This suggests that there will be a tremendous opportunity for makers of equipment to connect the internet to the PSTN. Since Dialogic does not have the CO and AIN experience, I fail to see them as a player in the CO side of the market. The best margins historically, are in the CO market.
Bill gates understands the importance of the PSTN and AIN, hence his push to make NT the OS of choice for AIN SCP's and SSP's (along with SQL as the database of choice). Unfortunatley, I do not think that Dialogic has made any serious moves into this market.
On the desktop and CTI side, I see emerging standards making telephony boards a ubiquitous as network boards. Soon, it won't really matter which board vendor you use, as applications will run on any (possibly with built in driver support from the OS). Our newest product (still in development) is designed from the ground up to run on DLGC, BRKT, NMSS, and Rhetorex (perhaps others as well). Our channels will be able to use this open board support as leverage against all of the board vendors. Pricing will be very competitive. Previously once a product was built around one board, moving was very difficult, hence, board pricing has been premium. The days of proprietary, single-vendor telephony board providers are running down quickly. All of the providers will have to learn to do business with much smaller margins. |
