I had a conversation earlier today about VoIP providers and traditional TDM companies. The context was really around Avaya who advised a major customer that they'll have to forklift upgrade a bunch of cabinets to continue moving ahead on a path Avaya had previously committed support for. Not the first time of stories like this from Avaya. It's a legacy that came from AT&T via Lucent technologies. The DEFINITY series was bound to face the same approach that the older Dimension PBXs took.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term forklift upgrade, let me explain. Pick up your car with a forklift and drop it into the crusher. I'll give you 12 cents on the dollar (or some other miserable pittance) towards the purchase of this shiny new Lexus with features you'll never want or use. There you have it. The bane of PBX customers existence, the forklift upgrade.

This article caught my eye, because the telecom person asked me specifically what vendors "get it" when it comes to the evolution from TDM PBX telephony toward VoIP for an organization that doesn't want to leap exponentially forward, but rather wants a slow and steady path. Siemens has, in my mind, been the best at that technique for a while now, providing excellent support to SMBs and groups like small telcos. I did a bit of work with small rural telcos, and many of them were first to market with DSL because Siemens did that right before any other vendors could build a good working model for DSL delivery (that was as much the larger telco mentality as it was the hardware).

Today we get this -

Siemens targets the SMB VoIP market with P2P HiPath BizIP solution

Siemens Communications Inc. today announced its HiPath BizIP offering, a new peer-to-peer SIP VoIP phone system that negated the need for a complex enterprise network telephone system. Conceptually, this is similar to Popular Telephony or Nimcat Networks (now part of Avaya) , but the real news here is the fact that Siemens, a traditional "big iron PBX company" is now offering a P2P phone system that doesn't require a centralized PBX - instead the intelligence is located on the "peers", i.e. the phones. Now that's Avaya and Siemens that have embraced P2P phone systems. Can the death of the big iron centralized PBX be far behind?

Indeed, the death of telco big iron  PBXs has been hinted at...heralded as on the horizon...anticipated. I'm not sure how big a signal this really is, but Siemens is a company that really does "get it" when it comes to telecommunications. If they're embracing P2P SIP VoIP, the other providers will be right on their heels...well, no, they'll catch up when the get it. Give 'em a year. Maybe two. Cisco is likely to embrace this more openly and quickly that Nortel or Avaya.


Technorati Tags: VoIP, P2P, peer to peer, HiPath, Siemens, SMB