Digium Switchvox SMB
Digium is the maintainer and primary sponsor of Asterisk, the oldest and most widely deployed open-source telephony platform in the world with more than 2 million downloads in 2009, the company claims. Notable customers include British Telecom, Portugal Telecom and Yahoo (NSDQ:YHOO). Originally developed for-- and most commonly deployed on -- Linux,Asterisk ports also exist for Unix, Windows and others. Resellers' opportunities surrounding the free software include deployment as a VoIP or Skype gateway, voicemail or IVR server, plus services for customization, maintenance and training.
To fund its efforts, Digium develops and markets Switchvox, a VAR-centric telephony appliance embedded with a feature-locked and stable version of Asterisk.The Switchvox still can be customized and extended through a series of plug-ins for the desktop, browser and Outlook. These are developed by a community of 63,000 Asterisk users, 2,000 code contributors and 50 Digium engineers.Through a simple browser interface, resellers, customer IT departments and even Switchvox users can create and modify some telephony features. Though Asterisk itself is administered only through the command line, Digium adds a great browser layer to Switchvox. A front-panel LCD also can be used to view and configure network and other basic settings.
The CRN Test Center evaluated the Switchvox 65 appliance (with Switchvox 4.5 software) and optional TE122P Single span E1/T1 card, which list for $3,200 and $600, respectively. Digium primarily supplies IP phones from Polycom, which list for $200 to $600. The box consumed 34 watts of power and ran at about 79 degrees F.
Setting up the Switchvox is relatively easy, as long as the unit and all phones are on the same subnet and there's a DHCP server around. The Switchvox cannot act as a DHCP server and, as with any server, its own IP address should be static so phones can always find it. Administrative menus in the Switchvox 4.5 software are set up quite logically, making initial configuration uneventful. A setup wizard might be a welcome option, however, to make initial setups a bit more seamless. Once up and running, Switchvox detects new phones plugged into the network and assigns an extension number and enough additional info to make it operational.
At the hub of the user experience is Switchboard, a customizable browser window that displays call queues, parked calls, incoming caller ID info and company directory with presence and call status info. The drag-and-drop environment makes simple work of conferencing, call transfers and other "complex" telephony tasks. An included link with Google (NSDQ:GOOG) Maps pinpoints the location of incoming calls. This infinitely customizable tool can be taught to perform other tasks based on caller ID info, including display of unread e-mail, links in Google News and the like.
For the flexibility and extra revenue potential of its open-source nature, large and active developer community, ease of setup and use, and relatively low cost, the CRN Test Center recommends the Digium Switchvox SMB.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Friday, 21 May 2010
Comdasys’ Mobile Convergence Solution now also deployable in
Comdasys reaches into Service Providers and large Enterprises
Munich, 18 May 2010 - Comdasys, the global leading provider of Mobile Unified Communications Solutions today announced that Service Provider and large Enterprises can now deploy its MC Solution in a virtualized form (with major virtualization software such as VMWare) as well as in a high performance mode on Blade Servers.
By releasing its virtualized and Blade Server versions of its MC Controller, Comdasys is now able to offer its MC Solution for large and very large deployments by Service Providers and Enterprises. For this purpose, Comdasys provides its MC Controller as an easily deployable package with a user licensing model. “It has always been our target to make the deployment of our MC Solution as easy and cost effective as possible”, said Martin Bitzinger, CTO of Comdasys. “With the release of the Virtual Server and the Blade Server versions of our MC Controller, our MC Solution can now be deployed and sold by our business and channel partners under a software license agreement. The licensing module we provide is easy to deploy and intuitive to administer”, he added.
With the Mobile Convergence Solution Smart Phone become fully fledged Enterprise PBX extensions complementing and partially also replacing desktop phones without having to sacrifice PBX features. The Comdasys Mobile Convergence Solution also enables the use of the full suite of UC functionality on the Mobile Phone while reducing mobile communications cost through a sophisticated Mobile Least Cost Routing that Comdasys provides with its MC Client. The Comdasys MC Solution is easy to use and to deploy and comes with a client provisioning tools. The Comdasys MC Solution supports the largest variety of mobile handsets in the market, including Symbian, BlackBerry, Android and iPhone mobile devices.
Comdasys’ MC Solution earns great market recognition not only for the number of mobile devices and features supported but also for its reliability and scalability.
About Comdasys Comdasys is the leading provider of PBX integrated Mobile Unified Communications Solutions for enterprises. Comdasys’ MC
Solution is PBX vendor and mobile provider agnostic. Enterprises of all sizes can depend on Comdasys’ MC Solution for state-ofthe-
art secure and scalable enterprise mobile unified communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service
and competitiveness. The company provides also branch office connectivity network appliances with office survivability, session
border controller and other enterprise communications features. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, Comdasys has sales
offices in EMEA and North America. The company provides its products and related services through its channel partners to
leading businesses and organizations around the world. For more information, visit www.comdasys.com.
Munich, 18 May 2010 - Comdasys, the global leading provider of Mobile Unified Communications Solutions today announced that Service Provider and large Enterprises can now deploy its MC Solution in a virtualized form (with major virtualization software such as VMWare) as well as in a high performance mode on Blade Servers.
By releasing its virtualized and Blade Server versions of its MC Controller, Comdasys is now able to offer its MC Solution for large and very large deployments by Service Providers and Enterprises. For this purpose, Comdasys provides its MC Controller as an easily deployable package with a user licensing model. “It has always been our target to make the deployment of our MC Solution as easy and cost effective as possible”, said Martin Bitzinger, CTO of Comdasys. “With the release of the Virtual Server and the Blade Server versions of our MC Controller, our MC Solution can now be deployed and sold by our business and channel partners under a software license agreement. The licensing module we provide is easy to deploy and intuitive to administer”, he added.
