VOCALTEC REVAMPS PRODUCT LINES, FOCUS

VocalTec is telling the world it’s ready to reassume its place at the forefront of the voice over IP sector, releasing a new product set that brings the company’s packet-switching focus out of the core and into the network edge--a dramatic shift in its business model, which for several years dealt solely with the long-distance market.

Today, VocalTec announced three new products in its Essentra line: a broadband VoIP application server, an SS7-enabled SIP gateway and a peering manager. In addition, VocalTec said it would break up its core product portfolio, allowing customers to buy individual components of both its core and edge product suite.

The company’s strategy is twofold, said Ari Rabban, VocalTec’s vice president for corporate development: The product line opens up numerous new sales opportunities in an expanding sector, and allowing customers to mix and match its current products with its competitors’ expands VocalTec’s addressable market by exponential amounts.

“Focusing on the long-distance market prevented us from addressing opportunities even with our existing customers,” Rabban said. “The long-distance side was simply too closed. Now it’s much easier for us to open up to new markets.”

When VocalTec launched in 1995 it made a big splash internationally with its Internet Phone product, the first voice-over-the-Internet phone solution. While a popular consumer product for a while, the technology never became more than a novelty due to its limitations over dial-up connections. Over the next decade, VocalTec began focusing on its network software architecture and eventually became a significant player in the growing Class 4 long-distance market, selling to Tier II and eventually Tier I long-distance carriers in 100 countries around the globe.

Since then, however, VoIP to the customer premises has taken hold, and VocalTec finds itself back in the edge arena, this time not with a consumer offering but with software and servers that will allow carriers to add Class 5 intelligence and enhanced features to access VoIP networks and the infrastructure necessary to connect VoIP networks to other NGNs as well as traditional TDM networks.

“The wholesale long distance market is changing. The margins are shrinking,” Rabban said. “The focus of VoIP is moving much more toward access.”