I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services. Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know: 1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages. 2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based. 3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station. 4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities. 5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware. 6. Built in faxing support. 7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform. 8. Busy Lamp field integration. 9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it. 10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc.. Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
Am 28.10.2015 um 14:54 schrieb Colton Conor:
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. [...] Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
It does not exist and you are asking too much. :) I always thought a soft-switch is solely being used to distribute calls. To route calls from A to B and from A to C etc. This more sounds like you are looking for a Hosted PBX solution. But you are also looking to connect your own customers (with their office phones) to it. That sounds like a weird combination. IMHO, Hosted PBX = usually only for yourself. If you have customers with physical offices and tons of phones you would probably build such a solution by yourself, I think?
Well we are a service provider, so yes we are looking for a Hosted PBX / Unified Messaging Solution / Softswitch to offer these services to our end customers. I guess softswitch might be the wrong term for such a request. On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 9:37 AM, Markus <universe at truemetal.org> wrote:
Am 28.10.2015 um 14:54 schrieb Colton Conor:
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch.
[...]
Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
It does not exist and you are asking too much.
:)
I always thought a soft-switch is solely being used to distribute calls. To route calls from A to B and from A to C etc.
This more sounds like you are looking for a Hosted PBX solution. But you are also looking to connect your own customers (with their office phones) to it. That sounds like a weird combination. IMHO, Hosted PBX = usually only for yourself. If you have customers with physical offices and tons of phones you would probably build such a solution by yourself, I think?
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
No one solution except maybe through a white label like CoreDial. There are too many functions you want that are third party add-ons, like phone provisioning (Phonism.com), call recording (CTI), faxing. Regards, Peter Radizeski RAD-INFO INC Bandwidth * Colo * Circuits * Consulting 813.963.5884 http://rad-info.net On 10/28/2015 9:54 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services.
Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know:
1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com <http://bandwidth.com>, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages.
2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based.
3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station.
4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities.
5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware.
6. Built in faxing support.
7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform.
8. Busy Lamp field integration.
9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it.
10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc..
Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
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Switchvox may do all this. It's been a while since I've looked at it. On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 7:54 AM, Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com> wrote:
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services.
Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know:
1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages.
2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based.
3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station.
4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities.
5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware.
6. Built in faxing support.
7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform.
8. Busy Lamp field integration.
9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it.
10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc..
Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
To be fair, what you are describing is not really a softswitch but a suite of applications that happens to be built around a switching platform. There are some vendors that handle parts of this well, Cisco HCS can provide a full UC&C suite including call control, multi-party video, IM&P, desktop/content sharing, delivers it all through the same Jabber interface on your desktop, phone, or tablet and has a beautifully simple user portal, at least in 10.x and up. Broadsoft has UC-One which provides basically the same feature set through a unified interface, though the portal is lacking. When it comes to some of the ancillary services though, it doesn?t make sense for a solution vendor to start looking at developing a full fax or call recording solution when RightFax and Hylfax, and whatever else already exist. Most of them stick to what they are good at ? call control and features. If they need to provide video they buy a company, Tandberg for example. They want to add desktop sharing, buy WebEx. This is how Broadsoft acquired most (maybe all?) the constituent components of UC-One as well. If you start looking under the hood at any of the SPs that you mentioned I would venture to say that you would find a bunch of discrete systems, Broadworks or Asterisk for call control and features, Hylafax or Right Fax for faxing, an open source SMS gateway, etc. with a bunch of ?glue? tying them together via APIs and a bespoke user interface to present a unified view to the customer, all tied into the providers BSS/OSS systems. That ?glue? and UI is what is unique to each SP and is what turns a pile of boxes into a ?solution?. It also allows you to add features and functionality easily when the next great app comes along, and prevents you from being tied to any one solution vendor. Hylafax doesn?t work out? Trash it and switch to XYZ fax, your custom UI obfuscates the change from the customer and they never know. I?ve said this before, 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future. Let?s be honest, If you and I both sell Broadworks and you have a feature pack called ?Premium? and I have one called ?Executive? but they offer the same features and the only difference is price, then we are fully commoditized and can only compete on cost. Providing more services to your customer than your competitor is able to adds value and provides stickiness. Having a unique and differentiated product allows you to move the conversation away from cost, and towards the value that you can bring your customer. All that being said, I think you have a great list of features and an a good start because you are looking to model some of the companies that are already doing this successfully. I do think that you are asking too much if you are looking for a sole sourced solution. But, if you have the time, capital, and people you can certainly go out and find the best of breed for each component and then integrate them into your own unique platform. Rob From: VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Colton Conor Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:55 AM To: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services. Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know: 1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com<http://bandwidth.com>, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages. 2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based. 3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station. 4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities. 5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware. 6. Built in faxing support. 7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform. 8. Busy Lamp field integration. 9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it. 10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc.. Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
Our company offers none of these advanced features, but does do a very high level of customization and provides high-touch and intelligent customer support. That's our differentiation, and our attrition rate is near zero. There are lots of ways to offer value, but it's much harder to prevent commoditization. That's ours. On the customization side we do everything with bare Asterisk so there are really no limits. That has ended up being of higher value for our customer demographic than having visual voicemail on a cell phone or SMS integration. On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Rob Dawson <rdawson at force3.com> wrote:
To be fair, what you are describing is not really a softswitch but a suite of applications that happens to be built around a switching platform. There are some vendors that handle parts of this well, Cisco HCS can provide a full UC&C suite including call control, multi-party video, IM&P, desktop/content sharing, delivers it all through the same Jabber interface on your desktop, phone, or tablet and has a beautifully simple user portal, at least in 10.x and up. Broadsoft has UC-One which provides basically the same feature set through a unified interface, though the portal is lacking.
When it comes to some of the ancillary services though, it doesn?t make sense for a solution vendor to start looking at developing a full fax or call recording solution when RightFax and Hylfax, and whatever else already exist. Most of them stick to what they are good at ? call control and features. If they need to provide video they buy a company, Tandberg for example. They want to add desktop sharing, buy WebEx. This is how Broadsoft acquired most (maybe all?) the constituent components of UC-One as well.
If you start looking under the hood at any of the SPs that you mentioned I would venture to say that you would find a bunch of discrete systems, Broadworks or Asterisk for call control and features, Hylafax or Right Fax for faxing, an open source SMS gateway, etc. with a bunch of ?glue? tying them together via APIs and a bespoke user interface to present a unified view to the customer, all tied into the providers BSS/OSS systems. That ?glue? and UI is what is unique to each SP and is what turns a pile of boxes into a ?solution?. It also allows you to add features and functionality easily when the next great app comes along, and prevents you from being tied to any one solution vendor. Hylafax doesn?t work out? Trash it and switch to XYZ fax, your custom UI obfuscates the change from the customer and they never know.
I?ve said this before, 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future.
Let?s be honest, If you and I both sell Broadworks and you have a feature pack called ?Premium? and I have one called ?Executive? but they offer the same features and the only difference is price, then we are fully commoditized and can only compete on cost. Providing more services to your customer than your competitor is able to adds value and provides stickiness. Having a unique and differentiated product allows you to move the conversation away from cost, and towards the value that you can bring your customer.