With the Mobile Convergence Solution Smart Phone become fully fledged Enterprise PBX extensions complementing and partially also replacing desktop phones without having to sacrifice PBX features. The Comdasys Mobile Convergence Solution also enables the use of the full suite of UC functionality on the Mobile Phone while reducing mobile communications cost through a sophisticated Mobile Least Cost Routing that Comdasys provides with its MC Client. The Comdasys MC Solution is easy to use and to deploy and comes with a client provisioning tools. The Comdasys MC Solution supports the largest variety of mobile handsets in the market, including Symbian, BlackBerry, Android and iPhone mobile devices.
Comdasys’ MC Solution earns great market recognition not only for the number of mobile devices and features supported but also for its reliability and scalability.
About Comdasys Comdasys is the leading provider of PBX integrated Mobile Unified Communications Solutions for enterprises. Comdasys’ MC
Solution is PBX vendor and mobile provider agnostic. Enterprises of all sizes can depend on Comdasys’ MC Solution for state-ofthe-
art secure and scalable enterprise mobile unified communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service
and competitiveness. The company provides also branch office connectivity network appliances with office survivability, session
border controller and other enterprise communications features. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, Comdasys has sales
offices in EMEA and North America. The company provides its products and related services through its channel partners to
leading businesses and organizations around the world. For more information, visit www.comdasys.com.
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Exclusive interview for VoIP Today on SIP Trunking with Microsoft OCS Providing Critical TCP/IP to UDP Conversion with Steven Johnson, President, Inga
VoIP Today spoke with Steven Johnson, president of Ingate Systems, about a recent announcement of a new SIP trunking deployment.
The installation showcases a critical issue many businesses are finding when they try to deploy SIP trunks while using Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) as the IP-PBX.
voiptoday.org: What are the challenges to deploying SIP trunks with Microsoft OCS?
Microsoft OCS 2007 uses TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)/IP. TCP/IP is one of the core protocols used in Unified Communications (UC) and allows for the reliable, ordered transmission of data.
SIP trunking service providers, however, generally use UDP (User Datagram Protocol) because it consumes less bandwidth.
The solution is to provide a seamless protocol conversion of TCP/IP to UDP. This is easily accomplished with a Session Border Controller such as the Ingate SIParator and is absolutely necessary in order to have SIP trunks work with the Microsoft OCS-enabled network.
voiptoday.org: Is this what Ingate did for Northern Michigan Substance Abuse Services, Inc. (NMSAS)?
Yes. Northern Michigan Substance Abuse Services, Inc. (NMSAS), which coordinates and oversees the delivery of substance abuse services for 30 counties in that state, had deployed SIP trunks from BBTelsys, a nationwide provider of Internet telephony and multi-dwelling unit triple play services. They were using Microsoft OCS 2007, and encountered the problem of TCP/IP-UDP incompatibility.
To address the issue, NMSAS deployed the Ingate SIParator with the Ingate SIP Trunking Software module, which works hand-in-hand with the BBTelsys service and NMSAS’ existing Microsoft OCS solution. The SIParator provided the crucial integration component necessary for SIP trunks to work with the IP-PBX.
voiptoday.org: What is the SIParator?
The SIParator is an Enterprise Session Border Controller (E-SBC) that enables SIP trunking by resolving Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal of SIP traffic. Working with the SIP Trunking Software module, it also normalizes the SIP signaling between the IP-PBX, in this case the Microsoft OCS server, and the BBTelsys service solving interoperability issues. The SIParator also secures VoIP calls made over the SIP trunk.
voiptoday.org: Is there, or will there be, a significant demand for this TCP/IP-to-UDP conversion capability?
Absolutely, we’re already seeing a spike in requests for this solution – and our VAR partners tell us the same thing. Microsoft OCS is an extremely popular SIP-based PBX, with a large installed base of users. SIP trunking is in demand as well, as a way to deploy VoIP quickly and easily and with a very fast return on investment. Microsoft OCS users want to leverage SIP trunks now. This solution addresses the incompatibility issue immediately. It also provides security for the SIP traffic (in this case, for VoIP) – another significant added benefit to incorporating the SIParator.
voiptoday.org: In the press release for the NMSAS deployment you talk about added benefits you brought to the table for the customer.
Yes. The BBTelsys and Ingate solution also addresses the advanced dialing requirements needed by NMSAS, to provide their clients with unparalleled privacy and security for VoIP calls.
As a substance abuse services facility, NMSAS offers counseling for clients over the phone. These clients are oftentimes at work; most require absolute privacy about their relationship with NMSAS. NMSAS needed to make sure that, when they called clients, the recipient’s caller ID display would come up as “anonymous.” Additionally, NMSAS wanted the flexibility of making calls without this “anonymous” option.
Ingate developed a simple dial plan solution harking back to the days of traditional wireline telephony. When calling a client, NMSAS workers need only dial “8” and then the phone number for the system to display an anonymous caller ID. Regular business-related calls, where an anonymous caller ID is not necessary, are preceded by a “9.”
About Ingate® Systems
Ingate® Systems develops firewall technology to enable global SIP-based person-to-person communication such as IP telephony, presence, Instant Messaging, video conferencing, IP-PBX connections and Unified Communications. With a history based in security, Ingate offers enterprises, service providers and carriers elegant solutions that make trusted SIP communications possible beyond the LAN. Among the company’s award-winning products are the Ingate Firewall® and Enterprise Session Border Controllers (E-SBCs) including the Ingate SIParator® and the Intertex IX78 E-SBC for operator volume SIP trunking deployments. These are widely used to connect service providers’ SIP trunks to enterprise IP-PBXs and Unified Communication solutions and to allow remote users outside the LAN. Ingate products are used by retail companies, financial institutions, industrial firms, government agencies and small-to-large enterprises throughout Europe, Asia and North America.
