for to focus on that, and, like I said, we have some of that technology in-house and in our technology Harald Braun labs already. We also some ongoing IP peering projects with customers — one of the lead projects is in Europe. I’m definitely seeing it as another trend and it will continue Each year, new trends present themselves in the communications environment. At in 2007 with increased intelligence and more one time, it was the adoption of VoIP, which is now commonplace, as is wireless projects. But, I’m still interested in how we networking and mobile communications. The question, then, is what are the next can make the business case work. driving forces as the world continues to harness the power of IP? RT: What other trends do you see? Rich recently took time to speak with Harald Braun, president of Siemens’ HB: The third is one of my favorite topics. Communications Network Division. (news - alert) Harald laid out several trends I did everything here within the company to he sees gaining momentum in the coming months, from greater expansion of make every product IMS-ready to ensure we mobile IP to the proliferation of IMS infrastructures and more. Here are parts of have that architecture in place and that that conversation. Be sure to visit TMCnet at http://www.tmcnet.com/459.1 for whatever we do is IMS-compliant. That way, all of Harald’s predictions. on the application side, we can work on how quickly and easily we can we bring new RT: What trends are you seeing from the What we see very clearly in all the RFPs applications to market. large telecom companies? and all the interactions with the big players We need to have all the components for HB: The number one trend is very self is ENUM. They’re all looking at how to get IMS, and they need to be standardized. I’m explanatory and maybe a little bit obvious — TDM to work together with IP. We’re see- pushing for an IMS standard, which is but on the other side, maybe not. Last year, ing ENUM requirements everywhere. In already a major effort because the 3GPP a lot of people were talking about IP end- fact, there are no RFPs anymore without an people have one thing in mind and U.S. points and what they see coming into the ENUM requirement. So, of course, that is providers have their own specific require- marketplace, and in the last couple of what we need to accomplish with our end- ments. But, in the last year, we have seen months, we have seen a huge jump into what to-end solution, and that is a commitment them all talking to each other, even to the I call IP telephony, especially non-traditional we have made as a company. extent of asking, “What is really common IP-enabled endpoints, like PDAs, laptops, The second portion of that is a little bit for all of us and should we create one stan- game stations, and dual mode handsets. more disruptive — IP peering. I don’t know dard that is applicable for all of us and then There is also very strong growth in whether anyone has figured out how to do we can take off into the different network machine-to-machine interaction. Last year, I IP peering profitably. And it is disruptive directions?” had a business unit, which we have now put when machines directly talk to each other So, standardization is a very important into a different organization, which had without routing engines in between and concern. For me, 2007 is a year of deploy- small wireless models, like the little wireless without a secure telephone network, but this ment. There is a lot of talk within the indus- models in cell phones. You could put them is absolutely a trend. Everybody is thinking try about whether it is ready and whether it into meters, into utility sets at home, into about it and I think everybody is thinking is too big, or even why do we need IMS. water meters, voltage meters, cars, really in about how to make it work, and also about For me, the answer is it’s the best architec- anything you want to track remotely. That’s what the business case underneath it is. In ture to consolidate platforms. We have the what we’re seeing and I think in 2007 will other words, can people make money with it? components and we are ready to deploy. bring event greater numbers of these new We’ve undergone a lot of lab trials as well as devices to market. RT: How will peering moving from being some field trials with cable companies and an obscure phenomenon to a widespread telecommunications companies. In 2007, I Rich: It’s already started, hasn’t it? initiative effect you? definitely see IMS deployment — maybe HB: Yes. For instance, at this year’s CES HB: The scary part, in a way, will be if not huge deployment, but there will be show, there were countless new IP-enabled advisors in the future begin talking to each deployments. devices, which is good. TDM, on the other other without using a secure telecommunica- The number one application is seamless hand, brings me to number two, which is tions network, doing the handling and handover between different networks... ENUM and IP peering, with IP Peering everything else. That’s when I’ll start think- TDM to WiFi or WiMAX networks, or being a kind of disruptive technology. On ing I’ve cannibalized my own business. PSTN to GSM or CDMA handovers. We the ENUM side, there is a TDM system Enterprises also will be trying to figure will see that, technology-wise we are there. legacy out there — end of story. There is no out IP peering. We actually have a program We can do it. We showed that this year. I investment any more from the big players in within the company running an IP peering think it is very important to see that all the TDM, but it is still around and it will be project. So, while peering might jeopardize players, the cablecos, and the traditional tel- around for the next five to ten years. one side of the business, on the other side, I cos, are all going in this direction. IT

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communications in conjunction with Cisco WiFi Phones Unified CallManager and the Cisco Aironet 1200, 1100, 350, and 340 series of WiFi Voice over IP technology is no longer new, as evidenced by the increased rate (IEEE 802.11b) access points. As an inte- of adoption in both business and consumer markets. Service providers of all sorts gral component of the Cisco Unified are rushing to add voice to their offerings, and hardware vendors are steadily Communications Wireless solution, the Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7920 growing their product lines. transparently delivers intelligent services such as security, mobility, quality of service The latest obsession has become mobility, which comes in many flavors, and (QoS) and management across an end-to- productivity demands and improved wireless networking solutions have created a end Cisco network. need for VoIP technology to also be extended to the wireless world. Being unteth- ered from their desktops enables workers to be more effective, and the ability to Clipcomm access corporate wireless networks can dramatically decrease cellular calling http://www.clipcomm.co.kr (news - alert) Clipcomm’s CWP-100, is a costs, which has prompted many phone manufacturers to develop WiFi-enabled WiFi portable terminal with handy and sleek handsets. On the consumer side, the Skype phenomenon has also caused vendors design, compatible with IEEE 802.11b stan- to make similar products available for home and SOHO use, many of which have dard and interoperable with major been specifically designed for user with Skype. Some of the handsets are relative- SIP/H.323 call servers, IP PBXs, and vari- ly basic, while others offer SIP compatibility and many of the features users have ous terminals. The CWP-100 is easy to use and efficiently managed thanks to its inte- come to enjoy — even demand — from their cellular devices. grated provisioning system. Together with VoIP/PSTN dual mode IP With that in mind, this month’s product round-up features a selection of WiFi- Phone with lifeline function, residential enabled phones. These represent many of the products available to businesses and FXS/FXO gateways and embedded IP-PBX consumers, and we encourage you to use this list as a starting point for selecting for SMEs, CWP-100 completes Clipcomm’s the WiFi handset that is best suited to your specific needs and budget. There is VoIP solution lineup and can be an attrac- also a selection of cellular/WiFi dual mode handsets available already, as the tive alternative to ITSPs and IP PBX solution providers. As a VoIP terminal, CWP- fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) movement gains traction. Those products will 100 offers many essential features, such as likely be covered in a later issue. easy-to-use auto-provisioning, dynamic jitter buffer, and firewall/NAT traversal. Belkin Phone is Skype certified, which means that Through its power management scheme http://www.belkin.com/skype it adheres to all Skype’s requirements to optimized for its platform as well as the The Belkin (news - alert) WiFi Phone for ensure that users’ WiFi Phone experience is standard IEEE 802.11b power saving mech- Skype doesn’t require a PC and will work just like it would be on a PC. anism and highly optimized DSP software, anywhere in the world where users have the CWP-100 has exceptional performance secured or open access to a WiFi network. Cisco for its power consump- Any home, office, cafe, or municipal wire- http://www.cisco.com tion. less access point that does not require Cisco (define - news - alert) extends browser-based authentication will do. The D-Link phone comes advanced voice and unified commu- ready to use, nications capabilities across the http://www.dlink.com pre-loaded enterprise with a D-Link’s (news - with Skype powerful and inno- alert) DPH-541 pro- software and vative converged vides the freedom of featuring the wireless solution wireless connectivity same Skype based on an and the benefits of interface with intelligent wire- VoIP in a sleek, which users less infrastruc- portable, flip-style have become ture. The phone. By utilizing the familiar. It is Cisco Unified WiFi Phone with a VoIP easy to use Wireless IP service plan, both — to make a home and business call, users Phone 7920 simply use is an easy to users have the poten- the intuitive use IEEE tial to dramatically on-screen 802.11b reduce local and long color menu to wireless IP distance telephone locate con- phone that charges compared to a tacts and view provides standard telephone their online compre- service. It is a stand- availability. hensive alone device that does The WiFi voice not require a computer

54 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index — just an 802.11g or 802.11b wireless net- of supporting all types of system environ- NEC Unified Solutions work with high-speed Internet access to ments and telephony requirements. From http://www.necunifiedsolutions.com make and receive calls. Users can make and an office primarily using analog phones to a The (news - alert) NEC MH110 and receive calls just about anywhere there is a leading-edge office that has introduced an MH120 Wireless Telephones are designed wireless connection available. IP PBX and migrated largely to VoIP, the for a broad range of enterprise applications, The DPH-541 uses SIP and is ready to be Hitachi WirelessIP5000 flexibly supports a from general office to industrial. These used with a VoIP service plan. For access- wide range of user environments to create compact handsets offer a rich set of fea- ing secure wireless networks, it supports a truly ubiquitous network for all your busi- tures including a high-resolution graphic WEP, WPA, and WPA2 encryption, and with ness situations. display, menu-driven functions, and mes- features like echo cancellation, packet delay This wireless IP phone is 802.11b-com- saging capability, all within a light, compensation, and lost packet recovery, pliant, allowing users to leverage their exist- ergonomic design. Push-to-talk functionali- users can expect the voice quality from the ing wireless LANs. The WirelessIP5000 ty is available in the industrial-grade NEC WiFi phone to be similar to traditional PSTN automatically roams to the most suitable MH120 Wireless Telephone for broadcast access point based on the electromagnetic phone calls. communication between employees, elimi- wave strength and communication error The phone sports a large, bright color state from the access point. The roaming nating the need for two-way radios or LCD screen that displays call information, conditions can be flexibly changed to match walkie-talkies. such as call history, address book entries, the access point. The NEC MH110 Wireless Telephone was and caller ID numbers, and supports sever- A built-in site scan feature enables users designed specifically for busy office envi- al other convenient calling features includ- to measure signal strength to find the best ronments. This compact handset offers fea- ing redial, mute, and hold. access point and plan access-point layouts. tures and accessories that address the A ping feature is provided in order to enable needs of a variety of businesses. The NEC Hitachi Cable users to check whether they can connect to MH120 Wireless Telephone was designed to http://www.hitachi-cable.co.jp/en/index.html a given person’s network or terminal. The meet the most demanding environmental (news - alert) Hitachi Cable invites a new WirelessIP5000’s presence feature allows requirements, and includes exclusive push- communications environment using SIP users to quickly ascertain the availability of to-talk functionality. The handset is small and IEEE 802.11b in its WirelessIP5000, others without calling to find out. Support enough to be highly mobile, yet rugged which provides unrivaled scalability capable for instant messaging is also available. enough for heavy usage.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 55 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Netgear tures allow users to experience a difference Handover/Roaming between different APs http://www.netgear.com that’s real, real-time, and real-world. and SSIDs, as well as many other technical (news - alert) NETGEAR’s SPH101 Skype Professionals will enjoy the latest aspects to ensure high quality calls over WiFi Phone allows users to make free calls 802.11g technology, which brings improved WiFi networks. to other Skype users anywhere in the world, performance and call quality. The handset is anytime they have WiFi access, without a SIP-compliant, making it compatible with Viper Networks vPhone PC. Users’ contacts (up to 200) are shown many hardware solutions. The color display http://www.vipernetworks.com right on the phone’s color display so they is easy to read and the speakerphone The Viper Networks (news - alert) WiFi will know exactly who is online. They will enables hands-free conversation, increasing vPhone is a next generation intelligent IP also be more available for your friends to productivity. Communications device that combines SIP- call, because they based VoIP communications together with no longer have to Spectralink WiFi. The vPhone is an ideal option for be on a PC to be http://www.spectralink.com branch offices as well as the SOHO market, connected. They Spectralink’s (news - alert) NetLink WiFi enabling inexpensive VoIP calling from any can even make telephones support a broad range of enter- location with 802.11b access over Vipers prise applications, from general office to SkypeOut calls. industrial environments. These compact Global network. The vPhone’s scan feature Users can use handsets offer a rich set of features and functions as a wireless any WiFi network accessories to suit users in a wide variety “Hot Spot” finder, and to which they of applications. The NetLink 8020 is there is no need to be have access to designed for users across a wide range of connected to a PC industries. With a lightweight yet rugged talk with anyone design and extensive feature support, it in order to place else who’s also meets the needs of general office and man- or receive on Skype, any- agement staff while also providing a reliable calls. where in the option for front-line personnel in high-use world. The phone environments. The NetLink 8030 extends the capabilities also enables fea- of the 8000 Series handsets by adding tures like call for- SpectraLink’s push-to-talk (PTT) feature warding to along with improvements to the industrial mobile or land- design and handset ergonomics. The line numbers or NetLink 8030 PTT capability allows instan- other Skype taneous communication between employ- accounts. Zyxel ees independent of the PBX system, elimi- http://www.zyxel.com nating the need for two-way radios. The (news - alert) The SIP-based P-2000W is Samsung larger earpiece seals out background noise http://www.samsung.com interoperable with major SIP-based call and provides comfort for frequent or servers, IP PBXs, and other standard SIP- The new (news - alert) Samsung lengthy calls. The 8030 is ideal for distrib- OfficeServ SMT-W5100E Handset, commu- based client devices. The P-2000W_v2 is uted work teams that require frequent com- compliant with the IEEE 802.11b standard nicating with SMT-R2000 Dual Band munication. Wireless Access Points, bring a new defini- and interoperates with any existing 802.11b or 802.11g wireless AP and gateway, and tion of what power really means to wireless UTStarcom voice and data users. can be used as a cordless handset for resi- http://www.utstar.com With the W5100E, users gain greater dential users or for business users in an UTStarcom’s (news - alert) residential control over productivity, beginning simply office environment. The small form factor of F3000 WiFi handset is a revolutionary with the new trim design. A longer lasting the handset is easy to transport and allows device that expands the reach of VoIP com- battery source and added calling features users to place VoIP phone calls in public munications. It provides consumers a new users have come 802.11-based environment. cost effective way to communicate, with the expect from The P-2000W_v2 is capable of tagging great features such as three-way calling, features that support a service provider’s their cellular call waiting, call QoS planning, such as ToS (Type of phones make the transfer and Service), and allows gateways or central handset a busi- many other pop- side equipment to identify and prioritize ness asset. The ular features. voice and data traffic. By supporting G.711 power is extended It features a and G.729 voice compression technology, to an unlimited clamshell design the P-2000W_v2 effectively reduces band- number of access width consumption caused by voice traffic. that supports points, By configuring a remote IP address in the 802.11b/g, SIP, support- built-in phone book, the P-2000W_v2 pro- SDP, RTP, DHCP, ing a vides a direct IP-to-IP call feature when and TFTP and wider there is no intermediate SIP proxy server incorporates coverage available in the network. The P-2000W_v2 Adaptive jitter area. can also establish an 802.11 ad-hoc net- buffer, Echo sup- Together, work, which allows users to use the hand- pression, these fea- sets as wireless intercoms. IT

