When Nortel Networks, one of the worlds largest telecommunications companies,
purchases Bay Networks, one of the worlds largest data networking companies,
its only a matter of time before a slew of new Internet telephony products emerge.
The industry has eagerly been anticipating Nortels entry into the ring to take its
rightful place among some of the other Internet telephony heavyweights such as Lucent and
Cisco. Here is a brief synopsis of some of the recent IP telephony announcements by
Nortel, as well as their future strategy.
Since February of this year, Nortel has been extremely busy rolling out and announcing
new products that converge voice and data networks. Almost out of nowhere, Nortel
announced an alliance with British Telecom to provide the worlds largest Internet
telephony network in Spain. The announcement went on to state that Nortel plans on being a
major player in the Internet telephony market regardless of delivery
mechanism
wireless, wireline, or cable.
The heart of the announcement is a product called IPConnect , which is
targeted at next-generation service providers that need to provide full-featured,
PSTN-grade telephony over multi-service IP networks. IPConnect aims to maintain the
integrity, quality, manageability, scalability, and reliability of the PSTN network, and
yet take advantage of the cost efficiency, open standards, and reduced time to market
promised by IP telephony networks. The service will be offered over a high-speed optical
network connected to around 75 of Nortels Java-controlled CVX 1800 access switches,
the majority of which will be installed in the next 24 months.
Prior to this announcement, Nortel announced their Succession Network a network
that enables providers to offer the revenue-generating telephony services that drive the
bulk of their business today, and the new end-to-end IP services that the market is
demanding. Succession does this without the need or expense of a data overlay network. In
addition, Nortel says that the Succession Network allows service providers to offer
converged telephony and data services, while reducing annual operating costs by up to 45
percent, and capital costs by up to 50 percent over traditional telephony solutions.
Succession also takes into account the need to provide existing enhanced services, and as
such, allows three-way calling and caller ID on a single or multi-service packet network.
Furthermore, Nortel, through its Arris Interactive
joint venture with ANTEC , is also developing cable
telephony products and claims to have shipped more Arris Interactive Cornerstone Voice
cable telephony solutions than any other competitive cable telephony products worldwide.
Nortels goal is to eventually allow these cable modems to support IP telephony.
NORTELS VISION AND NEW PRODUCTS
I recently had a chance to talk to Nortel about their vision of the future
of Internet telephony. Nortel believes that were moving toward converged networks
based on IP. They further believe that customers should have choices as to how quickly
they want to evolve their networks. They should be able to do it on their terms, not on
the vendors terms. Unless they want to, customers should not have to throw out
everything they have and start over the green fields approach.
Nortels approach is to provide a wide range of choices. If a customer wants to
build an IP-based network from scratch, they can assist. If a customer wants to IP-enable
an existing voice network, they can also help. If a customer wants to voice-enable an
existing data network, they can help.
Furthermore, through the use of Nortels Optivity management suite, they feel they
are best positioned to offer IP telephony plumbing as well as a rich suite of
applications. Some of the Optivity family members include Optivity Analysis, which
delivers advanced traffic monitoring throughout enterprise environments across hubs,
routers, Layer 2, and Layer 3 switches. Another family member is Optivity Service Level
Management, allowing network managers to optimize their networks for business-critical
applications by measuring service levels either per user, per port, or per
application.
The future of Nortels strategy is to telephony-enable their data products and
IP-enable their voice products. By the time you read this, the company will have announced
details on a full range of products that will be rolled out over the next three quarters
or so relating to Internet telephony.
As you have no doubt read in our sister TMC publication CTI magazine, Nortel has released a few Internet
telephony products already, such as an integrated IP telephony gateway for Meridian 1, and
the laptop-based converged voice/data IP Telecommuter.
The following announcements are expected to become products in the latter part of 1999:
IP-ENABLED VOICE PRODUCTS
- IP-enabling the Meridian SL-100 and MC6500/Mercator communication systems.
