Telephony, the New Enterprise Application
by Gregor Fisher

The ugly step child of the IT world, telephony, is on its way to becoming an enterprise application in the corporate IT shop. Traditionally, telephony in most businesses has been an unsupported, highly specialized utility, supported by your service provider of choice. Today, as telecommunications technologies continue to evolve and mature at a brisk clip, we are seeing the pieces begin to fall into place that will allow the entire PBX function to become an enterprise application, supported and maintained (perhaps with a little help) by the IT department.

To understand what is meant by ‘telephony becoming an enterprise application’ let’s first define what is meant by the over used term “enterprise application.” Because many vendors use the term “enterprise application” to serve their marketing needs, a brief definition may be helpful. Essentially, an enterprise application is any application that is critical to running your business. Email is an enterprise application. Network access is an enterprise application, because it provides access to the corporate documents and other resources essential to your business. Payroll…etceteras…is an enterprise application. Although the list may grow or shrink depending on one’s specific business, email, network access, payroll and CRM are considered core enterprise applications. They are must haves for most businesses…telephones are another obvious must have.

In the not too distant future telephony, specifically the softswitch or IP PBX, may be ready to shed its “ugly step child” status to become the prince of enterprise applications. I am not talking particularly about VoIP, which can mean almost anything having to do with voice and IP, but IP telephony (which implies the actual use of a telephone with its requisite features and capabilities) and its integration with desktop applications and other IP enabled devices. Indeed, Microsoft is validating this movement with its Live Communications Server and Office Communicator products.

What makes the softswitch a potential enterprise application is its ability to integrate the specialized and often proprietary old world of telephony with new world enterprise server software (think Linux and Windows) and the ubiquitous reach and flexibility of IP. Specifically, it links the telephone to your desktop computer and its applications. Some would say that the connecting of phone functionality with the PC is long long (not a typo) over due. The softswitch not only enables this type of integration, but seems to be in a unique position to usher in revolutionary changes in the telecommunications industry.

The big idea here is that telephony will become an enterprise application, eliminating the need for a service provider to provide telephony services. Your telephony services will be provided by an in-house server application, managed by your IT department, and will be tightly integrated with other desktop applications in your network.

Another benefit of softswitch technology is that most support established and emerging standards, such as MGCP, SIP, and IMS, as well as the integration of completely new features and services that utilize web services to allow remote access to an administration or call control server. These new protocols make new applications possible, including the holy grail of fixed mobile convergence (FMC)—indeed we are already beginning to see the large carriers embrace and promote FMC applications.

As mentioned previously, the two ingredients that make it possible for the PBX to become an enterprise server application are 1) that the softswitch is already a software application built on industry standard technologies and 2) that the global IP network provides the essential infrastructure necessary for connecting to a multitude of devices and their applications. Once a call is initiated the IP addressing scheme takes over and there is no need for a service provider to be involved at all, other than to give you access to the internet.

This not to say that a softswitch solution is a plug-and-play proposition. Far from it. There are network architecture issues that affect QoS and security that must be worked out for every installation. What is my current bandwidth usage and can my existing network support VoIP traffic or do I need to upgrade my network? Do you segment your VoIP traffic? Do you use a border session controller? So, no you cannot go out today and buy a softswitch like one buys MS Exchange server and slap it in a box and go. I do think, however, that as 100 MB and gigabit Ethernet becomes standard and T3 prices continue to drop bandwidth will become less of an issue.

Making the PBX an enterprise application, like an email server or CRM application does have its issues, the least of these may be technical. Many softswitch PBXs achieve five nines of uptime and are scalable. One of the main issues that may take some time to overcome will be the addition of this new application into the already bursting at its seams arsenal of enterprise applications that an IT shop must support, each with its own lexicon and functionality.

One can easily argue that telephony is as core an application as it gets when it comes to running your business and therefore has a right to be supported by IT--right next to email and network access. It will, however, take some time for the IT department to understand Class of Service, Bridge Line Appearance, and ACD. On the other side of this coin, softswitch developers need to begin to focus on the enterprise. In fact, in an IP world it makes the most sense to have one’s telephony (a de facto enterprise application) actually reside in the enterprise. In the long run, whether or not it reduces costs, bringing VoIP telephony in-house opens up a new world of applications and the possibility of revolutionary changes in the telecommunications industry.