PBX: Switching Loyalties?

Every year, hundreds of new businesses buy PBXs. Many existing
businesses replace the old ones or buy one for their newly set up branch office.
For a large number of those who have been using it or those who are
contemplating to buy a new one, PBX is no more then a voice switch, whose one
and only function is to switch calls to various extensions within the office.
Five years ago, this attitude would not have been a matter of unusual attention,
after all, what could have one expected a PBX to do for his or her business
except for switching calls? As Niru Mehta, vice chairman, Tata Telecom, puts it,
"Earlier PBX would not have been so-critical for most businesses. But now,
it is and many competitive advantages of an enterprise, center around it".

Mehta isn’t off the mark. Today, PBX is not only doing much
more than switching voice calls; it is also being looked at differently. PBX is
no more a box–it is today, a solution, it is a network. In an enterprise, it
is the center of convergence of voice, data and video, on one network. And in many businesses
like, for instance, contact centers, it is the

very edifice on which the business survives. And this change is largely being
driven by what is called IP. This change is as

significant as the change from analog to digital, in the 1980s.

The Choice

In a market that is still predominantly traditional, at least
here in India, choosing an IP-based PBX is not going to be an easy task for an
enterprise. The first thing that it would encounter is pathological hatred among
the pure IP vendors like Cisco on one hand, and those like Ericsson and Siemens,
on the other hand. While big data networking solution vendors like Cisco and
3Com have complete faith in the capability of their IP solutions to make
business more efficient, others believe in the traditional PBX systems with
built-in IP interface. They rubbish all questions raised on the reliability of
IP solutions as attempts by the traditional vendors (who do not have IP-ready
solutions) to keep their circuit-switched customers from defecting to the IP
platform.

On the other hand, primarily, voice solutions vendors, who
still religiously defend the legacy systems, continue to raise questions of
reliability and other defects in IP solutions. "The fact is that the
server-based systems are not reliable. The issue is of reliability and the pure
IP-based PBXs are not optimized for voice", claims Anurag Kumar, product
manager, HCL Infosystem, OA division. HCL Infosystem sells Ericsson’s
Webswitch2000 and MD110 that provide IP capability on traditional PBX platforms.

Vendors like Avaya (though admitting resource integration
over one network is a challenge over one network in an IP-enabled PBX
environment) do not think reliability or maturity of technology, is an issue.

All of them, however, do not dispute the central role of IP
in the new systems. And as Chetan Turakhia of Intellicon, agrees, it is
definitely the future. "It is a matter of time before all PBXs would
necessarily have IP gateways", says Rajesh Tuli, director, Usha Informatics
and Usha Electronics, two successful homegrown vendors. "IP PBX will be
definitely better than tradional systems," says Sunil Hakhu of National
Panasonic. The vendors plans to launch its IP PBX soon.

Applications are the Key

IP or no IP, the essential fact is that today, PBX is much
more powerful and cost-efficient than what it was, a few years ago. And that
they have applications that many organizations surely need for increasing their
business goals more efficiently and cost-effectively. Take for instance, an
IP-based PBX would allow a company to do such things as video conferencing and
unified messaging from a single platform. Avaya’s IP 600 and Nortel’s
Succession Server 1000 support such and many more diverse functions. Another
vendor, Cisco, has an IP-based PBX solution that supports a diverse range of
functions from directory integration to record of missed and dialed calls. While
these are the solutions from global brands, homegrown vendors, too, have begun
offering PBXs that can be IP-enabled if needed. Intellicon’s TD1648 and DS200
are both IP-enabled and offer features, such as voice, data and image
integration. Coral Telecom’s IRIS–Ivdx or integrated voice and data server–is
capable of switching data channels as swiftly as any PBX would switch voice
channels.

Among other significant benefits of an IP-based PBX is that
unlike the traditional PBX, they are based on a non-proprietary, open-standard
platform. This essentially means that if an enterprise wants to integrate new
applications to the solution, it can always look for any of the vendors. On the
other hand, the traditional PBX, with their closed and proprietary architecture,
bind the user to one vendor for all adds and changes.

The significant point is that the enterprises want cost
savings and enhanced productivity. Even though deployment costs have not
stabilized yet with the cost of IP solutions on the higher side as compared to
the traditional systems, operational savings have been reported by many
enterprises in the US. There have also been instances of dramatic reduction in
costs of adds, moves and changes. Couple these with the fact that IP-based PBXs
support thousands of ports, save money by using less expensive standard-based
infrastructure equipment, by lowering administrative costs with easier
management, and simpler user interfaces. They allow voice integration with a
variety of applications and databases that make information retrieval quicker
and easier. As many of these solutions have built-in voice-data compression
mechanism, companies get to utilize bandwidth much more efficiently.

Enterprises save money on cabling, too. In the traditional
PBX environment, they need two separate cabling systems, one for the telephone
system and the other for PC LAN. But deploying IP-based PBX would mean running
both the LAN and the telephone system on a single cable network.

Options Before Enterprises

That is the way technology is moving. So what should an
enterprise do now? Throw away its legacy system? Certainly, not. The truth for
the moment is that most enterprises here, in India, would not have applications
to run which could require or motivate them to invest in the IP-based solutions.
But this does not mean that they should keep investing in the traditional
systems. Those planning to buy new systems, should at least look for a PBX
solution that would offer hassle-free and flexible migration to IP in the
future. Those enterprises intending to ride on the benefits of IP, should now,
look for vendors who offer solutions that protect investments in the legacy
system. This essentially means that enterprises can migrate to IP, riding on
their existing telephone system. In case, this does not works out, only then,
they should think of replacing their legacy system with a packet-based PBX.

The most important point, here, is that any investment
decision in any PBX, should be application-driven. The enterprise must itself
ask the question as to what applications it wants to run on the system apart
from the usual voice. And then customers should also look for (as many of them
look for), in the words of Harish Khanna, chief technology officer, Tata
Telecom. "Customers should look for critical reliability. Enterprises which
depend on the communications infrastructure for business, there should not be a
single point of failure. It is extremely important that redundancies are built
in", emphasizes Khanna.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey

Buying and Installing a New PBX Solution: Points to Keep in Mind