56 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Project1 2/22/2007 2:00 PM Page 2 IPTV in Carrier Ethernet Networks

By Peter Lunk

The increased service flexibility and economic advantages of Ethernet have driven carriers to steadily replace circuit- switched equipment throughout the network. Continued advancements in Ethernet technology through advanced quality of service (QoS) capabilities, Scaling Through scalability enhancements, and service resiliency now enable Ethernet MAC-in-MAC networks to deliver bundled residential triple-play voice, video, and Existing technologies, such as the IEEE 802.1ad Q-in-Q standard, provide data services. Service providers can attract new customers with isolated tunneling of VLANs, enabling attractively priced service bundles, while relying on Ethernet to service providers to separate subscriber increase bandwidth and reduce network costs. traffic while providing different levels of QoS. This is an effective solution for Hierarchical QoS ing a triple play package of two IPTV smaller deployments, but is insufficient With triple-play services, QoS must channels, one of which supports HD, for use in large Metro networks because be guaranteed not just at the subscriber two VoIP lines, and 2Mbps peak down- of VLAN ID space limitations. The level but also for the individual services load data service. recent introduction of the IEEE 802.1ah being offered. Hierarchical QoS pro- New hardware based hierarchical QoS standard (also known as MAC-in-MAC) vides three tiers of QoS support — capabilities are just now being deployed builds upon existing Q-in-Q technology port, subscriber, and application — in service provider networks. These to overcome Ethernet scaling limitations. allowing service providers to support enable scaling up to 40 times larger than By inserting a provider MAC address real time services over high-speed con- traditional implementations with the into each frame that is transparent to nections carrying tens of thousands of ability to set SLAs (Service Level customer data, MAC-in-MAC economi- diverse flows. This eliminates the need Agreements) down to the individual cally scales to millions of service VLANs, for distinct overlay networks such as a flows. For example, at a larger central more than 4,000 times the number sup- residential DSL data network and a sep- office a single switch may aggregate 20 ported by traditional VLAN and Q-in- arate cable or satellite TV network. independent 1GE ports each feeding a Q deployments. MAC-in-MAC also Three tier hierarchical QoS enables DSLAM that aggregates 300 and 500 offers seamless interoperability with Q- service providers to set both a commit- subscribers, with two 10GE ports pro- in-Q networks without the complexity ted and peak rate for each outgoing port viding a redundant network uplink. or expense of a Layer 3 MPLS deploy- (Tier 1) with individual committed and Such a switch will have on the order of ment. Additionally, further standards peak rates for each subscriber on the 6-10 thousand incoming subscribers. work is under way by the IEEE that will port (Tier 2), as well as up to eight QoS Without a scalable QoS implementa- build upon MAC-in-MAC technology levels per subscriber (Tier 3) to support tion, switches must group traffic by to further improve traffic engineering individual triple-play services. In order service class, overprovision bandwidth, capabilities. to simplify provisioning, residential sub- and hope for the best. A hardware- scribers typically choose from a set of based, three tier hierarchical QoS capa- Service Resiliency pre-defined service profiles. An example bility enables an elegant and determinis- Subscribers like the idea of consoli- would be a residential subscriber select- tic triple play network deployment. dating three bills — TV, phone, and

58 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Internet — into a single bill. Carriers The operating system must be broken occurs before higher layer protection like consolidation because subscribers into modules that can be operated inde- mechanisms need to kick in, giving the are less likely to switch service providers pendently. In this way, when a process experience of uninterrupted service to due to the hassle involved in moving does fail, the failure can be contained to subscribers. multiple services. Unfortunately, the prevent the outage from spreading to The new Ethernet technologies such as same triple-play capabilities that attract other processes. The operating system hierarchical QoS, MAC-in-MAC and subscribers can also make it easier to also needs to manage the separate service resiliency bring carrier-class per- drive them away. processes so that the system can auto- formance and scalability to service With data services, it’s not always clear matically terminate a failed application provider networks and allow network when a connection is experiencing an or process and start a new instance. operators to provide reliable IPTV and outage. Even if a service disruption was a The third level of service resiliency is other triple-play services while simplifying network problem all along, subscribers network resiliency. Traditional Ethernet overall network design. When coupled often perceive that they have fixed the networks do not have the inherent with the economic benefits and complete problem by rebooting the computer or resiliency of circuit-switched networks. control over priority for subscriber appli- modem and conclude that somehow the In order to increase Ethernet network cations, it is clear why Ethernet is poised problem had been on their end. IPTV resiliency, technologies such as Ethernet to dominate service provider networks as services are much more likely to impact Automatic Protection Switching it has enterprise networks. IT subscriber churn as it becomes quite (EAPS) are now widely deployed. EAPS clear when the network is experiencing is a service-aware, ring-based protection Peter Lunk is the Director of Service an outage. Subscribers are able to more protocol that utilizes a standard Provider Marketing for Extreme Networks. (news - alert) For more information, visit accurately evaluate the quality of the Ethernet MAC and provides a carrier- the company online at services they are receiving, making it class failover response of less than http://www.extremenetworks.com. crucial for service providers to maintain 50ms. Ring connec- the overall resiliency of their network. tivity is verified con- Resiliency for triple-play networks tinuously through must be maintained at the hardware, the exchange of software and network levels. Hardware “heartbeat” messages resiliency achieved through equipment between neighbor- redundancy is a fairly well-understood ing switches. issue. However, this is the level at which EAPS offers a many service providers stop thinking number of advanced about resiliency. Maintaining the high- resiliency features to est quality of service and availability networks, including requires not just a focus on hardware primary/backup resiliency but rather a perspective that path designation on includes service availability. Just because a per-VLAN basis, a connection is up and successfully dual-attached and rerouted, there is still a possibility that subtended rings, and there is a disruption to the service being support of multiple offered over the connection. domains of protect- With the increased role of software in ed VLANs on the the network, software-based outages same ring, enabling have become more prevalent. The prob- carriers to create lem is exacerbated by the increasing highly available plat- aggregation of links in high-speed net- forms that are able works since a single application failure to continue service can tie up limited processing and mem- delivery even during ory resources, bringing down other near-catastrophic processes and spreading the outage outage conditions. across all aggregated connections. Additionally, because Achieving software resiliency requires EAPS addresses fail- failover mechanisms that mirror hard- ures at Layers 1 and ware redundancy through modularity. 2, recovery often

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 59 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index spread_2-22-07.qxp 2/22/2007 4:58 PM Page 2

SMB VoIP: Today’s Hottest IP convergence — Tearing Business Expansion down the barriers between Opportunity Telecom and Information Technology

Sponsored By:

www.itmag.com www.allworx.com Architectural Options for Converged Cellular and WiFi Services

Enterprises, hospitals, manufacturing plants, and other large organizations are increasingly moving to deploy WiFi and in-building cellular services, and there is a natural inclination to converge the two systems as much as possible. Distributed antenna systems (DAS) have Typical WiFi and DAS Deployments been the prevailing method of deploying in-building cellular systems WiFi and DAS technologies support for many years, and it is tempting to centralize WiFi APs in one loca- different types of services, so it’s no sur- tion and deliver WiFi services with the distributed antenna architec- prise that there are big differences between typical deployments. WiFi ture provided by the DAS. But while central radios and DAS may supports Ethernet traffic, and was ini- work well for cellular, using the same method for WiFi service can tially developed with the idea that one reduce performance, capacity, and deployment flexibility; especially radio (access point or AP) would be as newer WiFi technologies such as 802.11n become standardized. sufficient to support a given deployment. In larger spaces like enterprise offices, multiple APs are used to create Figure 1. Standard multi-AP adjacent cells that provide the required deployment. radio coverage. Companies also use multiple APs to re-use frequency, scaling capacity as they scale coverage. In the 802.11b/g deployments, for example, there are three non- overlapping channels: 1, 6, and 11. APs alternate channels to minimize interference between cells using the same channel (See Figure 1). Within each cell, users have full access to the bandwidth (11 or 54 Mbps) from its AP. A large deployment may provide capacity via Channel 6 several times, for example, since the same channel can be used in different areas of the facility. Using discrete radios in this manner also allows for significant coverage and service flexibility, since APs can be individually added, moved, or upgraded to support changing requirements.

