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September 2010

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United Video Communications, Mobile Advertising, Single-Chip Control

September 28, 2010

 If you're interested in "Creating an Effective Mobile Advertising Ecosystem," you're in luck -- Alcatel-Lucent has recently produced an excellent study of the subject.   "The mobile advertising space is poised for growth," the study finds, adding that however, "the promise of significant revenues has predictably caused a meteoric rise in the number of companies jockeying for position, muddying the waters and making it increasingly difficult for companies across this emerging business ecosystem to work together to achieve positive results."   The study finds that meeting each stakeholder's needs is absolutely crucial. It identifies the key stakeholders, and gives useful advice in meeting their needs, observing that "an effective mobile advertising solution serves the needs of three distinct groups: mobile operators; brands, marketers, media buyers and sellers; and subscribers."   Mobile operators. Most mobile advertising is delivered over the top of their networks by application and content providers (market rivals including Google and Apple). As a result, mobile operators are providing the pipes (for advertisers to communicate with their subscribers), but not getting a great return on that investment.   Read more here.
...   A recent white paper from Alcatel-Lucent takes a fine, in-depth look at the issue of, as the title would suggest, "Improving Business Operations with Unified Video Communications." The entire paper is well worth a read, it goes into useful detail on this complex topic.   Basically, Medium and large enterprises are finding new opportunities to reduce costs and improve team collaboration and customer service by deploying the latest enterprise video solutions.

Online CRM, Voxeo's Portal, Moshi Voice Control, BMC's Remedy Service Desk

September 28, 2010

A helpful recent study by David Tabor in CIO kicks off with "CRM systems are where the richest data about customer relationships is supposed to live, and most CRM systems provide a report-writing system as well as dozens of canned reports."
  Reports, he notes, "immediately expose data quality problems and some of them can provide dangerous misinformation... reports really do make a difference in managing your business. But first, let's look at the foundation: meaningful data."   Ay, there's the rub. Data hygiene.

Ooyala's $22 Million, Google and Cyberbullies, Hosted VoIP for SMB, Aptela's VoIP

September 28, 2010

Large, international investors are finding the online video space an attractive place for investment these days. In the most recent news Ooyala "has announced a $22 million Series D round, led by the CID Group, a Shanghai-based venture capital firm and ITOCHU Technology Ventures, the venture unit of the Tokyo-based ITOCHU," according to TechCrunch.   Industry observer Jim O'Neill notes that "Ooyala CEO Jay Fulcher said online video in the APAC region is expanding rapidly and having CID and ITV aboard as investors would help Ooyala grow in the area. CID, which has more than $1 billion under management."   Ooyala is in online video technology, including video analytics and monetization. With Ooyala's online video platform, content owners can get viewer insights for increased video engagement and better monetization.

Blackboard Alerts, Amie and Amazon, Robot for Software, Tellme's Shirk

September 27, 2010

On the morning of January 27, 2010, Northwestern University Police were notified that a man with a gun had been seen in a campus building elevator. According to a recent white paper written by Blackboard, after the threat was deemed credible, university police began searching the building and adjoining buildings while University Relations, the university's communications office immediately began informing students, faculty and staff of the potential danger.   Most important was ensuring that constituents had the opportunity to either take onsite safety precautions or avoid the area altogether.   "In a crisis, we have the challenge of trying to reach our constituents all over the Chicago metropolitan area, regardless of the time of day. And the Chicago metropolitan area is a big space," said Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations.   Administrators used the Blackboard Connect service to warn stakeholders of the danger.
  "Blackboard Connect allowed us to do so in a timely manner. It has been a valuable addition to our emergency communications systems," Cubbage said.

