Doug on IP Comm » ADTRAN

Enterprise Connect 2012: From Enterprise Connect to… Business Connect

Doug Mohney — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:57:11 +0000

A couple of years ago, VoiceCon morphed into Enterprise Connect because there was UC, there was video, and voice was just so passé. When I talked to Co-chair/CEO Fred Knight back in the day, he said the “sweet spot” for the show were enterprise clients with 1,000 seats or more. Big companies. Multi-site companies. Fortune 500 to 1000-2000 companies. Sooo… how come there are a significant number of companies that show up to announce SME solutions?

Off the top of my head, there’s ADTRAN, Avaya and CounterPath. ADTRAN rolled out its SBC (session border controller) for NetVanta and Total Access CPE. The software can be purchased for 10, 25, and 100 sessions, with a $395 to $495 list price, depending on the box it runs on. Avaya introduced its cloud solutions, including AvayaLive Connect “a new, fully-integrated, unified communications solution for small businesses that includes voice, voice conferencing, messaging, video, mobility, presence and more.” CounterPath showed up to give a “sneak peak” of SoftPhone.com, a cloud offering to connect CounterPath X-Lite softphone users (i.e., the people too cheap to pay for a copy of Bria). SoftPhone.com is targeted at 25-30 seat SMBs to connect X-Lite to X-Lite calls for free, while terminating calls over an IP PBX when the recipient is not connected to the SoftPhone.com network.

Enterprise Connect isn’t a huge show — fits nicely into the Gaylord Convention Center in Orlando — and it treats the attending media quite well. I don’t know, but suspect from the quality of amenities given to attendees and the media, it’s not exactly a cheap show to exhibit at; a 3 day VIP Special for 2012 is already running at $1695 for attendees. (But you can get in on an Expo Plus pass free for access to keynotes, show floor, sponsored sessions, and networking receptions).

I guess my point is that I’ve seen SMB-esque announcements out of Enterprise Connect before and I have to wonder if there’s room somewhere for a dedicated Business Connect show strictly for the 2-500 SMB world.

Enterprise Connect 2012: ADTRAN adds SBC to NetVanta and Total Access Business Gateways

Doug Mohney — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:04:41 +0000

Orlando, Florida – ADTRAN has rolled out Session Border Control (SBC) software to its NetVanta 3430 and 6000 series, plus its Total Access 900e IP Business Gateways.

Targeted at the small to medium enterprise (SME) markets, the new SBC offering rolls into service providers’ need for a new CPE demarc device to handle normalization, security and monitoring for SIP trunking services.

The announcement shouldn’t come as a surprise; It’s part of ADTRAN’s philosophy these days to add more functionality to its devices via software. The company hinted it might add SBC functionality and other features to its boxes at its annual media/analyst event in December.

Features included in the SBC software are:NAT/firewall traversal, VoIP protocol interworking, transcoding, media anchoring and “numerous” service provider troubleshooting tools.

By moving the functionality to the edge of the enterprise network, service providers can more easily integrate directly with a wide variety of IP PBX vendors’ SIP trunking implementations. It also provides a clear point of demarcation that enables providers to gather valuable metrics and perform tests, as well as implement network disaster recovery, security and failover polices without having to modify a customer owned IP PBX. (Yes, that’s straight out of the press release…)

Upcoming events—ADTRAN/Huntsville, CES 2012, IT EXPO East 2012

Doug Mohney — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:52:25 +0000

Between now and the beginning of February, I’ll be at three different industry events.

ADTRAN media briefings – Huntsville, AL

ADTRAN’s annual briefing event, held in Huntsville. Always interesting because of what you learn about ADTRAN and its neighborhood community.

CES 2012 – Las Vegas

Held this year towards the beginning of the week, this is a multi-day ordeal. And not really in a good way.

Sunday, January 9 – Storage Visions 2012 and “CES Unveiled.” Never been to the former event, but it’s a hot topic this year with the flooding in Thailand causing ripples in the hard drive food chain.

Monday, January 10 – CES Press Day. Starts with the (always overcrowded) LG press launch at 8 AM, with a number of companies throughout the day, ending with the Digital Experience event at the MGM on Monday evening.

Tuesday, January 11 – First day of CES show floor. I start the day by hitting as many companies parked in Hilton suites as I can, then go to the show floor. Around noon, I go to “Lunch at Piaro’s” to check out the tabletop exhibits there, rest my feet, then go back out to the floor. The evening closes with ShowStoppers at the Wynn.

Wednesday, January 12 – More meetings day, trying to catch up with as many companies I can before I have to head to the airport for my redeye back home.

