IP PBX: On the Upswing

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Though India is a fairly mature market when it comes to traditional PBX systems, IP PBX is still in a fledgling state. However, there are signs that IP PBX is making significant inroads into India Inc. A recent Frost and Sullivan study pegs the IP PBX market in India at $10.2 million in 2002–03, a growth rate of 1789.2 percent from 2001–02. In 2003–04, the market is expected to grow by more than 600 percent to cross the $60 million mark. In terms of shipments, IP PBX has grown exponentially from a small base of 770 in 2001–02 to 19,757 in 2002 –03. However, this number pales in comparison to the overall Asia-Pacific figures, where the IP-PBX market in 2002–03 was pegged at $2.05 billion.

The three most crucial factors currently driving the IP PBX upsurge in India are the scale of economics with respect to cost savings, ease of deployment and subsequent manageability and lastly significant improvements in voice quality. Most Indian enterprises have realized that going along the IP road can lead to considerable savings while making costly STD and ISD calls. Many organizations are experiencing up to 10–15 percent in cost savings, going up to 50 percent in certain cases, by adding IP telephony and subsequently IP PBXs to their set-ups. The RoI for an IP PBX deployment can come quite early, even within six to 12 months.

"It is very easy to manage and upgrade your IP telephony system, as everything runs on software and goes into a server that acts as a call manager"
Bihari Jhumani, CEO, Enkay Telecom

Another crucial reason behind adoption of IP PBXs is their ease of manageability over conventional PBXs. Says Bihari Jhumani, CEO, Enkay Telecom which represents NEC in the country, "It is very easy to manage and upgrade your IP telephony system as everything runs on software and goes into a server which acts as a call manager, that is, the IP-PBX. Upgrades can be done smoothly without much change in the physical infrastructure of the network. Moreover, you do not specifically require a separate person to manage the network, thereby helping organizations in cutting call management costs."

Using software at the back-end, IP PBX simplifies life for the user. Says Suchitra Srinivasan of Avaya, "Many applications can be integrated with the IP telephony network, making information easily available on the desktop. It is very easy to change an extension number, forward a call and route crucial calls to another location instantly while using an IP telephony network."

The traditional PBX market in India is currently at Rs 600 crore out of which at least 90 percent are IP-ready. Jhumani estimates that it would be at least 25 percent cheaper to migrate from an IP-ready digital PBX to an IP PBX than going for a virgin IP PBX. Therefore, the best strategy for an Indian enterprise would be to go for a digital PBX today and later migrating to IP in two years time. This would entail a cost of about Rs 9,000 for a digital PBX today followed by an upgradation to IP cost of Rs 15,000–20,000 per extension.

	"Many applications can be integrated with the IP telephony network, making information easily available on the desktop. It is very easy to change an extension number and route crucial calls to another location"
Suchitra Srinivasan, Avaya

The IP PBX market in India is still in the early adoption phase and like any technology pioneers these customers are going for virgin IP PBXs even while spending more on them. However, Alok Shende, industry manger-IT Practice, Frost & Sullivan Growth says, "The IP PBX is steadily gaining momentum and, in the not too distant future, will enter the business mainstream. Thus, while IP PBXs are still in the early-adoption phase, many corporate customers have implemented or are at least are contemplating a limited deployment."

Who are the early adopters? The hospitality industry has been a major convert—the Taj Group has IP PBX at all their hotels. Other large adopters during 2003–04 included NTPC, Tata Home Finance, Cipla, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, ACC, Gujarat Ambuja Cement as well as L&T.

Ten Check Points for Implementing IP PBX

1.	Latency and Packet Loss
	High latency is less acceptable with voice than with data traffic. Thus, companies should measure and characterize end-to-end latency and packet loss for the IP telephony traffic class across the network. Whether the results are acceptable or not depends on the quality of voice expected and amount of bandwidth usage. There are also strict requirements on the type of codec and end-to-end packet loss and delay
2.	Recognition of the 802.1P Standard
	It is highly recommended that the wiring closet have the ability to recognize the 802.1P protocol, for traffic prioritization at Layer 2. This may not be necessary if the network is an underutilized, fast Ethernet network with abundant bandwidth. Routing switches, which are Layer 3 aware, have the ability to recognize DSCP (DiffServe Code Points); these are good to have but not a requirement
3.	Ability to Prioritise at Layer 3
	The core data network needs to be able to provide Layer 3 priority. It is probably optimal to recognize DiffServ, an IETF standard for differentiated classes of service for various types of applications and business requirements. However, routers with priority queuing capability should be fine for the initial deployment
4.	IP Telephony Call Patterns
	To prepare yourself with a picture of your total traffic patterns after IP telephony is implemented, you should determine what the telephony call patterns will be like across the IP infrastructure. The current telephony usage patterns of the enterprise should give a good starting point
5.	Determine WAN utilization before Voice is Added
	To fully determine the ability to carry voice over long distance, you should examine WAN utilization. To do this, have the WAN running no more than 85 percent utilization at peak traffic. The acceptable percentage of voice traffic should be engineered for each transmission link in the IP network, and should be estimated based on telephony usage of the particular enterprise
6.	Traffic Patterns and Peak Utilization
	To better manage the addition of voice traffic on the network, you should be aware of network traffic patterns at different times of the day. Examine traffic patterns over a defined time period to determine peak times in network utilisation, such as monthly roll ups or end-of-quarter processing
7.	Link Speed and Voice Quality
	The speed of network links—connections between devices—will impact voice quality. Low speed links (under 256 K) will need proper handling and may introduce lower voice qualities. Consider the possible impact of VoIP bandwidth on the data flows on the same links
8.	Network Congestion and Dropped Packets
	One needs to be aware of any areas of the network that are prone to congestion. Examine areas of network congestion and measure your IP switches and routers for the degree of:
n	Dropped packets and re-transmissions
n	Queue exhaustion
n	Ingress and egress delay
n	CPU utilization.
9.	Reliability of Network Infrastructure
	One should be very careful to determine the reliability of the infrastructure; for example, LAN mean time between failure (MTBF), router functions, and recovery. One should also check network powering standards. A redundant power supply may be indicated to ensure certainty of operation
10.	Policy Servers
	Finally, one should consider the strategic direction on policy servers. Although not absolutely required prior to implementing VoIP policy servers are a good strategy for supporting different level of services on an IP network

Srinivasan points out that India’s growing presence as an attractive call center outsourcing destination has also managed to perk up the IP PBX market. She feels that even Asia-Pacific giants like China and Korea do not offer markets with such tantalizing growth opportunities like India. With CTI being an absolute necessity in the number of call centers growing daily, it makes immense sense for them to migrate to IP PBXs. A large number of call centers with IP VPN implementation across India, are using the infrastructure also for voice transfer. Subsequently, when they come up with new facilities, they look at IP PBXs as their entire voice and data transfer is based on IP.

Avaya, represented by Tata Telecom, is currently the leader in the Indian IP PBX market with a 29.2 percent revenue share. Reveals Srinivasan, "Tata Telecom’s dominance in the high-end PBX market focuses less on price and more on features and its aggressive positioning as a convergence solution provider has helped the company increase its revenue market share in 2002–03." It is followed by Siemens and Nortel, while NEC, who leads the Asia-Pacific market with a 26.2 percent share, comes fourth with around 12 percent.

Rajneesh De