March 2006 Archives

I had the chance recently to interview Lane Patterson, Director of Research and Development of Equinix. Equinix is a global provider of network-neutral data centers and Internet exchange services for global enterprises, content companies, and network service providers. The company offers co-location, traffic exchange, peering, and outsourced IT infrastructure services.

Equinix Internet Business Exchange (IBX) centers serve as core hubs for critical IP networks and Internet operations worldwide. With direct access to more than 200 networks, including all of the top global Tier 1 networks, Equinix customers can directly access the providers that serve over 90 percent of the world’s Internet networks and users.

Last October, Equinix announced a partnership with Neustar, whereby they would jointly develop a new generation of services to enhance the interconnection of networks providing advanced services under Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

I asked Patterson about that relationship, about SIP, and about VoIP Peering in general.

GG: What is the nature of the relationship between Equinix and Neustar?
LP: Equinix and NeuStar have entered into a partnership agreement, whereby Equinix will leverage its exchange and peering services at layers 1–3, and NeuStar will connect with SIP/ENUM services at layers 4–7, in order to provide a comprehensive infrastructure for inter-provider VoIP and SIP interconnection. Equinix is well-recognized as a global authority on peering and inter-provider routing, and NeuStar has expertise in SIP/VoIP, ENUM, e911, PSTN numbering, number portability, and call routing. Both Equinix and Neustar are committed to carrier and provider neutrality, and to developing a long-term infrastructure for the industry. The goal is to provide scalable and interoperable infrastructure allowing next-gen services to work seamlessly across networks.

GG: In your opinion, how important is SIP to the future of communications applications?
LP: SIP is extremely important and quite flexible. Because it is easily extended for VoIP, gaming, video, chat, and other services, it will create a unified and scalable signaling infrastructure for a variety of real-time communications, just as HTTP provided a unified protocol for the exchange of hypertext and other content. SIP supports both one-to-one and multiparty communications. SIP hides the private identity of end users, but provides an easy public way of reaching people using a simple “sip://user@domain.com” address that can hide multiple devices and communications capabilities behind it. SIP provides automatic negotiation of capabilities between endpoints, so that the most preferred settings, such as voice or video quality, can be negotiated between callers. SIP has extensions for security and identity, to solve caller-ID spoofing. SIP also adapts well from simple peer-to-peer communications to more controlled carrier environments, where you may have to traverse several proxies and border elements.

GG: How does SIP interoperate with ENUM?
LP: Quite easily. ENUM is based on DNS, and is used to simply translate a TN (Telephone Number) into a SIP Address such as sip:bob@example.com, which gives the IP address of the caller’s SIP proxy. So it acts as an IP-enabled phone book. ENUM just handles the lookup for the caller. Once it knows the IP endpoint of the callee, SIP takes over and actually negotiates the end-to-end session, including all the capabilities such as audio/video codec and security settings between callers, and the tracking of the beginning and end of the call.

GG: What are some of the more exciting applications you are seeing in early deployments or in early trials?
LP: An important early step is the successful use of ENUM to automate IP-to-IP routing of calls so calls no longer have to be handed off to a PSTN switch. I’m also excited about some proposed extensions of ENUM to allow it to return SS7-type information for calls that still must go through the PSTN. During the transition, this will be the majority of calls, but ENUM can gradually replace many of the roles of more costly SS7 infrastructure. Of course, the first application of ENUM that’s already in use is to enable users across multiple wireless providers to exchange pictures or rich media between their phones. And SIP-Identity promises to make sure SIP communication does not get filled with SPIT (SPam for Internet Telephony), like our e-mail system has. It can also help run interesting services like age verification that can drive purchasing from SIP-enabled devices. And finally, NeuStar understands e911 for VoIP better than anyone.

