[asterisk-biz] Evariste Systems drops open source, becomes Acme Packet reseller

Mon Apr 1 03:48:30 CDT 2013

I suggest you look at the date.
On Apr 1, 2013 3:47 AM, "Steve Totaro" <stotaro at totarotechnologies.com>
wrote:

> Best of luck but this is FUD and laughable.  If you want, I can do a point
> by point, but I am sure most Asterisk folks know what is bunk.  The most
> laughable.
>
> 500 calls a day, seriously?  No open source that does call recording?
>
> This "Press Release", if you can call it that, does not belong on the list.
>
> Thanks
> Steve Totaro
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 1:53 AM, Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com>wrote:
>
>> For immediate release:
>>
>> ATLANTA, GA (1 April 2013)--Evariste Systems LLC, an Atlanta-based
>> consultancy specialising in Kamailio-based VoIP infrastructure solutions
>> for the ITSP and CLEC market, has announced that beginning in the second
>> quarter of 2013, it will be abandoning its Kamailio-based technology
>> portfolio to focus on its new role as a preferred VAR (Value Added
>> Reseller) for Acme Packet (NASDAQ:APKT).
>>
>> "It is with a heavy heart that we abandon five years of Kamailio-oriented
>> work and the Canonical SIP Routing Platform product derived from it,"
>> said Alex Balashov, the principal of the company.
>>
>> "However, the reality is that investment in open-source VoIP technology
>> is a dead end.  From a technological point of view, we have lagged very
>> badly in meeting the needs of today's sophisticated VoIP market, and it's
>> time to cut our losses.  Asterisk, Kamailio, FreeSWITCH--all this stuff
>> just hasn't kept up with the pace of evolution of 3GPP, ETSI, and ITU
>> standards.  We are tired of saying 'sorry, we don't support IMS or
>> H.323' to our resultingly dwindling customer base.  Does anyone
>> actually run an all-SIP network?"
>>
>> Starting in early April, Evariste will begin providing value-added
>> consultancy related to the implementation of the Acme Packet Net-Net
>> Session Director.  In Balashov's view, "the Net-Net SD is the only
>> product capable of meeting the perimeter security, routing and peering
>> needs of today's VoIP service delivery environment."
>>
>> Fred Posner, the director of Team Forrest, a Palner Group integration
>> and consultancy operation based in the Jacksonville, Florida area,
>> agreed:
>>
>> "SIP is a tiny piece of the telephony puzzle. The big boys of
>> ClueCon [an interoperator revenue-sharing consortium] want DIAMETER-based
>> interdomain peering policy control, H.323, MGCP, and IMS.  IMS is pretty
>> much how VoIP architecture is done now.  We got out of the Asterisk
>> business just in time, right before Mitel swallowed the PBX world.
>> I'm glad to see Evariste is finally seeing the light, and I'm sure its
>> shareholders are too."
>>
>> Posner also believes Evariste's lack of support for TDM interfaces
>> accounted for dwindling market share.
>>
>> "Have you seen CSRP?  It's SIP in, SIP out.  Real inter-LATA haulers
>> and application service providers use TDM and leave SIP for things
>> like voicemail.  I can't plug my DS3s into a SIP proxy, so I just
>> don't think there was any real demand for the sort of thing they
>> were doing."
>>
>> Noting Oracle's US$2.5bn acquisition of Acme Packet in early February,
>> as well as its more recently announced buyout of Tekelec, a Siris
>> Capital Group portfolio company, Balashov remarked: "The obvious
>> shift to an Oracle-centric telephony paradigm was a kind of validation,
>> if you will, of our decision to unload our dead weight and sign on
>> to the revolution in unified communications."
>>
>> Sean McCord, of CyCORE Systems, an Atlanta-based software consulting
>> house and long-time Evariste creditor, agreed that there was a natural
>> synergy between Evariste's shift to Acme Packet and Oracle's dominance
>> of telephony infrastructure.
>>
>> "Oracle is a forward-thinking telecom pioneer," McCord said.
>> "The telephone is Oracle, and Oracle is the telephone."
>>
>> Balashov also noted that a tightening regulatory environment and new
>> consumer protection rules helped hasten the decision to embrace the
>> more professionalised Acme Packet product portfolio.
>>
>> John Knight, Senior Engineer at Hendersonville, NC-based Ringfree
>> Communications, one of Evariste's oldest channel partners, said:
>> "As one of Evariste's long-time disties, we were jittery about exposure
>> to CALEA and the QA requirements of large call centers.  We tried to
>> make do, but at some point we just had to put the relationship on
>> stop.  I'm all in favour of open, but there's just no open-source
>> software out there that does call recording, and that's the bottom line
>> for us.  In the end, we had to restructure some debt just to get
>> bondholders to let us source a proprietary solution on tick."
>>
>> In a thematically related move, Evariste will be dropping its heavy
>> use of the open-source PostgreSQL database manager for its rating and
>> reporting tools.
>>
>> "The business case for standardising on Oracle's databases could not be
>> clearer.  With Oracle Database 11g's support of warehousing and OLTP,
>> the real mystery is why we didn't go there sooner," said Balashov.
>>
>> Carlos Alvarez, a director at Televolve, a growing Phoenix-area VoIP
>> operator, recently spearheaded a move away from Evariste's PostgreSQL-
>> based call detail record (CDR) storage solution to one running atop
>> Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
>>
>> Alvarez commented: "Evariste had a nice idea, in a cute, David-and-Goliath
>> kind of way, but we're processing over five hundred phone calls a day
>> now.  Are we really going to store those kinds of volumes in an
>> open-source database?  Might as well just put it all in flat text
>> files at that point.  Phone service is an uptime game. You can't
>> compromise on this stuff. What if someone needs to call 911?"
>>
>> Asked to summarise his expectations, Balashov said: "I hope this turns us
>> around in a big way.  We were wrong to think that nobody cared about
>> stuff like P-CSCFs, or that you could deliver even rudimentary VoIP
>> to the premise without the expansive feature set of a comprehensive
>> solution like the Net-Net SBC.  I can only hope the market forgives us
>> for betting on 'SIP Express Router' and its ilk back in the day, and
>> gives us a chance to do it right in round two."
>>
>> Fred Posner, of Team Forrest, added: "Besides, if you look at the Git
>> repository, Kamailio hasn't had any code contributions in at least five
>> years. It seems everyone's figured out this pure SIP stuff is defunct
>> and hokey."
>>
>>
>>
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