EPABX: Reincarnated!

Only a couple of years ago, for many enterprises EPABX was just a voice

switch and nothing else. Well that was then, not any more. There has been a

fundamental change in the way an enterprise views an EPABX today. Ditto for the

position that an EPABX commands within an enterprise. Voice is not dead but an

EPABX today is in many ways a strategic tool for any business. Many enterprises

rely on it for adding competitive advantages to their business. In fact, the

name EPABX too has become a misnomer. After all, apart from voice, it also

facilitates data and video communication. In other words, it is the protagonist

that is making convergence possible in enterprises. However, the world has not

found a better and more appropriate term for the box that resides at the

reception of most enterprises.

Technology Options



The major technology trends that enterprise can look forward to in a PBX are

support for open architecture-server based platform; support for open OS like

Linux, inter-operability with legacy and multi vendors over open standards; VoIP

support (H323, SIP) and integration of converged applications like UMS.

IP Is Here, and It’s the Future: IP-enabled and pure IP voice and

data switches are the talk of the town. While an IP-enabled EPABX is basically a

circuit switch with an IP interface, a pure IP EPABX is designed based on an IP

platform. While both can enable VoIP, the former would permit a limited number

of communication channels over IP and would require an intervening operator.

Also, adding an IP line card into the EPABX shelf would offer no real advantage

since all the drawbacks of the existing TDM platform of the EPABX, viz. limited

scalability, high cost of integration and high administration and management

costs remain.

On the other hand, a pure IP-based platform would incorporate RAS

functionality and will allocate a unique IP address for each telephone, thereby

permitting free and transparent connectivity with the IP world, with the need

for an intervening operator. The key point here is that IP offers unlimited

functionality and applications that an enterprise would surely need for

achieving its business goals more efficiently and cost-effectively. For example,

an IP EPABX would allow companies to do such things as video-conferencing and

unified messaging from a single platform. More importantly, upgrades are easy

and less costly on nonproprietary, open-standard platforms, on which IP-EPABXs

are based, unlike the traditional switches that rely on vendor-owned closed and

proprietary standards. This essentially means that if an enterprise wants to

integrate new applications into the solution, it can always look for any vendor.

On the other hand, the traditional EPABX, with their closed and proprietary

architecture, bind the user to one vendor for all adds and changes.

Going the IP way is giving organizations a competitive edge over their

competitors. Even though initial investments are still high, IP does help in

reducing costs by offering single network advantage from day one, leveraging

existing WAN for intra office traffic, lower costs of moves adds and changes and

management. Moreover, it can also facilitate a truly mobile enterprise as it

enables employees to access applications and full functionalities from anywhere

in the world. IP also offers better disaster management capabilities that can

ensure business continuity in case of a disaster.

Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT): Mobility is

another area where the voice communication has evolved. Today, in a cost

optimization environment, ‘employee movement’, ‘reachability anywhere’,

and ‘any time’ has become a bigger necessity. The voice communication

servers today offer these solutions using DECT technology. This has made the

user to move around within the premises at his will and still be in touch with

the rest of the world and enjoy latest features set.

Computer Telephony Integration (CTI): CTI offers revolutionary change

in the desktop tools available to the user. Today, enterprises are moving

towards implementing customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource

planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM) applications to enable the

organization to perform efficiently and handle customers with utmost care. Using

CTI, Telephony is integrated with any of the applications listed above to

provide a unified window to the users, so that they can perform all their

telephony and application related tasks using click of a mouse. Now the users

are able to concentrate more on their work than learning how the telephone or

any other communication tool works.

Unified Messaging: Unified messaging has revolutionized the mail

handling in the enterprise, be it voicemail, faxmail or even e-mail. Unified

messaging aims at providing a unified management of all sorts of mails through a

single storage and management , making the system administrator’s life easier,

and at the same time providing one single client window to the users to access

any of their mails. Using the familiar window to access all his mails including

voice, fax or e-mails, has made it easier for the users to send , receive, and

archive the mails. Using text to speech (TTS) and speech recognition

technologies, the unified messaging solutions are able to deliver the messages

any where, any time on various media including Web, landline or on a mobile.

Buying Tips

With hundreds of choices available in the EPABX market, choosing the one

that would not only meet your current business requirements but also take care

of the future needs, is not going to be an easy job. The job is compounded by

the fact that the cut-throat competition between vendors has meant that they are

always more eager to push their own product and less interested in considering

the needs of the user. So listed below are some tips that an enterprise should

keep in mind before finalizing a EPABX deal.

n Calculating

Costs: When arriving at the cost of investment, avoid calculating on the

basis of an immediate expenditure that would be incurred on buying a solution.