GG: How much of an impact will VoIP Peering have on the PSTN in the short term?
LP: In the short term, it will be very gradual. However, if MSO’s get organized, they have the potential to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from their settlement costs by routing calls to each other over IP — even walled-garden IP. And it gives them a great infrastructure to launch features such as video calling that can provide a feature hook to continue to lure folks away from their old-fashioned POTS lines. What remains to be seen on the wireless side is if they will try to wait for IMS, or are willing to move forward with SIP peering. And native SIP communications (e.g., calls to sip:user@example.com, and not to TNs) will probably start emerging with the potential to erode PSTN minutes up to about 20 percent. Other elements, such as Google federating Google Talk with other trusted SIP providers, may develop enough push for this at the right scale. It is important to realize that SIP-IX was built with both early-stage and late-stage PSTN-to-VoIP transition issues in mind and with both open Internet and walled-garden architectures considered.

GG: What are your thoughts on IMS as a roadmap for next generation networking?LP: In short, it will be a long road for IMS. There is great concern about the complexity involved, and there will have to be proper integration of multiple IMS “building blocks” into integrated platforms. The good thing about IMS is the discussion being created, and the care being taken to discuss things like authentication and security, QoS and measurement, customer-network and network-network interfaces, etc. However, there is much that can be done with SIP and ENUM, without presuming IMS.

The Voice Peering Forum Spring 2006 is underway. The Forum will be held today and tomorrow (March 30-31, 2006) at the Wyndham Miami Beach Resort, in Miami, Florida.

Our own Rich Tehrani is keynoting the event tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. I’m sure Rich will have some interesting comments in his blog over the course of the next two days.

The Voice Peering Forum is an event designed to bring together industry experts to share their insights on the latest business and technology implementations and discuss topics such as  

• Voice Peering Implementations
• Bi-Lateral Peering (Least-Cost-Routing) and Multi-Lateral Peering (ENUM)
• Transitioning to IP based trunking for voice origination, voice termination and SS7
• Voice Peering Technologies and Techniques
• Strategy, Design and Best Practices for VoIP Security & QoS

Point Topic is reporting that Korea, the oft quoted “standard measure” of a country when it comes to successful broadband penetration, is in danger of slipping from the global top spot.

According to a release, “South Korea is close to losing its position as the world leader in broadband take-up. After several years when Korea was far ahead of other countries in number of broadband lines per 100 population, Denmark and the Netherlands are now very close to catching up.”

South Korea maintains slightly more than 25% penetration of broadband by population. But Denmark and The Netherlands are only a fraction of a percent behind. Hong Kong and Finland are also close, both having reached a 23% penetration level.

It’s a shame that the United States is not on this list yet.

According to a just released report from Informa Telecoms & Media, the IMS market is expected to peak during 2010, when investments on IMS equipment are expected to reach US$4.5bn

According to IMS: Opportunities and Challenges, 39 million users will adopt IMS-based services in the fixed market, by 2011. This compares with the 188 million in the mobile sector. Key early services will include VoIP and IPTV in the fixed environment and Push over Cellular and Instant Messaging in the mobile market.

IMS: Opportunities and Challenges, posits that the next two years will be pivotal to the adoption of IMS worldwide. There are now over 50 contracts and 100 ongoing trials and operators are expected to form strategies within the next two years.

For more information on the report, visit www.informatm.com.

For a subscription to IMS magazine, please visit www.imsmag.com.

As I was sifting through my Inbox this morning, cleaning up the spams and scams, I felt a severe sense of frustration. No matter what solutions we employ, the spammers and scammers are always one step ahead. They figure out how to bypass any filtering system.

I recently met with Vipul Ved Prakash, founder and chief scientist at Cloudmark, a provider of real-time anti-messaging abuse security solutions. Prakash shared some industry statistics regarding spam, telling me that 53% of all filtered messages at one of Cloudmarks RBOC customers turned out to be spam, representing a full 22% of their network mail storage.

The company has introduced a new anti-virus fingerprinting algorithm for service providers -- the solution is designed to detect and block e-mail viruses.

