November 2004

White Paper

Solving Branch Office Communications Issues with Unified

Communications Solutions

Enterprise Communication Trends

Small and Medium-sized Businesses are increasingly
operating at least one remote business site. According to
Reed Electronics Group, 60% of the workforce in the
United States operates from a remote location or branch
office.

Voice services at
Although many small businesses have extended their data
remote branch network to their remote branch offices, voice services at
locations often these locations often remain basic. Unlike employees at
remain basic. the main office, remote staff spend a significant amount
of time each workday searching for phone numbers,
exchanging or misplacing handwritten messages, and
trying to retrieve lost voice mail messages between
customers and employees. This results in loss of
productivity, poor customer service and a feeling of
disconnect from the rest of the organization.

These productivity losses can present a significant

financial drain to any organization. Until recently, the
cost of extending modern full-service telephony features
to small or remote locations has been out of reach for
many companies.

IP Telephony can IP telephony has now entered the PBX market. It not only
provide cost brings with it increased productivity and superior
savings by customer service, but also cost savings attributed to;
reducing long reduced long distance expenses, lower equipment prices,
distance charges and workstation mobility.
and lowering
equipment prices.
For most companies the true benefit of incorporating IP
telephony technology into the PBX system design has
proven to come from the increased flexibility in the
choice of the PBX architecture and system configurations.
Solving Branch Office Communications Issues
with Unified Communications Solutions
Today, user’s data
and telephony are
at the forefront of
IP business
communications.
Dialexia Communications Inc.
White Paper
The Changing Communications Landscape
The convergence of telephony circuit switched networks
and data networks into a single unified network, has
resulted in the design of components and applications
able to support both worlds. Services like voice and video,
traditionally supported on circuit switched networks, are
now provided on packet switched networks. The outcome
is the emergence of new components, called Soft
Switches. They are able to support these new networks
and services, while maintaining traditional telephony
service and interfaces.
An IP-PBX system that utilizes a packet switched
transmission signaling infrastructure can reduce the
number of single points of failure. Because of the highly
distributed nature of LAN/WAN infrastructure, it can also
be used to connect common control and peripheral
elements. Redundant common control elements, such as
active (primary) and standby (secondary) call telephony
servers, can be geographically distributed from each
other. Each IP endpoint can typically register with
multiple gatekeepers (H323 Solution) or a network of two
or three clustering Proxies (SIP solution).
Already in place within the desktop environment, is the
integration of Voice, Email, Video and Web
communication. Today, the distributed user’s data and
telephony are at the forefront of convergence of Internet
Protocol (IP) business communications.
SIP Protocol, the technological choice
The SIP protocol standard closely matches that used by
the Internet. Intelligent devices communicate directly
with each other over a simple transport infrastructure.
This contrasts greatly with the traditional telephone
network, where transport between dumb endpoints is
provided through an intelligent network core that is an
active party in any conversation. This significant
difference allows the network to become a commodity. It
allows any device attached to the network to provide
services to another. It is this openness that increases
competition, drives down prices, and generates
innovation. With the traditional intelligent telephony
network, only the telephone company can provide new
services. This usually requires the network core to be
upgraded, an expensive and slow process.
-2- July 2004
Solving Branch Office Communications Issues
with Unified Communications Solutions

The above explains why IP telephony is helping to drive

down the general cost of voice communication. And why
there is a high level of SIP innovation. The following SIP
features demonstrate why it is such a powerful
framework.

• Mobility: The SIP protocol allows a client to

register dynamically with any location, so that
calls can be routed to the client using a well-
known address (similar to an email address).

• Flexible message structure: SIP is recognized

as being a much simpler and more flexible
protocol. Its message structure is easier to extend
for new applications than equivalent existing
protocols such as H.323, which uses the ITU’s
encoding standard instead of text.

• Distribution of function between devices: SIP

allows requests to be dynamically routed through
different devices, enabling functionality to be
distributed and requests routed through relevant
devices.

• Negotiation of supported features: This makes

SIP very adaptable, as the media and protocol
extensions to be used for a particular call are
negotiated between the clients on that call. As a
result, SIP can be used to set up any type of media
conversation, including voice, video, and
messaging.

• Separation of signaling and media: Using SIP,

the signaling and media paths are completely
independent. The signaling and media may
traverse different routes through independent sets
of devices on different physical networks.

