Unified Communications

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Read more about it here in TMCnet.

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.

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.

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.

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.