EPABX: InevitablY IP

Over the years, EPABX has undergone a gradual transformation, from the good
old days of analog to the digital to hybrid to and now to IP. All of these forms
exist in their own right, but there are all indications that most enterprises
are considering some form of IP implementation at their end. This has resulted
in the traditional frontoffice boxes slowly giving way to state-of-the-art
IP-PBX, thanks to the increasing acceptability of IP by the large and medium
enterprises.

Many enterprises, however, are also taking the safe route of hybrid systems
to protect their existing investment. Tracing the growth of EPABX, Vipen
Malhotra, president, Syntel Telecom says, "The technology behind enterprise
communications has rapidly evolved over the last three decades, to meet the
demand for new forms of communications. In the 1970s, a single, analog network
allowed the business world to communicate by telephone. But today, packet-based
technology allows converged voice, data, and video communication over a single
packet-switched network."

According
to Anurag Kumar, assistant general manager, telecom sales and marketing, HCL
Infinet, the national distributor of Ericsson enterprise equipment, "EPABX
has gone through a major shift in technology, usage patterns and support
applications. It has become more user-friendly with support of multiple end
terminals viz., POTS, digital phone, IP phone, softphone client, mobile phone,
or a fixed-line phone."

IP Comes Calling!

The march has begun, but it is still a long way before mass-market adoption
of IP-PBX becomes a reality. According to a Frost & Sullivan report, there
was an increased inclination towards Internet protocol (IP) telephony from
traditional legacy private branch exchange (PBX). Vendors operating in low-end
time division multiplexing (TDM) PBX segment are graduating to hybrid PBX, while
new models of key telephony systems (KTS) are being launched to cater to the
needs of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME)/SOHO segment. According to
Phillippe Cros, regional director, South Asia, Alcatel Enterprise Solution
Division, "The shift to IP is on, and we are seeing implementations move
from traditional TDM only to either hybrid IP/TDM or pure IP. Improvements in
quality of service and availability are contributing to this trend."
Malhotra also feels that the rise of IP telephony interface/platform is an
outcome of the use of Internet to streamline voice and data out of the
enterprise into the public networks, resulting in the rise of those who wish to
derive cost benefits for large traffic.

The RoI Debate

With the dynamics of business changing, large and medium enterprises are
toying with the idea of going the IP way but are hesitant due to some misgivings
about the technology, and lack of clarity regarding RoI and interoperability.
Equipment vendors, however, are bullish and dispel any negative notions about
the above issues.

“There is a quantifiable benefit if the customer chooses to deploy across the enterprise.” Karthik Natarajan, country manager, Snom

However, convincing the enterprises to rip out their traditional TDM boxes is
something that has not met with much success. There is still strong skepticism
about the virtues of IP telephony amongst the enterprises. This lack of
favorable IP atmosphere is stronger among the SMEs, who are faced with a
dilemma: whether to retain the existing TDM infrastructure, or go for a hybrid
implementaton, or replace their existing boxes with IP-PBX.

According to Cros, "Customers require open solutions that operate in TDM,
hybrid IP/TDM, and pure-IP environments. This enables customers to migrate to IP
at their own pace." Talking about the pricing of IP solutions, Cros says,
"There is a price premium for IP-based solutions, which could be as much as
20 percent higher than TDM. However, there is tangible RoI in terms of cost
savings, related to reduced telecommunications costs, simplified management,
etc."

"The TCO benefits are easier to see in a new installation, than in a replacement scenario" Anurag Kumar, assistant general manager, telecom sales and marketing, HCL Infinet

Anurag Kumar of HCL Infinet makes almost a similar calculations when he says,
"At present, the cost of IP-PBX is 25—30 percent higher compared to TDM
systems. The cost of IP telephone constitutes a major part in the overall cost
of the system. The TCO benefits are much easier to see in terms of a new
installation, rather than in a replacement scenario." According to Karthik
Natarajan, country manager of Snom, "There is a quantifiable benefit
if the customer chooses to deploy across the enterprise in multiple branch
offices. Our customers have seen an RoI in 6 to 12 months." He also
suggests that upto 60 percent costs can be saved if enterprises invest in
standards-based technologies like SIP. On a per-line comparison between TDM and
IP, Mathew Verghese, principal consultant, Cisco System India says, "The
per line cost of an IP-PBX system would always be higher than the per line cost
of a TDM-EPABX system. This differential could vary anywhere from 15—45
percent, depending on the configuration and applications."

Lack of IP Awareness: Vendors to Blame?

Except for a few vendors, the initiative to educate prospective enterprises
is clearly lacking. BPO companies are an honorable exception, which is more due
to the stringent quality norms stipulated by their clients. Unless there is a
strong business case, it is unlikely that enterprises would opt for the IP-PBXs.
However, Karthik Natarajan of Snom believes that things are moving in the right
direction on the IP front. He says, "TDM has evolved over 100 years, IP is
just maturing, and is about a decade-old technology. Enterprises already see the
benefits of IP, however, investments already made in TDM are forcing enterprises
to look at a hybrid model, before migration fully to IP." Anil Jain,
general manager, marketing communications, enterprise network, Siemens provides
a solution. He says, "The way forward in such a scenario is to offer
comprehensive solutions catering to different market segments like SOHO, SME,
and large enterprises. Extensive customer reach backed up by high-quality
service support will be a differentiating factor."