All that being said, I think you have a great list of features and an a good start because you are looking to model some of the companies that are already doing this successfully. I do think that you are asking too much if you are looking for a sole sourced solution. But, if you have the time, capital, and people you can certainly go out and find the best of breed for each component and then integrate them into your own unique platform.
*Rob*
*From:* VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] *On Behalf Of *Colton Conor *Sent:* Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:55 AM *To:* voiceops at voiceops.org *Subject:* [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services.
Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know:
1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages.
2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based.
3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station.
4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities.
5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware.
6. Built in faxing support.
7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform.
8. Busy Lamp field integration.
9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it.
10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc..
Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
Doesn?t Metaswitch perform almost all of those features? http://www.metaswitch.com/resources/topic/hosted-pbx From: VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Rob Dawson Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 10:51 AM To: Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com>; voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch To be fair, what you are describing is not really a softswitch but a suite of applications that happens to be built around a switching platform. There are some vendors that handle parts of this well, Cisco HCS can provide a full UC&C suite including call control, multi-party video, IM&P, desktop/content sharing, delivers it all through the same Jabber interface on your desktop, phone, or tablet and has a beautifully simple user portal, at least in 10.x and up. Broadsoft has UC-One which provides basically the same feature set through a unified interface, though the portal is lacking. When it comes to some of the ancillary services though, it doesn?t make sense for a solution vendor to start looking at developing a full fax or call recording solution when RightFax and Hylfax, and whatever else already exist. Most of them stick to what they are good at ? call control and features. If they need to provide video they buy a company, Tandberg for example. They want to add desktop sharing, buy WebEx. This is how Broadsoft acquired most (maybe all?) the constituent components of UC-One as well. If you start looking under the hood at any of the SPs that you mentioned I would venture to say that you would find a bunch of discrete systems, Broadworks or Asterisk for call control and features, Hylafax or Right Fax for faxing, an open source SMS gateway, etc. with a bunch of ?glue? tying them together via APIs and a bespoke user interface to present a unified view to the customer, all tied into the providers BSS/OSS systems. That ?glue? and UI is what is unique to each SP and is what turns a pile of boxes into a ?solution?. It also allows you to add features and functionality easily when the next great app comes along, and prevents you from being tied to any one solution vendor. Hylafax doesn?t work out? Trash it and switch to XYZ fax, your custom UI obfuscates the change from the customer and they never know. I?ve said this before, 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future. Let?s be honest, If you and I both sell Broadworks and you have a feature pack called ?Premium? and I have one called ?Executive? but they offer the same features and the only difference is price, then we are fully commoditized and can only compete on cost. Providing more services to your customer than your competitor is able to adds value and provides stickiness. Having a unique and differentiated product allows you to move the conversation away from cost, and towards the value that you can bring your customer. All that being said, I think you have a great list of features and an a good start because you are looking to model some of the companies that are already doing this successfully. I do think that you are asking too much if you are looking for a sole sourced solution. But, if you have the time, capital, and people you can certainly go out and find the best of breed for each component and then integrate them into your own unique platform. Rob From: VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Colton Conor Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:55 AM To: voiceops at voiceops.org<mailto:voiceops at voiceops.org> Subject: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services. Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know: 1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com<http://bandwidth.com>, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages. 2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based. 3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station. 4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities. 5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware. 6. Built in faxing support. 7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform. 8. Busy Lamp field integration. 9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it. 10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc.. Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
The only platform that I know if that supports most of your reqs would be the netsapiens platform. I don't have direct experience with it. But they have most of what you are looking for. One of the issues is that if one company is doing ALL of those things, it's very likely that they aren't doing them all well. They just don't have the ability to be all things to all people All of the products you need can be bolted on to a softswitch or integrated via api. It's the service providers job to then give their customer a unified experience so as not to provide them just a bunch of disjointed apps. Another issue with having all of these bolt on products to include with your "premium seat" is that your arpu keeps going up but your margins are shrinking considerably. 8x8, ring central, vonages for biz, etc are already offering all of these at a price point that seems to be inline with a smaller service providers' cost to deploy them Thanks, Shripal
On Oct 28, 2015, at 11:01 AM, Sean Salvadalena <sean at telnes.com> wrote:
Doesn?t Metaswitch perform almost all of those features?
http://www.metaswitch.com/resources/topic/hosted-pbx
From: VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Rob Dawson Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 10:51 AM To: Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com>; voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
To be fair, what you are describing is not really a softswitch but a suite of applications that happens to be built around a switching platform. There are some vendors that handle parts of this well, Cisco HCS can provide a full UC&C suite including call control, multi-party video, IM&P, desktop/content sharing, delivers it all through the same Jabber interface on your desktop, phone, or tablet and has a beautifully simple user portal, at least in 10.x and up. Broadsoft has UC-One which provides basically the same feature set through a unified interface, though the portal is lacking.
When it comes to some of the ancillary services though, it doesn?t make sense for a solution vendor to start looking at developing a full fax or call recording solution when RightFax and Hylfax, and whatever else already exist. Most of them stick to what they are good at ? call control and features. If they need to provide video they buy a company, Tandberg for example. They want to add desktop sharing, buy WebEx. This is how Broadsoft acquired most (maybe all?) the constituent components of UC-One as well.
If you start looking under the hood at any of the SPs that you mentioned I would venture to say that you would find a bunch of discrete systems, Broadworks or Asterisk for call control and features, Hylafax or Right Fax for faxing, an open source SMS gateway, etc. with a bunch of ?glue? tying them together via APIs and a bespoke user interface to present a unified view to the customer, all tied into the providers BSS/OSS systems. That ?glue? and UI is what is unique to each SP and is what turns a pile of boxes into a ?solution?. It also allows you to add features and functionality easily when the next great app comes along, and prevents you from being tied to any one solution vendor. Hylafax doesn?t work out? Trash it and switch to XYZ fax, your custom UI obfuscates the change from the customer and they never know.
I?ve said this before, 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future.
Let?s be honest, If you and I both sell Broadworks and you have a feature pack called ?Premium? and I have one called ?Executive? but they offer the same features and the only difference is price, then we are fully commoditized and can only compete on cost. Providing more services to your customer than your competitor is able to adds value and provides stickiness. Having a unique and differentiated product allows you to move the conversation away from cost, and towards the value that you can bring your customer.
All that being said, I think you have a great list of features and an a good start because you are looking to model some of the companies that are already doing this successfully. I do think that you are asking too much if you are looking for a sole sourced solution. But, if you have the time, capital, and people you can certainly go out and find the best of breed for each component and then integrate them into your own unique platform.
Rob
From: VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Colton Conor Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:55 AM To: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services.
Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know:
1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages.
2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based.
3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station.
4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities.
5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware.
6. Built in faxing support.
7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform.
8. Busy Lamp field integration.
9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it.
10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc..
Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
metaswitch does just about all those features but bring your check book lol but i'll admit it just works Carlos Alcantar Race Communications / Race Team Member 1325 Howard Ave. #604, Burlingame, CA. 94010 Phone: +1 415 376 3314 / carlos at race.com<mailto:carlos at race.com> / http://www.race.com<http://www.race.com/> ________________________________ From: VoiceOps <voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org> on behalf of Sean Salvadalena <sean at telnes.com> Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 11:01 AM To: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch Doesn?t Metaswitch perform almost all of those features? http://www.metaswitch.com/resources/topic/hosted-pbx From: VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Rob Dawson Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 10:51 AM To: Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com>; voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch To be fair, what you are describing is not really a softswitch but a suite of applications that happens to be built around a switching platform. There are some vendors that handle parts of this well, Cisco HCS can provide a full UC&C suite including call control, multi-party video, IM&P, desktop/content sharing, delivers it all through the same Jabber interface on your desktop, phone, or tablet and has a beautifully simple user portal, at least in 10.x and up. Broadsoft has UC-One which provides basically the same feature set through a unified interface, though the portal is lacking. When it comes to some of the ancillary services though, it doesn?t make sense for a solution vendor to start looking at developing a full fax or call recording solution when RightFax and Hylfax, and whatever else already exist. Most of them stick to what they are good at ? call control and features. If they need to provide video they buy a company, Tandberg for example. They want to add desktop sharing, buy WebEx. This is how Broadsoft acquired most (maybe all?) the constituent components of UC-One as well. If you start looking under the hood at any of the SPs that you mentioned I would venture to say that you would find a bunch of discrete systems, Broadworks or Asterisk for call control and features, Hylafax or Right Fax for faxing, an open source SMS gateway, etc. with a bunch of ?glue? tying them together via APIs and a bespoke user interface to present a unified view to the customer, all tied into the providers BSS/OSS systems. That ?glue? and UI is what is unique to each SP and is what turns a pile of boxes into a ?solution?. It also allows you to add features and functionality easily when the next great app comes along, and prevents you from being tied to any one solution vendor. Hylafax doesn?t work out? Trash it and switch to XYZ fax, your custom UI obfuscates the change from the customer and they never know. I?ve said this before, 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future. Let?s be honest, If you and I both sell Broadworks and you have a feature pack called ?Premium? and I have one called ?Executive? but they offer the same features and the only difference is price, then we are fully commoditized and can only compete on cost. Providing more services to your customer than your competitor is able to adds value and provides stickiness. Having a unique and differentiated product allows you to move the conversation away from cost, and towards the value that you can bring your customer. All that being said, I think you have a great list of features and an a good start because you are looking to model some of the companies that are already doing this successfully. I do think that you are asking too much if you are looking for a sole sourced solution. But, if you have the time, capital, and people you can certainly go out and find the best of breed for each component and then integrate them into your own unique platform. Rob From: VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] On Behalf Of Colton Conor Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:55 AM To: voiceops at voiceops.org<mailto:voiceops at voiceops.org> Subject: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services. Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know: 1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com<http://bandwidth.com>, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages. 2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based. 3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station. 4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities. 5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware. 6. Built in faxing support. 7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform. 8. Busy Lamp field integration. 9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it. 10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc.. Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
I appreciate all the replies to this thread. I can honestly say that no one said it better than Rob Dawson. Especially the part about " 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future." I couldn't agree more as I feel that is where I am currently at, on a Broadsoft platform, selling the same basic feature sets, at the same price points, as everyone else. Hard to be innovative with Broadsoft when Broadsoft nickles and dimes you for ever little feature especially when the big competitors are giving these features away for free or at no cost because their platform allows them to. So I am looking for a new soft-switch engine. Something that with API's I can integrate into these existing services such as fax (that I wish people would stop using). The only thing I have seem so far to come close as an all in one solution is NetSapiens. I have not looked at Metaswitch as its too expensive unless there is someone out there that has a wholesale, hosted, whitelable Metaswitch product? Anything else besides Broadsoft, Metaswitch, and Netsapiens that fits the bill? On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Rob Dawson <rdawson at force3.com> wrote:
To be fair, what you are describing is not really a softswitch but a suite of applications that happens to be built around a switching platform. There are some vendors that handle parts of this well, Cisco HCS can provide a full UC&C suite including call control, multi-party video, IM&P, desktop/content sharing, delivers it all through the same Jabber interface on your desktop, phone, or tablet and has a beautifully simple user portal, at least in 10.x and up. Broadsoft has UC-One which provides basically the same feature set through a unified interface, though the portal is lacking.
When it comes to some of the ancillary services though, it doesn?t make sense for a solution vendor to start looking at developing a full fax or call recording solution when RightFax and Hylfax, and whatever else already exist. Most of them stick to what they are good at ? call control and features. If they need to provide video they buy a company, Tandberg for example. They want to add desktop sharing, buy WebEx. This is how Broadsoft acquired most (maybe all?) the constituent components of UC-One as well.
If you start looking under the hood at any of the SPs that you mentioned I would venture to say that you would find a bunch of discrete systems, Broadworks or Asterisk for call control and features, Hylafax or Right Fax for faxing, an open source SMS gateway, etc. with a bunch of ?glue? tying them together via APIs and a bespoke user interface to present a unified view to the customer, all tied into the providers BSS/OSS systems. That ?glue? and UI is what is unique to each SP and is what turns a pile of boxes into a ?solution?. It also allows you to add features and functionality easily when the next great app comes along, and prevents you from being tied to any one solution vendor. Hylafax doesn?t work out? Trash it and switch to XYZ fax, your custom UI obfuscates the change from the customer and they never know.
I?ve said this before, 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future.
Let?s be honest, If you and I both sell Broadworks and you have a feature pack called ?Premium? and I have one called ?Executive? but they offer the same features and the only difference is price, then we are fully commoditized and can only compete on cost. Providing more services to your customer than your competitor is able to adds value and provides stickiness. Having a unique and differentiated product allows you to move the conversation away from cost, and towards the value that you can bring your customer.
All that being said, I think you have a great list of features and an a good start because you are looking to model some of the companies that are already doing this successfully. I do think that you are asking too much if you are looking for a sole sourced solution. But, if you have the time, capital, and people you can certainly go out and find the best of breed for each component and then integrate them into your own unique platform.
*Rob*
*From:* VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] *On Behalf Of *Colton Conor *Sent:* Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:55 AM *To:* voiceops at voiceops.org *Subject:* [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services.
Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know:
1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages.
2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based.
3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station.
4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities.
5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware.
6. Built in faxing support.
7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform.
8. Busy Lamp field integration.
9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it.
10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc..
Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/voiceops/attachments/20151029/92f1d389/att...>
On Oct 29, 2015, at 9:58 PM, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
Have you considered Enswitch by Integrics?
?It's the best of breed of the sort of thing that it is. Moreover, if you'll tolerate BW price points, you'll think it's practically free.
?https://integrics.com/enswitch/
It's got the API and integration path requirement covered, too. I know about a dozen operators and they're all pretty happy with it.
If you talk to Alistair Cunningham, their director, be sure to relate that Alex Balashov sends his regards.
-- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
This is a great suggestion. -- Fred
Yes, I have taken a look at Enswitch by Integrics. Looks like a solid platform, but a little concerned about the user interface and overall design of the platform. Its not as polished as I would like it to be, but overall seems nice. For the price it seems like an awesome system. I don't like the tough of Asterisk being the core of the product. So far based on recommendations I see Broadsoft, Metaswitch, NetSapiens, and Enswitch by Integrics as options. I am going to throw out 2600hz as a platform that might evolve into a solution to use, but its not there yet. Besides these 5, are there any other recommendations? On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
Have you considered Enswitch by Integrics?
