VOIP News

ITEXPO is right around the corner, and the sheer variety of subjects being addressed in the conference program is pretty impressive. Take for example the subject of Open Source CRM. It’s not exactly the common fare you get at other conferences. The session, “Open Source: Too Good to Be True?” presented by SugarCRM’s CEO and Co-founder, John Roberts, will be held on Wednesday September 12, 2007 1:45pm–2:30pm. TMCNet’s Stefania Viscusi offers a sneak peek of the session here.  I urge you to check it out. Register here.  I look forward to seeing you in LA!  

AudioCodes and TMC are teaming up on a series of free Webinars addressing the IP Communications marketplace. The first Webinar in the series — titled Break Free — Leveraging SIP in Developing Enhanced Applications — addresses the topic of developing exciting and profitable new applications using the session initiation protocol. Over the last 15+ years, literally thousands of enhanced applications have been developed for the legacy telecommunications infrastructure. From simple voicemail, to sophisticated contact center solutions, these Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) applications have built value on top of basic PSTN dial-tone, generating substantial revenue in both products and services. However, many of the CTI applications were developed using a restrictive and hard-to-learn architecture that limits the developer’s choices in operating systems, choice of technology suppliers and incurs other serious restraints. This Webinar outlines a migration strategy that leverages SIP to eliminate many of the past restraints and show how to “break free” from the bonds of the legacy CTI architecture.   The Webinar will be presented by AudioCodes’ Director of Business Development Alan Percy. In this role Mr. Percy is responsible for identifying market trends and building relationships to foster new business opportunities.   In the second Webinar of the series, Building Applications with SIP — The IP Contact Center, Mr. Percy will address the evolving contact center and discuss how IP is replacing the PBX and separate IVR and ACD systems and unifying e-mail and instant messaging into a new architecture that integrates these functions, leveraging Voice over IP technologies. Whether the goal is to reduce costs in the existing call center, leverage inexpensive overseas labor or add Work At Home Agents (WAHA), IP Contact Centers provide tremendous flexibility to adapt to changing markets and labor resources. By attending this Webinar, you will learn how SIP can be leveraged as a key enabling technology for the IP Contact Center — delivering scalable and cost effective solutions while avoiding restrictive and expensive API development.   Both events are free of charge and offer attendees an invaluable opportunity to pose questions to the presenter in a scheduled Q&A after the presentation.  Make plans to attend now! Break Free — Leveraging SIP in Developing Enhanced ApplicationsThursday, September 6, 2007 2:00pm ET ~ 11:00am PTRegister Now!   Building Applications with SIP — The IP Contact CenterThursday, September 26, 2007 2:00pm ET ~ 11:00am PTRegister Now!

It must have been a fairly busy day. BT announced that the Department for Work and Pension’s (DWP) newly installed IP Telephony platform handled over 1,000,000 calls in a single day.  According to BT’s news release:  The Integrated Communications Network Services (ICONS) programme being implemented at the DWP is one of the largest converged data and voice networks in northern Europe. It is part of a two-year DWP IT transformation programme designed to extract the maximum value from IT in order to support the reform and delivery of public services. The DWP’s two existing networks are being replaced be a single Voice-over IP network capable of carrying data, voice and video. This will allow the department’s frontline staff to more effectively manage their workflow, reduce data-access times and facilitate teamworking and collaboration via video-conferencing. The technology underpinning the infrastructure that has enabled BT to achieve this milestone is from Nortel. Specifically:

• BT has installed the Nortel Communication Server 2000 Carrier class softswitch in its core network to provide hosted IP telephony and IP Contact Center services for DWP
• Currently 435 sites around the UK serving over 35,000 DWP employees have been migrated to the new system
• 24,000 new Nortel 2002 IP handsets and nearly 4,000 fax and other analogue devices are in use over the new network
• BT is replacing the entire DWP estate of PBX and other legacy telephony services with the Nortel hosted Service that will ultimately support DWP’s Telephony & Contact Center users
• Nortel DWDM Optical and network security products are also provided in this complete end-to-end network solution