Large, Small, or Medium?

Medium and large enterprises are adopting IP faster as compared to small
enterprises. The main reason behind the better level of adoption is that the
medium and large enterprises have dedicated IT departments, whose main role is
to work towards creating and maintaining an effective communications
infrastructure for their company. The small enterprises have, so far, almost
stayed away from deploying IP systems in their offices.

The absence of an IT department in these small companies leaves the decision
making functions to the purchase department, who are clueless about the new
technologies including IP. According to Cros "Large enterprises are the
early adopters with more complex, multisite, and campus implementations.
Medium-sized enterprises and smaller company adoption follows, with this segment
requiring less complex 'solution bundles' that combine platforms, devices
and applications."

Amongst the large enterprises, it is primarily the large BPO companies who
have installing IP systems. Early movers include Vcustomer, which has one of the
largest deployment of IP systems. Non-BPO companies who have gone for IP systems
include large multinational corporations. Premier technology institutes like
IITs have been the front-runners in the adoption of IP. Some of the examples of
hybrid deployment (both analog and IP) include Ericsson's (through HCL Infinet)
deployment at IIT Kharagpur, which is believed to be one of the largest
installations of such systems in India.

According to Anil Jain of Siemens, "The existing PBX users are looking
for easy steps for IP migration without disrupting the existing investment. Here
the converged IP systems are very well positioned to offer the legacy
connectivity and feature richness of IP. Pure IP deployment is particularly
popular for the green-field projects, small overseas call centers etc."
However, he feels that on the SOHO market front, customers are still going for
the regular EPABX/KTS systems but they are looking for IP ready and Broadband
ready systems. According to Varghese, "One of the key reasons for this late
adoption by SMEs was the non-availability of a low cost IP PBX platform suiting
their needs." But he adds, "Vendors are realizing the need of the
organizations in this segment and our Business Communication Solution IP
Communications platform is specifically designed for the SME segment."

Hybrid or Pure IP?

This question is on the top of the minds of the enterprises that are looking
at investing in new systems. Anurag Kumar of HCL Infinet has the answer. He
says, "Hybrid PBXs, which support both circuit switched and IP Telephony on
the same platform, are a better choice. This allows the customer to avail the
benefits of both technologies. Customers are often taking a hybrid approach and
adopting IP Telephony with their existing platforms to cut costs by running
intra-site traffic over the IP network or for the consolidation of branch
offices sites, while keeping investments to a minimum."

Operator Push

In a major development, which is good news for both enterprises and vendors
alike, BSNL decided to go for a leasing model for EPABX. According to the model,
enterprises do not need to invest on buying these PBXs. All they need to do is
to pay a nominal amount per month to BSNL who will own the equipment. It is
believed that this alternative model can be a boon for small enterprises. These
are primarily entry level PBXs with the option to integrate IP cards. According
to Rajesh Tuli, managing director of Coral Telecom, "These bundling schemes
are a roaring success in the western world and I foresee a large business
opportunity in the year ahead."

Interoperability Is a Must

Most vendors claim their commitment to open standards, such as H.323, SIP,
and XML, to simplify the integration with existing environments to help ease
migration enterprises. According to Malhotra "There are interoperability
issues depending on the equipment make and compatibility, as these do not have
open protocol support for heterogeneous networks. Also, the other issue lies in
providing adequate bandwidth and speed to cater to speech in real time, as
speech is intolerant to delays whereas data is delay-tolerant." It is also
felt that some IP-PBX products prohibit interoperability with most third-party
applications. According to Karthik Natarajan of Snom, "Enterprises
using legacy equipment will have interoperability issues due to
non standards based system of the older PBX equipment and due to legal
requirements of keeping CUG and PSTN calling separate. Once legalized, all
PBX environments can be made partial IP and migrated slowly to full
IP." 

Outlook: Strong Trends Towards IP Telephony Adoption

According to the latest Voice&Data-IDC survey (published in this issue)
on telecom spend amongst enterprises, the capital expenditure on IP equipment
will double in the next year. Currently about 25 percent of 100 plus large and
medium enterprises surveyed use VoIP or IP telephony in some form or the other.
21 percent felt they would use IP telephony next year.

According to Frost and Sullivan, the size of the total IP telephony market in
India was $54 million in 2005, out of which the enterprise IP Telephony (IPT)
applications accounted for $2 million in 2004. The IPT applications, according
to the research firm, are expected to grow strongly at a CAGR of 52.3 percent
between 2004 and 2011. This market is forecast to grow to $38.8 million by 2011.

The uptake of IP telephony by enterprises will certainly gain momentum in the
coming year. The withdrawal by Department of Telecom's directive on physical
partitioning will also go a long way in promoting the growth of IP adoption by
enterprises.

Sudesh Prasad