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Will VoIP Kill the PBX?
gManZboy writes "Following up on their last VoIP article, Queue just posted "Not Your Father's PBX?" from Jim Coffman at Avaya Labs. Looks like the PBX may survive, but it's going to have to evolve considerably. I guess eventually corporate telecom goes away as a kind of island in the MIS dept? Maybe that's already happened?"
See Asterix, which works with three VoIP protocols.
Personally, I'm intrigued by software like Asterix and its capabilities, but I have absolutely no telephony knowledge and I'm not really sure where to start, like what kind of hardware I'd need in order to set this up with POTS. Lots of modems? Special cards for the phones in the office?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
And what praytell will be responsible for your complex dialplans (routing) or giving access to client SIP phones? PBX's aren't going anywhere but *of course* they have to evolve, it is amazing they have remained sedantary for so long.
If you wonder where the PBX is heading look at the simple office copying machine. They used to make copies. Now they make copies, colate, autoscale, create PDFs on the fly and then fax the results to someone while storing the PDF somewhere AND emailing a copy to a lit of people. The PBX of next year will integrate even more so than the one's of today in a cheaper, faster way.
The PBX isn't going extinct but many of the specialized lockin systems and consultants may.
--- I do not moderate.
So far, VoIP has been a boon for the large companies who have the money to implement it between corporate sites. It seems to me as if it will take quite a while for network effect to kick in and have enough market share for it to be worthwhile as the sole delivery of voice services.
The other issue is that much of the IT staff don't comprehend the Telecom issues, like line hunting, rollover, etc.. Unless they have been explicitly trained on it. I think we'll still have a staff of Telecom folks who are instead trained up in additional IT concepts like routing, VLAN's, etc.
My parents were in the hurricane in Florida and lost power (of course). No electricity, no internet, no cordless phones and the cell phone towers were out as well.
The corded phone plugged into the wall outlet worked for hours after the power went out and was on days before the power was restored.
In the US the phone system is required to have its own separate power supply/source to ensure that communications continue.
I'm not a luddite, I'm all for VOIP, cordless phones, etc. But in this case, I also like redundancy!
I don't understand your post. If you are saying that Avaya is only traditional telco, they have been selling VoIP equipment for over three years now. The last World Cup matches had the entire setup using VoIP and WVoIP services provided by Avaya...