Video Conferencing

Verizon and BT Announce Cross-Network Video Calling & Telepresence

February 8, 2012

Verizon and BT announced a deal enabling each of their respective customers initiate high-quality video conferences and telepresence sessions. I spoke with representatives from BT and Verizon to learn more about their collaboration.

Marc Hambley, Sr. Product Manager at BT explained, "We are connecting our respective telepresence exchanges together - that will allow BT clients to have meetings with Verizon clients, either hosted on BT service or Verizon service. It goes both ways equally.

Posted in Polycom, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing

Zultys MX Release 7.0 Unified Communications Release Adds Android Support

January 31, 2012

At ITEXPO in Miami, Zultys today announced their latest UC software offering mobility features for Android, call center enhancements, and third-party CRM integrations. The latest major firmware release for the MX platform, MX Release 7.0 Unified Communications Software is a secure, all-in-one SIP-based IP phone system that is highly scalable and highly customizable. This version also includes enhancements to SIP security.

Zultys introduced Zultys Mobile Communicator for iPhone and Blackberry users in MX Release 6.0. In MX Release 7.0, Zultys adds support to Android-powered devices.

Posted in ITEXPO, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Lync Federation Tool Makes it Easy to Find Lync-enabled Business Partners

January 23, 2012

Who wouldn't want to join the Federation? No, not the United Federation of Planets, commonly referred as the Federation, though it would be cool to play on the Star Trek Enterprise's holodeck. No, we're talking Lync Federation here. Matt Landis has a cool WCF Tool (Who Can Federate) that will scan through your Outlook contacts and tell you which contacts have public Microsoft Lync or OCS federation enabled. The utility works simply by checking for a specific Lync DNS SRV record for each domain name in your Outlook contacts.

You don't even need Lync installed to try this tool.

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

President Obama Has VoIP Glitch

January 4, 2012

Apparently, President Obama had some VoIP glitches when he attempted to tried to steal some of the Republican Iowa Caucuses' spotlight last night via a live address to his Democratic supporters over the Internet. The video teleconference had sporadic audio issues making him hard to understand. It's bad enough trying to understand some of President Obama's policies when he is speaking clearly never mind when he's encountering VoIP packet loss and jitter!

According to ABC News, Obama's video teleconferences utilized a proprietary software program developed for the Obama campaign by Adobe Systems Inc. It's likely a derivative of the Adobe Connect VoIP, video, and collaboration platform.

In one part of the video, he sounded like Max Headroom "(static) In some ways, I'm actually more optimistic now then I was when I first ran cuz we've already see...

Posted in Internet, Personal and Humor, Politics, TMCnet, Video Conferencing, VoIP

As Predicted - the Cisco Umi Demise

January 4, 2012

First Cisco killed the popular Flip Cam they acquired, now this - Cisco has killed their Skype-alternative UMI videoconferencing product. Rich Tehrani gave 10 reasons why he thought Cisco UMI would fail, plus an 11th reason later on (Kinect, Skype-enabled Bluray players). I didn't even bother to write about Cisco Umi because I knew it would be a failed venture. We were both right.

Posted in Cisco, TMCnet, Video Conferencing, VoIP

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 Microsoft, Polycom, SIP, TMCnet, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

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.

Lync 2010 for Android includes features such as rich presence, instant messaging, audio conferencing, and calling features.

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

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.

Screenshot of the Profiles for Lync switcher app (left) and the setup screen (right):

Go download your copy today and then you too can have fast multiple Lync identities at your command!

Posted in Microsoft, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Dilbert is a Skype Fan. Who knew?

December 12, 2011

Looks like Dilbert is a fan of Skype. This is absolutely brilliant!

Via Dan York

Posted in Skype, Video Conferencing, VoIP

Microsoft Lync Mobile Client Launches in 3 Days!

December 9, 2011

Back in August I told you Microsoft informed me that the Microsoft Lync mobile client was coming "very very soon". Microsoft told me the mobile Lync client would support both voice and video on Android, Apple's iOS and Windows Mobile 7, explaining, "it will dependent on the device, but it will be enabled at some point at time." They pointed out that some devices don't have a front-facing camera so having a videoconference via a mobile Lync client wouldn't necessarily make sense.

Well, at the Lync mobile "partner-only" virtual event some more details about the long awaited mobile Lync client has been released. First, the launch date. According to this tweet, Lync Mobile clients will be on the market / launched on December 12th.

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

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