Communicate with CommuniGate Pro 5.0 - page 2

Scaling, Big and Small

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.