A leading educator on SIP trunking, Ingate hosts the SIP Trunk Seminar Series at the ITEXPO and the Ingate SIP Trunking Community at http://sip-trunking.tmcnet.com. Both bring together industry visionaries to generate awareness for the benefits of SIP, SIP trunks and Unified Communications.
The installation showcases a critical issue many businesses are finding when they try to deploy SIP trunks while using Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) as the IP-PBX.
voiptoday.org: What are the challenges to deploying SIP trunks with Microsoft OCS?
Microsoft OCS 2007 uses TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)/IP. TCP/IP is one of the core protocols used in Unified Communications (UC) and allows for the reliable, ordered transmission of data.
SIP trunking service providers, however, generally use UDP (User Datagram Protocol) because it consumes less bandwidth.
The solution is to provide a seamless protocol conversion of TCP/IP to UDP. This is easily accomplished with a Session Border Controller such as the Ingate SIParator and is absolutely necessary in order to have SIP trunks work with the Microsoft OCS-enabled network.
voiptoday.org: Is this what Ingate did for Northern Michigan Substance Abuse Services, Inc. (NMSAS)?
Yes. Northern Michigan Substance Abuse Services, Inc. (NMSAS), which coordinates and oversees the delivery of substance abuse services for 30 counties in that state, had deployed SIP trunks from BBTelsys, a nationwide provider of Internet telephony and multi-dwelling unit triple play services. They were using Microsoft OCS 2007, and encountered the problem of TCP/IP-UDP incompatibility.
To address the issue, NMSAS deployed the Ingate SIParator with the Ingate SIP Trunking Software module, which works hand-in-hand with the BBTelsys service and NMSAS’ existing Microsoft OCS solution. The SIParator provided the crucial integration component necessary for SIP trunks to work with the IP-PBX.
voiptoday.org: What is the SIParator?
The SIParator is an Enterprise Session Border Controller (E-SBC) that enables SIP trunking by resolving Network Address Translation (NAT) traversal of SIP traffic. Working with the SIP Trunking Software module, it also normalizes the SIP signaling between the IP-PBX, in this case the Microsoft OCS server, and the BBTelsys service solving interoperability issues. The SIParator also secures VoIP calls made over the SIP trunk.
voiptoday.org: Is there, or will there be, a significant demand for this TCP/IP-to-UDP conversion capability?
Absolutely, we’re already seeing a spike in requests for this solution – and our VAR partners tell us the same thing. Microsoft OCS is an extremely popular SIP-based PBX, with a large installed base of users. SIP trunking is in demand as well, as a way to deploy VoIP quickly and easily and with a very fast return on investment. Microsoft OCS users want to leverage SIP trunks now. This solution addresses the incompatibility issue immediately. It also provides security for the SIP traffic (in this case, for VoIP) – another significant added benefit to incorporating the SIParator.
voiptoday.org: In the press release for the NMSAS deployment you talk about added benefits you brought to the table for the customer.
Yes. The BBTelsys and Ingate solution also addresses the advanced dialing requirements needed by NMSAS, to provide their clients with unparalleled privacy and security for VoIP calls.
As a substance abuse services facility, NMSAS offers counseling for clients over the phone. These clients are oftentimes at work; most require absolute privacy about their relationship with NMSAS. NMSAS needed to make sure that, when they called clients, the recipient’s caller ID display would come up as “anonymous.” Additionally, NMSAS wanted the flexibility of making calls without this “anonymous” option.
Ingate developed a simple dial plan solution harking back to the days of traditional wireline telephony. When calling a client, NMSAS workers need only dial “8” and then the phone number for the system to display an anonymous caller ID. Regular business-related calls, where an anonymous caller ID is not necessary, are preceded by a “9.”
About Ingate® Systems
Ingate® Systems develops firewall technology to enable global SIP-based person-to-person communication such as IP telephony, presence, Instant Messaging, video conferencing, IP-PBX connections and Unified Communications. With a history based in security, Ingate offers enterprises, service providers and carriers elegant solutions that make trusted SIP communications possible beyond the LAN. Among the company’s award-winning products are the Ingate Firewall® and Enterprise Session Border Controllers (E-SBCs) including the Ingate SIParator® and the Intertex IX78 E-SBC for operator volume SIP trunking deployments. These are widely used to connect service providers’ SIP trunks to enterprise IP-PBXs and Unified Communication solutions and to allow remote users outside the LAN. Ingate products are used by retail companies, financial institutions, industrial firms, government agencies and small-to-large enterprises throughout Europe, Asia and North America.
A leading educator on SIP trunking, Ingate hosts the SIP Trunk Seminar Series at the ITEXPO and the Ingate SIP Trunking Community at http://sip-trunking.tmcnet.com. Both bring together industry visionaries to generate awareness for the benefits of SIP, SIP trunks and Unified Communications.
Monday, 10 May 2010
NET AND MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY CENTERS FORGE ALLIANCE
NET’s Voice Platform Provides Enhanced Capabilities to Microsoft Office Communications Server Customers Worldwide
Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. ("NET", NASDAQ: NWK), a leader in network and voice-over-IP solutions, today announced that it has been named an MTC Hardware Partner for Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs) worldwide. MTCs are state-of-the-art collaborative environments that provide access to innovative technologies and world-class expertise and enable enterprise customers to envision, design, and deploy solutions to meet their exact needs.
NET’s solution integrates enterprise voice and leverages Microsoft® Office Communications Server (OCS). NET’s platform provides the MTCs with the ability to demonstrate enterprise voice integration into the Microsoft Unified Communications solution.
"As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, NET continues to focus on innovation that enables and extends interoperability for Microsoft solutions," said Matthew Krueger, Vice President of Marketing for NET. "NET’s platform provides a key component in MTC OCS engagements, allowing MTC alliance partners the capability to demonstrate applications in production conditions. This enables Microsoft customers to visualize how to leverage their existing investments, take advantage of software powered voice, and integrate their disparate systems into OCS."
