<html><head/><body><html><head></head><body>The leader of the Kamailio project, Daniel-Constantin Mierla, just released a surprising statement that casts some doubt on the viability of our new business plan:<br>
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<a href="http://lists.sip-router.org/pipermail/sr-users/2013-April/077314.html">http://lists.sip-router.org/pipermail/sr-users/2013-April/077314.html</a><br>
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Well, this is certainly out of left field. We weren't expecting that.<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">Alex Balashov <abalashov@evaristesys.com> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<pre style="white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap:break-word; font-family: sans-serif; margin-top: 0px">For immediate release:<br /><br />ATLANTA, GA (1 April 2013)--Evariste Systems LLC, an Atlanta-based<br />consultancy specialising in Kamailio-based VoIP infrastructure solutions<br />for the ITSP and CLEC market, has announced that beginning in the second<br />quarter of 2013, it will be abandoning its Kamailio-based technology<br />portfolio to focus on its new role as a preferred VAR (Value Added<br />Reseller) for Acme Packet (NASDAQ:APKT).<br /><br />"It is with a heavy heart that we abandon five years of Kamailio-oriented<br />work and the Canonical SIP Routing Platform product derived from it,"<br />said Alex Balashov, the principal of the company.<br /><br />"However, the reality is that investment in open-source VoIP technology<br />is a dead end. From a technological point of view, we have lagged very<br />badly in meeting the needs of today's sophisticated VoIP market, and
it's<br />time to cut our losses. Asterisk, Kamailio, FreeSWITCH--all this stuff<br />just hasn't kept up with the pace of evolution of 3GPP, ETSI, and ITU<br />standards. We are tired of saying 'sorry, we don't support IMS or<br />H.323' to our resultingly dwindling customer base. Does anyone<br />actually run an all-SIP network?"<br /><br />Starting in early April, Evariste will begin providing value-added<br />consultancy related to the implementation of the Acme Packet Net-Net<br />Session Director. In Balashov's view, "the Net-Net SD is the only<br />product capable of meeting the perimeter security, routing and peering<br />needs of today's VoIP service delivery environment."<br /><br />Fred Posner, the director of Team Forrest, a Palner Group integration<br />and consultancy operation based in the Jacksonville, Florida area,<br />agreed:<br /><br />"SIP is a tiny piece of the telephony puzzle. The big boys of<br />ClueCon [an interoperator revenue-sharing consortium] want
DIAMETER-based<br />interdomain peering policy control, H.323, MGCP, and IMS. IMS is pretty<br />much how VoIP architecture is done now. We got out of the Asterisk<br />business just in time, right before Mitel swallowed the PBX world.<br />I'm glad to see Evariste is finally seeing the light, and I'm sure its<br />shareholders are too."<br /><br />Posner also believes Evariste's lack of support for TDM interfaces<br />accounted for dwindling market share.<br /><br />"Have you seen CSRP? It's SIP in, SIP out. Real inter-LATA haulers<br />and application service providers use TDM and leave SIP for things<br />like voicemail. I can't plug my DS3s into a SIP proxy, so I just<br />don't think there was any real demand for the sort of thing they<br />were doing."<br /><br />Noting Oracle's US$2.5bn acquisition of Acme Packet in early February,<br />as well as its more recently announced buyout of Tekelec, a Siris<br />Capital Group portfolio company, Balashov remarked: "The
obvious<br />shift to an Oracle-centric telephony paradigm was a kind of validation,<br />if you will, of our decision to unload our dead weight and sign on<br />to the revolution in unified communications."<br /><br />Sean McCord, of CyCORE Systems, an Atlanta-based software consulting<br />house and long-time Evariste creditor, agreed that there was a natural<br />synergy between Evariste's shift to Acme Packet and Oracle's dominance<br />of telephony infrastructure.<br /><br />"Oracle is a forward-thinking telecom pioneer," McCord said.<br />"The telephone is Oracle, and Oracle is the telephone."<br /><br />Balashov also noted that a tightening regulatory environment and new<br />consumer protection rules helped hasten the decision to embrace the<br />more professionalised Acme Packet product portfolio.<br /><br />John Knight, Senior Engineer at Hendersonville, NC-based Ringfree<br />Communications, one of Evariste's oldest channel partners, said:<br />"As one of Evariste's
long-time disties, we were jittery about exposure<br />to CALEA and the QA requirements of large call centers. We tried to<br />make do, but at some point we just had to put the relationship on<br />stop. I'm all in favour of open, but there's just no open-source<br />software out there that does call recording, and that's the bottom line<br />for us. In the end, we had to restructure some debt just to get<br />bondholders to let us source a proprietary solution on tick."<br /><br />In a thematically related move, Evariste will be dropping its heavy<br />use of the open-source PostgreSQL database manager for its rating and<br />reporting tools.<br /><br />"The business case for standardising on Oracle's databases could not be<br />clearer. With Oracle Database 11g's support of warehousing and OLTP,<br />the real mystery is why we didn't go there sooner," said Balashov.<br /><br />Carlos Alvarez, a director at Televolve, a growing Phoenix-area VoIP<br />operator, recently
spearheaded a move away from Evariste's PostgreSQL-<br />based call detail record (CDR) storage solution to one running atop<br />Microsoft SQL Server 2008.<br /><br />Alvarez commented: "Evariste had a nice idea, in a cute, David-and-Goliath<br />kind of way, but we're processing over five hundred phone calls a day<br />now. Are we really going to store those kinds of volumes in an<br />open-source database? Might as well just put it all in flat text<br />files at that point. Phone service is an uptime game. You can't<br />compromise on this stuff. What if someone needs to call 911?"<br /><br />Asked to summarise his expectations, Balashov said: "I hope this turns us<br />around in a big way. We were wrong to think that nobody cared about<br />stuff like P-CSCFs, or that you could deliver even rudimentary VoIP<br />to the premise without the expansive feature set of a comprehensive<br />solution like the Net-Net SBC. I can only hope the market forgives us<br />for betting on
'SIP Express Router' and its ilk back in the day, and<br />gives us a chance to do it right in round two."<br /><br />Fred Posner, of Team Forrest, added: "Besides, if you look at the Git<br />repository, Kamailio hasn't had any code contributions in at least five<br />years. It seems everyone's figured out this pure SIP stuff is defunct<br />and hokey."<br /><br /><br /><br />--<br /><hr /><br />-- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by <a href="http://www.api-digital.com">http://www.api-digital.com</a> --<br /><br />asterisk-biz mailing list<br />To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:<br /><a href="http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz">http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz</a><br /></pre></blockquote></div><br>
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Sent from my Nexus 10, with all the figments of autocorrect that might imply.<br>
<br>
Alex Balashov - Principal<br>
Evariste Systems LLC<br>
235 E Ponce de Leon Ave<br>
Suite 106<br>
Decatur, GA 30030<br>
United States<br>
Tel: +1-678-954-0670<br>
Web: <a href="http://www.evaristesys.com">http://www.evaristesys.com</a>/, <a href="http://www.alexbalashov.com/">http://www.alexbalashov.com/</a></body></html></body></html>