Hi Mighty Mizzou,
Welcome!
>> what is your take on ASND vs. Cisco in carrier VoIP? Do you see one as truly superior to the other or is it a dead heat?<<
First, I'd like to say that your question shows some insight and is very revealing, since it demonstrates the sea change that is beginning to take place. And that is that only a year ago it seemed that a few startup software houses and a couple of Mom and Pop ISPs with funny sounding names would come in and clear the bases in the VoIP space. Now, it appears, and as implied by your question, the giants are already taking the ball away from the kids, and are in the process of choosing up sides amongst themselves. Interesting.
CSCO vs ASND in the carrier VoIP Space?
That depends on what you mean by "truly superior to the other?"
Do you mean whose technology do I like? Or whose business model do I think is going to score the highest baggers? The answers to these questions are often not one and the same.
So, let's look at whose technologies will fair the best under what circumstances, and that should be indicative of my views ,anyway, and that's all they are, my opinions, of who will dominate where and when.
CSCO made some good press a while back, claiming to be on the cusp of mastering the SS7 space, and they had some great backup doc to support what they intended, and indeed are, doing, at this time. They came out with product, and it looks like they are ready to roll.
But I haven't seen anything earth shattering in the way of carrier announcements that would indicate that large rollouts were imminent using their VoIP-enabled routers and what they call their access devices. I think that they will probably be best suited for enterprise intranets for now, where VoIP is concerned, where they have a strong following and solid relationships, before they pose a more serious threat in the common carrier space.
Their sights are really set for down the road, IMO, despite their getting in at this time in an almost me-too manner to mark their notch on the technology time line. I would have to believe that they see their routing model virtually subsuming voice in a couple of years in a not-so-discrete-way, as most of today's products do. I also see where their 12000 model can be tailored with attributes and features to become a major VoIP trunking vehicle on very high density routes. But again, not in the near term, where dominant voice carriers are concerned. They're just too used to SS7 and ATM backbones for the time being.
CSCO's, I infer, and I can be wrong about this, is a vision of higher levels of multiprotocol traffic integration than that which can be seen in any of the pure plays of the present day. Accordingly, CSCO's forte is primarily in the Internet space, and although that word Internet is part of VoIP, and although the Internet is beginning to meld, ever so slowly with the PSTN, voice still rings out a lot louder in this set of disciplines than data does. The voice space, replete with its administrative snarls and humanistic oddities (beyond the simple tie line model, that is) belongs to the carriers, not the ISPs, for the time being, and for a material time to come.
The carrier space, where it butts up against the ISPs, at the edge and into the core, is where ASND is now king. I say this despite LU's shared hegemony over the Class 5 switching space with NT (an ironic observation, wouldn't you say, since the Class 5s are among the most threatened of all networking elements in the entirety of telecommdom at this time, due to little ol', nascent VoIP).
In fact, I'm surprised you didn't include the latter two players, LU and NT, in this bake-off question.
In any event, if we are comparing CSCO against ASND in this instance, and the added batting averages that Stratacom will be bringing to the dugout soon, both with technologies and with long standing carrier relationships, I like ASND. I like it because of the foregoing and due to its own mature relationships with the carriers, and growing awareness of the Internet space, strengthened by its dominance in the access sector, where in fact, they are introducing their VoIP hooks. Grand Slam.
And most importantly, if becoming a major league bagger is the criterion in this exercise, they are now beginning to sell VoIP product to very large carriers and ISPs, and it appears that in a short time that they are beginning to pick up a good deal of momentum here.
So, in the short term, if I had to pick between the two it would be ASND in the VoIP space. Longer term, say another two years out, I don't know. I can only see a couple of months out at a time, nowadays, which is to reiterate that I have no clue as to which of these two will dominate the voip space, over the other, in the future.
I hope that's honest enough for you. <smile>
And let's not forget, that we're only in the infancy stage of this thing. We've not witnessed yet how well either one of them will hold up in the changing Internet environment, and have no doubts about it, the Internet is changing. It's not so inconceivable to me that the VoIP and other products being placed on the 'net today will, in another two or three years, resemble road kill, and will have to be taken off the road and disposed of because they are not upgradable to the next traffic management protocol, or the next prioritization scheme, or IPng, or the next optical window, or whatever.
And comments are certainly welcome here. That's how I/we learn.
Best Regards, Frank C. |