GrammaTech's Zairns, Sigma's Weissman, Voice Broadcast Center, Online CRM

September 27, 2010

Recently TMC CEO Rich Tehrani interviewed the VP of Products for GrammaTech, Mark Zarins. The company, a spinoff of Cornell University founded by a couple professors, specializes in software development, with their niche being static analysis tools, source code analysis tools.   One of the company's products is Code Sonar, a tool that analyzes code, identifies common programming defects. Tehrani noted that of all the various defects a programmer could make, what are the ones it detects?   Zarins said it doesn't work with design errors, but picks up things like memory leaks or buffer overruns, "what we would consider kind of generic programming defects that would bring down the application or crash the system, it can identify a set of those."   We have users using Code Sonar to identify problems that can lead to serious vulnerabilities too, he said, noting that buffer overruns can lend themselves to malicious attacks.   Read more here.
...   Recently Michael Weissman, vice president of corporate marketing for Sigma Designs, sat down for an interview with TMC's CEO, Rich Tehrani. The company is a semiconductor company, it makes chips used in IPTV, for media processing and in set top boxes, among other uses.

Altus' Hughan, M86 Security, Opswat, Mobile Unified Communications

September 27, 2010

D2 Technologies' vPort products are designed, company officials say, to deliver the voice quality, tuned system implementation and broad OS and IC support necessary for manufacturers to build VoIP products.

With vPort, OEMs and ODMs can develop a range of VoIP-enabled devices without being distracted from product platform design and branding, say D2 officials, adding that it's a flexible platform that supports multiple services, such as SIP-based VoIP and VoIM (PC-based IM/P2P voice such as Skype GoogleTalk, Yahoo! and MSN).   In addition, it's being billed as something to lower costs by enabling the use of "softDSP," which provides OS and IC flexibility by abstracting the software layer, and improves performance by eliminating latency inherent in other options.   VPort can be used for enabling networking, signaling and voice processing functions to execute as an integrated product on a single processor. This in turn offers substantial advantages in bill-of-materials cost, power consumption and ease of integration, company officials say.   Read more here.
...   Recently TMC's CEO, Rich Tehrani, interviewed Altus Learning's Director of Marketing, Tim Hughan. The company does searchable enterprise video.


Layered Tech, OPC Customer Service, Vocalocity Hosted PBX, Sensicast Systems

September 21, 2010

Layered Tech is a company providing IT infrastructure, including dedicated servers, managed hosting, and grid computing, to businesses of all sizes.   It recently added virtualization technology to its offerings, and participated in the Microsoft Go-Live program for the Windows Server 2008 operating system with Hyper-VTM virtualization technology, which permitted the company to deliver services based on Hyper-V to customers even before the product's official release.   Jeremy Suo-Anttila, chief technology officer at Layered Tech, said "With the advances in server hardware technology, each dedicated server is providing a great deal more resources than is generally needed. I log into many servers a day, and I often see that as much as 80 percent of a server's resources is not being used, which means that customers are paying for processing power, memory, disk space, and bandwidth that they aren't taking advantage of."   So the company wanted to adopt virtualization "because it can enable our customers to consolidate their hosted servers, which saves them money," he said.   With its new virtualization offering, Layered Tech can create a more efficient, easy-to- manage hosting environment, company officials say, adding that cost-savings as a result of virtualization are passed on to the company's customers, giving Layered Tech "a competitive advantage in the marketplace."   Read more here.
...   OPC officials have announced that their Technical Support Department "continues to be rated 'Excellent' by our customers month after month."   The company "understands the importance of service after the sale and offers a survey after each technical support session," company officials say, adding that January customer support surveys reflected a 90 percent "Excellent" rating along with 8 percent "Good," 1 percent "Fair" and only 1 disappointed -- "that turned into an 'Excellent' rating."   In fact, among the comments the company's received are "great! Eric fixed me in a matter of moments," "Nice to have someone that will work with you so fast and so friendly," "Excellent tech support, had a good conversation" and "The support technician was very helpful and the remote support tool is great."   The company sells predictive dialers, and lists several advantages of the product including the fact that it manages the process of dialing tens of thousands of calls or tens of millions of calls in its lifetime as well as detects the result of the call. As an example: no answer, busy, fax, bad number, answering machine without any presence of human expertise - consequently saving time by only transferring calls which are voice connects to the agents locally or remotely.   Read more here.
...   Hosted PBX phones are changing how small and medium-sized businesses serve their customers, grow their business, and support their employees.   According to officials of Vocalocity, a vendor in the space, delivering the same enterprise- level phone system capabilities large businesses use at a much lower cost, "hosted PBX is helping SMBs save money while putting their customer services on par with much larger organizations."   Large enterprises, of course, get to enjoy the cost advantages and capabilities of enterprise IP telephony.

