Much is being made about Internet telephony in the carrier space, and for
good reason. However, the enterprise VoIP market is booming and should
most certainly not go overlooked. The concept of converging a company's
voice and data infrastructure holds much promise for IT managers looking
to simplify network management and for employees looking to get more
productivity out of that most ubiquitous of office tools -- the telephone.
This month's Special Focus features two sidebars on implementation and
deployment of IP phones, courtesy of Telogy
and Pingtel. Also, you may want to
take a look at the Q&A with Quintum
Technologies vice president of marketing, Charles Rutledge, for some
insight into the decision making process involved in implementing an
enterprise Internet telephony solution.
LAN HO! One aspect of enterprise IP telephony deployments -- LAN-based
telephony -- is enjoying particular success these days, with a number of
industry leading vendors driving the market forward. The early entrants (TouchWave,
NBX, Selsius...) must have been on the right track, because they've all
been bought up by the likes of Ericsson, 3Com, and Cisco, who in turn have
leveraged their tremendous resources to put LAN-based telephony on the
fast track. There are other players as well, both smaller and larger
(i.e., Shoreline Communications, Siemens, Alcatel...), who are involved in
this interesting market niche.
3Com's NBX Regardless of what else is happening at 3Com these days, the NBX
product line is going gangbusters. Executives at 3Com recently told me
that they've deployed over 3,000 NBX 100 LAN telephony systems. That's
systems, not phones! Essentially, the NBX 100 communications system
combines some enhanced call processing features with typical
standards-based Ethernet connectivity to create a pretty compelling small-
to medium-sized business PBX replacement strategy.
The system scales easily to support 3Com's target market of 200 users
or less. Some of the product's features include enhanced call management
and call routing, for example:
Transfer services, including direct voice mail transfer;
Phantom mailboxes;
Calling and hunt groups;
...and the list goes on.
Cisco's Call Manager Another "fairly large" company that's playing in this space
is Cisco. Having completed their acquisition of Selsius some time ago,
Cisco engineers have been busy revamping and adding features to their LAN
telephony offering. And not only that, but Cisco is showing its commitment
to the technology by (as they put it) "eating their own dog
food." Cisco plans to migrate their entire enterprise to their Call
Manager-based solution, and in fact, they tell me that the changeover is
approximately 25 percent complete. That quarter of the company is
primarily using first-generation technology. The remaining 75 percent will
be quickly ramped up using the latest version of Cisco's solution.
Other measures of the demand for LAN-based telephony systems are
evident in Cisco's claim that having delivered solutions featuring over
50,000 phones in 1999, the year 2000 brings so many possible orders that
there's already a backlog of upwards of 20,000 units. Perhaps a good
example of Cisco's success in this market is their ongoing strategy to
outfit Merrill Lynch with a complete enterprise-wide LAN telephony
solution. Keep one eye on that particular story as it continues to unfold.
Ericsson's WebSwitch Ericsson, a long-time leader in the world of communications never
really had much play in the U.S. market when it came to its PBX business.
The advent of VoIP and the company's acquisition of TouchWave changed all
that.
The company's WebSwitch 2000 IPBX provides a full set of PBX call
handling functions, as well as features such as visual voice mail, auto
attendant, and TAPI interface support for PC application-based call
control. Support for wireless VoIP is another standard feature of the
WebSwitch 2000 platform. The WebSwitch 2000 IPBX supports Symbol
Technologies' wireless IP telephones. Symbol's phones and access
points allow an organization to implement a complete fixed and wireless
voice/data solution on their existing LAN. This simple approach makes
adding intra-building mobility effortless and cost effective, as no
separate wireless infrastructure is required.
Shoreline Communications Shoreline Communications recently announced a major new release of its
enterprise-class IP voice communications system. Based on the company's
Distributed Internet Voice Architecture (DIVA) software, the new Shoreline
IP Voice Communications System 2.0 delivers enterprise-class scalability,
support for remote teleworkers and SOHO environments, unified messaging
through Microsoft Outlook, and cost savings through toll bypass, enabling
voice to "ride free" across the IP network.
At the heart of the system is the standards-based DIVA software
switching architecture, which distributes call handling intelligence
across multiple local or remote locations, rather than centralizing it at
the network core. DIVA enables a customer to deploy a Shoreline system
across local and multiple remote sites, yet still manage all distributed
resources as a single, integrated IP voice communications system thus
simplifying configuration and administration tasks such as adds, moves,
and changes.
