Unified Communications

Top Line Education on SIP Trunking

2008-09-16T13:45:54-05:00

Talk about a top of the line education! Ingate's teaming with Avaya, TMC, as well as a host of leading IP-PBX vendors and SIP trunking service providers for a SIP Trunking Seminar is as good as it gets.

The "SIP Trunking: Everything You Need to Know" Seminar at ITEXPO INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & Expo West 2008 is primed to be one of the highlights of the entire event. To learn more check out this TMCnet article here.

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So Much to See at Communications Developer Conference

2008-09-16T12:53:27-05:00

Before Avaya kicks the wham off this DevCom jam, there are several interesting Communications Developer sessions to check out. I wish I could attend each, but alas, too many to see not enough time! Anyway, if you have time and are interested in this space (of course you are, why else would you be reading this UC blog) here are four that may whet your appetite for the week to come:

The State of SIP Application Development
Trends in Mobile VoIP
How to better achieve better than PSTN voice Quality
in services for the enterprise and SMB markets
Fundamentals of IMS Development

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Avaya First out of Gate at TMC's Fifth Annual Communications Developer Conference

2008-09-16T12:44:24-05:00

TMC's Fifth Annual Communications Developer Conference kicks off today here in LA and the crowds are already starting to queue up in front of the registration desk at the city's convention center. Last night at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in scenic downtown LA, Avaya got things started with a Unified Communications workshop focusing on its online development community dubbed DevConnect. It was a great way to get things started. The New Jersey-based company also hosted a beer and wine bash after the event with many members of its development team speaking about DevConnect with great alacrity. Team members were keen on getting DevConnect in front of the audience. Stay tuned for more from Avaya... and many others!

For those not already in the know... the Avaya DevConnect program provides a wide range of free developer resources including Avaya APIs and SDKs, developer tools and more. The company is giving the keynote here at 11am. Pretty cool stuff!

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Broadcom Joins WirelessHD Consortium

2008-08-28T10:55:57-05:00

Broadcom Corporation has joined the WirelessHD consortium as a promoter company in a bid to help enable wireless connectivity for streaming high definition (HD) content between consumer electronics devices and displays.

What this means it is Broadcom will aid in the positioning of WirelessHD as a leading organization for the advancement of standards used in the wireless home audio and video technology space, by developing advanced solutions that will reduce the cost of wireless video distribution. To learn more, read this TMCnet article here.

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Enhanced mobility Unified communications Space on Rise

2008-08-26T17:31:26-05:00

Enhanced mobility in the unified communications space continues to be a key driver for growing demand. One company that is definitely hoping not to miss out on this trend is AltiGen Communications. They have just that Project InVision International is now increasing their productivity through enhanced mobility and multi-site capabilities with the company's unified communications phone systems.

Project InVision International is a provider of business performance improvement solutions to professional services organizations. To learn more check out the TMCnet article here.

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Nortel, Microsoft Team to Deliver UC Solutions Around the World

2008-08-25T12:11:04-05:00

Recently the pairing of Nortel and Microsoft has been a formidable team creating unified communications solutions for company large and small. The two titans recently helped
New England Credit Union (NECU), Australia's inland regional community credit union, to implement a unified communications solution to reduce business costs and improve customer service. The new technology solution, which will be implemented early next month, is expected to save the company a minimum of $100,000 per year through increased productivity, reduced travel time, and other time-saving features.

To learn more, please visit this TMCnet article here.

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Nortel, Microsoft Team to Deliver UC Solutions Around the World

2008-08-25T12:11:04-05:00

To learn more, please visit this TMCnet article here.

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Nortel, Microsoft Team to Deliver UC Solutions Around the World

2008-08-25T12:11:04-05:00

To learn more, please visit this TMCnet article here.

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Aspect Software Receiving Top Ratings in UC

2008-06-19T16:25:02-05:00

Positioned as the world's largest company solely focused on unified communications for the contact center, Aspect Software has announced that its Aspect Unified UP solution has received a strong overall customer satisfaction rating in the 2008 Hosted Contact Center Infrastructure Report from DMG Consulting.

In her TMCnet article, Susan Campbell writes "In the competitive unified communications and contact center industries, if a company stands out above the crowd to be recognized for its efforts, the tendency is to tout the news in order to strengthen its positioning in the market. Aspect Software is doing just that."

To learn more about the subject check out Susan's article here.

