Siemens raises its VoIP

RESTON, VA. - Siemens will in the next few weeks unleash a barrage of IP telephony products and applications aimed at large-scale enterprise convergence deployments.

Upgrades for Siemens' HiPath 5000 enterprise softswitch will double the capacity of the IP PBX to 2,000 lines, the company says. And it will be possible to use smaller HiPath 3000s as survivable switch nodes in HiPath 5000 networks. Siemens also is unveiling a line of middleware designed to extend voice and Web-based applications to mobile users.

While Siemens has offered HiPath convergence products for two years, competitors Avaya, Cisco, Nortel and 3Com were first to scale support beyond 1,000 IP users, observers say.

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And though the German company has offered converged messaging applications, it had yet to bring its full telephony features and technology to bear on the packet telephony world.

At the heart of the new capabilities is Version 4.0 of Siemens' call-control software, which runs the HiPath 5000 in corporate sites and the HiPath 3000 in smaller offices.

While the 4.0 software does not increase the capacity of the HiPath 3000 - 500 lines - it does let HiPath 3000s act as H.323 gatekeepers and TDM trunk/gateways for a centralized HiPath 5000. Off-loading public switched telephone network and voice-over-IP trunk processing and H.323 gatekeeper functions - call setup, teardown - to the HiPath 3000 means the HiPath 5000 can handle more calls, Siemens says.

"Adding capacity to the HiPath 5000 is going to strengthen [Siemens'] position to compete against the big incumbents like Avaya and Nortel, which have both packet and TDM telephony plays," says Brian Riggs, a senior analyst with Current Analysis.

Riggs says it is important for Siemens to emphasize its server-based, pure IP telephony systems, such as the HiPath, for customers looking for a completely converged voice system. This also could help the company compete against vendors such as 3Com and Cisco, which are leaders in IP telephony but have no legacy telephony customer base to draw from, as does Siemens.

VoIP disaster recovery

The 4.0 software also will let HiPath 3000s act as Survivable Media Gateways (SMG) in HiPath 5000 networks. In this SMG mode, Siemens says, each box could continue providing local phone access and complete telephony features to a branch office if a WAN link went down or the central HiPath 5000 failed.

The technology is an answer to Cisco's Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) on its routers, observers say. SRST provides dial tone and some calling features when connectivity to a central Cisco IP PBX is broken. Siemens says it improves on this idea - introduced by Cisco last year - by providing full PBX functionality to IP telephony users who are cut off, whereas the SRST supports few features beyond dial tone, hold and call transfer.

Up to 64 remote HiPath 3000s can be clustered across LAN or WAN links, with a HiPath 5000 acting as the hub of the IP telephony network. Remote systems and the central IP PBX share a single user directory, dial plan and features.

"Survivability is very important" in an IP telephony system, says Brian Strachman, an analyst with Cahners In-Stat. "Many enterprises that have IP PBXs use them [in] remote offices" to connect back to centrally located PBX or IP PBX systems, he says.

"Raising scalability is the right move," he adds, because that's where the money will be in the next few years - large companies looking to replace old PBXs with IP.

This also could help Siemens improve its position in the LAN telephony market, which will reach $3 billion worldwide by 2005, Strachman says. While Siemens does not report IP PBX and handset sales, Strachman estimates that Siemens ranks in the bottom half of the top 10 sellers of IP telephony equipment.

Version 4.0 of the HiPath 3000 and 5000 call control software will cost between $310 and $720, and is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2003.

QoS in the mix

To help customers deploy converged environments, Siemens is introducing the HiPath QoS 2000 line of WAN traffic-shaping appliances. The products are said to be able to prioritize traffic into more than 1,000 classifications, with support for WAN speeds between fractional T-1 and 100M bit/sec. These products replace Siemens' HiPath AP 2500 line of QoS boxes, which supported traffic speeds up to 384K bit/sec.

According to Siemens, the box's wire-speed packet inspection engine prioritizes out-going traffic based on TCP/User Datagram Protocol (UDP) information or application type, such as voice, video or data. A management application - the HiPath QoSDirector - can be used to configure and manage up to 50 QoS 2000 boxes from a single site.

The QoS 2000 devices will cost between $5,500 and $25,000, for speeds ranging from 512K to 100M bit/sec. All products are expected to be available in the fourth quarter, except for the 512K bit/sec box, which is slated for the first quarter of 2003.

Convergence apps on tap

In addition to the IP PBX upgrades and new hardware, Siemens this week is announcing its HiPath CorporateConnect and HiPath CommResponse IP telephony middleware products.

CommResponse is a Windows 2000 server application that can be used to integrate interactive voice response (IVR) and text-to-speech functions with back-end systems. CommResponse can be integrated with Microsoft Outlook, Siemens' unified messaging servers or a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol server to retrieve corporate directory information or for transferring to other extensions.

Once linked, employees could set up personal messaging portals that let callers schedule appointments in an Outlook calendar via touch-tone or IVR commands.

It also would make it possible to build companywide voice portals that let callers access Web-based data such as stock information or other messages. A text-to-speech engine is used to convert Web data into audio. Employees can post custom messages or Web information to their personal CommResponse portal via Web-based tools.

CorporateConnect, which also runs on Win 2000, can extend centralized PBX or IP PBX features to mobile phone or voice-enabled PDA users. After logging into the network via a password, all features from a Siemens PBX or IP PBX - such as four-digit dialing, transferring, hold, conference calling and messaging access - are extended to a user's PDA or cell phone. User access to the corporate network is via an encrypted IP connection.

Once users are logged into the IP network, they can dial out over the corporate network - even overseas links - to avoid cellular long-distance or roaming charges.

Both applications are available now. HiPath CommResponse costs $4,100 for portal channels and the CorporateConnect server costs $400 per user.

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