The Session Border Control (SBC) space has been relatively steady state over the past three to four years, so it is refreshing to watch Metaswitch Networks’ launch of the Perimeta SBC. How well the company does depends on how attractive its new architecture is to service providers and its estimates of future market growth. 

If we take a snapshot of the SBC world today, Acme Packet (News - Alert) controls a dominant chunk of the market – anywhere from 50 to 60 percent share, depending on who is counting and what is being measured.   Most SBC sales have been concentrated in the service provider arena, but everyone wants a crack at the enterprise SBC market. I’m not bullish on the enterprise SBC market, but to each his own.

Enter Metaswitch. The Permeta SBC starts with an ATCA platform that uses off-the-shelf hardware; no custom hardware, brags the company. On top of that goes discrete software modules for signaling media functions, decoupling the traditional 1 to 1 relationship built into SBCs from day one when they were created to handle voice traffic. 

Permeta can be optimized to handle more SIP signaling traffic, so service providers can save money by optimizing media handling.  With an expected boom in SIP signaling traffic due to the proliferation of presence and IM services, having signaling and media decoupled makes a lot of sense. Exactly how much money can be saved by using a “balanced” approach to signaling and media vs. buying a traditional 1-to-1: SBC is an open question, but a Metaswitch spokesperson suggested a service provider may find up to a 30 percent savings in capital expenditures.

Interestingly, Metaswitch is now fully in the IMS rah-rah camp. Once upon a time, if my memory serves, Metaswitch positioned itself as being “IMS-ready” and downplayed IMS, preferring to sell solutions to carriers based upon what they needed,. 

Today, what carriers appear to need are 3GPP IMS solutions. Two trends are driving the embrace of IMS. First, the LTE (News - Alert) wireless world is an all-IP network and more “legacy” wireless networks are migrating to IP-based solutions because it takes out all the legacy (expensive-to-support) moving parts.   Secondly, the larger discussion of getting rid of the legacy phone system and replacing it with an all IP solution from end-to-end is starting to gain momentum.

If you’re going all IP, you have to have SBCs in the mix. And if you’re adding more non-voice IP applications, you’re doing more SIP signaling, so that shifts the SBC status quo of signaling to media. And that makes Permetta an attractive SBC option.

To find out more about Metaswitch, visit the company at ITEXPO West 2011. Happening now in Austin, TX, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Marc Matthews, director of Systems Engineering at Metaswitch,  is speaking during “2018: The Death of the PSTN Keynote Luncheon Panel.” Chris Carabello, marketing director at Metaswitch, is speaking during “A Competitive Edge: Hosted and Cloud Services Solutions for SMBs,” and “How MNOs Can Leverage a Cloud Platform to Deliver UC.”  Don’t wait. Register now.

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