Comments: Is “Serverless” a Virtue?

You should probably stress the distinction between using a server for signalling and using one for the actual voice transport. A "server" used for signalling can be as innocuous as a DNS server resolving ENUM queries.

Posted by Fazal Majid at October 9, 2004 11:15 PM

Thanks for the pointer. I am saying only indirectly what you are suggesting: you need a "signaling server" if you want to interact outside an enterprise and "voice transport server" is required only if you interact with PSTN. Also, it is not clear to me how one could avoid a "voice mail server".

Posted by Aswath at October 10, 2004 08:43 AM

While serverless is certainly not a virtue as such, it can certainly mean goodness.

I work for a CPE manufacturer and I had the opportunity to spend quite some time with both Popular Telephony and Nimcat people.

Given the pragmatic nature of their target market (SMBs), my temporary conclusion is that their products will fly if they deliver on the promise of lowest Total Cost of Ownership compared to Key Systems, PBXs and Centrex solution.

A Peerio or a Nimcat phone will probably sell $50-100 more than the equivalent IP phone (the cost difference comes from the software license and additional memory) but that price is lower than that of most proprietary phones sold with Key/PBX systems. And no PBX is required in this case...

Besides they claim that peer-to-peer technology makes adding a phone to a network completely plug and play. No more expensive external integrator spending hours exercising black magic in the dusty closet where noone dared going.

Provided the IP network is reasonably well designed (and preferable implements QoS) the assumption is that the cost of ownership of a p2p telephony solution is only marginally higher than the cost of the phone. If this assumption is confirmed in real life deployments, serverless comes pretty close to a virtue.

JC

Posted by JC Francois at October 11, 2004 08:09 AM

Perhaps you'd like to define the term "enterprise" ? Do you mean only companies in the Fortune 500? I know many small and medium sized enterprises that would be more than happy to ditch the expense of purchasing, deploying, and managing a server and have no problem with the supposed "social and privacy" issues that you raise.

I suggest that the world is big enough to support both views -- some companies will keep the servers while others opt for serverless.

Posted by Ted Shelton at October 12, 2004 12:16 AM