Using Skype from a Legacy PBX

Skype has become one of the most attractive ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Provider) out there. In many geographies, its usage is now prevalent by consumers and is gaining substantial adoption in the enterprise. The problem with current corporate usage is that Skype is rarely integrated with other business communications infrastructure. That means that users deploy Skype on their desktop and call their contacts “peer-to-peer” or make long distance calls using Skype-Out. Of course, when you are doing that, your regular phone system is not “aware” that you are on a call so it cannot forward new calls to voice mail automatically (or whatever other logic you may have programmed in your PBX), or transfer/conference calls using internal PBX extensions, etc. Also, you don’t have integrated reporting of all your communications from a billing and resource usage perspective. Bottom line, you end up using two orthogonal business communication systems.

At CommunicAsia this week, PrettyMay, a maker of Skype PBX and Skype PBX Gateway systems that helps integrating Skype into business communications, is announcing their partnership with Sangoma. They have built a complete PBX system based on Skype. So all the features that are expected from a PBX can be used with Skype phones and external connectivity is done with a mix of Skype network, along with the good old Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). A lot of companies love Skype, but they want to keep a few traditional lines for external access, for 911 or fallback perspective. PrettyMay has integrated Sangoma voice cards for the interface to the PSTN.

PrettyMay also has a Skype PBX Gateway that allows to connect a legacy PBX to the external Skype network. PrettyMay’s system integrates Sangoma’s voice cards to “bridge” lines that look to the PBX like PSTN lines, but in fact connect to the Skype network. This way, Skype can be used transparently as an ITSP for any customer out there with a legacy PBX. All PBX features remain, but Skype is used for transport on a few lines of the PBX, therefore saving on telecom costs.

But PrettyMay is not the only company with a Skype-to-PBX gateway. Back in February, IndustryDynamics launched their VoiceGear product line, integrating Sangoma telephony cards to provide a seamless interface between the Skype network and legacy PBX’es. IndustryDynamics supports both analog and digital PBX interfaces, increasing the number of potential integrations. The company is working hard to increase its distribution network and I think they will get great success with their product in the coming months and years. In particular, they have worked hard on explaining the detailed business case for enterprises to use their product. Check out their ROI models at:

http://www.industrydynamics.ca/business_cases.php

Overall, it’s exciting seeing companies bridge the gap between Skype and legacy PBX systems. It’s even more exciting that the industry seems to be standardizing on Sangoma to provide the telephony interface!

Sangoma and Open Source Telephony

Sangoma's roots are in Open Source. The company has invested significantly to be a dominant board vendor in this space.

Alex and his team at Halo, one of Sangoma's long time business partners, has written a great article on his own analysis of the two main players for PCI cards in the Asterisk market: Sangoma and Digium. I'm obviously biased, but his analysis looks very thorough and sound. Have a read and decide for yourself:

http://www.halokwadrat.pl/sangoma-vs.-digium.html

Also, Sangoma is not exclusive to Asterisk. Sangoma is very active in other major open source telephony projects such as FreeSwitch, Call Weaver, Yate, etc. There are rumours that FreeSwitch is getting attention from major industry players, which might lead one to believe they will become a very important player in the space in the near future...I'm just reporting on rumours here. See Tony's blog at:

http://schmoozecom.blogspot.com/


Last minute edit: Actually, the rumours have been clarified in this interview:

http://www.voipstore.com/2009/06/interview-with-anthony-minessale-from-freeswitch/

Still, we can see that FreeSwitch is becoming more and more important in the community...

So to all of you open source developers out there. Why not choose the independent PCI card vendor that brings quality and innovation to all major open source telephony projects out there? Would you lock yourself with a supplier that may compete with you or who's products only work with specific open source projects?