While the establishment of the Service Creation Community and new enhanced VoIP applications from various vendors at SUPERCOMM offer new hope about the direction this industry is going, IP telephony news in Atlanta was not as much about delivering significant new calling features to end users as it was about driving down carrier and customer costs and helping service providers retain existing revenue streams to whatever extent possible while leveraging existing network infrastructure.
Nowhere was that theme more evident than in SBC Communications Inc.'s announcement that its new IP Centrex service will -- at least initially -- pull all enhanced services off existing Class 5 switches. On the flip side, however, Verizon Communications Inc. announced in late June that it is reselling on a limited basis GoBeam's IP Centrex services, which offer a host of new IP-based enhanced services that reside on Sylantro Systems technology. "This is the first RBOC to offer this type of IP Centrex with these types of services commercially," notes Laura Thompson, Sylantro's vice president of corporate marketing.
Called Verizon Voice Over Broadband, features of the service will include find me/follow me, which allows users to direct their calls to any phone, pager or e-mail address; demand conferencing, which instantly sets up a conference call with two to 10 participants; unified messaging, which manages voice, fax and e-mail communications from one mailbox; and office administration, which lets users make phone service changes from any Internet-enabled PC. Under the terms of the agreement, GoBeam provides the service infrastructure, billing and customer support to Verizon for the services, which are available initially to small businesses in Chicago, a city outside of Verizon's region.
In the meantime, SBC is conducting acceptance testing of IP Centrex in Chicago; Hartford, Conn.; Houston; Los Angeles; and Sacramento, Calif. The company expects to begin selling the service during the September/October time frame in those markets.
Leveraging Class 5
SBC's IP Centrex service in these initial markets will be based on Lucent Technologies Inc.'s iMerge platform. But rather than taking a pure IP approach, the solution is leveraging SBC's existing network assets in the form of Class 5 switches.
Lucent's iMerge does packet-to-circuit conversion between a SpringTide router on the customer side and a Class 5 switch, which iMerge interfaces with via a GR-303 connection, on the network side. In the initial SBC deployment, the Centrex features remain on the Class 5 switch or traditional intelligent network peripherals to the switch, and iMerge simply pulls them from the switch, explains Dan Alto, SBC's executive director of Centrex/Plexar. SBC could add additional IP features on a server attached to the SpringTide router in the future, he adds.
The companies declined to disclose the value of that contract. The fact that Lucent delivers the capability to do remote network monitoring and maintenance for the solution; can serve up to five Class 5 switches off iMerge; and has a product that can work with any vendors' Class 5 switch gave Lucent the winning edge. But Alto was quick to note that Lucent won't necessarily be the carrier's only vendor for IP Centrex. Last year, SBC tested Nortel Network's IP Centrex equipment to deliver service to a Fortune 50 company in Chicago.
For businesses, IP Centrex is attractive because it allows them to put all voice and data traffic on a single network. It also allows staff to move around within the business without the business having to incur expensive rewiring and reconfiguration costs typically associated with moves and changes.
According to Alto, IP Centrex is probably most attractive to new companies or companies with new offices that can be wired for the service. In some cases, it makes sense for some companies to use both types of Centrex, he says. For example, telecommuters or traveling workers could benefit from the fact that they can carry corporate dialing features wherever they go with IP Centrex, whereas traditional Centrex would work fine for employees who don't move around much within or outside the corporate LAN. Using both types could be a means of network backup for some customers, Alto says.
Defensive Strategy
Of course, the RBOCs' moves to deliver IP Centrex are more defensive than offensive. They effectively are being forced to deliver IP Centrex services in a move to stem lost revenue due to the growing number of enterprise customers adopting IP PBX solutions from Cisco Systems and, later, other vendors.
"It's a no win situation for SBC because if they do it they lose some of their revenue, and if they don't do it they lose all of their revenue," says Eric Burger, chief technology officer with vendor Snowshore Networks and a board member of the International Softswitch Consortium.
According to Gary Andresen, director of the packet services group at consulting firm RHK Inc., SBC and Verizon own about 75 percent of the traditional Centrex service market. "If they don't do something [to respond to the IP PBX threat], they're going to start losing that base," he says.
While the industry is beginning to see early RBOC rollouts of IP Centrex, many of the major telcos, including SBC and BellSouth, already have been reselling IP PBXs for several months. And BellSouth announced during SUPERCOMM plans to build on that business.
