Vendors Roll Out New VoIP, Networking Wares At Interop

A variety of vendors at this week's Interop 2005 conference are showcasing new products that focus on technology convergence, giving solution providers more options as they tackle networking and infrastructure solutions.

At the show, formerly known as Networld+Interop, Avaya plans to launch new IP telephony products, including software upgrades, media gateways and IP phones. In addition, Infoblox rolled out appliances for managing DNS and DHCP services, and optical wireless vendor LightPointe unveiled a product that integrates optical and RF technology for WAN connectivity.

Avaya expanded its VoIP portfolio with Communication Manager 3.0, the latest version of its call control software. The upgrade improves survivability, reliability and advanced communications functionality for customers, said Lawrence Byrd, director of communications applications at Avaya, Basking Ridge, N.J.

"IP telephony to date has been driven by cost savings and bringing new applications to the fore. We think the discussion now is moving toward a question of application functionality and openness, the integration of communications applications and traditional business applications," he said.

Avaya solution provider North American Communications Resource (NACR) beta-tested some of the new features with clients, including an alternate routing feature that enables customers to route calls over the public telephone network while call signaling travels over the IP network, said Sandy Odell, national account manager at NACR, Eagan, Minn."It's for customers who don't have a robust enough IP network [to support] voice running over it but want the benefit of having all their remote systems connected to a centralized system," Odell said. "It gives them the benefit of having IP-connected end points anywhere in the world and still giving toll quality at locations where they don't want to spend money for more bandwidth."

NACR also beta-tested Avaya's new Meeting Exchange Standard Edition feature, a conferencing bridge that supports "meet me" conferencing for up to 300 ports. Avaya is licensing the software in groups of 50 ports to enable smaller businesses to take advantage of the technology.

Tiered pricing for Communication Manager 3.0 starts at $35 per seat for implementations of up to 100 seats. Meeting Exchange pricing for a 50-license bundle starts at $295 per license, and a 300-port license costs $150 per license.

Other new Avaya products include Converged Communication Server, which now includes support for Web services, enabling application developers to tie communications into business applications such as ERP, Byrd said. Pricing starts at $6,200. Avaya also introduced a softphone, color IP handsets and several media gateways. The products are scheduled for release in June.

Infoblox, meanwhile, continued the expansion of its network identity management appliances with new software and hardware. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based vendor is launching version 3 of its Network Identity OS (NIOS), which includes new high-availability features that reduce potential service downtime, said Richard Kagan, vice president of marketing at Infoblox.NIOS 3 also adds bloxSDB, a semantic database engine that combines data for DNS, DHCP, RADIUS and LDAP into a single repository. The new DNSone v3 module includes a new graphical user interface for simplified management of DNS service, and an optional Keystone DVS enables the clustering of distributed devices to improve management and availability, Kagan said.

In addition, Infoblox is rolling out two appliances: the 1000, which supports up to 150,000 records, and the 1200, which supports up to 300,000 records. The products are scheduled to ship this quarter, with prices starting at $9,995, including hardware and software.

LightPointe is combining its high-speed optical wireless products with integrated RF capabilities to provide backup WAN connectivity in the event of inclement weather. Used to connect buildings where leased lines are too expensive or unavailable, LightPointe's optical technology provides 100-Mbps full-duplex connectivity. Its new FlightStrata 100 XA also includes an integrated 72-Mbps RF backup path. Optical technology is susceptible to dense fog, while RF technology has difficulty operating in heavy rain. Together, the two provide an "all-weather" solution, according to the company.

"Enterprises want to have something that's completely redundant," said Jim Cady, president and CEO of San Diego-based LightPointe. "This gives you a redundant solution with five-nines reliability and allows them to have a connection up all the time."

FlightStrata 100 XA is slated for release this quarter at a price of $34,995, which includes all of the equipment needed to link two buildings, the company said.0