?It's the best of breed of the sort of thing that it is. Moreover, if you'll tolerate BW price points, you'll think it's practically free.
?https://integrics.com/enswitch/
It's got the API and integration path requirement covered, too. I know about a dozen operators and they're all pretty happy with it.
If you talk to Alistair Cunningham, their director, be sure to relate that Alex Balashov sends his regards.
-- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Sent from my BlackBerry. *From: *Colton Conor *Sent: *Thursday, October 29, 2015 21:50 *To: *Rob Dawson *Cc: *voiceops at voiceops.org *Subject: *Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
I appreciate all the replies to this thread. I can honestly say that no one said it better than Rob Dawson. Especially the part about " 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future."
I couldn't agree more as I feel that is where I am currently at, on a Broadsoft platform, selling the same basic feature sets, at the same price points, as everyone else. Hard to be innovative with Broadsoft when Broadsoft nickles and dimes you for ever little feature especially when the big competitors are giving these features away for free or at no cost because their platform allows them to.
So I am looking for a new soft-switch engine. Something that with API's I can integrate into these existing services such as fax (that I wish people would stop using).
The only thing I have seem so far to come close as an all in one solution is NetSapiens. I have not looked at Metaswitch as its too expensive unless there is someone out there that has a wholesale, hosted, whitelable Metaswitch product?
Anything else besides Broadsoft, Metaswitch, and Netsapiens that fits the bill?
On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Rob Dawson <rdawson at force3.com> wrote:
To be fair, what you are describing is not really a softswitch but a suite of applications that happens to be built around a switching platform. There are some vendors that handle parts of this well, Cisco HCS can provide a full UC&C suite including call control, multi-party video, IM&P, desktop/content sharing, delivers it all through the same Jabber interface on your desktop, phone, or tablet and has a beautifully simple user portal, at least in 10.x and up. Broadsoft has UC-One which provides basically the same feature set through a unified interface, though the portal is lacking.
When it comes to some of the ancillary services though, it doesn?t make sense for a solution vendor to start looking at developing a full fax or call recording solution when RightFax and Hylfax, and whatever else already exist. Most of them stick to what they are good at ? call control and features. If they need to provide video they buy a company, Tandberg for example. They want to add desktop sharing, buy WebEx. This is how Broadsoft acquired most (maybe all?) the constituent components of UC-One as well.
If you start looking under the hood at any of the SPs that you mentioned I would venture to say that you would find a bunch of discrete systems, Broadworks or Asterisk for call control and features, Hylafax or Right Fax for faxing, an open source SMS gateway, etc. with a bunch of ?glue? tying them together via APIs and a bespoke user interface to present a unified view to the customer, all tied into the providers BSS/OSS systems. That ?glue? and UI is what is unique to each SP and is what turns a pile of boxes into a ?solution?. It also allows you to add features and functionality easily when the next great app comes along, and prevents you from being tied to any one solution vendor. Hylafax doesn?t work out? Trash it and switch to XYZ fax, your custom UI obfuscates the change from the customer and they never know.
I?ve said this before, 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future.
Let?s be honest, If you and I both sell Broadworks and you have a feature pack called ?Premium? and I have one called ?Executive? but they offer the same features and the only difference is price, then we are fully commoditized and can only compete on cost. Providing more services to your customer than your competitor is able to adds value and provides stickiness. Having a unique and differentiated product allows you to move the conversation away from cost, and towards the value that you can bring your customer.
All that being said, I think you have a great list of features and an a good start because you are looking to model some of the companies that are already doing this successfully. I do think that you are asking too much if you are looking for a sole sourced solution. But, if you have the time, capital, and people you can certainly go out and find the best of breed for each component and then integrate them into your own unique platform.
*Rob*
*From:* VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] *On Behalf Of *Colton Conor *Sent:* Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:55 AM *To:* voiceops at voiceops.org *Subject:* [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services.
Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know:
1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages.
2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based.
3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station.
4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities.
5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware.
6. Built in faxing support.
7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform.
8. Busy Lamp field integration.
9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it.
10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc..
Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
I agree that people are looking for a better value proposition in Hosted PBX providers, but as Peter said most just want a cheaper version of what they have. Which means service providers must either shrink their margins, or go with a cheaper platform that allows them to offer more value and keep the margins. So as Alex said, If you're going to sell glorified POTS/key system replacement, commoditised down to ever-shrinking ARPUs, why in the hell would you pay Broadsoft prices on those ports? Talk about paying the most to get the least. Those are some of the most expensive ports in the known universe. " Ideally I would love a platform that didn't have per seat or user fees. Just a base fee for the platform. On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 8:00 AM, Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, I have taken a look at Enswitch by Integrics. Looks like a solid platform, but a little concerned about the user interface and overall design of the platform. Its not as polished as I would like it to be, but overall seems nice. For the price it seems like an awesome system. I don't like the tough of Asterisk being the core of the product.
So far based on recommendations I see Broadsoft, Metaswitch, NetSapiens, and Enswitch by Integrics as options. I am going to throw out 2600hz as a platform that might evolve into a solution to use, but its not there yet.
Besides these 5, are there any other recommendations?
On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
Have you considered Enswitch by Integrics?
?It's the best of breed of the sort of thing that it is. Moreover, if you'll tolerate BW price points, you'll think it's practically free.
?https://integrics.com/enswitch/
It's got the API and integration path requirement covered, too. I know about a dozen operators and they're all pretty happy with it.
If you talk to Alistair Cunningham, their director, be sure to relate that Alex Balashov sends his regards.
-- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Sent from my BlackBerry. *From: *Colton Conor *Sent: *Thursday, October 29, 2015 21:50 *To: *Rob Dawson *Cc: *voiceops at voiceops.org *Subject: *Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
I appreciate all the replies to this thread. I can honestly say that no one said it better than Rob Dawson. Especially the part about " 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future."
I couldn't agree more as I feel that is where I am currently at, on a Broadsoft platform, selling the same basic feature sets, at the same price points, as everyone else. Hard to be innovative with Broadsoft when Broadsoft nickles and dimes you for ever little feature especially when the big competitors are giving these features away for free or at no cost because their platform allows them to.
So I am looking for a new soft-switch engine. Something that with API's I can integrate into these existing services such as fax (that I wish people would stop using).
The only thing I have seem so far to come close as an all in one solution is NetSapiens. I have not looked at Metaswitch as its too expensive unless there is someone out there that has a wholesale, hosted, whitelable Metaswitch product?
Anything else besides Broadsoft, Metaswitch, and Netsapiens that fits the bill?
On Wed, Oct 28, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Rob Dawson <rdawson at force3.com> wrote:
To be fair, what you are describing is not really a softswitch but a suite of applications that happens to be built around a switching platform. There are some vendors that handle parts of this well, Cisco HCS can provide a full UC&C suite including call control, multi-party video, IM&P, desktop/content sharing, delivers it all through the same Jabber interface on your desktop, phone, or tablet and has a beautifully simple user portal, at least in 10.x and up. Broadsoft has UC-One which provides basically the same feature set through a unified interface, though the portal is lacking.
When it comes to some of the ancillary services though, it doesn?t make sense for a solution vendor to start looking at developing a full fax or call recording solution when RightFax and Hylfax, and whatever else already exist. Most of them stick to what they are good at ? call control and features. If they need to provide video they buy a company, Tandberg for example. They want to add desktop sharing, buy WebEx. This is how Broadsoft acquired most (maybe all?) the constituent components of UC-One as well.
