MAYNARD, Mass. — January 28, 2008 — Covergence®, the leading provider of next-generation Session Border Control (SBC) solutions, today announced the CVA, the industry’s first SBC delivered as a virtual appliance.
CVA enables enterprise branch offices and service providers servicing small and medium businesses to deploy Covergence session management software as a pre-built, pre-configured, ready-to-run enterprise application, packaged with an operating system inside a virtual machine. By doing so, Covergence customers can now run its session management software on any x86-hardware, making it easier to deploy at multiple branch offices or SMBs.
For years now the industry has been touting convergence as one of the primary motivators for moving to VoIP. But for the most part, enterprises have enjoyed only nominal benefits because they have not been able to integrate their voice and data networks. The Covergence Session Manager secures, controls and integrates real-time traffic onto the WAN to give customers both substantial cost savings and the infrastructure they need to move to Unified Communications. With the new CVA organizations can now easily and cost-effectively integrate their branch offices.
“Many organizations are looking to move beyond VoIP to unified communications, but the need for security, management and policy enforcement stands in their way,” said Bob O’Neil, president and CEO, Covergence. “Some found relief when session border control moved from proprietary to commodity hardware, but many others with branch offices or smaller operations have been left waiting for the next price and convenience breakthrough. That day has come with the CVA virtual appliance.”
“Enterprises will forever struggle with the cost and management concerns of their IT investments. Due to the complexity of voice communications, those concerns can be magnified,” said Nora Freedman, senior research analyst with IDC’s Enterprise Networking. “Therefore, IT managers are attracted to solutions that allow them to integrate, manage and control real-time applications like VoIP from a single point. The CVA is a good example of this type of solution.”
“Covergence is again demonstrating its commitment to supporting its customers’ platform strategies,” said Joe McGarvey, principal analyst at Current Analysis. “Last year Covergence added support for the ATCA platform and the IBM BladeCenter. With this announcement the company adds support for the entire x86 universe of platforms for its customers.”
CVA allows organizations of all sizes to enforce policy along appropriate geographic or organizational boundaries, as well as enact policies reflecting government regulations, security concerns, corporate codes and business priorities.
The list price for CVA is $5,000, and Covergence is now accepting applications for its early adopter program. >> Apply for the program
About Covergence
Covergence is the leader in scaling, securing and controlling VoIP and other real-time services. The award-winning Covergence Session Manager combines traditional session-border-control functionality with comprehensive security features and management tools. Covergence Session Manager is purpose-built to securely and reliably connect users to VoIP and multi-media services while giving organizations the complete control and visibility they require.
