Pingtel Corp. will enter the IP PBX fray this month at SUPERCOMM, introducing SIPxchange, a private business exchange for small and medium businesses seeking to unify their voice and data network applications and network management under one umbrella.
Known as a leader in session initiation protocol (SIP)-based IP phones, Pingtel will extend its product line into the PBX market mainly by adding voice extensible markup language (VXML) application scripting to the technologies underlying its xpressa desktop hardware and portable software SIP phones. The PBX incorporates three primary components, running on Linux or Windows servers: Pingtel Comm Server, providing PBX features, including intelligent routing; Pingtel Media Server, providing voicemail, auto attendant and other audio features; and Pingtel Configuration Server, providing centralized management of servers and phones. The system is designed to interwork with SIP phones, softphones or standard PSTN phones via analog adapters packaged with the PBX. SIPxchange will be targeted to locations with fewer than 400 lines but with sophisticated data networks; to companies that may have multiple locations; to locations where the phone is a business tool; to financial services, healthcare, higher education and certain other vertical markets; and to sales, service, marketing and certain other horizontal markets.
"Our original mission was to build endpoints for hosted services," says marketing director Steve Guthrie. "The telecom crash led us to add a premises option about six months ago by extending our SIP intellectual property to SIPxchange." Guthrie describes the product as a "blended solution," which does not incorporate an IP-to-PSTN gateway.
Because SIPxchange and expressa are open to third-party Java application development, "There is no one source of features, information or content," Guthrie says. In addition to a "full set of legacy PBX features ... you can go to www.realnetworks.com for hosted music on hold, to www.mysap.com to match phone numbers with a customer relationship management database, to www.411.com for directory services or to Windows Messenger to register for presence."
To differentiate itself from market-leading Cisco Systems Inc.'s Call Manager IP PBX, Pingtel is emphasizing that SIPxchange does not assume only dumb terminals, and it is open to a wide community of third-party Java developers. Anticipated features might see a law office capture billing time automatically as calls to clients are made, greetings personalized to specific callers, selective recording, corporate intercom, a range of call filters, a sales 'tickler list,' caller-selected music on hold, and picture.vcf electronic business cards with embedded photos.