Cloudmark's virus detection methodology and zero-hour fingerprinting algorithm deliver speed. The new zero-hour executable fingerprinting algorithm disassembles executable code to generate fingerprints that identify new worms and virus stains in real time. The algorithm automates the response process by which suspect e-mails are evaluated and reported by highly credible reviewers worldwide in all languages. Prakash told me that Cloudmark’s worldwide network of “honeypots” and proven reporters nip virus attacks in the bud, identifying malicious messages, and preventing their spread.

In February, the Cloudmark network detected and began shutting down the much publicized Kama Sutra virus in less than 20 minutes after its first appearance in the Cloudmark network.

For more information, check out the Cloudmark Web site.

Genesys has released a survey entitled Contact Center Outlook on IP Technology: A Detailed Report Examining the Deployment of Internet Protocol Telephony in Contact Centers.

The report opens by stating that “…Internet Protocol Telephony — also known as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) — has quickly become one of the most important technology considerations for contact centers…”

Genesys’ vice president of IP business development Rob Winder told me that the company has been very interested in gaining greater insight into the market, and they saw some interest from the user community so they decided now was the right time to commission such a study.

Genesys contacted 500 contact center technology managers from 20 industries and 53 countries. Respondents hailed from a variety of industries and were responsible for managing contact centers ranging from five seats in a single site deployment to 30,000 seats across 300 sites.

Some of the key findings from the survey:

• 19 percent have already deployed IP telephony in at least one contact center

• 24 percent are currently planning or deploying IP telephony in at least one contact center

• 41 percent are currently investigating deployment of IP telephony in at least one contact center

• 16 percent are not currently investigating or planning to deploy IP telephony

• 60 percent of all respondents expect to deploy IP telephony in at least one contact center within a year, rising to 82 percent within two years.

• Most organizations expect to have a mixture of traditional circuit-switched and IP-packet switching telephony across their operations for years to come.

As it turns out, the decision to deploy IP telephony in the contact center is being driven by a number of factors that executives are considering as they build the business rationale. To whit, organizations consider the following reasons significant drivers for adoption of IP telephony:

67%.....Reduce Costs

61%.....Deploy New Applications

47%.....Backup & Disaster Recovery

43%.....Whole Organization Migrating to IP Telephony

39%.....Infrastructure Reached End of Life

33%.....Needed Interface for Managed Services

25%.....Needed Interface to Outsourcer

Still, while cost is often cited as the primary driver to embrace IP telephony, the survey revealed a trend towards a broader set of benefits being realized, at least in the experience of early adopters.

These benefits include:

• The ability to extend call center operations across the enterprise;

• Business improvements resulting from centralized, consolidated operations management;

• Improved ease of integrating applications; and

• Easy virtualizations of resources — providing a single point of enterprise-wide call control and routing.

The report’s authors posit that these benefits… “which are already being considered by some organizations planning or investigating IP telephony, can help build stronger business cases for organizations whose recent investment in telephony infrastructure is holding them back.”

In the end, the report found that the fact that early adopters have discovered broad business benefits by choosing IP telephony, “lends credibility to business cases that look further than simple cost savings — especially those that take into account opportunities to deploy new business applications and features, and extend contact center capabilities into and across the enterprise.”

The report concludes, “These benefits are likely to be highly valuable to contact center technology managers that find the business case for deploying IP telephony does not stand up on cost savings alone, because of the value that remains in their existing investments and the cost of migrating to and implementing IP telephony.”

About 7 or 8 years ago, my colleagues and I created a spoof editorial calendar, comprised of topics such as CB Telephony: 10-4 Good Buddy, The Pros and Cons of Tin Can Telephony, and other such silly topics. One topic was a tongue-in-cheek jab at Lucent, called Why Lucent has No Suitors.

Well, it turns out Lucent did and now once again – does – have suitors after all.

