Zultys introduces itself with an integrated enterprise IP solution

Declaring the death of the legacy PBX, privately funded Sunnyvale, CA-based startup Zultys Technologies announced the birth of its first product this week, the MX1200 enterprise media exchange.

The MX1200 is a SIP-based all-in-one unit that provides PBX functionality as well as automatic call distribution and voice mail on the voice side. It also integrates data, fax and video and acts as an Internet gateway complete with firewall and network address translation capabilities.

“Most solutions in telecom come in many pieces all with their own administration systems. We build products that are highly integrated,” said Patrick Ferriter, product manager for Zultys.

. The MX1200 is a two-unit sized standalone box that supports from 25 to 1200 users without the need for additional hardware. Price ranges from $20,000 to $212,000. The Zultys Web site includes a configuration calculator to estimate specific pricing.

The unit supports most major PBX features as well as presence and instant messaging and acts as a SIP user agent client and server and a SIP registrar.

For interconnection, the MX1200 supports 12 powered Ethernet ports and 16 non-powered ports as well as eight analog ports and eight T1/E1 ports for connectivity to the central office or an Internet service provider. There is also a Gigabit Ethernet port. The unit can work in conjunction with existing PBXs.

Zultys built its product using open technologies such as SIP, Voice XML and telephone application programming interface (TAPI) and runs on a Linux operating system. “Everyone says they are open if they are working toward open standards, but if you plug into their open system with someone else’s phone, you’ll have problems,” Ferriter said.

Zultys guarantees compatibility with Microsoft Messenger and the Cisco 7960 IP phone. The product also supports other IP phones including PingTel, Mitel and IPDialog.

The same administrative software, called MXIE, is used for configuration, system administration, PBX functions, monitoring and maintenance and provides a client interface for controlling presence status and access to contact management applications such as ACT!, Goldmine, Maximizer and Outlook.

Zultys has signed up 35 value-added resellers and expects to have 150 by the end of next year.

“For the market Zultys is courting, which is the small and medium enterprise, the integrated approach is absolutely the appropriate direction,” said Jeff Snyder, vice president and chief analyst at Gartner Dataquest.

Snyder said the company’s goal is to make it easy for enterprises to have full features without the need to manage products from a dozen different vendors and maintain an entire staff to support the integration between products. He said it was also important from a maintenance point of view.

“A single point of support is extremely important to these customers. If something goes wrong they don’t have the finger-pointing you see in larger, mixed environments,” Snyder said.