Cisco's bumpy ride in IPT

IP telephony business sees as many losses as gains

Cisco's IP telephony (IPT) business has experienced a roller coaster ride this year, with a steady increase in sales and some key contract wins, but also a number of equally high-profile contract losses, as some of the early adopters of the firm's technology chose to switch allegiance.

The US State of Alaska, for example, recently dropped a $100m deal with Cisco after both sides encountered problems.

"The aim for us is to make the network more useful," said Rob Redford, Cisco's vice president of technology marketing. "People should get better access to more information through our networks." Proprietary standards for IPT will eventually evolve into open standards, according to Redford. At present, each vendor pushes proprietary standards for its systems, which make mixing handsets and IP PBXs difficult, if not impossible.

"The situation is that the voice people are becoming more data-like, while the data guys are having the same problems as the phone people did 40 years ago," said Neal Tilley, Alcatel's northern Europe solutions marketing manager.

"But the data people are also seeing that the way they can get ahead is to have a better feature set."

IP Centrex provider inClarity is abandoning its Cisco IP handsets in favour of Swissvoice devices, simply because Cisco makes it difficult for non-Cisco networks and exchanges to use features on its handsets.

But inClarity vice president John Irvine claimed other vendors are not much better.

"Vendors have historically produced handsets that work only with their systems," said Irvine. "What we are seeing in terms of IP PBXs is the same thing; Avaya handsets will only work with Avaya systems.

"Cisco is different in that its phones are not cabled directly to the CallManager, but connect over the network. But Cisco has Skinny, which is totally proprietary and therefore pushes the same way as the old voice vendors."

Redford, however, said much of what the company does is open. "The only thing we do that is proprietary at the moment is the way that we communicate with the phone," he said. On top of this, the current dearth of interoperable systems is to be expected, he said.

"This is typical in the early stages of a market," Redford said. "The Internet Engineering Task Force standards are made from a rough consensus and running code. Get it working first, then make the standard."