Robot Cars, Plum IVR, Infonetics on Routers, BlackBerry Apps

September 21, 2010

Talk about your incredible journeys. This'd make a good TV series.   According to the Associated Press, a team of driverless vehicles are "on an 8,000-mile road trip from Europe to China," with the goal of covering arriving in Shanghai on Oct 28, for a final demonstration at the World Expo.   And what do they have to show for it so far? "A pair of fender-benders, two technology-loving hitchhikers and 22 hours blocked at the Russian border."   Italian engineers from the University of Parma are "testing sensory technology that allow unmanned vehicles to avoid obstacles on the longest-ever road trip of driverless technology," the AP says, adding that "one month into the three-month journey, most errors have been human."   When they steer themselves, "the electric, solar-powered vehicles use laser scanners, seven cameras, GPS sensors and plenty of computing power, to avoid obstacles," Digitpedia says.   Read more here.
...   Plum's data center products are built from fully redundant components, company officials say: "Each data center rack contains multiple VoiceXML IVR gateways, redundant data networking components, and telecom circuits from redundant carriers. Each data center component has been deployed in thousands of settings."
Plum uses server hardware from Hewlett Packard for "reliability, system redundancy, and manageability," company officials say, adding that "telephony gateway components have collectively handled billions of calls."   Earlier this year TMC's Susan J. Campbell reported that "Single-source IVR system provider Plum Voice has announced the immediate availability of its new automated transcription feature with the ability to transcribe open ended caller responses in near real-time.

iTunes U Milestone, Small CRM, Mobile Phone Users, Social Gaming Bubble

September 19, 2010

Sometimes CRM companies have to remind themselves just what business they're in. They can get so fixated on the delivery method or technical makeup - anybody up for another open source vs. cloud debate? - that they forget they're in the CRM business.

Industry observer Si Chen wrote recently of his friend, Phil Simon, who is writing a book called "The New Small" about how today, "small businesses are taking advantage of emerging technologies."   As Chen says, "we started talking about how open source software is affecting small businesses.

Cheating in Cambodia, BlackBerry in India, Nokia and Motally, Alcatel-Lucent

September 19, 2010

Here's a novel use of cell phones: They can assist you in cheating. On tests.   As the Agence France-Presse writes, it's common in Cambodia for students to bribe teachers to let them smuggle notes into exams, and even purchase answer sheets for tests from teachers. And some more high-tech cheaters have people read out answers over mobile telephones to them while they're taking national exams.   As the Phnom Penh Post, which no doubt is one of your bookmarks, reported last month, "around 108,000 Grade 12 students across the country took Khmer literature, social sciences, geography and chemistry exams, and exams in physics, morality, history and English" were taken later.   "What would happen if they fail?" asked Than Vichea, according to AFP. "We have to think about our expenses for schooling, part-time studies and fuel costs, and especially our time."   Students admitted to the AFP that they had "bribed teachers to allow them to use their mobiles to phone relatives for help during the exams, the results of which will be announced on August 20."   Read more here.
...   According to Reuters, India's security agencies "are testing ways to access corporate email on BlackBerry devices by obtaining encrypted data in a readable format."   Research In Motion "faces an August 31 deadline to give Indian authorities the means to track and read BlackBerry Enterprise email and its separate BlackBerry Messenger service," Reuters says, explaining that the government is "concerned about the potential for militants to use the secure BlackBerry network to carry out attacks."   And they're serious, as they've threatened to shut down the services if RIM fails to comply.
As industry observer Scott Canon wrote recently, it's a thorny issue for RIM in some countries.