Reports from Paris today indicate that Lucent and Alcatel are starting up talks that they last held in 2001 regarding the potential “merger of equals” between the two firms -- a merger that would result in a telecom gear maker with combined sales of over $25.3 billion. That would make the combined entity larger than Cisco.

With carriers chomping at the bit to deploy next-generation solutions such as IMS and IPTV, Lucent/Alcatel would enjoy tremendous leverage with their customers. Lucent just won a bidding war over Ericsson for Riverstone Networks, helping to complete their Triple Play offering.

Forbes reported earlier this week that Banc of America Securities analyst Tim Long upgraded the rating on shares of Alcatel to “buy” from “neutral,” and also raised the price target on Alcatel shares to $18 from $14. Long was forecasting 10% growth in 2006 and 9% growth in 2007 for Alcatel's wireline segment.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

Like the song says, things are easy when you're big in Japan. I wonder if that's as true today for a Massachussets-based provider of VoIP and IMS equipment as it was for 1980's German synth pop outfit Alphaville...

Sonus Networks revealed yesterday that it has been named the leading provider of VoIP solutions for Japan by Synergy Research in a recent survey. In the survey, Sonus led the market with a 36.1% market share position, more than double any other equipment provider and (according to Synergy) also accounted for approximately 76% of the high-density gateway market and more than 61% of the total gateway market in Japan in 2005.

Sonus is also making big noise in the IMS market.

Sonus customers read like a who’s who of Japanese carriers: KDDI, Fusion Communications, Jupiter Communications, NTT, Softbank Broadband, WILLCOM, Inc… and the success that the equipment maker is having in the Japanese VoIP market portends good things for future IMS deployments.

Our own Rich Tehrani conducted an interesting interview with Hassan Ahmed, Sonus’ CEO for the premiere issue of IMS Magazine.

Sonus also recently announced a partnership with Atreus Systems that is designed to enable service providers to reduce operating costs and speed the delivery of hosted VoIP services by blending Sonus’ IMS gear with Atreus’ provisioning software for IMS, VoIP and IP service bundles. The goal of the partnership is to deliver a solution that empowers carriers to generate new revenue streams by simplifying the delivery of a suite of value-added consumer and business voice services, including Hosted PBX, business trunking, conferencing, and voice VPN.

The solution has reportedly been selected by an as yet unnamed, large North American carrier as the foundation for its next generation voice network.

So one of the big stories currently gurgling up is the fact that VoIP — specifically Skype — is being banned in China. TMCnet’s Stefania Vescusi summarized that situation yesterday.

Interesting however that just one day earlier, on 3/20, our own David Sims wrote the following:

The Beijing News is reporting -- Page 1, no less -- that “it is said that a company from southern China obtained the first VoIP service operation license as a pilot.”

Telecom carriers and virtual network operators will be able to apply for the license by 2007 when the country will fully open the market, but “experts from China’s Ministry of Information Industry, the industry regulator, expressed their doubtness.”

It’s not specified what they expressed their doubtness about.

(Sims' full article can be found here.)

Well the doubtness seems pretty clear now. I can just picture a high-ranking Information Ministry official at a press conference on Monday:

Q: “Mr. Minister! Any chance TOM Online starts offering Skype Out PC to Phone calling any time soon?”
A: “I have my doubtness.”

And there you have it. "SKYPE BANNED IN CHINA!"

It seems that any time a new technology comes along that threatens to rough up the status quo, you see the reaction that’s happening in China. (Of course, throwing a totalitarian government in the mix, as opposed to say, capitalist market forces, adds a certain different “flavor” to the recipe…)

This will all play itself out soon. Either the government and the carriers it’s protecting will reach an agreement with Skype whereby MONEY will change hands, with some of it finding its way into the pockets of various Ministry of Information officials, or else some home-grown Skype clone will suddenly appear as if from nowhere to say, “Hey check it out! We came up with a brand-new service that allows people on PCs to call their friends and families who only have phones.”

