[VoiceOps] Looking for opinions of BroadWorks.

[Aled Treharne]

On 11 March 2010 00:17, Matthew S. Crocker <matthew at corp.crocker.com> wrote:
>
> Howdie,
>
>  I'm the lucky (!!?) owner of a Vocaldata/Tekelec/GENBAND/Broadsoft M6 soft switch.   I'm looking at replacing it with a Broadsoft Broadworks switch.  Anyone out there familiar with both switches?   Any opinions of the stability/feature set of Broadworks would be welcome!

I'l send this on-list, but feel free to contact me off-list if you want.

Although I'm now a consultant who's busy moving a number of M6
customers onto Broadworks, my background is from service providers
where I've run mainly Broadworks systems. The opinions here are my
personal ones, with some comments thrown in from another consultant
who used to install M6 platforms and now runs a Broadworks one.

M6 and Broadworks are wholly different beasts - M6  appears to be more
of a small-scale, all-in-one style solution, whereas Broadworks is a
large-scale and very complex system. The UI you've grown used to in M6
is gone, replaced in Broadworks by APIs and CLI tools - this is the
biggest culture shock I've seen so far. M6 is apparently easy, but not
so flexible, Broadworks is complex and difficult bt incredibly
flexible. I've heard people describe M6 to Broadworks as Windows is to
Unix.

The stability and featreset offered in Broadworks is very good -
especially the resilience/stability side. Over the past 8 years I've
had some very good experiences with Broadworks. I think Broadsoft are
hitting a good balance between bringing features to market quickly and
keeping the platform stable.

I'd definitely recommend it. You'll also find that Broadsoft will
offer you very agressive pricing to move you onto Broadworks as an M6
customer, but it's worth getting someone like us in to roll it out and
bring you up to speed on it. We're typically seeing deployment times
of between 1 and 4 months (depending on your reqiurements), possibly
longer if you have a large, complex system or need large amounts of
professional services work to move your existing userbase.

>  If you have Broadworks,  which SBC are you using?  Anyone using OpenSIPS to front end BWorks?

I've seen both Acme and Covergence (now the Acme NNOS-E) front
Broadworks. I have to admit that the ex-Covergence box was great in
front of Broadworks and worked like a dream, however Acme are
currently changing the way they sell the NNOS-E, so talk to your local
Acme rep to see. I've not used OpenSIPS.

Hope this helps, feel free to contact me offlist if you want.

Thanks,
Aled.

-- 
Aled Treharne
SIPhon Networks