Unified Communications

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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Are Presence-Aware Applications on the Rise?

2008-02-12T11:54:52-05:00

While Unified Communications (UC) solutions are available in the market include a number of individual applications that deliver specific capabilities, one much-talked-about app. is Presence Management. The presence application enables users to manage accessibility and preferred mode of communication, as well as view the availability of others.

TMC, along with IntelliCom Analytics, recently asked enterprise decision makers to share their near- and mid-term plans for deploying UC applications to their employees.

To crunch the numbers have a look at the TMCnet article here.

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SpinVox Makes Foray into Unified Communications Market

2008-02-11T14:55:08-05:00

It is no secret that the Unified Communications space has been heating up as of late, and now more and more players are moving into fill existing needs in the market. One outfit making a big splash is SpinVox.

The a global leader in Voice-to-Screen messaging entered this week the Unified Communications Services market with Spinvox CallMail for Call Centers, the company said today.

SpinVox Unified Communications Services are driven by its core Voice Message Conversion System (VMCS). VMCS enables voice messages to be converted to text and then delivered as an email on PC or PDA or as an SMS to a mobile phone screen, according to Christina Domecq, SpinVox co-founder and CEO.

Around the Clock Unified Messaging

2008-02-11T12:30:01-05:00

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.

Hitachi Deploys ShoreTel UC solution

2008-02-07T14:53:28-05:00

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.

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Controlling to the Borders

2008-02-07T12:04:53-05:00

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.

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And the Bronze Goes to...

2008-02-05T13:58:51-05:00

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.

Microsoft/Yahoo! Unification?

2008-02-01T12:10:46-05:00

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.

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Master Unified Communications

2008-01-31T14:34:32-05:00

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.”

It's Big Overseas, Really!

2008-01-31T09:45:46-05:00

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.