NET’s voice platform provides "any-to-any" voice integration and advanced capabilities for high-performance, secure voice communications. NET solutions offer outstanding interoperability for enterprise unified communications and deliver a powerful switching solution that allows enterprises to simplify IP network environments.
"NET is an exciting addition to the Microsoft Technology Centers," said Chuck McCann, director of the MTC Alliances Program. "Demonstrating how NET leverages OCS to rapidly integrate legacy voice applications to immediately answer pressing business questions drives home one of the many value points of OCS in the enterprise."
About Network Equipment Technologies:
Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. (NET) provides network and VoIP solutions to enterprises and government agencies that seek to reduce the cost to deploy next generation unified and secure communications applications. For a quarter of a century, NET has delivered solutions for multi-service networks requiring high degrees of versatility, security and performance. Today, the company's broad family of products enables interoperability and integration with existing networks for migration to secure IP-based communications. Broadening NET's voice solutions, Quintum Technologies, now a part of NET, is a VoIP innovator whose applications bring the reliability and clarity of public telephone networks to Internet telephony and unified communications. NET is headquartered in Fremont, CA and has 14 offices worldwide including the US, the UK, France, the Middle East, China, Japan, Australia, and Latin America. The company sells its solutions through a direct sales force and an international network of resellers and distributors.
Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. ("NET", NASDAQ: NWK), a leader in network and voice-over-IP solutions, today announced that it has been named an MTC Hardware Partner for Microsoft Technology Centers (MTCs) worldwide. MTCs are state-of-the-art collaborative environments that provide access to innovative technologies and world-class expertise and enable enterprise customers to envision, design, and deploy solutions to meet their exact needs.
NET’s solution integrates enterprise voice and leverages Microsoft® Office Communications Server (OCS). NET’s platform provides the MTCs with the ability to demonstrate enterprise voice integration into the Microsoft Unified Communications solution.
"As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, NET continues to focus on innovation that enables and extends interoperability for Microsoft solutions," said Matthew Krueger, Vice President of Marketing for NET. "NET’s platform provides a key component in MTC OCS engagements, allowing MTC alliance partners the capability to demonstrate applications in production conditions. This enables Microsoft customers to visualize how to leverage their existing investments, take advantage of software powered voice, and integrate their disparate systems into OCS."
NET’s voice platform provides "any-to-any" voice integration and advanced capabilities for high-performance, secure voice communications. NET solutions offer outstanding interoperability for enterprise unified communications and deliver a powerful switching solution that allows enterprises to simplify IP network environments.
"NET is an exciting addition to the Microsoft Technology Centers," said Chuck McCann, director of the MTC Alliances Program. "Demonstrating how NET leverages OCS to rapidly integrate legacy voice applications to immediately answer pressing business questions drives home one of the many value points of OCS in the enterprise."
About Network Equipment Technologies:
Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. (NET) provides network and VoIP solutions to enterprises and government agencies that seek to reduce the cost to deploy next generation unified and secure communications applications. For a quarter of a century, NET has delivered solutions for multi-service networks requiring high degrees of versatility, security and performance. Today, the company's broad family of products enables interoperability and integration with existing networks for migration to secure IP-based communications. Broadening NET's voice solutions, Quintum Technologies, now a part of NET, is a VoIP innovator whose applications bring the reliability and clarity of public telephone networks to Internet telephony and unified communications. NET is headquartered in Fremont, CA and has 14 offices worldwide including the US, the UK, France, the Middle East, China, Japan, Australia, and Latin America. The company sells its solutions through a direct sales force and an international network of resellers and distributors.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
Polycom Introduces Unified Communications Professional Services
New Polycom services further the Polycom Open Collaboration Network by helping customers integrate Polycom voice/video collaboration within UC environments
LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 22 Apr 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice communications solutions, today announced a portfolio of Unified Communications Professional Services delivered through Polycom Global Services, Polycom Open Collaboration Network partners and certified Polycom partners. It has been designed to help customers successfully integrate Polycom voice and visual communications solutions into their unified communications (UC) environments
The new services further the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy of providing open and interoperable collaboration solutions that give customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with leaders in unified communications and networking, such as Avaya, BroadSoft, HP, IBM, Juniper, Microsoft and Siemens, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core UC environments. As a result Polycom is making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that can be provisioned and managed centrally.
''Unified communications is critical to the overall productivity and success of our customers,'' said Andrew Miller, executive vice president of global field operations, Polycom. ''Polycom UC Professional Services provide the proper planning and deployment to help our customers maximise the benefits and value of their investments and deliver an accelerated return.''
In response to customer demand, the first available service focuses on the integration of Polycom solutions within Microsoft UC environments. Polycom has teamed with Microsoft to provide a unified collaboration solution that integrates presence-based real-time IM, voice, video and data collaboration. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 provide IM and a presence-enabled unified communications infrastructure. Polycom extends this user experience with one of the broadest portfolios of integrated voice and visual communication products for Microsoft environments, including optimised network-based IP phones; personal, room and immersive telepresence solutions; unified conferencing infrastructure; an integrated scheduling solution for Microsoft Outlook, and recording, streaming and digital signage solutions.
''By building on the integrated feature set in Office Communications Server, our industry partners provide customers with improved ways to stay connected and work together,'' said Yancey Smith, director of product management for Office Communication Server at Microsoft. ''Polycom has expanded the collaboration capabilities offered in Communications Server 2007 R2 to help customers realise higher productivity for their businesses.''
''Polycom Global Services helped us design and implement a highly reliable, distributed video network that will scale with our business needs and that lays the groundwork for seamless integration with our unified communications platform,'' said Mary Genrich, director, Conferencing Services, Kimberly-Clark Corporation. ''We are extremely pleased with the results and view Polycom as a valued business partner.''
