Enterprise

Skype for SIP: VoIP Provider Targets Corporate PBX Market

March 23, 2009

It was only a matter of time. Skype today announced the Skype For SIP beta program, which will enable businesses to receive and manage inbound calls from Skype users on SIP-enabled PBX systems, connecting a company's Web site to the PBX system via click-to-call. The beta is initially available to a limited number of participants. The financial benefits are clear, allowing businesses to connect to over 400 million registered Skype users while offering the features and integration capabilities of traditional office PBX systems. According to the official announcement: The beta version of Skype For SIP will enable business users to: · Place Skype calls to landlines and mobile phones worldwide from any connected SIP-enabled PBX; reducing costs with Skype's low-cost global rates · Purchase Skype's online numbers, to receive calls to the corporate PBX from landlines or mobile phones · Manage Skype calls using their existing hardware and system applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voicemail. Beginning today, SIP users, phone system administrators, developers and service partners are invited to apply to the Skype For SIP beta program. Applicants will need to be businesses, have an installed SIP based IP-PBX system, as well as a level of technical competency to configure their own SIP-enabled PBX. During the beta period all calls will be charged at standard Skype rates. Further pricing details will be announced when the product is fully launched later this year.

Posted in Business, Enterprise, IP Communications, Service Provider, VoIP

Dallas Trip Winds Down; Sipera News

March 5, 2009

So my week in Dallas is finally winding down. Not that it hasn't been a great week, with interesting meetings with a number of the companies who reside astride the north Dallas Telecom corridor. In the last two days I've spent time in the offices of Telstrat, NEI, NEC, Fujitsu, Texas Instruments, Excel, and Apptrigger; that's in addition to the executives I interviewed from a number of companies attending the Comptel show in Grapevine this week. The interviews should be online shortly, to see if they've been posted, please visit the TMCnet video library. I'll be following up with posts and articles about all the companies I met with, but in the meantime I wanted to share a bit of news from Sipera that's not made the rounds of the mainstream media just yet. The company has just released an IP Video sniffer called UCSniff2.0. Until now, the information has only been posted on security boards and community sites, and on the SourceForge site at http://ucsniff.sourceforge.net/ The UCSniff2.0 eavesdrops, captures and records video conferencing sessions and works on regular IP Telephony too. Using the tool, an IT manager can perform a man in the middle voice capture and can reconstruct the voice call, shows holes in a security policy, and enable those responsible for a site's security to fix the application. The timing is good, as many industry pundits are hailing 2009-10 as the timeframe when IP video comes into its own; the solution allows an IT manager to test their environment and move quickly to address issues. Sipera also told me about VideoJak, an application designed to allow an IT manager to examine any vulnerabilities with regard to system availability. According to a description on the SourceForge site: VideoJak is an IP Video security assessment tool that can simulate a proof of concept DoS against a targeted, user-selected video session and IP video phone.

Posted in Development tools, Enterprise, IP Communications, Open Source, Security, Unified Communications

Infonetics' Enterprise Telephony Report: Winners and Prognostications

February 26, 2009

I was on the road yesterday, a quick jaunt to Chicago for an interview with Tellabs. Rich blogged about it and posted a bunch of images from the trip, including one picture that so eloquently captured my thoughts on how busy O'Hare was.

The Tellabs facility is a beautiful. Modern, spacious, everything a corporate headquarters should be.

Watch for the interview with president and CEO Robert Pullen to be published soon in NGN magazine.

While I was winging my way back home, Infonetics Research announced its Q4 (2008) Enterprise Telephony report.

The headline of the release suns it up quite nicely: "Cisco takes lead in 2008 enterprise telephony market; Alcatel-Lucent, ShoreTel sole 4Q08 winners"

So amid the gloom:

· The worldwide enterprise telephony market dropped 14% sequentially in 4Q08 to $2.3 billion, with vendor revenue down for all types of equipment including pure IP PBX, hybrid PBX, and TDM PBX

· The main cause of the decline is the lack of new business creation and business expansion due to the difficult economic climate worldwide

There were some bright spots as well:

· Year-over-year, the overall PBX market is up 1.1%, with the IP PBX segments up and the TDM segment down as the market continues switching over from TDM to IP equipment

· Pure IP PBX revenue grew 25% worldwide in 2008, sustained by new product introductions

On the vendor front, the Infonetics report found that Alcatel-Lucent and ShoreTel -- alone among their competitors -- realized PBX equipment revenue gains in Q4, with Alcatel-Lucent's revenue up 13% sequentially and ShoreTel's revenue up 1%.

And despite a quarterly revenue loss, Cisco maintained the first spot in overall PBX/KTS revenue market share in 4Q08. According to the report, 2008 saw Cisco "grab the lead" for the entire year for the first time as well.

Matthias Machowinski, Directing Analyst, Enterprise Voice and Data, Infonetics Research had this to say:

Because of the significantly deteriorating worldwide economic conditions, we expect the overall enterprise telephony market to contract fairly significantly in 2009.

