Media5 Corporation Transforms the Branch Office

By: Richard “Zippy” Grigonis

In these tough economic times, it’s nice to hear of a company that’s addressing the challenges and needs of the market. Media5 Corporation (News - Alert) (see the cover story of our March 2009 issue) has actually strengthened its position as a leading provider of MMoIP solutions for service providers and enterprises with multi-branch applications. I recently sat down with Marc Skinner, the Director of PLM for the Mediatrix and Media5Boss brands of Media5, to discuss the company, its products and their philosophy.

RG: Media5 is new to a lot of people but in fact it’s not new at all, correct?

MS: Exactly, Media5 has existed for 10 years, but people have gotten to know us as either Mediatrix or M5T. Until the fall of last year, Media5 had been only the holding company for the brands, but we decided that the synergies of the two divisions made it logical to combine the strengths under one new banner. Mediatrix and M5T certainly still exist as thriving product and technology solution brands, but going forward we will develop our strategic offerings under the Media5 brand.

RG: Here is the million dollar question: Why focus on the branch office marketplace?

MS: The world is shrinking and the office is no longer the large building in the center of town. The number of remote workers has increased dramatically in the last few years — by over 35 percent in North America alone. The Best-in-Class Organization Standards, a U.S. Government initiative, are developing solutions for optimizing and accelerating network traffic and remote management of branch office networks. Countries like Australia and many in Europe have led the way by passing initiatives amongst government employees to minimize travel by having employees work from remote locations or home.

In this environment, more and more headquarters may be in one city with offices all over the world, increasing the need for communication systems and solutions that will allow organizations to communicate reliably and securely as if they all were in that one building in the center of town. These attributes are at the heart of the Media5Boss solutions.

The breadth of our technical expertise is one of the strengths of Media5; the telecom marketplace is changing rapidly and you have to be able to bring the latest technology built into the right solutions to the market. We feel that we are ideally positioned to bring the combination of our award-winning VoIP gateway products and technology leadership to the branch office market segment.

RG: Your new product line is geared towards branch-office applications for service providers and enterprise; can you tell us a little about the Media5Boss line?

MS: Media5Boss stands for Media5 B (News - Alert)ranch Office Secure, Survivable solutions; they are suites of “all-in-one” solutions designed specifically for security and survivability in multi-site, branch office environments. Survivability is a key differentiator for the Media5Boss. The Media5Boss-Branch solution allows a remote office to maintain telephone service even while the Internet is down. The solution maintains telephony features for the branch extensions, while providing PSTN access. The solution requires minimal configuration as the integrated SIP Proxy learns passively as devices are initially registered in the branch office, allowing transparent activation when the WAN link fails. The solution is further enhanced by Security features that allow the encryption of the Media and signaling streams.

The Media5Boss-Branch can also act as a Session Border Controller for voice scenarios, thus controlling real-time traffic flows in and out of the branch office. These powerful features make it the premier single box branch connectivity solution for VoIP Enterprise or VoIP Centrex scenarios.

The Survivability and Call Admission Control capabilities, the availability of voice call routing and SBC functionalities, the ability to terminate SRTP calls, as well as the state-of-the-art QoS functionality make the Media5Boss-Branch a true one-box-solution for branch offices. For larger applications (beyond 150 users), we have introduced the The Media5Boss-Convergence (News - Alert) products.

The evolution of Mobility Communications is also one of the key drivers in the Enterprise marketplace. To address this need, we have launched the Media5Boss-FMC, an all-in-one Fixed Mobile Convergence solution combining the technologies of the M5T MC Client and FMC Controller, with a variety of popular dual mode handsets, allowing users to freely roam between WiFi (News - Alert) and cellular networks. It is very intuitive to use and provides a homogeneous interface for instant messaging, contacts, presence, and more unified communications features.

The movement towards FMC is one market trend that we’re very excited about. We have seen a definite shift from wireline to wireless services; in the US alone, over 20 million lines have been disconnected in the last few years.

For more information on Media5 you can visit www.media5corp.com.

Richard “Zippy” Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC (News - Alert)’s IP Communications Group.

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