Sangoma, Dialogic, Huawei: Best SBCs in Overall Satisfaction

Customers have excellent things to report about session border controllers (SBCs) from Sangoma, Dialogic, and Huawei, based on a new Eastern Management Group survey of 3,000 IT managers worldwide. The three SBC providers lead every major competitor in providing the best overall satisfaction.

In our study of the top 14 SBC vendors, we had each customer judge its own SBC provider in 10 measurement areas we call Life-Cycle Customer Satisfaction Research. Customer life-cycle evaluations start with the initial product evaluation, then installation, and after several intermediate measurements, like service and value, end with the pinnacle measurement called overall satisfaction. This last measure reflects the customer's opinion of how its own SBC vendor performed across the spectrum of customer measurements. It's the ultimate compliment. Overall satisfaction is where Sangoma, Dialogic, and Huawei -- the best of the best -- shine brightest in the new Eastern Management Group "2018 Session Border Controller Customer Satisfaction Report".

Held in High Esteem

• Huawei -- Customers love this company. Even if you're not thinking of Huawei, many SBC customers are. Outside the U.S. is where to find thousands of Huawei carrier and enterprise customers, including service providers like BT, Orange, and Vodafone, delighted with the company, based on our customer interviews. But it's not just tier-1 service providers that love Huawei; it's also small carriers dependent on Huawei for low-cost gear. While Huawei's carrier business is five times bigger than the enterprise, the latter is growing faster, especially in vertical markets like safe cities, finance, energy, transportation, and manufacturing. We think a large contributor to Huawei's overall satisfaction is the 80,000 employees, 45% of the workforce, involved in R&D. (Read our recent No Jitter piece for our discussion of how Huawei leverages employee R&D power.)

• Sangoma -- Winner in multiple measurements.

Unknown even by many of its larger peers, Sangoma has quietly built a base of fervent customer supporters for its SBCs. Sangoma is a small company with FY18 revenue of $57 million. However, year-over-year sales are well up, and on top of that Sangoma is purchasing Digium, a VoIP darling.

Sangoma's SBC technology and products are peerless, a conclusion we draw from the Sangoma users we researched. Customers give Sangoma the highest possible Eastern Management Group ranking -- four stars out of a possible four -- for reliability. This important measurement, discussed in another No Jitter article, is one of the several customer satisfaction measurements in which Sangoma scored well. This contributed to Sangoma's top rating in overall satisfaction.

• Dialogic -- Just tops.

No SBC beats Dialogic in value. Of the many things customers roll into an SBC buying decision, value approaches the top of the list. It encompasses the technology, the purchase experience, after-sale support, and so much more. Altogether, Dialogic scored well in multiple customer satisfaction measurements and ended up as the SBC leader in overall satisfaction.

Dialogic has re-architected its SBC product portfolio from a hardware-centric solution to a software-only, cloud-native architecture in line with the company's overall vision. With a virtual solution, customers can deploy a BorderNet SBC on premises, in public and private clouds, and in hybrid environments. This change is positively impacting customer perceptions and experiences with Dialogic.

This software-centric company has operations in 25 countries and good distribution across North America, EMEA, LATAM, and APAC. The company's customers are service providers and enterprises from 10 to more than 20,000 employees.

Metaswitch Deserves a Mention, Too

• Metaswitch -- Perfect 100 Net Promoter Score. We must include Metaswitch, which holds a key-spot -- willingness to recommend -- in Eastern Management Group's 2018 Session Border Controller Customer Satisfaction study. It's incredibly rare, in any industry, that 100% of respondents would recommend a product and company to their peers. But our research on Metaswitch found just that, as we previously noted on No Jitter.

If you have a hard time discerning from which SBC vendor to purchase, it may be because each of the four providers discussed in this piece has its own niches. Geographic presence and support are important to some. Targeted customer size (e.g., small, mid-market, enterprise, carrier) is a focus of others. And vertical market specialties and specialists are touted by different providers. So, we recommend that you do your homework.

This is Eastern Management Group's fourth customer satisfaction study of SIP technology providers within the past year. Other subjects have been SIP trunks, VoIP phones, and PBXs. More information about the report "2018 Session Border Controller SBC Customer Satisfaction" is available from Eastern Management Group. For questions about the SBC customer satisfaction study and report please ask our researchers or contact John Malone.

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