Release 2.0 includes two new network voice switches: The ShoreGear-24
for the growing enterprise and the ShoreGear-Teleworker for employees of
the extended enterprise as well as brand-new ShoreWare 2.0 software. The
software resides on an NT server platform and includes such application
services as voice mail, automated attendant, and call detail recording.
ShoreWare 2.0 also comes with a new personal call manager application,
which gives users the ability to easily dial a party by name using the
system directory and their personal Outlook contacts, as well as providing
customized call handling options.
CONCLUSION The enterprise space is hot. Through the efforts of the companies
mentioned in this article, as well as others who are in various stages of
deployment, companies the world over will soon be able to realize the
enhanced services and greater functionality afforded by LAN-based
telephony systems. Is your enterprise ready to make the leap and start
enjoying the benefits promised by this next-generation communications
solution? I'd like to know. Drop me a line to ggalitzine@tmcnet.com.
Implementation Issues for Enterprise IP Phone
Solutions
BY DEBBIE GREENSTREET
The majority of first generation Internet telephony solutions provide
gateway functions, interfacing dissimilar frameworks -- telephony systems
and packet networks -- to provide seamless end-to-end communications. Now,
architectures that allow the user's telephony equipment to be IP-based are
available, opening a plethora of telephony solution options. A prominent
example being deployed is the Unified PBX (UnPBX) model. By upgrading
existing enterprise PBX (Private Branch Exchange) systems, additional
users may be added to the system via a data network connection. This
allows the use of a common, low cost LAN in place of an (often
proprietary) PBX network interface. Additional branch offices can be added
in a simple manner by installing a homogeneous Ethernet solution comprised
of IP-based telephones.
For such solutions to become viable options in enterprise telephony
equipment some key challenges must be overcome. To justify their
deployment over existing PBX telephones, a solution must meet critical
price points and offer features unavailable on traditional PBX equipment.
An optimally designed hardware/software solution is necessary to meet
these requirements, one that features interoperability to emerging
Internet telephony systems, as well as the ability to adapt and interface
to the existing proprietary PBX system. These requirements are
"musts" for IP phones to be accepted as a viable solution. In
addition, ease in connecting IP phones to existing or new enterprise LANs
is necessary for achieving the benefits of a single data and voice
network. No additional wiring should be required; the IP phone should
provide a dual port Ethernet bridge, one port for the phone and one for
the PC to both connect to the single Ethernet network.
Quality is another important issue in determining the viability of
LAN-based, enterprise IP phones. These phones must achieve toll quality or
better to achieve volume succession of PBX or key system phones. Many
currently deployed VoIP solutions have addressed voice- over-packet
quality issues and these implementations can be leveraged for IP phone
applications. Since LAN-based IP phones are not limited to the traditional
eight KHz telephony voice-sampling rate (which limits the voice bandwidth
to four KHz), wideband voice codecs, which afford a higher voice quality
than can be obtained in current telephony systems, can be employed. At
first, the benefits of wideband codecs will be limited to communications
with IP devices also employing the codec. But, as VoIP solution
deployments continue to expand, it is expected that high-fidelity voice
will become widespread.
A core IP phone platform architecture that achieves key price points
yet supports scalable features is a key element needed for enterprise IP
phone market penetration. While the enterprise phone systems architectures
themselves may dictate how much call processing is actually executed in
the phone, a robust hardware/software platform that supports phone vendor
feature differentiation (graphical user interfaces, audible alerts, Web
browsers, etc.), as well as implementation of different network protocols
affords a more scalable architecture.
The ideal architecture will provide core functionality while affording
manufacturers the ability to develop specific feature differentiation via
software APIs. Implementing a programmable DSP in such an architecture
provides an optimal engine for the execution of voice processing functions
while allowing for future growth of advanced features, and upgradeability
of configuration information and network protocols. A variety of industry
standard network protocols (e.g., H.323 and SIP) as well as some
proprietary protocols are being deployed as part of IP phone
implementation, and a clear winner is not yet evident.
It is clear however, that a complete IP phone solution will feature
pre-integrated VoIP hardware such as a programmable DSP and
microprocessor, and software components with the necessary software
interfaces for IP phone manufacturers to rapidly develop their IP phone
products. Such a design provides for robust voice processing while
allowing the incorporation of future advanced features.
Debbie Greenstreet is senior product manager for Telogy Networks, a
Texas Instruments Company. For more information on Telogy's products and
services, please visit their Web site at www.telogy.com.