66 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By John Spindler

through the system. But in an aggregated AP deployment, each channel can be used only once, reducing throughput per channel to 54Mbps. As companies and users increasingly demand more bandwidth for mobile applications such as video and IP voice, WLANs will need all the bandwidth they can get. Reduced output power — Connecting antennas to aggregated APs with coax cabling significantly reduces the output power at each antenna. In fact, Cisco specifically cautions against long coax cable runs between APs and antennas, because the cable introduces losses in Figure 2. Distributing the antenna system on both the trans- WiFi signals from mitter and the receiver. As the length of aggregated APs over cable increases, so does the amount of coax cable. loss introduced. The problem is worse with 802.11a or 802.11n installations, because the 5GHz frequency attenuates In contrast, DAS systems deliver cel- the same set of distributed antennas much more quickly. Essentially, users lular services using just one central radio (Figure 2). would get a signal, but not one with the (typically a micro base station located in On the surface, this approach seems strength needed to transmit large files or the data center), whose signal is driven to be an attractive way to reduce capital support quality IP voice for even a through a system of hubs and remote expenses and maintenance costs. medium-sized user community. antennas. Depending on the specific Vendors point to several benefits: Multipath distortion and collisions — service(s) being offered through the • Aggregating APs and using the DAS In every AP deployment, there is a DAS (i.e., CDMA, GSM, EV-DO, to distribute their signals saves money potential for multipath interference. An HSDPA, etc.) there are from several to because it uses fewer APs — by linking AP may receive signals from a wireless over a hundred different channels avail- a group of APs to a DAS, one AP can user via two different paths (due to able, and any of them may be broadcast deliver a signal to several coverage cells. interference from walls, furniture, etc.), from any antenna (Figure 2). In this • APs are more secure in a locked so one signal arrives later than the other. way, the DAS provides ample capacity wiring closet than they are in ceilings or When this happens, the AP treats the for any number of users and eliminates walls near users’ desks, and there is less mismatched data as an error and doesn’t channel interference among cells. likelihood of damage to them. acknowledge it, forcing the sending • Configuration, maintenance, and device to retransmit. Typically, 802.11g Making WiFi More like DAS: replacements are easier because there’s and 802.11a APs handle this problem Promise and Reality no need to tear into ceilings when serv- by using two or more antennas on each In new construction or large infra- icing the APs. AP to provide diversity. The collision structure reconstruction projects, it Unfortunately, these benefits are out- problem is handled via software that makes sense to deploy WiFi and DAS weighed by significant drawbacks. Let’s essentially recognizes only the signal systems at the same time to minimize look at some important issues. from the antenna with the strongest sig- disruption and reduce costs. With Reduced capacity and throughput — nal. But when APs are aggregated and enterprises increasingly deploying both When APs are aggregated and their their signals are distributed through WLAN and cellular voice/data systems, channels must be shared across the many antennas in a DAS, multipath some vendors are suggesting that both entire antenna system, it is impossible to interference becomes a much bigger infrastructures can be consolidated — reuse channels to maximize throughput. problem: there are far more antennas that a single system of coaxial cables For example, when a building has nine linked to a given AP and the traditional can function as a common path for separate 802.11g APs placed properly in diversity scheme is violated. As the sys- WLAN and cellular traffic. The idea is a traditional deployment, each of the tem is loaded up with users, the number to aggregate APs in the same wiring three available channels would be re- of collisions becomes unmanageable, closets as DAS hubs, and then distrib- used three times, enabling 172Mbps of and service quality drops well below ute both WiFi and cellular signals over total capacity per channel, or 516Mbps optimum levels.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 67 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By using a DAS that leverages the same type of standard Poor/nonexistent 802.11a/n support dreds of dollars, so this is a small savings cabling as the WLAN, — The 802.11n standard delivers high- in an enterprise-class deployment. In er throughput for advanced applica- reality, cable installation and IT config- IT managers can deploy tions, but it works by bonding two of uration labor costs far outweigh the cap- both sets of cabling the available WiFi channels. While ital cost of APs. 802.11n works on the 2.4GHz band In short, anyone considering the at the same time. (802.11 b/g), using it at this frequency aggregated AP method should recog- means that only one bonded connection nize that Cisco, Symbol, and other is available, which limits user capacity. leading WLAN equipment providers 802.11n performs far better in the have consciously chosen to create the 5GHz (802.11a) band, because there are WLAN with distributed Access Points 11 non-overlapping channels, so there and specifically warn against non-stan- are several ways to bond two of them dard deployments because the 802.11 deploy both sets of cabling at the same and provide a lot of capacity. standard is designed to provide opti- time (Figure 3.). In terms of labor, it Unfortunately, the high attenuation mal capacity with a very specific costs no more to pull two cables than it caused by the coax DAS system and dis- antenna topology. Aggregating APs does to pull one. tortion issues created by aggregating APs and using distributed passive antennas In most cases, it will be possible to makes it difficult or impossible to pro- sounds great on paper, but unfortu- place APs and remote DAS antennas in vide even marginally acceptable 802.11a nately it violates several of the techni- the same locations because each tech- or 802.11n capacity. cal requirements for optimal WLAN nology has similar coverage areas: a Questionable integration — While functionality. remote cellular antenna covers a radius moving APs into a wiring closet does of from 80 to 200 feet, while an AP make them easier to maintain, the IT Optimizing Service with covers a radius of from 60 to 225 feet. staff must still deal with two entirely Reduced Costs In addition, both cellular antennas and different networks — an IP network Nevertheless, it is possible to reduce APs can use power-over-Ethernet to from the WLAN that backhauls deployment costs without compromis- eliminate the need for AC power at through the LAN, and a cellular net- ing either WLAN or cellular perform- each location. work that backhauls through carrier ance by addressing the largest cost factor The advantage of this technique is micro-cells. in these deployments. More than half that it minimizes installation costs with- Questionable economics — AP aggre- the cost of deploying wireless systems is out compromising performance and gation does reduce costs by reducing the in cabling installation. By using a DAS flexibility. If it ever becomes necessary AP count. However, access point prices that leverages the same type of standard to add capacity by adding APs, or to continue to decline into the low hun- cabling as the WLAN, IT managers can upgrade to a new standard such as WiMAX, changing the system is relatively straightforward. In an aggregated Figure 3. DAS and WiFi deployments AP deployment, on the other hand, with same Ethernet cable run. such changes would require a complete re-engineering and re-installation of the distributed antenna system and cabling as well. By deploying DAS with an Ethernet- like architecture based on intelligent hubs, fiber, and Cat-5 cabling, IT directors can hold costs to a minimum without compromising either WiFi or DAS performance. As tempting as integration may seem, it’s best to let WiFi be WiFi and deploy it the way it was intended. IT

John Spindler is the Vice President of Marketing at LGC Wireless. (news - alert) For more information, visit the company online at http://www.lgcwireless.com.

68 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Packet8 Ad_v2.qxp 10/17/2006 3:32 PM Page 1 IP Contact Centers and the Open Source IP PBX

Open source solutions have been available to enterprises for years, it can be downloaded for free and low but have recently begun to grow in popularity, including the new cost SIP phones are readily available. open source IP PBX options. Should your contact center forego a There are minimal expenses relating to traditional private branch exchange (PBX) system and evaluate this installation, depending on the expertise new Internet protocol (IP) technology? of your IT staff. • Vendor neutral — Using SIP and Companies that are adopting open stability and the ability of users to other telephony standards, open source source in the contact center are being quickly get information on the solution. IP PBXs can be easily integrated with drawn by the low cost, as well as the This allows for an elevated level of secu- applications from multiple vendors, as greater control and flexibility that open rity, flexibility and control that enables well as existing TDM infrastructure to source telephony offers. However, as companies to quickly enable new fea- ensure seamless interoperability with with any new technology, it is impor- tures and functionality with an open the contact centers throughout your tant to examine the functional require- source solution, rather than relying on a organization, whether they are open ments of the contact center to deter- closed source PBX vendor to make the source or proprietary systems. These IP mine if open source makes sense for changes. Open source IP PBXs are PBXs are specifically designed to help your company. architected to be as reliable and scalable companies avoid being “locked-in” to as any closed source IP PBX, offering specific vendors or products, resulting Why Open Source? these benefits: in better pricing and greater choice and As VoIP (define - news - alert) adop- • Customizable — While typical flexibility. tion rates continue to grow, businesses open source IP PBXs offer more than • Stable and secure — While it is not are seeing open source as a more viable 100 standard features, including all the possible for any software to be entirely option in the contact center. Open expected capabilities, the number and secure, open source enables constant source IP PBX solutions are feature rich, scope of possibilities are infinite. Since peer review, which results in rapid iden- offering capabilities such as voicemail, the source code is readily available, com- tification of security breaches. Because a conference bridging, call detail record- panies can control and add an unlimited large community of users has access to ing, call routing, and provides all of the range of features and functionality to the code, multiple people can be simul- features — and in fact more — than a meet their unique and evolving needs, taneously developing bug fixes at no closed source PBX offers. instead of spending on and waiting for cost. And because open source is open The open source IP PBX community customized features to be developed by in terms of both code and philosophy, is very well supported with hundreds of an outside vendor. there is no motivation for hackers to try contributors who have collectively • Cost-effective — An open source IP to ‘crack the code’. added hundreds of thousands of lines of PBX can be fully implemented for one- • Rapidly developed — Open source code. Open source also benefits from third to one-half the price of proprietary telephony is powered by a large commu- hundreds of individuals testing and doc- systems that are on the market today. nity of programmers. A multitude of umenting its development, adding to its There are no associated software costs as users with collaborative development,

70 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By Gary Barnett

But of course, it’s not limited to just companies with dynamic business processes — any company that wants to save money and increase the flexibility of its infrastructure can implement an open source solution. In addition to outsourcers, companies that could reap the benefits of an open source IP PBX would include collections contact centers, those with a dispersed workforce, global customer service, help desk, multi-campus environments, mobile workforce, companies requiring seasonal workforce increase/reduction and companies looking to introduce new products/services in pilot markets. Many companies that are interested real-world experience and vested inter- increased adoption. For example, when in open source also require simple, ests means that new capabilities can be the Linux operating system was first seamless integrations with more reliable quickly added and brought to market, introduced, people were skeptical about and proven contact center applications. and upgrades are timely. the value of an open source solution, These businesses are looking for a low- but once IBM and other large software cost infrastructure that can be easily cus- Addressing Open Source companies offered support and mainte- tomized, but they also have the option Concerns nance behind the solution, open source of adding more reliable, proven prod- Open source solutions, like Asterisk, was viewed as a well-established, fully- ucts to the contact center. This can have definitely been gaining traction in capable solution. Red Hat is another often be accomplished when an open the contact center recently. It has been company that distributes a packaged source IP PBX is packaged with full implemented in more than 250,000 version of Linux, and in October 2006, support through a larger vendor. sites and is downloaded 1,000 times Oracle announced they would provide Contact centers are constantly look- each day. Using session initiation proto- full support for Red Hat customers. ing to meet consumer demands, while col (SIP) and standards-based technolo- This is another proof-point that major balancing those with the realities of the gy for interoperability, open source has technology vendors are using open bottom line. An open source IP PBX gives them a quick and inexpensive way become an increasingly viable option for source solutions to drive their business- to achieve their business objectives while contact centers. es, further underscoring the viability of increasing choice, flexibility and control. However, many organizations are hes- open source offerings As the industry learns more about this itant to jump on the open source band- technology and recognizes the benefits wagon and adopt the technology Is It Right for Your Company? that Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) because of the lack of support and Open source is particularly appealing brings to a dynamic contact center and maintenance. These companies don’t to companies with dynamic business the enterprise, adoption rates will con- necessarily have the internal experts and processes and practices that need to tinue to grow like wildfire. In an indus- resources to maintain an open source make adds, moves, changes quite fre- try where needs are ever-changing and solution. And in the contact center, the quently to meet strategic objectives. dynamic, the right open source solution lack of support and maintenance is Outsourcers are a great example of a could be the spark your business needs to lower costs, increase revenue and ulti- especially a concern, particularly when dynamic business. Open source offers mately separate your company from the mission-critical contact center opera- an elevated level of flexibility and con- competition. IT tions could be at risk. trol that enables the business to quickly To address these concerns, several manage or add new features rather than vendors are offering open source solu- relying on a proprietary vendor to make Gary Barnett is the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President at Aspect tions that include support and mainte- the changes. These contact centers can Software. (news - alert) For more informa- nance. This has enabled companies to dictate their own PBX product roadmap tion, visit the company online at rethink the possibility of using open instead of relying on a vendor to update http://www.aspect.com. source, and has paved the way for the product.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 71 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Beyond Triple Play In Quadruple Play, Delivering Exceptional Customer Service is More Critical (and Difficult) Than Ever

The key to increasing stickiness with bundled services is to ensure the customer has a positive brand experience despite technological complexity.

While the success of the “Triple Play” service providers should know about the beginning to reap the financial benefits — video, high-speed internet/data, and unique support challenges companies of the multi-play strategy. One area premise-based voice convergence — has face in offering triple/quadruple service where companies are seeing dramatic been making headlines, it’s the bundles and how they need to prepare results is customer “stickiness” — or “Quadruple Play” and “Quad-Play Plus” to ensure the highest level of contact loyalty. According to Frost & that are promising to move the needle center service to these valuable customers. Sullivan/Stratecast, in the North even more dramatically for increased American cable market, a three-product customer value, retention and improved Quad Play Takes Off with subscriber is as much as 50% to 60% Consumers... revenue streams. By adding mobility less likely to churn than a single product There’s no question that the quadru- and focused content to the mix of the subscriber. ple play — with the addition of mobili- three current services, service providers ty — is going to be a boon for service have the compelling ingredient that will providers and consumers alike. For cus- However, Success Requires Major lure yet more customers away from sin- Operational Changes tomers, it’s one-stop shopping, billing gle or dual services to a bundled solu- Whether through partnerships, acqui- simplicity, and the prospect of a lower tion of three, four, or more integrated sitions, or creating new business models, total monthly outlay. For service offerings. delivering a successful triple or quad providers, it offers increased customer Now for the bad news: competition is play bundle will require operational loyalty, competitive advantage, and a fierce for the higher-value, bundled changes and strategies that ensure a higher value set of customers. services customer and it’s coming from smooth rollout and seamless customer This win-win proposition is gaining everywhere — traditional providers and experience throughout. New higher- steam in the market. According to many new competitive sources. With value customers represent not only research from Parks Associates, by 2010 bundled services, technological innova- increased revenues, but increased risk more than one-half of broadband tions and industry deregulation, the tra- and expense; particularly in cases of cus- households will subscribe to a triple or ditional lines of demarcation are being tomer churn. Therefore, getting the quadruple play bundled service. IDC is moved or eliminated; resulting in merg- service delivery, operational and cus- forecasting a significant drop-off of dou- ers, consolidations, partnerships, and tomer care aspects right is essential to ble-play service over the next five years, other business model-shifting trends. ensure the excellent brand experience falling to 42% of total subscriptions by The deciding factor that determines that will separate the market winners 2010. which companies will succeed will ulti- from the losers. mately come down to customers’ brand . . .While Service Providers Enjoy With technology hurdles and rapid experience, the majority of which is Increased Stickiness introduction of new and changing serv- formed through customer support inter- Service providers already offering ices, the onus will fall to customer sup- actions. This article focuses on what triple and quad play service offerings are port to ensure customer satisfaction

