OpenScape Unified Communication Server

On August 16, 2010 the Russian departments of Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN) and VMware companies announced joint development of OpenScape Unified Communication (UC) of Server 2010. It is purely program telephone exchange with voice transmission functions on IP networks (VoIP), call center, the connection calling with all specified called numbers if it does not answer by the main number (unified communication), etc.

As the CEO of SEN in Russia and the CIS Arseny Tarasov told, the main target audience for this development the company sees telecom operators, commercial data centers and big corporate customers. Upon purchase of OpenScape two schemes of payment – monthly and on number of jobs are provided. As Tarasov in a conversation with the correspondent of CNews explained, negotiations are conducted with all large current customers of SEN. "While there are no implementations in Russia, we expect to receive the first serious projects in this direction at the end of 2010 – the beginning of 2011", - he added. The head did not want to give forecasts for revenue.

"The market of virtualization of infrastructure will be saturated sooner or later, - the head of the Russian office of VMware company Antich Anton considers. – Now we aim that could work at our hypervisors as the bigger quantity of business software is possible. We want that in commercial DPCs and the softwares office centers for the services generating additional revenue (value added services, VAS), could work at our platform".

The main role in development belonged to SEN, programmers of VMware worked on ensuring start of OpenScape in virtual OS of a hypervisor. In the SEN code wrote three programming teams – American, European and from development center of the company in St. Petersburg. The Russian developers were responsible for localization of the interface (adding of Russian), compliance of software to requirements of the Russian regulators and coordination of works on the code relating to the system of quickly search actions (SQSA).

"Directly this part of software was written by programmers of the third party having examination in SORM, - the technical director of SEN in Russia Tkachyov Vladimir told CNews. – This part of a system, specific to Russia, cannot be virtualized since according to requirements of law enforcement authorities under problems of SORM the separate physical server should be selected". In the world only five countries imposing similar requirements to control of negotiations of subscribers among which there are Israel and the UAE were added by him.

What is interesting, SEN itself makes devices (for example, office automatic telephone exchanges) which do not become necessary in case of use of new software. On a question of CNews of whether will strike OpenScape the hardware direction of business of the company, her heads said that the trend of transition to software development is obvious to producers of the telecom equipment for a long time and nothing remains to them except how to follow it quicker than competitors. "Besides there are spheres from which customers will never pass to the IP telephony for reliability reasons, first of all it is power", - Tkachyov considers.

OpenScape UC Server is constructed based on key new products:

• the OpenScape UC Server Enterprise platform in which voice services and applications of unified communications are integrated. OpenScape UC Server Enterprise is intended for large enterprises, but at the same time the solution can be deployed on one server and is easily integrated with the existing customer's IT infrastructure;
• the solution HiPath 4000 Evolution, includes new program and hardware developments for convenient migration in convergent network IP-telefonii, including the solution of HiPath Access for increase in flexibility and simplification of management of a server architecture is used.

Core of a new solution are the flagman solutions Siemens Enterprise Communications: OpenScape Voice and OpenScape UC Suite which are developed according to philosophy of open standards. OpenScape Voice is the first product of operator level based on the SIP protocol, capable to provide with software tools connection within 100,000 users. Today on the 5th version of OpenScape Voice over 1 million licenses are sold. OpenScape UC Suite is a tool for reliable work with means of unified communications which has the improved performance.

The cost of ownership of the solution OpenScape UC Server and time of deployment are significantly reduced and do not require expensive or technology difficult preparation. OpenScape UC Server is easily integrated with the existing IT and telecommunication infrastructure, including the IP telephony and the PBX of production both Siemens Enterprise Communications, and any other vendor.

Products analogs

The technical director of Avaya in Russia and the CIS countries Sanadze Georgy told CNews that similar solutions already exist at many vendors. "In fact, this development – Softswitch of the 5th class, – he says. – In case of Avaya an analog of OpenScape is Session Manager. Our solution first of all is expected corporate customers, but in practice can solve problems of telecom operators. Including within outsourcing model when in the center SIP virtual machines are placed, and then subscribers unite to them".