An Internet Architecture Will Take Us To The Next
Level
BY JIM HOURIHAN
telephone -- noun a device that converts voice and other
sound signals into a form that can be transmitted to remote locations and
that receives and reconverts waves into sound signals.
synonym terminal
terminal -- adjective causing, ending in, or approaching
death; fatal.
epiphany -- noun a comprehension or perception by means
of a sudden intuitive realization.
Compared to the Web, telephony today remains in the dark ages. It
continues to be plagued, as it has for decades, by a lack of innovation,
horrendous ease-of use, and poor scalability -- the very same diseases
that raged during the mainframe terminal era of computing. Here's the
comparison:
Innovation -- All features and services in the voice world are
solely defined and developed by PBX and CLASS switch manufacturers just as
mainframe applications were defined by its vendors. On the Web, in
contrast, a new page or "feature" can be created in less than
two minutes. Most importantly, it can be conceived, created, delivered,
and personalized by anyone -- Yahoo!, e-Bay, GE, your company, you, your
kid, your grandparent!
Ease of use -- For most telephone users, cryptic,
impossible-to-remember flash sequences and *codes are the interface to
thousands of PBX and CLASS features. For the very fortunate few, block
character displays make even 3270 and VT100 terminals attractive. Get
real! On the Web, millions of sites with billions, maybe trillions of
pages can be easily navigated by pointing and clicking at pictures or
words displayed on your intelligent browser-based PC.
Scalability -- In the telephony world, big honking boxes have
all the smarts. Whenever the telephone, the "terminal" in the
parlance of telephone equipment vendors, sends a flash sequence or *code,
it's the PBX or CLASS switch that figures out what it means. It also must
actively manage each and every call. Consequently, it just doesn't scale.
Support for just that "one more user" requires a hugely
expensive replacement or addition.
A Web site, however, can support millions of users. Scalability is
achieved not only through the connectionless nature of IP and by adding
more and bigger servers and pipes to the Web site, but by exploiting an
intelligent endpoint -- the browser-based PC. In fact, it's the browser
software that consumes CPU cycles to interpret things and put a Web page
together. In doing so, it makes things easy to do and enables tremendous
innovation by integrating several sources of content and services from
multiple Web sites. For example, in accessing a typical e-commerce site,
the browser:
Retrieves and displays the source HTML page and embedded product
images individually.
Retrieves and runs a Java applet, Java script, Flash, Active X or
other application components.
Retrieves and displays a dynamic ad from DoubleClick.com.
Retrieves shopping cart services from ShoppingCart.com.
Stores cookies to identify users and maintain state.
Encrypts credit card numbers.
For telephony to deliver an Internet level of innovation, ease-of-use,
scalability, and easy integration, it must embrace the Internet computing
model and its technologies, and create new delivery platforms that reflect
these. For example, why shouldn't your phone be able to:
Retrieve user directory services and dial from Yahoo!, an ASP, a
corporate intranet server, or Microsoft Outlook on your PC.
Use a SIP location server to place a call.
Produce a CD-quality call.
Play personalized music-on-hold from MP3.com.
Retrieve voice mail from onebox.com.
Encrypt user-selected calls.
Recognize your verbal commands.
Automatically update its software like the Real player on your PC,
and diagnose its hardware periodically.
For your phone to do this, the telephony world desperately needs to
completely overhaul its architectural model. It requires abandoning the
current host-terminal model and putting intelligence in the phone.
With this perspective, even today's alleged "next-gen" voice
platforms fall woefully short. These server-based platforms, whether for
enterprises or service providers, exploit IP for transport, and feature a
Java or XML software environment. While these changes help, this
"open" environment is typically not extensible by anyone other
than the vendor or some vendor-trained guru. These systems also continue
to perpetuate the same host-terminal architectural model and dumb phone
endpoint:
The IP-PBX is a host computer with all the smarts driving dumb IP
phone terminals.
A softswitch with its feature and application servers are merely
exploded, physically distributed mainframes talking to dumb terminals.
Moving to an IP "wire" and using Java and XML on the servers
is necessary, but totally insufficient. Only an Internet-age architecture
exploiting an intelligent, openly extensible IP phone, not a terminal,
will pull telephony out of the dark ages and deliver a true renaissance in
voice services and applications.
An Internet-age architecture! This is the epiphany for telephony.
Jim Hourihan is vice president of marketing for Pingtel. For more
information on Pingtel's products and services, please visit their Web
site at www.pingtel.com
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