“For the Ingate perspective, the E-SBC market is indeed growing at a record pace.  Customers are looking for solutions that make SIP trunking and Unified Communications deployments a fast and simple process, that provide advanced security features and offer rapid return on investment all at an aggressive price point.  Ingate delivers all of this and more,” Steven Johnson (News - Alert), president of Ingate Systems, told TMCnet. “From what we see, the market is fragmenting on the vendor side: some are known for extremely high price points, some focus only on extremely large implementations (or just the SMB), and some offer solutions that are (this is what we hear from new customers) far too complicated to implement.”

“Ingate has successfully carved out a niche for itself with E-SBCs that simplify (not complicate) deployments, are competitively priced, are designed to be able to grow with a company to meet the needs of the smaller startup all the way to the largest enterprise, with hardware that maximizes your investment. Additionally, all Ingate products come bundled with sophisticated Intrusion (News - Alert) Detection System/Intrusion Prevention System (IDS/IPS) security solutions for SIP to protect against attacks targeting SIP devices, such as IP-PBXs, further strengthening security for VoIP, SIP trunking, Unified Communications (News - Alert) and other SIP applications.” 

According to a release, while Acme Packet leads both the Enterprise and Service Provider segments of the SBC market, in 1Q11 its market share in the Enterprise segment was half of its share of the Service Provider segment. Cisco continues to leverage its strong presence in the enterprise IP PBX market for second position, while Ingate and Sipera round out the top four positions.

"Beyond these vendors, the market for enterprise SBCs remains fragmented, with perhaps 20 additional vendors vying for pieces of the market,” said Greg Collins, founder and principal analyst at Exact Ventures, said in the release. “This fragmentation will work to provide strong competition, driving prices downward. Early market share is key because as the market grows, economies of scale will help the larger vendors be aggressive on price as well as to continue to fuel the research and development required to remain competitive. We expect that as this occurs, the market will consolidate."

The Exact Ventures report further detailed that in the first quarter of this year, the market for IMS Core equipment contracted on a sequential basis due to seasonal factors, but was up 20 percent compared to 1Q10, but accounted for just 3 percent of the total wireless and wireline NGN Voice and IMS Core market, which is up from 2 percent in 1Q10.  Nokia Siemens (News - Alert), Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Huawei, respectively led the IMS Core market in 1Q11.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.