If you start looking under the hood at any of the SPs that you mentioned I would venture to say that you would find a bunch of discrete systems, Broadworks or Asterisk for call control and features, Hylafax or Right Fax for faxing, an open source SMS gateway, etc. with a bunch of ?glue? tying them together via APIs and a bespoke user interface to present a unified view to the customer, all tied into the providers BSS/OSS systems. That ?glue? and UI is what is unique to each SP and is what turns a pile of boxes into a ?solution?. It also allows you to add features and functionality easily when the next great app comes along, and prevents you from being tied to any one solution vendor. Hylafax doesn?t work out? Trash it and switch to XYZ fax, your custom UI obfuscates the change from the customer and they never know.
I?ve said this before, 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future.
Let?s be honest, If you and I both sell Broadworks and you have a feature pack called ?Premium? and I have one called ?Executive? but they offer the same features and the only difference is price, then we are fully commoditized and can only compete on cost. Providing more services to your customer than your competitor is able to adds value and provides stickiness. Having a unique and differentiated product allows you to move the conversation away from cost, and towards the value that you can bring your customer.
All that being said, I think you have a great list of features and an a good start because you are looking to model some of the companies that are already doing this successfully. I do think that you are asking too much if you are looking for a sole sourced solution. But, if you have the time, capital, and people you can certainly go out and find the best of breed for each component and then integrate them into your own unique platform.
*Rob*
*From:* VoiceOps [mailto:voiceops-bounces at voiceops.org] *On Behalf Of *Colton Conor *Sent:* Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:55 AM *To:* voiceops at voiceops.org *Subject:* [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
I am still on the search for a 2015 grade multi-tenant soft-switch. Something that can compete with Vonage Business, Switch.co, and other newer innovative phone services.
Here are the requirements I am looking for, so if anyone knows of something that fits this bill please let me know:
1. Has the ability to support SMS and MMS already. I am tired of so many softswitch vendors saying they are adding SMS or MMS as a coming soon item. It is 2015 people. SMS has been around since as long as I can remember. Most of the large wholesalers (bandwidth.com, Level3) support SMS, and some are supporting MMS. Not only should the softswitch support it, but they should have some way to allow the user to send and view these messages.
2. Supports call recording on both the inbound and outbound side. Should be able to see call recording through the web interface. Web interface for overall platform should be user friendly, and hopefully HTML5 based.
3. Supports Music on hold where you can upload multiple files. It can play these files in random order like a radio station.
4. Supports the OPUS codec and VP8 for WebRTC capabilities. Hopefully already has WebRTC capabilities.
5. Has a device provisioner where we can modify the XML files for each device at the global, group, or seat level. So many of our customers have special needs, and a one size fits all device template simply will not cut it. We should be able to reboot phones remotely, and push firmware.
6. Built in faxing support.
7. Voice Quality Monitoring built in. Should show MOS scores, Jitter, Packet Loss, for each call through the platform.
8. Busy Lamp field integration.
9. Some sort for mobile integration (beyond just call forwarding) for mobile employees who don't want a desk phone. This can be apps for smartphones, or something else. Most vendors say well our softswitch is SIP compliant so you can use the 1000's of apps that support SIP already. That will not cut it.
10. All the advanced features one would expect out of any modern hosted PBX offering. Auto attendants, call forwarding, time of day rules, voicemail to email, etc..
Does this simply not exist and I am asking for too much? Each of these are things my clients are requesting for.
On 11/02/2015 09:04 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
Ideally I would love a platform that didn't have per seat or user fees. Just a base fee for the platform.
You're an idealistic guy, Colton. Bold vision. You want a platform that is at once: - At the cheapest possible price point. - Largest feature matrix possible. - Carries nary an iota of a smattering of a whiff of open-source proper nouns. - Whose vendor doesn't understand market & pricing segmentation, but is nevertheless commercially successful. Judging by the ambitious criteria you've set out here, I don't think you're moored by earthbound go-to-market considerations. Godspeed! I hope you find what you're looking for. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
You didn't get my whole point. Customers want the same cheaper -- because that is how we trained them to think. That is how we "sell" in telecom. We take orders while driving the price to zero because (A) we don't value sales and marketing as a sector of the economy; and (B) this has traditionally been an arbitrage business. However, low prices only work in mass scale with automation. First criteria of picking a switch is What are you selling and to who? It sounds like you want the cheapest switch available so you can sell at $10 per seat. That doesn't scale at all. The vendor can't support that. You can't scale that. To support software you have to have revenue. Hence, per seat licensing or maintenance fees. BSFT may be expensive but it has proven to scale - over 1M trunks from XO and WIND and 10K seats added per month by an MSO. You pay for that. That said. You don't need something that would scale like that. NetSapiens is a great platform, but how would they continue to support it with a flat rate price? When M5 dumped their M6 platform and built their own, they paid 75 devs to support it. That is overhead! Talent, hiring, benefits, management, etc. We had a great discussion about this at ITEXPO in 2 panels with Dialogic, XO and Netsapiens (see summary: http://www.dialogic.com/den/d/b/corporate/archive/2015/10/14/nfv-and-open-so...). We are doing it again at ITEXPO in Ft Lauderdale in January. Join in. Colton, you have this idea that this should all be one turn key system for practically free. This is exactly the kind of customer mentality that everyone complains about. Free music, free movies, free content, free software. This isn't the first time you asked for switch recommendations either. So you are searching for Bigfoot. In business, you cannot be all things to all people. That is the Duopoly - average things for the mass market. The CLEC industry has always been fringe. Today, you either sell on price (and eventually lose to someone cheaper like say Microsoft) - or you put together a value prop for a specific target and you sell to those 1000 customers, then the next 1000 and so on. If HPBX was about price, someone would already own the market. And no one really does. It is a SIP trunk world. The HPBX industry is littered with open source. Linux, Apache, PHP, OpenStack, Asterisk, OpenSRS, DNS, JPG -- all open source, buddy. Thank you. Regards, Peter Radizeski RAD-INFO, Inc. 813.963.5884 http://rad-info.net 2015 Hosted PBX Market Report: http://www.onradsradar.com/2015/09/2015-hosted-pbx-market-overview.html On 11/2/2015 9:04 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
I agree that people are looking for a better value proposition in Hosted PBX providers, but as Peter said most just want a cheaper version of what they have. Which means service providers must either shrink their margins, or go with a cheaper platform that allows them to offer more value and keep the margins. So as Alex said, If you're going to sell glorified POTS/key system replacement, commoditised down to ever-shrinking ARPUs, why in the hell would you pay Broadsoft prices on those ports? Talk about paying the most to get the least. Those are some of the most expensive ports in the known universe. "
Ideally I would love a platform that didn't have per seat or user fees. Just a base fee for the platform.
On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 8:00 AM, Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com <mailto:colton.conor at gmail.com>> wrote:
Yes, I have taken a look at Enswitch by Integrics. Looks like a solid platform, but a little concerned about the user interface and overall design of the platform. Its not as polished as I would like it to be, but overall seems nice. For the price it seems like an awesome system. I don't like the tough of Asterisk being the core of the product.
