Avaya

Why SIP Standardization is Critical

Matthew Nickasch — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:51:03 -0400

If you're even remotely interested in the convergence / VoIP / unified communications field and haven't read Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler's article on SIP interoperability, you should. I would like to expand a bit on why SIP is so incredibly important, and why the future of IP communications depends on it. In my honest opinion, we have a quiet, yet major problem developing in the industry. There are simply too many systems and environments that are utilizing proprietary or "modified" protocols for signaling. So, development in this area has been vendor-centric and closed, and not towards a common and unified technology.

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Is Convergence Diverging?

Matthew Nickasch — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:40:48 -0400

Covering the "convergence beat" has been an interesting task. I'm currently finishing my fifth month writing Considering Convergence, and we've covered quite a few technologies, topics, and issues. From specific product focuses to analyzing the present, past, and future of the industry, there is one thing evident: VoIP, convergence, and the 'fusion' of technologies across a single network, has and will continue to be the standard for business communications. Ten years ago, the idea of convergence was just being developed into product form for the first time. Now, ten years later, the idea has been revolutionized into a whole industry.

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The Future of the Key System

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:35:19 -0400

Ah yes, the "key system". Doesn't that just conjure up images of old AT&T Merlin sets, where you could holler to your co-worker: "Your wife is on Line 3?" The sad part is that these PBX-wanna-bes are still being sold across the world to SMBs everywhere. But don't assume that a lack of scalability leads to a significantly lower price tag. Where I live, I still see a huge following of Avaya Partner, Nortel CICS, and Toshiba Strata systems and users. When one dies, well, they're replaced quickly by yet another key system. So why do SMBs continue to invest thousands of dollars in old technology? Simply, I believe it's because they don't know much better.

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How VoIP Has Influenced the Hotel Industry: Part 1

Matthew Nickasch — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:05:09 -0400

Throughout the last few months, we've discussed quite a bit about convergence, VoIP, IP-PBXes, and the like. What's been increasingly interesting, however, is to chart the "spread" of convergence technologies from industry to industry. Today, let's focus on the hotel/hospitality market, and their shift away from traditional telephony. As with any new technology, some examples in the "market" are quicker to adopt new technology earlier than others. What drives this interest and migration to new technology? It's usually competition.

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Digium|Switchvox Breaks the Appliance Barrier

Matthew Nickasch — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:26:22 -0400

There are many reasons to get excited about the future of IP telephony. For me, it's the development and release of new products that will revolutionize the industry. After a recent blog post (Appliances Run Amok) on the emerging market of VoIP & IP-PBX appliances, it appears that Digium, "The Asterisk Company", is pulling ahead of the competition with their recently updated Switchvox appliance line.

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10 Tips To Prepare For Telecom Disasters

Matthew Nickasch — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:13:27 -0400

With the beginning of summer, it's important to refresh our memories on Telecommunications Disaster Recovery. Here are some tips I've prepared on how to plan for, react to, and prevent telecommunications "disasters". 1) Conduct Frequent "Disaster Drills"

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The Virtualization of Telephony

Matthew Nickasch — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:43:43 -0400

So, it appears that the popular trend for IT is to "go green." Hardware that consumes less resources, in a smaller space, seems to be the future. With this comes the ever-popular topic of virtualization. Virtualization in the telephony environment isn't as simple as it's application server counterparts, however. Timing is everything, especially in telephony. With shared compute resources, it's hard to scale any type of large production environment on a virutalized system.

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Government Agencies Rejecting VoIP?

Matthew Nickasch — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:39:22 -0400

Naturally, when I walk into any office, store, etc., I somehow inadvertently identify what voice switch is being used. I'm not quite sure if I want to admit to such 'geekiness', but it is true. Recently, I had the interesting experience of interviewing at a "three-letter" US government agency. Not only did most desks have a secure and non-secure phone, but the terminals were strictly analog or TDM at best. No VoIP here. After reviewing my resume, an interviewer noticed my previous VoIP implementation experience, and quickly noted: "we don't do VoIP here." So, I'll be sticking to Active Directory or DNS then?

