Beatnik's requirements for an on-premise solution were simple: It had to be flexible and it had to be easy to manage. Since Roberts himself is Beatnik's entire IT department, and manages both voice and data for the company, configuring a PBX was not something on which he could afford to spend a lot of time. At the time the company was on the market for a phone system, however, LAN-based telephony was still in its infancy, so the company was looking mainly at more conventional products. “It was fortuitous, really, that we ended up buying an IP PBX, and we were somewhat hesitant about it at first. But when we tested Shoreline's system it performed flawlessly.”

Architecturally, Shoreline (Sunnyvale, CA - 408-331-3300) differs a bit from most pure-play IP PBXs. A Windows NT server manages call setup and features (including voicemail, auto attendant, and ACD capabilities), but Shoreline adds a more traditional flavor to its system with a series of what it calls IP Voice Switches. These compact boxes can be thought of as something like the line cards on a legacy PBX, but Shoreline has broken out that functionality into self-contained, Ethernet-connected components that can be distributed across a LAN. The idea is for users to connect standard analog telephones up to the Voice Switches, instead of carrying calls over IP all the way to the desktop. The switches plug into a standard 10/100 Ethernet LAN, and communicate with the server via IP, so they could theoretically be located anywhere (including on the other side of a VPN from the server itself). On the trunk side, Shoreline makes its own gateways, so that calls can travel out over an IP WAN or the PSTN.

For Beatnik, using analog handsets as opposed to IP telephones was not perceived as a drawback, particularly since they implemented Shoreline's Windows-based call control software, which puts all the standard business phone features into a GUI on the user's desktop. In addition, Roberts reports that the features offered natively with the Shoreline system are still a significant step up from those the company was getting with Centrex. But by far the biggest advantage, he says, is what Shoreline has been able to offer in terms of management.

More or less any administrative functions can be accessed through a web-based GUI, and, according to Roberts, configuring a new user takes about five minutes. Scaling the system is equally simple, since all that is required is at most the addition of another Voice Switch (which come in four-, 12-, and 24-port models). This has proved crucial for Beatnik, which had anticipated around forty users at the time it purchased the Shoreline system, but has since grown to nearly 100. “Moving a user or adding a new one is literally plug-n-play,” says Roberts. “It's just been a godsend in terms of flexibility, and we've definitely been able to save money from an administrative standpoint.”

Sphere

Product: Sphericall

Customer: Minerallac

Location: Addison, IL

Size of installation: 50 users

In terms of scale, Minerallac (630-543-7080), a 50-person company specializing in metal stamping and plastics forming, is not necessarily representative of Sphere's customer base, which includes some very large installations in the education and government sectors. Sphere (Lake Bluff, IL -847-247-8200) has also been actively targeting its product at small- to medium-sized businesses, however, and has demonstrated its effectiveness in both environments.

Sphericall, as the product is known, is a modular, server-based system that actually began as a voice-over-ATM product and last year underwent a transition to IP. The architecture is based around an NT server core and series of distributed line-side gateways, which interface between analog phone lines to the user's desktop and a standard Ethernet LAN. Sphere also offers trunk-side gateways that can be used to network multiple offices across a WAN.

The multi-site capabilities of the system were important to Minerallac, which operates out of two separate sites. Cost savings were one important aspect of what the company hoped to achieve by combining the transport of voice and data between these facilities (which they do over a converged T1), but their requirements went beyond a simple trunk interface. Essentially, Minerallac hoped to install a system that could make their two offices appear as a single one both to its users and its outside callers. Originally, the company had explored options within circuit-switched telephony for this type of application, but found proposals from traditional vendors falling short in this regard.

At the time that Minerallac wanted to install a new system, early November of last year, the Sphere product was still in beta trials (it has since gone into general availability). After some preliminary evaluations, however, Minerallac CFO Mike Howlett says his company was satisfied with the performance of Sphericall, and saw that it could effectively accomplish all of the applications they had in mind.

“We were a little nervous about the technology, since it was so new,” says Howlett, who also oversees most of the company's IT concerns, “but from all the vendors we talked with, including the traditional ones, we got the clear sense that this is where the industry was headed. In the end, we knew that we'd much rather be initially out on the edge than have to go back to our board in three to five years to make another investment in phone equipment.”

Minerallac began its trial deployment of Sphericall at the beginning of November and transferred all of its users over from their existing PBX shortly after Thanksgiving. Howlett reports that the transition went smoothly, and had no problems with either configuring the Sphere system itself or integrating it with the company's LAN (composed mainly of 3Com products).

In addition to simplifying its wide area network deployment, Minerallac has derived other benefits from its installation of Sphericall by way of the system's software applications. The server supports a relatively high level of integrated call center features, for instance, and Minerallac has designated certain of its extensions at both sites for call center agents (single hunt groups can be set up across the wide area connection). Sphere also ships its own desktop call control software, which Minerallac has found attractive for all its users and has integrated with its Microsoft Outlook. Howlett says that he has discussed the possibility of implementing unified messaging with Sphere, and eventually plans to, though for the moment the company is using conventional voicemail.

