New 3Com product offers resilient enterprise IP communications

3Com Corporation has expanded its range of converged communications platforms to deliver a higher degree of reliability, resiliency and ease of management for supporting voice over IP (VoIP) solutions with the new V6000 Integrated Branch Communications platform. The new solution offers centrally-managed, business continuity applications to ensure that phone service, messaging and system management continue to be available at remote sites in the event of wide area network (WAN) failure.

The new V6000 Integrated Branch Communications platform runs 3Com's award-winning VCX IP Telephony module and convergence applications, which were recognized for its exceptional distributed ‘survivability’ in a recent test conducted by Miercom, a privately held network consultancy, specializing in networking and communications-related product testing and analysis. Designed for medium to large, geographically distributed enterprises, the 3Com V6000 supports productivity-enhancing IP applications, including SIP-based IP Messaging, IP Mobility, IP Contact Center, IP Conferencing and Presence.

"When we tested the fail-over of the VCX, we were frankly astonished that we could keep disconnecting back-up controllers, and phone service with 3Com's communications system continued without skipping a beat," said Ed Mier, president of Miercom. "3Com's architecture for IP convergence is a key asset of the vendor's SIP-based portfolio. It's high survivability IP convergence, at its finest, and brings IP telephony closer and closer to the legendary reliability of legacy telecommunications."

Key to the VCX architecture is the total availability of the applications. Should the WAN between sites be lost, the IP Telephony and IP Messaging applications running on the V6000 can work totally independent of the corporate headquarter system. Once the network becomes operational, the VCX systems will automatically resume normal networking operations. Even in the extreme event of a failure of the local V6000 server, the 3Com IP phones will automatically re-route to the central site server running the VCX system for call control.

Another key attribute of the V6000 platform is its ease of management and deployment. Since the platform has built-in connectivity ports to the network, as well as VCX call control and IP messaging software, small branch locations can be deployed quickly and with a minimal amount of equipment. Furthermore, because system management can be done remotely, no on-site telephony expertise is required.

The V6000 is priced starting at $3,500 (US list) for the hardware and $1,000 (US list) for the software license.

•Date: 24th Jan 2006• Region: US/World • Type: Article •Topic: Telecoms continuity
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