Businesses have migrated to IP-based communications systems to improve collaboration and contain costs. But many enterprises still maintain large collections of legacy gear, both TDM (often called digital)and analog. Organizations can have hundreds or even thousands of analog phones as well as analog lines for elevator phones, door phones, alarm systems, and fax machines. Many large organizations often have campus environments with legacy cabling that is cost-prohibitive to upgrade to IP. In fact, it's not unusual to find organizations that can't upgrade to modern unified communications because of the cost of upgrading analog devices and cabling.

The most popular Unified Communications solutions don't have a strong analog station story deploying multiple analog station gateways can be expensive and the problem is magnified when hundreds or even thousands of analog stations per location are needed. Some analog stations cannot easily migrate to voice over IP, and wiring and cable plant issues can exacerbate the problem. When you factor in the cost of deploying multiple small and medium sized gateways, its very common to come to the conclusion that leaving analog ports on the old PBX system is less expensive than incorporating them into a UC rollout. This problem has driven many enterprises to keep their Legacy PBX systems in service for years beyond the original schedule in order to defer this cost, but this option gets more expensive each year maintenance costs are increasing, and experienced PBX engineers are getting harder to find and to keep.

Ribbon’s Enterprise Gateways deliver pragmatic solutions to network transformation. Whether it's just a few devices at a branch office or tens of thousands of lines at a university or military base. Ribbon has solutions for any size deployment.