Are physical Appliances still a choice?
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I used to be part of an organization responsible for the quoting and deployment of Alcatel-Lucent Omniswitches on customer networks. Mainly focused on dedicated Hw appliances connected to either a SIP Trunk or PRI/BRI/Analog lines.
Manufacturing environments or areas where ntw connectivity was not so strong were strongly looking for solutions like this one as it gave them the agility to avoid being controlled on whether the data connection was working.
Pros
- Local Branch out
- Segregation between data and PSTN traffic
- DECTs and in warehouses mobility solutions
Cons
- Being provided in Cloud environments
- Out of the VPN connection and service usage
- limited reach when using DECT antennas.
Likelihood to Recommend
I think there are more agile and capable solutions in the market which don't rely on hw appliances or the need to have physical devices on premises. Cloud voice and UC solutions have developed (Teams with the SIP proxy for example) to enable more legacy ways of making calls into their environment.
Using analog gtws together with the cloud platforms allows the same use cases, without the need for OPEX which setting up a platform like this require.