“Have you ever embarked on what you thought was a fairly
well-defined project, only to see it expand far beyond its original
scope? That certainly happened to us with this series on vendor
network and switching architectures. When we started, we had around
ten vendors in mind–the heavy hitters like Avaya, 3Com, Cisco
Systems, Lucent Technologies, and Nortel. But with a little
research, we discovered that the VoIP switching marketplace is not
just a North American business, as we identified many companies
around the globe that were pitching IP telephony products,
including firms hailing from Canada, Eastern and Western Europe,
and the Middle and Far East.“Moreover, we discovered that the lines segmenting the switching
systems market were a little blurry, with systems that support just
a handful of stations at a small business oftentimes very similar
to those that can handle thousands of stations in a multi-location
enterprise. We also discovered that when you peel back the cover of
many of the ‘software only’ IP PBXs, you find the familiar
open-source Asterisk system underneath…”