Do away with that approach and rather take into consideration all the future

operational costs, and costs of moves, adds and changes. Remember a short-term

saving today, could prove costly for your business tomorrow.

n Do not look

for boxes: Buy a platform instead, so that you can make additions and

changes in the communication network built around it. This way you can maximize

your investment. Buying a box would limit your option and could prove to be

disruptive in the future.

n Don’t

forget these: Overall an enterprise should keep these considerations in mind

when deciding on an EPABX: open server based architecture, open operating system–Linux

, Win 2K, Unix etc; VoIP-ready–H323, H.248 and future SIP compliance; support

for all kind of network interfaces–ISDN, E1, CO, etc.; support for all kind of

end points–analog , digital, IP soft, hard phones, wireless phones etc.;

security features on IP–encryption, etc.; interoperability for smooth

multi-vendor environment functioning; ease of management–GUI LAN based

administration and application and feature functionality integration, support

and roadmap.

n Bet on

Nonproprietary Open Standards: Ensure that whichever solution you buy from

the vendor, avoid proprietary and closed-architecture based solutions. While

upgrades are easy and less costly on nonproprietary, open-standard platforms,

additions and changes are either impossible or very difficult on proprietary and

closed standards.

n Do not Buy

Features/applications You Do not Need: You need not buy applications, which

you do not need currently. But make sure that you can easily add new

applications in the future as the need arises and that too, without incurring

considerable costs. For example, today, you may not need a video-conferencing

application, but make sure that when you need it, you do not need to change the

entire EPABX but just add a video-conferencing solution to it.

n Ensure

Interoperability: If you are looking for not just voice but many other

applications, buy a solution that would be inter-operable with applications from

a diverse set of vendors and solution providers.

n Check for

Reliability and Redundancies: Don’t take every word of the vendor. When

encountered with conflicting versions on issues like reliability and

redundancies in a solution, check out with the existing users.

n In case

looking for a pure IP EPABX: Before you plan for an IP EPABX, make sure that

your existing infrastructure (like wiring) supports such a solution, and also

check out for inter-operability of the new EPABX with the existing devices.

Also ensure that the IP-addressing system can handle the new voice IP

application. Also remember that in India, voice and data integration over a

single network is still not allowed, so you would not be able to fully exploit

the benefits of IP.

Enterprises looking for more applications in an EPABX should not necessarily

buy an IP EPABX now. For many of the enterprises, it would be a costly

investment that can not be justified in a country like India that still does not

permit integrated voice and data networks.

However, every enterprise willing to buy an EPABX, should at least look for a

solution that would facilitate easy migration to IP whenever such a need arises.

Most big vendors would give a definite roadmap for IP enablement of their PBX

by adding the gatekeeper, gateway functionalities and some software upgrades.

However, they do differ in the level of functionalities, scalabilities and costs

etc.

Also, few would have live sites demonstrating the same in India. Hence the

customer should ensure that the road map provided is scalable and without any

loss of feature functionalities and is not a fork lift upgrade to be cost

effective. Also look for demo sites to ensure local vendor support of the

solution.

n Service Is

Important: Service-level agreements with vendors are important. Services are

varied in nature, and include both usual nut-and-bolt kind of fixing of problems

and sophisticated remote management. The more complex solution you employ, the

better you should ask for. Some vendors offer graded services, i.e. different

categories of services. So ensure what suits you best. The best service is the

one that proactively monitors the system.

n Indulge in

Some Hard Bargaining: Most vendors usually offer a price flexibility that

ranges from 15 to 30 percent. This means that whatever price a vendor asks for,

you can bring it down by 15 to 30 percent. But be cautious of a situation where

the vendor succeeds in selling a phone system that is too small for your growth

but sounds attractive price-wise.

Market Information

The Indian PBX market is still predominantly traditional, with voice being

the prime application. And within voice, it is the call-switching function that

is widely used. Even the most tech-savvy people rarely use features like

voicemail (that has long been available). This is largely because people have

never felt the need to do more. Things, however, are changing, though only

slowly.

n Market

Segments: The PBX market in India can broadly be divided into two segments.

The first one is the volume market, which sees PBX system as a mere call

transfer device with no urge to use its other capabilities. The other one is the

high-end value-driven market, which looks at PBX as a convergence device, the

center of all voice, data and video traffic in an enterprise. Another emerging

segment is that of IP PBX. Even though it was insignificant in 2001-02, in terms

of both value and volume, it was definitely the talk of the town.

n Market Size:

The EPABX market was estimated to be around Rs 450 crore in 2001—02. In terms

of number of lines, 50 percent of the market is dominated by low-end PBX

systems. The middle-end products account for 20 percent of the market, while

high-end PBXs have a market share of 30 percent. However in value terms,

high-end PBXs account for 45 percent of the market, with the rest shared by the

SME and low-end segments. Besides this, revenue from services also forms a

significant portion of the vendors’ income.

EXPERTS PANEL

A Sethuraman, director (broadband networking division), Alcatel India

Manish Sablok, national marketing manager, Tata Telecom Ltd

Pramodh Menon, business development manager, Cisco Systems India & SAARC

Rajesh Tuli, managing director, Coral Telecom