- A Windows NT-based communication system that combines full telephony features with the
BayStack LAN product. This would give the customer the ability to use circuit switching,
packet switching, or both.
- A multi-user, remote-office solution that extends digital telephones over IP networks.
- Addition of voice-over-IP (VoIP) capability to the existing HomeOffice II product.
- The initial stages of evolving Optivity to manage both data networks from Nortel and
other vendors (which it currently does), AND Meridian 1, SL-100, and Norstar systems.
- A client/server-based user interface for performing daily system management on the
Meridian SL-100 to improve efficiency and response times.
- A new release of the Symposium Agent browser-based call center.
- Software designed to enhance agent productivity.
TELEPHONY-ENABLED DATA PRODUCTS
- A platform-independent, Windows NT-based system that consolidates telephony
intelligence, complex call-connection management, and standard protocol support over
existing IP networks.
- VoIP enhancements to the Passport line of enterprise switches.
- A new member of the Passport family for voice and data consolidation in regional and
branch applications.
Finally, by the year 2000, Nortel plans on delivering Internet phones competitive to
the Cisco/Selsius phones.
Nortel was the last holdout in the Internet telephony market. Understandably, when you
purchase Bay Networks, a $9 billion networking company, it takes some time before you can
roll out an integrated suite of converged voice/data products. We welcome Nortel to the
future of telecommunications one based on packetized Internet telephony networks.
|
CTI
EXPO: The Best Place To Learn About
IP Telephony
Bar None. Attendance Tops 16,000!Having
recently come from the latest CTI EXPO in DC, I can tell you unequivocally that the
interest in voice and data convergence is at frenzied levels. The best indicator may be
the fact that attendance and exhibit space has doubled from the first-ever CTI EXPO
in Baltimore only one year earlier. In fact, over 16,000 attendees came to CTI EXPO
in just two days of exhibits!
Having attended industry trade shows in telecom and datacom for years, I have never seen
the interest in information that attendees displayed recently at CTI EXPO. Cisco,
Nortel, Lucent, Microsoft, and IBM had mob scenes at their booths
. Attendees
included a good mix of resellers, end users, service providers, and call center decision
makers all trying to absorb the latest in convergence technology and learn how they
can benefit from the merging of once disparate voice and data networks.
In fact, CTI EXPO just may have been the busiest show I have attended all year
and I attend dozens of datacom and telecom events annually! We have already
received many testimonials from attendees, conferees, and exhibitors, which we have posted
at www.ctiexpo.com/testimonials.
Amazingly, not only was there a tremendous amount of interest in traditional
convergence, telecom, and Internet telephony exhibitors, but call center exhibitors were
mobbed as well. CTI EXPO has become the largest call center event by far in just one
short year!
In fact, perhaps the largest consistent crowds I have ever seen at any booth at any
show were the ones I witnessed at the live multimedia blended call center co-sponsored by CellIT and TMC, as well as CellIts own booth. In
two days, over 1,000 attendees went through CellIts booth alone! Amazingly enough,
CellIT had 13 agents continuously calling attendees and inviting them to the show. In two
days, these agents made and took more than 11,000 phone calls. Even more incredibly, the
call center was absolutely stunning in appearance. CellIT and their partners deserve a
great deal of credit for putting together this state-of-the-art call center in a matter of
hours. Many call centers with legacy equipment take months to get up and running with less
functionality than CellIts multimedia center. They should be commended for their
tremendous efforts, and all other call center vendors better take note of what these guys
are on to there has not been anything like this in the call center market
ever. No single technology in the call center market has generated the interest level I
witnessed last week. Amazingly, CellIT had agents transmitting telephony over ATM, and now
IP an announcement they made at CTI EXPO.
