BY RICH TEHRANI

The voice/data switch is a device that switches both voice and data and is capable of call control and other traditional PBX-like functions. Voice/data switches allow a single wire to the desktop to carry voice, and potentially video, as data. In some cases a voice/data switch can also function as a network hub, a unified messaging server, and even a firewall. These products typically employ IP telephony, but they don't have to. CellIt uses ATM to the desktop but does not currently employ IP.

HISTORY REPEATING
The adoption of both PC-PBXs and now voice/data switches has been steady, and I give companies selling alternatives to traditional PBXs a great deal of credit. In fact, I give their sales forces and resellers even more credit for competing against the big boys. If I were a Lucent or Nortel reseller selling traditional PBXs, I would tell customers that they should be very wary of new technology because it is coming from companies that don't have decades of experience in telecommunications.

Sure, resellers of traditional PBXs can use techniques like this to keep some of their customers, but for how long? The future of voice/data switches and PC-PBXs is very secure: they are telephony equivalents of the PC, while the traditional PBX is the telephony equivalent of the mainframe. History always repeats itself, and hindsight in the computer industry is foresight in the telephony industry. The traditional PBX must evolve or die.

The number of voice/data switch vendors at CTI™ Expo Fall 1998 in San Jose is further proof of how much interest there is in this new field, as was the tremendous activity in their booths. Praxon, StarVox, CellIt, Selsius Systems, and NetPhone are just a few of the exhibitors at CTI EXPO with voice/data switches released or announced. Soon there will be dozens of competitors in this space.

What the PBX alternative market needs to reach mainstream acceptance is quite simply a legitimizer: a major player to release a PC-PBX or voice/data switch. I always assumed it would be Lucent or Nortel. Instead, it was Rockwell who introduced their Transcend PC-based ACD in March 1998. Rockwell has been a leader in the call center market for years and has a reputation for producing products that are reliable and scalable. Transcend marks the first time that a major ACD or PBX vendor released a PC-PBX/ACD.

So who will legitimize the voice/data switch? I thought Lucent or Nortel must release something soon. Well, it turns out that Cisco, Nortel, and Lucent have all legitimized the voice/data switch, although perhaps not in the way we would have expected.

We've predicted for years that data networking companies would eventually enter the telecom space, and Cisco did not disappoint us. They recently purchased Selsius Systems, and shortly thereafter they pledged to replace their own corporate PBXs with Selsius's voice/data switch. Nortel purchased Bay Networks for nine billion dollars, and although they haven't announced a voice/data switch, odds are we don't have to wait long. But really, we don't have to wait at all - when a PBX company purchases a data networking company for nine billion dollars, they legitimize a combined voice/data market. Who can argue with that logic?

Finally, Lucent released their IPES system, consisting of two voice/data switches of varying capacities. IPES scales to meet users' needs, whether the user is a small company or a large corporation. IPES can provide CLECs with an appropriate platform to roll out voice and other enhanced services, and Lucent also includes an API that allows developers to augment the PBX with any feature or option they choose. This is not trivial - the entire CTI industry was born out of the fact that computers could finally control PBXs. Open APIs give developers direct control over the switch without the need for middleware.

FEATURES
We've seen how much activity the voice/data switch market has seen recently - now its time to see some of the things that voice/data switches based on IP can do for us. The following is a list of features available through voice/data switches:

• Inherently scalable and distributed easily and seamlessly.
• With open APIs, they can easily harness best-of-breed applications.
• Easier to use than traditional PBXs due to a Web browser interface.
• Installed more smoothly than traditional PBXs.
• Upgraded automatically via Web downloads.
• Easily used to construct voice/data VPNs.
• Allow easy remote access, since any Internet telephony client connects seamlessly with a full in-office PBX feature set.
• Eliminate the need for a separate Internet telephony gateway.
• Handle Web/call center integration with Internet telephony applications easily since IP telephony is the native switch protocol.
• Result in lower administration costs - again, Web browser access.
• Result in lower long-distance costs via Internet or intranet telephony.
• Lead to increased productivity: Software-based CTI features are easily accessed and less expensive.
• Have multimedia collaboration built into the switch through support of H.323.

And let's not forget the growing population of service providers such as ISPs, cable companies, and CLECS. The following list of features should be of interest especially to them:

• Service providers (SPs) can quickly add applications through open APIs.
• SPs can easily provide combined voice and data access/service.
• Value-added IP services (click to dial, Web-based unified messaging, "IP Centrex," etc.) and vertical market applications are a natural addition.
• Remote management by the customer.

The last point on remote management is my personal favorite, and I will elaborate. Currently, when you call your local phone company and ask to add call waiting or caller ID or a host of other features, you must wait days or weeks for these services, and you are typically charged for the changes as well. During a recent SNET strike, the wait time was more than a month at times for certain services.

With a voice/data switch, a CLEC can provide a Web browser interface to the customer so they can make their own configuration changes to best suit their individual needs. A great example would be configuring a second phone number and line for a child in the household through a Web browser interface. No cable needs to be drawn - Internet telephony transmission adds minimal overhead of under 20K to the existing service provider connection. Upon realizing a correlation between the second line and lower grades, the parent can reconfigure the second telephone to work only on weekends, during daylight hours, or perhaps not to accept calls from certain parties. The possibilities are enormous.

I've been waiting for years for someone to legitimize the voice/data switch market, and now Lucent, Cisco, and Nortel are all major supporters of this new technology. Superior applications, increased productivity and flexibility, as well as lower cost of ownership assure that voice/data switches should be your primary choice for all future PBX purchase decisions.