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The Brits are Getting Excited About UC

2008-06-09T13:29:10-05:00

Unified Communications technologies already has a strong foothold in North America, now the United Kingdom is checking in big time with a whopping 87 percent of U.K. businesses looking to invest in unified communications solutions in the near future, according to a survey conducted by U.K.-based Vanson Bourne. Just 13 percent of respondents reported they would not consider adopting UC.

TMCnet Editor Gray Kim is all over the story. To read more click here.

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Focusing on UC for the Contact Center

2008-06-05T15:33:44-05:00

Aspect Software, a company focused on unified communications for the contact center, and AireSpring. a provider of telecommunications services, are teaming to bring interoperability between Aspect’s session initiation protocol (SIP)-based solutions and SIP trunking products from AireSpring.

Check out the interesting article on TMCnet here for more information.

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Buzzing Blogosphere over MS UC Platform

2008-05-30T12:27:33-05:00

TMCnet Senior Editor Mae Kowalke has done another fantastic job following the latest buzz with speculation about a new platform from Microsoft code-named “Echoes,” that the company apparently thinks will eventually do away with the need for telephone numbers. T

Mae says the idea is to integrate the functions of mobile phones and e-mail into a single system that enables people to contact one another based on name rather than having to look up and dial a number or type an e-mail address.

Read more what she has to say about it here.

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Open Solutions for Rio

2008-05-29T15:44:18-05:00

Open Solutions is bringing its unified communications solutions way south of the border, announcing an international reseller partnership agreement with Senior Solution, a Brazilian software and services provider for the financial market.

The partnership is expected to offer all Open Solutions’ products and services, including The Complete Banking Solution, to its retail banking client base within the Latin American financial services marketplace.

Shazamm!

2008-05-28T11:52:23-05:00

Atrion Networking Corporation has acquired Shazamm, an interactive multimedia company that is expected to allows Atrion to offer customized technical and aesthetic client business solutions. This is likely going to beef-up their unified communications presence.

Shazamm is an interactive firm specializing in software development and Web and multimedia design. Shazamm specializes in detailed Web, print and multi-media communications and marketing solutions, with Web application designs and technologies being its signature trademark.

There is more here.

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From Russia with Love

2008-05-28T11:51:10-05:00

Mobile TeleSystems is preparing for the commercial launch of its 3G network in Saint Petersburg, Russia and technical readiness of 3G networks for commercial launch in Sochi, Yekaterinburg and Kazan.

According to my sources, the company expects the key benefit of a next-generation network to provide customers with “faster data download speeds with top download capacity using HSPA technology up to 3.6 Mbit/s.”

Read all about it here.

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Microsoft Continues Court Losing Streak

2008-05-22T11:04:08-05:00

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Tuesday said that French-American networking group Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) has not infringed on Microsoft patents for unified communications technology.

The latest verdict came after an earlier ruling by administrative law judge Paul Luckern that Alcatel-Lucent was guilty of violating one of four Microsoft patents included in the lawsuit. ITC overturned that decision, stating that the many of the contested patent claims in the lawsuit were invalid. To learn more read this TMCnet article here.

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UC Interest Growing

2008-05-16T14:35:37-05:00

Interesting news from Wainhouse Research. The outfit has published a report documenting attitudes, interests and opinions of resellers and channel partners that shows strong interest in Unified Communications and Telepresence. Check out Eve Sullivan's article here to find out more.

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Nortel/Microsoft Unified Communications (UC) platform

2008-05-16T14:32:41-05:00

Tulsa Technology Center is getting in on the unified communications game. The oldest and largest career and technology education center in Oklahoma, has chosen XETA Technologies to deploy the largest Nortel/Microsoft unified communications (UC) platform to date, the company announced today. Check out the whole story here.

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Polycom Releases Impressive Earnings

2008-04-17T10:23:53-05:00

Unified collaborative communications solutions player Polycom reported impressive first quarter earnings this week, thanks in part to a rapidly growing UC space.

"Unified collaboration continues to be a key priority for our customers worldwide," said Robert Hagerty, chairman and CEO. "We believe the fast return on investment of our solution, compliance with the green initiatives in Europe and other important markets, and globalization of the workforce, are driving adoption within enterprise and public sector customers alike.

To learn more, please read the TMCnet article here.

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UC for Rich Media

2008-04-14T16:10:30-05:00

Creating a single unified interface for advanced rich media content is helping companies like Vignette established a stronger foothold in the unified communications space. Now, with the acquisition of Vidavee, a video Web services company, the company expects advertisers and publishers to be able to land more traffic, increase revenues and increase customer management.

