No IP, No Problem

Genesys’ GETS beefs up legacy phone systems Commenting on the business phone-system market way back in 2003, telecom consultant Dick Kuehn said: "You can get any PBX you want, as long as it’s IP." The statement was an exaggeration then, but it’s practically true today. IP-PBXs are becoming the de facto standard among corporate voice communications platforms. If you don’t use an IP phone system yet, you probably will. But what if you don’t have one right now? Well, you may be missing out on some fancy functions – communications applications that rely on the IP phone system’s defining architecture, which combines aspects of computer-based elements such as Instant Messaging (IM) and email, with those of the voice world like the good ol’ desktop phone and, in some cases, mobile phones too. Thanks in part to this voice-data convergence, IP lets users turn IM chats into phone calls, listen to voice mail messages through their email software, and deflect calls coming into one device – say, the desktop phone – to another, such as the cell phone, for improved communication mobility. All of the systems-commingling required on the back end could give users anytime, anywhere access to the links they need to communicate in this increasingly competitive business world. So where does that leave companies not yet aboard the IP bandwagon? Are they doomed to miss out on the impressive communication apps that IP affords? In a word, no. Even as manufacturers quit making non-IP phone systems, at least one software provider, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc., aims to help IP laggards squeeze as much functionality as possible from their last-generation equipment. But there are no guarantees that this firm’s solution will solve much for very long. In 2005 Genesys, the call-centre-focused portion of Alcatel SA, unveiled Genesys Enterprise Telephony Software (GETS), a middleware package designed to help non-IP-PBX owners access some of the mind-blowing features of IP, without having to throw out their existing phone equipment and install IP. "Instead of having to rip and replace and put in another $100 million worth of IT gear to get dial tone, why not leverage what you have now?" says Mathew Frazer, vice-president of enterprise solutions at Genesys. What Does GETS Do?GETS connects PBXs to Microsoft Corp.’s Live Communications Server 2005 (LCS), a messaging system that supports enterprise IM as well as presence – the ability to see if work colleagues are available for IM chats. By linking LCS to a PBX, companies can extend that presence capability to phone systems, so users can see if a colleague is already on another call or perhaps unwilling to take calls at this particular time, thanks to a do-not-disturb setting. Some modern IP-PBXs ship with connectors for LCS to provide just this level of interoperability. Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Mitel Networks Corp., Nortel Networks, Siemens AG and Vertical Communications Inc. are among the LCS-friendly IP-PBX vendors. Even Alcatel, Genesys’ partner, provides IP-PBX-LCS connectivity. But for telecom managers overseeing PBXs that don’t use IP, LCS integration can be difficult. Brent Kelly, a Hyde Park, Utah-based senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research, wrote a white paper about GETS last year. In it, he notes that you could connect your PBX to LCS using a Computer Supported Telephony Application (CSTA) gateway that also understands the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) networking language. The gateway would take SIP messages from the PC-based communication client – Office Communicator in the LCS world – and translate those messages into the PBX’s proprietary language. The gateway would then send those missives onto the phone system, where the voice features get started. But there are problems with this CSTA method. As Kelly points out, not all PBXs support the same CSTA version, so the IT department has to beef up on the vagaries of each PBX-CSTA configuration in order to manage in a heterogeneous PBX environment. Big companies with many PBXs from multiple manufacturers might have trouble dealing with the conversions, making for a headache where increased user functionality was the goal. Businesses could just throw in the towel – lose their legacy PBXs, move to IP and rely on the IP-PBX manufacturers’ own LCS integration mechanisms. But that’s not always feasible. For one thing, it takes time to make the switch, especially in the enterprise arena. Big businesses might be able to provide LCS-IP-PBX integration for some users in the near term, but other users, those still operating on older phone systems, will lack those impressive presence capabilities. Silos breed contempt: workers without presence might be jealous of those who do, and most IT departments would understandably rather avoid this divide. GETS provides a possible solution. The software – there’s no special hardware needed – links LCS with more than 100 different PBX models from more than 25 vendors, Kelly notes. It provides a single connection scheme that does away with individual management mandates according to the number of PBXs a company might have. And it lets companies create a common user experience – no silos. How GETS WorksIn truth, GETS isn’t all that different from a CSTA gateway. It’s just a bit smarter than your average ware. For instance, its media layer incorporates a T-Server, which translates messages coming from the user’s desktop into whatever proprietary language the PBX in question happens to use. Each PBX maps to a particular T-Server in a one-to-one relationship, providing the