Six of the leading voice/data switch vendors will be objectively educating attendees on next-generation voice/data products at the voice/data switch learning center at CTI Expo Spring 1999, Washington, D.C., May 24-26.

At TMC™ our commitment to objective education of our readers and attendees is unyielding. We continuously strive to provide you with information you need - information that is vital to your career and comes from a source you can trust: TMC. Our editors and TMC Labs engineers toil endlessly to help VARs, interconnects, service providers, developers, and end users purchase products that best suit their needs. Innovation and relentless pursuit of the ideal educational expo experience for our valued attendees is what keeps CTI EXPO ahead of all other shows. Our learning centers are especially useful to a broad range of attendees, and you can see how the following groups should all be interested in learning about the voice/data switch:

Service Providers have been hearing about Internet telephony enhanced services for over a year and finally can come see a variety of products that will allow Internet telephony enhanced service provisioning directly in the switch itself. What could be more cost-effective and convenient? Open APIs that are also available for the CPE community ensure a wealth of inexpensive applications that can be easily and inexpensively ported to this platform.

Developers must come and see Lucent's new IPES system and learn firsthand how open APIs allow you to augment this powerful voice/data switch and offer an array of exciting new products for all future Lucent IPES customers.

Interconnects selling PBXs, you have been hearing for years that CTI will change the way you work and the products you sell. The voice/data switch learning center at CTI EXPO is the only place to which you can come and see six of the leading voice/data switch vendors without being pressured by a sales pitch. You can spend time with these vendors in a low-pressure environment without being hassled or barraged with sales information if you don't require it.

Computer VARs know that there is a huge opportunity selling CTI products and have made up a major part of the CTI EXPO attendance this past year. The voice/data switch is a great product to get started selling. Telecom and datacom are indeed merging, and the voice/data switch represents telecom in almost a pure data or packetized format. Now is the time to get into CTI by coming to CTI EXPO and learning how to sell the next generation PBX - the voice/data switch.

CTI EXPO is the industry event. No other trade show in any related industry can claim close to 300 exhibitors and over 15,000 attendees in its first year. CTI EXPO is one of the fastest growing shows anywhere. Our dedication to you - our valued readers - is what will ensure that CTI EXPO is the only show you need attend in the field of computer-telephony integration.

Please don't take my word for it - take a look at our list of testimonials from exhibitors and attendees alike at www.tmcnet.com/ctiexpo/f98quotes.htm and judge for yourself. Mark your calendar today with CTI EXPO, May 24-26 in D.C. at the Washington Convention Center, and to stay current on the latest updates, be sure to register for free at www.ctiexpo.com.

We are very excited and proud to have industry veteran Marc Robins join the TMC team as Associate Group Publisher. Marc has been in telecommunications consulting and publishing since 1983. In 1988 Marc founded Robins Press, a leading publishing and consulting firm specializing in voice and fax processing, call center technologies, computer telephony, and Internet telephony. Robins Press has published a number of best-selling industry books on various CTI subjects, including speech recognition, voice messaging, and IVR.

Marc's career includes work as a technology marketing consultant for several CTI and Fortune 500 companies, and as associate editor of Teleconnect magazine for several years in the 1980s. His career evolved from publishing and consulting into a full-time position at Linkon Corporation, a leading provider of Internet telephony gateways based on Sun Microsystems' servers. Marc served as Linkon's director of marketing and was instrumental in positioning Linkon as a leader in the newly formed Internet telephony industry. Marc's industry experience makes him rather unique, and allows him to see the market from a different perspective than typical journalists. It is this real-world experience that makes Marc a wonderful addition to the team.

Throughout the years, Marc and I have become good friends and have often discussed the possibility of working together more closely. Marc has been with TMC for just a short time, but together we have already come up with many ideas to make TMC publications and trade shows even more useful to you than they are today.

In publishing, as in most other disciplines, experience and longevity in a given industry are what differentiate the leaders from the rest of the pack. TMC already has a tradition of maintaining an experienced editorial staff, and we happily welcome Marc Robins to this team.

Feel free to drop Marc a line, to welcome him, at mrobins@tmcnet.com.

When TMC launched CTI magazine, we made a decision early on to publish only the most in-depth and objective reviews of products in the emerging field of computer-telephony integration. By hiring engineers who seek to expose product weaknesses ranging from difficult installations to buggy GUIs and limited feature sets, CTI magazine was the first industry publication to effectively cover the telephony market like a computer magazine.

Over the last few years, the office space we had allotted to TMC Labs has become more and more crowded with PC-PBXs, Internet telephony gateways, legacy PBXs, industrial computers, and a host of voice and fax boards. Furthermore, TMC Labs has recently taken on the added monthly responsibility of supplying both Internet Telephony and C@LL CENTER Solutions™ magazines with reviews.

As TMC Labs takes on more responsibility, we have outgrown our current office space and must expand into new offices. In the upcoming months, TMC Labs will be moving into another office in Norwalk, Connecticut, a few miles away from our One Technology Plaza headquarters. With our new office space allowing even more state-of-the-art testing equipment, you can expect TMC Labs to continue providing you with the most in-depth and objective reviews of products in the computer-telephony integration field.

We always love to hear from our valued readers. If you have any comments about our labs, please feel free to drop me a line at rtehrani@tmcnet.com, or e-mail our executive technology editor, Tom Keating, at Tom Keating . Tom has done a wonderful job building and growing TMC Labs from its humble beginnings, and if you find the reviews in TMC publications helpful or have suggestions that will help us improve our publications, feel free to drop him a line and let him know.