The Polycom UC Professional Services include several stages to meet specific customer needs and support internal IT resources, including Solution Planning & Design, Pilot Solution Deployment, and Full Solution Deployment services. Service teams are balanced with qualified professionals to ensure success, including: experienced programme managers to evaluate business needs and coordinate required vendors and service providers to deliver the solution; solution consultants to assess the integration benefits and evaluate existing and planned infrastructure components; network consultants to assess existing LAN and WAN services, define network requirements and develop upgrade plans as needed; deployment specialists to install and configure critical components and verify interoperability to support the enterprise IT team in understanding the new environment and developing appropriate operational processes.
''We are seeing increasing customer demand for UC solutions and services that include real-time voice and visual communications,'' said Mike Brandofino EVP for Video and UC at AVI-SPL, a leading global integrator of audio and video systems and services. ''Working with Polycom and leveraging our A/V and systems integration expertise, AVI-SPL is able to deliver best-in-class voice and video solutions seamlessly into Microsoft UC environments. We are able to help customers navigate through large and complex deployments that include UC platforms, local and wide area networks and IT management applications in order to create a fully integrated and truly unified communication and collaboration platform.''
Industry analyst firm Gartner forecasts the market for video conferencing services will reach nearly $3.9B in 2013, with a CAGR of 23.8% from 2008 – 2013.1
About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Leading unified communications and networking providers have joined the Polycom Open Collaboration Network to provide open and interoperable collaboration solutions that give customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their unified communications environment. The Polycom Open Collaboration Network enables Polycom to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom ''Triangles'' logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom’s products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
1 - Gartner, ''Video Conference Products and Services Market Forecast, Worldwide 2007 to 2013,'' Sept. 28, 2009.
LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 22 Apr 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice communications solutions, today announced a portfolio of Unified Communications Professional Services delivered through Polycom Global Services, Polycom Open Collaboration Network partners and certified Polycom partners. It has been designed to help customers successfully integrate Polycom voice and visual communications solutions into their unified communications (UC) environments
The new services further the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy of providing open and interoperable collaboration solutions that give customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with leaders in unified communications and networking, such as Avaya, BroadSoft, HP, IBM, Juniper, Microsoft and Siemens, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core UC environments. As a result Polycom is making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that can be provisioned and managed centrally.
''Unified communications is critical to the overall productivity and success of our customers,'' said Andrew Miller, executive vice president of global field operations, Polycom. ''Polycom UC Professional Services provide the proper planning and deployment to help our customers maximise the benefits and value of their investments and deliver an accelerated return.''
In response to customer demand, the first available service focuses on the integration of Polycom solutions within Microsoft UC environments. Polycom has teamed with Microsoft to provide a unified collaboration solution that integrates presence-based real-time IM, voice, video and data collaboration. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 provide IM and a presence-enabled unified communications infrastructure. Polycom extends this user experience with one of the broadest portfolios of integrated voice and visual communication products for Microsoft environments, including optimised network-based IP phones; personal, room and immersive telepresence solutions; unified conferencing infrastructure; an integrated scheduling solution for Microsoft Outlook, and recording, streaming and digital signage solutions.
''By building on the integrated feature set in Office Communications Server, our industry partners provide customers with improved ways to stay connected and work together,'' said Yancey Smith, director of product management for Office Communication Server at Microsoft. ''Polycom has expanded the collaboration capabilities offered in Communications Server 2007 R2 to help customers realise higher productivity for their businesses.''
''Polycom Global Services helped us design and implement a highly reliable, distributed video network that will scale with our business needs and that lays the groundwork for seamless integration with our unified communications platform,'' said Mary Genrich, director, Conferencing Services, Kimberly-Clark Corporation. ''We are extremely pleased with the results and view Polycom as a valued business partner.''
The Polycom UC Professional Services include several stages to meet specific customer needs and support internal IT resources, including Solution Planning & Design, Pilot Solution Deployment, and Full Solution Deployment services. Service teams are balanced with qualified professionals to ensure success, including: experienced programme managers to evaluate business needs and coordinate required vendors and service providers to deliver the solution; solution consultants to assess the integration benefits and evaluate existing and planned infrastructure components; network consultants to assess existing LAN and WAN services, define network requirements and develop upgrade plans as needed; deployment specialists to install and configure critical components and verify interoperability to support the enterprise IT team in understanding the new environment and developing appropriate operational processes.
''We are seeing increasing customer demand for UC solutions and services that include real-time voice and visual communications,'' said Mike Brandofino EVP for Video and UC at AVI-SPL, a leading global integrator of audio and video systems and services. ''Working with Polycom and leveraging our A/V and systems integration expertise, AVI-SPL is able to deliver best-in-class voice and video solutions seamlessly into Microsoft UC environments. We are able to help customers navigate through large and complex deployments that include UC platforms, local and wide area networks and IT management applications in order to create a fully integrated and truly unified communication and collaboration platform.''
Industry analyst firm Gartner forecasts the market for video conferencing services will reach nearly $3.9B in 2013, with a CAGR of 23.8% from 2008 – 2013.1
About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Leading unified communications and networking providers have joined the Polycom Open Collaboration Network to provide open and interoperable collaboration solutions that give customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their unified communications environment. The Polycom Open Collaboration Network enables Polycom to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom ''Triangles'' logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom’s products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
1 - Gartner, ''Video Conference Products and Services Market Forecast, Worldwide 2007 to 2013,'' Sept. 28, 2009.
Wednesday, 21 April 2010
VoIP Security with Inagte
Ingate’s architecture with a built-in SIP Proxy and registrar solves the problem of SIP traffic not traversing firewall by working as a proxy between the two clients. Each packet is opened, inspected and necessary rewritings are done. This gives a very secure, flexible and solid tra-versal of SIP traffic and advanced call control.
The media ports between the clients are only open between the specific clients and for the duration of the call.
The inspection of the SIP packages make sure that it is valid SIP packages and that they are not malformed in any way.
