SMB

Cisco invests in SMB market to the tune of $100 million

Cisco Subnet — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:53:34 -0500

Cisco is investing $100 million into its SMB business through investment in product development, service and support, including the opening of a new Small Business Technology Group (SBTG) to target businesses with fewer than 100 employees.

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Polycom’s SpectraLink Line Delivers Standards-Based Wireless VoIP

Matthew Nickasch — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:13:14 -0500

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.

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Technology, Green and Naturally Boulder Days 2008

Martha Young — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:24:59 -0400

The Naturally Boulder Days 2008 conference was this week. The tour on Wednesday afternoon was incredibly interesting. It included visiting the CU Chancellor's home to see its role in the Xcel Smart Grid city project, a tour of Udi's Bakery and a trip to a gourmet, organic chocolatier manufacturing facility, Seth Ellis. The tired cliché regarding Boulder and organic is just that, a tired cliché. Boulder is the global epicenter of innovation in the natural and organic market spaces.

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The New Economy Is Calling

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:38:59 -0400

Everybody is becoming familiar with the violent see-saw that the global economy has become within the last few months. In fact, we've heard about how the economic uncertainty is affecting jobs, fuel prices, and even the presidential election. Point is, these recent economic developments will directly affect the IP communications / convergence industry as well, and in many ways.

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The Business Case for Business Technology Convergence

BizTech — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 04:48:09 -0400

The structured approach of Business Technology Management (BTM) is a proven methodology that seeks to unify business and technology decision-making at every level within a company. Originally conceived to address the needs of large enterprises, there are now very apparent benefits for both small and medium sized businesses. Let's consider the growing body of evidence that supports that business case.

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IT Strategies in an Economic Crisis

Ken Buck — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:03:55 -0400

We've all experienced the volatility of the market this year. In the last week or so, it's been a wild economic ride; not just here in the US, but also globally. You can run from it, but you can't hide... It affects your life on a daily basis. The economists (and I'm one of them), the politicians (I'm not one of them), and the scholars (well, the fact that I'm in business is probably enough said..!), all have their theories and explainations on why we are where we are in 2008. You decide for yourself what flavor of the Economic Kool-Aid that's being served up that you want to drink.

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Microsoft ResponsePoint's Future

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:42:10 -0400

Have you heard of Microsoft ResponsePoint? Ironically, not many people really have. ResponsePoint is Microsoft's new SMB-focused IP phone system appliance. With hardware vendor support from a wide variety of companies, including D-Link, Quanta, and Aastra, there are multiple choices for the hardware side of the system. ResponsePoint has had a mildly slow "take-off" into the market, but it will be a product to watch. What could potentially hamper RP? First, Microsoft will need to show continued commitment to the product. Recently, Service Pack 1 was announced, so the development lifecycle of the product is indeed continuing. Secondly, the actual user experience of the product focuses on voice recognition. Time will tell as to whether this will be a time-tested implementation of a user interface. Scalability of RP seems to be a chief concern among users. The system will likely not scale above the 10-12 line (analog) environment (with multiple appliances), with no PRI support on the way. This is definitely a small business product. However, other vendors are offering appliances with more features and more scalability options at the same relative price point. The future of ResponsePoint is unknown. It will be interesting to see whether some of the intuitive voice recognition features make it into the mainstream releases of Microsoft OCS, however, time will tell. For more information about Microsoft ResponsePoint, visit this site.

Securing the Line Part 1 - Layered Security Approach

Matthew Nickasch — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:11:19 -0400

Most IT professionals are familiar with, and practice the idea of "layered security approaches." This idea literally states that multiple layers of protection are required to effectively secure any system, network, or service. Especially with the advent of converged networks, IP telephony, and unified communications, this now applies directly to the telecom field as well. As you may have recently read, I've discussed VoIP and telecommunications security many times on the blog before. With the new Securing the Line feature, I plan to delve into each "layer" of potential security vulnerability and recommend strategies, architectures, and even solutions that will make any converged network more secure.

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Introducing "Securing the Line"

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 10:08:38 -0400

We're all familiar with the common security concerns with deploying an IP Telephony environment. Tomorrow, I'm launching a large 10-part series on improving VoIP and telecom security in an enterprise environment.

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Cisco dropped the ball with SMB TMM’s and AM’s sending emails to partners saying bye-bye

Larry Chaffin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:52:05 -0400

I was really not looking forward to this when Cisco starting moving engineers and account managers away from the SMB channel and moving in Linksys teams to those positions. First hand I can tell you it has not been a great start, the new Linksys people who are taking over the current SMB roles from Cisco teams are not really up to date and do not really answer emails. This is not just one person but more than a few that I have sent emails to in different areas and never received an email back when asking for help or asking questions.

