CEBIT 08 – some observations in regards to VOIP

Just got back from the yearly ‘CEBIT trip’. It was the first time we represented 3CX at the worlds number one IT fair. We exhibited in Hall 13, and I joined my Colleagues Chris, Kevin from 3CX and Andreas from our distributor Ebertlang.

I must have spoken/demo’d 3CX to at least 100 people – and noticed a number of trends in the VOIP business:

• Hall 13 – more or less the ‘VOIP’ hall, was one of the strongest visited sections of the show. There was constant and strong traffic. It would seem that VOIP is gaining in popularity and the market is ready to start mass deployment
• The use of VOIP gateways rather then PCI add in cards is clearly more advantageous – people are seeing the advantages of taking the Analog/ISDN to IP conversion off the box and making the gateway independent from operating system versions. Especially in the linux area where a kernel update can effect the device drivers of the voice cards.
• Virtualization of the PBX seems to be well received. Rather then using a separate IP PBX appliance, virtualize the PBX under Vmware, or Hyper V of Windows 2008 server.
• VOIP equipment is becoming more mature and more widely available. I picked up a Siemens DECT IP phone for 80 euros at the local Media markt in Hannover – something that was unthinkable a year ago. It worked out of the box with 3CX Phone System