So far based on recommendations I see Broadsoft, Metaswitch, NetSapiens, and Enswitch by Integrics as options. I am going to throw out 2600hz as a platform that might evolve into a solution to use, but its not there yet.
Besides these 5, are there any other recommendations?
On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com <mailto:abalashov at evaristesys.com>> wrote:
Have you considered Enswitch by Integrics?
?It's the best of breed of the sort of thing that it is. Moreover, if you'll tolerate BW price points, you'll think it's practically free.
?https://integrics.com/enswitch/
It's got the API and integration path requirement covered, too. I know about a dozen operators and they're all pretty happy with it.
If you talk to Alistair Cunningham, their director, be sure to relate that Alex Balashov sends his regards.
-- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 <tel:%2B1-800-250-5920> (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 <tel:%2B1-678-954-0671> (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
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Peter, I am selling to small and medium sized business customer. We also have residential side for an ISP. Our average seat selling price today is between $25 to $35 per seat, so no I am not trying to sell on low price. However, I personally hate selling to the customer when I know what else is out there today. I hate explaining time and time again that we have to charge for every auto attendant, voicemail box, etc. I am running out of excuses to tell the end customer when they say "well Vonage Business has the same $35 price per seat you do, but they have text messaging, call recording, CRM integration, voicemail to text, mobile apps, etc." You don't have any of that, so explain to me why your platform, at the same premium price is better? We have to provide enough value to ensure people continue to buy and use their desk phones and/or apps, otherwise everyone is going to just stat using their cell phones for everything. Its getting to the point where cell phones are cheaper both on the hardware, service side, and provider a better set of features. Voice quality used to be the concern, but have you heard HD voice on VoLTE? Sounds amazing, better than any desk phone I have used. Plus with wifi calling hard to say well coverage is an area of concern. So we either adapt to something that has value, or we continue to loose customers. On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Peter Rad. <peter at 4isps.com> wrote:
You didn't get my whole point.
Customers want the same cheaper -- because that is how we trained them to think. That is how we "sell" in telecom. We take orders while driving the price to zero because (A) we don't value sales and marketing as a sector of the economy; and (B) this has traditionally been an arbitrage business. However, low prices only work in mass scale with automation.
First criteria of picking a switch is What are you selling and to who?
It sounds like you want the cheapest switch available so you can sell at $10 per seat. That doesn't scale at all. The vendor can't support that. You can't scale that. To support software you have to have revenue. Hence, per seat licensing or maintenance fees. BSFT may be expensive but it has proven to scale - over 1M trunks from XO and WIND and 10K seats added per month by an MSO. You pay for that. That said. You don't need something that would scale like that.
NetSapiens is a great platform, but how would they continue to support it with a flat rate price?
When M5 dumped their M6 platform and built their own, they paid 75 devs to support it. That is overhead! Talent, hiring, benefits, management, etc. We had a great discussion about this at ITEXPO in 2 panels with Dialogic, XO and Netsapiens (see summary: http://www.dialogic.com/den/d/b/corporate/archive/2015/10/14/nfv-and-open-so...). We are doing it again at ITEXPO in Ft Lauderdale in January. Join in.
Colton, you have this idea that this should all be one turn key system for practically free. This is exactly the kind of customer mentality that everyone complains about. Free music, free movies, free content, free software. This isn't the first time you asked for switch recommendations either. So you are searching for Bigfoot.
In business, you cannot be all things to all people. That is the Duopoly - average things for the mass market.
The CLEC industry has always been fringe. Today, you either sell on price (and eventually lose to someone cheaper like say Microsoft) - or you put together a value prop for a specific target and you sell to those 1000 customers, then the next 1000 and so on.
If HPBX was about price, someone would already own the market. And no one really does. It is a SIP trunk world.
The HPBX industry is littered with open source. Linux, Apache, PHP, OpenStack, Asterisk, OpenSRS, DNS, JPG -- all open source, buddy.
Thank you.
Regards,
Peter Radizeski RAD-INFO, Inc. 813.963.5884 http://rad-info.net
2015 Hosted PBX Market Report: http://www.onradsradar.com/2015/09/2015-hosted-pbx-market-overview.html
On 11/2/2015 9:04 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
I agree that people are looking for a better value proposition in Hosted PBX providers, but as Peter said most just want a cheaper version of what they have. Which means service providers must either shrink their margins, or go with a cheaper platform that allows them to offer more value and keep the margins. So as Alex said, If you're going to sell glorified POTS/key system replacement, commoditised down to ever-shrinking ARPUs, why in the hell would you pay Broadsoft prices on those ports? Talk about paying the most to get the least. Those are some of the most expensive ports in the known universe. "
Ideally I would love a platform that didn't have per seat or user fees. Just a base fee for the platform.
On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 8:00 AM, Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com> wrote:
Yes, I have taken a look at Enswitch by Integrics. Looks like a solid platform, but a little concerned about the user interface and overall design of the platform. Its not as polished as I would like it to be, but overall seems nice. For the price it seems like an awesome system. I don't like the tough of Asterisk being the core of the product.
So far based on recommendations I see Broadsoft, Metaswitch, NetSapiens, and Enswitch by Integrics as options. I am going to throw out 2600hz as a platform that might evolve into a solution to use, but its not there yet.
Besides these 5, are there any other recommendations?
On Thu, Oct 29, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Alex Balashov < <abalashov at evaristesys.com>abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
Have you considered Enswitch by Integrics?
?It's the best of breed of the sort of thing that it is. Moreover, if you'll tolerate BW price points, you'll think it's practically free.
? <https://integrics.com/enswitch/>https://integrics.com/enswitch/
It's got the API and integration path requirement covered, too. I know about a dozen operators and they're all pretty happy with it.
If you talk to Alistair Cunningham, their director, be sure to relate that Alex Balashov sends his regards.
-- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, <http://www.csrpswitch.com/> http://www.csrpswitch.com/
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You said it all with these very words. On 11/2/2015 10:34 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
However, I personally hate selling to the customer when I know what else is out there today. I hate explaining time and time again that we have to charge for every auto attendant, voicemail box, etc.
We have to provide enough value
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On 11/02/2015 10:19 AM, Peter Rad. wrote:
To support software you have to have revenue. Hence, per seat licensing or maintenance fees. BSFT may be expensive but it has proven to scale - over 1M trunks from XO and WIND and 10K seats added per month by an MSO. You pay for that. That said. You don't need something that would scale like that.
BSFT isn't the only thing that scales into those kinds of numbers. Although we've transitioned out of the consulting business by and large, we've been building open-source platforms with those kinds of port densities for years. Now, most customers imagine they'll hit those kinds of numbers and actually don't get anywhere near them--turns out getting 1M endpoints is really, really hard--but architecture ask was always to support them. In my eyes, the argument against BSFT isn't so much against maintenance fees or even per-seat licencing, but just price relative to value. Considering it provides formulaic POTS & Key replacement, friends don't let friends buy Broadsoft. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
On 11/02/2015 09:00 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
I don't like the tough of Asterisk being the core of the product.
