VoIP Touches A New Tone

After years of red-hot growth, the VoIP market is showing signs of maturity and stability. This is not to say the growth is slowing down—far from it. The market is still poised for strong growth as small businesses take advantage of lower costs and new applications to move their phone systems and larger enterprises away from maintaining legacy analog lines. Solution providers are seeing a new class of customers interested in VoIP: they are larger and less willing to take chances with their data, security and applications than previous adopters. These customers generally need more training and support. Larger customers mean larger profit margins, but the sales cycle gets longer as a result.

Customers, regardless of size, are also demanding more from the technology. It's no longer enough to just get the phone system onto the IP network; they want video, too. VoIP VARs need to get used to talking about unified communications as customers look for ways to combine voice with other applications to increase productivity. Most importantly, the days of complicated infrastructure are numbered. VoIP has to play nice with the rest of the network to justify its deployment.

The Test Center evaluated a few of the current VoIP offerings from some of the major players in light of the maturing market. Each product varied in its approach. Some focused on small deployments. For example, D-Link Systems Inc.'s VoiceCenter, running Microsoft Corp.'s Response Point, is aimed at making the switch affordable and easy while making some advanced features, such as auto-attendant and call groups, available for the smallest customers. Digium Inc.'s Switchvox solution is simplifying large deployments while simplifying mashups and application development. And even others are integrating VoIP with rest of the network. Adtran Inc.'s latest line of NetVanta switches offer QoS and other networking tools. Cisco Systems Inc. remains focused on incorporating its networking gear with with VoIP, but it recently made large investments to include messaging, TelePresence and other collaborative technologies as part of the VoIP offering.

These products all have potential and clearly demonstrate that the trend is for integration, simplicity and ease of management.

Adtran NetVanta
Huntsville, Ala.-based Adtran positions its NetVanta family of switches for the SMB that requires enterprise-class features. The switches are combination IP-PBX, PoE switch and a QoS-enabled router. In August, the company introduced six new NetVanta switches, featuring 802.3af connectivity, wireless controller capabilities and Gigabit uplink ports. Three of these Layer 2 switches offer Gigabit Power-over-Ethernet and power conservation features to minimize the amount drawn. With these new NetVanta switches, the SMB can upgrade the LAN to higher speeds and more ports while investing in VoIP equipment.

NetVanta switches support non-blocking switching, VLANs, QoS Link Aggregation, TCL scripting and remote configuration capabilities. There are options for creating ring groups, auto-attendant, paging, user directories and call coverage lists. Analog, virtual and physical SIP phones are supported. Businesses can maintain existing analog lines, including direct support for up to 10 analog trunks. The system also supports fax machines and credit card readers without requiring adapters.

In addition to advanced networking features, the system gives businesses some flexibility. Office-in-a-box capabilities reduce the amount of cash outlay required to get networking infrastructure up and running for the branch office. Monitoring and management tools ensure voice quality is not degraded. The Voice Quality Monitoring suite allows administrators to examine the data stream and identify problems using a graphical user interface. With the VQM, both active and historical VoIP call statistics are accessible. The charts and graphs present overall network health as well as areas with problems in call quality. VQM looks at Mean Opinion Score, delay, jitter and dropped or out-of-order packets. The data can be searched on a variety of parameters. The NetVanta family also includes business gateways for hosted voice applications.

The company has aggressively pursued Cisco, often undercutting the giant's prices. Adtran already has some of the most generous warranties in the market and is currently offering limited lifetime warranties on its new switches.

Next: Cisco Smart Business Communications System Cisco Smart Business Communications System
San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco remains the company to beat in unified communications. With its robust product portfolio and extensive networking expertise, Cisco is a commanding presence. The heart of its SMB offering is the Smart Business Communications System, a single product offering unified communications, systems management and networking. This all-in-one system handles voice, data, video and security, bringing several communication capabilities onto a single platform and eliminating multiple servers.

The SBCS comes with call-processing software that includes automated attendant, voicemail, paging, conferencing and video calls. Built-in presence technology allows callers to determine colleague availability, even if the colleague is using a softphone on the PC instead of a physical IP phone. Cisco has also aggressively promoted conferencing and collaboration tools such as WebEx and TelePresence applications that combine video and voice conferencing with Web presentation and other capabilities.

Cisco's Unified Communications Manager Express encourages staff collaboration and access to customer data. There are options to integrate the voice data with Microsoft and Salesforce.com CRM applications and other third-party applications. The integration allows businesses to combine information stored in other applications with caller data to provide a much more responsive and productive support experience.

SBCS also supports remote workers and branch offices. Remote workers and telecommuters can take advantage of the same voice system as the rest of the company despite not being on the corporate network. Calls can be seamlessly forwarded to mobile and home phones without interrupting the current conversation.

Digium Switchvox Pro and Asterisk
Digium, Huntsville, Ala., is the creator and the best-known backer of Asterisk, although there are plenty of other companies selling Asterisk gear (Fonality, Los Angeles, is one). While VARs can choose to sell Asterisk on their own sourced hardware, Digium also offers Switchvox, an Asterisk-based appliance, and Switchvox Hosted Edition, a SaaS product.

Switchvox relies on a switchboard to manage and organize call flow. Mashups are created (some are ridiculously easy) and run off the switchboard. A typical mashup might link the caller's phone number with the relevant record on a CRM application, display call logs and direct the caller to the same agent from a previous call. Digium will increase the focus on unified communications in the next version of Switchvox.

The company is also working to make Switchvox attractive to larger customers by making large-scale deployments easier. The aim is to make the system as easy to roll out for 400 users as it is for 10 users. The appliance detects the phones as soon as they are plugged into the local network and the phones download all configuration information directly from the server. The administrator simply has to set up extensions and call groups. The switchboard can be used to direct or escalate calls accordingly.

With over 250 channel partners, Digium also offers an online marketplace for partners, VARs and developers to offer Asterisk-based products and solutions. Partners looking for more advanced features can deploy Asterisk on their own instead of the simpler Switchvox.

D-Link Voice Center and Microsoft Response Point
Developed entirely in-house by a group that acted like an independent startup within Microsoft, Response Point requires only Windows XP or Vista on the management PC. Everything else is built-in to the IP-PBX box available from D-Link Systems, Fountain Valley, Calif., and Quanta Computer Inc., Tao Yuan, Taiwan. Response Point SP 1 was released in July and now allows SIP trunking integration for external VoIP calls. While customers can continue to use analog lines, SP1 simplifies the process for adding new phone lines.

While D-Link's VoiceCenter can support 50 users, the sweet spot is around 10—making VoIP an option for the smallest businesses. The system is easy to set up and service. If something goes wrong with the PBX, solution providers can just swap in a replacement box and restore from the last system backup. The base unit also comes with a built-in DHCP server, handy for customers who don't already have one or want to deploy the phone system on a VLAN. The PBX runs off solid-state flash memory, adding to its reliability. The IP phones support 802.3af PoE. The voice recognition capabilities integrate with the Outlook address book flawlessly. The system plugs directly into the existing analog line and provides internal calls over IP without changing anything externally. This is an attractive option for startups and businesses based out of a space without office-specific infrastructure.

Bottom Line
As the market matures and stabilizes, solution providers can expect vendors to place more emphasis on scalability, price and unified communications capabilities. Regardless of the number of users on the customer site, VoIP systems have to offer more than just call routing. Ways to prioritize and redirect calls—such as paging and call escalation—is essential, and the ability to integrate with third-party applications is attractive. Other goodies like PoE and support for wireless handsets wouldn't hurt either.