No Jitter is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Have We Reached the PBX Tipping Point?

Given my many past No Jitter articles that argue not for the death of, but for the continuation of the PBX, PSTN, and desk phones, you might be surprised that I am now exploring this topic.

So let's be clear: The PBX still isn't dead, neither is the PSTN, and desk phones are still around and will continue to be for quite some time. In fact, it will take years to displace the on-premises PBX from the scores of SMBs. The PSTN will continue to serve as an inconvenient failover, while desk phones act as cheap terminals.

But I am suggesting that a significant tipping point is in our midst:

In my recent past posts, I've written about Adtran products that utilize the combination of SDN (software defined networking) and NFV (network function virtualization). I wrote that this is an interesting move for Adtran since the company is a hardware manufacturer, but as I noted then and will repeat now, "This doesn't necessarily translate to fewer hardware sales for the company, but it absolutely means a major shift in what's headed to the cloud: Wi-Fi control, firewall and security layers, analytics, storage, and mobility."

Well, you can throw the PBX in with that list. VMware is another company that has indicated plans to put PBXs of choice in the cloud. I recently came across a job description for a position with VMware that I found to be particularly revealing as to its stance on the cloud and the PBX. It read:

Understand the major telecommunications equipment market segments, standards, trends, products and vendors on the market and how they can be integrated with VMware technologies to achieve customer solutions.

I believe this can be roughly translated to: The PBX will never die; existing/surviving manufacturers of hardware PBXs will need to evolve into the cloud or become insignificant market shareholders of premises-based solutions.

Am I basing this on just one job description? Not at all! The telecommunications industry is in need of convergence more than most enterprises. Telcos and investors are pushing forward with mergers and acquisitions and swallowing up tech companies left and right.

The old central office (CO) has proven itself adept at becoming a new data center. And not to sound negative, but this evolution will likely mean chaos and disruption for customers, vendors, and investors alike.

In the race among PBX vendors to win customers, perception is everything. Which PBX is selected and which endpoints are installed will depend largely on customer choice, and selections will be made based on core system features, add-on features and customization options.

This will be an interesting race. Once users have their vendor of choice, then like IBM and its OSS will they select industry-specific solutions?

Convergence is happening with SDN and NFV, and you can't leave out from the discussion virtualization by VMware. I hope that this teases your imagination for what's to come, and at the very least, opens up new dialogues into Deming's' 14 points of transformation.

Follow Matt Brunk on Twitter and Google+!
@telecomworx
Matt Brunk on Google+