Communicate with CommuniGate Pro 5.0

By: Rob Reilly
Thursday, November 10, 2005 10:27:22 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6070/1/

Scaling, Big and Small

Do you need an Internet communications server solution that handles email, instant messaging, calendaring, and VoIP?

CommuniGate Pro 5.0 could be the ticket.

It competes directly with other carrier-level collaboration packages like Critical Path, Openwave, and Sun/iPlanet.

Thom O'Connor, Director of Product Architecture, pointed out that the unique scalability of CommuniGate Pro comes from the "Dynamic Cluster." The same binary runs on all cluster machines as a multi node system. All services are active on all machines in the cluster, and all systems provide service for all users.

This helps the product reliably accommodate large numbers of users. For example Tele2, the European telco, has about 30 million telephony users and 5 million on email. The email system is a CommuniGate Pro 4.3 Dynamic Cluster with 16 front-end servers and 5 back-end servers. Users were migrated from a previous Openwave system. Servers are both Linux and Solaris powered (within the same cluster). The back-end communicates over NFS to a medium-sized NAS array of between 100 and 200 disks. Shared storage for Dynamic Clusters can be on NAS or SAN.

The largest cluster to date has been a 24 (frontend) by 16 (backend) server cluster. That system was constructed 5 years ago and would require far fewer servers, for the same four-million account cluster.

At the other end of the spectrum are smaller clusters and even single-server systems. Examples include Childrens Hospital of Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) and the University of Virginia. Universities are prime candidates for all-in-one collaboration systems because of the need for ease of provisioning and frequent user changes.

Currently, there are about 9,000 customer sites and 180 strong resellers and integrator. The majority are Telco and Broadband service providers. Many of the VoIP technology partners OEM CommuniGate Pro and bundle it into their integrated solution offerings.

Open Standards For Collaboration

Although the CommuniGate product is not open source, O'Connor said that the company is adhering to open standards.

He believes that open and interoperable standards are the basis of Internet communications itself. That is especially true for the SIP standards with VoIP communications, much like it has been for the last 10 years with e-mail. Service providers like Skype might have a tougher long-term future because they have developed proprietary formats that will hinder third-party interaction.

O'Connor spoke on Open Standards for VoIP, at the Message05 conference in London, late last month.

Versions 4.2 and 4.3 introduced SIP components. The advanced SIP features in 4.3 includes NAT and session border control. They don't use STUN (Simple Traversal of UDP through NATs (Network Address Translation)), instead using server-based SIP signaling and media proxying that modifies SIP headers to keep connections open.

CommuniGate incorporates its own procedural scripting language for application development, called CG/PL. The VoIP applications provided in the download--Conference Server, Auto-Attendant/IVR, Call Queuing/ACD, Voicemail/Self-Service, and Call Pickup/Parking/Transfer are provided as open CG/PL in the package, and are easily extended by sites for personalization or customization, or for use as examples in the development of new applications.

Open and documented standards also make it possible for third-party vendors to produce Web skins and voice mail prompts. The company's Web site has a downloadable collection of voice mail prompts in Japanese, Portuguese, German, and several other languages.

Wrapping Up

Version 5.1 will provide additional codec support and new protocols, such as XMPP.

5.0 'CURRENT' (beta) is available now. 4.3 is the most-recent stable version. Consult CommuniGate for a complete rundown on their pricing options.

Rob Reilly is a Contributing Editor for LinuxToday.com. His business advises clients on business, technology, and marketing projects. Send him a note or visit his Web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~robreilly.