Session Border Controllers (SBCs)

As the world of work settles into the “new normal," contact centers have been doubling down on technologies that enable agents to work from home.

How to Carve a PBX

The vertically-integrated silo of the PBX is obsolete. A like-for-like replacement of any PBX - TDM or IP - should be challenged before making any investments. We saw this happen with mainframe computers several decades ago (See "Only the Paranoid Survive" by Andy Grove, Chairman Emeritus, Intel). Now it has happened with PBXs, the mainframes of voice communications. So, what would you buy instead?

Sonus Goes Virtual, with a Twist of Cloud

We all know that virtualization and cloud are big for today's IT teams. A Brocade/Vanson-Bourne survey, completed in June 2013 showed that, on average, 50 percent of enterprise software is already deployed in a virtualized environment and in two years 55 percent of organizations will have more than 80 percent of their applications virtualized. In the data center, not only have the servers and storage been virtualized, but the networks and network services are also becoming virtual, accelerated by Software Defined Networking (SDN).

What is Oracle Thinking?

I didn't see this one coming. Today, Oracle announced its intent to acquire Acme Packet for $1.7 billion. Oracle became a hardware company when it acquired Sun, and offers a variety of hardware and software solutions for the data center and cloud adopters. Acme Packet is the global provider (and innovator) of session border controllers (SBCs) for service providers and enterprises.