As the top reseller of Cisco's AVVID IP PBX CPE in its nine-state region, BellSouth has been "selling a fair amount the past year, and a lot of customers are asking for configuration, support, as well as for advanced application development," says Ken Kraft, senior director of data services for BellSouth Business Customer Markets. So, combining network, equipment and professional services, BellSouth is extending support of Cisco's AVVID IP telephony CPE to include a suite of fault management, performance reporting and configuration services.
Cisco agrees the future of the IP Centrex-IP PBX wars could become a win-win for both sides, although that may depend a great deal on the service providers' ability to catch up with their own business customers' accelerated know-how in IP and end-to-end IT processes and applications.
"To date, big enterprise customers tell us that their own IT shops know more about granular IP services than the carriers do, so they only see the service providers as carriers," says Kurt Dahm, director of OSS market development for Cisco's network management technology group. "We'd like to help the service providers take on those IP services, let enterprises concentrate on core operations, and see all boats float on the same rising tide."
Like SBC, WorldCom Inc. also used SUPERCOMM to spotlight its new IP Centrex service, which it launched in May throughout its entire network.
The service provider is using CommWorks' equipment to support the service. The deal, for which the terms were not disclosed, has WorldCom using Comm- Works' media gateway/softswitches, SS7 technology and a portion of its SIP proxy capabilities (WorldCom has a homegrown SIP proxy solution), according to Todd Landry, vice president of product management at CommWorks, a 3Com company.
WorldCom also plans to add enhanced services incrementally. The company already is working with third-party vendors to deliver voicemail over the system. And it is beginning to talk with third parties about adding unified messaging and presence capabilities to the mix, says Barry Zipp, senior director of enhanced voice services.
In September, WorldCom expects to incorporate local VoIP with its IP Centrex services, adds Zipp.
"In our softswitch today we use voice communications to get messages and provide summaries of messages in multiple mailboxes," says Landry. "We allow end users to decide how they want their calls handled. The moves and changes/ mobility is the foot in the door with IP Centrex, and then we can offer enhanced calling features."
Indeed. Nortel, which announced at the show an IP Centrex deal with Australia's Telstra, also is working to enable its VoIP solutions with added features so it's ready when service providers are ready to add those bells and whistles.
Jenna Stanley, who handles technical product marketing for Succession Solutions at Nortel, says her company's solution can tap into Class 5 switches, but it also offers additional functionality -- such as unified messaging -- that sits directly on the Interactive Multimedia Server (IMS). Nortel also is looking at adding collaborative videoconferencing, whiteboarding and dynamic call handling (a find-me, follow-me type feature) to its IP Centrex portfolio, she says.
And, adds Nortel spokesman Jay Barta, Nortel is building its solutions so these enhanced services can be delivered over any type of network -- be it wireless or wireline -- so service providers can leverage their investments again and again.
Riding the IP MPLS Wave
Equant also used SUPERCOMM to promote its new IP-based voice service.
Unlike others rolling out local IP voice, however, Equant's move is more an offensive than defensive strategy.
The carrier doesn't have a legacy voice business to protect as do many other carriers, explains Michael Burrell, Equant's senior product manager for convergence solutions. Rather, the company is offering IP PBX services in a move to leverage its IP MPLS-based network, which can carry voice, video and data, to bring customers more services and to drive new revenue.
But rather than pushing IP Centrex, for which Equant is not seeing much demand from its (large) customers, the global service provider is selling what it calls managed IP PBX and hosted IP PBX services.
Managed IP PBX, which Equant announced in February and began taking orders for in May, includes 24-by-7 management of all devices. The IP PBX sits at the customer premises, but it is managed from one of Equant's global network management centers. "So it's a complete, turnkey solution," says Burrell.
The service is based on Cisco's AVVID call manager at the customer premises and a network-based gateway from NetCentrex. Call detail reporting and Cisco voice mail are part of the package; Cisco unified messaging is slated to be added this quarter.
Managed IP PBX is available from Equant in 65 countries with availability in 18 additional countries on a case-by-case basis. As of SUPERCOMM, Equant had three customers either deploying or commercially using the managed IP PBX service.
A second Equant service, hosted IP PBX, will be available later this year in a controlled introduction, says Burrell. For this service, the IP PBX will reside at one of Equant's Internet data centers.
Burrell adds that because Equant houses private dial plans for its IP PBX services on its NetCentrex application server, rather than on edge routers, the company can deliver least cost routing as part of its service.