I’m sure we are still only at the beginning of this story.

I have no doubtness about it.

Minerva Networks and Nortel announced the joint development and release of an Application Interface (API) that enables the integration of real-time IPTV services with Minerva's iTVManager software. Nortel is using this jointly developed interface as a first step to bring together Minerva's IPTV middleware platform with Nortel's IMS solution to make content available to users anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Using SIP, the new API gives developers and service providers the tools needed to enable real-time applications such as voice mail access and callback functionality over the television set.

Also, Deutsche Telekom Group announced it will launch IPTV services using the Microsoft TV IPTV Edition software platform. The agreement with Deutsche Telekom represents the largest IPTV deal for Microsoft in Europe and the second largest worldwide.

IPTV services will be delivered through the new VDSL network, which is currently being extended by T-Com. This network is expected to permit bandwidth of up to 50 Mbit/s and is planned for launch starting mid-2006 in ten major German cities including Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and Munich.

The IPTV services will include standard and high definition programming, interactive TV, video on demand, personal video recording, as well as a wide range of content, including pay TV and special-interest channels.

Om Malik was among the first (as usual) to report this development. The early reports on Microsoft’s IPTV solution were fraught with negative comments regarding the inability if the solution to scale. Now, while Microsoft may not always have the best technology, they always seem to throw resources at the sectors of the market they believe will bear fruit. They certainly believe IPTV will bear significant fruit and they’ve proven adept at convincing some serious carriers that their solution is the one.

I’ve thrown stones into Microsoft’s yard before — sometimes it’s too easy — but I’m not betting against them this time. AT&T, BT, Italia, Deutsche Telekom… if they buy into Microsoft’s IPTV vision, there must be something to it.

Siemens Communications today announced a new version of its IMS-based fixed mobile convergence (FMC) solution with a deployment model supporting the enterprise market, the consumer cable operator market as well as the fixed/mobile telephony market.

Siemens has trialed the solution in the United States as well as globally with a range of service providers over the last year.

According to the company news announcement, the Siemens IMS/FMC solution features transparent roaming and active handoffs across fixed and mobile networks. The solution includes personalized multimedia services and – for enterprises – presence-aware collaboration technologies that help improve workflow and business process efficiencies.

Features of the Siemens IMS/FMC solution include:

• Intelligent Address Book — Stored on the IMS/FMC subsystem and accessible on all networks, contact information needs only to be entered once and is available to all end devices.
• Roaming Button — Allows a subscriber to receive calls and messages on the device that he or she is currently using; this feature can be enabled or disabled based on presence and availability.
• Call-and-Share — Data and voice work together with this feature. While calling from home to a friend with a mobile phone to explain directions, for example, a subscriber could also sketch a route on a city map and send the instructions to the friend’s mobile phone during the conversation.

Hosted enterprise services are also part of the Siemens IMS/FMC solution, enabling people, teams and organizations to communicate more efficiently and integrate business applications and workflow processes. The IMS/FMC solution incorporates technology from Siemens’ HiPath OpenScape collaboration portal – providing presence-enhanced tools for multimedia correspondence including voice, messaging, document sharing, video, and conferencing.

Scheduled for springtime availability, the solution complies with the NCS cable standard, allowing full support of IMS and PacketCable services within one service network infrastructure.

Rich Tehrani pointed out an interesting NY Times article that profiles Ivan Seidenberg, the chief executive officer of Verizon. The piece does a good job of focusing on Mr. Seidenberg’s goals of turning Verizon into a forward-looking, fast-growing provider of next-generation enhanced services. Seidenberg shies away from the term Bell Company, as he believes that conjures up images of a slow-moving, heavily regulated behemoth.

