Recently in Unified Communications Category

With Microsoft OCS R2's pending release, I thought you'd be interested in seeing a video interview of Microsoft's Ananad Lakshminarayanan about some of the new features in Office Communications Server R2, which is Microsoft's popular unified communications platform. In the video you'll see some of the IT Admin specific features in OCS R2, which includes an OCS architecture planner to make OCS much easier to deploy. Essentially, it includes a wizard that you provide with your locations, users, and feature requirements and it spits out a detailed Visio style architecture for you, including recommendations for number of servers and locations, as well as bandwidth requirements. The wizard will even list out all the ports & IPs that you need to open.

They've added load balancing for Edge Servers for scalability. Another change is they've reduced the number of ports you need to keep open. They've changed the archiving feature so that it stores instant messages archives separately from CDRs or voice call records. This assists with compliance using 3rd party compliance utilities.

To Virtualize or not to Virtualize, that is the question...
A hot topic in the Office Communication Server community is virtualization for some of the OCS server roles. In the video, Ananad mentions they are looking at supporting some virtualization for some of the OCS roles. Specifically the roles that don't support real-time media (audio, video, conferencing, etc.). Although the video doesn't mention it, Microsoft told me that the voice & video quality and performance in virtualized environments just isn't up to business-grade quality. Nevertheless, I'd still like to see support for virtualization of all the roles for testing in a lab or pre-deployment testing environment. in any event, excluding those roles that require real-time media they will be able to be virtualized very soon. In fact, in the video Ananand says support for virtualization will be likely be post RTM, which is basically plus 90 days from when OCS R2 RTMs.

Click to go watch the in-depth video including a demo of OCS R2:

The next ITEXPO marks the 10th anniversary for Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. I for one cannot believe its been 10 years! We started ITEXPO way back in 1999. That was way back in the 20th century. Did VoIP even exist back then? Yep, it sure did - take a walk down memory lane.

In celebration of 10 years of TMC's most successful event, our art department has designed a new logo. Check it out:



Thanks to all of you out there that have helped make ITEXPO the success that it is. I hope to see you all at the next event. The show takes place February 2-4, 2009 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, Florida.

According to Andy Abramson's post published 20 minutes ago, Carl Ford and Scott Kargman, who were big parts of the VON brain trust has joined forces with TMC. As Andy also commented - Hath hell frozen over?

This is like Mirror! Mirror! where Captain Kirk and Spock meet their opposites. Or even worse the episode called The Alternative Factor where two enemies both named Lazarus who Spock concludes is Lazarus and an "anti-Lazarus", possibly from a parallel "antimatter" dimension. Should Lazarus and his anti-self manage to destroy each other, it could spell doom for both universes.

Fortunately, the joining of former VON employees with TMC has not destroyed the VoIP universe!

Andy said:

What I'm hearing is that long time VON business brain-trust, Scott Kargman, and VON Conference impresario, Carl Ford have teamed up with TMC's Rich Tehrani to produce the 4G Wireless Evolution Website and a conference in Miami next February.

I was aware of what was going on between the VON heavyweights and TMC but kept it hush. I saw both Carl and Scott in TMC's main conference room a couple times over the past couple of weeks meeting with my fellow co-workers Rich Tehrani, Dave Rodriguez, and others. I was told about the negotiations but didn't sit in on the meeting since I was busy testing some VoIP products, including the new snom 820 phone.

Rich also got me involved with testing a cool HD streaming over coax product. More on that soon.

Ya know, I saw the demise of VON in 2006 coming when I poked fun at Jeff Pulver changing the focus from Voice on the Net (VON) to Video on the Net (VON 2.0?). My only question now is should I expect to see Jeff Pulver in TMC's conference room? Then hell will have truly frozen over!

For more on the deal, read Andy's post.

I'm a huge fan of SightSpeed and so I was pleasantly surprised this morning to read that Logitech has acquired SightSpeed for approximately $30 million in cash. I'm a fan of both companies actually, and my favorite webcam is the Logitech Quickcam Orbit AF, The acquisition is expected to close in early November. Just check out my favorable review of SightSpeed here and how SightSpeed carried out their patriotic duty in offering SightSpeed videoconferencing for online gameplay between Pros and G.I. Joes.

