Dialogic Brings Closure to the World of 1990s Computer Telephony

By Richard Grigonis

Executive Editor, IP Communications Group

 

Well folks, as of Friday, December 5, 2008 it’s official: Dialogic (News - Alert) Corporation has announced the closing of its previously announced acquisition of the former NMS Communications Platforms business. In conjunction with this, NMS Communications has changed its corporate name to LiveWire Mobile, Inc. and its NASDAQ Global Market ticker symbol has changed to LVWR from NMSS.

 

LiveWire Mobile’s Joel Hughes replaces long-time CEO Bob Schechter and Todd Donahue replaces Herb Shumway as CFO, effective immediately.

 

LiveWire Mobile will focus on managed personalization services for mobile operators, such as expanding its integrated suite of music and video services (e.g. ringback tones, ringtones, full track downloads, dedicated content, video and service marketing). Their site is www.livewiremobile.com.

 

As for Dialogic, it has now pretty much absorbed its two long-time competitors – NMS Communications (originally called NaturalMicrosystems) and Brooktrout (News - Alert) (later part of Cantata), whose fax boards were always a bit more well-known and capable than the GammaLink technology Dialogic had acquired in 1994. (GammaLink made the first computer fax board in 1985.)

 

Dialogic has also taken on as Chief Strategy Officer the industry legend Brough Turner (News - Alert), one of the principal geniuses behind the first sophisticated “CT bus”, called Multivendor Integration Protocol (MVIP). Larger and larger computer telephony systems (e.g. Interactive Voice Response systems, voicemail systems, auto attendants and fax bureau servers with lots and lots of ports) needed some kind of internal “telephony bus”, a mezzanine bus separate from the conventional local I/O board bus, to connect the distributed-switching interface circuits on each resource board. In this way CT boards could transmit separate digitized signals (data, voice, video, fax) simultaneously over a communication medium (a backplane or a ribbon cable) by quickly interleaving a piece of each signal from each board in succession (Time Division Multiplex timeslots) and putting them on the new bus, with each board capable of sorting out the signals and putting them back together in their proper order.

 

Dialogic had introduced the first multiline voice board in 1985 and in 1986 had developed a primitive telephony bus that could connect multiple analog voice resources (boards) and transport audio and signaling information. Called the Analog Expansion Bus (AEB), this bus was similar to a bundle of two-wire analog connections, this telephony bus eliminated the need for host processing of time-critical data and made the rapid growth of the CT industry possible. As systems grew in density (more ports) and complexity, Dialogic in 1989 developed and released the PCM Expansion Bus (PEB), which was the first digital bus standard for connecting devices from multiple suppliers, featuring Pulse (News - Alert) Code Modulation (PCM) and Digital Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) for connectivity similar to that offered by a digital T-1 or E-1 trunk line.

 

But in 1989 seven board vendors, led by NMS (called Natural MicroSystems in those days) and Mitel (News - Alert), defined another, more advanced TDM bus standard, called the Multivendor Integration Protocol-90, or MVIP-90. Dialogic eventually countered with their own CT Bus, SCSA (SCbus). Later on the “bus wars” between these two were settled with the mutually agreed-upon H.100 bus and H.110 bus (for CompactPCI form factors).

 

Like its larger-than-life leader, Howard Bubb, Dialogic in the 1990s had big booths at big expos, and gave fabulous “Connection” parties at places such as the late great Windows on the World restaurant, Gotham Hall in Santa Monica, the Regency Club in Los Angeles and the Rainbow Room in New York.

 

Intel acquired Dialogic for $780 million in 1999, then sold it to Eicon Networks Corporation in 2006.

 

And now, with the expertise of Dialogic, NMS and Brooktrout having coalesced into a single entity, we can all move forward with some confidence into the cutting-edge technologies and applications of the 21st century.

TMC President and Group Editor-in-Chief Rich Tehrani blogged about the subject here.