72 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By Michael Roy

tive (CSR) has evolved, especially in the communications/cable industries. “Not only does the CSR need to understand the basic voice service offerings,” said Mr. Bingham, “but now with the introduction of quad-plus play services (voice, video, broadband, mobile, and media/content) they need to trouble-shoot complex service outage questions, understand ever-changing regula- tions, and a whole host of other technical processes and systems. That is why we are seeing an up-tick of traditional wireline, wireless and major cable companies gravitate towards outsourcing providers to deliver bottom line savings.” while hiding the complexity of deliver- One Bill/One Voice — Fulfilling the Addressing the Customer Service ing disparate services from the customer. One-Stop Shopping Expectation Challenges of Multi-Play In this high-stakes environment, cus- While quad play means one-stop to The challenges of quad play require tomer support will need to surmount customers, in reality many vendors have service providers to work toward cus- several major hurdles in order to deliver multiple systems across multiple service tomer support solutions that provide a brand experience that exceeds expecta- offerings making customer care any- high levels of first call resolution, care tions: thing but seamless. Regardless of where agents that are multi-skilled across mul- • Uneven quality of services the service is ultimately originating, the tiple offerings, and agents that can pro- • Integration of multiple systems and customer will expect one company to vide information about and processing products for one bill/one voice support all the services provided. Care of additional, value-added services. At • Overcoming technological com- agents, business processes, and support the same time, intense competition for plexity systems will be required to integrate and wallet share means that service providers align as never before. must also ensure a cost-effective infra- Quality of Services — Only as structure to protect their profit margins Strong as the Weakest Link Technological Complexity — while growing their customer base. Customers purchasing bundled servic- Shielding the Customer Companies can choose to handle the es will expect a high level of support, as Customer care agents will be expected customer care function in-house, well as consistent, high-quality experi- to provide support and resolutions at a addressing the above-mentioned chal- ences. In fact, each service must be uni- higher level, across a larger matrix of lenges of complexity, one voice, and formly good quality or it jeopardizes the products and services. Rather than the quality of service through increased entire bundle. Unfortunately, providing tactical challenges of a phone connec- staffing, extensive agent training, new all the services within a bundle can be a tion being down, cable TV being out, or systems, and updated technology. Cost disjointed process given the fact that DSL not working, multi-play support control can then become an issue and products may originate from a variety of issues can present any combination of often results in either less than adequate sources thanks to inherent technologies, these issues at varying levels of complex- staffing for call volume peaks or over- sub-contracts, joint ventures, acquired ity. Those providers that can keep the capacity, which translates into cost over- companies, and other business models. frustration of complex technology deliv- runs. When the center is understaffed, Customer support must develop ways to ery invisible to the end user will be the call abandonment rates and call wait shield the customer from these issues, ones most likely to succeed. times escalate, payroll costs increase due yet deliver a coordinated view of the According to IDC analyst Brian to overtime hours, agents experience subscriber, and a well-orchestrated expe- Bingham, Global Director, CRM fatigue and burnout, processes break rience to questions, billing and service Services and F&A BPO Research, the down, and customer satisfaction problems. role of the customer service representa- declines.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 73 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index The Value of Outsourcing Some or However, companies leveraging out- shopping and support to the customer. All of Multi-Play Customer Support sourcing as a cost-effective solution to Managing the total customer experience When faced with the choice between the support challenges of multiplay throughout the customer lifecycle will internal or outsourced fulfillment of strategies need to research and hire a be critical to success. Quality customer the complex customer care require- business and brand partner, not merely care becomes the lynchpin element to ments of triple or quad+ play strate- an outsource services provider. ensure a seamless and satisfying sub- gies, many companies are seeing the Organizations should seek out a collab- scriber experience with the multi-play value of identifying and sourcing serv- orative partner with complementary bundle. IT ices and strategy with a trusted part- resources and technology, and a focused ner. common interest in not just handling a Michael Roy is Director of StarTek A proven outsourcer’s standardized subscriber event, but meeting the strate- Solutions, (news - alert) a leading provider processes and flexible staffing allow it of Business Process Optimization services gic needs of the company. for outsourced customer interactions. Roy to leverage experience, infrastructure has 20 years in marketing, consultative and capacity, eliminating the service You’ve Got to Play to Win sales, strategy and solutions development provider’s need to over-invest in Seen as a win-win for both con- supporting the Telecom, Cable/Satellite and resources. The right outsourcing part- sumers and service providers, the quad Broadband, CPG and Travel industries for ner can offer experienced management, play strategy also brings a number of such companies as AT&T, Level 3, Convergys, Comcast and Time Warner well-trained agents and systems for the challenges with it: new and upgraded Cable. (For information about StarTek’s varied types of services being offered in technology, disparate services and Quad Plus Play Services, contact StarTek the new bundles, ensuring superior sources of services, complexity of inter- today at 1-800-541-1130 or visit first call resolution and customer satis- related services, and integrating busi- http://www.startek.com to read StarTek’s faction. ness processes to provide one-stop Quad Play Services white paper.)

74 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index

The State of Session Border Control

Early on in the world of IP Communications, it became evident that VoIP (define - news - alert) calls were going to have trouble getting through firewalls and moving across and to differing networks and devices (e.g. SIP and H.323). This led to the first Session all of which rely to a great extent on Border Controllers, or SBCs. SBCs have evolved since then to SBC functionality. include functions other than simple border control, protocol and Netrake, another venerable SBC ven- media interworking, signaling/media validation and SIP-aware NAT dor, was acquired by AudioCodes. [Network Address Translation] traversal. Security and management AudioCodes’ VP of Marketing for the functions became important, such as access control, call detail SBC Business Line, Menachem Honig, says, “AudioCodes recently acquired recording, Quality of Service [QoS] control, network topology hid- Netrake, a company that has focused on ing, and so forth. With the approach of IMS [IP Multimedia SBCs and security gateways for several Subsystem] and fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), SBCs are evolv- years now. AudioCodes sees SBCs as a ing once more to meet the challenge. type of product complementary to its product lines. Until recently For example, at the recent GSM BG are ETSI TISPAN and 3GPP IMS AudioCodes has focused on the connec- World Congress in Barcelona, Acme compliant and deliver the Interconnect- tivity between the PSTN and VoIP net- Packet (news - alert) demonstrated Border Gateway Function (I-BGF) and works, but now we’re seeing a lot of IMS and an IMS-compliant decom- Interconnect-Border Control Function VoIP ‘islands’ forming both on the posed session border controller (SBC) (I-BCF) elements for interconnect net- operator and enterprise side, so the con- and how their Net-Net SBCs will work works and Proxy-Call Session Control nectivity between such networks is not in a FMC solution, providing security, Function (P-CSCF), Core Border so simple. From Layer 2 and up vendors service reach maximization, service Gateway Function (C-BGF) and and networks are using different assurance, revenue and profit protection Service-based Policy Decision Function schemes, so you need something that and regulatory compliance — for IP (SPDF) elements for access networks. can guarantee the traversal between net- interactive communications over fixed SBCs are considered such an impor- works and through firewalls. Up to or wireless IP networks. tant network element that larger compa- Layer 7, the networks are not necessarily Acme Packet’s SBC can be ordered as nies have acquired some SBC vendors. signaling with the same protocol. Even a ‘decomposed’ SBC solution; their Net- Emergent Network Solutions is now the the networks are using the same proto- Net Session Controller (SC) and Net- Emergent Network Solutions group at col, there can be slight differences, and Net Border Gateway (BG) are software Stratus Technologies in Maynard, you have to bridge between them. configurations that decompose session Massachusetts. Emergent was attractive Accomplishing this is one of the tradi- border control into separate signaling to Stratus, a well-known maker of fault tional functions of an SBC. Now that and media control systems for SIP ses- tolerant computing platforms, since the world is moving away from the sions and are supported on both the Stratus has a strategic business initiative PSTN to IP-to-IP voice networks, Net-Net 4000 and 9000 series hardware involving VoIP, IMS, service mediation AudioCodes decided it should play a platforms. Both the Net-Net SC and and fixed-mobile convergence (FMC), role in this game. Thus, the SBC is a

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

building SBCs, what would you say you see there? Are the companies going public? Are they getting bigger or smaller? Many are getting acquired by big companies, and you don’t do an acquisition unless you’re convinced it’s a strategic move.” “As for ourselves,” muses Smolucha, “we’re probably the most important software company you’ve never heard of. We’ve been around for about 40 years. We’re a public company headquartered in Sweden, with 500+ employees globally. The interesting thing about us is that our software technology is powering about 250 million mobile handsets — 2G and 3G — half of the world’s 3G base stations, satellite gateways, media gateways, session border controllers, and very natural component or network ele- in conjunction with residential voice more. Being that we don’t make devices, ment to have in our product portfolio.” services, hosting VoIP, and in the core it we help our customers make better “If we ignore IMS for a moment,” will support trunk peering to other net- devices. We don’t get the public recogni- says Honig, “and simply focus on a pure work operators.” tion that really should go with what we VoIP network, we will definitely find John Smolucha, VP of Product do. The company had its origins build- SBCs at the network edge, associated Marketing at ENEA (news - alert) ing real-time operating systems for with the access functions and the host- (http://www.enea.com), says: “There was a Ericsson, which is still one of our best ing of residential services. SBCs are also feeling early on in VoIP that everyone in customers after more than 30 years. We in the core, where they are used to peer the industry would settle on the same also work with names such as Nokia, between two VoIP network operators.” two or three voice codecs, and not a Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Agere, Alcatel, “There is no doubt about the future whole lot of interworking and transcod- Samsung and more. Our focus is really of session border controllers,” says ing would be necessary. As it turns out, network software. When I say ‘network’, Honig. “As long as VoIP exists, SBC more and more interworking and if you think of whatever you have in the functionality will be necessary.” transcoding has been necessary to main- palm of your hand as a mobile handset, “IMS has presented us with innova- tain the interoperability of networks and being the termination or delivery point tion as to how to compose the net- network devices, and SBCs fill the bill.” for that, then we’re also into mobile work,” says Honig. “We think that we “The ‘Session Border Controller’ term handsets.” can easily move the needed IMS func- caught on because it’s a pretty accurate “ENEA is interesting is that we’re one tionality into the SBC and then the description of what they do,” says of the only companies I’m aware of that SBC will play a role on the IMS net- Smolucha. has a software platform and IP infra- works as well. Both the functionalities “Ultimately, at the end of the day, structure that works equally well in of an SBC and a security gateway are without session border controllers, IP mobile handsets or in high-end carrier- going to merge into one AudioCodes networks aren’t secure,” says Smolucha. grade telecom equipment,” says product in 2007. As for IMS, we’ll have “Carriers must be in a position so that Smolucha. one device with all this functionality of they’re confident they can safely “One basic function that SBCs fulfill both devices on one platform and it will exchange traffic to access networks, and is carrier-to-carrier network peering,” be optimized for IMS. With IMS you they’ll be able to do that while hiding says Smolucha. “As VoIP rolls out a bit can compose a network differently, in the topology of their network, especially more and the movement continues to which case the functionality of the SBC when it comes to carrier-to-carrier peer- try to achieve a coalesced IP network, will be partitioned in a different way in ing. A lot of what the rapid acceleration session border controllers are still the network. Still, we think our SBCs of VoIP that we’ve seen is all about required to provide all of that interoper- are flexible enough to provide a lot of moving across carrier-to-carrier net- ability to allow carriers to peer into each functionality that is defined in the IMS works. If you look at what what’s hap- others’ networks, but now with security architecture. This new device will work pening with the companies that are and quality of service [QoS]. I don’t see

