Will PBXs Evolve into SAXs?Will PBXs Evolve into SAXs?

VoiceCon ProgramSome early signs of a shift are visible, although it may be another 5-10 years before everything is in place.

VoiceCon Program Several events and announcements in the past two weeks, including those made at Lotusphere, the Avaya/Nortel roadmap, Mitel's new mobile voice and data services, and what was discussed at the Genesys/Alcatel-Lucent analyst conference, reminded me of issues and predictions I made in a white paper more than 6 years ago. The paper was called The Communications/Information Productivity Revolution, and it covered a wide range of topics, including the important question of the future of the PBX.We are at the very early stages of the office phone evolution, but it is easy to predict that in the future the majority of office phones will be wireless. This will dovetail with the evolution of how these devices get connected - the role traditionally played by a PBX. In the white paper I predicted a new Connection Model - how we will communicate based on various use cases. In very simple terms, a series of SIP servers - at home, in the office and in the cloud, will communicate to connect users to each other and provide them with access to information.

What does this mean for the future for the PBX? Well, the PBX as we've known it will disappear, as it evolves into a Services Access Exchange (SAX). The SAX will know where you are, what devices are available near you and the capabilities of those devices, such as display size, bandwidth, etc.

But for this to occur, the carriers/service providers need to evolve their strategy, as do the vendors providing call control functionality. Some early signs of a shift are visible, although it may be another 5-10 years before everything is in place for this prediction to become a reality.

Some traditional PBX vendors will deliver on this vision better than others. For example, Mitel has already virtualized its PBX software, and if it can move some call control into the mobile network (maybe as part of its recent mobility announcement), the company will have a compelling solution. Also, Siemens, Avaya and Cisco have all announced (in that sequence) SIP "session management" capabilities that mirror the Internet Multimedia Subsystem functions of the wireless carriers' networks and that begin to look like a SAX. As one of the few companies that still has carrier and enterprise divisions, Alcatel-Lucent also may be in a very advantageous position to help the carriers move to this new model, and at the same time enhance Alcatel-Lucent enterprise offerings.

How will this impact your UC Strategy? We'll be following up on this issue, next week with a posting on www.UCStrategies.com, and then in the VoiceCon eNews, the week of February 7th. Stay tuned.VoiceCon ProgramSome early signs of a shift are visible, although it may be another 5-10 years before everything is in place.