September 2000

Convergence As Good Medicine

BY KEVIN MAYER

Until recently, the convergence cure was regarded as worse than the disease, or so one might gather, from the limited success of traditional convergence schemes. Consider traditional computer telephony integration, or CTI. To many, CTI represented little more that a proprietary link between monolithic PBX and mainframe computer systems. Hardly any institution besides large call centers had call volumes sufficiently large to justify the expense of the proprietary solutions, or the difficulty of the systems integration work involved.

Traditional computer telephony, or CT, fared little better. Cramming telephony functionality into a PC had some appeal, thanks to the PC's graphical interface, but the CT approach had inherent limitations, not the least of which was the latency contributed by the PC within Internet telephony applications.

So, you might say traditional voice/data convergence implementations brought to mind the old joke about ineffective surgery: "the operation was a success, but the patient died." Perhaps we should take the time to go back to medical school. If we were to do so, we'd likely hear an illuminating analogy, one that we could extend to voice/data convergence.

A DOSE OR AN OVERDOSE?
In medical schools nowadays, students are presented with a challenging puzzle: a patient has a tumor deep in their chest, surrounding the esophagus, a tumor that is (fortunately) susceptible to radiation. The problem, however, is that the radiation source (a lump of uranium, say) emits so much radiation that it will not only destroy the tumor, but all the healthy tissue between it and its intended target.

Typically, the students realize that merely exposing the patient's chest to radiation from the lump of radioactive material is not an option. So, what do the students suggest instead? Most of them recommend forcing the radioactive material down the patient's throat.

As you might guess, this is not the solution. Sooner or later, the patient would have need of an esophagus. Destroying the esophagus to destroy the tumor simply won't do. But then, what is there to do?

At this point, the instructors tell a story. And the students, upon hearing the story, usually catch on. The brighter students even suggest the appropriate remedy. Anyway, here is the story: A castle is under siege by an army sufficiently large to accomplish its mission. The only problem is, the main road to the castle is so narrow that the army has difficulty exerting its full force on the castle's ramparts. The solution? The army filters through the forest that surrounds the castle. It stages a multi-directional attack, and it finally breaches the castle's defenses.

To the brighter students, the story suggests what to do with the radiation source. These students realize that the single lump of uranium should be broken up into smaller sources, and that these smaller sources be arrayed around the patient, in such a way that many weak beams of radiation may converge on the tumor. That way, the healthy tissue surrounding the tumor is spared destruction, even while the tumor is exposed to the combined strength of the multiple radiation sources. The procedure is a success, and the patient lives.

Now, we might ask what all this means to telecommunications convergence. Well, we could start by recognizing traditional CTI and computer telephony as "down the throat" approaches to convergence. Nowadays, we are seeing less and less enthusiasm for these traditional approaches, and more and more interest in distributed approaches. And by distributed, we mean communications solutions in which the distribution of communications functionality (and processing power to deliver this functionality) is increasingly arbitrary. We also mean communications solutions in which upgrade paths are more clearly defined, and in which the value of legacy investments may be maintained. Examples of such communications solutions abound, on both the enterprise side of communications, as well as on the service provider side.

THE CONVERGENCE ARMAMENTARIUM
Businesses, be they enterprises, small or medium-sized corporations, or even home offices, may evaluate a range of options, some of which are premises-oriented, others of which assign responsibility to service providers. For example, vendors of unified messaging solutions are outlining both premises- and services-oriented configurations. (Check out CTI2, at cti2.com, and Critical Path, at cp.net.)

In addition, a range of solutions featuring integrated access devices (IADs) are being deployed. While IADs were once focused on aggregating basic voice and data services, they are now contributing to more sophisticated solutions. A relatively "dumb" IAD may deliver advanced business telephony functionality from platforms residing in the service provider's network, and a relatively "intelligent" IAD may provide such functionality (or at least a subset of such functionality) "on board." (See the IAD feature in this issue.) In either case, IADs may work with existing PBXs or key systems, or even extend PBX functionality to branch offices and remote workers. (Check out the brief story we ran the July 2000 issue on MCK Communications. This company has recently announced partnerships with several VoDSL gateway and next-gen switching vendors.)

Distributed approaches to convergence also apply to service providers -- and just in time, considering that service providers worry over what to do, now that basic access and transport services are becoming commodities. These distributed approaches typically involve the deployment of packet telephony communications solutions.

Not long ago, packet telephony was usually an enterprise-oriented workaround, that is, a way for the enterprise to bypass the public switched telephone network (PSTN), and avoid the expense of relying on PSTN services. For the enterprise, the alternative to the PSTN was to direct telephony traffic over the enterprise data network, an application made possible by such things as Internet telephony gateways.

More recently, packet telephony has focused on becoming "carrier class," so that service providers, with the benefit of "carrier class" packet telephony architectures, may bypass their own overworked Class 5 switches, cap their investments in proprietary circuit-switched gear, and roll out enhanced, value-added telephony services.

Service providers may evaluate a range of options that allow them to migrate from circuit-switched solutions to next-gen packet-based communications. Service providers may extend the edge of their networks into the premises, thanks to IADs, and divert data traffic from circuit-switched facilities, thanks to VoDSL gateways, which send only telephony traffic to the Class 5 switches. Or service providers may deploy next-gen switching solutions, which may comprise media gateways, softswitches, signaling gateways, and feature servers. In these next-gen architectures, call control may reside in the softswitch, which is also called a gatekeeper), while advanced telephony applications may reside in the feature servers (which are also called service nodes or application servers). Vendors concentrating on feature servers include Broadsoft, Iperia, and Sylantro Systems.

Service providers may elect to build out their own next-gen solutions, or they may decide to rely on outsourcing, to such entities as communications or telephony applications services providers, also known as CASPs and TASPs. (Check out Congruency, which styles itself a CASP. Also, check out TalkingNets, which calls itself a TASP.)

THE CONVERGENCE PROGNOSIS
Communications solutions such as packet telephony will succeed traditional approaches such as CTI and computer telephony, much the way medicine may eschew surgical solutions if gene therapy will suffice. Network-oriented solutions will supplant awkward links and desktop-centric approaches. Indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say IP is to communications what the human genome project is to cancer research. Convergence is now working at an altogether finer level, the way medical research now works at the molecular level.

Communications solutions, working at the level of zeros and ones (analogous to medicine working at the level of nucleic acids), will yield applications and services that are at once more subtle and more profound, and at once more discrete and more powerful. No longer need convergence be crammed "down the throat." It may be distributed, and called upon from wherever may be convenient, emerging from wherever may be most efficacious. Convergence will succeed, and the patient will live.

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