It’s no secret that mobility in the enterprise is one of today’s hottest areas of interest, as CIOs and IT teams desperately try to deliver productivity boosting applications to their employees. Enterprises need to develop thorough plans for unleashing their workers from the physical office location. Much thought must be given to security, synchronization, network management, device management, and wireless best practices that will work together to create an optimal mobile enterprise that is productive, seamless, and cost effective. Motorola, in concert with TMCnet, has made available three white papers dealing with various elements of effectively deploying a mobile enterprise. These three white papers are available free of charge through the TMCnet White Paper library.  I urge you to check out the descriptions below, and then click on the titles to learn what you need to know in order to un-tether your enterprise. The mobile enterprise is real, and is increasingly becoming more ubiquitous. Don’t be left behind.  Enterprise Mobility: How to Unshackle Your Mission-Critical ApplicationsMulti-national enterprises must reckon with a mobile workforce that will grow larger every year, driven by the requirements of global business and the need to stay in close contact with customers and increase productivity. This paper describes the key issues enterprises needs to consider when determining the requirements for deploying a global wireless messaging project.  Managing the Mobile Enterprise: A Guide for Creating Effective Enterprise Wireless StrategiesWhile planning for wireless access to enterprise information, IT managers must consider five key necessities Enterprise-class security, application optimization with real-time push synchronization, broad handheld support and robust fleet management tools.  Mobile Device Security: Securing the Handheld, Securing the EnterpriseMobile devices represent a tremendous productivity advantage for today’s mobile worker. However, IT organizations must give consideration to the deployment of device security policies in order to provide the level of security that enterprises require.  

 The word from Europe this morning, according to Informa’s Telecoms.com, is that Apple has apparently signed up three mobile operators to distribute the much heralded iPhone “across the pond.” Citing a report in the Financial Times Deutschland, Telecoms.com reports that O2 in the UK, Orange in France, and T-Mobile in Germany, have all agreed to commence selling the iPhone later this year.   

ShoreTel and Black Box announced an agreement today, whereby Black Box will sell, install, and support ShoreTel’s IP telephony solutions to its large enterprise customers across the United States and Canada The two companies have already completed several large multi-site installations at FORTUNE 1000-class enterprises. According to Rick Gannon, regional general manager at Black Box: “ShoreTel is a natural fit for our portfolio of products. There is a clear demand from our customers for ShoreTel’s solutions, and we are very impressed with the overall performance and reliability.”  

Just got a note from SightSpeed’s Peter Csathy regarding the Skype outage and the blogosphere wondering aloud of this is a P2P doomsday scenario. Here’s Peter: Obviously, the Skype outage is big news – and several industry pundits are now wondering if Skype’s troubles expose previously unexposed vulnerabilities to all P2P models.  This is a critical question right now because literally billions of dollars are at stake — (eBay lost nearly $1 billion valuation in the past 48 hours alone per TechCrunch) The answer is a critical “no” – i.e., all P2P models are NOT created equal… Peter is inviting people to check out a blog entry written by SightSpeed CTO Aron Rosenberg, which explains the differences between the various types of P2P. ***Ironically, I just installed Microsoft’s Office Communicator this week for IM’ing my colleagues here in the office, so I’m not really missing Skype too much. Still I’m fairly confident that once this issue is finally completely patched up, Skype will return stronger for the experience.  

The latest survey results are in. Over the past few weeks we have been asking readers to share their views on a broad range of topics regarding Unified Communications. In our latest research survey conducted in partnership with IntelliCom Analytics, we wanted to see how well positioned the incumbent voice platform vendors are in terms of being the provider of choice when the enterprise decides to deploy Unified Communications. With 505 businesses participating in the survey, the findings strongly suggest that incumbent voice platform providers should not presume that they will automatically be chosen by their customers to provide Unified Communications solutions. For more on the findings, please check out this article.

Inter-Tel today announced that the Delaware Court of Chancery has denied a shareholder motion to enjoin the acquisition of Inter-Tel by Mitel Networks Corporation. As a result of the Court’s decision, Inter-Tel and Mitel are free to move ahead with the merger. The expected close of the transaction is scheduled for tomorrow, August 16, 2007.For more on the imminent close of this merger, check out this story.

 Infonetics has released a new study titled “Service Provider Plans for Next Gen Voice & IMS,” that shows nearly 80% of responding service providers plan to offer fixed/mobile convergence (FMC) services within 8 months. According to the study, service providers see the two main benefits of FMC services as increasing average revenue per user and keeping traffic within the network. “Despite the fact that 71% of the service providers we interviewed for a similar study last year expected to use IMS architecture in 2007, we cautioned that providers likely were being optimistic with their uptake plans. With this year’s study, we now have concrete evidence of IMS adoption shifting out: just over a quarter are using IMS in 2007 and less than half plan to do so in 2008,” said Stéphane Téral, principal analyst at Infonetics for service provider VoIP, IMS, and FMC. Several other highlights from the report include: 

• Operational expenditure saving remains an important driver to deploy IMS
• Some providers say they will never completely migrate to next gen voice for access, Class 4, or Class 5, meaning multiple heterogeneous access networks will coexist for a long time, and full Class 5 replacement is not on the agenda
• Main drivers for carriers adopting VoIP continue to be reducing opex, growing revenue, and adding margin-rich services, all aided by an increasing broadband penetration and the maturation of next gen voice technology

Infonetics’ study is based on formal interviews conducted by senior analysts with 24 North American, European, Asia Pacific, and Latin American-Caribbean service providers who plan to deploy next gen voice over the next year.