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Technology Stocks : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1171)	8/25/1998 1:52:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 3178

Starvox integrates public switched network and WANs- Includes VoIP features. August 25, 1998 COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS via NewsEdge Corporation : San Jose, Calif. -- Starvox Inc. next month plans to release its much-awaited network telephony software, which integrates the public switched network with wide- and local-area networks and includes voice-over-IP features. The StarGate Server and ancillary software, which the company previewed in February, gives corporate users a way to integrate almost any phone switch with the public network, provides some computer telephony integration (CTI) functions and Internet telephony. The application software is based on a per-voice-port charge of $1,500. Systems range in price from $10,000 for an analog system to about $65,000 for a T1 trunk configuration. Installation is not included. The product is scheduled to ship in late September. So far, Starvox has chosen only a handful of VARs with communications experience to install StarGate Server and for now will sell most of its product direct. But that is expected to change, said Bob Harbison, chief technical officer and vice president at Starvox, San Jose. "Later this year we will roll out the product to more VARs, and next year we will deliver our low-end telecommuter products," Harbison said. Analysts and VARs have high expectations for the technology because of its ambitious goal of making it easy for LAN managers that want to add desktop CTI and voice services, typically found only in an advanced private branch exchange (PBX). "[Starvox] isn't just selling cheap, naked calls that can't be handled intelligently by the network," said Bill Hills, analyst at The Aberdeen Group, a Boston-based consulting firm. "They are selling you IP voice services that are transparent with your [public switched telephone network] PSTN services, and you also get desktop CTI. The desktop-services integration makes it easy to manage, but we will have to wait and see if customers want to go this route," he said. Customer expectations are generally high when they find out about product such as this, and so far beta customers have been satisfied with Starvox's pending offering, said Ralph Infanti, principal at Safenet, an Atlanta-based VAR. Chief information officers are excited that, via this product, they receive a virtual PBX for their site, Infanti said. "Voice-over-IP is nice but it's not enough to get a [chief information officer] or a communications manager interested until you show them the other features," he said. The larger the customer site and the more features it uses, the more cost-effective the product, said Infanti. Installations are customized, largely because each user's site and telephony requirements are so different, he said. StarGate Server overlaps an existing PBX infrastructure so it can work with any type of switch, company officials said. It uses two features-failsafe and fallback-to bring reliable voice calls to the customer's data network, according to Starvox. The failsafe feature checks the data network for failures before it completes a connection. If there is a failure, failsafe reroutes the call back over the PSTN. The fallback feature monitors the quality of the call. If quality drops, again, the call is rerouted over the PSTN.