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 77 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index that moving into routers, since routers networks be they enterprise or residen- messaging, presence and other capabili- aren’t really ‘stateful’, they can’t perform tial. What else but a session border con- ties, SBCs do nothing — they’re ‘silent’ all of the key mediation functions and troller could provide such functionality?” on that topic. Then there’s SBCs’ lack- quality of service, transcoding and “Still, as we talk to our customers luster ability to manage diverse end- authorization. I don’t see it being entire- about convergence and migration to points in terms of handling registration ly integrated back into softswitches IMS networks,” says Smolucha, “one of and registration ‘floods’ and in terms of either, because a softswitch is only state- the things we see are folks asking them- addressing the interoperability issues ful at the core, not necessarily at the selves, ‘How do I get to carrier-grade that we’ll have at the edge because edge, which is where the security and availability? How can I improve the enterprises are going to use differing quality of service mediation and traffic engineering efficiency of my product vendor handsets, softphones, Office normalization happens. A softswitch can development team, reduce the cost of Communicator clients, mobile devices, provide some of signaling and some ownership of this technology and build and so forth. In such an environment media routing, but it can’t do all of the stuff that’s going to last longer than interoperability is not at all assured and real-time IP routing.” three or four years in the network?’ So needs to be addressed.” “So, in the cases of carrier-to-enter- we’ve still got some work to do.” “Then there’s the whole area of man- prise and carrier-to-carrier peering, says agement tools,” says Hodgman. Smolucha, “SBCs will stay around for a The Hidden SBC “Networks are becoming really compli- while. Also, if you look at that market (news - alert) Rod Hodgman VP of cated and they require high-level appli- from who’s out there and who’s playing Marketing for Covergence cations layer tools to debug and fault- in it, the companies that are building (http://www.covergence.com), says, “Many isolate problems on the network and SBCs tend to be specialized — the of the current SBC features are going to ensure that the service doesn’t get Acme Packets, MERAs, Netrakes, move into other network elements. degraded by these faults.” NexTones and Newports and the That’s beginning to happen today. SBCs “SBCs solved the first generation of Sonuses. I haven’t seen the big guys such will have to evolve to address not the problems,” says Hodgman. “You could- as Nortel and Ericsson take on session connectivity issues that they deal with n’t make a VoIP call because it couldn’t border control as a strategy part of their today, but higher-level application issues traverse the network firewalls. To that product portfolios. In 2003 to 2004 instead posed by customers — both we added some things necessary for timeframe, I recall there was a flood of providers and carriers deploying IMS as service providers, such as call admission venture capital money into that market, well as enterprises. You can categorize control and media transcoding, basic something on the order of $240-$250 these around a broad class of issues authentication. Many SBCs have some million in funding. Having raised VC related to making a service ‘business features you’d expect of them such as money on my own, I know that VCs grade’. The biggest market for a business protocol and media interworking, ses- don’t put money into technologies or grade service is of course businesses in sion routing, admission control and companies unless they’re hoping to get a the enterprise marketplace. Most service policing, auality monitoring and 10X return on their investment in a providers, other than the consumer enforcement, signaling security, network three-to-five year window. So somebody VoIP pure plays, desperately want to address translation (NAT), authentica- was expecting a $2.4 billion return with attract and retain business customers tion, authorization, and accounting a good hunk of profitability.” because they can sell them higher value (AAA), media transcoding and call “As carriers and operators send out services and incremental services. But if detail recording, Network Topology RFPs, what are they asking for?” asks you look at traditional SBCs today and Hiding. SBCs will increasingly move Smolucha. “If you believe guys like how they stack up, in terms of several onto things such as blades that will be Frost & Sullivan and the other analysts business-related categories, you can see in routers and other network elements. that spend all of their time focused on that traditional SBCs are somewhat lim- SBCs will be involved with open source this space, then there is a huge carrier ited.” software and pretty widely available as demand for session border controllers, “For example, the security that SBCs we move through 2007. What’s left to or at least SBC functionality, and it’s provide today is essentially unusable,” do with SBCs has nothing to do with not going away, especially with the dra- says Hodgman, “They don’t provide the connectivity issues, it really involves the matic increase over the last few years in signaling or media security encryption harder, more interesting issues at the real-time multimedia IP communica- necessary to pass security muster or the Application layer of how to provide a tions, which typically are based on SIP, monitoring, logging, and alerting neces- single point of policy-based control for H.323 or MGCP protocols. Multimedia sary to pass the compliance team. If you real-time services and applications based content really must flow between IP look at SBCs’ ability to help service on the SIP protocol.” networks, carrier-to-carrier networks, or providers provision real-time services “SBCs will need to shift focus to solv- services that go from carrier-to-access that go beyond VoIP, such as instant ing application-level security, control

78 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index SBCs will need to shift focus to solving application-level and management issues,” says controller,” says Hughes, “because the security, control and Hodgman. “Basic connectivity will basic functionality that some customers migrate into network elements.” need, such as session control, firewall management issues... Hodgman elaborates: “This is why we traversal, and those sorts of functions, developed the Eclipse, which not only are needed and yet they didn’t need a has basic SBC features but also very expensive platform to do that. And advanced application level security fea- so we found a very inexpensive solution. tions being pushed over the network are tures, such as application-level security, In fact, you’ll find that a lot of routers not just voice anymore. They’re voice, cryptographic authentication, DOS and devices are implementing that data and video. Carriers are looking to attack protection, signaling encryption, approach, so SBCs are a kind of basic deliver these things over a unified plat- media encryption, signaling and media functionality, almost like having a pho- form, or unified network, if you will. I validation, intrusion prevention, virus tocopy machine in an office. Our other think that VoIP has done a great service scanning, malicious URL filtering. The two products have SBC NAT traversal to the industry by paving the way in Eclipse also has advanced management functionality integrated in them. My terms of showing how you can take and control features, such as applica- product takes SBC functionality to the something that wasn’t necessarily and IP tion-aware session routing, web services point where it makes the implementa- applications and have it run over IP. For management/control, distributed signal- tion and deployment phases for our cus- that process to occur, a lot of things in ing/media processing, independent poli- tomers more seamless. In doing that, the industry had to change. IP has cy decision functions and much more.” we’ve created a single solution. Both become as a protocol suite. More and Another SBC-in-the-machinery sce- provisioning and billing is integrated. more applications appear and they have nario is playing out over at Tekelec The control of that device is integrated, more and more capabilities. If you look (news - alert) (http://www.tekelec.com) too. Statistics monitoring, and all of at SIP alone, for instance, when it first Sara Hughes, Director of Product those types of functions are also fully appeared it was a simple session setup Management for the P6000 VoIP integrated with the platform.” and teardown protocol; it is agnostic to Application Server at Tekelec, says: “If you go with a standalone SBC,” specific applications and so it’s suited “From the standpoint of the switching says Hughes, “provisioning is separate; to IMS.” realm — I’m in the switching business you’ve got another vendor to deal with, “New networks are trying to deploy unit — we have three products in this and the billing must traverse devices. services that encompass all media,” says area and I’m the director of product You also have to deal with not only the Sipper. “When I say ‘all media’ I’m not management for one of those products. integration of provisioning, but inte- just referring to multimedia, I mean all For my product and one other, we’ve grating the SIP call flow and any other media: tech services, voice, data and integrated SBC functionality. My prod- protocol call flows between devices.” video services that could be uniquely uct interfaces with CPE [Customer deployed on their own or they can be Premise Equipment] devices as well as Meet the Universal Convergence mixed in a number of ways. These SIP gateways, so we use my integrated Gateway (UCG) services will be pushed over any net- session border controller in the Tekelec Reef Point’s Universal Convergence work — any means the customer can 6000 to interface not only CPE devices Gateway is the industry’s first fixed- use to access the services has to be and control firewall traversal, NAT and mobile convergence gateway product to available as a means to deliver those PAT and all that, but also to handle publicly demonstrate security for multi- applications. It’s no longer suitable to peering to other SIP gateways and SIP vendor mobile IMS networks and to just have networks built specifically for functions in the network.” concurrently provide security for mobile a particular application or setup access- “The forward thinking of this is that IMS and landline (or ‘fixed’) IMS net- ing technology.” we’re debating whether we should sell works. The Reef Point UCG was also “What Reef Point sees in the market the SBC part as a standalone device as the first gateway to publicly demon- is that there is a requirement now for a well,” says Hughes. “For the time being, strate IMS fixed- line and mobile net- new kind of border element that must the SBC is fully integrated with the work security and IMS Proxy-Call exist in the network,” says Sipper. “An product and is controlled by the prod- Session Control Function integrated in SBC is definitely a border element. uct, which does yield a lot of benefits a single chassis system. Session border controllers are purpose- associated with an integrated platform. Aaron Sipper, Director of Product built devices that were really built for Not all of our competitors have that, Marketing for Reef Point Systems (news fixed-line VoIP signaling mediation for and it does definitely give us an ‘edge’ - alert) (http://www.reefpoint.com), peering and access. They’re used in a that our customers see.” says, “Obviously, the network is chang- number ways in such things as access “One of our products actually does ing. It’s changing for a number of rea- applications, everything from VoIP serv- connect to a 3rd-party session border sons, but mainly because the applica- ices that you have at home or in the

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 79 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index office to peering. Most of the traffic for to accommodate firewall traversal on the terms of topology hiding and potentially voice today is obviously peering traffic access side,” says Sipper, “so if you’re doing some authentication functions. or LD [Long Distance] so SBCs were deploying VoIP services on the edge, More importantly, there’s other func- designed to fix problems associated with and you had a network access transla- tionality that comes along with SBCs, two carriers or networks attempting to tion function sitting at the residence or such as doing number translation for peer on a VoIP level, and really to han- in the enterprise, you needed a way to ENUM (“Electronic Numbering”) that’s dle signaling mediation — specifically, perform a conversion there, and so required at the border.” two separate domains can talk to each SBCs were a prime candidate to do that, “Now that IMS is appearing, many other without any problems, even if one because they could act as a proxy, they vendors are focusing on TISPAN,” says domain is based on H.323 and the had back-to-back user agent functionali- Sipper. “specifically the TISPAN as it other is based on SIP.” ty, and by tacking on some additional addresses wireline players, and since “Our Universal Convergence capabilities SBCs could get VoIP traffic many tend to be entrenched in the wire- Gateways [UCG], on the other hand, could actually get around firewalls by line space, it makes sense. SBCs are real- are built to provide security, quality of handling NAT [Net Address ly positioned for VoIP fixed-line access service [QoS] and policy enforcement,” Translation]. As the world moved for- and peering roles in the IMS network. says Sipper. “In particular, they’re ward, NAT was one of the first intro- So, vendors are starting to evolve their designed not just for voice but for any ductions to security measures. The SBC platforms to do more with it, along the application you want to push over it. industry at that point realized that there lines of what they’ve done before, but The UCG is built for what’s really are other functions that the SBC could now in an IMS context, so it includes occurring in the industry, and that’s the provide, things such as topology hiding, such things as SIP protocol enhance- fixed-mobile convergence [FMC] order SIP Denial of Service [DoS] protection ment and as well as other protocols such that’s occurring. So, whether a carrier is and to some extent, VoIP bandwidth as DIAMETER that’s necessary to work fixed line, cable, or a mobile operator management. They realized that, with other IMS network components.” really doesn’t matter. There’s almost because the SBC is an endpoint user “Our universal convergence gateway, always a mobile component to the agent, they could actually glean what’s or UCG, starts life a bit differently than strategies of carriers and network opera- really going on — for example, ‘Since I an SBC,” says Sipper. “We have a legacy tors, and because of this, borders are [the SBC] am really parsing the SIP too, just like the SBCs. The UCG actu- definitely changing.” message, I can detect a malformed SIP ally started out as a security gateway. Sipper continues: “If you look at the message that someone can use in an From a security gateway perspective, SBC architecture foundation, as I said attack on me, to take control of the one looks at borders a bit differently before, it started out as a mediation servers or do something to assist them. than an SBC does. First off, the type of device for signaling. Most VoIP net- Furthermore, since I can already see the functions that are needed deal with pri- working and devices of the past used the SDP session descriptor, I can make vate networking, authentication, sepa- H.323-based control protocol. As the some decisions on what to do with that rating traffic, routing, packet switching, benefits of SIP became more apparent, flow. Shall I route it to a specific path, doing NAT — I’m not referring to fire- carriers looked to evolve the network to such as a voice or IP trunk for least wall traversal yet, but just NAT, map- SIP, but they had to maintain interoper- cost?’ So, security built into SBCs is ping one IP address to another from an ability with the networks that actually designed for voice specifically and SIP, enterprise or VPN perspective — and were generating revenue at the time, and centers on policy decisions. being able to mark flows and provide and those were running H.323. It’s still Typically, there’s a requirement with some measure of QoS, being able to do true to some extent today. The solution some SBCs that if you want to control firewalls and filtering packets using deep to this was the development a product the media you have to use a separate, packet inspection to examine the flows, that could translate between SIP and external media-firewall to handle RTP providing intrusion detection and pro- H.323, the SBC. The architecture is sessions. Not all SBCs are like that, of tection capabilities, and also encryp- really based on back-to-back user agents course, some of them do include a tions. As a secure gateway product, we and it’s very software-centric, because media component, but usually it’s a sep- developed this generically. We said, SBCs are designed by nature to termi- arate function.” ‘Okay, there’s media coming in. It could nate a SIP session, understand or parse “SBCs, therefore, are really good at be anything, because it’s encapsulated in through the meaning of that session, VoIP network peering applications,” IP. Given that, how do you safeguard and then regenerate or ‘re-originate’ says Sipper. “At two VoIP borders — it that traffic and/or the network and in so another session as need be. So, with an really doesn’t matter whose borders they doing, what are the functions we need SBC you have to terminate, parse, and are — you really need an SBC to ensure to build into the system?’ And so we then re-originate.” the interoperability of the networks and did. The architecture is really based on “Obviously, over time, SBCs evolved to provide some measure of security in network processors, FPGAs [Field-

