The Life of a Silicon Valley Rockstar

This this a cross-post from my hyperconnectivity blog but I thought the group here might have some interesting thoughts as well…

Our friends over at NoJitter seem to be on quite the anti-TDM rampage lately. Maybe they have a point. If I were making a greenfield voice recommendation, and I often do, I’d be hard pressed to justify a traditional TDM system over a VoIP or UC-integrated solution. Does that mean there’s no place for the traditional PBX?

One problem lies in the lack of availability of SIP trunks from service providers as not by Eric Krapf. That means, somewhere you’re bringing in a traditional line. Even if it’s pure PSTN or a PRI into a media gateway, the world of all-SIP all-the-time is still a fantasy. Al Baker mentioned, in the same article, that service providers may be protecting their current revenue stream by limited SIP trunks. I’m sure that’s partially to blame. However I think there’s also a general lack of understanding of SIP trunking both in the marketplace and at the carrier. Try calling your provider and trying to order a SIP trunk. You might as well be asking for a Tribble.

Nortel’s Tony Rybczynski mentioned at Interop2008 this morning that most of us have probably written our last telephony RFP. I think that may be true, however as I mentioned above I don’t see the world going all SIP yet. As Jason Alley adds any current voice strategy must include a provision for unified communications. In fact I see many companies using UC as a compelling business case to upgrade their legacy TDM systems. Low cost solutions like Asterisk and the commercial Nortel SCS500 make for an interesting counterpoint legacy systems like the Avaya Dimension and Alcatel Omni PCX.