Ingate´s architecture allows the support of encrypted SIP signaling – TLS. This makes it much harder to do session hijacking and spoofing since much information is encrypted. Which me-dia ports that will be used for the communication is an example of such encrypted information. Ingate will also support encrypted RTP media streams in SW releases planned for mid 2005.
Ingate has a good architecture for security, but we believe that threats like virus and worms should be handled by experts on these specific fields. This is why we have not incorporated virus protection in our products.
We believe that the same thing will happen when it comes to VoIP. The Ingate products how-ever already do have a good basic protection being firewalls, and development processes con-tinue to further improve this protection.
We are proud to have one of the world’s largest financial institutes as our customer; on request we would be happy to provide it as reference.
Denial of Service attacks
DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service attack. Thousands of computers have been infected with malicious code, e.g. “Trojans” over the Internet. This code then transforms these computers into ”zombie” systems that send useless data to a selected IP-address. The system behind the IP-address thus gets flooded by traffic and goes out of its normal service.
This is not a unique problem for SIP and VoIP, but the consequences are more severe since this kind of communication is very realtime-critical.
It is a challenge to stop it since the traffic comes from many sources. It should be stopped as early as possible, for example in the Service Providers network and backbone. Being, up-stream, Service Providers are in a better position to detect and choke the traffic.
Solving the problem in the enterprise network is harder. Even if an attack can be identified locally, it can still flood the “pipe” to the server that is under attack.
Some techniques can be attempted to lessen the problem:
• Set aside extra network bandwidth and server processing capacity.
• Many distributed servers to avoid single point of attack.
• Use of multiple connections and Service Providers.
Ingate´s heritage as a Firewall supplier helps when developing systems that are less vulnerable to such attacks. For each new software release all 4200 protos tests must be passed.
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/research/ouspg/protos/
Spam over the SIP protocol
We distinguish between SPIT and SPIM.
SPIT
SPIT stands for SPam over Internet Telephones. A single “caller” can potentially send out thousands of voice messages simultaneously into phones or voicemail boxes. It is very rare on the market today, but considered as a potential future threat. One problem is that it is almost impossible to detect a SPIT without first listening to it.
Same basic techniques to prevent this, as in the e-mail world will work:
• Black-lists: calls from specific domains, users, IP-addresses are discarded.
• White lists: calls from specific user, domains, IP-addresses are allowed.
As with normal SPAM, a number of companies will specialize in the SPIT issues and supply products offering more and more advanced protection.
One of these companies is Qovia which filed the first patent for SPIT blocking technology. It claims to be able to differentiate “normal human traffic” from large scale machine-generated blast messages.
www.qovia.com.
Ingate follow the market closely on this issue and we have some plans in our short-term road map to further improve SPIT protection.
Maybe the long-term answer to this will be authentication. An interesting question is if there in the future will be third party trusted authorities (CA) that verify the callers?
Ingate has support for both encryption and authentication in its products.
The distributed architecture of the Ingate products, with CPE equipment in every branch of-fice, will also help making the system less vulnerable as there is no single point to attack. We can expect a huge creativity, both from SPAMers and companies like Ingate who try to pre-vent SPAM.
SPIM
SPIM stands for SPam over Instant Messaging. It is very similar to e-mail SPAM but more insidious, since messages may pop up automatically. It is also easier to handle than SPIT, not being as realtime sensitive as voice.
Proven methods can again be used to stop it:
• Black and White lists.
• Content filtering.
• Authentication of the user initiating the IM.
Since this communication form allows a small delay before sending the message on to the receiver, it is possible to build the same kind of filtering functions as the e-mail SPAM block-ing techniques. Ingate believe that the same companies that sells anti e-mail SPAM software will add SPIM blocking into their product portfolio. Ingate does at the moment not plan to develop any additional functions for this except for the Black/White lists and the authentica-tion support that already are present in its products.
The media ports between the clients are only open between the specific clients and for the duration of the call.
The inspection of the SIP packages make sure that it is valid SIP packages and that they are not malformed in any way.
Ingate´s architecture allows the support of encrypted SIP signaling – TLS. This makes it much harder to do session hijacking and spoofing since much information is encrypted. Which me-dia ports that will be used for the communication is an example of such encrypted information. Ingate will also support encrypted RTP media streams in SW releases planned for mid 2005.
Ingate has a good architecture for security, but we believe that threats like virus and worms should be handled by experts on these specific fields. This is why we have not incorporated virus protection in our products.
We believe that the same thing will happen when it comes to VoIP. The Ingate products how-ever already do have a good basic protection being firewalls, and development processes con-tinue to further improve this protection.
We are proud to have one of the world’s largest financial institutes as our customer; on request we would be happy to provide it as reference.
Denial of Service attacks
DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service attack. Thousands of computers have been infected with malicious code, e.g. “Trojans” over the Internet. This code then transforms these computers into ”zombie” systems that send useless data to a selected IP-address. The system behind the IP-address thus gets flooded by traffic and goes out of its normal service.
This is not a unique problem for SIP and VoIP, but the consequences are more severe since this kind of communication is very realtime-critical.
It is a challenge to stop it since the traffic comes from many sources. It should be stopped as early as possible, for example in the Service Providers network and backbone. Being, up-stream, Service Providers are in a better position to detect and choke the traffic.
Solving the problem in the enterprise network is harder. Even if an attack can be identified locally, it can still flood the “pipe” to the server that is under attack.
Some techniques can be attempted to lessen the problem:
• Set aside extra network bandwidth and server processing capacity.
• Many distributed servers to avoid single point of attack.
• Use of multiple connections and Service Providers.
Ingate´s heritage as a Firewall supplier helps when developing systems that are less vulnerable to such attacks. For each new software release all 4200 protos tests must be passed.
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/research/ouspg/protos/
Spam over the SIP protocol
We distinguish between SPIT and SPIM.
