Infonetics Research: Multi-Vendor Strategy the Best in SBC Deployment

By Steve Anderson
Contributing TMCnet Writer

Recently, Infonetics Research (News - Alert) staged a survey that provided some insight on the concept of session border controller (SBC) deployment, and while there was plenty of information contained in that survey, the centerpiece of the affair came from a discussion of the best strategy to use in terms of deployment.

The strategy of choice for many firms? A multi-vendor approach.

The Infonetics Research survey, SBC Deployment Strategies: Global Service Provider Survey, focused on several critical points, including the top SBC applications among service providers and the top vendors in the SBC field. According to the piece, interconnection was the most important SBC application for service providers, though SIP trunking and VoIP hosting were close behind.

Eighty-eight percent rated security as the most important function an SBC can offer, and more operators surveyed were in favor of a network-wide licensing model as opposed to a node-based licensing model more commonly in use today.

The current top of the heap in SBC vendors currently being considered by those considering SBC expansion is Acme Packet, which in turn was rated a “top vendor” by almost all survey respondents. Only 4 percent of respondents didn't rate Acme Packet (News - Alert) a “top vendor.”

But the clear winner in the survey was the multi-vendor strategy of SBC deployment, something that 41 percent of respondents were currently using, and by 2014, two-thirds of respondents – 67 percent –would be using. While this poses a great opportunity for top vendor Acme Packet, it also leaves open several possibilities for other vendors like Sonus Networks, Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), Huawei, and several others to step in as providers are growing to widely prefer the multi-vendor model.

Given that the Infonetics Research study's respondents comprise 39 percent of the world's known telecom revenue among them, as well as 41 percent of the total capex in telecom, it's a report to take very seriously. Between a third and a half of the market is essentially responding to this survey, so it's not exactly a far cry to suggest the rest of the market feels at least approximately the same way.

Thus, marketers will likely be putting more emphasis on security when it comes to talking up SBC technology, as well as the overall ability of their equipment to interconnect with other devices and work with the devices of other manufacturers so as to best fit themselves into a multi-vendor environment.

When it comes to SBC, providers clearly want the best of all possible worlds. Those vendors who are willing to provide it, or at least come the closest, will likely be the ones walking away with the contracts and making the sales happen.

It's always worth keeping a weather eye on market research, and in SBC, it's no different.

Edited by Braden Becker