"Business-class" IP telephony: which vendors "get it" and which ones don't?

I am responding as a former ROLM/IBM systems engineer and a former Siemens inside sales rep.

I have watched Nortel Networks go broke and be purchased by Avaya in a competition with Siemens. I watched Siemens' marketshare shrink significantly over the past several years, which was a major reason to leave that company.

I see some areas of strength for NEC. I see a bit of Mitel/Intertel at the low end. I have two Microsoft Office Communicators and one 3Com system listed.

What I am consistently seeing is that Avaya is competing with Cisco for the lion's share of the market, and I see Avaya winning whenever a call center application with sophisticated management and record keeping functions are required.

I am also seeing a fair amount of NEC and assume that company is doing well, although they are not competing with the big two.

I am not seeing the equipment that Sergey Kolesnichenko listed at all and I have literally thousands of contacts, with more than half associated with specific vendors PBX, VoIP or hybrid PBX/IP equipment.

Sergey, first some responses to 4 of your comments:
1. People introducing themselves: it's very helpful to know who a poster is before reading on; it helps to qualify what they are saying.
2. The prevalence of "hacked software" indicates popularity in countries where piracy is especially rife; companies that don't offer localised versions for those countries may see less piracy.
3. O'Reilly as a reference for Asterisk "the future of telephony"'; do you really believe that quoting the cover of an eponymous book validates your opinion?
4. It's interesting that you state that everyone knows and has worked on Avaya, but you still think it is going to "end", in spite of its completed acquisition of Nortel and its leading share of existing business customers.

Now to the original question: no one has tried to define what "business class" VOIP means. Here's what I think it means:
- SIP
- scalable across multiple geo's
- ultra reliable
- simple deployment with strong virtualisation options, centrally managed
- leveraging rich voice, conferencing and presence capabilities as part of unified communications and collaboration
- integrated seamlessly with line of business applications to maximise productivity

The "unified" in unified communications is going to make a quantum leap forward, and it's going to be a huge enabler of productivity within colocated enterprises, highly distributed organisations, *and* global businesses, large and small, cooperating in flexible networks to take best advantage of world-wide competition for resources, services and products.

A phone is not just a 1-1 communications device, it's a lightweight and increasingly mobile portal for collaboration. The second decade of the 21st century is going to be *very* interesting.

It is an interesting question and I'm not sure if there is any one answer to it. That said, I must admit that we are standing at the cusp of VoIP boom. People are already talking about the next decade as being VoIP decade. This has huge bearing on all of us.

What we are seeing now is sign of the maturing industry. There are far too many players currently. As the industry matures, we are bound to see consolidation. Players like Cisco have a huge role to play in defining the industry landscape. Other companies to watch out for are Asterisk, Digium, etc.

As a short run strategy, it would make sense to invest in equipments backed by big names so as to ensure support in the long run.

While VoIP stands for "cheap" for a lot of people, it may not be that ways in the future. Quality will be an important factor and quality comes at a price. We will see players operating at the top end of the market offering quality products. However, we will continue to have small players catering to the rest of the market.

Well, we are sure to see great times ahead.....can't wait to see it unfold!!

Observing both Open Source and proprietary worlds I can tell that VoIP becomes more standardized and unified. What I see is more a demand for reasonable priced wireless unified communications platform. I'm talking about an end-user device and infrastructure supporting voice, video, IM, email and others communication methods. At this point definitely Cisco is the major player on this market. They bring the idea on the table and put together existing technology from other companies. Lost of Cisco products are just re-branded solutions from their partners like Polycom, Tandberg and others. One step behind is SMB sector players like Mitel, Shoretel. Open source products are in the same segment, targeting small business. Mitel put a lot of effort in their own SIP stack which opens a lot of integration options with Internet Telephony providers, Unified communications platforms and etc. After multiple attempts starting from 50s video communications are entering enterprise markets. People are ready to see each other and share information in electronic form. Besides high costs affordable for governments of leading countries only, video communications had internal resistance. People were not sure that they want to be seen by the other party during the conversation. Era of digital photography and Youtube changed this and broad range of users wants communications with real life experience. Polycom and TANDBERG are the most advanced players in this area.
This is my personal opinion.

Digium and Asterisk solutions are most helpful for lots of businesses. They don't give the possibility to well-known vendor-solutions to sleep being on the top of the heel and make money at the same time.

Cisco doesn't sleep at all and it helps a lot. If something cannot be done by other vendor, call to a Cisco guy ;-) Lots of VoIP stuff and vendor's solutions just don't work without Cisco on the background.

Mera Systems... hacked software is a good sign of popularity ;-) I've never seen Cirpack to be hacked and distributed on the web just like illegal Windows copy with a keygen. When vendor's soft switches cannot do something, a lot of guys employ Mera+Cisco.