SPIT
SPIT stands for SPam over Internet Telephones. A single “caller” can potentially send out thousands of voice messages simultaneously into phones or voicemail boxes. It is very rare on the market today, but considered as a potential future threat. One problem is that it is almost impossible to detect a SPIT without first listening to it.
Same basic techniques to prevent this, as in the e-mail world will work:
• Black-lists: calls from specific domains, users, IP-addresses are discarded.
• White lists: calls from specific user, domains, IP-addresses are allowed.
As with normal SPAM, a number of companies will specialize in the SPIT issues and supply products offering more and more advanced protection.
One of these companies is Qovia which filed the first patent for SPIT blocking technology. It claims to be able to differentiate “normal human traffic” from large scale machine-generated blast messages.
www.qovia.com.
Ingate follow the market closely on this issue and we have some plans in our short-term road map to further improve SPIT protection.
Maybe the long-term answer to this will be authentication. An interesting question is if there in the future will be third party trusted authorities (CA) that verify the callers?
Ingate has support for both encryption and authentication in its products.
The distributed architecture of the Ingate products, with CPE equipment in every branch of-fice, will also help making the system less vulnerable as there is no single point to attack. We can expect a huge creativity, both from SPAMers and companies like Ingate who try to pre-vent SPAM.
SPIM
SPIM stands for SPam over Instant Messaging. It is very similar to e-mail SPAM but more insidious, since messages may pop up automatically. It is also easier to handle than SPIT, not being as realtime sensitive as voice.
Proven methods can again be used to stop it:
• Black and White lists.
• Content filtering.
• Authentication of the user initiating the IM.
Since this communication form allows a small delay before sending the message on to the receiver, it is possible to build the same kind of filtering functions as the e-mail SPAM block-ing techniques. Ingate believe that the same companies that sells anti e-mail SPAM software will add SPIM blocking into their product portfolio. Ingate does at the moment not plan to develop any additional functions for this except for the Black/White lists and the authentica-tion support that already are present in its products.
Wednesday, 7 April 2010
SoundPoint IP/SoundStation IP/VVX: SIP 3.2.3 Software + BootROM 4.2.2 Releases Have Been Posted
The following software and associated files have been posted to the various Support web sites for SoundPoint IP/SoundStation IP/VVX products.
SIP 3.2.3:
Affected Products:
SoundPoint: IP 320, 321, 330, 335, 430, 450, 550, 560, 650, 670
SoundStation: IP 5000, 6000, 7000
VVX 1500
Key Enhancements:
Introduced support for the SoundStation IP 5000.
Alerting and other tones can now be played on an audio device (headset, handset, speakerphone) specified by configuration parameters, e.g. incoming call ringer alerting tone can be played in the headset earpiece.
DHCP option 60 is now available in an ASCII String format as well as RFC 3925 Binary and selectable using a configuration parameter.
DHCP option 60 allows a DHCP server to identify the type of host making a request of it, allowing it to offer different option values for various types of hosts such as Microsoft’s IIS.
This feature requires BootROM 4.2.2 (see below).
Full details are available in Technical Bulletin 54041 “Using DHCP Vendor Identifying Options with Polycom SoundPoint IP, SoundStation IP and VVX Phones”.
http://www.polycom.com/support/voice/soundpoint_ip/VoIP_Technical_Bulletins_pub.html
BootROM 4.2.2:
Affected Products:
SoundPoint: IP 320, 321, 330, 335, 430, 450, 550, 560, 650, 670
SoundStation: IP 5000, 6000, 7000
VVX 1500 (BootROM 4.2.2 is distributed with SIP 3.2.3 for the VVX)
Key Enhancements:
Introduced support for the SoundStation IP 5000.
DHCP option 60 is now available in an ASCII String format as well as RFC 3925 Binary and selectable using a configuration parameter.
DHCP option 60 allows a DHCP server to identify the type of host making a request of it, allowing it to offer different option values for various types of hosts such as Microsoft’s IIS.
Full details are available in Technical Bulletin 54041 “Using DHCP Vendor Identifying Options with Polycom SoundPoint IP, SoundStation IP and VVX Phones”.
http://www.polycom.com/support/voice/soundpoint_ip/VoIP_Technical_Bulletins_pub.html
sip_sw_release_matrix.htm:
Updated to reflect the support for 3.2.3 and SoundStation IP 5000.
http://downloads.polycom.com/voice/voip/sip_sw_releases_matrix.html
For full details, please refer to the respective Release Notes now available from the Support web pages.
SIP 3.2.3:
Affected Products:
SoundPoint: IP 320, 321, 330, 335, 430, 450, 550, 560, 650, 670
SoundStation: IP 5000, 6000, 7000
VVX 1500
Key Enhancements:
Introduced support for the SoundStation IP 5000.
Alerting and other tones can now be played on an audio device (headset, handset, speakerphone) specified by configuration parameters, e.g. incoming call ringer alerting tone can be played in the headset earpiece.
DHCP option 60 is now available in an ASCII String format as well as RFC 3925 Binary and selectable using a configuration parameter.
DHCP option 60 allows a DHCP server to identify the type of host making a request of it, allowing it to offer different option values for various types of hosts such as Microsoft’s IIS.
This feature requires BootROM 4.2.2 (see below).
Full details are available in Technical Bulletin 54041 “Using DHCP Vendor Identifying Options with Polycom SoundPoint IP, SoundStation IP and VVX Phones”.
http://www.polycom.com/support/voice/soundpoint_ip/VoIP_Technical_Bulletins_pub.html
BootROM 4.2.2:
Affected Products:
SoundPoint: IP 320, 321, 330, 335, 430, 450, 550, 560, 650, 670
SoundStation: IP 5000, 6000, 7000
VVX 1500 (BootROM 4.2.2 is distributed with SIP 3.2.3 for the VVX)
Key Enhancements:
Introduced support for the SoundStation IP 5000.
