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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

SysAid's Lifshitz: The Cloud Will Dominate ITSM Market

By Rich Tehrani on Thursday, May 16

Cloud computing has really become a household word with mainstream media outlets running stories on television about the growth in the space...

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Tagged help desk, itsm, mdm, sysaid

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Everyone Uses Conferencing

December 19, 2012

One of the first cloud voice services was audio conferencing. Audio and web conferencing are a big component of UC&C (unified comm and collaboration). I am as guilty as the next agent in not pushing enough of this product.

There are a lot of providers, including quite a few free ones. Apparently, politicians like using the free ones:

"During the 2012 election, both Presidential campaigns racked up millions of FreeConferenceCall.com minutes -- President Obama's campaign used over 1,000 FreeConferenceCall.com accounts and millions of conferencing minutes. Governor Romney's campaign also had multiple accounts and totaled considerable minutes of conference calls, although far less than the Obama campaign. This was the second consecutive national election where both presidential campaigns used FreeConferenceCall.com."

Posted in conferencing, politics

Tagged: conferencing : Related Tags: election presidential, presidential campaigns, conferencing, freeconferencecall, campaign, minutes

A Little Bit of Tuesday News

December 18, 2012

365 Main returns to the data center space with its completed $75 million acquisition of 16 data centers, in the US from Equinix. Some Equinix execs came along with the acquisition. The data centers - located in Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Nashville, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburg, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa and Washington D.C. - seem like the former Switch & Data facilities.

Posted in PBX, data center, hosted uc, mergers, voip

Tagged: 8x8, broadsoft, cbeyond, clearwire, data center, google, hosted pbx, mergers, sprint : Related Tags: million, sprint, interesting, hosted, third, clearwire

2 Small Acquisitions

December 14, 2012

Zayo just can't help themselves. Zayo is spending $22 million to acquire Litecast/Balticore, LLC. "Litecast owns and operates the leading Baltimore metropolitan fiber network, connecting over 110 on-net buildings, including all of the city's major data centers and carrier hotel facilities. Litecast is focused on providing dark fiber and ethernet-based services to a concentrated set of Baltimore enterprise and governmental customers, particularly within the healthcare and education segments." It fills in the greater DC area for Zayo.

Alpheus today announced that it has acquired Net Star Telecommunications Inc. Net Star was Houston's 3rd largest ISP in 2006, according to the Biz Journal and the company website. No financial details were available.

Posted in data center, ethernet, fiber, mergers

Tagged: data center, ethernet, fiber, mergers, zayo : Related Tags: litecast

Fill 'Er Up

December 11, 2012

Many business models are at odds with the customer wishes.

Airlines want full planes. Customers don't want to be sardines and have bags checked for them.

Consumers hope that not everyone is using the Internet at 8 PM.

Posted in ISP, cellular

Tagged: airlines, cellular, customer service, isp, UX : Related Tags: model succeed, business model, business, customers, model

Regulating the Internet

December 10, 2012

While the ITU / UN take over of the Internet was being debunked, AT&T has been making moves of its own. They even have the help of the Astroturf groups as they try to dismantle the copper plant and reassert their Monopoly. (more about that at WSJ)

The FCC is working on two fronts.

Posted in FCC, Internet, duopoly, off topic

Tagged: duopoly, FCC, fcc, rant : Related Tags: neutrality rules, sprint, internet, broadband, court, network

RBOCs Declare War on CLECs

December 6, 2012

This is a letter from telecom lawyer Kris Twomey to the members of FISPA, an association for ISP's and CLEC's. I know that Politics and Regulatory talk puts you to sleep or bores you or you don't have time for it - but these proposed changes to the Telecom Act WILL affect you!

"One of the questions I am often asked by ISPs considering starting CLEC operations is whether access to unbundled network elements ("UNEs" or "the copper in the ground") will continue in the future. My response has always been something like, "Of course, the Telecom Act guarantees it.

Posted in CLEC, FCC, ISP, ethernet, politics, telco, wireline, xo

Tagged: att, congress, copper, duopoly, ethernet, FCC, forbearance, lobbying, politics, vz : Related Tags: copper loops, network transition, clecs essentially, telecom regulation, facilities based, telecom

Beware of Cable

December 6, 2012

On the one hand, you have the Top MSO's - Comcast, TWC, Cox, Charter, Cablevision and Bright House - taking market share rapidly, primarily due to its better broadband bargain and its willingness to build out fiber.

On the other hand, cable sells a commodity item at low prices. Obviously, not just cable prices are low, T1's are under $300 in major areas; EoC is inexpensive; and Internet bandwidth in major hubs is under $1 per MB! It is taking more and more sales to make a living.

Posted in VAR, agents, cableco, channel, duopoly

Tagged: agents, cable, cableco, duopoly, ilec, mso, rboc, var : Related Tags: monopoly mindset, beware cable, service provider, selling broadband, broadband circuit, cable

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