Unified Communications

As its name suggests, 724 Solutions is offering seamless communications for IP-based domains around the clock, and now it seems industry player Nortel has chosen 724’s Seamless Messaging solution.

724 Solutions, which provides next-generation mobile data solutions, is poviding its Seamless Messaging solution to allow transparent messaging between enterprise and mobile networks. Execs at the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company say its plan will benefit Nortel’s leading Fixed MobileConvergence (FMC) Enterprise solutions including Nortel’s Communication Server 1000 and CallPilot Unified Messaging.

Read more about it here.

There isn’t a day that goes by that TMCnet isn’t covering or monitoring the Unified Communications space. So, this blog has a lot of to follow. For example, earlier this week Hitachi Consulting deployed the ShoreTel UC solution at all of its offices in the U.S. and Europe, creating a single, integrated phone system complete with five-digit dialing, centralized management, and toll bypass.

According to Hitachi Consulting, ShoreTel's UC system has made the company a more collaborative and productive organization while saving more than $10,000 every month.

To find out more read this TMCnet article here.

Session border control solutions firm Acme Packet says XO Communications has expanded its installed base of Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers (SBCs) to support its wholesale service provider VoIP customers. Interesting!

Acme Packet's Net-Net SBCs are used by XO Communications to facilitate interoperability between peering networks and to provide protection of XO's VoIP infrastructure. Why is that important, you say? Because this security architecture provides denial of service attack protection, topology hiding and access control to protect XO's network. This unification helps maximize service reach and revenue potential by normalizing signaling protocols at the interconnect border.

TMCnet’s Susan Campbell has more on the story here.

Hey, even third place is pretty good when you're talking about an ultra-competitive field like Unified Communications. So, that is why Active Voice, a global provider of Unified Messaging, Unified Communications and speech-activated solutions, is touting its position as the third leading Unified Messaging provider for messaging systems shipped in North America.

Read more about it here.

Today’s news that Microsoft made a $44.6 billion cash and stock bid for Yahoo! will very likely shake up the highly competitive market for Internet search, but ripples could also be felt in the bourgeoning Unified Communications space.

Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 is the company's flagship UC offering and a revamped version of Live Communication Server 2005 is still key to the product's IM capabilities.

However, while it's unclear how Yahoo's portals and other services would be integrated, a combined Microsoft-Yahoo would be able to create a "social platform" that could become a new entry point for UC to the Web.

"The combination of these two teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own," Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie, told the AP.

And that likely means an expansion of UC capabilities and an extension of ways in which it is delivered. Because so many company employees use public IM clients the consolidation of clients always help ease regulatory and compliance issues. Overall, OCS is designed for the tight integration of Exchange and Outlook, which extends the presence feature of IM to other mediums.

And challengers in the UC space are around every corner. Let’s not forget the competition heating up back east as IBM’s Lotus Development unit recently shifted its integration, social software and Unified Communications operations as it readies for a Web 2.0 battle.

It is going to take some time to shake up. To learn more about today’s news, please read TMC’ President and Editor-in-Chief Rich Tehrani’s article here.

The Virginia-based ePlus has achieved both the Master Unified Communications Specialization and the Master Security Specialization from Cisco.

The importance of receiving both designations is the reorganization that ePlus has fulfilled the training requirements and program prerequisites to sell, deploy, and support highly sophisticated Cisco unified communications and security solutions.

“Achieving Cisco Master Specializations in both Unified Communications and Security simultaneously is a significant accomplishment for ePlus, and a testament to our proven success and commitment to delivering advanced solutions,” said Philip G. Norton, chairman, president and CEO of ePlus. “As one of a small number of Cisco partners holding both master specializations, our clients can continue to benefit from our process-oriented approach to providing the best technologies in both categories.”

Read more about it here.

American audiences may not be that familiar with the game of cricket but there is a whole Asian Subcontinent just as passionate about seeing England and India square off on the pitch as baseball fanatics who look forward to watching the World Champion Boston Red Sox battle the New York Yankees.

So when CRM vendor Epicor Software announces that the International Cricket Council (ICC) has implemented its Epicor enterprise resource planning product, it’s a big deal.