Business Faxing, FrontRange's Focus, Indian Charity, Choosing Telemarketing Software

September 19, 2010

 Yaphank, New York's ECCT sells credit union technology, specifically IT services and systems integration, and provides full-time IT management for many financial institutions, typically ranging from 20 to 200 users.   Faxing, according to ECCT officials, is "the ideal method for handling business-critical and potentially sensitive information common in the financial industry."   Yes, faxing - it's still around. In fact ECCT uses the Open Text Fax Appliance, FaxPress Edition with their clients.   Since their clients usually deploy products that handle from 50 to 500 faxes per day, Fax Appliance was "ideal" for ECCT, company officials say: "Open Text's all-in-one approach to network faxing combines the hardware and software in one complete offering, which translates into cost and time savings for the client. Familiar Windows-based interfaces, as well as e-mail, address book and business application integration dramatically reduces the steps employees take in their fax transactions."
Because ECCT works primarily with financial institutions that deal with sensitive information, security is crucial, as you might imagine. With Fax Appliance, senders can fax confidential information directly from their computers, right from the application they're working in, ECCT officials explain, adding that for added security, "departmental computers receiving inbound faxes can be password-protected, accessible only to authorized individuals within the department, and configured with built-in security policies."   Read more here.
...   "Anything that makes IT faster, more efficient, or less labor-intensive is going to be a hit, both with IT professionals and their bosses," writes industry observer Holly Dolezalek in one of the least controversial sentences you'll read this week. 

Disagree with that and, well, you have issues you probably need to address.
FrontRange Solutions is building a software stable along those lines, Dolezalek writes, aimed at the makes service management, customer service, and asset management software markets.




Marvell's Network Processor, Verify Addresses Now, Satellite Optimization, E911

September 19, 2010

Linley Gwennap, principal analyst for The Linley Group, recently wrote a white paper entitled "The Untold Story of Marvell's Processor Development." It's an enthralling tale quite relevant to the network processor industry.

Gwenapp delves into the eight-year effort that preceded the recent launch of Marvell's Sheeva processors, explaining how the company became a leading CPU supplier without announcing a single processor product."

The paper also looks at these new processors and their applicability to communications, printers, storage, consumer, and mobile applications, and "provide a peek at some next-generation CPUs."   Marvell is a vendor in several markets, including hard-drive controllers, Ethernet chips, and mobile Wi-Fi chips -- and not comics. Different Marvel.   Read more here.
...   Confirming the quality of address data should be done as it is captured - not later. Using address verification software from the very beginning can reduce 
the risk of invalid information.
A recent white paper by Forrester highlighted this fact, delving into the intricacies behind effective address verification.
While "after-the-fact batch cleansing" is extremely valuable for scrubbing large volumes of legacy or acquired address data, it is a downstream process with no ability to request additional information. "The only way to guarantee that an address will be accurate and deliverable is to verify it during the data capture process -- while the customer is still engaged online, on the phone or in person."   Batch address cleansing is valuable, the paper says, when "high volumes of address data collected from a variety of disparate data capture systems need to be processed.







ESPN Gets Local, Cars and Whiskey, FM Radio Lifeline, Freedom Fone

September 19, 2010

Didn't have enough reasons to bemoan the ESPNization of the world? (Note to women: The sports world IS the real world. Deal with it.)   Well, ESPN wants to localize you now. According to Macworld, ESPN is rolling out a series of localized sports apps, targeting specific cities, currently New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago and Boston.

VoIP Call Termination, Sizing Up SAP and Oracle, 24M Technologies, Zynga and Conduit

September 14, 2010

If you were wondering about the basics of VoIP call termination, a recent post on Boosh News might be helpful.

Those of us who use the Web like a Yellow Pages can "integrate our browsing experience with our Internet based phone service," according to the article: "Imagine not having to look up a phone number and dial it manually from a mobile phone or traditional land line - instead, just click to place the call instantly right from your computer screen."   Sounds good, we must say. Well, such click to call functionality is available in Mozilla browsers with a Firefox add-on that "turns any phone number on a Web-page into a link, allowing an instant connection." According to the post, all you have to do is configure your VoIP / PBX service "so that when you click on the phone number, a call is automatically placed using your SIP address."   When would this be really handy? One situation, the article suggests, is when you start the conversation "and need to bring in another team member for consultation, or a senior executive to approve a pricing agreement with a vendor. Since you are already using your Internet-based phone service, conferencing in a third person is simple." Well, "simpler," no doubt.   Read more here.
...     Industry observer Harshal Kallyanpur recently conducted an interview with Greg Corgan, president Global Field Operations, corporate senior VP, Infor on how his company plans to duke it out with the industry heavyweights, such as SAP and Oracle.
One way is by simply focusing on different competencies.