SightSpeed supports up to an amazing 9-way videoconferencing. Take that Skype! Even Dell jumped on the SightSpeed bandwagon by offering SightSpeed preloaded onto all Dell consumer PCs (called Dell Video Chat).

No doubt with this acquisition, Logitech will bundle the SightSpeed software onto their software CD that ships with every webcam they sell. This will no doubt boost the number of SightSpeed users. My heart congrats go out to the SightSpeed team, including SightSpeed's VP of Marketing Eric Quanstrom whom I have spoken to many times.

Founded in 2001, SightSpeed has approximately 25 employees and unlike Skype which is proprietary, SightSpeed leverages the industry standard SIP protocol.

fring, just released fring's latest version 3.36 for all Symbian 9 devices. fring, the "Swiss Army knife" of mobile VoIP/IM apps supports MSN Messenger, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, SIP, and more.

fring's blog writes, "Having upgraded the GUI (the way it looks to you and me) fring is now better looking (as if that were possible) and more user friendly with an upgraded menu structure, and all of your favorite online communities and cool new fring Add-ons available in one easy place, making it simpler than ever to find what you need."

 

They also explained the new version now supports FAXL 3 Add-on development language.

Point your Symbian phone to www.fring.com/downloadand download it now!

Fonality's CEO Chris Lyman spoke with me earlier today to talk about the strong inroads Fonality has been making in the call center market. Chris said, "Fonality has become a big player in what I like to call the micro call center market. We launched our call center product in 2005 and we have almost 3,000 deployed call centers now."

When asked to define "call center" since many people have a different definition, Chris responded, "Anybody who purchases Call Center Edition plus HUD Agent. We can't imagine someone buying barging, monitoring, recording, and queue reporting if you weren't doing call center activity. Since these products effectively add in some cases double the costs to the phone system, you're pretty serious if you're buying those."

When asked what percentage were call center deployments versus regular enterprise deployments, Chris said that 40-50% of all their solutions sold are Call Center Edition.

Chris stated that there is a vastly under served and untapped call center market when he explained, "The 5-50 agent market where I have a regular business with 50 employees, but I've got 10 sales people who work the queues. And so there is this micro call center that has been ignored by Genesys and the expensive players out there for all these years because you cannot afford a $100,000 drop-in, bolt-on Avaya call center system. I think the low end of the market hasn't been able to afford that and we're enabling the micro call center market."

Chris explained that Fonality PBXtra Call Center saved Crusecom, a Michigan-based outsourcing call center, more than $250,000 annually. Art Cruse CEO at Crusecom explained he'd have to hire a full-time Avaya engineer on-site at $140,000 - $160,000 per year plus maintenance costs of the Avaya system. He also explained Avaya call center phones are more expensive than regular Avaya phones. They also have 94% call completion rate or an amazing 6% abandonment rate. Other call centers are coming to look at how they've achieved such a phenomenally low abandonment rate. Fonality's call center system has helped Crusecom attain rapid growth. The $250,000 savings enabled Crusecom to invest in a new 14,000 square foot call center facility that will house up to 150 call center agents.

"Fonality and PBXtra Call Center made our whole business model of providing cost effective, outsourced onshore call centers possible. They have delivered remarkable business benefits to our company," said Art Cruse CEO at Crusecom. "When we bought our Fonality system, it was 75 percent less than a comparable Avaya system. With Avaya, we would easily be paying an extra $250,000 per year in support, maintenance and hardware costs, which would directly impact our bottom line and limit our growth capabilities."

Crusecom provides 24x7x365 call center operations to state agencies and companies that want to keep call center operations in the U.S. but cannot afford the high costs of urban call centers. Since deploying PBXtra Call Center in 2007, the company has expanded its customer base, added 50 new call center agents and increased inbound call volumes.

"PBXtra Call Center is amazing - the more calls we get the more we save," Cruse continued. "We've been able to reinvest these cost savings in our company and grow our business very rapidly."

