Even with new Enterprise unified communication platforms and capabilities, the audio conferencing industry continues to grow at a rapid pace. To service this growth, new entrants are joining the business, increasing competition and lowering the price per minute. To compete, providers need a cost-efficient infrastructure that ensures flexibility for new service innovations with solutions that can evolve their network.

RadiSys offers a turnkey, integrated IP-based solution for both reservationless conferencing and event conferencing applications. To accomplish this, RadiSys (News - Alert) has combined its SIPware audio conferencing applications with its industry-leading media server products. This solution provides customers with a competitive advantage, allowing them to offer more services at a lower cost structure and lower operational expenses. In an example customer case study, presented within the RadiSys “Solved” video series, a conferencing customer explains how RadiSys provided, “a way to move forward into a next generation IP-based communications network that is open, scalable, flexible and affordable.” For enhanced flexibility, RadiSys media servers also have the capability to integrate within a TDM-based PSTN network using media gateway devices, allowing all customers to evolve to the next level.

An IP-based architecture using Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) for call control finally gives service providers the business model flexibility that was unavailable when utilizing traditional audio bridge equipment and TDM networks. This approach supports much greater cost-efficiency because the conferencing functionality can be disbursed through various components.

According to a RadiSys whitepaper titled, “Integrated Conferencing Solutions,” the RadiSys integrated conferencing solution fully supports this model because it consists of an application server and IP media server, whose functionality is divided into three components: RadiSys SIPware, which is separated into event and/or reservationless conferencing, RadiSys RapidFLEX and the RadiSys media server.

The RadiSys SIPware Operator-assisted event conferencing is used for large scale events like a conference or seminar and allows an operator to give support to participants throughout the duration of an event while providing a high level of reliability to the call. Reservationless conferencing, such as impromptu ‘meet-me meetings,’ offers basic services which enable a participant to self-manage meetings from beginning to end without any prior booking procedure, according to the whitepaper.

By combining these innovating components into a single integrated conferencing solution, RadiSys can address multiple problems such as cost, integration, scalability, return-on-investment, security and personalization.

Cost can be greatly reduced due to this solution. The high port allowance on the RadiSys media server helps reduce the cost per port to about half of a typical TDM bridge solution. In addition, SIP Peering can also be utilized in any situation, which allows for long-distance costs to be greatly reduced.

Seamless integration offered through the integrated conferencing solution allows CSPs to utilize open standard protocols, network architecture standards and the Linux operating system, while the solution also allows for scalability to large, multi-site distributed systems that have the capability to support 50,000 calls or more at any given time.

In addition, the RadiSys integrated conferencing solution is extremely reliable and can integrate newly available technologies.

According to the whitepaper, CSPs using the RadiSys conferencing solution will quickly see an improvement in time to money. Looking forward, CSPs will now be able to add video conferencing capabilities without hardware upgrades, thereby protecting their investment.

Due to the fact that this solution is based on Linux, it has multiple security and platform management options. According to the whitepaper, the RadiSys SIPware conferencing application also supports fraud prevention capabilities, such as protection against unauthorized individuals using a calling card to dial out to international destinations. The system will automatically disconnect the caller after various invalid PIN attempts and will even block future PIN fraud attempts that are made from the same telephone number.

As a standards-based implementation, the RadiSys solution enables the integration of various third-party solutions, providing application personalization including web-based GUI customization for subscriber or operator interfaces;  APIs for integration with common desktop productivity meeting scheduling tools, web conferencing services or web-based integration with social networking websites looking to add audio conferencing services; and simple integration with Enterprise unified communication Systems.

As companies transition away from legacy TDM conferencing bridges to next-generation IP-based platforms, new opportunities are becoming available for conferencing service providers. They now have more control over the cost, size and feature-mix of their conferencing systems and can dramatically lower cost per port. In comparison to other TDM audio bridges, overall the RadiSys solution costs less, needs less space and energy, and offers a much higher level of integration flexibility and scalability options.