3/2/2006 -- Many Cisco Systems Inc. customers -- even large shops that have infrastructure investments in Cisco gear across most of their large campuses -- share a common pain point: namely, the comparatively high cost of Cisco solutions.

This is particularly true in the branch or remote office segment, where Cisco's IOS-based stack can up the ante in terms of cost and administrative complexity. This doesn't have to be the case, of course. Branch offices can have their Cisco and, er, save money, too. Fact is, a number of third-party vendors market solutions designed to complement, extend or replace gear from Cisco, Nortel Networks and other vendors in the cost-conscious SMB or branch office spaces.

The market impetus, they say, is a no-brainer. "Cisco is the absolute dominate force in medium-sized and enterprise-class customer IP phone rollouts. Those ... customers who choose a Cisco solution often do so because of Cisco's tight integration with their other [Cisco] networking products [such as PoE switches, routers, etc.]," says Matt Godden, president and CEO of Xoasis Networks Inc., a provider of IP telephony solutions for small- and mid-sized businesses. "[A]s many Cisco clients have come to learn, extending that IP phone network to branch offices that do not have the requisite Cisco infrastructure is difficult both in initial upfront cost and long term management, as many sites are not large enough [e.g., have fewer than 50 handsets] to warrant the ongoing time commitment to running an all Cisco network."

Cisco hasn't exactly turned a deaf ear to this problem, of course. But -- in view of its IOS-centric and highly modular product stack -- there's only so much it's been able to do. "This is a very grey area for Cisco, as they're often dealing with a small business within a larger enterprise. So customers become very impatient with [the idea of] extending the top notch, Cisco-class network they have long maintained at their main sites to branch offices that will not necessarily benefit from the Cisco features and local branch managers who do not have the budget for such a deployment," Godden argues.

Enter companies such as Xoasis, which fill in the missing -- and most expensive -- interstices of an otherwise cost-prohibitive all-Cisco or all-Nortel stack SMB or branch office stack. "We specifically design our solution to fit into this niche market of supplementing enterprise class IP phone networks with an easily deployed and reliable IP phone system," Godden says, alluding to his company's Prodigy VoIP PBX. "Unlike a Cisco deployment, we do not require end-to-end Cisco switching and routing hardware and function with standard Ethernet switching. We offer a 'one-box' solution where a single call chassis will handle all functions from voicemail, call routing, conferencing, auto attendant, etc."

This strategy is a lot more straightforward than Cisco's own (highly modular) approach, Godden maintains. "As you know, Cisco is very component-oriented, everything is an add-on or module that requires an upfront software license or another piece of hardware. For a standard IP phone deployment you will end up with multiple different network devices for the very basic items like handling call flow and voicemail to the more advanced like conference calling bridges. [We remove] the upfront infrastructure headache and [provide] a 'one-box' solution." Xoasis also support bread-and-butter Cisco IP telephony features -- such as SCCP trunking -- along with the networking giant's hugely popular IP phones.

Xoasis doesn't always get in to customer accounts from the get-go. Instead, Godden explains, many customers -- put off by the prohibitive prices Cisco charges for optional IP telephony features -- become surprisingly receptive to third-party alternatives. "A Cisco customer will become frustrated with the notorious Cisco pricing structure -- heavy upfront user licensing for every optional feature -- and want to deploy a feature like Groupware [voicemail and FAX routed to e-mail and dialing from within Microsoft's Outlook or Novell's GroupWise clients] but the pricing structure is out of their budget and turnup after [an] initial Cisco IP phone network deployment is complicated," he indicated. -Stephen Swoyer