Recent articles by Larry Hettick
May 21, 2013
Zoom Video Communications announced it has reached more than 1 million participants worldwide, connecting more than 400,000 meetings and 3,500 businesses, in more than 2,500 cities worldwide since the company delivered its 1.0 release in February of this year. Founded in 2011, Zoom offers what it calls a "Unified Meeting Experience" -- providing cloud-based HD video meetings and mobile screen sharing for up to 25 people by connecting desktops, mobile devices and room systems. Zoom's with its 3-in-1 cloud service is priced at $9.99 per month.
May 17, 2013
Several news highlights today: Thinking Phone Networks has extended its cloud-based UC solution to target enterprises in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. Level 3 has launched its Carrier Cloud Voice solution as a wholesale offer to CLECS, cable operators, telcos and wireless carriers. Meanwhile, ShoreTel has launched a new DECT phone and upgraded its system management capabilities.
May 14, 2013
Sonus has enhanced its session border controller portfolio, targeting both enterprise and service provider market opportunities. Among the enhancements: modular form factor session border controllers (SBCs) designed to permit customers to field-install digital signal processor (DSP) cards at their own pace, nearly 100 new software enhancements, and an enhanced Survivable Branch Appliance (SBA) functionality with mobile broadband 3G/4G failover capability meant to ensure Microsoft Lync Server operations during wide area network (WAN) failures.
May 13, 2013
When we started this year as usual with our annual predictions, we suggested that Microsoft would have some material announcements about the integration of Skype and Lync, and while we're still waiting for that to (hopefully) happen, late last month Microsoft did announce that it is integrating Skype connectivity features with Outlook.com.
May 07, 2013
ShoreTel has announced a new product called the ShoreTel Dock -- a business-grade docking station that transforms iPhones and iPads into desk phones when paired with ShoreTel Mobility. The ShoreTel Dock turns Apple handhelds running the ShoreTel Mobility app into business desk phones and enterprise collaboration tools. ShoreTel is demonstrating the ShoreTel Dock and its portfolio of enterprise unified communications solutions this week at Interop 2013 in Las Vegas.
May 03, 2013
Digium has announced the general availability of two new Switchvox appliances targeting the IP phone system needs of midsize businesses. The Switchvox 400 Series includes enterprise-class unified communications features, supporting up to 600 users in a single system. The latest products are added to the Digium portfolio that already includes a portfolio of hardware-based and software-based solutions -- along with the Switchvox Cloud a hosted version of the company's phone system that we covered in our newsletter two months ago.
April 30, 2013
GENBAND hits the headlines today with three big announcements that were unveiled at the company's Perspectives13 conference. The first is the launch of the "Innovation Exchange," a collaborative business and technology exchange. The second item is also an announcement about collaboration: GENBAND has partnered with F5 Networks to deliver an Integrated SIP and Diameter Signaling Solution. And in product news, GENBAND has launched a WebRTC gateway with the release of GENBAND SPiDR.
April 26, 2013
Orange Business Services has announced the global expansion of "Business Together as a Service" -- a move the company touts as the "market's first Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) offer available for large enterprises on a global scale," according to the company's statement. The cloud service, originally deployed in France and Europe, is hosted in three regional data centers (Atlanta, Frankfurt and Singapore) that are part of the Orange Business Services dedicated cloud computing infrastructure. The service is available on six continents.
April 23, 2013
Today we highlight two items covering developments with session border controllers (SBCs), with separate news from Dialogic and from GENBAND. In the first announcement, Dialogic disclosed that it has completed interoperability testing between its BorderNet 4000 SBC and BroadSoft's BroadWorks application server. The collaboration between BroadSoft and Dialogic is designed to deliver solutions to help service providers more easily offer unified communications (UC) services and hosted applications such as fixed-mobile convergence, modern call center capabilities, mobile video and HD voice.
April 19, 2013
We have long followed the trend of wireless substitution for landlines and the growing market share for VoIP as an alternative to traditional telco service. In a report released earlier this month, USTelecom said that, according to its estimates, more households now use wireless only than those that use an incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) phone service. The trade association's analysis and projections suggests that at the end of 2012 ILECs were no longer the dominant provider of residential voice services as more consumers "cut the cord" and as they transitioned to VoIP.
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