AVAYA will end like Novell Netware. Everyone knows about it, everyone worked on it, some started a business on it, some still have it in the network, but too less people see it as a basement for new installations of VoIP systems.

Why does every second message on this community start from the phrase emphasing on titles and experience of the story teller? Please, take it easy, this is a professional community, it is not a proper place to sell yourself.

I am not seeing the equipment that Sergey Kolesnichenko listed at all and I
Did you ever heard, that Asterisk was called by some guy The future of telephony? Then take a look in Google, this is a book by O'Reilly Media ;-)

Yes. May be you don't know Mera, but it is one the most efficient softswitches in the world. Ask somebody from VoIP-transit company.

The majority of business know, that VoIP is a synonym to a word "cheap", AVAYA is a kind of expensive VoIP equipment, so, once, their marketing will need to anderstand this controversy, otherwise the amount of new installations will go down.

I will not tell you where I work and which experience I have, believe me, I have enough. I still didn't change my mind about strange manner of telling everyone "Hello", which starts from the words of how much years a person worked in VoIP industry.

OK. I will focus on Asterisk, all other points are interesting, but too little time during this Sunday night, I want to sleep already.

I will quote the words of the client, who wanted to buy a solution for his new callcenter. The conversation in the office of big system integrator goes like this:
- Tell me, why whould you like to buy AVAYA?
- Oh! It is really good, flexible, reliable, very stable solution, it can be integrated to lots of other systems (he stops talking after 10 minutes or something telling about the advantages of AVAYA)
- But if you finance your business and you don't have money from that investor (the name of the company goes here), whould you like buying AVAYA?
- Never! First 2-3 years, while business doesn't generate enough cash flow I will use Asterisk it is cheaper, and you can live with a lot comfort using it.

2 points here:
1. If he finances it by himself, he doesn't feel already, that this solution is perfect for that money.
2. After 2 years of Asterisk experience, he will not change it.

Another conversation at class 4 and class 5 softswitch vendor. Our R&D guys were choosing the solution for a big telecom company. After all meetings and presentations they were sitting in the office and talking with vendor's techs, drinking a coffee in a friendly environment. A little piece of conversation:
- And what about PBX features, which your sales said work great for customers? Can you show us something live? Is this phone (picks up the phone on the desk) connected to your system?
- No, lets go to a test room, this one is connected to Asterisk. (pause) (very long one, the conversation before was too friendly, so, everyone lost the feeling, that they try to sell the solution) Ooops. I shouldn't tell that, our sales will kill me, if they know, what I've told you...

And another story. I don't sell equipment too much, I work with carrier grade services or solutions, very often I go with sales people at Corporate Sales Department to consult them on the meeting and help them to sell.

We went to a callcenter to sell some 2 PRIs, 20Mbps of Internet, a block of 0800 numbers, local numbers etc. That callcenter is not the biggest in my country, but it is big and well-known company and it is financed by top-managers, which work there (3 shareholders, which occupy the positions of directors). These people earn and count their own money.

I asked why they use Cisco and Asterisk, but not some cool vendor solution. One of the shareholders replied, that they need solution, which works, and do not need that solution, which gives too much food to a system integrator. I started my reply with a word "But" and I've been interrupted by that guy, he continued his story and told me, that their callcenter has the clients not because they sell well. He said, that their sales team is very poor, but they know, how to make custom development very fast without calling a vendor or system integrator. This callcenter gets all clients, which were not satisfied by proud AVAYA owners.

His comparison was very clear to me. From 5 clients, 2 need some custom development, one case from 2 was somehow implemented in the past, but 1 is not. A client is not rich, but his business depends on customisation, so, that's why he demands some changes from his outsourced callcenter. And now it is callcenter's turn to fit into the tight budget. They can do everything at home or they can order everything at vendor. Vendor's solutions only for one extra card sometimes are bigger, that the total client's budget.

I can continue stories like this for hours... Asterisk will be a brother of Apache Web Server in VoIP industry. Soon it can happen that there will be no questions at system integrator's offices, which hardware solution to sell to a client, there will be questions, which services to implement based on Asterisk. Because it is going to be a standard like Apache has become a standard for web.

In reply to: "O'Reilly as a reference for Asterisk "the future of telephony"'; do you really believe that quoting the cover of an eponymous book validates your opinion?":

No, of course not! I'm sure you're right and even more... it was a stupid joke by O'Reilli Media to give a name "The future of the telephony" to a completely unknown book about completely unknown telephony system.

Asterisk is not a greatest VoIP system ever. It has to go aroud huge number of patents while AVAYA, MITEL, NRTEL, CISCO are generating those patents during their R&D. Plus they have a lot of cross licensing agreement, which means that software engineer with AVAYA does not need to do a patent searh for every idea and line of the code.
Asterisk has problems in its core infrastructure while some patents preventing more effective solutions for another 20 years. There are other Open source projects forked from Asterisk due to licensing constrains like Call Weaver. Others were developed from the ground up. Examples include Bayonne, YATE, FreeSwitch.