Indian WiMAX Lacking, RuggedCom, Snom Technology, Alcatel-Lucent

September 14, 2010

Hey, they're honest about it: The "lackluster performance" of India's broadband market means changes need to take place.   It's primarily attributable to, "the technical and economic non-feasibility of the fixed line infrastructure in India," according to officials of the upcoming trade show WiMAX 2010, to be held August 20 in New Delhi.   They add that, "the solution for mass proliferation of broadband in India has to be wireless." And now the industry and the country wait to see, "which wireless technology will be adopted to provide a cost effective and scalable BB to the Indian market." Perhaps not surprisingly, the trade show's officials feel that WiMAX, "emerges as the quintessential answer to these problems, given its superior performance and lower costs as compared to the existing 3G technologies and futuristic Long Term Evolution equivalents."   The show itself, the WiMAX India 2010 International Conference, will focus on the delivery of next generation broadband services using WiMAX, 802.16x and similar proprietary standards, according to show officials: "Senior-level speakers will discuss crucial issues of standards and interoperability, spectrum and licensing," and other issues including strategies for capturing the mobile market.   Read more here.
...   Snom Technology has announced that its full suite of IP phones for the desktop has, "passed a battery of interoperability tests with 4PSA's cloud-based unified communications product VoipNow."   According to company officials, the tests included the snom 3xx and snom 8xx desktop phones, as well as the snom m3 wireless DECT phone. Snom officials say this support snom's, "growing position as the go-to developer of intelligent IP endpoints for unified communications systems of all kinds."
The combination of snom's open SIP architecture and 4PSA's innovative cloud computing communications software is cited by company officials as offering customers a, "low-cost, highly functional enterprise telephony system" capable of being deployed and scalable "to hundreds or thousands of endpoints, if necessary."   All of snom's products "are built on the premise of interoperability in any SIP environment, be it hardware or software, on-premises or hosted and even in the cloud," said Michael Knieling, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales for snom technology AG. "With 4PSA leading the way in cloud-based unified communications environments, we think the two product suites complement each other very nicely."   Read more here.
...   Operators globally have been discussing and planning Class 5 migration strategies for many years. Alcatel-Lucent's Class 5 offering, based on 5060 ICS, is seen by company officials as "a perfect fit" for service providers in emerging markets, or smaller Tier 2/3 operators.   The main motivations to migrate this legacy network to new packet based networks vary from operator to operator, they say, "with a few common themes:"   The legacy PSTN infrastructure restricts the introduction of new and innovative voice and multimedia services," company officials say: "And most operators face increasing competition from alternative carriers with attractive voice offers, significantly eroding voice revenues.


RadiSys, Google Embedding PayPal, Hulu's IP, Hosted PBX: A Comparison

September 14, 2010

Got 4G on the brain? If you work in telecom, you're certainly not alone.   As of June 2010, a Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) Report confirmed that 80 operators in 33 countries have committed to deploying Long Term Evolution. The specific benefits to investing in LTE technology are broadly understood, but for several operators worldwide, the real question is how to deploy the infrastructure in time to remain competitive, avoid subscriber churn and minimize risks involved.
"As most countries in the world use a global system for mobile communication-based networks, the evolution path of those networks, or LTE, generates better economies of scale for carriers," says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Olga Yashkova. "Despite high-speed packet access' ability to enable the delivery of streaming video, audio and Internet data services, it is not good enough to be a true land line-last mile replacement option, which makes LTE a very attractive alternative to wireless operators."   Recently TMCnet tapped officials at RadiSys, a provider of hardware and software platforms for IP-based wireless, wireline and video networks, to understand the benefits of LTE, but also to gain insight into the risks associated with development and deployment; specifically, when and how to successfully deploy these solutions in order to reap the benefits of LTE.    Read more here.
...   According to Mobile Business Briefing, PayPal "is reported to be in talks with Google to embed its payments platform in the Android operating system."   Evidently Bloomberg mentioned this on Friday, but nobody's commenting on the unconfirmed talks.