cross-PBX-manufacturer functionality that CSTA gateways generally lack. GETS can connect up to 100,000 phones with LCS on a single PBX, and it supports up to 20,000 simultaneous calls, Genesys says. Kelly says the price is US$50 per user; Genesys will only say it’s under US$100. "We’re willing to play in this sub-$100 category until we see greater adoption," says Dan Nordale, Genesys’ director, business development. Kelly notes a number of advantages in GETS:Users can create audio conferences from their Office Communicator clients, stemming external conference bridge expenses. Presence reduces phone tag and voice messaging among users and increases speed of connectivity – essential to efficient business operations. Voice mail-to-email conversions let users pick and choose the most important voice mail messages and listen to those first. Companies can use their legacy PBXs to support new communications capabilities. Companies moving to IP can deploy inexpensive IP phones, because all of the advanced calling features come from GETS. But what about that move? More and more companies are doing it – tossing out their old phone systems and switching to IP. As mentioned, some IP-PBX manufacturers provide LCS integration. Assuming you’re shopping one of those vendors, why would you pay for GETS? Those in the GETS know essentially respond to that question with some of their own: do you plan to buy all of your IP-PBXs from one vendor? Doing so might decrease your bargaining clout with the phone-system maker. "If single source, say, on Cisco, suddenly Cisco has tremendous power over them, and they wouldn’t be able to negotiate with Cisco," Genesys’ Frazer explains. GETS lets you choose IP-PBXs from multiple vendors and ensure that the end-user features are the same across the enterprise. Firms should also consider whether they mean to switch all of the company over to IP at one time. For businesses with tens of thousands of employees, it’s not feasible. Silos are inevitable, unless you find some way to give everyone similar functions even as the back-end communications platforms change. "GETS is really designed for large companies," Kelly says. "We know it’s going to attract companies in a hybrid situation," halfway between IP and earlier technology, he adds. According to Frazer, one of the most compelling aspects of GETS is that it provides IT managers with a single administrative, configuration and management scheme for the enterprise’s entire presence infrastructure – something that’s otherwise largely missing from the telecom world. But one wonders if this fact invites Microsoft to play a larger role in the communications industry. Might the software giant turn its attention to this space, offer up the requisite controls and essentially make moot Genesys’ GETS endeavour? "It’s a non-trivial thing to provide and it’s outside of their core expertise," Frazer says of the house that Gates built, and its prospects with any kind of overarching management system. "It’s not the low-hanging fruit. Genesys came from 15 years of managing heterogeneous environments. It’s part of our value proposition and it’s not easily replicated. It’s part of the reason Microsoft formed a strategic relationship with us, and part of the reason they deployed GETS on their campus in Redmond." The Case StudyMicrosoft was already something of a collective IM junkie before GETS came along. Internal surveys at the Washington-based company indicated that employees were saving about an hour per week using instant messaging instead of the phone to chat with colleagues and external contacts. But Microsoft wanted to connect its IM infrastructure to the phones for even deeper communication efficacy, and although it planned to migrate to IP in the future, the firm had no easy way to provide cross-system integration in the here and now. According to a Genesys case study, Micro-soft wanted to provide that integration sooner than later, in a manner that would also support a nice, smooth move to IP (read: no functionality silos among workers). Microsoft worked with Genesys toward a solution. The result was a GETS installation at Microsoft’s headquarters. The case study says 35,000 Microsoft employees use GETS. They can deflect incoming calls away from the desk phone and towards another device, such as a cell phone – handy when the worker’s on a conference line but still wants to pick up the incoming call. The do-not-disturb function tells callers that there may be a better time to contact the people they’re trying to reach. And the ad-hoc conference-call creation capability has reduced the need for external conference bridges. "The solution virtually eliminates the all-too-common phone tag routine," says Indranil Banerjee, a senior programmer in Microsoft’s IT department. Microsoft is a believer, which stands to reason. After all, the firm surely benefits from GETS: easier PBX-LCS integration means more businesses might buy LCS licences. Nonetheless, GETS seems to be a viable way to smooth a business’s path to IP, even if the user organization isn’t biased in favour of the software, as Microsoft must be. But over time, GETS’s value will decline. As businesses move to IP – and as the interconnecting SIP standard becomes more…well, standard than it is today – at some point in the future IP-PBXs will interoperate among each other and with third-party systems such as LCS in a standard manner, without requiring middleware. But that day isn’t exactly around the corner. Genesys, meanwhile, may well have a near-term alternative to forklift, homogeneous IP upgrades in GETS.

No IP, No Problem

News | June 1, 2006

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