I'm sorry, but that's just ignorant. Do you object to Broadworks running on Linux and not AIX, too? I mean, I suppose I could understand your reluctance at using a glorified Asterisk box, e.g. an embellished FreePBX. However, have you bothered to understand the highly distributed systems architecture of Integrics before making such a statement? In a nutshell, Enswitch merely uses Asterisk as a dumb compute node. An expansive middleware layer performs the synchronisation, event distribution and logic control that drives it. It's a clustered application silo on top of Asterisk done _right_. I don't even know that it's accurate to say that Asterisk is the "core" of the product. Asterisk is a part - merely one - of the open-source technology stack on top of which this proprietary product is built. NDAs would stop me from disclosing where Asterisk and Freeswitch are similarly situated inside commercial platforms with mainstream enterprise acceptance and which scale to millions of users, but, it suffices to say that it's a lot more common than you think. Perhaps Integrics' biggest failure is disclosing Asterisk as a building block. The upcoming next Enswitch release, version 4.0, is written in Golang. Its automated testing, continuous integration QA, and service-oriented architecture would give the bureaucracy of any large-scale enterprise software initiative a run for its money. So, I would submit that it's not just a question of what is under the hood, but rather how it's used and the role it plays. There's a qualitative dimension to it, as well. Otherwise, you may as well say that you object to expensive commercial products which make central use of Apache or, say, PHP. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Let me rephrase. After reading so much on why Freeswitch was developed in the first place, I consider Freeswitch to be a more powerful and better media engine than what Asterisk is. So its not that I object to opensource in general, I just think moving forward that if building a communications application I would think that Freeswitch is a better option that Asterisk. I might be asking for a lot, but consumers expect a lot as well. I did not say the cheapest price point available. I want a licensing model that is not restrictive like Broadsoft. On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 8:32 AM, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
On 11/02/2015 09:00 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
I don't like the tough of Asterisk being the core of the product.
I'm sorry, but that's just ignorant. Do you object to Broadworks running on Linux and not AIX, too?
I mean, I suppose I could understand your reluctance at using a glorified Asterisk box, e.g. an embellished FreePBX. However, have you bothered to understand the highly distributed systems architecture of Integrics before making such a statement?
In a nutshell, Enswitch merely uses Asterisk as a dumb compute node. An expansive middleware layer performs the synchronisation, event distribution and logic control that drives it. It's a clustered application silo on top of Asterisk done _right_. I don't even know that it's accurate to say that Asterisk is the "core" of the product. Asterisk is a part - merely one - of the open-source technology stack on top of which this proprietary product is built.
NDAs would stop me from disclosing where Asterisk and Freeswitch are similarly situated inside commercial platforms with mainstream enterprise acceptance and which scale to millions of users, but, it suffices to say that it's a lot more common than you think. Perhaps Integrics' biggest failure is disclosing Asterisk as a building block.
The upcoming next Enswitch release, version 4.0, is written in Golang. Its automated testing, continuous integration QA, and service-oriented architecture would give the bureaucracy of any large-scale enterprise software initiative a run for its money.
So, I would submit that it's not just a question of what is under the hood, but rather how it's used and the role it plays. There's a qualitative dimension to it, as well. Otherwise, you may as well say that you object to expensive commercial products which make central use of Apache or, say, PHP.
-- Alex
-- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list VoiceOps at voiceops.org https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
?Ah, a Freeswitch religionist (don't worry, I prefer Freeswitch myself). Some things you should probably be aware of: - Architectural shifts in >= Asterisk 10 that have closed performance gaps with Freeswitch. - Asterisk's adoption of the PJSIP SIP stack & PJMEDIA. - New ARI (RESTful) API. I certainly can't tell the difference anymore. Moreover, the way Enswitch uses it, i.e. lateral N-way clustering, it's largely a moot point.? Don't let custom, habit, vague tastes and impressions inform your decision. ? -- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ Sent?from?my?BlackBerry. ? Original Message ? From: Colton Conor Sent: Monday, November 2, 2015 10:04 To: Alex Balashov Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
Alex, Thanks for the wonderful information about Asterisk. I was unaware of this, so all good points! What are your throughs on the 2600hz Kazoo platform. In 2014 you mentioned " 2600Hz is interesting, but immature." Is that still the case? Seems there is a lot of support behind that platform now. On Mon, Nov 2, 2015 at 9:07 AM, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:
?Ah, a Freeswitch religionist (don't worry, I prefer Freeswitch myself).
Some things you should probably be aware of:
- Architectural shifts in >= Asterisk 10 that have closed performance gaps with Freeswitch.
- Asterisk's adoption of the PJSIP SIP stack & PJMEDIA.
- New ARI (RESTful) API.
I certainly can't tell the difference anymore. Moreover, the way Enswitch uses it, i.e. lateral N-way clustering, it's largely a moot point.
Don't let custom, habit, vague tastes and impressions inform your decision. ? -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States
Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
Sent from my BlackBerry. Original Message From: Colton Conor Sent: Monday, November 2, 2015 10:04 To: Alex Balashov Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
On 11/02/2015 10:18 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
Thanks for the wonderful information about Asterisk. I was unaware of this, so all good points!
:-) The classic "why we dumped Asterisk to start Freeswitch" narrative was current in the mid-late 2000s, but not anymore.
What are your throughs on the 2600hz Kazoo platform. In 2014 you mentioned "2600Hz is interesting, but immature." Is that still the case?
Oh dear. There's not really much I can say about it publicly without pissing off people who know how to Google list archives. Feel free to e-mail me off-list. -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
On 11/02/2015 06:01 PM, Alex Balashov wrote:
Oh dear. There's not really much I can say about it publicly without pissing off people who know how to Google list archives. Feel free to e-mail me off-list.
I belatedly realised that this comes off as though I have a grudge to bear against 2600 Hz or Kazoo, and wanted to clarify that this is not the case! This formulation was meant to convey that there's not much I can say about Kazoo without reference to concrete implementation details that would be thought unseemly to post into a publicly archived forum. -- Alex -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
In a recent blog post, I discussed some of the points made in this discussion in relation to the Class 4 space: http://blog.csrpswitch.com/why-do-evaristes-itsp-customers-choose-csrp-to-so... Disclaimer: it is certainly written to be promotional of our product. But I'm hopeful it is also illuminating vis-a-vis the cultural rift that appeared in this thread. -- Alex Balashov | Principal | Evariste Systems LLC 303 Perimeter Center North, Suite 300 Atlanta, GA 30346 United States Tel: +1-800-250-5920 (toll-free) / +1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/
?Enswitch is licenced based on concurrent call path (in a commonsensical, humane usage). At a seat-to-call contention ratio of 8:1 to 10:1 commonly found in the business PBX world, it's hard to imagine how you could not make money, even if you charged the lowest of glorified POTS replacement per-seat rates. ? -- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ Sent?from?my?BlackBerry. ? Original Message ? From: Colton Conor Sent: Monday, November 2, 2015 10:04 To: Alex Balashov Cc: voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
Le 2015-11-03 00:04, Colton Conor a ?crit :
Let me rephrase. After reading so much on why Freeswitch was developed in the first place, I consider Freeswitch to be a more powerful and better media engine than what Asterisk is. So its not that I object to opensource in general, I just think moving forward that if building a communications application I would think that Freeswitch is a better option that Asterisk.
