Conferencing

Allworx

September 5, 2007

I recently had the opportunity to ask Sandra Gault, EVP of Marketing at the rapidly expanding communications product company Allworx about the evolution of IP communications in the SMB space, VoIP and the direction her company is taking. Allworx provides businesses with all the mission-critical communications support in a single system. They combine PBX and Key phone functionality with PC network services, along with VoIP, secured Internet access, remote office, group collaboration tools, and messaging software such as email, voicemail, unified messaging, follow-me calling, and group calendaring. To learn more about the company, read this article published on TMCnet from earlier this year. Be sure to read this interview to the end… The answer to the final question is pretty surprising. RT: Please outline your new corporate initiatives. SG: Our initiatives continue to enable the 3.5 million small to medium-sized (SMBs) businesses in the U.S. to transition risk-free and affordably to the benefits of VoIP, replacing the aging installed base of TDM key telephone systems that are incompatible with VoIP.

Posted in Broadband, Call Center, Cisco, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, Google, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Microsoft, SIP, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Fonality FtOCC Training

September 5, 2007

Great news. Fonality FtOCC (pronounced F-Talk) Technician Certification is sold out at next week’s ITEXPO in Los Angeles, CA. There is still limited seating for the Administrator Certification. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention what this acronym means. It stands for Fonality’s trixbox Open Communications Certification. I have been hearing more and more and more buzz about what Chris Lyman and company have been up to and the momentum seems to be fantastic for the open source industry as a whole.

Posted in Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Conferencing, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Microsoft, Open Source, SIP, Science, Security, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP

Nortel on Microsoft/Cisco

September 4, 2007

The following comments are from Nortel’s Tony Rybczynski regarding the new relationship between Microsoft and Cisco. I found them interesting and worth passing along. --- I was on holidays in Eastern Europe when the photo shoot took place. During my travels I learnt that the Austrio-Hungarian empire was largely created by making love (through arranged marriages) not war.

Posted in Broadband, Call Center, Cisco, Conferencing, FCC, Google, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Microsoft, Open Source, SIP, Technology, Unified Communications, Video, VoIP, Wireless

Miss Teen South Carolina

August 31, 2007

It is all about the education. Miss Teen South Carolina hit the nail on the head when she said our education system in the United States needs to improve so as she says, US Americans can one day hope to aspire to be as well-educated as the people of Iraq and South Africa. At least I think that is what she said – you may watch the video for yourself and decide. Of course as she reminds us, we need to also include the Asian countries so we can help build up our future. If you haven’t seen the video, make sure you are sitting down first.

Posted in Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Cisco, Conferencing, FCC, Green, IMS, IP Communications, IPTV, ITEXPO, Microsoft, Open Source, SIP, Security, Skype, Speech Technologies, Technology, Unified Communications, Video, VoIP, WiMAX, Wireless

Inter-Tel

August 28, 2007

Inter-Tel executives Aron Aicard (Director of Product Marketing), Jon Young (Director, Softswitch Technology) and Rick Ringel (Strategic Solutions Engineer), gave me this exclusive interview. They talked to me about Inter-Tel’s new corporate initiatives, the impact of SIP technology, and the future of the market in general. Recently merged with Mitel Networks Corporation, Inter-Tel is a high-profile provider of business telephone systems and related software products. It will be interesting to see how Inter-Tel/Mitel does under the leadership of the capable Mitel and Inter-Tel management. This includes of course Sir Terry Matthews who seems to turn everything into gold. Please outline your new corporate initiatives. Now that its merger with Mitel has been concluded, Inter-Tel is working closely with its colleagues at Mitel to broaden its collective suite of solutions to deliver seamless, advanced IP platforms, applications and services to businesses ranging from large enterprises to SOHO environments. How has SIP changed communications? We are only in the early stages of SIP acceptance, but Inter-Tel sees SIP—and other industry standards—as integral to the evolution of business communications.

