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

Mon Apr 1 03:51:38 CDT 2013

Wow, been working all night.  First time I got, got in years.  LOL.

Thanks and good one,
Steve T

On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 4:48 AM, Rizwan Kassim <rizwank at geekymedia.com>wrote:

> 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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>>
>>
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