Why it's hot:
Fully featured
integrated access
device for
the enterprise
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"To set up a branch office, you just plug this box in and you have all your wide-area communications up and running," says David Pearson, director of IT infrastructure at the Boston Globe Newspaper Co. (Boston), who is trialing the product and plans to use it in about 20 branch sites. Pearson thinks Instantoffice will give remote users more functions as well as save money. "Normally I have to give branch offices a stripped-down version of Centrex," he adds. "Now I can give them everything, including CTI [computer telephony integration]."
Still, Instantoffice has its limitations. It's based on 10-Mbit/s hub, not a faster switch, and the device handles 108 end-users at most. It also doesn't have all the features of standalone PBXs, which let end-users dial intra-company extensions between sites. Finally, relying on one box could be risky. If it fails, so do communications for an entire office.
Slot Machine
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Instant Access
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Instantoffice is a chassis with 14 slots for vertically loaded cards. One slot holds a management module, called a resource switch card. It carries an embedded processor running Windows NT; 12 10Base-T Ethernet ports, which function as a hub; 12 analog ports, which function as a PBX for connecting to user phones; and 6 analog phone ports for linking to the PSTN (public switched telephone network). The management module also gathers performance and flow statistics and sends them to net managers at the central site. Other slots can hold cards with 12 or 24 Ethernet hub ports or analog phone ports, for up to 108 voice and 108 data ports.
Another card, the universal T1 trunk module, furnishes one or two fractional T1 (1.544-Mbit/s) uplinks. Instantoffice aggregates voice and data onto the links. Using time-division multiplexing (TDM), it splits the bandwidth into 64-kbit/s channels, which net managers allocate for voice or data from a management console at the central site.
And that's not all. At Layer 2, it acts as a simple Ethernet hub, consolidating all the data ports onto a single LAN segment. At Layer 3, it's a multiprotocol router handling IP, IPX, and Appletalk. The unit also functions as a FRAD; alternatively, it can send IP packets to an ISP (Internet service provider) using point-to-point protocol (PPP). What's more, Vertical (Sunnyvale, Calif.) recently licensed the IOS operating system from Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), so it can furnish routing functions similar to that vendor's products.
On the voice side, users get a PBX, which includes voice-mail and automated attendant capability. Companies typically hook analog phones with caller ID displays and the all-important call-forwarding buttons to Instantoffice. These cost about $100. That's much cheaper than digital units from the likes of Lucent Technologies Inc. (Murray Hill, N.J.) or Northern Telecommunications Ltd. (Mississauga, Ontario), needed with other PBXs, which cost up to $400 each.
Vertical's box not only delivers both voice and data, but also makes CTI affordable. Instantoffice works with TAPI (telephony application programmer's interface), which lets third-party application developers write CTI apps for it. The vendor has included a few such applications with the product, which do things like furnish screen pops with relevant data on callers and let end-users dial from their desktops. Companies used to have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop such functions (see "Computer Telephony Integration: Major Hassles, Major Payoffs," October 1997).
The Competition
Vertical isn't alone in the IAD marketplace. Several vendors, including Accelerated Networks Inc. (Moorpark, Calif.), Cisco, Lucent, Radwiz Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel), and Vina Technologies Inc. (Fremont, Calif.), are shipping IADs. But their gear is suited more to carriers than corporate customers. Their boxes use ATM to statistically multiplex everything onto the line and require a corresponding ATM device to terminate the link.
Shoreline Teleworks Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) and Selsius Systems Inc. (Dallas, recently acquired by Cisco) say their IP-based devices can replace legacy PBXs. And enterprise IADs from Adtran Inc. (Huntsville, Ala.) and Vina combine a TDM, router, and Ethernet hub. But the IP-based PBXs can't be connected directly to the WAN. And the enterprise IADs don't support built-in PBXs. In fact, the only product similar to Vertical's is the Phone Data Exchange (PDX) chassis-based unit from Praxon Inc. (Campbell, Calif.), which costs around $200 per user for a fully configured system. That's cheaper than a similar Instantoffice setup, which costs around $475 per user. But Praxon offers ISDN basic rate interface (BRI) uplinks rather than T1s, performs only IP routing, and doesn't work with TAPI.
To help reduce concerns about relying on one box for communications, the vendor supplies a redundant power system and two separate analog phone ports. The product also has two built-in analog modems, so administrators can dial in and troubleshoot the system. Still, if the Instantoffice unit fails, all communications except the emergency phones are lost. Other problems: Instantoffice packs a 10-Mbit/s shared-media hub, not a swifter 10- or 100-Mbit/s LAN switch. It can't scale above 108 users-not very useful for companies that need to expand fast.
Instantoffice costs $21,000 for 84 users and $39,900, fully configured.
Vertical Networks; 408-523-9700, www.verticalnetworks.com
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With the Instantoffice integrated access device (IAD) from Vertical Networks Inc., hooking up branch offices to the outside world is simple. Because Instantoffice combines a PBX, router, Ethernet hub, CSU/DSU, access multiplexer, and CTI server in one box, corporate networkers only have one device to manage. What's more, they can do so via their Web browsers, cutting management time and effort. Buying one box is also up to 30 percent cheaper than shelling out for multiple communications products, according to the vendor.