One of the fun things about going to VoiceCon is visiting with the smaller companies that are represented because they frequently provide a view of innovations that will help VoIP progress in the marketplace. Today, we’ll take a look at two companies that demonstrated such innovative approaches.

Clarus Systems provides Cisco VoIP users with a diagnostic tool that delivers handset-level testing and feature verification. Its tool works by using software that emulates a user taking phones off the hook, and verifies each phone’s features, functions, and configurations. The advantage of this approach is that the testing can offer remote troubleshooting on a scheduled, customized basis helping enterprise that want to deploy VoIP with the assurance the phones will work “as advertised” – an especially important task when planning and executing large scale VoIP deployments.

Once the phones are deployed, the tool can be used to validate software upgrades along with service quality when the enterprise moves, adds, or changes their VoIP phones. The tool also gives the enterprise’s help desk a remote view of the user’s phone that can remotely control or observe the VoIP phone end-users’ actions to recreating problems and verify solutions. While the tool is currently limited to customers of Cisco VoIP systems, Clarus is adapting its solution for other VoIP suppliers.

The second innovative approach that will help move VoIP forward was demonstrated at VoiceCon by LiteScape Technologies, a developer of unified communications applications. The company announced “OnCast Communications Client” an open source desktop client that combines different services including “authentication, presence, remote call control, directory/application integration, collaboration/conferencing and broadcasting/paging,” according to the company statement.

Since the enterprise may not always buy each of its VoIP system features from a single vendor, integrating them into a single application will make the end user’s life easier. The software supports Asterisk, Avaya, Cisco and Polycom. The company has also developed other productivity-enhancing tools that use VoIP and are designed to help user-specific needs like phone log driven client billing for law offices and using an IP phone in a retail store fitting room to check inventory and request other store services.

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