Polycom Expanding Relationship with Microsoft

2008-03-17T11:44:33-05:00

Unified collaborative communications solutions player Polycom today announced the expansion of its relationship with Microsoft to include compatibility between Polycom's visual communications solutions and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

Check out the full story in this TMCnet article.

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Making Unified Communications Work for You

2008-03-17T11:38:50-05:00

As many loyal readers of this space can attest, one of my favorite topics is finding a workable definition for Unified Communications.

Art Rosenberg weighs in on that and more in this TMCnet article.

Art says “The industry has finally stopped touting just ‘VoIP’ cost savings for traditional legacy telephony and moved on to unified, multimodal and mobile business communication applications. That includes an emphasis on real-time messaging, instant voice and video conferencing, and communications enabled business process applications.”

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ShoreTel Reducing UC Costs with New Suite of Apps

2008-03-10T14:12:10-05:00

Pure IP Unified Communications provider ShoreTel has released a news suite of applications the company says is designed to dramatically improve customer service while reducing the cost of deploying and maintaining high-performance inbound or outbound multimedia call center.

Here is the deal in a nutshell: ShoreWare Contact Center 4.66 is designed to support more simultaneous agents while offering several new features to enhance the customer experience. Such an execution will make it ideal for expanding mid-sized contact centers.

To find out the deal outside the nutshell read this TMCnet article

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Here Comes the Sun (Alongs side Mitel)

2008-03-07T11:24:31-05:00

Mitel has announced the availability of the Mitel Communications Suite (MCS), which is a pre-integrated unified communications (UC) solution based on Mitel’s flagship 3300IP Communications Platform software and Sun Microsystem’s X4150 SunFire servers.

Wow, that really seems like a mouthful! To get a great breakdown of what this means and check out Greg Galitzine’s article here on TMCnet.com

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Leveraging the IMM Platform

2008-03-03T15:33:19-05:00

Zannel has launched an open API that will allow developers to leverage the functionality of its Instant Media Messaging (IMM) platform to create media-rich mobile applications, widgets and mashups.

Here is an interesting article on the subject.

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Does Unified Communications Defy Definition? Huh?

2008-03-03T15:20:33-05:00

For some time it has been popular to rant about the lack of a definition for the growing Unified Communication space. In fact, so much so that it has almost become cliché to say “there is no cohesive Unified Communications definitions.” Well, I’m not going to say it any more…. At least without providing concrete reasons for why I this is the case.

To read more about why check out this TMCnet article.

Quick summation: Part of the problem is that some obvious prerequisites for the UC vision have not been met from an open, standards perspective, i.e., “federated presence” across enterprise and service provider networks. The other part of the problem that scaresIP management is how to start a UC migration selectively, yet be “future-proofed” for the new capabilities that UC might offer, especially in a mobile, device independent world.

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Polycom's Schooling the Global Unified Communications Space

2008-02-27T12:16:31-05:00

Unified collaborative communications solutions leader Polycom is helping create global classrooms by providing symmetrical telepresence in each location across the world that feature high definition video, voice and content-sharing capabilities. Now, thanks to the company’s telepresence solution students separated by more than 7,000 miles of ocean and land are able to interact and collaborate with each other and faculty as if they were in the same room.

Read more about Polycom’s global classroom efforts here.

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More Money, More Money.

2008-02-21T10:00:38-05:00

N-trig is suddenly flush with cash as it announced this week it has completed a fund-raising round of $28 million from Canaan Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners and current investors.

You may recall N-trig is the provider of DuoSense technology combining pen and zero-pressure touch for mobile computers into a single device. The outfit also recently secured a credit facility of $5 million from Plenus, a leading Venture Lending Fund in Israel.

To find out how they are going to use that money read this TMCnet article here.

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Unified Communications, Who Needs It?

2008-02-19T10:43:10-05:00

It is not surprising that the varied ideas and definitions of Unified Communications (UC) has caused some confusion among enterprises, and to some it is increasingly difficult to determine the value UC delivers to businesses. However, if the number of e-mails, voicemails, telephone calls, instant messages, newspapers and Web sites the average employee encounters during a given day are considered the need of UC begins to come into focus.

That is because businesses often require an all-inclusive unified communications approach with the understanding that communication needs vary depending upon the organization.

To learn more about it read this TMCnet article here.

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Sipera Systems Adds New Top Exec

2008-02-12T14:07:44-05:00

VoIP and United Communications security solutions outfit Sipera Systems today announced John Lochow has joined Sipera as president and chief executive officer.

For more info on the move check out this TMCnet article here.

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