Verizon is looking at advanced wireless services and a first-rate fiber network to provide their customers lightning-fast broadband connections and even television service. The Times article quotes Seidenberg as saying that Verizon, “is all about trying to invest in technology so we can create new growth.”

It should be pointed out that although rival AT&T is in the process of scooping up BellSouth, expanding their footprint and overtaking Verizon as the nation’s largest carrier, Seidenberg dismissed the scuttlebutt that Verizon would counter with a move to buy up either Qwest or Alltel. Rather, Verizon’s priority remains to buy up the 45% of Verizon Wireless currently owned by Vodafone. While that stake is reportedly worth up to $43 billion, Seidenberg is a willing buyer because then his company could claim the entirety of profits generated by the wireless carrier.

The NY Times article is available online (registration required).

What a week it’s been. New York, Orlando, Connecticut, Toronto, Dallas, San Jose… It’s almost time I learned the words to Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere…” Soon enough, I’ll be able to write my own version…

Well, we do what we need to do, and go where the news is, and this week there was a steady flow of VoIP news out of San Jose at the Voice on the net show.

D-Link launched a flip-phone style WiFi handset, which comes pre-loaded with a TelTel softphone application. The phone ships with the fully-featured TelTel application, which allows users to make free calls anywhere there’s access to a WiFi network. Calls from the D-Link phone are carried over TelTel’s PsipTN network.

Cognio announced additions and enhancements to its Spectrum Expert spectrum management platforms to support the rollout of innovative new services such as wireless VoIP. The solution enables IT managers to create detailed device versus channel charts that quickly show the impact of specific devices on each WiFi channel and how they are impacting channel and overall network performance. With this knowledge, IT managers can elect to remove, move, shield, or replace specific devices to minimize impact and maximize WiFi network performance.

Cognio has also added the ability for wireless technicians to perform a full spectrum capture at remote sites that can be saved for later review and analysis or transmitted via the wireless network back to headquarters for real-time analysis. This enables IT managers to create a baseline and compare spectrum changes over time.

Ingate Systems released new hardware designed specifically for large enterprises: the Ingate Firewall 1900 and Ingate SIParator 90. The new products are designed to offer large corporations complete support for IP communications based on SIP, including apps such as VoIP, IM, and video. The new products are capable of handling 1,200 concurrent VoIP calls (e.g. RTP sessions).

The company also announced the first-ever successful completion of an encrypted VoIP call using the Secure Realtime Protocol (SRTP). This was achieved with their partner, snom Technology. SRTP is intended to provide encryption, message authentication and integrity, and replay protection to the RTP data in both unicast and multicast applications.

Whaleback Systems launched several feature updates to its CrystalBlue Voice Service, which is a turnkey, premises-based, IP PBX solution that is managed by Whaleback, in the role of service provider. The features include Road Warrior Functionality and OrcaDial.

Road Warrior Functionality is designed to allow businesses to seamlessly extend their office communications to employees that are on the road or working from home provided they have a connection to the broadband network.

OrcaDial delivers click-to-dial functionality across multiple applications. A user can highlight a phone number in a desktop application and hit the F10 key to establish a call. OrcaDial works with multiple desktop applications, including Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint as well as Adobe PDF files. It also allows users to click on phone numbers displayed on Web pages or email clients to initiate calls.

Notably, I also had the opportunity to preview the latest platform from Inter-Tel, the Inter-Tel 7000. The 7000 is currently in beta, and is scheduled for general availability by mid-year 2006. Essentially, Inter-Tel is scaling up the amount of customers who can be served from a single system; the 7000 is designed to serve up to 2,500 users, although Inter-Tel tells me we can expect the system to be marketed first to groups ranging from 100–1,000 users.

The 7000 is at its core a SIP softswitch with tenanting capabilities, an embedded presence engine, multimedia applications that are part of Inter-Tel’s current portfolio of proven apps, and more. One of the differentiators here, is that Inter-Tel is bringing to market an open, standards-based solution with SIP at its core as opposed to its competitors who offer proprietary solutions with SIP at the edges. Since the solution is open, it offers future-proofing and perhaps most important in today’s business environment — investment protection.

