Aculab, a leading provider of enabling technology for the communications market

The market needs

The changing market conditions, lower cost of telephone calls, teleworking, business travel patterns and changing telecoms regulations are all contributing to an increased rate of growth of voice and video conferencing services.

In addition, leaps in technology such as improved voice quality, VoIP-based conferencing and telepresence/realview video conferencing are re-invigorating the voice and video conferencing market. These technology improvements are key to widespread acceptance of conferencing as a real alternative to business travel for meetings.

Widespread adoption will come through a good user experience - this is fuelled through making conferencing systems that are easy to use, flexible in deployment and cost efficient.

Aculab technology for conferencing platform developers

Aculab's media processing and call control technology satisfies service providers' needs for converged VoIP and TDM solutions, benefiting from high integration density, outstanding voice quality and low cost per conferencing channel.

Implementation of a highly integrated conferencing service enables lower overall system costs, reduces development cycles and speeds time to market. Coupled with Aculab's unparalleled digital network access support and consistent API, the Prosody portfolio enables fast, global deployment of conferencing solutions.

Conferencing system features and capacities vary depending on the market segments they target. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) may look to enhance the built-in conference call functions of their phone system, while larger companies may require a stand-alone solution for intra-company conferencing. Carriers and service bureaus may look to provide large scale conference facilities as a business offering. Some example applications include premium rate chat lines, intra-company worldwide training, distance learning and corporate referendums or voting.

Conferencing functionality available with the Prosody portfolio allows developers to create applications to suit any of the above market segments. By eliminating the need for dedicated, specialised conferencing hardware, Prosody products present a cost-effective solution for delivering conferencing with powerful features and high quality audio.

The flexibility of the Prosody portfolio enables conferencing solutions to be created which encompass both traditional TDM, IP-based and mobile participants using the same conference server hardware. The Prosody portfolio supports multiple voice codec types including wideband codecs, to give the developer the choice of providing a system with optimised network bandwidth utilisation or a premium product with maximised voice quality

Aculab's partnership approach

When you decide to partner with Aculab, the leading-edge products are just the start of what we offer. Complementing the product range, we offer customers a solid vendor partnership in the field of professional services, ongoing development and support based on our in-depth expertise and experience. The foundation of Aculab's approach is our industry-recognised agility and willingness to meet and exceed our customer's demands.

We focus on our customers recognising that their success is our success, and we are willing to listen and invest in the technology they need achieve their goals. One of the key areas that sets Aculab apart is our ability to respond to customers' near term requirements through our request for change (RFC) process. An example of this in action for a conferencing application was in the recent development of a wideband audio codec for a conferencing provider to enable them to offer a solution with class-leading audio quality. The final solution is providing the client with industry leading conferencing capabilities. A scalable, redundant, high density solution, with over 225 wideband iSAC encoded streams mixed per single board and over 4000 per CompactPCI chassis, ensuring the client's ability to provide a premium conferencing service with minimal operational cost.

For more information on this and other examples of how our customers have used Aculab products to develop conferencing solutions visit case studies.

Visit our partners section for a list of partners offering conferencing platforms based on Aculab's technology.

The Aculab Prosody portfolio of hardware and software boards and software supports all the media processing technologies required for voice conferencing platforms: