GOVERNMENT

As voice and data services managers convene this week to evaluate new Voice Over IP (VoIP) solutions at the Spring 2005 VON Conference and Expo, Silicon Graphics and Signate will offer them a glimpse of the future of VoIP. In Booth 901 at the Asterisk Pavilion of the San Jose Convention Center, SGI and Signate will demonstrate how Linux OS-based SGI server technology, first designed to handle extreme I/O demands of technical and scientific users, overcomes the cost and compatibility problems of proprietary VOIP solutions, and the I/O bottlenecks and scaling limitations that plague typical PC-based open source solutions. A two-processor SGI Altix 350 server, running the Signate Enterprise PBX software based on the open-source Asterisk environment, will process more than 5,000 simultaneous calls - greater than 10 times the call capacity of a similarly configured white box PC server. "When we were introduced to the SGI architecture it was immediately obvious that it was perfect for higher volume telco and enterprise VoIP customers," said William Boehlke, CEO of Signate, a leading provider of open source VoIP telephony systems. "Signate and SGI have spent months benchmarking, optimizing and configuring systems that deliver great price/performance, and the proof is on the VON show floor." The demonstration of this two-processor system shows the vastly superior price-performance made possible through the Altix architecture's massive I/O capacity - operating at 51 Gigabits per second. Considering that Altix can scale to 512 processors in a single standard Linux kernel, the opportunities for enterprise scalability and services consolidation are virtually unlimited. And for those who don't need to drive thousands of simultaneous calls, the high-performance platform has plenty of overhead for flexible services consolidation for VoIP PBX, voicemail systems, and teleconferencing solutions. Just as Linux has done in the computing markets, Asterisk and open source are ready for primetime enterprise deployments, giving customers dramatic benefits in cost, choice, and control versus their current proprietary solutions. The demonstration reflects SGI's efforts to work with VoIP open source leaders to accelerate the evolution of Linux as a VoIP platform, just as SGI was instrumental in speeding the adoption of Linux in technical, scientific and manufacturing environments. "Enterprises and carriers pursuing VoIP are looking for alternatives to the expensive, proprietary architectures that hold customers hostage," said Andy Fenselau, director, strategic channels, SGI. "We are demonstrating how VoIP solution providers can leverage standards-based hardware with open-source technologies for their competitive advantage-not only for today's telecom demands, but also for future multimedia applications."