Watch for more information on the Inter-Tel 7000 as it gets closer to the official GA date later this year.

Those are the high points from some of my meetings here in San Jose. Truth be told, there was little else that caught my interest here. Maybe I’m jaded, maybe I come to these events expecting to be blown away by some new product launch or redefining moment… And yet, perhaps we should look to the silver lining of what the type of news I saw this week might say to us. The majority of announcements coming out this week are customer wins, product deployments, partnerships… all of which means that the VoIP market is maturing. All the years spent developing solutions and applications are now coming to fruition as vendors are focusing on selling what they have spent time and energy creating. While it makes a good story for the health of our industry, I’m not quite sure that the lack of buzz or product launch “wow” factor makes a terribly “exciting” story.

Tomorrow it’s back to the East coast, and the continuing search for new and exciting products and solutions. Thanks to all who took the time to meet with me over the past few days.

My colleague Michelle Pasquerello put it so nicely that I feel compelled to repeat her words  here: “Seven months after first announcing its intentions to combine forces, Excel Switching and Brooktrout Technology announced the two companies will be harmoniously renamed “Cantata Technology.”

The invitation to attend their launch party at the Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, CA this evening was indeed music to my ears. Together with my colleagues we attended the fete, and it was truly a first-class affair. Thanks to all who endeavored to make sure we were included on the list, and kudos to those who put on such a fine event. The cheese was fantastic. (I’m not kidding… if you were there, you know what I mean!)

Brooktrout and Excel are (were) two companies staffed by great people. I’m sure that the merger will give these great teams the opportunity to shine and to showcase their individual abilities as they help the new entity become a household name in VoIP. Individually they served their markets well, but together the new Cantata Technology will offer products and services from the small/medium business segment right on up to the carrier market, and if past performance is any indicator, they will do very well in the months and years ahead. The combined portfolios of the merged company will serve as a counterpoint to other companies in the space, such as AudioCodes who have  themselves been able to generate great success from offering a soup to nuts product line to their customers.

I wish Cantata Technologies well in their mission to … “Empower the creation and delivery of high-value anytime, anywhere communications.”

For more information on the new company, check out http://www.cantata.com.

I received the following interesting release from Savatar regarding their new SMB market/VoIP analysis.

The timing couldn't be better. TMCnet, together with Covad, is launching VoIP for SMB, the newest source for small and medium-sized businesses looking for more information regarding VoIP. 

Here's a taste of the release.

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) who have deployed VoIP systems are saying their new converged voice and data infrastructure has met or exceeded expectations, but not for the reasons VoIP providers have been touting.  While providers continue to promote features, SMBs ranked system management capabilities at the top of their list when asked how well their system performed. 

For those SMBs considering VoIP, their perceptions of the technology are clear: they want lower total cost of ownership and better system management.  But providers trying to sell to these SMB are still delivering confusing messages about feature sets that the SMBs don't understand.

A study of 560 SMB decision makers, and an analysis of the product and pricing strategies of major VoIP providers, conducted by the Boston, Mass.-based consulting firm Savatar reveals a stark contrast in SMB's perception versus reality of the benefits of VoIP. 

Seventy-one percent of the 84 SMBs surveyed that had deployed VoIP said their system met their expectations; 22 percent said their system exceeded their initial expectations.  SMBs say their VoIP system performed "very well" or "well" for routing (76 percent), capacity (69 percent), moves, adds and changes (68 percent), multi-location management capabilities (61 percent), and cost (60 percent).

In contrast, those companies who have not deployed VoIP (476 companies surveyed) don't perceive its value nor do they have a strong imperative to implement the technology.

For more on this fascinating report, check out the consulting firm's Web site. And make sure to bookmark VoIP for SMB.