IP-Centrex System : Siemens ICN

Siemens ICN sells its Centrex product under the name GeoCENTREX. GeoCENTREX is based on the Siemens EWSD central office switch. The EWSD is the most widely sold such system in the world, supplying 250 million analog and digital ports. A single EWSD system can process 16 million BHCAs, have up to 240,000 ports, and handle 100,000 Erlangs of traffic. Siemens holds a distant third place in the North American market and is still a minor player in the Centrex field.

Siemens intends to provide an end-to-end IP-Centrex solution through a combination of its own technology and vendor partnerships, as shown in Figure 3.5, which illustrates the use of an IAD to link analog stations or KTS/PBX systems to IP-Centrex.


Figure 3.5: Next generation local switch services.

In mid-2002, Siemens sold its controlling share in Unisphere to Juniper Networks and is no longer directly involved in the data router and switch market. However, since Siemens' IP phones work to open standards, the customer and service provider could use any standards-based router. Siemens has retained the name of the Unisphere SRX for its family of softswitches and obtains its IP-Centrex software from Broadsoft Inc.

The Broadworks package can be deployed in a totally packet-based architecture such as full IP-Centrex or work as an extension of a preexisting class 5 switch. The system can support more than 1 million customers per network and process up to 6 million BHCA, based on a cluster of Sun computers, divided into the three classes of application, media, and network servers.

This software enables service providers to manage a nationwide IP-Centrex system centrally, delivering a uniform service to distributed enterprises and optimizing network management resources.

The Broadworks package provides Web portals for five types of service management:

- Service providers with complete system administration capabilities;

- Resellers that can create and manage their own groups of customers, under contract with the service provider;

- Enterprise administrators with access for configuration and management of multilocation dialing plans, for specific organizations:

- Group administrators, within one enterprise, that can perform modification, addition, and deletion of features and users;

- End users within a calling group that can personalize calling services and features.