I encourage all my competitors to follow that advice. :) Simon
Those are the 4. Hint: If you are going to buy BSFT, get it via Taqua: cliff.mainor at taqua.com On 11/2/2015 9:00 AM, Colton Conor wrote:
So far based on recommendations I see Broadsoft, Metaswitch, NetSapiens, and Enswitch by Integrics as options. I am going to throw out 2600hz as a platform that might evolve into a solution to use, but its not there yet.
Thank you. Regards, Peter Radizeski RAD-INFO, Inc. 813.963.5884 http://rad-info.net 2015 Hosted PBX Market Report: http://www.onradsradar.com/2015/09/2015-hosted-pbx-market-overview.html --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
With a market penetration of less than 20% in the US in over ten years, it doesn't matter that there are 2000 Hosted VoIP providers in the US. Most are taking orders for cheap voice. Hardly anyone is actually "selling" UC. Doesn't matter what switch you have, if you are losing a deal over a feature, you failed at sales. Period. In my experience, it is rare that a deal stumbles over a feature. Most people just want a cheaper version of what they have. Hence, all that key system emulation crap that we see -- and where the deployments ultimately fail and the customer leaves (and the SP loses money). If you have a Broadsoft now and you think THAT is what is stalling your business growth, your platform, a lack of features???? I have seen folks fail at Asterisk or Freeswitch. Migrate to Meta from BSFT. MIgrate to BroadCloud. It is rarely the tech that messes them up --- it is the sales department. And later the implementation, but you have to sell it before your can mess up the deployment. Most of the sales right now in the US are people dissatisfied with OTT VoIp and are shopping for another one. Top providers in the US have no common theme: Comcast, Vonage, 8x8, RC, thinking phones, Shoretel. I am presenting UCaaS sales training today at Noon ET, reply to this message and you can jump on for free. Regards, Peter Radizeski RAD-INFO INC 813.963.5884 http://rad-info.net On 10/29/2015 9:50 PM, Colton Conor wrote:
I appreciate all the replies to this thread. I can honestly say that no one said it better than Rob Dawson. Especially the part about " 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future."
I couldn't agree more as I feel that is where I am currently at, on a Broadsoft platform, selling the same basic feature sets, at the same price points, as everyone else. Hard to be innovative with Broadsoft when Broadsoft nickles and dimes you for ever little feature especially when the big competitors are giving these features away for free or at no cost because their platform allows them to.
So I am looking for a new soft-switch engine. Something that with API's I can integrate into these existing services such as fax (that I wish people would stop using).
The only thing I have seem so far to come close as an all in one solution is NetSapiens. I have not looked at Metaswitch as its too expensive unless there is someone out there that has a wholesale, hosted, whitelable Metaswitch product?
Anything else besides Broadsoft, Metaswitch, and Netsapiens that fits the bill?
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My experience is that most customers aren't looking for cheaper; they are looking for a better value proposition. The traditional phone company they have and their hardware vendor have been screwing them for years with a bad value prop. Outages that go for a day or two, all MACs take days and cost $175+, missing basic features like concurrent ring, remote/home phones, etc. We find that the most basic of VoIP features are what most customers are looking for, along with stability and exceptional customer support. They are also tired of talking to a $10/hour call center worker when something does go wrong, or they need a change done. We position ourselves with all the features that have easily recognizable business value and a high level of service. We are not cheap like Vonage and others, but that almost never matters. And we've learned that if it does matter, that customer will suck anyway. About 15% of our customers are highly customized, and that's another value proposition. Doing something that can't be done with PRI/analog, and in some cases, that other VoIP providers can't do. Those customers are higher in overall revenue per seat though, and probably account for 30% of our revenue. On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 7:05 AM, Peter Rad. <peter at 4isps.com> wrote:
With a market penetration of less than 20% in the US in over ten years, it doesn't matter that there are 2000 Hosted VoIP providers in the US. Most are taking orders for cheap voice. Hardly anyone is actually "selling" UC. Doesn't matter what switch you have, if you are losing a deal over a feature, you failed at sales. Period.
In my experience, it is rare that a deal stumbles over a feature. Most people just want a cheaper version of what they have. Hence, all that key system emulation crap that we see -- and where the deployments ultimately fail and the customer leaves (and the SP loses money).
If you have a Broadsoft now and you think THAT is what is stalling your business growth, your platform, a lack of features????
I have seen folks fail at Asterisk or Freeswitch. Migrate to Meta from BSFT. MIgrate to BroadCloud. It is rarely the tech that messes them up --- it is the sales department. And later the implementation, but you have to sell it before your can mess up the deployment.
Most of the sales right now in the US are people dissatisfied with OTT VoIp and are shopping for another one.
Top providers in the US have no common theme: Comcast, Vonage, 8x8, RC, thinking phones, Shoretel.
I am presenting UCaaS sales training today at Noon ET, reply to this message and you can jump on for free.
Regards,
Peter Radizeski RAD-INFO INC813.963.5884http://rad-info.net
On 10/29/2015 9:50 PM, Colton Conor wrote:
I appreciate all the replies to this thread. I can honestly say that no one said it better than Rob Dawson. Especially the part about " 99% of all Broadworks shops sell the same exact product. Whatever comes out of the box, with the crappy BW portal, using Polycom phones but taking no advantage of any of the advanced features that are available. I really think that in the next few years that providers who are not offering a full UC&C experience for their customers and not doing anything to differentiate their products will start faltering. That innovative product suite is what providers will need in order to be competitive in the future."
I couldn't agree more as I feel that is where I am currently at, on a Broadsoft platform, selling the same basic feature sets, at the same price points, as everyone else. Hard to be innovative with Broadsoft when Broadsoft nickles and dimes you for ever little feature especially when the big competitors are giving these features away for free or at no cost because their platform allows them to.
So I am looking for a new soft-switch engine. Something that with API's I can integrate into these existing services such as fax (that I wish people would stop using).
The only thing I have seem so far to come close as an all in one solution is NetSapiens. I have not looked at Metaswitch as its too expensive unless there is someone out there that has a wholesale, hosted, whitelable Metaswitch product?
Anything else besides Broadsoft, Metaswitch, and Netsapiens that fits the bill?
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?To my mind, this mainly raises the following question: If you're going to sell glorified POTS/key system replacement, commoditised down to ever-shrinking ARPUs, why in the hell would you pay Broadsoft prices on those ports? Talk about paying the most to get the least. Those are some of the most expensive ports in the known universe.? That's why I suggested Enswitch. It provides good but _cheap_ POTS/key system folk traditions. ? -- Alex?Balashov?|?Principal?|?Evariste?Systems?LLC 303?Perimeter?Center?North,?Suite?300 Atlanta,?GA?30346 United?States Tel:?+1-800-250-5920?(toll-free)?/?+1-678-954-0671 (direct) Web:?http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.csrpswitch.com/ Sent?from?my?BlackBerry. ? Original Message ? From: Peter Rad. Sent: Friday, October 30, 2015 10:06 To: Colton Conor; rdawson at force3.com; voiceops at voiceops.org Subject: Re: [VoiceOps] 2015 Softswitch
participants (11)
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abalashov＠evaristesys.com -
caalvarez＠gmail.com -
carlos＠race.com -
colton.conor＠gmail.com -
fred＠palner.com -
peter＠4isps.com -
rdawson＠force3.com -
sean＠telnes.com -
shripald＠gmail.com -
sperreault＠jive.com -
universe＠truemetal.org