MUNICH (02/08/2000) - Siemens AG's networking group today said it would focus its efforts on moving companies towards converged voice and data networks based on the Internet protocol (IP), but promised to let companies "go at their own pace."
At a press conference in Munich today, executives from Siemens' I&C Networking Group announced HiPath, which they described as both a strategy focus and an ensemble of products and services.
These products, some of which already exist and are being used by companies, are designed to enable easy interoperability between software components and applications, regardless of whether they stem from voice or data networks, the executives said.
The products should be as reliable as those that corporate customers expect of telephone networks, said Anthony Maher, member of the Siemens board responsible for Siemens I&C Networking.
Each company will take a different approach to migrating its existing mix of voice and data systems, so that a large part of the HiPath is in providing services to determine and implement each company's needs, said Andy Mattes, president of enterprise and business switching networks. Some companies will stick with their circuit-switched systems, others will prefer ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)-based data networks over IP networks.
"Companies do not want off-the-shelf solutions," said Maher.
Analysts are predicting cost savings for companies that send their voice and data traffic over a converged network. With the rise of the Internet, IP is emerging as the standard for such networks that send data in packets, instead of via circuit-switching, used by traditional telecommunications networks.
Although companies have been somewhat slow to move toward the market, Siemens expects growth over the next three years. "There hasn't been a massive uptake of voice-over IP, but the market is beginning to take place," Maher said.
The overall concept behind what Siemens is calling HiPath is to make the switching functionality reside in a company network, rather than in an outside switch, so that the there are access points all over the network, Maher said.
But beyond that, details of how HiPath works are sketchy, and it is not quite clear how much of it exists as an idea on paper.
Siemens plans to show some of its HiPath products at the CeBIT trade fair this month in Hanover, Germany. These include an IP gateway, an IP-based phone, and a prototype of an IP-based system that demonstrates applications using Siemens' Hicom telecommunications system, Mattes said.
The approach is to start with SMEs (small and medium-size enterprises), which have less complex networks and can thus more easily migrate them to IP-based networks, Mattes said.
But even the Siemens executives themselves conceded that a portion of the HiPath architecture is still just an concept. For example, one missing link is a system management tool to make a converged network work smoothly, Mattes said.
"That's a high goal, and there's a lot to be done," Mattes said. "We are making large investments in this technology and want to achieve leadership in the IP space," he said.
Siemens has moved its focus from traditional telecommunications systems toward the data networking market over the past several years. Last year, it founded a U.S.-based data networking company, Unisphere Solutions Inc., to develop data networking applications mainly for carriers that want to offer services over public networks.
One analyst sees Siemens as a viable player in trying to become a player in the converged networking market, even though it is up against data networking giants like Cisco Systems Inc.
"It is much easier to go from telecommunications to data networking than the other way around," said John Delaney, IP-services analyst with Ovum Ltd. in London. "Voice is hard."
Siemens' Unisphere subsidiary does have some specific convergence products in the works, Delaney said, such as a softswitch, a workstation that controls calls on IP networks.
Siemens AG, in Munich and Berlin, can be reached at +49-89-636-00 or at http://www.siemens.de/.