Take a look at any of the headlines that have been alive on the mainstream media sites, and you may feel quite depressed. Read more
Virtualization is not a new topic, however, it continues to be an emerging and quickly-adopted strategy for combating several enterprise technology problems. How does adopting a continual virtualization plan help an organization's bottom line? In many ways, actually. Believe it or not, many have been slow to adopt this strategy. They still have datacenters full of under-utilized hardware, consuming precious resources.
Why should adopting a prominent virtual environment be a part of your 2009 strategy? Read more
A new year brings new hopes, opportunities, ventures, and problems. 2008 was a difficult year for many industries, especially the telecom community. Many organizations saw large shakeups and changes as they tried to cope with the changing landscape. Read more
Cloud computing is one of those topics that will have even more attention in 2009, and with good reason. With a more diverse distribution of industries and organizations considering "the cloud", several obvious questions are raised. For cloud hosting companies and entities, the concerns of overall cloud availability and sustainability are usually at the forefront. Read more
On a lighter note this Friday... We're often talking about the many benefits of a converged voice, data, and video infrastructure, with one of the obvious benefits being the ability to provide 'telework' solutions for remote employees.
I'm personally enjoying the ability to telecommute this morning, waking up to a foot of snow after yet another storm hit Wisconsin overnight. So, having the opportunity to "practice what you preach" affirms my belief in convergence technologies! Read more
It's a competitive world out there, especially in the IP-PBX markets these days. With a plethora of platform choices, it's becoming difficult for technology decision makers to effectively decide on a solution.
Now, interoperability seems to be newest trends in promoting such platforms, as such certifications between platforms and trunking / dialtone providers can make the difference for technology decision makers. Read more
Telecom-giant Nortel continues to strategize it's future today after hiring lawyers to decide on whether to seek bankruptcy protection, reports Network World's Tim Greene. This is yet another interesting piece to the financial puzzle that continues to plague the company, and even more, the entire industry. Read more
Those of you who frequently follow the IP-PBX and enterprise communications news feeds most likely have heard about the recently-issued "warning" by the Internet Crime Complaint Center about a "vishing vulnerability" and the Asterisk IP-PBX platform. Read more
This morning, telecom giant AT&T announced a four percent, or 12,000 employee reduction in its workforce, citing recent changes in business and economic factors.
In response to these business and economic factors, AT&T plans to reduce its 2009 capital expenditures from 2008 levels. Capital plans for 2009 are being finalized now and specific guidance will be provided when the company releases its fourth quarter results in late January.
Read more
"Do more with less, and deliver it faster," proclaim the organizational leaders dealing with the effects the 'new economy'. A project manager's nightmare, the times are quickly changing, and the need to make a full glass of orange juice out of a quarter-sized orange is becoming an unfortunate reality.
We've discussed the predicted impacts of the economic downturn on enterprise telephony, but have not explored how future projects and deployments are expected to succeed or fail under these new financial times. Read more
Wideband audio codecs have become nearly standardized in the IP communications field in the last few years. With the "more for less" quality vs. bandwidth needs, high-definition and low-bandwidth codecs are in high demand.
Garrett Smith, on his blog, "Smith on VoIP", posted an interesting interview with Polycom Co-Founder, Jeff Rodman. In this interview, Rodman discusses the importance of high-definition codec development, and also outlines Polycom's HD Voice strategy. Read more
Security incident handling, after many years of exposure, is still one of those 'sticky' subjects that can get any organization in a lot of trouble. Other than phreaking and other switch or voicemail-related mischief, the rather isolated telecommunications networks of yesterday aren't nearly as susceptible to the coordinated attacks that plague servers, routers, and UC and IP-PBX platforms these days. Read more
A recent study conducted by Plantronics and TNS is showing large changes in the way that organizations are conducting business. Due to the increasing costs of travel, employees of virtually all organizations are traveling less, and conducting business through teleconferences more.
This study, released on November 18, 2008, specifies that 36 percent of knowledge workers are traveling less, and that 40 percent are spending more time in teleconferences. Read more
In a recent press release, Microsoft has announced that Office Communications Server 2007, Release 2, will become publicly available beginning in February 2009. Visitors to the VoiceCon 2008 event in San Francisco this week got quite a bit of exposure to the OCS platform through panel discussions, keynotes, and demonstrations.
Microsoft has slowly been building a client base for the platform, which proposes an "in-place" migration to VoIP while maintaining existing PBX hardware, focusing the feature-set to the software platform. Read more
Yesterday, November 10th, Nortel announced a 'shakeup of sorts' after disappointing quarterly results, prompting a decentralization and large structure change at the company. These sweeping changes are resounding throughout not only the enterprise telephony industry, but other Nortel influenced markets including Carrier-Grade Systems and Metro Ethernet as well.
In addition, the highly-visible John Roese, the present CTO of Nortel will be leaving in January 2009. This decision comes as a response to the company's decision to vertically align and integrate its business structure. Read more
The busy winter conference season is upon us once again, promising a dizzying array of product annoucements, IP telephony news, and presentations and discussions that will continue to revolutionize the convergence industry. Read more
A recent British Telecom survey finds that more than half of organizations sampled are using VoIP in "production" environments. This figure is up from a 2007 statistic of 31%, proving that the industry continues to quickly adopt IP telephony as a primary communication solution.
When questioned about what issues still surrounded IP telephony platforms, network reliability, security, and voice quality were named. These were also issues that were also at the forefront of customers when choosing VoIP platforms. Read more
There's no doubt about it: IP Centrex is gaining steam, and quickly. With a comparatively miniscule initial investment to traditional telephony platform offerings, the market may be shifting ever-so-slightly to the "switch in the cloud." Read more
The market of wireless VoIP endpoints and devices has become a unique, almost niche environment over the last few years, previously gaining traction in verticals. While ‘wired’ endpoints have become commonplace across the industry, the idea of wireless VoIP has still lagged behind in development priority. This trend is quickly changing, in part, due to the rapid adoption of SIP, and also due to Polycom's accelerated development of the SpectraLink wireless product lines that support a number of SIP platforms. Read more
Any network infrastructure or voice environment of any scale requires an adaptable network monitoring environment to proactively keep tabs on the system. Potential problems and outages can be identified and recognized earlier with the appropriate monitoring environment.
Yesterday, GroundWork released Network Management Suite 2.1, a new version of NMS that introduces new features, including "single sign-on, simplified installation, consolidated monitoring data and comprehensive online user documentation integrated with GroundWork Monitor." Read more
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