80 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Programmable Gate Arrays] and ASICs absorbed? Packaged? Minimized in can slot into ATCA chassis slots as and [Application-Specific Integrated value? I think the clear answer from the when needed.” Circuits], that must handle all types of field perspective is quite to the contrary. “Bottom line, we see that SBCs were IP applications at wire speed.” IMS is an ideal architecture if not conceived of as a security device at the “Why so? Their model of handling framework for building networks and network boundary,” says Turner. “That packets is completely different than creating applications. But everyone is role will persist. As we see more and SBCs,” says Sipper. “Everything must be discovering that the real world is some- more production environments we start processed at wire speed, and to do that, what more complicated than what IMS’ to understand that architectures or I you can’t afford to terminate sessions. In creators anticipated in its design. The guess frameworks such as IMS need other words, you can’t terminate a flow, world is messy and has lots of complexi- more, they need help in dealing with all look at it, and then decide to ship it out ty, and more and more the primary role of the complexity that the real world somewhere once you know what to do of SBCs is to ‘nomalize’ that complexity has. Take 3GPP as an example. Many of with it. Doing that causes too much into something that the core IMS net- the 3GPP assumptions and what the delay and too many performance losses. works can handle. IMS networks need devices and network will look like just Plus you have different protocols that to be fast, lightweight and inexpensive, aren’t real. Enterprises find themselves aren’t necessarily suitable for termina- so it’s important that the SBCs take with IP PBXs from vendors that some- tion. You can’t say, ‘Well, I’m going to away all of the complexity from the core.” times deviate slightly from established terminate this type of session, parse it, “SBCs are still important when it standards and the enterprise may want look at it, then send it on its merry comes to certain kinds of network carri- to preserve some private address space. way.’ You have to be able to look at all er-to-carrier peering, particularly dealing 3GPP wasn’t designed for that, so you flows in a real-time, singular fashion. with H.323 which will be around for a need something at the network bound- What UCGs do in general is to use while,” says Turner. “There are specific ary to provide the adaptation.” deep packet inspection technology that business rules involved in carrier peering As IMS gets going, people will be able examines the packets as they move which need to be observed or handled to roam in a fixed-mobile communica- through the system, and affects change by an SBC on behalf of an IMS network.” tions environment from the desktop to as the packet streams traverse the box. “For peering involving an enterprise, WiFi to cellular or WiMAX with their Hence the hardware focus of the UCG there are a different set of problems and services intact, the ‘boundary’ of the concept.” complexities,” says Turner. “There’s the enterprise disappears. One would think “Over time, the UCG evolved to likelihood of more variances or difficul- that SBC functionality has to appear at include things such as firewalls, NAT ties of the IP realm. Then there are pri- every endpoint in the system, since the and you began to see more access-side vate IP addresses, public NAT devices, “edge” of the network will be every- specialization of functionality,” says overlapping IPs, VLANs, ‘realms’, and where. Sipper. “UCGs can handle SIP DoS, all sorts of other nuances and complexi- “It may commoditize to that level ALG, additional encryption methods, ties that softswitches and IMS networks over time,” replies Turner, “but at the IP application bandwidth management don’t have the ‘plumbing’ to handle. An moment we see the need to ‘repackage’ and offer flexible policy control.” SBCs job is to take care of and normal- SBCs to fit the right space. So carriers “UCGs are designed from the ground ize these things into something it can for network trunking need fewer but up for IP security, QoS, and policy understand and relate to, in addition to very large implementations. As you head enforcement and they operate on both the commonly understood security toward the enterprise there are more signaling and media flows,” says Sipper. aspects that we all know and love about possible sites and the hardware form “From an IMS perspective, they’re SBCs.” factor tends to be smaller. We fully focused on FMC access security, QoS, “What differentiates NexTone is that expect such repackaging to be necessary and policy enforcement for 3GPP, we decided to go down the computing to be a competent vendor in this space. 3GPP2, TISPAN, and PacketCable- platform path from its inception,” says Again, since we’re Intel-based we’re easi- based networks. We expect that UCGs Turner. “We’re inherently portable to ly portable in all those dimensions.” will be a major player in the IMS era.” AdvancedTCA [ATCA] form factor Whatever we call them — Session computing platforms for high-end tele- Border Controllers, Universal SBCs and IMS: Made for com applications. If you look at any Convergence Gateways, or what-not — each other? major Tier-1 or mobile operator, they’re a certain group of features and functions Over at NexTone (news - alert) looking at moving generically from a associated with SBCs will not just per- (http://www.nextone.com) VP of telecoms hardware ‘kit’ network to more sist in the future IMS network world, Product Marketing Nick Turner says, of an IT-based platform, and ATCA was but will both flourish and be of “Many people wonder how SBCs will the common denominator. NextTone immense importance. IT work an IMS network. Will they be equipment is Intel-based, our boards

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 81 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Choosing Development Platforms DIY Voice

As with any do-it-yourself project, using the right tools for the job is deployment costs from vendor to ven- fundamental to its success. Today, there are a variety of application dor. A careful price/performance exami- development environments (ADEs) and software development kits nation is required. (SDKs) available to significantly reduce the time, cost and complexity Once you have decided what type of of creating cutting edge voice solutions, such as interactive voice ADE you prefer, there are 10 top areas response (IVR), contact center and unified communications solutions. to consider during the selection process: 1. Functionality: There is as much In fact, at first glance there may be too forms, and, in some instances, no longer diversity in ADE functionality as there many options. Each platform vendor provided low level resource control. is in different voice solution projects. provides one or more development Next we saw the Internet/Telephony Some offer a wide range of telephony options and every technology vendor convergence revolution which ushered protocols, some offer support for email offers their own proprietary SDK. in a new breed of standards-based ADEs and Web, some offer multiple integra- Developers can narrow their choices, and more open communications devel- tion options, some even offer new tech- however, by considering the needs of opment platforms. Today these ADEs nologies such video support. their specific projects. Consider how are focused on the SIP, MRCP, CCXML Understanding your own needs before much functionality, integration flexibility and VoiceXML programming standards. evaluating your options will help. What and application portability is required to All of these development options telephony protocols, boards or infra- achieve the goals of your specific project. remain viable today and offer varying structure do you need to support? Is this benefits. SDKs offer the greatest level of a multi-channel solution? What are your The Evolution of Cutting control and have the lowest upfront preferred speech engines? Once you Edge Tools costs. However, these projects tend to be have a rough functional specification, In the beginning, there were individ- more complex, have longer development you can more easily determine the solu- ual SDKs created for each component cycles and require highly specialized tion that will work best for you. of a voice solution. Developers had to skills to complete. Traditional ADEs are 2. Standards & Migration Protection: write to one API to control telephony great for more programming oriented To ensure portability, look for application resource boards and to another to man- developers. They offer a layer of abstrac- development environments that support age each speech resource. This was tion for multiple components while still the latest standards including VoiceXML, extremely time consuming and not cost- providing a high level of resource con- CCXML, MRCP, SIP and more. effective. trol. And, they have lower licensing and Today, everyone is working in a state Then came the ADE which provided deployment costs. Graphical ADEs are of constant change. Developers need to a layer of abstraction for multiple com- more suitable for groups looking to find a way to leverage prior investments ponents in a single product. Developers quickly solve business problems rather in hardware, software and solution devel- could then create voice applications than to understand complex telephony opment, while providing a smooth more quickly, but there was still a lot of issues. They offer the greater range of migration path to the emerging standards programming to be done. functionality and fastest time-to-market. and technologies that will be required in Next, graphical ADE arrived on the Standards-based ADEs provide portabil- the future. Choosing an ADE with broad scene. It further sped development by ity and integration advantages however, capabilities and a strong roadmap will providing a more intuitive interface that their scope is limited and additional help ensure that your projects will go encompassed more solution elements application development work will have smoothly today — and tomorrow. such as database, email and Web integra- to be done to create a total solution. For 3. Development Relevance: With tion. However, these development tools both graphical and standards-based most projects, the developers have a par- were tied to specific deployment plat- ADEs, there is a tremendous range in ticular skill set and there is usually an

82 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By Sanjeev Sawai

ADE more suited for the job than others. For example, telephony specialists will appreciate a development environment that enables them to create call flow charts and program the functionality into the individual blocks. Visual Studio and .NET developers benefit tremen- dously from an ADE offering Active X objects for embedding telephony functions into their programs. When evaluating your options, look for robust functionality with easy access to low- level technology features. Web developers looking to voice- enable their applications should consider using a standards-based ADE for creating VoiceXML, a mark-up language that defines voice segments and enables access to the Internet via telephones and other voice-activated devices. When selecting a VoiceXML development solution, look for pre-built dialogs that feature best practice VUI design rules. However, the VoiceXML standard can be limited for applications that require advanced call control, extensive application integration or gration time, CTI middleware also pro- 7. Strong Code Management multi-channel capabilities. Look for a tects your development work ensuring Capabilities: Integration with Visual solution that allows you to generate that it will proceed as written in many Source Safe or CVS directly from the pure VoiceXML code wherever possible different — and evolving — call center ADE will facilitate change management and provides integrated development environments. and version control in large, collabora- capabilities for program elements not 5. Enterprise Software Integration tive development projects. covered by the standard. Capabilities: Most developers today 8. Testing Tools: The application test- 4. Call Center Integration believe that the future of enterprise ing phase, while critical to the success of Capabilities: Determining how much application integration resides in Web a project, is often squeezed to meet integration with call center infrastruc- services. Some of today’s ADEs already deployment deadlines. To help, look for ture elements is required will provide support these protocols. However, a products with strong debugging capabili- important insight for the ADE selection Web service may not be available in all ties, including block-by-block code process. Does the application need to sit cases. Look for products that support a check, expression watches and script behind a softswitch or PBX? Does the broad range of database and communi- traces. Robust system and application application require advanced call data cations standards including ODBC, logging capabilities are also important. (ANI, DNIS, call length, transfer data, SQL, XML, WSDL, HTML, HTTP, The more simplified the deployment etc.) to work effectively? Does it require TCP/IP, SNMP, LDAP, SS7, USSD, model, the smoother the testing process. sophisticated routing schemes or inte- RADIUS, X.25, IMAP4, POP3, SMTP 9. Deployment Models: There are a gration with agent workstations? Do and more. By selecting a product with variety of voice solution deployment you need desktop call control or click- multiple integration options, you will models available, however, your choice to-talk capabilities? In these cases, ADEs have fewer headaches and a greater of ADE will dictate which you can uti- with CTI middleware are an ideal solu- chance of success. lize. Solutions developed with a vendor tion. Choose one that provides a stan- 6. Code Flexibility: Look for prod- supplied ADE typically need to be dards-based methodology for communi- ucts that allow you to leverage existing deployed on their IVR platform. cating with a broad range of IP and tra- IT assets and call external applications, VoiceXML-based ADEs offer some plat- ditional PBXs from leading vendors. hosted scripts and DLLs written in C, form flexibility as they can be deployed Check for support for TAPI, JTAPI, C++, VB, Active X, JScript and on any certified VoiceXML gateway CSTA and SIP. Along with cutting inte- VBScript. connected to a J2EE compliant web

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 83 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Selecting the Right Tool for the Job server. Lastly, some ADEs are designed for server-based solutions that utilize can Pay Off in the End standard voice cards or HMP for telephony resources. When designing their VoiceOne Enhanced 911 service, VoIP Inc. wanted When considering your deployment to offer an IVR self-service solution that would directly empower subscribers options, look for a solution that pro- to continuously verify and update their location information — even while vides the reliability and scalability you traveling. Their development team used Envox CT ADE to reduce a project- need. Check for advanced administra- ed six to nine month development cycle to just three weeks. tive tools that simplify both for day-to- “Developing with Envox CT ADE reduced our service creation time by day management and deployment of more than 80%, which is vital in the highly competitive, evolving VoIP serv- upgrades and code changes. ice market, where time-to-market is a critical success factor,” said Shawn 10. Pricing: Evaluating the relative Lewis, CTO of VoIP, Inc. “Further, Envox CT ADE allows us to rapidly cre- costs of different ADEs is a rather com- ate new service prototypes to test customer acceptance, without overburden- plex issue. Naturally, there are licensing ing our development resources, ensuring that we have the flexibility necessary fees for the development software itself, to meet changing customer demands.” but deployment plays a big part in the equation. Third party products not supplied by an IVR platform vendor will sions on a price/performance basis to simply need to add some voice capabili- charge a per port runtime license fee. find the best scenario for your project. ties to an existing program. Service While that can be relatively straightfor- With all the choices available, you can providers and VARs need to be more ward in a server/board/HMP deploy- find a suitable ADE for your current strategic in their decision making. ment model, it can get very expensive in and future needs. For example, custom Standardizing on a single ADE that the VoiceXML world. As with IVR plat- designed solutions for known, control- offers a wide array of technologies, func- forms, there is a huge difference in the lable environments have different tions and communication protocols can per port pricing for VoiceXML plat- requirements than packaged applica- generate tremendous efficiencies that forms. Additionally, some platforms tions that must fit into a wide range of translate into time-to-market and prof- have hidden costs in the form of teleph- unknown customer environments. itability advantages. IT ony server charges and per port sur- Developers also need to determine how charges for speech and advanced func- much work they want to be able to do Sanjeev Sawai is Vice President of Research tionality. These additional fees can add within that application development and Development, Envox Worldwide. (news up quickly, especially for large-scale environment — do they want to be able - alert) For more information, visit the com- deployments. Evaluate deployment deci- to design a complete solution or do they pany online at http://www.envox.com.

