Small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) want the same access to IT as large enterprises, but in the past, the capital and operational expenses of on-premises infrastructure restricted them from deploying the best available solution. Today SMBs can access virtually every available IT solution by having it hosted and not worrying about the CAPEX and OPEX (News - Alert) of deploying the technology of their choice. One of the technologies that is more affordable is communications solutions, and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking is giving SMBs the flexibility and scalability to compete with anyone by combining data, voice and video in a single line, without separate physical media for each mode.

As more organizations migrate to SIP-based telephony systems, Patton, provider of new-generation IP-based voice, data, and multimedia technologies, has announced it will unveil the new SmartNode 5530 Enterprise Session Border Router (ESBR) as the 2015 CeBIT (News - Alert). This is a new Session Border Controller (SBC) with Basic Rate Interfaces (BRIs) and encrypted HD-Voice, designed to simplify the migration process IP communications.

The new platform will give SMBs in ISDN markets a path to SIP-based telephony for two or four BRIs with secure encryption, IPv6 support, and high-quality IP voice. As an enterprise session border controller (E-SBC), SMBs will be able to migrate to IP telephony for up to eight G.711 VoIP or T.38 fax calls and up to 512 SIP-to-SIP calls.

The BRI ports can be configured to be TE or NT to connect PBX (News - Alert) or ISDN terminals and telecommunication lines. And since the terminals have their own power supplies, they will not require an external box.

According to Patton (News - Alert), the SmartNode 5530 Enterprise Session Border Router (ESBR) will address the following four challenges SMBs in the ISDN world face. They are:

• IP-enable existing ISDN phone system for SIP trunking (with optional PSTN fallback for survivability).
• Integrate ISDN and SIP phone systems for gradual migration to all-IP (with SIP trunk and PSTN connections).
• Replace costly TDM link to ISDN PBX with low-cost SIP trunk.
• Connect IP PBX to the PTSN over BRIs.

The device also comes with built-in SIP TLS, SRTP, Stateful Firewall and secure provisioning security features designed to protect LAN networks from Internet attacks.

The enterprise session border controller (E-SBC) market is growing, and according to Gartner (News - Alert), growth is expected to continue at 20 percent annually from 2014 to 2018, around the world. The growth is going to be driven primarily by small-to-medium enterprises as the transition to SIP-trunking continues.

By providing SMBs with a device that can be easily implemented while simplifying the migration process, Patton is delivering a cost-effective solution with enterprise features. The company is now taking orders for the SmartNode 5530 Enterprise Session Border Router (ESBR).