IT EXPO East 2012 – Miami, February 1-3, Miami Beach Convention Center

Don’t know if TMC will be holding a media on January 31; stay tuned.

However, there will be an HD voice session, on Thursday, Feb 2, at 2 PM (2/2/12 @ 2 ) that I will be moderating. You can find more info at the TMC conference program listing here.

Future briefings on the calendar–GENBAND, ADTRAN, CES 2012

Doug Mohney — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 16:32:34 +0000

In November (7-8), I’ll be a guest of GENBAND for its Perspective 2011 event in New York City.

ADTRAN is hosting its annual media/analyst event in Huntsville on November 29-December 1.

The first big event in 2012 for HD voice looks like it will be at CES in Las Vegas. I’ll be running around town from Sunday, January 8 through Wednesday, January 11. More thoughts on CES 2012 will be posted at HD Voice News (www.hdvoicenews.com) next week.

ADTRAN beefs up Ethernet, FTTH hardware

Doug Mohney — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:26:04 +0000

In a pair of announcements last week, ADTRAN (www.adtran.com) added to its Carrier Ethernet portfolio and doubled the capacity of its Total Access 5000 for Active Ethernet and GPON applications.

On the Ethernet side, new solutions include:

NetVanta 868 Carrier Ethernet Access Gateway for large enterprises.
- Extending 100 – 400Mbps Ethernet services to a variety of vertical markets whose locations continue to wait for fiber installation.

NetVanta 850 Carrier Ethernet Access Gateway for infrastructure backhaul.
- Extending 50 – 100Mbps Ethernet backhaul services to service both cell site and DSLAM backhaul in response to 4G and residential broadband initiatives.

Total Access^® 1424S-CE Carrier Ethernet Access Gateway for remote offices.
- Extending both 10 and 100Mbps Ethernet services to far-flung branch offices.

The Total Access 5000 is now capable of supporting 5,376 GPON subscribers and 504 Active Ethernet subscribers per chassis. ADTRAN has also added a new family of universe ONTs which provide auto-sensing support for both Active Ethernet and GPON.

I will likely hear more about both these products at Metaswitch Forum in Vegas next week.

ADTRAN (yet again) declares record results for 2Q 2011, cash dividend

Doug Mohney — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 20:43:02 +0000

ADTRAN (www.adtran.com) reported its financial results for the second quarter of 2011 on July 12, 2011. Once again, the company continues to roll, racking up an increase of 23 percent as compared to last year’s results.

More specifically, ADTRAN had sales of more than $184 million, as compared to $150 million for 2Q 2010. Operating income hit an all time record high of $51.3 million for the quarter, with net income up 33 percent to $36.9 million for the quarter and earnings per share going up 27 percent to $0.56 for the quarter.

Stockholders will get a quarterly cash dividend of $0.09 per common share, with a payment date of August 11, 2011.

I don’t think there’s been a quarter where ADTRAN has lost money or even had flat growth, if memory serves.

ADTRAN dives deeper into the security world

Doug Mohney — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 04:51:03 +0000

Huntsville, Alabama-based ADTRAN (www.adtran.com) has announced a full line of Unified Threat Management (UTM) solutions.

The NetVanta 2000 series of devices use ADTRAN’s baseline hardware with Sonic Wall’s software on top, getting the company quickly into the security market without having to develop software in-house. ADTRAN is owning the product, so if you buy it and have a question, you call ADTRAN.

Each of the four appliances includes SSL and IPSec VPN clients, anti-virus and anti-spyware clients and all of them are/can be managed under a centralized global management system (run by Sonic Wall).

The NetVanta 2630 is the baseline box, with support for 3G and analog modem (seriously, do people know what an analog modem is these days?) to serve as a primary or failover WAN option in disaster recovery scenarios. The 2630W adds secure 802.11b/g/n wireless LAN capabilities. The 2730 is designed for branch offices and distributed mid-enterprise networks while the 2830 is designed for central sites and larger organizations that need higher performance.

NetVanta 2000 Series hardware platforms list prices are:

NetVanta 2630 (including one year of Continuous Threat Protection): $1,055
NetVanta 2630W (including one year of Continuous Threat Protection): $1,255
NetVanta 2730 (including one year of Continuous Threat Protection): $1,885
NetVanta 2830 (including one year of Continuous Threat Protection): $3,965

First 12 months of Continuous Threat Protection are included with the price of the hardware, while two and three year options (i.e. service contracts for updates/monitoring) are available. IPSec, VPN and SSL clients are priced at $55 list per user available in multi-user bundles. Anti-virus and anti-spyware clients are available starting at $195 list for five users and one-year subscriptions.

