Vendor Network
Architectures: Converged Systems ( TDM+VoIP)
January 24, 2006
By Mark A. Miller
Toshiba's
Telecommunication Systems Division (TSD) is a division of Toshiba
America Information Systems, which is part of Toshiba, a
130-year-old, $45 billion dollar company based in Japan. TSD has
been in business for nearly 30 years and claims the industry's most
extensive authorized dealer network, with more than 800 locations
nationwide. Toshiba's TSD focuses on the small to medium-size
enterprise marketplace, servicing a wide variety of industries. It
has an extensive National Accounts program that provides consistent
products, pricing, billing, etc., to provide business telephone
systems to stores, restaurants, and other multi-location businesses.
This multi-location customer focus is seen in Toshiba's
architecture. Toshiba understands that large, multi-location
customers will not typically be using the same technologies, and/or
have the exact same systems installed. For example, older offices
may have a telecommunications system based upon Time Division
Multiplexing (TDM) while new installations may go directly to VoIP.
The Strata CIX business communication system is an IP-based solution
that is unique in that it can be TDM-enabled for a mix of both TDM
and IP endpoints. It delivers on Toshiba's promise to "never leave a
customer behind" by providing a migration path, which enables many
telephones, cards, and other equipment from previous Toshiba
platforms to be re-used when the customer upgrades to a newer
system. Toshiba offers the industry's most comprehensive migration
path and backs it up with the industry's only seven-year
manufacturer's warranty.
Toshiba offers three families of business communications
products: the Strata CTX28, a very small, affordable TDM system; the
Strata CS, a communications server-based system; and the Strata CIX,
a family of IP-based systems. The Strata CTX28 is a telephone system
designed for small businesses, with a maximum capacity of 16 digital
telephone ports, 6 central office lines, and two standard telephone
interfaces. The Strata CS is designed for systems as small as 4
trunks and 8 stations, and can be expanded up to 96 trunks and 264
stations. It is based upon a Windows NT 4.0 server, and interfaces
with either analog or SIP-based telephones to provide standard PBX
features.
The Strata CIX family is Toshiba's flagship product line
offering, and includes four different systems providing IP telephony
services. It supports IP wireless and IP desk telephones, analog and
digital telephones, IP softphones on laptops, PDAs, and tablet PC,
and standards-based SIP telephones. Remote users have all the same
features available as locally connected users, with more than 300
telephony features supported. Toshiba has even built in a feature
customization tool, called FeatureFlex, which is based on the TCL
scripting language, and enables users to customize and create their
own features.
The Strata CIX systems are all designed to be modular, scalable,
and networkable, and support many types of network connections,
including IP network connections, analog and digital public switched
telephone network (PSTN) interfaces. The four different systems are
designed to serve different business sizes. The CIX100-S supports a
combination of 16 line or station ports; the CIX100 supports up to
64 CO lines or 72 stations, and combinations up to 112 ports; the
CIX200 supports up to 96 CO lines or 160 stations, and combinations
up to 192 ports; and the CIX670 supports up to 264 CO lines or 560
stations, and combinations up to 672 ports. Multiple Strata CIX
systems can be networked together to provide higher capacities and
serve multiple locations. These networked systems function as a
single integrated system, and provide centralized attendant
services, share a single voice mail system, and internal extension
dialing. In addition, the Strata CIX can be TDM-enabled, giving
users a choice of running a pure IP system or a mix of IP and
digital TDM, thus adding flexible and upward-migration paths for
their customers.
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03/29/2007