84 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 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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With the rise of mobile technology, it will only be a matter of time that are used in remote areas of before various advanced Location-Based Services (LBSs) appear, North America. mostly offered by mobile carriers to both provide one or more serv- • Interoperability issues frequently ices and as an ingenious way of sending customized advertising to limit telematics applications and the cell hone owners. The original applications in this area involved business case for them. Most of us will probably encounter such weighty topics as finding your location for E911 purposes, but more location-based services tied to cell soon your search for the closest pizza parlor will be fulfilled and phones. Indeed, the concept can be updated by your cell phone on a minute-by-minute basis. scaled down for use in the enterprise, or industry, or healthcare. This feat is made possible by two dif- analyst for Unstrung Enterprise Insider Cisco’s (quote - news - alert) Marketing ferent technologies: First, the recent who wrote the report, says: “Telematics Director of Wireless and Mobility, Ben ability to shrink GPS functionality into is a long-term commitment. Consumers Gibson, says, “Location-based services is a chip and embed it into a cell phone, tend to replace their cellphones every 18 a very important area that has a very which informs the carrier/service to 24 months on average, while the distinct focus for our wireless network provider as to the phone’s location. turnover rate at enterprises is somewhat and business unit. Our vision for loca- Second, non-GPS chip phones can be longer. Telematics modules, however, tion-based services involves leveraging part of a system where special assistance routinely stay in service for several years our WiFi architecture. We focus on servers can tap into radiolocation and or longer. A module installed in a truck, location-based services that employ trilateration methodologies (triangula- for instance, might be in service for a 802.11 WiFi (define - news - alert) tion of signal angles or signal-strength decade or more. As a result, decisions technology. Our offering in the space is measurements). The ability to deploy such as vendor and network technology our Cisco unified wireless network. This such services appeared in the 1990s. shouldn’t be made lightly, because they is a combination of wireless LAN con- The services themselves haven’t really determine the total cost of ownership trollers with a location-based services taken off yet, but interest is growing. and the ability to add applications over appliance that then works in concert (The governments of the world are many years.” with a whole range of different WiFi probably also interested, since they Key findings of the report include the access points that can be deployed in could conceivably track every sub- following: customer sites — primary indoors scriber’s location and history of move- • Telematics is still primarily an after- today, but increasingly we see moving to ment.) market sector, but that’s slowly outdoor WiFi solutions as well.” In the days before handsets could par- changing. “Our strategy is to develop location- ticipate in location-based services, the • CDMA2000 telematics radio mod- based solutions integrated into the wire- technology was still small enough to fit ules are pricier than GSM/GPRS less network infrastructure,” says in automobiles. Thus began the hubbub units. Gibson. “That’s the product platform over “telematics”. • Multi-technology telematics solu- we deliver, and then we take that inte- Indeed, the Heavy Reading Enterprise tions are likely to become common grated location-based capability that’s Group has just published a report, by the end of this decade. part of the WiFi infrastructure and we “Enterprise Telematics: Covering Your • The shutdown of analog cellular build programming interfaces into 3rd Assets” which analyzes the current state networks over the next two years is party business applications that allow a of telematics. Tim Kridel, a research an issue for telematics applications customer to take advantage of the loca-

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

mesh networks are deployed. But the question arises as to how broadly mesh WiFi networks can be scaled up to do that over a much wider area than you would normally encounter. That would require a huge number of outdoor mesh access points to enable such an application. There are some possibilities for such an application, but I think when it first appears it will be confined to various ‘zones’ within cities or certain areas. It’s feasible from a cost perspective to deploy a WiFi mesh in a zone where you have a high density of usage and/or tion information that’s generated by the esting business cases around location, a high development area.” network, and then use that to satisfy a which makes it a multipurpose net- “When you talk about broadband host of different needs.” work.” wireless technologies that can be used as “You may well ask what these differ- “Asset tracking can utilize active a platform to deliver location-based ent needs and business applications are,” RFID tags,” says Gibson, “and any services,” says Gibson, “a critical notion says Gibson. “We see our customer base WiFi-enabled device can be tracked is that you have to look at what’s split into two areas of interest: the first with our location-based technology. embedded in the client device itself. is the ability to track assets within an That’s one part of the puzzle. The other Today, one thing that WiFi enjoys is organization to improve organization area that we look at is, how do we use strong client ubiquity. It’s not just lap- insight in terms of what’s going on with location to provide more efficient meth- top computers. Day by day, you’re see- their assets across the business. That ods of communication? I mean, let’s say ing new and different types of devices involves how you can utilize a WiFi net- the network has knowledge of where I that are getting WiFi integrated into work to track different IT assets. In a am on the Cisco campus. That informa- them. You need to have that unless hospital it could be medical devices. In tion can be used and fed into say, a uni- you’re attaching an RFID tag to that a retail or manufacturing floor it would fied messaging application. And that device to be able to track all of these relate to supply chain management, to messaging app can then determine things. From that standpoint, there’s be able to track inventories and the like. ‘Okay, I know that Ben is not in his going to be a very clear play for WiFi- So we have many customers that use office. He’s over in the Customer based location services for the foresee- our integrated location system with Briefing Center. Therefore, the best way able future.” their WiFi network to do just this.” to reach him is by, say, cellular phone or “Could all of this be done with some Gibson beams: “A great example is instant messaging or gee, Ben has just newer longer range technology such as Boeing, which has the constant need to returned to his office’.” WiMAX 2?” asks Gibson. “Certainly be able to track aircraft parts on their “What we’re also doing at Cisco is that’s a possibility. We’re still a few years away from that, however. While the manufacturing floors, whether it be a looking at how we can marry up loca- Mobile WiMAX standard is still matur- small engine piece or an entire wing. tion-based information and then tie that ing to standards ratification, the next Boeing utilizes our location-based serv- to different communications or messag- step is that you need to see ubiquity in ices with their WiFi network to be able ing applications, to deliver the notion of terms of WiMAX integrated down into to track all of these devices to know presence-based applications,” says dual mode phone devices or laptop where they are and keep them cata- Gibson. computers. To get to that point you logued.” Gibson drills down: “So, I’d catego- must ride the cost curve down to where “With the WiFi network the primary rize the two areas of focus for us as it makes sense economically, and that’s application is data mobility, real-time answering the following questions: How yet to happen.” access ability,” says Gibson. “Let’s say do we track people for the purpose of In short, “location-based services” is you’re on a laptop or you have a new communication? And then how do we one of those tantalizing futuristic con- voice device that talks over WiFi. There track devices in terms of streamlining cepts that takes a while to get going, but are many benefits to purely using that business operations?” once it does, expect a flood of applica- wireless network for mobility. But that “There’s the potential of using this in tions and users. IT same network can also be used to track a telematics environment,” says Gibson, various assets and devices, and that’s “of using it in automobiles in concen- Richard “Zippy” Grigonis is Executive Editor when you get to build some really inter- trated zones, if you will, where WiFi of TMC’s IP Communications Group.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 87 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Fixed Mobile Entertainment: The Evolution to Mobile IPTV

IPTV is rapidly gaining exposure as the most important application riers can use the NGN to peer into a for breathing new life and revenues into fixed-line broadband net- wide variety of existing legacy networks works. At the same time, mobile users are rapidly expanding beyond — and now they can communicate the basic services enabled by cell phones — voice, text messaging IPTV or any other IP service anywhere. Tier 1 service providers can use the and voice mail — to digital media of all sorts, including video. Thus NGN to compete with cable compa- it seems only natural that as IPTV technology matures, IPTV servic- nies, reduce churn, increase revenues, es will be deployed over wireless broadband networks for viewing on and pick up new subscribers by offering mobile devices. But how will the evolution of IPTV from fixed to the triple play of phone service, high- mobile networks occur? The answer, in a nutshell, is the next gener- speed Internet service, and IPTV to ation network (NGN) with a softswitch at its core. wireline customers. The next step is to deliver rich IPTV, just like that available in the home, to Wireless is the fastest-growing com- anywhere. The NGN is the hub, pro- wireless-enabled devices and handsets, munications technology and is evolving viding a common infrastructure for which requires convergence. Ideally, a as people look for better ways to com- both wireless and fixed-wire infrastruc- subscriber should be able to access municate. The NGN, which originally tures and both local and long-distance IPTV and other applications and servic- replaced Class 5 switches to provide call services. Once in place, the NGN also es at any time, from any place, regard- control for local and long-distance calls sets the foundation for IPTV, since it less of whether the connection is wire- in the fixed-line infrastructure — and not only provides telecontrol but also less, broadband, wireline, or IP. And the which also provides a basis for IP servic- enables the required back office func- IPTV service should be so simple that es — has now become part of the wire- tions such as billing support, office when you are watching your favorite TV less infrastructure as well. With an administration, and customer support show at home, the media should be able NGN in place, operators can start — plus all the things that allow sub- to follow you. If you have to leave the thinking about the next step in services, scribers to interact with IPTV pro- house, you should be able to transition and IPTV in the home looks interest- gramming. the show from your home network to ing. But why stop there? Why not drive your handset (which is served by a IPTV to the handset? That will require Getting IPTV to Subscribers GSM network) so you can watch it on fixed mobile convergence (FMC), pro- The NGN may provide a foundation the train to work. And you can still viding the best coverage wherever the for IPTV, but the question then check your voice mail or email from the subscriber is located, including spotty becomes how to get IPTV out to wire- same device. indoor locations. less subscribers and provide them with This combination of FMC, wireless, the best coverage. Again the NGN is Access: Hard Decision or and IPTV bundled together with the the solution; because it is a softswitch, Easy Choice? NGN at the network core will enable it can communicate with IP users. This all sounds great, but from the the evolution of a new concept called These users may be on different net- operator’s perspective, implementing Fixed Mobile Entertainment (FME) — works, GSM or CDMA for example, such a service does not appear to be communications and multimedia access but that poses no problem because car- straightforward. Multiple methods have

88 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By Brian Caskey

dle traditional local and long distance services, wireless service, IPTV, and mobile entertainment and deliver them over a unified infrastructure. Operators no longer have one network over which they provide service; they have one network over which they provide multiple services — and the ROI of such a model is powerful. Depending on the subscriber base and the services invoked, achieving ROI can drop from the traditional 12-18 months to as little as three to six months. Take the subscriber who receives a high-speed broadband data service for been proposed for delivering IPTV to NGN and offers some IP service, and $30. Now the operator can overlay an mobile devices, including the ETSI has also invested in a GSM or CDMA IPTV service for $35 a month, and Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld network. No operator wants to pull the then overlay voice services, IP messag- (DVB-H) standard, MediaFLO technol- plug on its existing networks to invest ing, and other revenue-generating serv- ogy, TD-CDMA, WCDMA, and in an entirely new infrastructure. This ices. And that is just over broadband WiMAX. Operators must weigh these problem is solved with an NGN/FMC access. From there, operators can choices against such factors as time-to- platform that can provide peering extend media services to all their other market considerations, equity in their between an operator’s disparate net- subscribers — wireless, local, and long existing network infrastructure, and cost works, enabling customers to transition distance. Suddenly the $35 a month of deployment before they make any seamlessly from one to another. And customer is generating revenues of decision. with an NGN/FMC platform, operators $150 a month — and the rich array of Again, NGN comes to the rescue. can enable IP call control across any bundled, layered services will not only NGN is access agnostic; UTStarcom’s platform. Now they have a foundation increase revenues but also help reduce mSwitch® softswitch, for example, can for delivering IPTV over any network, churn. Seen from this perspective, FME provide a mix and match of voice, whether broadband, wireless, and even is indeed affordable. broadband, and video and can support to the handset. An NGN/FMC plat- any type of encoding technology. The form also eliminates time-to-market Stepping Up to Streaming Media NGN should be able to regard any- considerations for a variety of services, FMC also offers another bonus — it thing as simply payload going across because no matter what the operator is the first step to true streaming the network. It is actually more impor- offers, the platform can start to make media, which is essential to offering a tant for operators to focus on the fact FMC happen right away. In total, these full array of FME services. Today, video that they need a platform that will steps define the transition to FME, at is streamed to and stored in a set-top allow them to use any access method. which point operators have a framework box (STB) in the home, and users Moving a favorite TV show from your that allows them to do almost anything manipulate it by controlling the STB’s WiFi network at home to a GSM- they want to. hard drive. But users want more than CDMA wireless network outdoors to that; they want on-demand broadcast another CDMA or WiFi network at But Can Operators Afford FME? and time-shift TV. Streaming-media- the office requires a solution that Some telephone companies are con- on-demand allows the consumer to crosses access transport boundaries cerned that they will not be able to engage with the media itself, to say “I seamlessly. afford the capital expenditure associated want to watch this video, this TV That requires NGN plus IP plus an with FME. However, operators with broadcast, right now” — and do it. FMC solution that enables transparent fixed and mobile networks will need to Streaming media also lets consumers interconnection to both fixed-line and make the investment in peering in any manipulate live TV; they can pause, cellular networks and that eliminates the case. In addition, once they have an stop, fast forward, even stop for 24 need for a major overhaul of existing NGN/FMC platform, they can imme- hours and come back to the exact infrastructure. But moving to FMC can diately start generating revenue on the point where they left off. be a tough decision for an operator that services they offer across the network. Streaming media eliminates the need has already made an investment in With an NGN core, operators can bun- for the STB; instead, media can be sent