Coverity's Chou, Armorize and Malware, StorSimple's Cloud Storage, Call Center Headsets

September 14, 2010

Recently in San Jose, TMC's CEO Rich Tehrani had a chance to sit down and interview Andy Chou, the Chief Architect of Coverity, who said the company has just launched a new partnership with Armorize Software, which works in enterprise malware detection.   "What we really want to do," Chou said, is to take the quality analysis for software, "and combine it with security analysis for software, so you can do both during the development process, and get rid of both crash-causing defects and other problems, as well as security problems in your code before it's released."   When asked by Tehrani if that was a hot button for his customers about now, Chou said he thinks that customers have always cared about quality. "They've always wanted to make sure they ship products that are high quality and deliver the value they're supposed to, in terms of functionality and performance."   Read more here.

...   Recently TMC's CEO Rich Tehrani had a chance to sit down and talk with Caleb Sima, the CEO of Armorize. It's a three-year old company "mostly based out of Asia," Sima said, adding that "mostly what we do is make software products that help protect companies from computer hackers."   Specifically, he said, "we do two things. First, he said, is "identifying malware.

Panduit's Smart Data Center Talk, Outsourced Telecom, Buying Google Keywords, Jambool

September 14, 2010

Recently Panduit presented a discussion between their Director of Global Solutions, Jeff Paliga, and Global Solutions Manager for Data Centers, Todd LaCognata, on the topic of "What Is A Smart Data Center?"   Paliga said a smart data center can be understood as "an innovative approach to looking at the entire data center collectively." That means, he explained, that "all the stakeholders up front are in the process," covering everything - the planning, design and installation of the data center.

Real benefits and savings are in the operational side, Paliga said, adding that they represent "75 percent of the cost."   LaCognata said that historically, "IT and facilities have been two separate organizations," usually in a siloed approach, and that the goal of a smart data center "is to bring those organizations together, to really coexist and be on the same page when addressing the needs of the data center."   Read more here.
...   In 2009, 37 percent of all American businesses reported using outsourced or managed telecommunications.   A recent white paper by industry observer Lisa Pierce offers tips for organizations thinking of going the managed network route:   Do your homework.


Airline Security, BP Oil Spill, Hosted VoIP, BPA Quality

September 13, 2010

You've probably seen the startling images from the "backscatter" X-ray technology they use in airports now, which leave little to the imagination and could possibly heighten the risk of you getting skin cancer as well.   Well, there's another reason to hate it now: According to Yahoo! News, the Transportation Security Administration and other federal organizations store the images captured by the system.   This is, of course, in direct contrast with what they promised when they introduced the technology: 'The TSA has long held that scanned images - which show in great detail a photo-negative-type image of the subjects who stand before it - are not stored.

Dedicated Servers, TransUnion, Qualcomm, Managed WAN Optimization

September 13, 2010

"With Service Cloud, we are realizing efficiencies that drive revenue and are making more cost-effective decisions. In addition, we are getting a greater visibility into our pipeline and a deeper understanding of our customers," says Matt Brady, Director of Sales Automation for TransUnion.

TransUnion is an information products provider that offers a range of financial services. The company wanted to make its call centers more efficient and allow agents to up-sell or cross-sell customers. A reasonable enough goal.

WAN Optimization, Address Verification, Network Management, AirWatch

September 13, 2010

The need to be close to customers, manufacturing facilities and specialized labor means organizations have had to extend the traditional concept of "headquarters" to offices and factories hundreds or even thousands of miles away.

That's the observation of a recent white paper titled "Centralized Data Backup: It Doesn't Have to Cripple Your WAN," which addresses "the realities of dealing with data that sprawls across the organization."   Because as the paper notes, whether the data is "at the Munich branch or at HQ in New York," it is equally susceptible to loss, requiring that data recovery and security plans "apply to all parts of the organization, regardless of location."   WDS technology is one way companies are accomplishing this. The technology "accelerates application performance over the wide-area and provides networks with the appropriate interface for data transport between geographically-disparate sites," the paper finds, adding that certain products in the field can "extend the life of existing network infrastructure by minimizing the bandwidth required by distributed backup processes."   Read more here. ...   If you're not paying attention to the cleansing and enrichment of postal address data for customers, suppliers, prospects, and other individuals or organizations of interest, then you're neglecting the foundation, and often the only, data quality investment made by many enterprises.

