Nimcat Eliminates PBX for SMBs
Small businesses looking for phone systems will have a new choice early next year, when Aastra Technologies Ltd. releases a new office phone running Nimcat Networks Inc.'s NimX software. The SIP phones, to retail for $325 to $375 apiece, take the PBX out of the picture.
The phones themselves, which look like typical IP screen phones, embody all the switching, auto attendant, directory, transferring and voice mail features usually run off the central PBX, whether IP or traditional TDM.
Marc Gingras, Nimcat's vice president of business development, manned the Nimcat booth at the VON show Wednesday, demonstrating how a Nimcat-running IP phone, when plugged into the LAN, simply asks for an IP address and a user name for the directory. When more phones are similarly added to the network, they discover each other.
They also back each other up. Voice mail left for a disconnected phone is stored by a neighboring phone, retrievable through that phone or remotely. When the phone is reconnected, it quickly downloads its mail from the networked neighbor.
The only other piece of equipment in this system is a small PSTN interface box, to be thought of as a "reverse terminal adapter," said Gingras. With Ethernet and PSTN ports, it simply translates the SIP voice stream back to TDM for exit to the PSTN.
A teleworker with a Nimcat-running phone plugs in with his broadband connection (NATs are no problem, said Gingras), adds IP address, user name, and password, and NIMCat's software creates a "lite" VPN that tunnels back to the home office. The phone gets the next incremental extension number (this can be changed through the system's Web interface), and the teleworker is now an extension on the PBX-less network.
