Review: Nortel Networks' Multimedia Communication Server 5100 3.0

Claim: The MCS is now a convergence server delivering video, audio, and IM conferencing with integrated presence.

Context: Convergence servers are a hot area closely contested by the likes of Avaya, Siemens, Cisco Systems, and third-party SIP developers. Nortel had an early lead on many of its traditional competitors, but that gap has closed substantially.

Credibility: Nortel might play second fiddle to Cisco in the data space, but voice is another matter. The company brings tremendous experience and edge to the fore. At the same time, Nortel has a reputation of low-ball price quotes, with high-ball implementation tags. Whether that's going to hurt the company in this market remains to be seen.

Four years ago, Nortel Networks quietly revolutionized the telephony industry by being the first traditional PBX vendor to introduce a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based conferencing server, dubbed the Multimedia Conferencing Server (MCS) 5100. Last September, Nortel once again tried to take the lead in convergence capabilities by delivering version 3.0 of the MCS--only this time competition is a lot stiffer.

The latest upgrade to the MCS is the first to enable true triple-threat conferencing, integrating mixed audio, video, and IM into one solution. The new MCS version features multipoint videoconferencing, additional IM capabilities, and Web application collaboration. Nortel has gone down-market with the MCS, addressing offices of as few as 50 users and making the platform more attractive to service providers by encouraging third-party client development.For Nortel users looking for a convergence solution, the MCS is a leading choice. It integrates with Nortel's Communication Server 1000 product set (formerly known as Succession 1000), providing cutting-edge convergence capabilities to VoIP and TDM phones.

The bigger question is whether the MCS provides enough value to draw new users. While the MCS was far ahead of its time when first released, major competitors have since come up with MCS-like solutions. A case in point is Siemens' OpenScape, which does a better job of integrating real-time communications with third-party calendaring products such as Microsoft's Live Communications Server (LCS).

The biggest competition will come from the growing market of third-party SIP developers, such as Xten Networks. These vendors are now providing much of the same capabilities as Nortel's MCS, but at a fraction of Nortel's cost.

Ultimately, Nortel is in a quandary with the MCS. The solution can be cost-justified only if viewed as a phone replacement. However, the MCS may be too expensive to compete with the growing number of third-party products. Whether the MCS provides enough value to draw either market remains to be seen.

CONFERENCING KILLERAs enterprises increasingly decentralize their workforces, there's a growing requirement for effective collaboration tools that can help those distributed users work more effectively together. Networking vendors recognize this and have responded during the past 12 months with numerous acquisitions aimed at delivering such a product.

One common vision vendors are espousing--and we'll continue to hear about it in the months ahead--is triple play. By combining three different communications media, users can initiate IM sessions with other users, switch to voice when necessary, and layer on video if available. During those sessions, users can share files, co-edit documents, and share a whiteboard. By integrating presence capabilities, the status of other individuals can be checked so that they can be brought into the conference. Find me/follow me capabilities can in turn be used to locate key individuals when necessary and is a natural accompaniment to presence capabilities.

The MCS gives Nortel customers all this functionality. The latest version can also communicate with Nortel's Communication Server 1000 4.0 using SIP server-to-server calling, also called SIP trunking. With the MCS, network architects can deliver presence capabilities to all users, even if they lack a SIP phone.

While the MCS can't quite smoothly migrate a call between the three media types, it comes close. Users can start with an audio call, switch to video, and then if desktop sharing or collaboration is required, push a Web link to users on the call. Users can click on the link to publish the page to everyone's desktop.

The MCS ships with standard audio conferencing services, such as call recording, audio emoticons, and muting. Conferencing reservations are also integrated with Microsoft Office, allowing users to click-call from a directory. While IM has been available in previous versions of MCS, in this release Nortel has added one-to-many IM chatting and the ability to have a chat conference. With one-to-many IM chatting, a single user can send a message to multiple recipients and receive multiple responses. With chat conferences, those recipients can respond in a common forum.Once on a call, users can leverage the MCS' enhanced Web collaboration capabilities. Users can publish presentations for full collaboration and share applications while conducting sidebar chats. Although the MCS has always had ad hoc audio conferencing, this release adds Meet Me conferencing, where individuals can dial into a bridge number for mixed audio, video, and Web collaboration serving up to 1,500 endpoints.

THIRD PARTIES

Although point-to-point video was available in earlier MCS versions, release 3.0 adds videoconferencing to the mix through a deal with Polycom. Nortel has tested compatibility between it and Polycom's client, so users can launch a video call from either a Nortel or Polycom client.

The MCS offers two types of conferencing. Active Speaker, where the image of the person speaking is broadcast to the conference participants, is bundled with the MCS. Actual multipoint videoconferencing, where all participants are shown, requires a Polycom MCU, either the 3000 or the 7000 series.

Polycom has similar arrangements with other telephony server vendors, the most recent addition being Avaya's IP Video Telephony solution. Like Nortel, Avaya has video built into its softphone. However, the Avaya solution only provides point-to-point video, not multipoint. Avaya's solution also requires the use of a Polycom camera, bringing its cost to at least $359 per seat for existing Avaya softphone customers, or $429 per seat for non-softphone customers. The Polycom camera's codecs run in hardware, allowing Avaya's IP Video Telephony to work with older PCs. Nortel's solution can use any camera, which cuts costs by $300 or more, but may also affect video quality depending on the client hardware. DRAWBACKS

Polycom is one of the third-party developers that Nortel announced last May as part of an initiative to encourage outside development on the MCS platform. Reference designs for third-party devices are now available through Texas Instruments. That initiative is important because SIP interoperability is notoriously difficult. If carriers are to adopt the MCS, Nortel must provide them with an easy way to multisource consumer products

The value of such an initiative may be limited to consumers, however. Enterprise users will need access to the advanced telephony functions they expect from an enterprise-class PBX. Functions such as call park, where users put a call on hold and retrieve it from a different extension, require the use of UniStim, Nortel's proprietary client protocol, which the Texas Instruments designs won't include.

As third-party devices are brought into the MCS fold and allowed to benefit from new types of presence statuses, Nortel will want to look at updating its presence model. Nortel currently offers presence based on users' availability and whether they're active or inactive. Users can configure a banned list to prohibit select others from monitoring their status.

Next year, expect Nortel to expand this presence model. The company will add group presence, where personal availability is aggregated up into the availability of workgroups, and device presence, where users can look at the status of equipment. Nortel is said to be considering improving its centralized presence management, allowing network architects to establish presence policies on who can view an individual's presence status without having to configure those policies themselves. Over the longer term, Nortel will introduce federated services that will allow companies to interconnect their MCSs. Such a move could make workgroup collaboration as useful and as popular as e-mail.Pricing for about 100 users runs $215 per user, or about the cost of a top-end phone, for two MCSs with hardware and all the client software. The servers are effective for up to about 250 users, after which additional hardware is required. Video cameras for videoconferencing will add another $20 to $100 per client. Multipoint videoconferencing requires a software upgrade at the MCS server, adding another $250 per active endstation in a conference.

Executive Editor David Greenfield can be reached at [email protected].