Full disclosure: the company I work for is a system integrator that is an Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft and Nortel partner (among others). That being said, you can look at my previous posts to realize I'm not a shill for any one vendor.

I will share what I see in the marketplace:

Avaya: Has a huge marketshare (especially after the Nortel acquisition). There is lots of investment from Avaya to maintain the openness of the platform. Out of the major vendors, they are the most compatible to the SIP standard. Most large implementations are either Cisco or Avaya, and if it's a call center, it almost always falls on Avaya's side of the fence. The group that owns Avaya (Silver Lake Partners) has also made significant investments in other related technology, such as Skype.

Cisco: Great marketing engine and name recognition. Similar to IBM of yesteryear, most people figure they can't get fired for choosing Cisco. I have seen quite a bit of kickback during the economic downturn against Cisco... mainly because of their excessive licensing and support fees. Cisco has a slick presentation and cool-looking hardware. Everything they need, they can go out and purchase. That's both a blessing and a curse: a blessing in that they have a lot of features, but a curse in that it doesn't usually work seamlessly. Cisco is also not an open platform... meaning you can't use a Cisco Call Manager with a different switch vendor. They seem to want to sell phones to control the network more completely.

Nortel: Kind of a moot point now that Avaya has finalized the purchase. But Nortel has a huge install base and their customers are fiercely loyal. Avaya must be very careful not to upset the current base while migrating them to the Avaya platform. We'll know more in January when they announce the roadmap.

Mitel: I can't speak to them because I see them so little in the Midwest.

Shoretel: This is the main up-and-comer I see in the SMB market. They have a nice platform and a lot of "wow" factor. They can work with other manufacturer's switches and other voicemail platforms. The main knock against Shoretel is the size and financial performance of the company. They're a small company (

Odd... my post was truncated.

Essentially, the remaining post:

Asterisk: Let me start by saying that Asterisk is not a vendor... it is a code base owned by the community. That very fact is it's greatest asset... and greatest challenge. I have worked with several companies that wanted to use Asterisk because of the cost savings but couldn't justify the cost savings against the risk of their business by not having a manufacturer responsible for the system. I know people are going to flame me and say that the vendor is responsible for the system, but as they make changes to "customize" the system for the customer, it also wanders further away from the original code base. This means you either need to know how to program the switch yourself or make sure you minimize customization in case another vendor needs assist.

The TV Vendors: I call them this because the phones are an afterthought with not much put into R&D. These include Toshiba, Panasonic, NEC, Fujitsu, etc.

Digium and Asterisk cannot be compared as solutions. Asterisk is open Source and the other (even if based on Asterisk) is not. Digium provides a basic telephony solution but not a Unified Communication solution.

All of the large manufacturers such as Panasonic and Mitel make it cost prohibitive to employ third party SIP compliant handsets. SIP handsets can cost £25. Proprietary handsets are £100 plus. These Goliaths try to protect their revenue by ensuring their own proprietary handset sales.

Many manufacturers are integrating with Microsofts’ OCS that is in its infancy and does not offer a true Unified Communications experience.

Most manufacturers such as Swix, Splicecom, ShoreTel etc require separate Voicemail, Call Recording and Presence servers. These functions should not be spread across multiple hardware platforms, but be integrated within one purpose made hardware platform for ease of support, resilience and energy efficiencies.

With Mac OS X becoming more prevalent in business, software clients should work across multiple operating systems such as Windows, Linux and OS X.

Zultys of California offer:

1. A “one box” hardware solution.
2. Client runs on Windows, Linux and OS X.
3. Integrates with less expensive handsets eg: Polycom, Aastra

Some of the integrated Unified Communication benefits of Zultys are:

1. MX Meeting – LogMeIn/Webex Functionality (enhanced) without the monthly fee!
2. Conference Bridge – up to 30 simultaneous callers - Multiple conference rooms.
3. Video Conferencing – Shortly integrating with “Avistar” (as used by Deutsche Bank)
4. Full Presence Server
5. Fax Support
6. Seamless CRM integration
7. MX Mobile – Unified Comms on your mobile phone.
8. MX Connect – Make ANY phone your business phone.
9. Recording – Record calls from any phone.
10. Outlook – Outlook and MS Exchange Integration.

Zultys won the TMC Unified Communications, Product of the Year Award 2008 and many more besides.

I am the Business Development Director of 500 Ltd “500.uk.com”

We at “500”:

1. Offer Free Consultancy for business’s over five users.
2. Based in the St Albans, Herts, UK.
3. Experienced in implementing Business-Grade systems spanning different Countries/Continents.
4. Only offer “Best of Breed” Systems

We have thoroughly researched the IP PBX market and are confident that there is not another IP PBX manufacturer that can compete with Zultys Unified Communication Capabilities on a single dedicated server platform.