By leveraging web-based reporting capabilities in PBXtra Call Center and other technology developed in-house, Crusecom is the only electronic benefits transfer (EBT) call center in the country that is offering customers real-time, web-based service level agreement reporting. In addition to the $250,000 he is already saving with Fonality, Crusecom estimates that this real-time, self-service reporting functionality saves his company eight to 16 man hours every day, or $50,000 to $100,000 annually, while providing customers with better service and support.

"Gone are the days of the cumbersome, big-iron call center oligopoly. Crusecom is a perfect example of why there is a changing of the guard in the call center market as companies rapidly adopt more agile technologies like PBXtra Call Center," said Chris Lyman CEO of Fonality. "Small and mid-size call centers need affordable, flexible phone systems with solid service agreements that allow them to grow rapidly. Fonality is delivering on these requirements and is constantly innovating with newer advanced technologies."

Chris also explained that Fonality's flat rate support was also a key advantage over other call center IP-PBX competitors. Lastly, he explained the hybrid-hosted approach enables call centers to have home agents without the need for VPNs. The hybrid-hosted approach resolves pesky VoIP over NAT firewall issues making telecommuting a much easier approach with lower TCO.

I was sent a release about a wager between two hosted VoIP companies over which team will win the World Series - either the Philadelphia Phillies or the Tampa Bay Rays. The bet involves a dirty dozen cheesesteakes by Alteva against Telovations' two bushels of oranges. Ok, I'll bite (pun intended) and blog this since it involves VoIP and our national past time.

Check out the wager:

2008 World Series: Oranges for Cheesesteaks?

The Philadelphia Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays will soon battle it out on the field in the 2008 World Series. In each respective state, thousands of people are already placing bets on who should win this year's title. In particular, two hosted phone system providers are actually betting oranges for cheesesteaks in a friendly, VoIP competitor match up. Alteva is apparently putting a dozen cheesesteaks on the line against Telovations' two bushels of oranges.

Representing the Phillies: Hailing from Philadelphia is Alteva, leading provider of Hosted VoIP solutions in the Northeast. Alteva provides businesses with a telephone system that requires minimal installation and configuration while eliminating monthly phone system maintenance charges and reducing overall telephony costs. With a sophisticated open standards infrastructure, Alteva enables businesses to easily integrate existing business applications and add a steady stream of new Alteva or third-party "mashup" applications.

Representing the Rays: Based in Tampa, Telovations provides growing businesses in the Southeast with a hosted, managed, IP communications solution, including telephone equipment, telephone service and a high-speed T-1 connection to the Telovations private, secure and fully managed Cisco Powered RealTime Network(SM).

"Just like major league sports, business is all about competition. These guys on the field are fierce competitors, but off the field many of them are good friends," said William Bumbernick, President and CEO of Alteva. "Our industry is no different. While we compete on opportunities, we also have a common goal to educate businesses about how Hosted VoIP or IP PBX solutions are superior to the traditional customer premise based PBX model. Most importantly, it is a great opportunity to show our support for our Phillies, especially since our offices are located in the heart of Philadelphia," added William Bumbernick.

"Hosted IP communication solutions have surpassed premise based systems and there's no reason for businesses to purchase, install and maintain systems that will be paid off by the time they're obsolete," said Telovations President and CEO Rick Schonbrun. "Plus, Tampa is the best team in baseball and it's hard to find a good cheesesteak down here."

About Alteva, LLC
Alteva, North America's largest provider of Enterprise Hosted VoIP, has become the poster child for showcasing the high quality and reliability of Hosted VoIP solutions. Alteva provides businesses with a telephone system that requires minimal installation and configuration while eliminating monthly phone system maintenance charges and reducing overall telephony costs. With a sophisticated open standards infrastructure, Alteva enables businesses to easily integrate existing business applications and add a steady stream of exciting new Alteva or third-party "mashup" applications. Rather than building their processes around their phone system, Alteva's customers build their phone systems around their ideal processes. Alteva provides its "Communication as a Service" solution to growth-oriented companies in 48 states and 9 countries. For additional information about Alteva and its solutions, please visit www.altevatel.com or call1-877-258-3821.

