ComResource is a 25-year-old company that provides IT and telecommunications related services to business customers. It began selling VoIP solutions about a decade ago, but since then ComResource has been moving upmarket with those services. As the company began selling VoIP to larger clients, it realized a need for session border controllers to ensure high call quality and security, and to support its multi-location customers. Having already had a good experience working with Patton (News - Alert), ComResource tapped the company for its SBCs as well.

Patton had provided ComResource with PRI gateways related to its on-site PBX deployments, and it liked the way those gateways worked, said Mike Lump, VoIP lead for infrastructure delivery services at ComResource. So when ComResource started checking out SBCs, he added, it decided to go with Patton.

In looking for SBCs, Lump said ComResource needed a solution that could separate outside SIP connections from inside SIP connections so PBXs were secure. It also wanted to be able to do bandwidth management and quality of service. And it wanted to continue to be able to do the failover it was able to do with the Patton gateway, said Lump, adding this is possible with Patton’s SIP registrar capability, through which phones register with the PBX (News - Alert) and the Patton gateway in case of an outage.

“The way they wrote the software is phenomenal,” said Lump, explaining Patton’s software is very modular, so allows for ease of customization. “That makes it very easy to architect two disparate PBXs.”

One of ComResource’s customers has two PBXs. In the past they would have to be managed and connected separately, said Lump. Now, however, ComResource can come in with its PBX and the Patton SBC and get 90 SIP trunks, all of which come to the Patton SBC, and ComResource can assign network resources based on the number that was dialed. The ComResource IP PBX has a single trunk to the SBC, the call center has one existing trunk to the Patton SBC, added Lump, and that allows for extension-to-extension calling between PBX callers, contact center callers, and external calls.

The quality of service capability of the Patton SBC, meanwhile, enables ComResource to do bandwidth management to ensure it always has guaranteed bandwidth for the SIP connection. That way ComResource doesn’t run into situations in which the customer’s use of a single connection for data and voice will negatively affect call quality.

“As we got to mid-tier market, they’re clamoring for this,” said Canon (News - Alert) Krebehenne, ComResource’s director of sales for infrastructure delivery services.

In the last 4 years, ComResource’s ideal customer profile has increased to multi-location clients with 50 to 500 end users. That goes hand-in-hand with a need for an offer that supports quality of service and security for SIP services. Additionally, for some ComResource clients, it wanted to be able to reuse existing PSTN circuits or POTS lines for failover purposes in case of an outage. Many ComResource clients still have sites with POTS lines that they either wanted to cancel or get more usage out of them. So, ComResource deploys a Patton SmartNode with the SIP registrar key, and in the case of a PBX outage, it allows phones to register to the Patton gear to make and receive calls over those existing POTS lines. The company said that’s useful in emergency situations and to enable a cost-effective business continuity plan.

Lump said when he was deploying one of his first POTS line failover solutions with Patton SmartNode, the custom configuration was pretty challenging. Patton’s support team helped on several different calls to get the configuration right and helped Lump review and deploy it. Lump said the team was easy to work with, easy to reach, and the deployment went flawlessly.

“We selected Patton because it has U.S.-based support that is really responsive and great to work with.” And, he added, the basic support tier is free and doesn’t require a support contract.