This is the studied conclusion of a recent Forrester study titled, "Confirm The Quality Of Address Data As It's Captured, Not Later," and really here the title says it all.



Albis Technologies, Mitel's 3.2, Tone Software, CCTV World Market

September 13, 2010

 Albis Technologies, a vendor of electronic systems, has announced that its Universal Line Access Family ACCEED 1416 and 1404 equipment has successfully passed the Metro Ethernet Forum conformance certification program for Ethernet Private Line, Ethernet Virtual Private Line and Ethernet LAN.

The MEF certification "verifies the compliance of vendor equipment and services with MEF technical specifications," Albis officials say, adding that since launching in 2005, "just over 100 companies have been approved for certification."   Early this year TMC had the news that Zurich-based Albis announced the European launch of its ACCEED Ethernet First Mile for Carrier grade high-speed Ethernet services. The new service, aimed at network operators, "delivers fiber-optic speeds over existing copper wires, enabling operators to improve their infrastructure and enhance their performance," according to company officials at the time.   Patrik Schonenberger, VP Business Access, Albis Technologies, said infrastructure and network optimization are "key to ensuring maximum ROI for network operators."   Read more here. ...

Bank Security, Phybridge UniPhyer, Mobiles and Paisas, RIM in Indonesia

September 13, 2010

Indonesia "may follow the lead of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia by banning service for Research In Motion'sBlackBerry devices," according to a recent report cited by MarketWatch.   The Associated Press, citing a spokesman for Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Information, "reported that the government there is concerned that encrypted data sent by BlackBerry devices could be intercepted outside the country and used by criminals or spies."   MyStateLine.com has reported that Research in Motion and Saudi Arabia have "hammered out an agreement to put the BlackBerry smartphone back in service" in the tightly-controlled Islamic state.   The government says it's awaiting "some final, technical details before agreeing to lift the ban," MyStateLine says, adding that the ban covers e-mails and text messages from BlackBerry users.   "Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have threatened bans if they can't get RIM's encryption codes for the BlackBerry.

Google Social Networking, Alcatel-Lucent, Wireless Backhaul Market, Apptix

September 13, 2010

Apptix, a vendor of hosted Unified Communications services, has announced the completion of a nearly two and a half year project to consolidate legacy systems onto a network and service delivery platform.

  Company officials say they had more than 300,000 full Exchange users at nearly 22,000 companies and organizations under contract at the end of the second quarter of 2010, "including 100,000 employees of one of the largest U.S. healthcare providers."   David Ehrhardt, president & CEO of Apptix, said Apptix can, "meet the unique needs and requirements of businesses of all size -- from a single employee SoHo or a 100,000-seat enterprise."   They certainly have experience with the latter -- earlier this year, TMC reported that Apptix secured a contract with a U.S. healthcare system to provide standardized e-mail services for more than 100,000 employees spread across multiple facilities.

Sangoma Technologies, Starbucks, Electronic Band-Aids, Knowledge Management

September 13, 2010

Industry observer John Klossner says he's become "especially appreciative of the terminology used in the world of knowledge management -- a term that is now being used for what used to be called social networking."

Which is an interesting take, as this reporter remembers hearing "knowledge management" sooner than he did "social networking." Funny how these things work.

"Knowledge management sounds much more grown up," Klossner says, and he has a point. It sounds more like, well, actual work, and not so much like sitting around the bar chatting up people and exchanging phone numbers.

As Klossner sees it, and he's got a pretty good definition as far as we know, the goal of knowledge management is "to get the right information to the right person at the right time. After reading numerous pieces on knowledge management, it also seems as if you have to include the word 'knowledge' in that information."

He hit FCW.com and found the following terms in the knowledge management world: "knowledge services, knowledge-enabled, knowledge transfer, knowledge repository, knowledge portal, knowledge discovery, knowledge coordinators, knowledge audit, chief knowledge officer, knowledge networks, knowledge management integration, knowledge sharing and -- of course -- knowledge professionals."

Read more here









...   Do we still get the kiss?   Remember when Mom used to solve all sorts of medical emergencies with a Band-Aid and a kiss?
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