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Rebirth of the Branch Office Dialtone

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:29:05 -0400

When you're managing convergence-based networks across multiple locations, say 50 branch offices linked to two headquarters, you most likely have an ongoing migraine headache. There are always different ways to design such a network, but it's likely that management will want a centralized dialplan, easy office-to-office transfers, etc. People who design and deploy complex, multi-site environments are always looking to unify and simplify their environments while keeping an advanced feature-set available to the users. Sure, you could contract a large vendor to architect a solution, but when you're working on a limited budget, it's hard to justify all of the 'fluff' that's built into such quotes (licensing, design services, huge maintenance contracts, etc).

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Making Switch Management Easier

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:25:47 -0400

It's interesting how every organization manages their voice infrastructure a bit differently. Almost becoming a part of the "telecom culture" in a large organization, it's not surprising that we each have our own way of handling the organizational responsibilities of maintaining large voice switches.

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Avaya Customer Service

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:18:45 -0400

Their customer service won't matter once they finish tanking the company by trying to tie customers to them for maintenance if they buy the Avaya product. Great product but I should be able to have who ever I want work on it or have access to maintenance permissions myself.

Hiding the Documentation

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:23:45 -0500

I'm not sure about you, but when I'm presented with the challenge of researching any type of software or system, the first resource I go to is the vendor documentation. Sometimes, this happens even before I look at any white papers or brochures that go with the product. IP-PBXs are interesting beings. They're usually modular, have different software and hardware components, as well as pages and pages of PDFs to go along with each "part." I can sift through the various pieces and kludge it all together, but what I don't understand is why there are still a significant number of vendors who make this documentation proprietary , almost confidential.

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Does Cisco's call center system lack high-end scalability?

Cisco Subnet — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:32:51 -0500

If you're a member of LinkedIn you may have seen a question posted by an IT manager at a cable company asking whether anyone has had success with "a full blown Cisco CVP [Customer Voice Portal] to IPCC [IP Contact Center] (latest release) solution utilizing the CTIOS [Cisco Computer Telephony Integration Object Server] soft phone," because he's not come across a success story.

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Not to fast on serverless SES

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:04:53 -0500

Ummm, SIP-Enablement Services only runs co-resident with Communications Manager when the S8300 is used. It's still a bolt-on box for everyone else...S8400, S8500, S8710, S8720, S8730....

RE: Avaya claims iPhone is ready for business

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:47:40 -0500

I'd like to see the dual-mode added soon, but still, using my iPhone instead of the corporate cell phone is sweet.

RE: Challenges await Avaya's grand plans

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:14:07 -0500

Avaya's challenges can be summed up in the recent IBM ad's running on TV. Stop Talking and Start Doing. We are optimistic looking ahead with Silverlake and TPG taking over but are still cautious in that we would like to see some action. The $60M in advertising is a good start. Avaya has always had great solutions...now they just need to walk the walk.

RE: Q&A: Avaya's COO on what's next

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:47:43 -0500

What will happen or has happened to the shares that I owned?

Rating the Vendor Blogs: The good, bad & ugly

sumj — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:47:32 -0400

Network World took a look at blogs of 15 top networking companies and analyze them based on criteria we developed. Check out the results and let us know what YOU think? What vendor blogs would you put on your good, bad and ugly lists? Did we miss anyone? Speak out here!

Did anybody other than Avaya ever do a VoIP troubleshooting guide?

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:21:52 -0400

I'm actually looking for someone who might help me find if someone ever did a troubleshooting guide other than avaya. We have the guides but what we find now are minor things that pop up we didn't know or things the phones do that we didn't know because its not listed that it does it.

RE: Avaya upgrades software for interactive voice response

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 15:05:58 -0400

i tried to install IVR Designer 6.0, i saw that the package is protected by a password. Please can you help me ? Thank you