This is a company that's recently come to my attention. I recently had a chance to chat with Ken Kuenzel, their co-founder, CTO and VP of engineering, and I like what they're doing. Here's a press release about their latest.

Covergence Introduces Access-Edge Session Border Control

Enhanced Eclipse™ enables next-generation access to VoIP and real-time services

MAYNARD, Mass., January 29, 2007 – Covergence®, the leader in SIP security and management solutions, today unveiled the Eclipse access-edge Session Border Controller (aSBC). The Eclipse aSBC, an enhanced version of Covergence’s Eclipse, is a new type of Session Border Controller (SBC) built to scale, secure and manage performance at the access edge.

Traditional SBCs enable VoIP peering between a small number of well-known and trusted service providers, but today’s access edge requires the ability to connect large numbers of untrusted users to a multitude of real-time services. The Eclipse aSBC is specifically designed to address the challenges of the access edge by combining traditional session-border-control functionality with comprehensive security features and management tools.

"As business organizations grow their real-time applications, they find that scaling, managing and controlling the access edge poses its own special set of challenges and unique requirements." said Tom Valovic, Program Director for VOIP Infrastructure, IDC. “For instance, the access edge has to process registration traffic, manage registration floods, secure user connections, protect the service from intrusions and attacks, enforce user-defined policies, encrypt and de-encrypt content and manage thousands-to-millions of active endpoints - with negligible latency, jitter and loss.”

Service providers are finding that Eclipse enables them to deliver “business-grade” real-time services that meet the quality thresholds that business customers demand. Eclipse also helps providers create new sources of revenue by expanding service portfolios to include presence-enabled instant messaging (IM), audio, video, multimedia conferencing, Click-to-Dial and many other services.

“Our Network Performance Platform (NPP) initiative ensures that our VoIP resellers are able to exceed their business customer's expectations for high-quality communications services on a consistent basis,” said Bob Decker, senior vice president of technology & service operations, New Global Telecom (www.ngt.com). "The NPP initiative forced us to reassess all elements of our network and after a thorough analysis NGT selected the Eclipse aSBC for the access edge. The Eclipse’s high-performance design and flexible distributed architecture allows us to scale performance and capacity predictably, without increasing management complexity, and its unique ability to enforce fine-grained policy on any field within a SIP message is critical when managing tens of thousand of endpoints.”

“With Eclipse we are able to scale hundred-of-thousands of active endpoints at the edge of the network with a great measure of reliability,” said James Brind, CTO, Hipcom. “Eclipse also provides fully authenticated, validated and encrypted connections to protect all user information, plus comprehensive application-level security to defend the service from attacks and intrusions. This solution provides our engineering team with absolute control over our SIP messaging, giving us the confidence we need to offer our customers the next-generation applications and services that will keep us competitive in the marketplace.”

“What sets the Eclipse apart from other Session Border Controllers is that it was purpose-built to address the problems of the access edge and designed to exceed the quality expectations of enterprise customers,” said Kenneth Kuenzel, co-founder, CTO and vice president of engineering, Covergence. “There is a massive market opportunity out there for providers who can offer business-grade VoIP and real-time services to the enterprise market.”

Access-edge session border control was developed to meet a full range of needs; from the small to medium-sized business (SMB) market all the way up to the world’s largest service provider. The new solution is available from Covergence immediately and can be purchased by contacting sales@covergence.com or by calling 978.823.5200.

About Covergence
Covergence is the leader in scaling, securing and controlling VoIP and other real-time services based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). The Covergence Eclipse™ is a series of access-edge session border controllers purpose-built to securely and reliably connect users to VoIP and multi-media services while giving organizations the complete control and visibility they require. For more information, visit www.covergence.com.