Network World on Convergence

Video teleconferencing: "Meet me half a world away – in five minutes"

2008-05-09T00:00:00Z

Travel has become the bane of many companies' existence, thanks to escalating fuel and travel costs, unpredictable and increasingly frequent air travel delays and metropolitan gridlock. A face-to-face meeting can cost thousands of dollars and several hassle-filled days, yet small businesses often have customers at great distances.

Bringing the enterprise mobility dream closer to reality

Steve Taylor,Larry Hettick — 2008-05-07T00:00:00Z

For several years, we have predicted that this will (finally) be the year enterprise mobility services move beyond simple mobile e-mail. Although we are painfully aware of the slow progress thus far, WebMessenger Tuesday announced a product that may help the enterprise mobility dream move a little closer to reality. WebMessenger announced the commercial availability of WebMessenger Mobile for Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS). The first-to-market solution extends the Microsoft unified communications platform to BlackBerry and other enterprise mobile devices including those that support Windows Mobile and Symbian. WebMessenger Mobile for Microsoft OCS will be on-display May 13 - 15 at the Wireless Enterprise Symposium in Orlando.

VON trade shows may be in trouble

Tim Greene — 2008-05-06T00:00:00Z

The founder of Pulvermedia - the producer of VON trade shows - has resigned, leaving in doubt the future of the shows, which were among the earliest venues for Internet voice and video.

Unifying teams with unified communications

Steve Taylor,Larry Hettick — 2008-05-05T00:00:00Z

We had a chance recently to talk with Brian Bourne, President of CMS Consulting, about his experiences as a Unified Communications user. CMS Consulting is a boutique firm with about 30 senior consultants, and is a Microsoft Six-Times-Gold Certified Partner focused on a limited number of Microsoft's core server products. Bourne points out one of the biggest challenges they have as an IT consultancy is "if our people are in the office, then they are costing us money and not making money. But then how do you tie the 30 people together into a team?" He adds, "leveraging unified communications helps address issues of a team that is always spread out in the field."

XO expands Ethernet footprint

Brad Reed — 2008-05-01T00:00:00Z

XO Communications announced today that it has expanded the reach of its Ethernet services to include more than 500,000 businesses in 75 major metropolitan markets.

UC challenges: The large enterprise vs. the SME

Steve Taylor,Larry Hettick — 2008-04-30T00:00:00Z

Today we hear from Rob Arnold, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Communications and Dustin Kehoe Principal Analyst, Telecom Services Central Europe who recently co-authored a Current Analysis advisory report on how the unified communications views, dilemmas, and challenges differ between the large enterprise and the small-medium enterprise (SME) based on surveys and analysis of the European market. The report discusses the different levels of awareness, how buying decisions are made, deployment types, vendor selection, and makes some recommendations to unified communications users and potential users.

Security and management considerations when deploying OCS

Steve Taylor,Larry Hettick — 2008-04-28T00:00:00Z

We've suggested before that session border controllers (SBC) are necessary within an enterprise network to ensure QoS and security for VoIP and unified communications, and Acme Packet has suggested in a recently published white paper that the need for SBCs is especially acute for Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) users. Acme Packet also contends that SBCs are complementary to OCS deployments, and they can improve scalability and reduce total cost of ownership.

It's still early in the game for unified communications

2008-04-28T00:00:00Z

Unified communications offers the potential for anywhere, anytime connectivity between employees and the enterprise. But as the InteropLabs hotstage team found in piecing together more than a dozen commercial and open-source voice, data and messaging platforms, the technology is still at a relatively early stage, and today represents more promise than practice.

Adtran announces stand-alone IP PBX

Tim Greene — 2008-04-28T00:00:00Z

Adtran is introducing at Interop a stand-alone IP PBX and new IP phones.

Siemens offers contact-center software for its unified communications server

Tim Greene — 2008-04-24T00:00:00Z

Siemens is introducing a version of its contact-center software that plugs into the company’s Unified Communications Server.

Is your data center ready for tomorrow's applications?

2004-04-12T00:00:00Z

Click here to see what Gartner, Network World and other experts say about the new data center.