These features are equally applicable in many areas,

including telephony and messaging. They have been the
main drivers for the implementation of SIP by the major
suppliers in these fields.

Dialexia Communications Inc. -3- July 2004

White Paper
Solving Branch Office Communications Issues
with Unified Communications Solutions

IP-PBX versus Switched PBX Systems

Today’s Small and Medium Businesses (SMB’s) frequently
extend centralized data services to remote offices, but
operate separate non-integrated voice systems. Many
organizations have found that operating two distinct voice
systems can produce numerous problems. Many of which
include the following:

• Inadequate phone features: The small-scale

Public Branch Exchange (PBX) or Key Telephone
System (KTS) that many companies maintain at
remote locations provide few, if any, of the
features of a modern full-service business phone
system. Few remote employees have access to
basic productivity-enhancing features such as;
pickup groups, hunt groups, conferencing or online
employee directories. Many still rely on manual
systems and handwritten notes to manage phone
calls.

• Specialized phone system maintenance: Many

organizations work with a patchwork of local
service providers and PBX or KTS vendors to
manage remote-office voice services. Companies
must often contact up to as many as three
different vendors to resolve their problems. This
makes even simple add-on’s, moves, or changes to
the phone system expensive and time-consuming.

• Inconsistent voice system features and

functions: Companies frequently maintain
different voice solutions at their remote sites.
Administrators must be trained on all of the
systems. An employee traveling to a remote office
location must learn a distinct phone system and all
of its features. This dissimilarity of equipment and
vendors also means that it takes longer to bring
new branch locations online, which impedes cost
effective growth.

• Lack of scalability: Many small-office PBX/KTS

phone systems can only support a limited number
of phones. Adding users requires significant
hardware investments, limiting a company’s ability
to expand on demand. Relying on a circuit
switched PBX/KTS phone system also limits the
ability to integrate productivity-enhancing voice
and data applications today and in to the future.

Dialexia Communications Inc. -4- July 2004

White Paper
Solving Branch Office Communications Issues
with Unified Communications Solutions
DIAL-OFFICE: an
integrated full
featured IP-PBX,
specifically
designed for small
businesses and
remote branch
locations in mind.
Dialexia Communications Inc.
White Paper
The Convergence Solution:
Dialexia’s Dial-Office – an integrated full-featured IP-
PBX
For enterprises seeking a resolution to their remote office
communication issues, Dialexia Communications offers a
new generation of IP-enabled small-business solutions.
Dial-Office is an integrated full-featured IP-PBX including
soft phone. It is based on non-proprietary communication
protocols, compliant with the IETF Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) standard. Dial-Office combines both voice
and data on a single LAN/WAN infrastructure. Specifically
designed for small businesses and branch locations, Dial-
Office delivers the telephony and productivity features
that local and remote employees require.
Benefits of Dial-Office
With Dial-Office, small and medium sized companies can
benefit today from IP communications.
Management Benefits
• Lower total cost of network ownership, and
dramatically improve productivity of their remote
workforce and branch offices.
• Lower communication costs by means of
transmitting calls through VoIP. Long distance
charges can be reduced by up to 75%.
• Scalability – add up to 100 users
• Ease of installation and use
• Inexpensive solution
Supporting data, voice, video, security, and remote
connectivity within a single integrated system of gateways
and IP-Phones, the Dial-Office solution offers a cost-
effective platform for extending consistent, manageable
network services to small-office and branch-location
employees.
Administrative Benefits
• Voice mail
• Instant & Unified Messaging
• Auto-Attendant
• Receptionist Soft Console
• Diagnostics and Reporting Tools
• IP, Analog, or Soft Phones
• Conferencing
-5- July 2004
Solving Branch Office Communications Issues
with Unified Communications Solutions

Component Architecture
Some of the many productivity-enhancing advantages of
Dial-Office are Dialexia’s Dial-Manager proxy server (for
call processing) and Dial-Media media server (for voice-
mail and Auto-Attendant services).

DIAL-MANAGER: a Dial-Manager
proxy that uses SIP ™ A Communication Session Server engine that
signaling for
Internet
manages calls and client access to IP gateways. It
conferencing, also serves as a registration server and allow
telephony, and authorized client to log-on to the system.
instant messaging.

™ A SIP based, JAIN compliant server that enables

real time communication over IP Networks: IP to
IP, IP to PSTN and vice versa.