About Telovations, Inc.
Based in Tampa, Fla., Telovations provides growing businesses in the Southeast with a hosted, managed, IP communications solution, including telephone equipment, telephone service and a high-speed T-1 connection to the Telovations private, secure and fully managed Cisco Powered RealTime Network(SM). Telovations' Innovate services also include over 20 innovative applications, professional support and systems management for one low monthly price. For additional information about Telovations and the Innovate managed communications solution, please visit www.telovations.com or call 1-877-We-Innovate (1-877-934-6668).

If you haven't been reading On Rad's Radar, you should. This TMC blog is written by Peter Radizeski the CEO of Rad-Info, Inc. Let me take an excerpt from his bio.

"Today, I am still an agent for about 20 carriers (all through other master agents), but I spend more time consulting for service providers (ISP, WISP, CLEC, MSO, FTTH, and ITSP) on strategy, marketing, messaging, and sales training. I also spend a good deal of time blogging here at TMC and other places. Thanks for reading!"

Peter also speaks and moderates sessions at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. Peter knows the VoIP/telecom industry very well and has great insights. He's especially knowledgeable in the wireless industry. I've had some great conversations with Peter in the ITEXPO press room about various industry topics. He's not as prolific a blogger as me , but when he does write, it's good stuff! So add him to your RSS reader - you won't be disappointed.

TringMe has announced a Flash-enabled VoiceXML platform. TringMe said, "A lot of infrastructure is required to build voice application, because of the complexity involved in building interactive voice applications and the need for optimum performance and carrier grade reliability. Even with the innovation on both voice and RIA (Rich Internet Applications) fronts, something is required to bridge the gap and make voice accessible from RIA in a simple manner effectively."

They added, "With TringMe, we have tried to bridge this gap. With extension of our platform, TringMe opens up VoiceXML accessibility to millions of flash and web developers to easily, yet, tightly integrate voice and telephony without having to know the intricate details of call-signalling, routing, billing etc."

Developers only require Flash and Web technologies to create rich voice and telephony applications. Applications that can be developed using TringMe's Flash VoiceXML platform include speech recognition, DTMF or text-to-speech.

The beauty of TringMe's solution is you just post a simple widget on your website and visitors can traverse your VoiceXML application. With the ubiquity of Flash on all operating systems and browsers, market penetration is very high. Along with Flash, the VoiceXML capability is also accessible from Instant Messengers, TringMe MobileVoIP, or regular phones.

TringMe stated, "We are working with key VoiceXML technology vendors to provide a fully integrated solution. Currently, we have launched this solution in private beta and is available for evaluation. We will be happy to enable it from our portal to select interested developers."

They have some sample widgets you can check out. I was able to click the holiday reservation system, speak the words "Disneyland, California" and the TringMe platform recognized my phrase and connected me to Disneyland's live reservation system. I wasn't able to traverse the Disneyland IVR since the sample widget didn't have a DTMF/touch-tone dialpad, but according to TringMe they do support DTMF in their widgets. I wished they included it in their sample widgets.

Anyway, to check out the demo Flash+VoiceXML widgets go here: http://login.tringme.com/voicexmldemo.php

I'll embed one sample widget here to save you a click.

A major new version of OctroTalk (see previous write-up), an IM/VoIP/video P2P app just came out. The new version is called OctroTalk 2.0 for Windows Mobile and it now has real time video conferencing with VoIP, File Transfer, Instant Messaging and avatar support. You can even have video calls if you have OctroTalk running at both ends. The OctroTalk desktop version also supports video conferencing.

OctroTalk supports IM/VoIP and can communicate with Jabber, Google Talk, AOL/AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, and ICQ. Might have to compare this app with fring, one of my favorite multi-IM/VoIP applications.

You can also stream live video to the Web. Just add 3001@switch.octro.net to your buddy list in OctroTalk, and make a video call to this buddy. Users can look at what you are streaming by going to http://video.octro.com/ and entering the username as your JID. (Your JID is your Jabber/Gmail ID that you are using to log onto OctroTalk.

Currently, the front camera support is for Samsung Blackjack, and not for HTC phones (HTC hasn't opened up their API).

Download it at http://www.octro.com/.
To download cab file directly to your Pocket PC or smartphone.