IT Week: As chief executive of network operator Interoute, why should companies stop using PBXs?
Gareth Williams: PBXs suffer from being inherently and deliberately non-standard, which makes interoperability with, say, Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) complicated and costly. This complexity is further aggravated by the fact that the PBX is making routing decisions on the wrong side of the network connection: the customer premises. Not only does signalling and media trombone through the PBX, but the customer is expected to then configure routing.
How does Interoute solve those problems?
Since our Interoute One solution is built on top of a carrier exchange system, it has none of these issues, and using subscriber-based interconnect makes setup very quick and scalable. We advise companies to keep their legacy voice systems just in case their networks go down. Microsoft OCS can “federate” companies create a community of Office Communicator users that allow voice calls between them. Unlike Microsoft, we use telephone number mapping to federate users.
How is your network configured?
Our network is a 54,000km, E1.82bn Multi-Protocol Label Switched (MPLS) optical fibre backbone built on Infinera hardware. We’ve lit about 200Gbit/s, but we have the capacity to carry a petabit [1 million gigabits] of traffic.
What can Interoute offer businesses besides voice?
We can offer carriers, ISPs and content providers a range of services anything from E1s to 10Gbit/s bandwidths, as well as 10GbE services. We offer internet services, managed security or IP VPNs and Layer 2 Ethernet services, which firms can use to roll out their own services on top of.
What are your views on the proposed IEEE 40GbE and 100GbE standards?
Unlike with 2.5GbE and 10GbE systems, the demand for 40GbE and 100GbE connectivity will come before the delivery optical and transport IP layers are really operationally ready. While we will deliver some 40GbE, at an IP level we’re waiting for 100GbE and at an optical level we believe 100GbE will eclipse 40GbE before 40GbE hardware really becomes commercially viable.
How do you see telecoms provisioning changing in the future?
At present most telecom services are delivered, installed and managed by the operator. We see our customers being able to design, configure and then create their own service environments covering the core elements of IT infrastructure communication, content security and application hosting without having to talk to Interoute. We are seeing requests from customers for APIs into our service platforms so that customers can build their own environments based on Interoute platforms.
