Acme Packet, a company that specializes in session delivery network solutions, held its annual Interconnect customer conference May 16-18 in Miami, Florida. During the conference, Acme Packet announced new solutions to simplify session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking implementations and extend these services to medium-sized enterprises.

The new offerings include:

• New Enterprise Session Border Controllers (SBCs) – The new Net-Net ESD-Server Edition (SE) and Net-Net ESD-Virtual Machine Edition (VME) are software-based E-SBCs targeted at medium-sized enterprises, which operate on third party hardware or in virtual machine environments. These new E-SBCs utilize the same market-leading Net-Net OS software employed across Acme Packet’s E-SBC portfolio, delivering vendor-neutral interoperability, trusted security, and first-class reliability with increased usability and simplified deployment.

• SIP Trunk Xpress – Acme Packet’s SIP Trunk Xpress is a new, easy-to-use application that reduces the expense and complexity involved in deploying E-SBCs used for SIP trunking. Featuring a browser-based interface, SIP Trunk Xpress works with Acme Packet SBCs to provision and configure the SIP trunk connection in an automated fashion, reducing the time and effort associated with such activities.

• Interop Xpress – Interop Xpress is a new Acme Packet initiative to provide testing and qualification of SIP trunking services in conjunction with leading private branch exchange (PBX) and unified communication (UC) solutions.

According to Jim Dalton (News - Alert), founder and CEO of least cost routing software developer TransNexus and a longtime Interconnect attendee, the most important news was Acme Packet’s IP Multimedia Subsystem (News - Alert) (IMS) solution, which is called Net-Net SIP Multimedia-Xpress (SMX).

TransNexus noted on a recent blog post about the conference that telecom vendors have been promoting IMS solutions which provide a combination of voice, video and data services over the same network for years, but the IMS standard was too complicated. SMX simplifies the process for network operators because it implements six of the IMS network elements in a single session border controller (SBC).

This reduced network complexity was a major theme of the conference and a big advantage for Acme Packet, according to TransNexus.

TransNexus also noted after the conference that two big market shifts bode well for Acme Packet. First, the FCC’s (News - Alert) order last year that all carriers offer IP interconnection will translate into lots of SBC orders. Second, Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is picking up steam among wireless carriers, and Acme Packet is shipping VoLTE products and has been making presentations about the technology for the last three Interconnect conferences.

Among the wholesale VoIP software applications developed by TransNexus (News - Alert) is its OSS/BSS solution, an Acme Packet Open Session Routing Ecosystem application that provides least cost routing for inter-state, intra-state, local and international calls. TransNexus is a strategic Acme Packet partner, although it also maintains interoperability partnerships with other vendors in the space such as Cisco and MetaSwitch (News - Alert).