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 89 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index anywhere — to an Internet TV or a PC broadband TV and VOD, encompasses sumer has today. And operators need a that has the right client software, or to a everything from an STB, to a media sta- solution that is highly scalable, offers wireless device like the iPod or handset. tion streaming and storage server for simple and seamless growth, that lets Consumers have total control over what CO deployment, a content engine that them drive service to both fixed broad- they want to see, when they want to see encodes and trans-codes live or stored band and wireless customers, and does it, and the device they want to see it on. media, authentication and DRM not require that they replace their infra- With FMC providing the connectivity, servers, an OSS, and a network manage- structure. a subscriber watching a hockey game at ment system. Such end-to-end IPTV home on a TV can seamlessly transition solutions are very attractive to operators IP Everything to a wireless device when he leaves because developing an IPTV system is IP is behind the entire network evolu- home. Just key in a sequence of num- complex and difficult. tion just described. All the individual bers and you have forced a change of IP Operators need to think in terms of elements of the evolution drive in one address from the TV to the handset. providing excellent service to hundreds direction — the convergence of IP in all With streaming media, we’ve arrived at of thousands or even millions of con- things, IPTV, broadband TV, IP mobile, the ne plus ultra of FME — mobile sumers. A UTStarcom customer in streaming media, with much, much IPTV. China has an IPTV platform that is more to come. IT While mobile TV is not yet here, serving about 200,000 customers now Brian Caskey is the Vice President of complete end-to-end IPTV systems are and has the capacity to support up to Worldwide Marketing at UTStarcom, Inc. available now. For example, 500,000 users. The service, whether (news - alert) For more information, visit UTStarcom’s RollingStream™, an end- fixed or mobile, should provide a better, the company online at to-end platform for fully interactive less expensive experience than the con- http://www.utstarcom.com. W M G W S 3 S W U S R I

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E I M M S S E - O I M T S F R A P A B T A S

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NXT-7015 PC Internet Telephony.indd 1 2/22/07 10:30:22 AM Converged PC Softphones Provide Critical First Step toward Fixed Mobile Convergence

Fixed mobile convergence is a term that conjures up many defini- based softphones. In addition, this tions. Whether a mobile, integrated or cable service provider, each trend will continue to grow to 5% in type of carrier usually defines FMC according to its own natural 2007. biases. For example, Mobile carriers hold a handset-centric view of In the United States, according to In-Stat, roughly 50% of all households FMC and usually speak in terms of dual-mode handsets. However, a who have used VoIP have used PC soft- large opportunity exists for linking PC-based Internet softphones to phones, as opposed to the facilities- mobile services. based VoIP like Vonage. This equates to roughly 5% of households experiment- Increasingly, the PC is becoming a According to Continental Research, ing with PC softphones. Skype is the popular device for communications, a large percentage of UK Internet most popular of these used for Voice regardless of whether it is email, messag- users have used VoIP via PC-based telephony. ing, voice, or video. Consumers and software in the last year (See Figure 1). business users are finding its power, flex- The most popular of these is Skype. Skype Shortcomings ibility, form factor and access to increas- This study indicates that 1.8 million Today, Skype and its current soft- ingly ubiquitous broadband Internet UK subscribers, or 3% of the entire phone competitors have excellent provides a valuable addition to their UK mobile subscribers have used PC- instant messaging capabilities, but they choice of communication devices. have several shortcomings relative to And for service providers looking to Figure 1. telephony and mobile services. For gain a foothold in fixed-mobile conver- example, Skype: gence, PC softphones provide a time to • Requires yet another phone number market and usability advantage relative for incoming calls to dual-mode handsets • Connects to the PSTN on only a best effort basis, frequently resulting What is a PC-based Softphone? in poor quality calls Most consumers have started to explore • Works via non-standards based PC Softphones through their instant mes- technology, therefore difficult to saging communicators. These IM clients integrate with other networks provide free calls between IM clients and • Provides limited integration with cheap outbound VoIP calls to public mobile networks, resulting in telephony networks around the world. In expensive, uni-directional SMS addition, for a fee, inbound calls, voicemail, and outbound SMS are available. Mobile’s Converged Softphone Opportunity How Large is the Market? While Skype is currently a limited The growth of PC-based communica- threat to mobile minutes, it does signify tions with soft phones has been explo- a preference by a growing segment of sive in the past few years. the market to use the PC as a commu-

92 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By Mike Mulica

Finally, the convergence gateway must extend a subscriber’s exiting mobile number and service seamlessly across mobile networks and the Internet. BridgePort Networks achieves this single number identity via interactions with the mobile networks’ Home Location Register (HLR) All of these capabilities come together in the MobileSTICK solution. The solution is designed to provide convergence mobile services across PC and Figure 2. handset, without requiring a second phone number or change to the existing handset. nications device. Mobile providers have Pioneers award, has a mobile-centric Strategic Direction an opportunity to address this market, converged softphone solution called For integrated carriers, a converged and do so in a differentiated and prof- MobileSTICK. It address three elements softphone is a natural addition to their itable way (See Figure 2). that are key to a commercially viable bundling strategy. It provides a low-cost With a converged softphone, mobile converged softphone: method to tie Mobile, DSL and VoIP carriers can build on their existing • A secure end-user softphone client, together. It also establishes a platform mobile subscriber base and lead the • The convergence of Internet with for integrating emerging IP services charge into fixed-mobile converged serv- circuit-switched mobile networks, (video, audio) that benefit from net- ices. Converged softphones do not face and work authentication, quality of service, the same production hurdles as dual- • Integration and extension of existing and digital right management. mode handsets. Therefore, they can act and new mobile services. Susbcribers recognize the growing as an early-market product that will prove the business case for a larger, later dual-mode handset solution. [Softphones] act as an early-market product Relative to Skype, a converged softphone would hold many advantages. that will provide the business case for a It can: larger, later dual-mode handset solution. • Extend the existing mobile number into the internet, thereby simplifying subscribers’ communications A logical way to address security and relevance of this product category. and enhancing reachability via a sin- network authentication issues is to use Some projections point to over 50 mil- gle number identity existing SIM card technology. For exam- lion converged softphones by the end • Provide an easy-to-use, converged ple, BridgePort Networks offers a SIP of 2008 worldwide. However, it is too messaging platform that is consis- based client that automatically launches soon to tell whether Mobile and tent across SMS and IM from a portable USB Key. The USB Key Integrated carriers will seize this • Stimulate MMS usage by combin- has a SIM card that authenticates back opportunity or cede the opportunity to disruptive players like Skype who ing access to content stored on the to the mobile network. are likely to start encroaching on PC with drag-and-drop simplicity To carry authentication messages, Mobile markets. IT • Build on existing billing and cus- other signaling, and bearer traffic over tomer service relationships the Internet and interwork with the Mike Mulica is the President and CEO of • Establish a secure platform for a mobile network, a convergence gateway BridgePort Networks (news - alert) multitude of compelling future is required. (http://www.bridgeport-networks.com), a convergent applications BridgePort Networks’ NomadicONE leader in mobile to Voice-over-IP roaming. Convergence Gateway performs this With more than 20 years in the telecommu- One Approach: MobileSTICK function, acting as a both a SIP registrar nications industry, Mulica has built a repu- BridgePort Networks, a winner of the and a Serving Mobile Switching Center tation for opening global markets for inno- World Economic Forum’s Technology (S-MSC). vative software solutions.

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 93 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Project1 2/28/2007 10:21 AM Page 1 VoIP MARKETPLACE

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ADVERTISING INDEX

Advertiser/ Page Advertiser/ Page Advertiser/ Page Web Address Number Web Address Number Web Address Number ADTRAN...... Cover 4 Elma Electronics...... 27 Packet8...... Cover 2, 1, 69 http://www.adtran.com http://www.elma.com http://www.packet8.net Allworx ...... 2-3, 16-17, 65 FaxCore ...... 74 Pactolus Communications Software ...... 43 http://www.allworx.com http://www.faxcore.com http://www.pactolus.com AltiGen Communications...... 51 GENBAND...... 37 pbxnsip ...... 55 http://www.altigen.com http://www.genband.com http://www.pbxnsip.com ATCOM ...... 59 GlobalTouch Telecom ...... 9, 95 Profitec Billing ...... 49 http://www.atcombts.com http://www.globaltouchtelecom.com http://www.profitecinc.com Cantata Technology...... 15 i3 Networks...... 84 REDCOM ...... 41 http://www.cantata.com http://www.i3net.us http://www.redcom.com Communications Developer Conference ...57 IMS Forum ...... 53 Samsung...... 7 http://www.commdeveloper.com http://www.imsforum.org http://www.samsung.com/bcs Communigate Systems...... 46-47 ITEXPO West...... 94 Sangoma...... 63 http://www.communigate.com http://www.itexpo.com http://www.sangoma.com CopperCom ...... 23 JDSU...... 75 Seawolf Technologies...... 34 http://www.coppercom.com http://www.jdsu.com http://www.seawolftech.com Covad ...... 13 Juniper Networks ...... 29 Snom Technology ...... 95 http://www.covad.com http://www.juniper.net http://www.snom.com CTIA ...... 85 Level 3 Communications...... 5 Target Distributing...... 31 http://www.ctia.org http://www.level3.com http://www.targetd.com Dialogic...... 24-25, 33 MultiTech Systems...... 45 Teleformix ...... 35 http://www.dialogic.com http://www.multitech.com http://www.teleformix.com Dirigo Telecommunications...... Cover 3 NXTcomm ...... 91 Telx Technologies...... 11 http://www.dirigotelecom.com http://www.nxtcommshow.com http://www.telx.com Diversified Technology ...... 39 Objectworld Communications ...... 90 Vox Communications ...... 21 http://www.dtims.com http://www.objectworld.com http://www.voxcorp.net

Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 95 Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index By Greg Galitzine

Presenting The ITEXPO East 2007 Best of Show

What a show! Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO EAST, which took place in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, was by all accounts a successful show. The exhibit hall had a buzz about it, the likes of which I had not seen in quite some time, and the exhibitors who I spoke to were thrilled to be a part of it.

I spoke with Greg Lohrenz, CEO of AITech, (news - alert) a Keating, and with significant contributions from our provider of Hosted PBX services, SIP trunking, and PRI President and Editor-in-Chief Rich Tehrani, agreed to come replacement, and he was very pleased with the results of the up with a series of categories to aid in determining this year’s show. “It’s been a great show for us. We’ve been in business Best of Show for ITEXPO East. for 14 years, and in that time, this is probably the best show The editorial staff visited with the exhibiting companies, that we have attended.” listened to what booth representatives had to say, and partici- There were many exhibitors who had similar comments as pated in demos, and took away with them the information well, which as you can imagine is very gratifying for the team that was later disseminated into the winners’ list you have that organizes the events. Among the details of organizing the before you now. event, one of the items that falls under my purview is the The Best of Show awards are presented to companies that selection of Best of Show win- showcased impressive products ners. In the past this has been a and solutions on the ITEXPO wide open affair, with any num- The Best of Show awards are show floor. And in a nod to the ber of companies qualifying for presented to companies that fact that there were so many the honor, but never before have impressive companies at the event, we categorized the winners. showcased impressive products and we’ve decided to make the win- This year we decided to try ners two-deep in each category. something new. The editorial solutions on the ITEXPO show floor. Thanks again to everyone who team, which is made up of came together in Ft. Lauderdale myself, Executive Editor Richard “Zippy” Grigonis, Associate to make this ITEXPO one of the best events in our history. I Editor Erik Linask, Executive Technology Editor Tom look forward to seeing you at the next event! IT

Best of Show Award Winners Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO East 2007

Best Service Provider Solution Best Development Tool Best of Call Center 2.0 GlobalTouch Telecom Aculab CosmoCom Sansay Touchstone Aheeva

Best Large Enterprise Solution Most Innovative Product Best Event Marketing Interactive Intelligence Digium Interactive Intelligence Citrix Systems, Inc. 911 Enable Dice

Best SMB Solution Best Booth Editors’ Choice ActionTec Electronics, Inc. Dialogic SKY-click Dirigo Telecommunications Dice Arlinx

Best Consumer Offering Best Newcomer Packet 8 Acredo Technologies InterEdge Technologies Star2Star

96 INTERNET TELEPHONY® March 2007 Subscribe FREE online at http://www.itmag.com Go to Table of Contents | Go to Ad Index Don’t miss another opportunity.

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