SESSION BORDER CONTROL VENDORS DIVERGE AT VON

The white hot session border control market showed no signs of cooling off last week at the Voice on the Net show in Santa Clara, Calif., but opinion among vendors on where the market is headed were clearly on display.

While some softswitch vendors, notably Sonus Networks, have started incorporating some of the functionality of session border controls (SBCs) in their plans, those with dedicated boxes insist they have plenty of market interest to survive as standalone entities.

“In Q1, from a bookings perspective, we almost did the amount we did in all of last year,” said Jim Hourihan, vice president of marketing and product management for Acme Packet, which used VON to launch a new SBC designed for large Tier 1 service providers. Hourihan said most of the sales are coming from carriers in Japan and Fast Web in Italy.

Reflecting the interest in SBCs, almost $200 million in venture capital money has been poured into the market over the last year. However, at least one vendor doesn't see the market continuing at its current pace and believes consolidation will begin soon.

Jasomi Networks began offering a version of its SBC as an embedded piece of software designed to be integrated into other products. Dan Freedman, CEO of Jasomi, said the company made the move in part because there are at least eight SBC vendors chasing a limited market, and most will become cogs within larger companies.

“Most of us will survive, but not as independent companies,” he said. “The companies that demonstrate customer traction will be the first to [be acquired].”

Freedman believes SBCs as software can be integrated into a number of different network elements, including firewalls.

“There will be a number of different things that will be blurring the line between SBCs and firewalls,” he said.