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Alternative Architectures

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It's possible, and in some cases useful, to define an IP PBX system rather narrowly, as one that contains no TDM or circuit-switched elements at all in its core design. Some of the key benefits that we've outlined in such architectures, however, are not unique to them. Even before the first all-IP products were hitting the market, a number of innovations were being made in PBX design that leverage aspects of IP networking, while maintaining some more familiar telephony components. In most cases, the resulting hybrid systems still involve some form of TDM-based voice processing hardware (either proprietary line cards or third-party voice boards), but also include interfaces that connect to IP phones on the LAN side or IP trunks out to the WAN.

Praxon's (Campbell, CA - 408-871-1600) Phone Data eXchange (PDX) is a good example of an effective hybrid system, which offers both voice and data networking capabilities to small- and medium-sized businesses. The PDX consists of an industrially hardened chassis, with four slots that hold integrated cards in a proprietary form factor. These cards run on an embedded OS and contain all the hardware and software necessary for PBX-style call control, as well as (optionally) the main components of a LAN - from a 10 BaseT hub and router to built-in firewall, DHCP, and email servers. Praxon's voice applications are just as impressive as its range of interfaces. Standard features include voicemail, auto attendant, hunt groups, and follow-me routing. Best of all, these features can all be accessed through an intuitive CTI client or (for administrative purposes) through a standard web browser. For network administrators, the system's management functions are also SNMP compatible.

Simplified management and voice/data integration are also strong points for the Vertical Networks (Sunnyvale, CA - 408-523-9700) Instant Office 5000. The product itself is contained in a rackmountable chassis, equipped with station and trunk cards, as well as a number of expansion slots. Like the Praxon system, Vertical supports analog phones on the line-side, as well as its own line of digital feature phones. It also offers IP trunking through an integrated H.323 gateway. Standard telephony features include integrated voicemail and auto attendant, and the Instant Office supplies a built-in 10/100 BaseT Ethernet hub, as well as a router card that's compatible with the Cisco 1600. Browser-based interfaces make configuration and management easy, while a Windows GUI for users lets those with even featureless analog phones access sophisticated call control features from their PCs.

One of the original PC-PBXs, Artisoft's (Cambridge, MA - 617-354-0600) TeleVantage, has demonstrated in the past year some significant moves toward evolving into a VoIP-enabled system. By including an integrated H.323 gateway for both line and trunk connections, Artisoft now allows for WAN and for the option of using standards-based IP telephones. (Last year, Artistoft formed a partnership with third-party IP phone vendor e-tel to offer its Ethernet-connected devices with the TeleVantage server). In addition, the system is fully programmable by third-party software developers through a suite of open APIs, and Artisoft has rolled out a number of impressive applications, including ACD and eCRM, based both its own development efforts and those of its partners.

Altigen's (Fremont, CA - 510-252-9712) AltiServ is another Windows NT based system that uses Dialogic voice cards, and has been steadily migrating towards VoIP. The latest version of AltiServ, released last fall, supports standards-based IP telephones as well as offering a trunk-side VoIP gateway. In addition to all the common PBX goodies, Altigen takes a particularly strong approach to the integration of call center applications with its system. This includes advanced ACD and hunt groups, support for local and remote agents, and real-time reporting and call-accounting tools. AltiServ also comes with desktop call control, web-based and Windows management interfaces, and integrated voicemail and email servers (compatible with Microsoft Exchange).

The focus on call center applications that Altigen exhibits is becoming more and more common among systems that target small- to medium-sized businesses, as vendors have discovered a high degree of unfulfilled demand among companies in this segment. In some cases, the approach has been to include with the PBX itself features that once required separate platforms, like an ACD or CRM system. In others, vendors who have their roots in the call center space have been building PBX functionality into their systems, which suggests an interesting trend. In these cases, what the customer is buying is primarily an application, which could be used in conjunction with an existing phone system, but which may also include basic the call signaling and switching functions of a PBX as an integrated resource.

Interactive Intelligence (Indianapolis, IN - 317-872-3000) offers an example with its Enterprise Interaction Center (EIC), a full-featured call-routing package for contact centers and workgroups that also includes an impressive list of PBX and messaging features. EIC users can access all the standard business phone features through a desktop soft client, and also manage call queues and get screen pops from the same interface. The software also comes with unified messaging capabilities, built-in email and fax servers, text chat, and presence management features. If an enterprise already has a conventional PBX in place, the EIC can simply integrate with it as any ACD might. More recently, Interactive Intelligence announced compatibility with the Cisco Call Manager system, where it would act as an application server on the LAN, routing IP calls and applying other features like screen pops and messaging much as it would in a circuit-switched environment. The difference, of course, is that here EIC could leverage the inherent capabilities of VoIP to facilitate things like multi-site contact centers and telecommuting agents.

While aimed at a slightly different set of applications CosmoCom's (Melville, NY - 631-940-4200) CosmoCall IP-ACD system demonstrates a similar blurring of the line between standalone voice-enabled applications and a network-based phone system. CosmoCom does not purport to act as a replacement for a PBX or phone switch - the software's main application is IP-based intelligent contact routing (including voice, email, fax, and IVR capabilities - but the latest versions of the system extend farther in that direction than classic call center platforms. Because CosmoCall includes its own GUI call control client, and supports H.323 standards for IP telephony, all that would theoretically need to be implemented underneath it is a simple gateway/gatekeeper architecture. More than likely, CosmoCall would be paired with either an IP PBX or a softswitch (for ASP applications), but its fundamental architecture minimizes the amount of hardware and voice-specific infrastructure that is necessary to support it.