Sonexis introduces “plug-and-play” audioconferencing appliance

Citing a need for easy-to-use, inexpensive audioconferencing, Sonexis has introduced the audioCollaborator plug-and-play, on-demand audioconferencing appliance. It plans mass-market deployment deliveries starting in May.

The audioCollaborator will help move companies into their own audioconferencing, because it is easy to install and cheaper than outsourcing, said David Friend, Sonexis’ chairman-CEO. For now, the product only includes audioconferencing, but that alone can save companies thousands of dollars, Friend predicted.

“This is reservationless conferencing, which is sort of the hot spot in the market where you don’t have to call up in advance and make reservations,” said Friend.

Sonexis has engineered a technology “where we do on a Pentium what a lot of other people have to do with DSP cards,” he said. “That’s the key way of getting the costs way down.”

Lower costs translate into more calls handled via more ports. Sonexis’ low-end product has 24 ports and can do about 30,000 minutes of conferencing a month on a single T1 line, according to Friend.

“That would replace about $10,000 a month of AT&T conferencing at 30 to 35 cents a minute,” he said.

It’s also different than most other currently available architectures.

“Most of the conference bridges that are out there today are built with boards that do all the conferencing. Then they put them into a computer and add a lot of other junk,” Friend said. “At the low end of the market, [the price is] probably close to $2,000 a port. We’re selling our box for less than half of that at list price.”

Conferencing will migrate slowly to full videoconferencing, especially as companies like Sonexis help companies do their own conferencing via in-house Centrex, PBX and IP equipment, he said.

“Video is the last thing that’s going to get widespread acceptance,” Friend said. “People need to hear each other well; they need to be able to share documents or see the PowerPoint slides or see the demo [via Web collaboration]. The third thing is the talking head. It doesn’t add a huge amount to the other two.”