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VoIP Week-in-Review from TMCnet
 TMCnet Associate Editor
Welcome to the pre-Memorial Day weekend edition of VoIP Week-in-Review! In this edition, you’ll see Voice Over IP  (VoIP) news highlights dominated by four main themes: Microsoft’s newly expanded unified communications initiative; announcements from some pretty well-known VoIP/telecom industry companies like Nortel (News - Alert), Avaya and Sonus; industry recognition for select companies in the form of awards; and some new approaches to business communications needs. Let’s get started!
First up is, arguably, the biggest news of the week: Microsoft’s expanded unified communications initiative, designed to help the company conquer a very significant telecommunications market outside its traditional realm of desktop computer software. Microsoft announced expanded partnerships with 12 communications industry leaders that have chosen to adopt the interoperability specification built into Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.
Microsoft and its partners are now working harder than ever to help businesses deploy software-based unified communications and cost-effectively adapt to voice and data network convergence.
Dialogic (News - Alert) was among the 12 companies that announced expanded support for Microsoft’s unified communications solutions. The company this week said that it’s readying a new series of gateways capable of hosting one of the server elements required for the Office Communications Server 2007 solution.
The new, hybrid gateways will are capable of hosting server software on-board. As such, they reduce the total number of servers required in the solution set. Dialogic will be making the new gateways generally available early in the third quarter of 2007.
Mitel was also among the 12 companies this week announcing expanded, unified communications-related partnerships with Microsoft. To find out more about this broad industry initiative and what it means for the cost-effective adoption of voice and data network convergence solutions, TMCnet spoke with a representative at Mitel.
Stephen Beamish, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances at Mitel, spoke about his company’s relationship with Microsoft in the past, what this expanded partnership means, and how OCS 2007 is impacting the communications landscape for developers, enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Microsoft and its partners weren’t the only big-name telecom/VoIP company to make headlines this week. Another was Nortel, which introduced three new solutions designed to simplify address the challenges of achieving hyperconnectivity in an enterprise environment. The new solutions give branch offices the same capabilities as the head office by boosting WLAN performance and accelerate the speed of business applications. This is all achieved by condensing bandwidth needs.
These solutions are part of Nortel’s new Business Optimized Networking strategy. The company now offers solutions capable of supporting large enterprises using five building blocks which overcome challenges related to delivery of voice, video and multimedia applications.
Avaya, too, had branch offices on its mind this week. The company introduced a new IP-PBX system designed to help branch offices manage VoIP operations. The new Avaya Distributed Office System distributes call processing to individual branches and gives IT operators the power of centralized management tools.
Avaya Distributed Office System supports up to 1,000 branch offices. This functionality makes the solution especially well-suited for highly distributed organizations like financials services organizations and retailers.
Another familiar name in the VoIP and IMS arenas, Sonus Networks, brought attention by announcing the latest details about its IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) initiative. The company is helping drive the adoption of IMS applications and services by participating in IMS Forum’s upcoming IMS Plugfest II.
Plugfest II is set to be held June 4-8, 2007 at the University of New Hampshire’s Interoperability Lab (IOL). The event will focus on IMS Forum’s efforts to develop and establish industry standards for IMS applications and services.
Meanwhile, several companies gained attention another way: by winning awards. One of these was conference phones manufacturer Konftel, which recently received a Product Differentiation Innovation Award from Frost & Sullivan. The company was recognized for its achievement in creating an innovative product (the Konftel 50 conference unit) that differs from competitors in terms of functionality.
Another industry award from Frost & Sullivan, this time the 2007 Product Differentiation Innovation Award for the North American enterprise telephony system market, was bestowed upon IP-PBX ( News - Alert) provider Sphere Communications. The company was recognized for its achievements providing service oriented architecture (SOA)-based telephony solutions and its work developing niche delivery models as a differentiation strategy.
One of the ways Sphere differentiates itself from competitors is through its flagship telephony solution, the Sphericall IP-PBX. Sphere adds extra value to the Sphericall solution by offering an associated service development kit (SDK) to OEMs, ISVs and application developers. The SDK enables such developers to easily integrate Sphericall into existing applications and communications systems.
Finally, in the awards category we have IPTV provider Espial (News - Alert), which announced that it won the 2007 North American Frost & Sullivan Award in the IPTV Entrepreneurial Company category for its outstanding efforts and innovation to become a dominant participant in the IPTV market.
Espial experienced strong growth in 2006 and has now shipped more than one million Evo IPTV middleware subscriber licenses to service providers and partners. The company believes that IPTV is not just about emulating broadcast technology, but applying Internet rules to the TV viewing experience to provide a superior experience for subscribers and a service creation platform for operators.
To round out this week’s edition of VoIP Week-in-Review, let’s look at several companies that are taking new approaches to VoIP solutions in the business market. First up is VoSKY Technologies, a company that recently came along and changed the Skype landscape with its VoSKY Exchange product. Previously, the free, Internet-based calling service Skype ( News - Alert) was a consumer product only. VoSKY Exchange changes all that; it’s a product line that optimizes Skype for business. The product line features rack-mountable gateways that make it possible for businesses to route Skype calls through the company PBX, enabling Skype conversations to take place using existing office phones.
Open source VoIP solutions is the focus of cyLogistics, which for nearly a decade has served as a supplier of IP communications products and services from vendors like inGate, Aculab, Communigate, CyberData, Sangoma, and Digium. This week, cyLogistics announced a new addition to its roster of solutions: TrueClickFonCall, a click-to-call feature that can be inserted into any Web page, enabling simple VoIP connections to any number
Open source isn’t the only new trend in the VoIP industry. There’s another, just as significant, change afoot: the move away from location-centric business operations to mobile workforces that are empowered to serve customers no matter where they, or the customers, are located. One of the service-oriented industries affected is the call and contact center market. New virtual call center technology means agents can work effectively from remote locations.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a virtual call center type of setup, which utilizes the concept of telecommuting and combines it with next-generation networking technology like Sentillion vBusiness’ vThere desktop virtualization suite. A TMCnet. com article published this week discussed several such positives.
Speaking of decentralization of services, another fairly recent trend is the growth of hosted VoIP services. VoIP solutions provider Smoothstone, however, thinks that the concept of “hosted VoIP” is already rather worn out. Instead, the company is focusing its attention on an even newer, more cutting-edge approach to communications applications and services: converged communications as a service (or CCaaS for short).
CCaaS combines software applications used to deliver voice communications with converged IP networks and the software-as-a-service model. Smoothstone’s vision of VoIP communications, and one which the company thinks all VoIP service providers should be preparing for, is a world in which hosted VoIP services are delivered in the same way as hosted software.
That’s it for this week, folks. Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend, and check back next Friday for more VoIP news.
Want more VoIP? Check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents free to registered users.
Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) | X | | IPTV delivers a digital television service to subscribers
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in packets over the Internet. I...more |
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Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) | X | | This tutorial covers WiFi Authentication and Association as well as other issues related to network Authentication, Authorization and Accounting. While users complain about too many logins, the "over...more |
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