SonicWALL GMS software begins at $2,995 list, with additional node pricing based on the number of units managed.

From a business growth perspective, you see how all the pieces play together. ADTRAN expands its portfolio into security – what SME and enterprise customers want these days, now more than ever between WikiLeaks attacks and threats of cyberwar all over the place. The offerings bundle existing hardware with third-party software, so ADTRAN gets a quick time to market and the oh-so-sweet recurring revenue stream as businesses (hopefully) sign up for multi-year contracts. And it all builds upon ADTRAN’s dive into software+services which the company started last year with its UC product offering.

At this rate, I’m tempted to predict that next year’s product will be a 1U line of business/enterprise network storage products with optional off-site storage backup provided by either a third party and/or the service provider. SATA drives are dirt cheap and multi-terabyte, so you can hot swap ‘em while everyone could use an easy-to-use NAS storage solutions with “in the cloud” backup.

ADTRAN pushes optical to the edge

Doug Mohney — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:58:30 +0000

ADTRAN (www.adtran.com) has rolled out a suite of solutions to push fiber further out of the network “core” and to the “edge” – wherever “edge” is defined these days.

The Optical Network Edge (ONE) portfolio integrates packet optical functionality for service delivery, aggregation and transport, so service providers can extend/blur the edge of the network.

ONE is built around ADTRAN’s Total Access 5000 box and the initial release supports high bit rate Carrier Ethernet aggregation, SONET/SDH Multi-Service Provisioning Platform (MSPP) on a card, CWDM and DWDM networking scalable from a single wavelength to 400Gbps on a single fiber pair.

Pushing out all this optical capability farther out on the network means service providers can plug in higher-speed options for customers with less headaches, be it fiber to the home, xDSL solutions, or (surprise, surprise) ADTRAN’s own UBE (Ultra Broadband Ethernet) product. Service providers can keep everything Ethernet and do a “pay-as-you-grow” approach to add capacity when needed.

ADTRAN UBE–It’s GigE, but simplified

Doug Mohney — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 19:41:19 +0000

Huntsville, AL – ADTRAN (www.adtran.com) made big waves in Paris last month by announcing Ultra-Broadband Ethernet (UBE), delivering Ethernet at 100 Mbps over standard copper for up to 300 feet. It turns out there’s no big secret sauce to the underlying technology because it’s based on GigE. More interesting, UBE may become a more open “standard” that anyone can build hardware for.

Baseline copper GigE uses two pairs of wires and some power, so UBE simply subtracts one pair of wires, slows things down to get the longer distance over telco-grade wires, and adds power from the CPE/customer termination end.

Voila! UBE!

Efforts are afoot to make UBE a standard – wasn’t clear it was going to be an ITU or an IEEE one – by formalizing the roll-in of power-through-the-end node(s). (At which point I grunted and mumbled, “Sure, a standard 5 years and half a million units shipped later…”C’mon, we all know how the standards process *ahem* works these days).

ADTRAN product managers noted that anyone – yes, anyone – could build UBE equipment by following the standard, but the company was also filing patents on certain technologies in the company’s implementation.

Product managers also said the technology could be further stretched/slowed to deliver 10 Mbps Ethernet for some *mumble-mumble* longer distance of copper, say 2500 feet or so.

Hinted at in the initial media reports, there was not much info on speeds above 100 Mbps. Moving back/up to 1 GigE would require adding back that other copper pair, more power and who knows what else.

UBE came out of a discussion of needs requirements with a U.S. Tier 1 carrier – ADTRAN didn’t say which one, but you think about who is doing FTTN and wants faster speeds on the last couple hundred feet and you come up with AT&T without breaking a sweat.

Next week in Huntsville

Doug Mohney — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 19:55:07 +0000

ADTRAN (www.adtran.com) is holding its 3rd annual media briefing event in Huntsville, Al next week from November 30 through December 2. Expect to see quite a bit about on here and via Twitter @DougonIPComm as to the latest and greatest news the company will talk about, plus a “trickle out” of other news/press releases later in the month if the format stays the same as previous years.

It should be interesting to get an update on the whole UC software thing announced last year, plus efforts on the Ethernet/DSL mutant technology that scales from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps, if I recall the blurbs correctly.

Visiting with ADTRAN is always an interesting experience because everyone is so “engineer” except the PR people and the CEO; I think the CEO gets to drink a magic potion or gets a secret key to say whatever he feels like without being reserved.