Headquartered in Dubai, the ICC—the global governing body for cricket—picked Epicor iScala for "cost and time savings" across the organization, Epicor officials say, adding that the ICC selected Epicor to streamline the sports body's budgeting, analysis, tournament accounting and overall financial management functions.

Read more about it here on TMCnet.

Jigsaw, an online directory of more than 7 million business contacts, continued putting the business pieces together this week as it announced it had reached the 400 company customer milestone with the Jigsaw enterprise products introduced in fall 2007.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based company’s directory now includes more than 7.4 million contacts at more than 600,000 companies.

Jim Fowler, co-founder and CEO of Jigsaw, said the company's enterprise products "dovetail with CRM and SFA systems to provide business contact information… thanks to the collective contributions of its many members."

Read more about what Folwer had to say in this TMCnet article.

British Telecom has enlisted SPIRIT's audio technology for concept testing of its next generation telecommunications services to ensure the highest quality audio experience for its customers, according to the companies.

The deal is important because today's communications space is extremely competitive and service providers have to offer different value-added services to their customers in order to stand out in this fast-paced market.

Find out more here.

There was loads of movement today in the Unified Communications space today. Now comes the last installation of the day (maybe) in an article by Tracey E. Schelmetic, Editorial Director at Customer Interaction Solutions magazine.

The short of it is the Unified IP business communications solutions provider Interactive Intelligence announced today that it has been recertified to ISO 9001:2000, marking its third consecutive year of compliance.

The ISO 9001:2000 standard is important as it communicates that a company meets the stringent quality markers laid down by the International Organization for Standardization, an international reference for quality management requirements and continuous improvement of business-to-business interactions, according to Tracey’s article.

To get the long of it, read the rest here.

Siemens says it has produced “significant enhancements” — and the new brand name OpenScale — for its professional and managed services portfolio.

In addition, the company has also announced that it will invest significant resources into strengthening its existing global service infrastructure, and accelerating its capabilities in delivering software based Unified Communication (UC) services.

According to Siemens, the initiative will also substantially improve customer visibility of global service performance, increase speed of resolution, and provide a global Service Management platform for the design and delivery of IP-based Unified Communication environments.

To learn more about it, read this article by TMCnet’s Anshu Shrivastava here.

Toktumi today introduced its new small business phone service based on Global IP Solutions (GIPS) new REX SDK softphone platform.

The Toktumi platform is a feature-complete hosted PBX phone service is the first-available product to be built on the REX SDK platform, which delivers voice processing, NAT and Firewall traversal, and PBX features to Toktumi users.

Read more about it here.

Juniper has launched its EX-series switches, designed for high-performance businesses to deploy as part of a family of switches that deliver the High Availability (HA), unified communications, integrated security and operational excellence required today, with the ability to support the requirements of tomorrow.

The EX-series switches are right-sized for campus, data center and remote office environments and feature many of the same carrier-class hardware and software architectures found in Juniper's core routers that were purpose-built to support the convergence of data, voice, and video onto a single always-on network.

There is more about it here.

Ok, that headline was a set up. I’m not talking about the Patriots. I’m talking about Houston-based INX announcing today that it has begun deploying a wireless mesh mobility component of a unified communications solution for Subaru of New England.

Subaru of New England, the franchise ownership for all Subaru dealerships in New England, said it expects the new communications solution to dramatically improve customer service for its client base across multiple dealerships in the South Boston area.

Check out the TMCnet article on the subject.

Patton Electronics, a Business and carrier-class network access, and Voice-over-IP equipment firm, is doing its best to helping develop a stronger Unifed Communications space. The company today announced the new Unified Communication Agent (UCA) for SmartNode VoIP Gateway Routers.

The latest agent provides any-to-any multipath-switching, Voice-over-VPN security, dial-backup and IP-link redundancy for VoIP and Data Survivability, and SIP Registrar for presence/reachability, the SmartNode UCA streamlines deployment of unified communications into existing business voice-and-data networks, according to Scott Whittle, vice president of product management.

Check out this TMCnet article to find out more about the news here: http://hdvoice.tmcnet.com/topics/unified-communications/articles/19339-patton-
announces-unified-communications-agent-smartnode-voip-gateway.htm