VoIP & Gadgets Blog

10 Lessons from Volleyball, Part 2

By Peter on Thursday, May 23

Part 1 of the 10 Business Lessons from Volleyball can be found here. In volleyball, the only play you control yourself is...

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Tagged sales, strategy, volleyball

CloudTC and N-Able Acquired

By Peter on Wednesday, May 22

"Australian-owned IP PBX systems company, Vixtel, has completed the acquisition of Silicon Valley based glass phone developer, CloudTC, for an undisclosed figure,"...

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Tagged hosted pbx, itexpo, mergers, phone system, RMM

ProfitBricks: Where InfiniBand Meets Cloud 2.0

By Rich Tehrani on Wednesday, May 22

In a recent meeting with William Toll and Pete Johnson of ProfitBricks, the pair were ecstatic to explain how their company has...

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Tagged amazon, cloud computing, data center, ec2, infiniband, interop, profitbricks, public cloud, technology

Proactive Care Puts Operators One Step Ahead

By Peter Bernstein on Monday, May 20

By Thomas Fuerst, Senior Director, Multimedia Solutions MarketingAlcatel-Lucent

Monitoring and analyzing network data proactively saves operators time, money, and customers.

When a network service fails, it makes headlines, ticks off customers, and costs that network operator money. When a failure is headed off in advance, on the other hand, there might not be praise-laden headlines, but it's newsworthy nonetheless.

The traditional approach to customer care has typically been: a disgruntled customer calls customer service and complains of a service interruption or problem; the rep, learning of it for the first time, sends out a technician the next day, and eventually finds a resolution. Often, customers are left feeling put out, and the operator has spent significant time and money resolving the problem. Even worse is the customer who doesn’t call and just feels this is ‘typical’ of their network experience. That is a customer at risk of leaving.

Proactive care flips this dynamic on its head by using predictive analytics to identify potential outages or errors in the network and stop them before they occur. It consists of three main parts: one, constantly monitoring and measuring data on the network; two, real-time analysis of the data; and three, the most important, acting on that analysis to fix the problem.

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Tagged Alcatel-Lucent, big data, customer care, KPIs, network monitoring, procativecare | Responses

10 Lessons from Volleyball

By Peter on Monday, May 20

I've played volleyball for over 25 years. I have traveled around the US to watch the pros live - both indoor...

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Tagged hiring, strategy, volleyball

Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

There are 250,000 plus new pieces of malware being produced each day equating to one piece per person in the US in...

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Tagged emerging threats, interop, malware, security

NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability

By Rich Tehrani on Friday, May 17

One of the goals of ETSI NFV is to allow new entrants to provide solutions to carriers based on software instead of...

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Tagged bss, carrier, ericsson, huawei, interoperability, nfv, nokia siemens networks, nsn, oss, sdn, software telco

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Dell Support Website is Down

December 20, 2011

Just tried to find some new drivers for my Windows 8 laptop I'm testing and the Dell support website simply says "The service is unavailable." Maybe their systems are overloaded from last minute Christmas shoppers, but this is still unacceptable!

Posted in Computer Hardware

Windows 8 CPU Slow Benchmarks!

December 20, 2011

I tried out Windows 8 developer preview (32-bit) on a Dell E6500 dual core 2.26Ghz laptop and while the new UI is slick, the CPU processor is much SLOWER that the prior Vista 32-bit operating system it was running. Using PerformanceTest v7.0 (popular PassMark benchmark), the CPU benchmark went down from 2000 to 800! Similarly Windows Experience Index score for the CPU category went from 5.2 to 2.4. That's a 1/2 performance drop!

Posted in Microsoft, TMCnet, Technology and Science

Tagged: 2d, 3d, benchmarks, cpu, graphics, memory, microsoft, operating system, processor, slow, windows 8, windows vista : Related Tags: vista business, vista laptop, measured speed, score vista, prior vista, windows

Data Consumption Comparison: Microsoft Lync vs. Communicator Mobile for Windows Mobile

December 16, 2011

Matt Landis has some nice analysis comparing how much mobile data usage there is for Microsoft Lync vs. Communicator Mobile for Windows Mobile (CoMo). Go check it out.

Image above via Matt Landis

Posted in Lync, Microsoft, Mobile Phones, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: CoMo, data usage, lync, matt landis, microsoft, mobile data, voip : Related Tags: communicator mobile, windows mobile, mobile windows, mobile

Sprint Nextel Throws Out 489 PBXs - Switches 100% to Microsoft Lync

December 16, 2011

Sprint Nextel thew out 489 PBXs and switched over their 39,000 employees to using Microsoft Lync, a unified commutations solution gaining in popularity. Sprint Nextel said their goal was to "reduce its environmental impact, improve employee productivity, and reduce costs and administration for its cumbersome telephony systems". Whether they truly "threw out" the 489 PBXs and they're sitting in a landfill somewhere or they sold off the PBXs is unknown, but I'm hoping for the latter or it would defeat Sprint Nextel's purpose of "reduced environmental impact".

