When will VoIP Really be "Open"?

	by Haim Melamed, Director, Channel Marketing

Customers can combine a standards-based media gateway system to build their own open IP PBX, based on open industry standards. AudioCodes' new Mediant 1000 Media Gateway platform offers System Integrators the flexibility to choose the right components for their customers' solutions.

When the first IP telephony systems were introduced back in 1998, the great promise behind the innovation was that for the first time ever, customers could modularize the traditional PBX into different components and buy each component from a different vendor, while connecting all components via standards-based IP protocols.

Seven years later, even though IP telephony is here to stay, most enterprise IP telephony systems are being purchased from a single vendor. Furthermore, many of these systems are still based on proprietary protocols. This trend means that buying an IP-based PBX system is still as expensive as a traditional TDM system from a given vendor.

Recently, more and more software vendors appear to be shifting to a new route by supplying Linux-based, open-source, SIP IP PBXs. A system based on an open-source IP PBX is inexpensive, runs on standard, low-cost hardware, and enables customers to use any SIP-based 3rd party IP phone and 3rd party add-on applications.

Customers can combine a standards-based media gateway system to build their own open IP PBX based on open industry standards. AudioCodes offers System Integrators the flexibility to choose the right components for their customers' solution based on their integration capabilities, and open source codes onto which they can add and easily maintain.

AudioCodes' new Mediant 1000 Media Gateway platform excellently fits into this new environment. The modular form-factor of the Mediant 1000 provides the flexibility to support analog and/or digital interfaces, as well as support of a hosted CPU module designed specifically to comply with 3rd party IP PBX application integrated in the same platform.

Integrating the media gateway and an open-source IP PBX in the same unit presents an excellent offering for an SME seeking a full solution or for a large enterprise looking for a solution to support survivability in a remote branch.

AudioCodes is currently working closely with a number of key IP PBX vendors to supply similar solutions tested on the Mediant 1000 platform.