audiocodes.com
Indian Summer
BY RICH TEHRANI
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Webster’s defines Indian Summer as period of warm or mild weather in late autumn or early winter. Recently I had a chance to drive up the New England coast during this year’s Indian summer while meeting many companies in the industry. On my two-day trip, I eventually logged 400+ miles visiting companies in and around the Boston area. Between the mild weather and finding time to lunch at my favorite Massachusetts-based restaurant -- Legal Seafood -- I’d say the trip was great. Getting back to the subject at hand, I did see a diverse group of companies and the indication I received from most everyone is that the fourth quarter is looking good and that next year should be better than this one.
AUDIOCODES
The first company I met with was AudioCodes, a telecom company in great financial condition when you consider that they have over 100 million dollars in cash and seem to be doing well despite the decimation of telecom stocks in general. I expect them to acquire at least one company in the near future. It seems that one of the reasons for their success is the diversity of the products they sell while focusing on OEM customers. They develop algorithms and vocoders that can be embedded in chips and or modules, allowing partners such as Cisco, Nortel, and others to drastically reduce their time to market when developing IP telephony products. In the real world, a supplied module could help a partner to IP enable a legacy PBX with minimal development effort. Modules can also be integrated with other components onto boards, and boards -- when coupled with the appropriate hardware -- can be fashioned into a system such as a gateway. In short, AudioCodes is in a position to supply components at various levels of the food chain and as such is able to attract business that traditional board vendors such as Intel, NMS, and others don’t target.
AudioCodes boards are capable of allocating resources on a port basis and their boards can be set up to be the key components of:
Communications servers;
IP enabled call centers;
Voicemail/UM systems;
Fax servers;
IVR/auto attendants;
Voice recording systems;
Conferencing servers; and
Voice portals, to name but a few examples.
There are many products in the AudioCodes product line, including the MediaPack series of devices, designed to work with hosted PBX systems and/or benefit call centers. These devices are media agnostic and range from four analog ports to four T1/E1 connections. One of the strengths of the MediaPack product line is its ability to work with a variety of softswitches and IP PBXs. The product line has an international following as well. For those of you that read TMC’s sister publication, tmcnet.com, you know that the call center market in India is doing very well and it is no surprise that the MediaPack product line is thriving in that part of the world.
As always, AudioCodes stays on the leading edge of technology as evidenced by their recent release in conjunction with Main.net Communications, a company involved with power line broadband solutions. Main.net allows power companies to supply broadband over power lines and AudioCodes telephony enables power line customers. |
