VoIPon Interviews Frederick Dickey @ the Sangoma Partner Summit 2012 – New Sangoma Cards, Appliances & Gateways

VoIPon Solutions attended the Sangoma Partner Summit 2012. Sangoma discussed the new Sangoma Cards, Appliances & Gateways with an exclusive interview with Frederick Dickey of Sangoma.

VoIPon Solutions are proud to announce that they were the recipients of the Sangoma 2012 partner award for European sales. The Sangoma partner summit was held between the 29th -31st May 2012 at Niagara Falls, Canada.

Whilst at the Sangoma partner summit Alexis Argent, Sales Manager of VoIPon Solutions had an in-depth discussion with Frederick Dickey, Product Manager at Sangoma technologies.  Under discussion was the latest range of Sangoma products that have been released on the market and how Sangoma has evolved and expanded its product range.

The Sangoma A116 is a unique product, Sangoma have always been ahead of the curve of whatever is offered in the market for telephony boards so we will keep on introducing new boards and pushing the envelope. Frederick Dickey, Product Manager, Sangoma Technologies.

See the video interview below.

VoIPon: Hello my names Alexis Argent and I’m the sales manager of VoIPon Solutions in the United Kingdom and I’m joined here by Frederick Dickey the product manager of Sangoma technologies. We are here at the Sangoma partner summit 2012 it’s been a very exciting show, Frederick perhaps you can tell me more about the Sangoma products that are coming out this coming year.

Frederick Dickey: Sure, Sangoma has built a lot of products this year; it’s been a successful year. On the displays here we have some of our products,  As you know Sangoma is well know for building a lot of computer telephony boards for the open source industry and we have released three new products this year, which is three times more than we used to do every year.

One of these products is the Sangoma B500 BRI Card for ISDN, BRI which is mostly for Europe for small PBX low port counts, so that is an exciting new product which is going to be shipping in early June. The Sangoma B500 is available in four models;  Sangoma B500 1 Module – 2 BRI Ports – 4 B-Channel PCIe B501E , Sangoma B500 1 Module – 2 BRI Ports – 4 B-Channel PCIe + Echo Cancellation , Sangoma B500 2 Modules – 4 BRI Ports – 8 B-Channel PCI, Sangoma B500 2 Modules – 4 BRI Ports – 8 B-Channel PCIe + Echo Cancellation .

Sangoma is known for pushing the envelope a lot in terms of density in the open source market so for the last 5 years we have been shipping the Sangoma A108 PCI PRI ISDN Card  8 port card. Now are shipping this new board the Sangoma A116E PCIe, 16 spans, no H/W Echo Cancellation and the Sangoma A116DE PCIe, 16 spans, with H/W Echo Cancellation which also be shipping in early June, which will support 16 E1 or T1 worth of traffic so that’s over 400 channels on one single board like this.

Alexis: So this is unique to Sangoma? Nobody else has a card like this?

Frederick Dickey: The Sangoma A116 is a unique product. We have always been ahead of the curve of whatever is offered in the market for telephony boards. So we will keep on introducing new boards and pushing the envelope as I said earlier, and here is the Sangoma A116 port card.

Alexis: Excellent

Frederick Dickey: We also released back in February the Sangoma W400 GSM card, this is the first time that Sangoma has launched a wireless product, so again it has integration into PBXs and provides mobile to mobile connections. So that’s kind of a sample of Sangoma board products, but as you can see here on this table, Sangoma over the last year has built a lot of new appliances, appliance products. The Sangoma W400 GSM card is available in five models, Sangoma W400-001E GSM board with 1 GSM Module, Sangoma W400-002E GSM board with 2 GSM Modules, Sangoma W400-003E GSM board with 3 GSM Modules , Sangoma W400-004E GSM board with 4 GSM Modules , Sangoma W400-UPG-001 Field Upgrade Kit containing: 1-GSM module, 1-RF cable, 1- antenna.

