Siemens Enterprise Networks greatly expanded its HiPath portfolio today, stopping in at CommWeb's San Francisco offices along their promotional way to brief us. Here are the (brief) facts along with some of the official spin (at least that which made sense to us):

The announcement was highlighted by three formal IP communications platforms.

• The HiPath 3000 is aimed at the small to medium enterprise crowd. They say it scales to 1,000 users with the AllServe networking solution. Practical beginner platforms would fall into the 100-port range. It supports circuit, packet or mixed switching configurations -- something Siemens sensibly labels "IP Converged".

  In short, the idea is to provide a product family that lets enterprises evolve to IP telephony with, in the words of George Nolen, president and CEO of Siemens Enterprise Networks, "[a] mix of solutions they need and at an migration pace that they set themselves."

  The 3000 also supports Siemens' optiset E and optiPoint telephones, including their existing optiPoint 400 IP-based business phone and their new optiPoint 500 "workpoint" -- which is a circuit-switched telephone. They also officially introduced an optiClient (software phone). And while we were able to handle, if not use, both the IP and circuit-switched phones (they're handsome, indeed), we only saw a very tiny screenshot of the pure IP telephony client.

• The HiPath 4000 platform is aimed at the LME market. It scales to 100,000 users, according to Siemens -- with the 100k ports distributed across 64 nodes. In addition to handling the features of the 3000 family, it also has Web-based management and can access an LDAP display telephone book for corporate directories.

  The 3000 and 4000, in Siemens migration plans, are the bridges between circuit-switched PBX environment to a totally pure IP environment, which leads us to...

• The HiPath 5000 enterprise softswitch is more of a pure IP play, although it can work -- and in fact would have to in order to make and take calls over a TDM network -- with PBXs (like Siemens' Hicoms) or their so-called IP convergence platforms (like the HiPath 3000 and 4000) on H.323, H.450, QSig and/or CorNet link. CorNet is Siemens own interworking proprietary signalling protocol. SIP support is planned for the second quarter of 2002.

Interesting to note that the HiPath Xpressions unified communications and the ProCenter customer interaction suites work across the whole Siemens platform range -- from the Hicoms to the HiPaths. Xpressions works with MS Exchange now -- no Lotus Notes integration yet according to Siemens. The ProCenter suites now provides ResumeRouting database-driven call distribution; Siemens has also added virtual multi-site routing and mobile CRM to the mix too.

We mention these applications because they're the key element in another reasonable slide from Siemens' presentation. This one showed the investment in IP telephony on one side of the ROI scale with decreased capital and operational expenditures on the other -- a tricky argument at best in these skeptical times. But what really swings the scales are the concrete business benefits of a more converged telephone world -- namely:

• Increased User Productivity Through Unified Communications.

• Multimedia Customer Contact.

• Mobility and the Distributed Workforce.

We'll buy that (even if that's a tough argument as well these days). In fact, we were duly impressed with the Siemens pitch overall and bought most of it (now all we need is some of their equipment in CT Labs...); they're a player to watch for sure.

Siemens Enterprise Networks greatly expanded its HiPath portfolio today, stopping in at CommWeb's San Francisco offices along their promotional way to brief us. Here are the (brief) facts along with some of the official spin (at least that which made sense to us):

The announcement was highlighted by three formal IP communications platforms.

• The HiPath 3000 is aimed at the small to medium enterprise crowd. They say it scales to 1,000 users with the AllServe networking solution. Practical beginner platforms would fall into the 100-port range. It supports circuit, packet or mixed switching configurations -- something Siemens sensibly labels "IP Converged".

  In short, the idea is to provide a product family that lets enterprises evolve to IP telephony with, in the words of George Nolen, president and CEO of Siemens Enterprise Networks, "a mix of solutions they need and at an migration pace that they set themselves."

  The 3000 also supports Siemens' optiset E and optiPoint telephones, including their existing optiPoint 400 IP-based business phone and their new optiPoint 500 "workpoint" -- which is a circuit-switched telephone. They also officially introduced an optiClient (software phone). And while we were able to handle, if not use, both the IP and circuit-switched phones (they're handsome, indeed), we only saw a very tiny screenshot of the pure IP telephony client.

• The HiPath 4000 platform is aimed at the LME market. It scales to 100,000 users, according to Siemens -- with the 100k ports distributed across 64 nodes. In addition to handling the features of the 3000 family, it also has Web-based management and can access an LDAP display telephone book for corporate directories.

  The 3000 and 4000, in Siemens migration plans, are the bridges between circuit-switched PBX environment to a totally pure IP environment, which leads us to...

• The HiPath 5000 enterprise softswitch is more of a pure IP play, although it can work -- and in fact would have to in order to make and take calls over a TDM network -- with PBXs (like Siemens' Hicoms) or their so-called IP convergence platforms (like the HiPath 3000 and 4000) on H.323, H.450, QSig and/or CorNet link. CorNet is Siemens own interworking proprietary signalling protocol. SIP support is planned for the second quarter of 2002.

Interesting to note that the HiPath Xpressions unified communications and the ProCenter customer interaction suites work across the whole Siemens platform range -- from the Hicoms to the HiPaths. Xpressions works with MS Exchange now -- no Lotus Notes integration yet according to Siemens. The ProCenter suites now provides ResumeRouting database-driven call distribution; Siemens has also added virtual multi-site routing and mobile CRM to the mix too.

We mention these applications because they're the key element in another reasonable slide from Siemens' presentation. This one showed the investment in IP telephony on one side of the ROI scale with decreased capital and operational expenditures on the other -- a tricky argument at best in these skeptical times. But what really swings the scales are the concrete business benefits of a more converged telephone world -- namely:

• Increased User Productivity Through Unified Communications.

• Multimedia Customer Contact.

• Mobility and the Distributed Workforce.

We'll buy that (even if that's a tough argument as well these days). In fact, we were duly impressed with the Siemens pitch overall and bought most of it (now all we need is some of their equipment in CT Labs...); they're a player to watch for sure.