Today, we'll discuss some of the announcements made at the recent Fall 2006 VON Conference and Expo that caught our attention.

Global Crossing introduced VoIP Professional Services, leveraging an agreement with Avaya. The portfolio includes, technical services, transition management and managed solutions, the service provider says.

Through its partnership, Global Crossing can now provide "network readiness assessment and design, network integration and implementation, and managed VoIP PBX services," says the company.

The terms also add Global Crossing as an Avaya resale agent for Avaya's IP telephony applications, systems and services. Global Crossing has been a member of Avaya's DeveloperConnection Program since October 2005.

Our observation: It makes sense for carriers such as Global Crossing to include a customer premises equipment (CPE) solution to complement their hosted offerings. While Global Crossing isn't the first carrier to partner with Avaya, we think in this case "the more the merrier" when it comes to carrier and infrastructure partnerships because they ultimately give enterprise customers more choices.

The second announcement comes from Broadsoft, which is also working with Avaya to offer a small business and branch office package that includes the BroadWorks SIP Trunking Solution and Avaya's one-X Quick Edition. The offering adds BroadSoft's "IMS-compliant application server suite" to Avaya's "SIP-based, peer-to-peer communication solution that distributes PBX functionality through its phones." VoIP features include "mobile integration, call centers, remote office, conferencing, auto attendant and integrated PC clients."

Our observation: We're glad to see VoIP solutions move towards serving the smaller business market.

In a separate announcement, Broadsoft unveiled its VoIP call center product, designed so that both "large and small enterprises can set up call centers anywhere in the world with PCs and a broadband connection without additional hardware, PC-resident software, or traditional phone lines." The features include those typically included in a contact center. The system can scale up to include a carrier-scale system that would allow service providers to offer a hosted solution.

Our observation: Broadsoft's experience with carrier-class infrastructure brings valuable options to carriers that want to provide a hosted IP Contact Center service.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.