UC-ing the IP PBX

Legacy Gear Remains Barrier for Mid-market Adoption

The buzz around unified communications continues to grow, but a big adoption barrier in the mid-market is the required integration of the customer’s IP PBX along with legacy TDM infrastructure components, from cabling to T1s. To that end, getting the IP PBX-ready for UC is an increasing focus for those targeting this market.

For example, Aculab plc’s new ApplianX division has introduced a range of deployment-ready appliances for businesses and service providers. The gateways can be placed in a service provider network to deliver managed services, or can be sold via channel partners or directly from the service provider to end customers for an on-premises approach. Tim Joint, commercial manager for ApplianX, said Aculab saw the need for a plug-and-play version of the company’s OEM components; thus ApplianX was born.

“The start of the brand is the fact that the market is going to IP, but many end customers need to protect their legacy investments as well,” he explained. “We’re trying to provide flexible, simple-to-deploy solutions to get them into unified communications and IP in general, sooner — that’s a need service providers can tap with ApplianX.”

The vendor now is going to market with two products, showcased at NXTcomm in June for the first time. The ApplianX IP Gateway is a SIP-to-TDM gateway, for providing TDM connectivity to a SIP-based IP PBX, for instance. ApplianX also has a gateway for Microsoft Corp.’s unified communications offering, the Office Communications Server 2007. Working in partnership with the software giant, ApplianX tailored the gateway to work specifically with OCS 2007 to ensure ease of use. It performs SIP-to-TDM conversion with the IP PBX, but additionally incorporates the mediation server in a single ApplianX Gateway device. As such, it significantly can lower the total cost of ownership as fewer components are required, Joint explained, which consequently means there are fewer points of failure. Security headaches are reduced because media isn’t passed externally over the network from the gateway to the mediation server.

Aculab announced at NXTcomm that it has tweaked the product a bit from its first iteration: Customers looking to deploy an OCS 2007 solution now can select a hybrid gateway that supports anywhere from one E1/T1 trunk up to eight E1/T1 trunks in a standard 1U server. Comprehensive support for many PBX interworking protocols (including DPNSS and Q.SIG) means investment in legacy PBXs can be protected. “OCS is a new technology, so we’re finding that many service providers are waiting to see how that fits in to what they can offer,” said Joint. “We feel that if they can get in there in that market as quickly as possible, they can grow as the technology takes off.” He added that British Telecom plc and Telefonica S.A. are two first movers in the space.

Phybridge is another company looking at the legacy problem. Its UniPhyer gateway, which it talked up at NXTcomm, connects an IP network to legacy telephone cabling and turns any IP PBX into a plug-and-play unified communications solution. It sells the product via service providers looking to help businesses get to advanced IP communications without the cost of ripping out existing infrastructure. And it supports a variety of PBXs, including open-source solutions and products from Avaya, Cisco Systems Inc., Digium, Fonality, Mitel, Nortel, ShoreTel and Siemens.

“The UniPhyer instantly provides a parallel voice network with an additional QoS, power-over-Ethernet LAN drop to every desktop,” said Oliver Emmanuel, president at Phybridge. “By leveraging existing cable, businesses can easily deploy IP telephony and converged networks with no network downtime.”

Patton Electronics Co.’s SmartNode VoIP solution also was designed to enable carriers to deliver unified communications to SMBs without requiring a forklift upgrade. Earlier this year the company announced its Unified Communications Agent (UCA) for SmartNode, which provides simultaneous any-to-any communications between SIP VoIP, H.323, ISDN, and PSTN calls with seamless routing and conversion between TDM and VoIP.

The niche seems to be a good bet: the number of U.S. businesses using an Internet telephony line will surpass 5 million by the end of the decade and hit 7.⁸ million by the end of 2012, according to Pike & Fischer's Broadband Advisory Services Report. Revenue from business customers will triple over the next five years to hit more than $6 billion. But the majority of those will be large enterprises, which tend to have in-house information technology experts to manage telecommunications upgrades, P&F noted. Smaller companies have fewer built-in resources and may take a bit longer to adopt VoIP for their telecommunications systems, said Rich Power, a P&F contributing analyst and author of the report. "The sales and marketing cycle may be a little longer for buyers in this segment," Power said. "There is just too much at stake to risk changes to their communications systems unless they fully understand the risks and potential rewards."

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