SimpleSignal Deploys Sansay Session Boarder Controller to Accelerate Hosted UC Growth
Senior Editor
The transitioning of communications networks to an all-IP future is in many ways a revolution that is taking place in evolutionary phases. The switch from the TDM past that was optimized for voice traffic to the IP world of multiple media is now not a question of if, but how soon. At the heart of this transition is a critical piece of equipment called Session Boarder Controllers (SBCs).
Put simply what SBCs do, by literally sitting on the border of networks, is to enable enterprises and service providers to move to an all-IP world in an orderly manner — keeping the best of the functionality of what legacy solutions provide but enabling them to be full participants in the Internet Age.
It is all about inclusiveness. SBCs are needed during the transition to do things like provide: security, interoperability, least-cost routing, call admission control, CDR generation and multiple media handling. Their importance is only magnified as we move into an era where VoIP becomes the preferred way to provide voice calling and things like, hosted Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC), real-time web services and videoconferencing become pervasive.
This transition to help accommodate the past while helping accelerate the growth of critical multiple media capabilities, particularly UC applications, is exemplified by the announcement by Sansay, Inc., that SimpleSignal, Inc, a provider of hosted unified communications, has deployed Sansay’s (News - Alert) session control infrastructure to enter new markets and facilitate growth of existing telecom services.
Versatility and flexibility are key
In the case of SimpleSignal (News - Alert) the Sansay VSXi session controller is being deployed to enhance access and interconnect applications.
- Access-facing network: SimpleSignal is using the VSXi to expand its hosted UC business and enter new lines of business, adding services for larger enterprises and call centers. The management controls for calls, calls-per-second, and registration messages permit larger scale customers to be added simply and securely.
- Interconnect-facing network: SimpleSignal is using the VSXi and its enhanced routing capabilities to carry additional volumes of traffic and to do so at more competitive rates.
Ujjval Karihaloo, CTO, SimpleSignal Inc. stated that: "As SimpleSignal continues to rapidly expand, Sansay's highly scalable, cost-effective and open APIs based advanced routing solution ensures a solid foundation for future growth and allows us to deliver innovative new services fast. The fact that Sansay is Broadsoft certified further affirms their commitment to Cloud Communications providers like SimpleSignal."
What he is referring to is that the Sansay VSXi infrastructure is giving SimpleSignal fully redundant, per-node call handling of 1,200 calls-per-second which is a 3x improvement on current equipment. Given that the nature of network traffic is not only increasing but is becoming more unpredictable, and that enterprises of all sizes are looking to pay-as-they-go to mitigate sticker shock in the new realty of elastic computing, the added call processing capacity and use of geographic redundancy is seen as important to companies like SimpleSignal and their customers who require additional resilience in the case of traffic bursts or localized disruptions.
As the announcement also highlights, hosted services providers like SimpleSignal are taking advantage of SBC solutions like the VSXi to improve their operations. The VSXi's offers a comprehensive SOAP controls for improved custom provisioning and quicker deployments. And, the onboard VSXi diagnostics and intuitive GUI are enabling SimpleSignal to analyze problems faster and resolve issues more quickly.
The benefits for UC services
The selection of the Sansay VSXi was based on its attractiveness for hosted unified communications. As noted above features and functionality that service providers of hosted UC can leverage include:
- Network-wide session access and registration controls for more intelligent service delivery and effective network resource protection
- GUI & SOAP driven configuration and management for rapid setup, new service launch, and new customer turn-up
- Rich packet-header manipulation capabilities to facilitate interoperability
- Registration offload to improve application server performance and resilience
- Hardware deployment configurations that facilitate geographic expansion and highly distributed network architectures
It also should be noted that SimpleSignal’s UC services combine the Sansay VSXi with BroadSoft's (News - Alert) BroadWorks application server platform, and that Sansay has a deep commitment to hosted UC having completed BroadSoft's interoperability testing for the VSXi with market the market leading BroadSoft BroadWorks Release 18.
It is very clear from a variety of analyst reports that interest in session controllers is picking up rapidly because of the necessity to move to IP-centric infrastructures, and not incidentally because they enable companies to fully leverage the benefits of the cloud and particularly the power of UC applications.
Truth be told, SBCs may seem to be just more plumbing, but plumbing is critical and in the case of opening up all of the possibilities and potential of UC could even be called sexy.
Edited by Brooke Neuman
