[VoiceOps] Evariste Systems drops open source, becomes Acme Packet VAR

Mon Apr 1 15:19:48 EDT 2013

The leader of the Kamailio project, Daniel-Constantin Mierla, just released a surprising statement that casts some doubt on the viability of our new business plan:

http://lists.sip-router.org/pipermail/sr-users/2013-April/077314.html

Well, this is certainly out of left field. We weren't expecting that.

Alex Balashov <abalashov at evaristesys.com> wrote:

>For immediate release:
>
>ATLANTA, GA (1 April 2013)--Evariste Systems LLC, an Atlanta-based
>consultancy specialising in Kamailio-based VoIP infrastructure
>solutions
>for the ITSP and CLEC market, has announced that beginning in the
>second
>quarter of 2013, it will be abandoning its Kamailio-based technology
>portfolio to focus on its new role as a preferred VAR (Value Added
>Reseller) for Acme Packet (NASDAQ:APKT).
>
>"It is with a heavy heart that we abandon five years of
>Kamailio-oriented
>work and the Canonical SIP Routing Platform product derived from it,"
>said Alex Balashov, the principal of the company.
>
>"However, the reality is that investment in open-source VoIP technology
>is a dead end.  From a technological point of view, we have lagged very
>badly in meeting the needs of today's sophisticated VoIP market, and
>it's
>time to cut our losses.  Asterisk, Kamailio, FreeSWITCH--all this stuff
>just hasn't kept up with the pace of evolution of 3GPP, ETSI, and ITU
>standards.  We are tired of saying 'sorry, we don't support IMS or
>H.323' to our resultingly dwindling customer base.  Does anyone
>actually run an all-SIP network?"
>
>Starting in early April, Evariste will begin providing value-added
>consultancy related to the implementation of the Acme Packet Net-Net
>Session Director.  In Balashov's view, "the Net-Net SD is the only
>product capable of meeting the perimeter security, routing and peering
>needs of today's VoIP service delivery environment."
>
>Fred Posner, the director of Team Forrest, a Palner Group integration
>and consultancy operation based in the Jacksonville, Florida area,
>agreed:
>
>"SIP is a tiny piece of the telephony puzzle. The big boys of
>ClueCon [an interoperator revenue-sharing consortium] want
>DIAMETER-based
>interdomain peering policy control, H.323, MGCP, and IMS.  IMS is
>pretty
>much how VoIP architecture is done now.  We got out of the Asterisk
>business just in time, right before Mitel swallowed the PBX world.
>I'm glad to see Evariste is finally seeing the light, and I'm sure its
>shareholders are too."
>
>Posner also believes Evariste's lack of support for TDM interfaces
>accounted for dwindling market share.
>
>"Have you seen CSRP?  It's SIP in, SIP out.  Real inter-LATA haulers
>and application service providers use TDM and leave SIP for things
>like voicemail.  I can't plug my DS3s into a SIP proxy, so I just
>don't think there was any real demand for the sort of thing they
>were doing."
>
>Noting Oracle's US$2.5bn acquisition of Acme Packet in early February,
>as well as its more recently announced buyout of Tekelec, a Siris
>Capital Group portfolio company, Balashov remarked: "The obvious
>shift to an Oracle-centric telephony paradigm was a kind of validation,
>if you will, of our decision to unload our dead weight and sign on
>to the revolution in unified communications."
>
>Sean McCord, of CyCORE Systems, an Atlanta-based software consulting
>house and long-time Evariste creditor, agreed that there was a natural
>synergy between Evariste's shift to Acme Packet and Oracle's dominance
>of telephony infrastructure.
>
>"Oracle is a forward-thinking telecom pioneer," McCord said.
>"The telephone is Oracle, and Oracle is the telephone."
>
>Balashov also noted that a tightening regulatory environment and new
>consumer protection rules helped hasten the decision to embrace the
>more professionalised Acme Packet product portfolio.
>
>John Knight, Senior Engineer at Hendersonville, NC-based Ringfree
>Communications, one of Evariste's oldest channel partners, said:
>"As one of Evariste's long-time disties, we were jittery about exposure
>to CALEA and the QA requirements of large call centers.  We tried to
>make do, but at some point we just had to put the relationship on
>stop.  I'm all in favour of open, but there's just no open-source
>software out there that does call recording, and that's the bottom line
>for us.  In the end, we had to restructure some debt just to get
>bondholders to let us source a proprietary solution on tick."
>
>In a thematically related move, Evariste will be dropping its heavy
>use of the open-source PostgreSQL database manager for its rating and
>reporting tools.
>
>"The business case for standardising on Oracle's databases could not be
>clearer.  With Oracle Database 11g's support of warehousing and OLTP,
>the real mystery is why we didn't go there sooner," said Balashov.
>
>Carlos Alvarez, a director at Televolve, a growing Phoenix-area VoIP
>operator, recently spearheaded a move away from Evariste's PostgreSQL-
>based call detail record (CDR) storage solution to one running atop
>Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
>
>Alvarez commented: "Evariste had a nice idea, in a cute,
>David-and-Goliath
>kind of way, but we're processing over five hundred phone calls a day
>now.  Are we really going to store those kinds of volumes in an
>open-source database?  Might as well just put it all in flat text
>files at that point.  Phone service is an uptime game. You can't
>compromise on this stuff. What if someone needs to call 911?"
>
>Asked to summarise his expectations, Balashov said: "I hope this turns
>us
>around in a big way.  We were wrong to think that nobody cared about
>stuff like P-CSCFs, or that you could deliver even rudimentary VoIP
>to the premise without the expansive feature set of a comprehensive
>solution like the Net-Net SBC.  I can only hope the market forgives us
>for betting on 'SIP Express Router' and its ilk back in the day, and
>gives us a chance to do it right in round two."
>
>Fred Posner, of Team Forrest, added: "Besides, if you look at the Git
>repository, Kamailio hasn't had any code contributions in at least five
>years. It seems everyone's figured out this pure SIP stuff is defunct
>and hokey."
>
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--
Sent from my Nexus 10, with all the figments of autocorrect that might imply.

Alex Balashov - Principal
Evariste Systems LLC
235 E Ponce de Leon Ave
Suite 106
Decatur, GA 30030
United States
Tel: +1-678-954-0670
Web: http://www.evaristesys.com/, http://www.alexbalashov.com/
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