Sylantro scores in east with hosted PBX, IP Centrex

Sylantro Systems announced two deployments last week at the VON conference in Boston. Mindwire Communications, serving the Southeastern U.S., from Hunstville, Ala., and Edge Telecom in Tokyo are now using Sylantro’s platform to provide IP Centrex services.

Sylantro also announced a new SIP initiative, partner interoperability and product enhancements for hosted PBX customers.

Mindwire, formerly Vision Communications Concepts, will provide its MindConnect IP Centrex Solution using Sylantro’s platform. It also provides voice-over-IP solutions, data access and switching services to small- to medium-sized businesses, large enterprises and government agencies.

The MindConnect product comes with a suite of PBX replacement features using VoIP including several service packages such as hosted call center, find me/follow me, unified messaging, voice mail and conferencing.

“It’s a hosted application via a branded portal. There is no client software required, so it is easy for the service provider to roll out,” said Laura Thompson, vice president of corporate marketing and channels for Sylantro.

Edge Telecom is a new subsidiary of content delivery and data networking conglomerate Edge Co. It will use Sylantro’s platform to deliver IP Centrex services and also will offer voice VPN and long distance service.

Edge, the parent company, also joined Xten Networks and Sylantro in pre-integrating their products and services for an enterprise-class softphone business solution. Xten provided its X-Pro softphone, Sylantro supplied its SIP-based application server and EDGE provided the real world validation.

Sylantro announced interoperability with Santa Clara, Calif.-based Edgewater Networks’ EdgeMarc series appliances, which provide a demarcation point between WANs and LANs and resolves NAT/firewall traversal problems. Hosted communications provider, Sentient Group, is using the integrated solution to provide managed voice and data communication services.

The company also introduced new platform capabilities that extend hosted communications services to PBX station users. GoBeam help Sylantro develop and test the features and will be the first service provider to roll them out. PBX users will be able to access features such as hosted directories, click-to-call, unified messaging, conferencing and Windows Outlook without having to replace their premises equipment.

“You can now add on enhanced services without having to go to an IP-PBX. Soon, people will begin to understand they don’t have to buy a whole new system,” Thompson said.

Finally, Sylantro authored and submitted to various standards bodies a series of documents, called SIP-B, which outline requirements for features that are standards on a PBX, but have not yet been addressed by SIP, such as bridged line appearances, barge-in, whisper, camp-on and distinctive ringing.