Covergence Announces Support for IBM BladeCenter(R).

Support for BladeCenter platform helps enterprises reduce costs and complexity

MAYNARD, Mass. -- Covergence, Inc. the leader in scaling, securing and controlling VoIP and other real-time services at the access edge, today announced that its CXC appliance now supports the IBM BladeCenter in order to facilitate the integration of real-time communications into enterprise business platforms. With the Covergence - IBM BladeCenter session border controller solution, enterprises can merge line-of-business applications with real-time communications to streamline operations and increase productivity.

The Covergence - IBM solution delivers the full implementation of Covergence's award-winning, access-edge Session Border Controller (aSBC) as a blade within an IBM BladeCenter chassis. Now that customers are looking to grow their data centers or replace aging infrastructures, they not only face the complexities of integration, but also encounter the limitations enforced by space and power thresholds. Blades, which embed critical applications and high power capacity into a tiny, blade-sized device, provide a way to save space, increase density and decrease power consumption. With the combined offering from Covergence and IBM, enterprises can equip their application-ready blades with secure connections to real-time services without having to introduce additional hardware.

The CXC appliance combines traditional session-border-control functionality with comprehensive security features and management tools to allow users to scale performance, reliability and quality predictably at the access edge of the network. The device enables the rapid deployment of new, revenue-generating services such as presence-enabled instant messaging (IM), audio, video and others. With this solution enterprises can lower total operations costs and improve infrastructure flexibility, while service providers can further reduce the time and cost of deploying next-generation real-time services.

"Our move to the IBM BladeCenter is well-timed because it allows organizations to embed real-time communications into line-of-business applications - a transition that is becoming increasingly critical in the enterprise space," said Bob O'Neil, CEO of Covergence. "The CXC not only centralizes applications and network connections within a compact blade chassis, but also allows customers to extend IP Telephony and Unified Communications to remote users across fixed and mobile devices.

Voicemail applications, critical to communications in any organization, provide a concrete example of how the CXC increases enterprise productivity. One customer has used the CXC web services interface to integrate call control and automatic voicemail initiation into their CRM system. Now the customer's sales force is able to initiate calls from the CRM system and if the call goes to a prospect's voicemail, the CXC delivers a pre-recorded voicemail from the sales representative so the representative can move on to a new prospect.

"By teaming up with IBM, Covergence extends the CXC's real-time security and management capabilities to a next-generation form factor that enables enterprises to improve use of space and power conservation, "said Joe McGarvey, senior analyst, Heavy Reading. "With the Covergence - IBM BladeCenter solution, users can access operational applications and best-of-breed network security solutions through a single, cost-efficient device, further facilitating the widespread adoption of IP communications."

Covergence's CXC appliance was developed to meet a full range of needs from the small to medium-sized business (SMB) market all the way up to the world's largest service providers. The new Covergence- IBM BladeCenter session border controller solution is available from Covergence immediately and can be purchased by contacting [e-mail] or by calling 978.823.5200.

About Covergence

Covergence is the leader in scaling, securing and controlling VoIP and other real-time services at the access edge. The Covergence series of access-edge session border controllers (aSBC) combines traditional session-border-control functionality with comprehensive security features and management tools. Covergence's aSBC 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. For more information, visit www.covergence.com.

Covergence is a registered trademark of Covergence. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.