Not to insight more contention on this thread...but a while back I mentioned that YURI would feel the competitive pinch begining the second half of this calendar year. I thought I'd follow up that opinion with this little ditty...
Gary
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GEAR BLENDS VOICE, VIDEO & DATA
[Source: Inter@ctive Week, Received: 02/19]
>From Inter@ctive Week for February 16, 1998 by Joe McGarvey
A discussion about the integration of voice, video and data within a
corporate network is much like a discussion about the weather:
Everyone's talking about it, but almost nothing is being done to
actually improve it.
Most of the integration plans announced by equipment providers from the data and telecommunications camps to date have been long on hyperbole and short on new products designed to provide a clear path toward the aggregation of the various pipes that carry voice, video and data traffic.
Relief is on the way, however. Several equipment makers, including ADC
Kentrox (www.kentrox.com), Cisco Systems Inc. (www.cisco.com) and
Northern Telecom Inc. (www.nortel.com), recently introduced integrated
access devices that enable businesses to put integration plans into
practice. Offering a new spin on existing access devices that enable
enterprises to send either voice, video or data over frame relay
services, these new products, known as multiservice access
concentrators, are designed to send all three data types over a single
connection.
"It's an aggregation box that sits at the end of the customer network,"
says Fred McClimans, chief executive officer of market researcher
Current Analysis Inc. "It enables businesses to reduce the number of
access charges by reducing the number of circuits involved."
The first generation of these products is targeted primarily at
businesses that operate branch offices, McClimans says. With a
multiservice access concentrator installed at each retail outlet or
branch office, businesses that previously relied on three different
services to provide voice, video and data links between branch offices
can move both the voice and video connections onto the data link.
What makes this new breed of product capable of hosting all three
services is a function of both hardware and software, says Peter
Alexander, executive director of marketing for the multiservice access
business at Cisco, which recently introduced the MC3810 voice, video
and data aggregation device. On the hardware side, Cisco's MC3810, for
example, includes several interfaces that enable network managers to
link voice equipment, video equipment and data access devices from the
local area network or mainframe equipment into a single device. On the
other end of the MC3810, Alexander says, is a connection to a frame
relay or even an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network.
In order to ensure that the frame relay or ATM network that connects
the branch offices is roomy enough to carry voice and video traffic in
addition to data, the MC3810 uses several compression schemes that
shrink voice and video to about one-eighth of their original size,
Alexander says.
By preserving the quality of voice and video and moving it to the data
connection, multiservice access devices accomplish their primary
function: to reduce connectivity costs.
"It's about lower line charges," McClimans says. "Line charges are the
real killer at this point."
Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Inc. was looking to cut costs with
its purchases of Cisco MC3810s. Burlington will use the devices to
integrate voice traffic among 250 retail outlets into its data
communications network. "We got more bang for the buck because we can
put voice over data traffic," says Mike Prince, Burlington's chief
information officer. "That will mean free long-distance between any two
stores."
As part of the upgrade and integration plan, Burlington will upgrade
about 30 stores that already send data over a frame relay network. In
the case of the other 220 or so retail stores, Prince says, Burlington
will use Cisco's equipment to replace a satellite system.
Although ADC Kentrox, Cisco, Nortel and others are among the first to
offer integrated devices, more are on the way.
"Everyone knows where the action will be, and everyone is trying to get
preliminary products out the door," says Craig Johnson, an analyst at
Dataquest Inc.
These products are nevertheless only a first step down the path of
integration, says David Passmore, president of the Decisys Inc.
research firm. He adds that the ultimate goal is to move voice, video
and data onto networks based on Internet Protocol (IP).
"This fills a here-and-now need. There's still a lot of companies that
aren't comfortable with putting voice and video on IP," Passmore says.
"[These products] are more a consolidation of bandwidth than a
convergence on IP." |