There is no better place in the world to test IP telephony or packetized voice than an
active call center. As if a call center environment is not a tough enough environment to
test in, the entire demo was done on a trade show floor. Having witnessed trade show demos
for years, I can tell you that many vendors cant even get a demo to work correctly
in their booth a single time. CellIT demonstrated 11,000 call completions! Any demo that
works on a trade show floor where over 100 factors are not in anyones control should
work really well in a controlled environment like your office.
If you think you missed the boat by not being at CTI EXPO in DC you are
right. Dont fret though, the demand for the live multimedia call center was so great
that we have received many requests from attendees who want us to have another multimedia
call center in Las Vegas. We have already started working with CellIT to build an even
better, live, multimedia call center for our upcoming CTI EXPO in Las Vegas,
December 7-9. You wont want to miss this one it may be the last time
you ever get to see the live call center in action!
At TMC, we are never satisfied. We are always looking for ways to make our events the best
in the world. Just as our publications provide you with leading-edge, objective, and
in-depth information available nowhere else, we are constantly improving our trade shows
as well.
SIX LEARNING CENTERS
Just one of the many unique features of the next CTI EXPO will be the six brand-new
Learning Centers, objectively informing you of the most important and timely voice and
data convergence technologies.
CT Media: CT Media is a Micro-soft/Dialogic/ECTF standard that is used to
construct a computer-telephony (CT) server. Think of a CT server as roughly analogous to a
database server. When a company installs a database server such as Oracle in their
organization, many applications can take advantage of the database through open interfaces
such as ODBC. CT Media abstracts hardware in the same way that Oracle abstracts the
database. In both cases, applications can access core server functions through a variety
of function calls. In this Learning Center, you will witness many applications adhering to
the CT Media standard and witness the power of truly open telephony.
Development/Testing: Developers have so many options when it comes to building
CTI applications from picking the right DSP resource boards to the right
development environment, there is so much to consider. Once youve developed your
application, you should make sure to test it thoroughly with the latest generation of
testing tools from companies like Ameritec and Hammer. This Learning Center will have
enough diversity to allow the beginner through expert level developer to get a grasp on
the latest development technologies.
Linux Telephony: Linux and open-source software have emerged from cult-like
status to become the love of Webmasters and network administrators alike. Linux is the
biggest threat to Microsofts operating system dominance in years. (For a great
article on open source in CTI magazine, please see our March 1999 Horizons
article.) Advantages of open-source software include the fact that armies of
programmers worldwide can modify and augment the original source code. In this way, the
original product evolves and morphs much more quickly, and becomes more useful than if the
software was under a single companys control. Linux telephony is a relatively new
concept, but many vendors are betting that Linux is exactly the OS they need to make their
telephony solutions a success.
Next-Gen Call Center Technology: E-commerce without human interaction is like
shopping in a department store with no one to help answer your questions. The latest
generation of call center and Web integration products succeeds in marrying Web sites to
call centers, so that your customers can always opt for a live agent to help them before
and during their purchases.
Enhanced Services/Network CTI: This is the newest field for service providers
to explore a field with unlimited new product opportunities that customers need,
and service providers can profit from. Internet call waiting, Web-based unified messaging,
follow-me services, and broadcast Internet fax are just a few of the next generation of
IP-based enhanced services we can all look forward to using.
Wireless CTI: Palm-based computers will eventually merge with cell phones, and IP will be
the universal wireless networking standard. In addition to telephony, IP wireless devices
will allow you to have access to e-mail, the Web, GPS, the latest stock market
developments, a database of contacts, and myriad other features currently available only
on our desktops. Come see how far wireless CTI technology has come and where it is headed.
We have so many new things to introduce at CTI EXPO in Las Vegas, December 7-9, that
I cant even begin to cover all of them here. Please sign up for the show for free
today at www.ctiexpo.com and save $25. Once you have
done so, we will make sure to keep you posted, via e-mail, on the latest developments as
they happen. For further information, you can always visit our Web site at www.ctiexpo.com for the details. |