™ Bundles three fundamental SIP servers that make

up the core of a SIP network: a SIP Proxy Server, a
SIP Registrar Server and a Presence Server.

Dial-Media
™ An IP based voice messaging and Interactive Voice
Response (IVR) server that provides easy
integration with MS-Exchange, text to speech, and
voice recognition to deliver seamlessly integrated
voice mail and voice messaging.

Unified Communications and the Workplace

“Unified “Unified Communications” is a term used by Computer
Communications” Telephony Integration vendors (CTI’s) to describe a
are designed to collection of emerging enterprise communication
improve applications. They are designed to improve desktop
productivity, worker productivity, facilitate interactions among co-
facilitate co-worker
interaction, and
workers, and reduce communications expenses by
reduce optimizing real-time contact management operations.
communication Some of the specific application solutions that fall under
expenses. the Unified Communications umbrella are:

¾ Voice-mail
¾ Presence Management,
¾ Conferencing & Collaboration Services
¾ Instant Messaging

Although each of these can be used independently, they

are best implemented when working in conjunction with
each other, especially when SIP is used as the underlying
communication protocol.

Dialexia Communications Inc. -6- July 2004

White Paper
Solving Branch Office Communications Issues
with Unified Communications Solutions

Presence Management enables real-time communication

without time and/or space constraints.
• It allows station users to check the availability
status of the parties to be contacted prior to call
placement.

• It provides an indication of how best to contact

the individual at a specific time based on the
stored user profile record.

• Station users can be assigned to defined groups

allowing them to receive preferential call
screening status.

• It enables station users to more effectively

schedule and implement conference calls between
two or more system subscribers. Scheduling of
conferences can be facilitated if the solution is
integrated with personal calendar software such as
Microsoft Outlook. A web/audio conference
reduces face-to-face meeting requirements, and
can greatly enhance collaboration among internal
workers, clients, suppliers, and other external
parties with potentially significant time and cost
savings.

Instant Messaging (IM) is another form of real-time

communication enabled by presence management. It is
rapidly becoming an alternative to voice calls for
communicating in real-time at the workplace.

Dial-Com
Dial-Com is Dialexia’s Instant Messaging and Presence user
application. The effective use of instant messaging in the
business world is greatly enhanced when station users
have knowledge of other station users availability
provided by a presence management software solution.
Dial-Com is a full-featured instant messaging solution that
includes contact lists and the option to send e-mails when
parties are not available. An invaluable feature is the
ability to convert an active instant messaging event into a
telephone call with a few clicks of the mouse. Instant
messaging is available to station users via their desktop
client or a variety of mobile communications devices.

Dialexia Communications Inc. -7- July 2004

White Paper
Solving Branch Office Communications Issues
with Unified Communications Solutions

Summary
Designed to enable SMEs access to superior VoIP
technology, Dial-Office SIP-Based IP-PBX is the affordable
solution for local and remote office locations seeking a
method to increase productivity and customer service,
while reducing costs attributed to long distance charges,
phone system maintenance, and loss of business due to
call mismanagement.

About Dialexia:

Dialexia Communications is a next generation

communication software and services company,
established in the Techno-Park area of Montreal, Canada.

As one of the pioneers in the Voice over IP (VoIP) industry,

Dialexia has implemented the latest technologies to
facilitate the convergence of Voice and Data networks.

Dialexia offers a full suite of integrated IP Telephony

products and ITSP solutions that significantly reduce
customers' communications costs, while significantly
enhancing their ability to offer first-class customer
service.

In the short term, potential SME's will be able to make a

significant transition towards a telecommunication system
that will provide enhanced productivity by simplifying the
complexity of their numerous needs. One system will be
enough to manage telephony, Internet, E-mail, and Long
Distance thanks to the Dialexia's low cost VoIP solutions.

Our mission is to provide innovative and advanced Voice

and Data over IP switches for Small carrier ITSP, phone
booth retail outlets and for VoIP telephone systems for
For more information
SMEs. We build and deliver powerful converged data and
please contact: voice communications products and services.
Dialexia
Communications, Inc.
1755 St. Regis Blvd.
Suite 210
Montreal, Quebec
H9B 2M9 Dialexia Communications - Your Partner in IP
Canada
Telephony Success!
Tel: +1 514-421-1151
www.dialexia.com

Dialexia Communications Inc. -8- July 2004

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