IP Telephony

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Earlier this year, Eicon Networks (a company that provides media processing hardware and software) won a TMC Labs Innovation Award for Diva Server SIPcontrol, a software adaptation layer that allows the company's telephony boards to be used with SIP-based voice applications.

 

To find out more about why SIPcontrol is so innovative, TMCnet recently spoke with Eicon Senior Field Sales Engineer Ruben Martinez. This article is based on that conversation.

 

 

SIPcontrol was created when Eicon took a SIP wrapper and used that to enable tie-ins between the telephony boards and voice applications, Martinez told TMCnet. The connection can take place on a single server, or can provide connection to another server where the application resides.

 

“The innovative part of this, if you have an application that’s written to SIP, you don't have to do any more development,” Martinez noted. 

 

That means Eicon’s customers who have made the move to SIP-based applications get the full benefit of the company's telephony hardware without having to reinvent the wheel, as it were.

 

 

Making things even easier for users is the fact that, once a telephony board is installed, additional boards can be added without having to go through the whole setup process again. (Incidentally, SIPcontrol is supported by all of Eicon’s telephony boards.)

 

“What we've been hearing is that ours takes only one reboot,” Martinez he said of the installation process. “Others take 5-7 reboots.”

 

 

SIPcontrol was designed for ease-of-use as a way for companies to future-proof their voice application systems. Many companies are accustomed to proprietary software development kits (SDKs) that require development of new applications every time there's an upgrade to a new brand of hardware.

 

“It can be very tedious,” Martinez pointed out.

 

Using a SIP backbone means that applications don’t have to be re-written, so long as the hardware supports SIP. Martinez listed Vocalocity, VoiceGenie, Microsoft and Genesys as a few examples of companies that already have invested in SIP.

 

 

In the future, Martinez said, Eicon will be branching out to provide video products.

 

As of August 9, the big excitement at Eicon is the purchase of Intel's media and signaling business. The deal will be finalized mid-September, after which more details will be available.