Here's what their Lync deployment / voice infrastructure looks like now:

Sprint Nextel claims that switching to Microsoft Lync has saved them nearly $13 million annually by reducing the TCO of maintaining hundreds of hardware-based PBXs, on-site maintenance fees, and annual upgrades. It went with Microsoft's software approach and leveraged Sprint's Global MPLS network and SIP trunking to connect their 39,000 employees together seamlessly allowing them to retire 489 PBXs scattered across the country.

Posted in Lync, Microsoft, Polycom, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Tagged: lync, microsoft, polycom, sprint nextel, unified communications, video conferencing, voip : Related Tags: sprint nextel, environmental impact, video conferencing, provide voice, sprint plans, sprint

Lync for Android Launches!

December 14, 2011

Today, Microsoft released Lync for Android. In an interesting twist, it appears Microsoft released Lync for Android before Apple iOS. It seems more and more these days that Android is getting the app love before the popular iOS platform.

Posted in Android, Google, Lync, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP, Wireless

Tagged: android, google, ios, lync, microsoft, presence, unified communications : Related Tags: microsoft released, android

Impressive SkyDrive App for iPhone & Windows Phone Released

December 14, 2011

The SkyDrive app is now available both for the iPhone and Windows Phone users running the Mango update. This is a kick ass app that might make me switch from using Dropbox. You may recall I use Dropbox in my home surveillance recipe, which helped catch someone in the act of messing with my home theater.

The SkyDrive app isn't simply for viewing & uploading files or photos. Using either the iOS app or the Windows Phone app, you can upload photos, files, documents and manage your SkyDrive folders right from your mobile device.

Posted in Apple, Gadgets, Microsoft, Mobile Phones, TMCnet, Wireless

Tagged: apple, dropbox, ios, IPhone, Microsoft, SkyDrive, Window Phone, Windows Live SkyDrive, Windows Phone 7 : Related Tags: windows phone, iphone windows, skydrive, files, iphone, phone

Skype 2.6 for Android Sports Image and Video Sharing

December 13, 2011

Skype just released Skype 2.6 for Android, with a new feature that lets you send photos and videos to your Skype buddies. I haven't tested this yet, but I'm going to assume there isn't a size limit and no compression being performed on your images or video. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, i.e. longer transmission times, but better image quality.

Posted in Android, Google, Skype, VoIP

Tagged: android, image, mobile phone, skype, video : Related Tags: skype android, image quality, video, skype, android, quality

Digium TE820 8-port T1/E1 Card Released

December 13, 2011

According to Digium, they just released their 8-port T1/E1 card designed for high density Asterisk deployments. The TE820 includes eight independently software-selectable digital telephony interfaces, supporting up to 192 channels (in T1/J1 mode) or 240 channels (in E1 mode).

In a Digium email announcement, Digium claims this is the highest single-card port density available for use with Asterisk - though Sangoma's A108 Octal 8-port T1/E1 card might have something to say about that.

Features/Specs of the TE820:

8 T1 / E1 Spans using 4 RJ45 connectors (each supporting 2 circuits). Break out dongles included.
Up to to 192 (T1/J1) or 240 (E1) concurrent calls per card
PCI Express form factor / half-length, full-height card
Interfaces are software selectable (T1, E1, or J1 Mode)
Optional 128ms hardware echo cancellation module

The TE820 card supports industry standard telephony protocols, including multiple variants of Primary Rate ISDN.

Posted in Asterisk, Computer Hardware, SIP, VoIP

Tagged: asterisk, digium, e1, echo cancellation, high density, octasic, pci express, pri, sangoma, t1 : Related Tags: cancellation module, software selectable, digium, cancellation, module, software

Microsoft Lync Profiles Utility

December 12, 2011

So you want to switch Lync profiles but are tired of having to logout and type in the other credentials (username + password), eh? Well, I came across a cool new utility for Microsoft Lync that saves your various usernames, passwords, and both the internal & external URLs. Called Profiles for Lync (or P4L for short), the developer explains, "This app fills what has been to date an annoying gap in the feature offer, especially for partners/integrators: with P4L it’s as easy as clicking a button to logout of Lync and log back in with another set of credentials – and even into another system!"

Who wouldn't like the ability to switch Lync profiles quickly without having to remember usernames and passwords? Although, unless you sport some secret identity like a superhero, you likely maintain a single, non-anonymous user identity for your corporate-based Lync client. So really this utility is only useful for IT/MIS personnel testing and troubleshooting Lync, as well as VARs and resellers that deploy Lync at customer locations.

Posted in Lync, Microsoft, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Tagged: credentials, identities, lync, microsoft, multiple, profiles, unified communications : Related Tags: usernames passwords, profiles, utility

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