WHAT'S WRONG WITH BETTER, FASTER, CHEAPER?
VARS, Interconnects and even customers have used all the means available to save capital. Who in enterprise is willing to say they haven't in the past or won't in the future?
TDM is a HUGE business. TDM prices are not going up, did not go up because of availability and won’t likely go up because of age. Dare to compare the past 10 or even 20 years and you will find stability in the numbers. The numbers, not the emotion or rhetoric, reveal this. I’ve said for several years here and at the former VoIPLoop that TDM prices continue to offer the best deals and continue to do so. Viability of an aging system is something that every customer comes to terms with, and this includes early IPT systems that we deployed. We still have a few old IPT boxes out there- while most have been replaced with a HYBRID except one- and this one exception is a hosted solution. The customer replaced the “pure IP-PBX” with a hosted model- one that they are the primary VC source of funding for by the way.
Business shuffles assets to and fro- from one place to another. Why should telephone assets be any different? The market isn't depleted of good personnel knowing how to install, configure and maintain TDM gear. In fact, I’d argue that it’s just the opposite. The concern of having qualified and enough qualified and experienced personnel in IPT isn’t just another transparency of service in the industry, but it’s more like blind love. I hear you when you say IPT is better but the reality is that people with the experience and qualifications are still in short supply. Couple this with the complexity of IPT, and realism kicks in while fairy tales begin to fade very rapidly. IPT isn’t easy and like I said at VoiceCon in Orlando, telephony has taken a real turn now that we have Doctors to fix it.
IPT is young and the experience in the industry is not by any means evolved unless of course you carry the title of Doctor and the title of IPT. I’m referring to Fiona Lodge attending and presenting at IPT Troubleshooting in Orlando last month. She knows, as do the carriers, the business including IPT, and they sit comfortably at a distance from the L-enterprise that wants to be its own telephone company. In essence- how much you want to be your own telephony company is what you are ultimately deciding, and then delegating to IT to carry out and deliver, and Fiona and the carriers understand this. Then, there are only so many Cisco IPT engineers and that’s why they command base salaries upward of $200K. Show me a PBX guy commanding these salaries.
Still, it seems every other year is another proclamation that TDM is dead! Watch out- Dead Man Walking. Those dead men walking are still viable and profitable. I believe my other buddies in the business are right on when they tell me that it will take years to displace the TDM gear in place today- and these conversations date as far back as the late 1990’s. A great example of this is the Social Security Administration and Nortel’s effort to change the SSA over to IP- it’s a massive (and late, much needed), ten-year initial contract deployment. I know their telephony hardware is aging, I remember their gear going in service in the mid-1980’s.
Still, I wouldn’t be so bold as to give a date for the last TDM system to be removed from service, but I would believe it to be reasonable to expect soon, that TDM systems will no longer be manufactured. When? A poll of all the manufacturers would prove very interesting.
So as much as a surprise as this is going to be for some of you: IP is not the solution, IP is not the only solution, but it remains that IP is a solution adrift in a huge sea of opportunity. HYBRID however, is still leading the pack and still attracts the masses leaps and bounds above the “pure-IP systems.” Why? Maybe, just because it’s so practical.
But still, change takes time and life it is said that life is wasted on youth. So, from where I sit, the IP kid isn’t king yet and every time an IT guy declares it so, take a look around. Stop gauging what’s being shipped--that’s a no brainer; it will have an element of IP unless of course it’s a “pure TDM” deal, which may be less common.
As a last note- personally and professionally I want it all in IPT. Lower cost, ease of installation and maintenance, better profits, better returns, longer life span, higher reliability, better quality (better, faster, cheaper) and I don’t care if it’s Hybrid, pure IP or something else. Some say my expectations are too high.
But what I really, really want- is more like what IBM predicts: no more email, phones nor PCs and you can bet that the virtual office is being driven by a key factor, and that is environmentalism. So if you’re thinking I’m hanging on to old technology, then think again. I’ll be happy with my communicator badge so long as it has an off, DND or GO-AWAY button. Then, I’ll gladly lead the charge to hoist the skull and cross-bones flag myself, declare the death of TDM, and throw a party in honor of it. Don’t expect me to do too much more because I’ll likely still be hanging onto my old antiques of art until “you pry them from my cold dead hands.” By then, will a new league will have emerged from the dust of the legacy TDM days. Then, you too can stop and think about who’s left standing and Counting Coup and maybe one day these IT guys proclaiming the death of TDM will have a legacy of their own to brag about.
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Matt Brunk is president of Telecomworx, a Maryland-based interconnect. He is also a blogger for No Jitter, and a regular speaker at VoiceCon.
