Sonus Networks Positioned in the “Leaders” Quadrant in the Magic Quadrant for Session Border Controllers

Gartner has recently designatedSonus as a market “Leader” in its Magic Quadrant for SBCs (October 9, 2012). This Magic Quadrant focuses on incumbent SBC vendors and those that have developed competing products for communications service providers in the past two years. According to that report Communications Service Providers (CSPs) purchase SBCs for two main purposes:

• To incorporate them into their own infrastructure for their own use
  
  
• To offer CSP-managed SBCs as a service to customers that are evaluating whether to buy SBCs of their own or that have decided not to.

Gartner evaluates companies on their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. Leaders, they say:

• Have scale in terms of market presence and size
  
  
• Are high-viability technology providers that are well positioned with their current product portfolio and likely to continue delivering leading products
  
  
• Provide solutions that pose relatively little risk and they can achieve and sustain deployments of high quality.

In fact, through a combination of organic innovation and strategic acquisition, Sonus has built an end-to-end SBC solution delivering SIP-enabled applications from the central office to the branch office. And excluding NET, SBC product revenue is expected to grow in excess of 65 percent year-over-year in 2012, or three times the industry’s rate of growth, according to Infonetics.

From a Completeness of Vision perspective Gartner noted that: “Sonus's vision and road map include higher-scale platforms, virtualized SBCs, and feature and application themes such as SIP video support and media codec enhancements. Its SBC is built on COTS hardware.”

Sonus was specifically noted for its SBC 5200, SBC 5100, SBC 1000 and SBC 2000, all of which are Miercom Performance Verified:

• The Sonus SBC 5200 is specifically designed for high-capacity environments demanded by large service providers. The Sonus SBC 5200 supports 64,000 sessions on a single server, more than twice the capacity of a similar product from the leading SBC competitor. It is available as a stand-alone product and as an integrated solution with a media gateway, the SBC 9000. Gartner sees the SBC 5200 as competitive in the market in terms of feature/functionality and price. Moreover, they report that customer feedback has been positive.
  
  
• The Sonus SBC 5100 targets the 250 to 10,000 session market focusing in on both tier two/three service providers and large enterprises.
  
  
• The Sonus SBC 1000 and the Sonus SBC 2000 are designed for small office and branch office applications. However, as Gartner noted, they might be leveraged for use in with much smaller-scale deployments for small CSP environments.
  
  
• During the just completer 3Q12 the Sonus SBC 5100 and Sonus SBC 5200 were certified in Microsoft's Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program for Microsoft Lync Server 2010, which together with Sonus SBC 1000 and Sonus SBC 2000 represents the largest portfolio of MS Lync-certified SBCs on the market.

This choice, according to Gartner, “helps [Sonus] capitalize on its track record with customers as they continue to transform their networks into all-IP infrastructures.”

Sonus recently announced the first-editions of SIP Trunking for Dummies, Session Management for Dummies and Session Border Controllers for Dummies in partnership with John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sonus was particularly recognized by Gartner for having made “a significant marketing effort to improve understanding and awareness of SBCs [through its publication of Session Border Controllers for Dummies].”

Lastly, the Sonus PSX Centralized Policy and Routing Server was called out as a differentiator with a large installed base within CSPs, including AT&T and BT. The PSX offers centralized policy/traffic control for both SIP and legacy network elements, including SBCs, media gateways and softswitches.

In closing, Gartner cautions CSPs to assure themselves that their vendor of choice will maintain an adequate roadmap in order to remain competitive in the long term. In support of this requirement CSPs are urged to look for evidence of continued investment of vendor resources, expertise and capital to investment in SBC technology R&D.

Sonus reported on its 3Q12 10Q that:

• On August 24, 2012, the Company completed the acquisition of Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. ("NET").
  
  
• SBC product revenue was $20.4 million, compared to $13.5 million in the second quarter of 2012 and $10.4 million in the third quarter of 2011
  
  
• 40 new customers were won in the quarter, 11 for Sonus and 29 for NET (post-acquisition)
  
  
• R&D for the nine months ended Sept. 28, 2012 totaled $51.1M (28.5% of revenue) versus $47.0M (25.4% of revenue) for the same period last year. 3Q12 YTD R&D includes $1.2M of expense attributable to NET for the period since the acquisition. In its 3Q12 10Q the Company noted that: “We believe that rapid technological innovation is critical to our long-term success, and we are tailoring our investments to meet the requirements of our customers and market. We believe that our research and development expenses for fiscal 2012 will increase from fiscal 2011 levels due to our increased focus on new product development and the acquisition of NET.”
  
  
• Key elements of Sonus’ strategy include: “embracing the principles outlined by 3GPP, 4GPP2 and LTE architectures and delivering the industry's most advanced IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem)-ready SBC product suite; expanding and broadening our customer base by targeting the enterprise for SIP trunking solutions; assisting our customers' ability to differentiate themselves by offering a sophisticated application development platform and service creation environment…”

Ray Dolan, president and CEO of Sonus, noted that: “We are extremely proud of Sonus' 'Leadership' designation in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Session Border Controllers; it confirms our mission to enable cloud-based Unified Communications that help businesses communicate faster, smarter and more collaboratively. Our focused execution on SIP-based solutions has further enhanced our market position, resulting in the industry's fastest growing and broadest portfolio of Microsoft Lync qualified Session Border Controllers.”