Avaya

Avaya Buys Nortel

September 14, 2009

Avaya has agreed to purchase Nortel's enterprise business for $900 million, which is much larger than the $475 million 'stalk horse' bid put out last month by Avaya. As part of the deal, Nortel will sell the assets of the Enterprise Solutions Business, and shares of Nortel Government Solutions and DiamondWare to Avaya. Avaya will pay out US$900 Million in cash to Nortel, with an additional pool of US$15 Million Reserved for an Employee Retention Program.

But the bid is subject to approval. Both Canadian and U.S.

Posted in Avaya, Nortel, TMCnet, VoIP

ShoreTel Lands 1st 'Skype for SIP' interoperability

September 9, 2009

ShoreTel is the first company to land SIP interoperability with Skype for SIP - before Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, Nortel, or any Asterisk-based PBX. I can't help but find the irony in this news since ShoreTel did not support third-party SIP phones/endpoints until ShoreTel 8 was released in 2008. Thus, ShoreTel was pretty late to embrace the SIP standard for endpoints, which forced users to use ShoreTel's proprietary phones. Though to be fair, Cisco was pretty late to the game as well, finally embracing third-party SIP phones back in 2006.

Posted in Avaya, Reviews, SIP, ShoreTel, ShoreTel, Unified Communications, VoIP

SIP Print SME VoIP Recording Appliance Launches

September 1, 2009

SIP Print is announcing today the general availability of a new, enterprise-class call recording platform for mid-market enterprises. The new SIP Print SME platform offers support for up to 200 seats per location, along with RAID hot-swappable drive bays, dual hot-swappable power supplies, and a Core 2 Quad Series processor. Today's announcement is being issued in conjunction with TMC's ITEXPO Conference in Los Angeles.

According to SIP Print, SIP Print SME is a new, more powerful appliance designed for the needs of small and mid-size enterprises, or any organization with the requirement to record up to 200 seats per location.

"We introduced our highly affordable SMB product one year ago to meet the needs of small business with a need to record calls for training, QA, or compliance purposes, but simply couldn't justify the expense or hassle of the legacy recording systems on the market," said Jonathan Fuld, CTO for SIP Print. "Since that time we've seen tremendous demand for a similar, but more powerful system in the mid-market enterprise arena. We're pleased to introduce SIP Print SME as the ideal solution for mid-sized enterprises with the need for a system that is easy to install, easy to use and maintain, and easy to afford."

SIP Print SME is a 1U appliance and is certified as compatible and interoperable with many of today's leading IP PBX systems, including: Allworx, Aastralink, ADTRAN, Altigen, Avaya Distributed Office, Cisco, Epygi, Fonality, Grandstream, Mitel, NEC 8100, NEC 8300, Nortel, ShoreTel, SIPfoundry, Toshiba, Zultys, 3Com, and more. As configured, SIP Print SME is capable of recording and storing the equivalent of one handset, 24x7 for 15 years.

Check out my recent review (last month) of their previous SIP Print appliance which I gave extremely high marks.

Posted in Asterisk, Avaya, ITEXPO, Reviews, SIP, ShoreTel, TMCnet, VoIP

SIP Print VoIP Appliance Review

August 12, 2009

Call recording on VoIP phone systems is critical because it can ensure good customer service, provide employee training, and offer liability protection. SIP Print offers a SIP-compliant VoIP recording appliance at a price point that is much lower than legacy analog or digital E1/T1 recording systems. Part of the reason is you don't have to pay for expensive Dialogic or NMS telephony hardware to interface with analog or digital trunks. Instead, SIP Print's appliances sit on the network and simply record the SIP VoIP traffic.

Posted in Asterisk, Avaya, SIP, ShoreTel, TMCnet, VoIP

Microsoft OCS Call Recording

July 28, 2009

Last week, I wrote how Microsoft is making inroads in the enterprise with their Office Communications Server 2007 R2 platform and how they are looking to achieve five 9s of reliability. Well, one other critical feature needed for an enterprise phone system is decent call recording. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a lot of options for call recording on OCS 2007. One of the problems is that not all calls go through a PBX.

For instance, you can use the Microsoft Communicator client to call a co-worker who is also using Communicator.

Posted in Avaya, Microsoft, Polycom, Reviews, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

Microsoft OCS 2010 Will Finally Eliminate the PBX

March 16, 2009

Well, Microsoft has let the cat out of the bag and leaked word that Microsoft OCS 2010 will "remove the need for PBX equipment within your organization". I'm certainly not surprised. Let's flash back to last year where I wrote and article titled Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 Heralds the Death of the IP-PBX. In it I wrote:

"Office Communications Server 2007 R2, debuting just one year after the Microsoft unified communications launch, highlights the pace of innovation that is possible with software," said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division at Microsoft.

Posted in Avaya, Microsoft, Polycom, SIP, Unified Communications, VoIP

31 Million IP Phones shipped by Mayan 2012 Doomsday, the Media Phone, & Slow Consumer Adoption

February 13, 2009

According to In-stat, nearly 31 Million Business IP Phones will ship in 2012. That's if the Mayan 2012 Doomsday Prophecy doesn't come to pass. You know, the one where the Mayan calendar ends on December 21st, 2012 - the same date as the Winter Solstice and when the Earth will be in galactic alignment with the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, as well as our sun, resulting in a planetary shift. The date 12-21-12 reads as, A-B-B-A-A-B.

Posted in Avaya, Gadgets, Home Entertainment, Technology and Science, Triple Play, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Nortel Fights On

January 15, 2009

Nortel - will they or won't they file for bankruptcy? Will they be chopped up into pieces and sold off? All the news these past few months leading to a crescendo of news yesterday stating Nortel is planning to file for bankruptcy. Certainly, all the rumors didn't help their stock any.

Posted in Avaya, Nortel, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Avaya acquires Nortel rumors

January 14, 2009

With today's news of Nortel's potential bankruptcy flying, my fellow TMC team members have been trading emails back-and-forth about Nortel's future. (See also Rich's overview).

Brendan Read had an interesting take that I thought I'd share:

This could cause a political firestorm in Canada: Nortel being a Canadian company, Avaya being American, expected more job losses from consolidation, Stephen Harper's Conservative minority government being propped up by the center-left parties including a resurgent Liberal party under its US-educated new leader Michael Ignatieff, and the bulk of Nortel's jobs being in the battleground province of Ontario.

Parliament resumes later this month with a new budget--and his deal could add enough explosives to the mix to ignite another election. Harper is a superb political gameplayer which is why he stopped the sale of the firm that made the Canadarm to an American outfit.

He then pointed to an Industry Week article where the sale was blocked by the Canadian government.

So is an Avaya acquisition of Nortel in the works?

Posted in Avaya, Nortel, TMCnet, Technology and Science, Unified Communications

Fonality Launches PBXtra Unified Agent on Salesforce.com's Force.com AppExchange

December 9, 2008

Back in September I wrote about Fonality's trixbox Unified Agent Edition (UAE) and how it can automatically match all inbound and outbound calls with the corresponding record in salesforce.com's AppExchange, and call data is captured and logged. Apparently, this was still a yet-to-be-announced product I wrote about that resulted in a call from Fonality's CEO Chris Lyman asking how I found out about it. Woops, my bad, Chris.

Well, today, Fonality has officially launched UAE.

Posted in Asterisk, Avaya, Call Center and CRM, Reviews, TMCnet, Unified Communications, VoIP

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