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The Future of Pingtel?

Matthew Nickasch — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:27:31 -0400

If you haven't heard, Nortel recently acquired Pingtel's software-based telephony assets on Wednesday, driving forward Nortel's SIP-based enterprise communications portfolio. As with any acquisition, customers of Pingtel must be wondering: what now? Nortel plans to "integrate Pingtel technology" into its SMB portfolio, especially the Nortel SCS500 (Software Communication System). Of course, this integration will take some time, and the results could be, well, questionable.

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Simple Power! Reviewing the Digium | Switchvox SMB AA300 IP-PBX

Matthew Nickasch — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:03:05 -0400

I recently had the opportunity to spend a few weeks with the newly-released Switchvox SMB AA300 appliance. In my opinion, if there’s an appliance or SMB IP-PBX to beat, this is the one. For SMBs, there are three incredibly important functions of such an appliance: 1) Ease of installation, Ease of management, Ease of use 2) Flexibility (Phones, Trunking Options, External Connectivity) 3) Advanced Feature Set It’s rare that any system can adequately match all three dimensions, and users typically compromise for a “2 of 3” scenario. Sure, large systems can adapt to an organization’s needs with lots of advanced programming, but most SMBs don’t have a huge telephony budget to allow for such scenarios.

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Toshiba Attempts an IP-PBX Comeback

Matthew Nickasch — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:05:46 -0400

Things have been a bit quiet on the IP-PBX front lately, with little to no major news or product releases from the large PBX vendors. Toshiba recently announced the Strata® CIX™1200 VoIP business communication system, which is targeted towards the 200 to 1,000 user market.

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Wanted: A Telepresence system that SMB companies can afford

Larry Chaffin — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:30:00 -0400

Bigger is not always better and this is especially true when it comes to Telepresence systems for the SMB markets. As is always the case, major companies like Cisco and Polycom always look at the big companies first. Case in point -- you did not see Cisco come out with the small 500 system until the last few months and it is way over priced for the market.

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Bad news for SMB customers, Cisco stops 0% financing for potential UC500 Customers

Larry Chaffin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:18:24 -0400

Bad news for SMB customers, Cisco stops 0% financing for potential UC500 Customers

Cisco has been running a promotion for a while for SMB customers. It gave 0% financing through Cisco Capital with a $1 buy out at the end of the lease. Yes I was shaking my head and mumbling to myself at this latest move also by Cisco. With the economy the way it is and companies not spending money, this was the one true way to get them to move to a UC500 Series. Many customers who are on the same yearly calendar as Cisco have expressed their disappointment since they can not commit or spend money until the second half of the year.

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Cisco partners gather to talk talent recruitment strategies, expansion of Cisco Smart Care program

Cisco Subnet — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:12:04 -0400

Cisco partners are headed out next week to Honolulu, Hawaii for Cisco's annual Partner Summit, where the talk among Cisco resellers will be how to grow their business (U.S. partners are optimistic, despite the looming recession, according to this video of Keith Goodwin, Cisco SVP of worldwide channels) and how to find qualified talent.

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Microsoft rules in SMB

Alex Lewis — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 16:05:25 -0500

[url=http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9831424-16.html]This[/url] article by Matt Asay lays out the various barriers to entry for open source in the SMB market. Although I read Matt's blog occasionally, I find we rarely agree. The fact we agree on this topic is noteworthy in and of itself. In general small and medium businesses do not have massive IT staffs. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but it does mean they often look for IT strategies that are widely and easily supported, have regular upgrade cycles, and are reliable with minimum tweaking.

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Is Your Vendor Reliable?

James Gaskin — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 11:29:54 -0500

That's the underlying question in PCWorld's story Technology's Most (and Least) Reliable Brands. Of course, many brands under discussion include so many products a sweeping generalization doesn't fit. One thing does fit, however: brands with poor quality and poor customer support echo the attitude of their top executives. Some companies, and executive teams, make decisions to cut corners and cut support, so you can feel free to cut them loose.

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WLANs for SME: Bandspeed's Back

Craig Mathias — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 20:17:05 -0500

That's a little misleading, perhaps, since Bandspeed never went away. But this is a company that has changed direction significantly and may now in fact be on a very profitable course indeed.

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RE: When WEP won't work

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 11:56:00 -0400

I have a problem with my Linksys WRT54G. The whole network runs fine with WPA, but I need it to work with WEP. I put in the 10 hex key and can connect, but it is barely sending and isn't receiving any packets. And obviously isn't connecting to the network or internet.