3Com fills SMB niches with new IP Telephony products

Conversations I had with 3Com executives last week previewed some imminent rollouts of VoIP-enabling equipment for SMBs (Small to Medium Size Businesses  between 5 and 200 users.

Officially announced today, the products reinforce 3Com's belief that niches exist in these segments for robust, easy configurable VoIP-related solutions.

Some might call this "downmarket migration," but the 3Com execs I spoke with would rather cast this news as in line with the spreading of VoIP to broader swaths of business users.

Now as to the specifics:

3Com says today it is introducing VCX Connect, an all-in-one platform that delivers Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) software-based IP telephony call control and unified messaging in a single-server package.  There are two versions of the product.  The VCX Connect 100 delivers high-performance voice capabilities for organizations with 30 to 100 users.  The VCX Connect 200 delivers the same performance for between 100 to 250 users.

At the same time, 3Com Asterisk Appliance, an Open Source voice-over-IP (VoIP) system based on Digium’s Asterisk Business Edition 1.4 IP-PBX.  This plug-and-play out of the box product is intended for between 5 to 30 users, and fully compatible with 3Com's handset lines.

Those of you who have been paying attention to the user ranges might be wondering, yea, but what about 30 to 100 users, and more than 200 users?

At 3Com, those niches are filled by the already established 3Com NBX IP Telephony platforms for small and medium-sized businesses and the 3Com VCX IP Telephony platforms for mid-sized and large enterprises.

The VCX Connect 100 integrated server and gateway has a U.S. list price of $7,000 for a single or primary server.  A secondary server has a U.S. list price of $5,500.  The VCX Connect 200 has a U.S. list price of $7,500 for a single or primary server.  A secondary server for the 200 has a U.S. list price of $6,000.

As for 3Com Asterisk, that'd be $1,595 (U.S.)