Got the urge to converge? 09/27/99

By Susan Breidenbach
Network World, 09/27/99

The vision of a single network delivering voice and data to enterprise desktops has been like a mirage: It never gets any nearer and disappears if you look too closely. But the images of convergence may finally be more than thirst-induced fantasies.

Thanks to technology advances and emerging standards that are enabling a new generation of products, convergence is moving beyond call centers and other niches. The traditional PBX at corporate headquarters is in no immediate danger, to be sure, but small precursors to its ultimate IP-based replacement are starting to appear in branch offices.

The original premise of convergence - to save money by collapsing two network fabrics into one - is still valid, but the focus is shifting to the applications, enhanced communications and ease of management a single network enables.

Think about how frustrating it is to repeat tracking information to successive customer service representatives when you call a courier service to check on a shipment and get transferred five times. A converged voice/data network turns voice into an application that can be integrated with database software so tracking information can move with the call.This means database vendors can start voice-enabling their products.

"This is the sort of thing that will drive the migration to converged networks," says Jim Daugherty, general manager of data services marketing for AT&T.

Such enhanced communications are increasingly critical in an Internet economy in which the customer is king and your competitors are only a click away. Also important is the ability to support a legion of mobile workers and telecommuters.

"When my wife calls to tell me she's going into labor, it's no big deal for an IP-based switch to look into my scheduler, find the conference room I'm in and forward the call there," says Christian Renaud, manager of product marketing for Cisco's enterprise voice business. "Getting a traditional PBX to do that would take a whole fleet of Andersen consultants."

Because IP is distance-insensitive, convergence will help employers cope with tight labor markets by letting people work from almost anywhere. With a single line, you can give home-based employees LAN access, Internet access, a PBX extension, voice mail and features such as speed dial.

Call center operations are a primary beneficiary. Anyone anywhere on the enterprise network, including remote individuals attached via the Internet, can become part of a virtual call center that works off a single database of customer and product information. Call center managers will be able to create databases of incoming calls and at the end of the day send the five worst calls to the product managers, for example.

"That's the whole ball of convergence wax - the ability to do things you couldn't formerly do cost-effectively," says Don Hausman, product manager for 3Com's voice solutions group in Andover, Mass. 3Com's NBX 100, acquired through a merger with NBX this spring, is helping define a new class of network server that functions as an IP-based PBX.

3Com, like NBX before it, has concentrated on providing a complete plug-and-play voice and data product to small offices that don't have resident IT staffs. While the target has been small businesses, large enterprises are starting to adopt iPBXs for branch offices.

Cisco has a competing product, acquired through its merger with Selsius Systems in October 1998. The system, aimed more at the enterprise than 3Com's NBX 100, is assembled from components that include CallManager call-routing software for Windows NT; two models of IP phones; and assorted gateway interface cards and routers needed for WAN connections. Cisco is now targeting smaller businesses with Media Convergence Server, a bundled version preinstalled in a server.

Cisco stays away from the iPBX label. "That's like calling automobiles horseless carriages," Renaud says. Convergence is moving voice onto data networks, and "iPBX" implies the opposite, he explains.

Vertical Networks, a start-up in Sunnyvale, Calif., is challenging the two data communications giants. It offers a more completely integrated box, called InstantOffice, that incorporates hub and router functions as well as IP telephony. However, Vertical doesn't deliver voice over IP to the desktop. Instead, it uses two wires - one to the PC and one to a traditional phone - from its box, says Reed Henry, Vertical co-founder and vice president of marketing.

That approach is fine with Laptop Lane, which is using InstantOffice to provision T-1 lines to the business centers it's creating in major domestic airports.

"We could set up these centers without convergence, but we'd have to charge customers more and we'd make less," says Bruce Merrell, president and CEO of Laptop Lane.

In contrast, IP phones declare themselves using their Ethernet media access control addresses - whenever and wherever they are plugged in to the network. And because the same jack is used for voice or data, network administrators don't have to tag and keep track of different types of outlets.

On the negative side, the prices of IP phones currently start at $350 to $400, while the least expensive traditional phones are in the $100 range. Also, IP phones will double the number of IP addresses that an enterprise is using, and they are subject to Ethernet distance limitations.

"That last 100 feet to the desktop is going to be the hardest to change," says William MacDonald, vice president of business development for Calista, an IP telephony start-up in San Jose recently bought by Cisco. To ease migration, Calista has come up with an interim solution: IP-based PBX extenders that IP-enable traditional digital PBXs and their telephones and turn remotely located phones into virtual extensions.

Calista reseller KLF, a telecom interconnect supplier in Ft. Wayne, Ind., is using the PBX extenders to set up virtual call centers for customers. Using a single ISDN line, KLF can provision a call center agent's home office with a phone connection, Internet link and dedicated fax line. Calls can be routed to the agent's phone just as if the phone were sitting on a desktop at the corporate site.

Five nines or bust

Reliability is a major concern as voice gets moved onto data networks, although part of this is the natural uncertainty that accompanies any paradigm shift.

But one clear danger posed by convergence is the loss of the redundancy that two separate networks provide. People who design voice switches think of downtime in terms of seconds per year because the networks have to be up at least 99.999% of the time.

In contrast, the most highly available routers on data networks today have average annual downtimes measured in minutes, or even hours. While the connectivity demands of the Internet economy are rapidly reducing the tolerance of such outages on the data side, there is still a huge difference between the voice and data requirements.

This gap must be closed because it is clear that users aren't willing to sacrifice any reliability on the voice side. When asked if they'd settle for four nines - 99.99% uptime - on a converged voice/data network that provided a lot more features and capabilities for a lot less money, the answer was a resounding and almost unanimous, "No."

"There's no reason that we can't achieve the same level of reliability in the data world, but we will never get there if we have to keep putting all these resources into evolving a separate voice network," UM's Riley says. "If we try to keep these parallel investments going much longer, the underdeveloped world could leapfrog us to convergence."

Related links

Breidenbach is a freelance technology journalist and consultant. She can be reached at sbreide@aol.com.

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We sponsored a debate at N+I Atlanta among leading voice and data vendors. It revealed interoperability issues and spotty product plans. Network World, 9/20/99.

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Network World Fusion, 9/16/99.

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Network World Fusion Focus on Network and Systems Management, 5/26/99.

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