Alexis: This is a significant move because Sangoma is moving into the appliance market?

Frederick Dickey: Yes, so while we were in the board’s area as building blocks, essential building blocks for the integrators and developers of applications, now we are offering more of the ready to be used products as opposed to components, but they are still vital component of VoIP networks. One of the things that we are showing here is these Sangoma branded appliances where we leverage a lot of our boards technology to offer ready to use solutions and here we have as you can see this is a GUI it’s easy to use and navigate.

Alexis: This is the Transcoding Gateway right?

Frederick Dickey:  So we are displaying a Sangoma NetBorder Transcoding Gateway, we have a box here which is not powered up but it is for a Sangoma SS7 Appliance to VoIP so these are things that will cover thousands of ports, thousands of calls in these kind of units, so this is meant to go into the carrier space in the service providers space not in the enterprise, so leveraging again our technology leveraging the fact that we can scale up and these are types of products that can go into the service provider networks.

Then over the last year we have acquired a company in England called Vegastream and now the whole suite of products of VoIP Gateways for the enterprise at the appliance level so here we just have a sample we have the Sangoma Vega 50 which is a low port count for the BRI or FXO or analogue ports. We have the Sangoma Vega 100 Single T1/E1 Digital Gateway  which is the lowest introductory price the lowest entry point for a single E1 or a single T1 Gateway.

Then we have the Sangoma Vega 5000 which is very good for large campuses like universities or large industrial complexes.

Alexis: This is high density?

Frederick Dickey:  This is high density analogue and this will support up to 50 lines of analogue and will allow large campuses that are migrating the whole network on VoIP, but some places and buildings maybe remote buildings were maybe the budget is next year or in a few years they can still connect older legacy phones onto the VoIP network that are building so that facilitates the transition.  We’ve had deployments  were thousands of these are deployed in massive VoIP networks. But more recently we’ve had wins with universities in the US where they will use this to convert dormitories and various buildings onto a Voice Over IP network without having to re-cable entire buildings. So it’s a nice addition and a mixture of boards and a mixture of leveraging these boards and to appliances offering new and more are a broader spectrum of products.

Alexis: Is there anything more that perhaps we have missed in terms of appliances, so we have the SS7 Gateway, the Sangoma Transcoding applicance device is anything else in the appliance range?

Frederick Dickey: There are things that are coming down the road so natural evolution of a Transcoding Gateway is to offer a Sangoma Vega 400 Session Border Controllers SBC again for the carrier, so as SIP Trunking is taking off like crazy you need SBCs at the enterprise and you need SBC’s at the carrier’s space to protect the network. When you do SIP Trunking you open up your networks to different level of different issues with security that’s what SBCs do.

So this is going to evolve into a carrier based Sangoma Vega 400 SBC and one of the appliance were not showing here but we have in this family we have a Sangoma Vega 400 SBC for the enterprise so both carrier as well as the enterprise. So this Sangoma Vega 400 SBC has been released about two weeks ago.The Sangoma Vega 400 Session Border Controller can be purchased with different call sessions. Sangoma Vega 400 SBC: Session Border Controller – 12 Call Sessions, Sangoma Vega 400 SBC: Session Border Controller – 24 Call Sessions (VEGA-VS0156-024), Sangoma Vega 400 SBC: Session Border Controller – 48 Call sessions (VEGA-VS0156-048). Sangoma Vega 400 SBC: Session Border Controller – 60 Call sessions (VEGA-VS0156-060) . 

Alexis: Fantastic

Frederick Dickey: We are doing demos, beta sites we already shipped SBC around the world for us is a new venture it is very different, there is no TDM, Sangoma up to now you see all these boxes they have the TDM interface of our Sangoma Vega 400 SBC interface is pure IP units are also new for us.

Alexis: Excellent that’s great, well its fantastic to know that Sangoma are developing all these new products and there are great opportunities for Sangoma and its partners and we thank you for that, its been great interviewing you.