* How Nortel, Siemens and VocalData approach IP Centrex
Today, we’d like to continue our discussion about why carriers may wish to speed up their deployment of IP Centrex – taking on the excuses that incumbent carriers may make about IP Centrex products being less than “carrier class” or being hard to integrate.
We’ve recently raised these two issues with carrier equipment suppliers Nortel, Siemens and VocalData, asking them how they are addressing the carriers’ concerns.
Nortel offers “Centrex IP” on its Succession platform, featuring a hybrid portfolio that provides ATM-AAL-2 and IP-based packet voice services. As a well-entrenched supplier for carriers worldwide, Nortel certainly knows how to make carrier-class products, and the Succession platform was purpose-built to ease integration and migration from traditional TDM platforms and services.
VocalData, a relative newcomer when compared to Nortel and Siemens, has racked up some impressive wins with incumbent and emerging carriers and has more than 35,000 lines in service. VocalData has created what it terms a “hosted PBX” with its software-based VOISS platform. According to VocalData, its approach scales to support 100,000 users on a single server pair.
Siemens, another well established supplier, also provides IP Centrex with its Surpass portfolio. Like Nortel, the Siemens solution is designed to protect legacy services and operations with the migration to IP Centrex. What we’re most impressed with about the Siemens approach is its recently announced LifeWorks concept. The carrier-based Lifeworks architecture is very similar to Siemens’ recently announced OpenScape for enterprise firms.
One newsworthy element is that the Siemens announcement was made jointly by both the carrier and the enterprise sides of the Siemens house – showing that Siemens is serious about merging traditional carrier-driven Centrex voice features with enterprise-driven innovations like advanced multimedia capabilities.
Next time, we’ll examine how carriers can make up some of the Centrex revenues they’re losing to voice over IP.