Posted in Enterprise, IP Communications, Research, VoIP

Siemens Announces Results of Communications Survey

February 24, 2009

Siemens Communications announced the results of a global survey conducted by SIS Research that uncovered the top five pain points in communication for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The survey found that companies with 100 employees could be losing more than $5,000 per employee per year by not addressing common communication issues. Among the key findings: · 68% of respondents have trouble coordinating communications among team members, affecting their ability to respond quickly to time-sensitive requests. · 68% of respondents said they experience work delays while waiting for information from others. · 77% of respondents receive unwanted communications that disrupt workflow and decrease productivity. The complete text of the release as I received it follows: Companies with 100 Employees Could Be Losing More Than $5,000 Per Employee Per Year by Not Addressing Inefficient Communication Issues Communications barriers and latencies can cost small and medium businesses up to 40 percent of their productive time, according to a Siemens-sponsored global study On average, 70 percent of employee respondents of small and medium businesses (SMBs) with up to 400 employees said they spend 17.5 hours each week addressing the pain points caused by communications barriers and latencies, according to a global study sponsored by Siemens Enterprise Communications and conducted by SIS International Research. The research also showed that while SMB awareness of unified communications as a solution is rising, nearly 60 percent of SMBs do not currently employ one based on the sampling. In addition, researchers at SIS International Research determined that the time spent per week dealing with communications issues was more than 50 percent higher in companies with more than 20 workers. In hard costs, the study concluded, companies of 100 employees could be losing more than $500,000 each year by not addressing their employees' most painful communications issues. Key Findings.

Posted in Business, Enterprise, IP Communications, Research

Sipera, RSA in Secure VoIP Deal

February 23, 2009

Sipera Systems says it's joined the RSA Secured Partner Program and RSA, The Security Division of EMC, said that it has certified interoperability between the Sipera IPCS UC security product family and the RSA SecurID two-factor authentication solution. The result is a simple way for users to secure their VoIP phones without the need to use any special clients or phone configuration. All users need to do is enter the RSA SecurID one-time secure password and their PIN. In an era where security and privacy compliance in industries such as healthcare, financial services and others is becoming critical, this solution helps an organization achieve its overall secure information goals. Just today, TMCnet columnist Kevin Coleman published his most recent column, titled $1Trillion. In his note to me he wrote: "It's bigger than the bailout!" and when you stop to think about it, it's a scary thought. The trillion that Coleman is referring to is not a US Government sponsored handout, it's the estimated dollar loss for intellectual property and data theft in 2008 for businesses globally. Coleman gets his numbers from Dennis C. Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, in his Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. To learn more, read the entire article.

Posted in Enterprise, IP Communications, Security, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP

IP Phones Find a Home in Business, Not at Home

February 11, 2009

In-Stat is reporting that the business IP Phone market is thriving, and that by 2012, 31 million voice centric IP phones will ship into businesses. And while IP phones are making some headway into the consumer space, In-Stat believes business IP phones will continue to outpace consumers by 10:1. According to the report IP Phones Worldwide - On the Desk and Beyond, IP-based communication is enjoying much more vigorous adoption rate in enterprises than in the consumer space. "Within the business market, corded IP phones remain the standard, and will continue to dominate the enterprise IP phone market through 2012," says Norm Bogen, In-Stat analyst. "However, WLAN and IP DECT phones continue to grow, especially within some specific vertical and geographical markets."

Posted in Enterprise, IP Communications, Research, VoIP

ITEXPO Award Confusion

February 9, 2009

At ITEXPO, the editorial team was tasked with many assignments, but perhaps the most gratifying of all the items that appears on our collective "to-do" list is rewarding deserving companies with the best of show awards. One particular award seems to have raised a bit of a "stink" in the blogosphere. At the most recent ITEXPO, Interactive Intelligence was awarded a best of show award in the SMB category, which on the surface may seem like an odd thing to do, considering the company's Enterprise Interaction Center solution is geared to companies that employ at a minimum 100 people. There is no question that the solution deserves praise and in fact Interactive Intelligence has received much acclaim for their products over the years.

Posted in Contact Center, Enterprise, IP Communications, ITEXPO

Oh Canada! Dialexia, Sangoma Interop News

January 29, 2009

Posted in Development tools, Enterprise, IP Communications, ITEXPO, VoIP

SIP Trunking Podcast: Avaya's Alan Klein

January 26, 2009

With only one week to go before ITEXPO, it's an exciting time as we make the final preparations ahead of "The World's Communications Conference." One of the elements of the show that has been very successful in the past is the SIP Trunking seminar, organized by Ingate Systems with sponsorship from the likes of Avaya, BandTel and others. The seminar is taking place at this year's ITEXPO as well. Last week we ran a couple of interviews with BandTel's Joel Maloff, including a Q&A and a podcast. We also published an interview with Avaya's Alan Klein. Well we just posted the podcast interview with Alan. Give it a listen. And when you're done, please cruise on over to the ITEXPO site and sign up for the SIP Trunking workshop. You'll be glad you did!

Posted in Enterprise, IP Communications, ITEXPO, VoIP

Rich on Microsoft's Response Point

January 23, 2009

Posted in Enterprise, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Unified Communications, VoIP

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