Vendor Pins Hopes On CompactPCI Spec

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March 03, 1999 (12:00 AM EST)

By Warren Hersch,

Vendor adoption of the new CompactPCI specification will significantly boost business acceptance of computer-telephony technologies.

That was among the key messages of a keynote given by Natural Microsystems chairman and CEO Robert Schechter, at CTExpo.

"Fueling the CT market is the ongoing convergence of voice and data technologies," said Schechter. "But to realize the market's full potential, CT vendors have to move aggressively to adopt open standards. And that includes CompactPCI."

CompactPCI, initiated in 1994 by Ziatech under the auspices of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), is the newest open specification for PCI-based industrial computers. The standard offers telecom features required for network applications, including a standard telecom bus for communications between cards in a chassis rack, redundant chassis and board specifications, and a hot-swap capability among other features.

Despite its rugged industrial form factor, CompactPCI equipment is electrically compatible and software compatible with desktop PCI computers, Schechter said.

The shift from proprietary to open architectures is gathering speed as a growing number of vendors adopt the CompactPCI, H.110, and other open specifications, he said.

Forum (ECTF) and other standards bodies are backing the new specifications that will permit faster time to market and reduced deployment costs for CT technologies by leveraging off-the-shelf products, Schechter said.

To date, developers of speech recognition, unified messaging, interactive voice response, call center, and other CT applications have advanced furthest in adopting standards that permit cross-platform compatibility, Schechter said. Lagging are products that underlay the enterprise telecom infrastructure, including CT gateways, protocols, network management, and enterprise-switching equipment.

But transition to open infrastructure standards is accelerating, Schechter said.

"The infrastructure renewal is under way," he said.