Customer Profile

deltathree

Cisco SIP solutions enable service carrier to develop new voice services twice as fast, at 30-40 percent lower cost

Background

Founded in 1996, deltathree (Nasdaq: DDDC) provides Internet telephony services and infrastructure for service providers, businesses, and consumers worldwide. Service provider customers private-label deltathree's voice-over-IP (VoIP) services, which include PC-to-phone, phone-to-phone, and broadband phone solutions. The company differentiates itself through quality, reliability, and the fact that it provides complete turnkey solutions, including billing, operations management, marketing support, and network management to its clients.

When deltathree updated its infrastructure with a Cisco Transit solution and became one of the first carriers to adopt Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), it slashed application development time by half, reduced operational costs 30 to 40 percent, and won certification from Microsoft to provide voice termination for the SIP-based PC-to-phone service embedded in the MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger clients.

Challenge: Fast, Cost-Effective Application Development

In mid-2000, deltathree decided to re-evaluate its network infrastructure, provided by a telephony equipment vendor, to ensure it took full advantage of recent innovations for application development and operational efficiency. The company sought to maximize port density—essential for lower capital expenditures—and adopt SIP, then in its infancy. "We realized that a SIP-compliant network would enable faster and more cost-effective application development, greater scalability, and would reduce hardware requirements," says Noam Bardin, deltathree president and CEO.

The primary attraction of SIP was the ease and speed of developing additional value in telephony services. "Because SIP is based on standard Web protocols like SMTP and HTTP, Web developers who do not have telecom experience are able to write voice applications," says Bardin. "That's a crucial factor in developing unique services and rolling them out quickly and at low cost."

Bardin notes that SIP facilitates some of the most time-consuming and expensive tasks facing service providers: building applications, accounting for calls, and delivering quality of service (QoS), operation, and maintenance features required to deliver a real service.

The other advantage of SIP for deltathree is scalability. SIP-based applications don't need to maintain state information for each connection. "The connectionless environment means we get more value out of our hardware and can use fewer servers, for lower capital expenditure," says Bardin.

Cisco Chosen for IP Experience and Product Stability

After comparing the SIP offerings of Cisco and its incumbent vendor, deltathree chose Cisco. The company already used Cisco equipment for its H.323 applications and was impressed with the stability of the products, which were "rock solid," according to Bardin. In addition, Cisco offered unsurpassed leadership with IP technologies.

"Everybody certifies their equipment against Cisco," Bardin notes. "Working with Cisco equipment means we're working with the standards."

Finally, Cisco was receptive to creating solutions that would meet deltathree's unique requirements. "Rather than trying to tell us what we needed, Cisco asked, 'How can we help you solve your problems?'" says Bardin. "It was a breath of fresh air."

The company deployed a Cisco Transit solution, comprising Cisco AS5300 universal gateways and Cisco SIP Proxy Server (CSPS) software. CSPS provides authentication, least-cost routing, location, and registration.

The Cisco engineering team worked closely with deltathree to develop SIP functions for billing, operation, and service delivery. During this time, Microsoft endorsed the SIP standard by selecting it as the protocol for delivering voice services via Windows Messenger, included with the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, and MSN Messenger, which is available for other Microsoft operating systems. Deltathree's concurrent work developing its own SIP infrastructure greatly facilitated integration with Microsoft's client.

In April 2001, deltathree started working with Microsoft. The two companies successfully launched the service just a few months later, in October 2001. "When Microsoft needed adjustments to our network, Cisco was there to support us, sometimes creating a new release in just a week," says Bardin. Leveraging its development work for Microsoft, deltathree now offers service providers the ability to private-label the Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger PC-to-Phone clients.

Rapid Development of SIP Clients

In addition to its flagship Microsoft Messenger PC-to-Phone application, deltathree offers several other SIP-based applications that rely on the Cisco Transit solution. One is deltathree's own PC-to-phone client, which allows consumers and businesses to place calls from a PC to any phone in the world via deltathree's VoIP network. This service is available to end users either through deltathree's service provider partners or directly through the deltathree consumer division, iConnectHere. Another service, the phone-to-phone application, enables service providers' customers to use the deltathree VoIP network to make high-quality, inexpensive calls from any phone to any other phone in the world. Service providers can brand the phone-to-phone service with an interactive voice response (IVR) feature, and can take advantage of SIP-based provisioning, customer care, billing, and fraud protection applications for a turnkey solution. Through deltathree's Broadband Phone service, service providers can enable customers to connect ordinary phones to a broadband access line, for both inbound and outbound calls, and can give those customers a portable phone number.

In early 2002, deltathree will introduce its Business Link service, which allows enterprise customers with Cisco routers to make VoIP calls from their IP network to the deltathree network, which can terminate the phone call anywhere in the world. "With our SIP-enabled infrastructure, based on Cisco technology, customers augment their existing Cisco routers with voice capabilities," says Bardin.

Benefits: Development Cycle Slashed

The most concrete benefit of the SIP-enabled Cisco Transit solution is dramatically reduced development time. "Using the SIP-based Cisco infrastructure has enabled us to cut our development cycle in half," says Bardin. "That means we can introduce more revenue-generating products in less time." Factors contributing to faster development include more straightforward testing, and the ability to use off-the-shelf software components. Quality Assurance time alone is 60 percent faster because SIP is a clear text protocol, similar to Web protocols.

As another direct benefit of deploying Cisco solutions, deltathree expects its network operational costs to drop 30 to 40 percent compared to the cost of the company's previous telecom equipment. Factors contributing to the savings include smaller equipment "footprints," higher density, the availability of off-the-shelf software for operational support and maintenance, and the ready availability of engineers certified by Cisco. "Now that Cisco servers support SIP, which is simple and straightforward to work with, we have a larger talent pool at our disposal," says Bardin. Its Cisco infrastructure also entitled deltathree to free membership in the Cisco Service Carrier Community program, which helps telephony service providers grow by providing opportunities for them to form business relationships with each other. As a benefit of the program, deltathree can use a password-protected Web-based tool on Cisco Connection Online to search for carriers with points of presence (POPs) in more than 240 countries around the world.

For deltathree, one of the greatest advantages of Cisco, when compared to other leading telecom vendors, lies in the stability of its products, such as the market-tested Cisco AS5300 universal gateways and proxy servers. "Cisco equipment doesn't go down," says Bardin. "Engineers just turn it on and then can work on more important things."

Find Out More

Cisco Transit solutions, with integrated support for SIP, enable service carriers to deploy enhanced voice services more quickly and to reduce application development and capital expenditures. To find out more about Cisco Transit solutions and SIP, visit
http://www.cisco.com/go/telephony.