Posted in Apple, Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Cisco, Conferencing, FCC, Google, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Microsoft, SIP, Security, Speech Technologies, Technology, Unified Communications, Video, VoIP, Wireless

Call Center Outage

August 28, 2007

A call center outage could be disastrous for your business. Some of the largest call centers sell millions of dollars worth of products and services each hour so an outage of minutes can be devastating to the bottom line. According to Boston.com, NStar the Boston gas and electric utility had a four-hour outage in their call center due to AT&T cable failure. This outage on top of the recent Skype outage written about last week are both wake up calls for any business looking to ensure they can communicate effectively at all times. Even if you do not have a contact center in your company, dhow would you like to be the person explaining to the CEO why his call to your company’s top client was dropped unexpectedly. These wake-up calls should be heeded and you should definitely be at ITEXPO in a few weeks to ensure you are aware of the latest technology which can help your company avert communications downtime. Here are some parts of the event worth noting:

Posted in Call Center, Cisco, Conferencing, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Microsoft, SIP, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP

VoEX

August 24, 2007

VoEX, Inc., is a VoIP managed-service provider offering global peering infrastructure, network interoperability, industry-leading quality of service, and advanced applications capabilities for top tier carriers, mobile operators, cable operators, voice service providers, academic institutions and enterprises. VoEX maps the world’s phone numbers to resolvable IP addresses by combining an advanced carrier-grade VoIP peering infrastructure with the world’s largest carrier ENUM registry — now totaling over 250 million phone numbers — to interconnect IP, TDM and hybrid-network service providers. I recently had the opportunity to discuss industry trends with Cyril N. Matthews, Director of Registry and Network Services at VOEX. For more on the company be sure to check out a March 30th, 2007 discussion between Cyril and Russell Shaw. RT: Please outline your new corporate initiatives. CM: Our company has built our network on IP at the core and we are working with our customers and vendors to push IP to the edge of the network (using ENUM and other technologies) to provide a base for the development of applications that can take advantage of the IP-based environment to drive convergence. RT: How has SIP changed communications? CM: SIP has opened up communications to the level of flexibility and innovation previously seen in personal computing… creating the ability for personal communications such as Instant Messaging (text, voice & video), as well as other presence- and location-based applications. RT: What is the biggest request coming from your customer base? CM: Give me something to help me differentiate what I do from my competitors. RT: How are you answering their demands? CM: We are working with our customers to develop solutions RT: What do you think the future of the market is? CM: Applications that seamlessly blend voice, video and data with real-time (inter)personal communications. RT: How does the U.S.

Posted in Apple, Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Cisco, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, Google, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Microsoft, SIP, Science, Security, Skype, Technology, Video, VoIP, Wireless

Use Skype, go to Jail

August 24, 2007

OK, I have been writing about Skype almost continually and this is not intentional. There is just a great deal of news about the company lately. For example, George Ou discusses today how a man in the UK was arrested for using a neighbor’s WiFi network. He went on to say he was reviewing a Skype phone which automatically connected to an open WiFi network in an unfamiliar area.

Posted in Broadband, Call Center, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, FCC, IP Communications, Microsoft, Skype, Technology, Video, VoIP

Cell Phone Contract Cancellation

August 21, 2007

Are you looking to sue your wireless carrier? If you are you should know a full six paragraphs are dedicated to dispute resolution over at Verizon Wireless and ten “fat” paragraphs are dedicated to this topic in an AT&T Wireless bill. Interesting wording in the AT&T bill reads as follows: "You agree that, by entering into this Agreement, you and AT&T are each waiving the right to a trial by jury or to participate in a class action." I came across a good article on this topic at Newsfactor.com. This article is where I got the figures from the first paragraph by the way. The article is a good read if this topic is of interest.

Posted in Apple, Call Center, Cisco, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, FCC, Google, IMS, IP Communications, Microsoft, Patent, Science, Security, Technology, VoIP, Wireless

Skype Outage Article

August 21, 2007

Jon Arnold and I were both quoted recently in a San Francisco Chronicle article titled Skype reveals outage source, tells customers it won't happen again. The article is extremely well-written, gets perspective from a number of people and weaves each viewpoint into a cohesive whole. My quote follows below:

The technology relies on user computers to route phone calls and handle some of the call authentication. There are thousands of computers and servers that are tapped to act as these supernodes in the Skype network. That reliance has allowed Skype, owned by San Jose's eBay, to keep phone calls free between members and extremely cheap for calls to nonsubscribers. But an outage like last week's reveals the inherent vulnerability in the system when a large number of computers are affected within a short span of time, said Rich Tehrani, chairman of the Internet Telephony Conference and Expo and president of TMC, a communications and technology media company. "The fate of the users is not in the control of one company, and that's the problem," Tehrani said.

Posted in Broadband, Call Center, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, Google, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Microsoft, Security, Skype, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

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