DHCP option 60 is now available in an ASCII String format as well as RFC 3925 Binary and selectable using a configuration parameter.
DHCP option 60 allows a DHCP server to identify the type of host making a request of it, allowing it to offer different option values for various types of hosts such as Microsoft’s IIS.
Full details are available in Technical Bulletin 54041 “Using DHCP Vendor Identifying Options with Polycom SoundPoint IP, SoundStation IP and VVX Phones”.
http://www.polycom.com/support/voice/soundpoint_ip/VoIP_Technical_Bulletins_pub.html
sip_sw_release_matrix.htm:
Updated to reflect the support for 3.2.3 and SoundStation IP 5000.
http://downloads.polycom.com/voice/voip/sip_sw_releases_matrix.html
For full details, please refer to the respective Release Notes now available from the Support web pages.
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Relief From VoIP Headaches
Edgewater Networks Helps Ensure The Quality Of IP Communications
VoIP is a great solution for real-time communications—provided you have a system configured to properly monitor, secure, and allocate your voice and video data. Santa Clara, Calif.,-based Edgewater Networks understands this caveat. The company has been specializing in making VoIP-based communications easy to set up since 2002, and its heritage descends from a virtual who’s who of companies that pioneered this space, including Cisco, Siemens, Nokia, and First Virtual Communications.
“The management team has a lot of experience in TDM (time-division multiplexing) and packet-based networking of voice and video,” says Dave Martin, vice president of marketing at Edgewater Networks (www.edgewaternetworks.com). “We were founded on the belief that real-time communications over IP networks were going to be the next big thing in networking, and IT operators and service providers faced challenges in rolling them out.”
Secure & Reliable Real-Time Communications
Martin explains that the primary applications that tend to cause the most trouble for IT departments are converged networks, videoconferencing over IP, hosted voice and video over IP, connecting an existing PBX via SIP trunking, and secure access for remote employees working either in home or branch offices of an organization. “There are so many issues with security, quality of service (QoS), ongoing maintenance, and troubleshooting that we wanted to create solutions that would optimize real-time communications over IP networks and provide security and reliability for our customers,” Martin says.
According to Martin, Edgewater’s value lies in its ability to simplify the setup and monitoring of real-time applications, which in turn helps its customers reduce their costs and deliver a best-of-breed end-user experience when converging voice and video data with conventional data. “If you’re a service provider, we can reduce the TCO for delivering managed voice and video services and reduce customer churn because the service will work more reliably. If you’re an IT administrator, we can simplify branch office connectivity for you and provide a better experience for users of these applications,” Martin says.
Modular & Synergistic Solutions
Edgewater Networks takes a modular approach with its solutions. Each product line works well individually and often is all an enterprise needs. Combined, however, Edgewater’s product lines work in synergy to provide the sort of results that make VoIP a near no-brainer.
For example, Edgewater offers its EdgeMarc Network Services Gateways as access devices that are deployed as part of a network infrastructure. “Enterprise IT use [the EdgeMarcs] for branch office or office connectivity or secure remote access for their road warriors or remote workers who need secure connectivity into the enterprise for voice and video,” Martin says. The EdgeMarc product line is so broad that it scales to fit everything from a SOHO environment all the way up to a large enterprise.
Edgewater also offers the EdgeView, a hardware-based VoIP support system that works as an integrated VoIP quality probe, monitoring and troubleshooting the entire VoIP network. “When someone places a call using an IP [phone], the EdgeView generates statistics around the audio quality that user experiences during that call,” says Martin. “If that user has a bad experience, the EdgeView helps to isolate where you might have network impairments within your distributed enterprise that are affecting the call quality.”
The EdgeView typically is deployed in a network operations center or the primary data center, where it can monitor the entire network, while EdgeMarc routers are more often used as gateways to branch offices or remote locations. Either product line offers excellent functionality and seamless integration with existing VoIP networks, but the two really shine when they are used together. “If you have a user who tells you he had a [poor-quality] call an hour ago, it’s hard to start to figure out what is going on, given the distributed nature of IT networks,” says Martin. “The EdgeView provides you with visibility into the quality of your VoIP application. You can take problem resolution times from hours down to minutes because you are now able to monitor call quality at all different points of your network.”
Prioritizing The Right Data
Perhaps the most important thing a VoIP solution can do is to ensure that voice and video traffic gets priority over other traffic in order to maintain end-user call standards. With real-time communications, Martin says, “If you don’t have QoS built into the network, you’ll find that other data traffic can delay voice or video packets, which causes obvious problems for the person making the call.”
Edgewater’s EdgeMarc appliances are protocol-aware, which enables them to determine which devices need priority treatment should congestion occur within the network. “The EdgeMarc will automatically place them in the priority queue for the network operator or service provider, so it is not required to set up a complex access list or identify all the end points by IP address and so forth,” says Martin. “Because it is voice-aware, it can use that intelligence to simplify the prioritization and traffic shaping that has to happen.”
Martin says that the EdgeMarc is so effective in this regard that many service providers use the devices even when they do not own the actual infrastructure. “They will drop an EdgeMarc appliance behind someone else’s copper and essentially use it as a demarcation point for the service and provide the needed quality of service over that access point,” Martin says.
Making VoIP Seamless
In addition to prioritizing voice and video data, Edgewater’s products give users the ability to maintain stringent security and high availability standards in a range of scenarios. “If you’re offering a hosted service and the access point goes down, our devices can provide call control so that your employees and your customers continue to get voice services,” says Martin. “Or if you’re an enterprise with your own PBX connecting to a SIP trunk provider, we can provide the proper security and QoS and then help ensure interoperability between the service providers, SIP trunking network, and the PBX itself.”
Edgewater’s EdgeConnect managed power over Ethernet switches are optimized for converged networking environments such as a hybrid PBX/VoIP environment just described and can provide inline power to IP phones, as well. “You can see we’ve created another networking solution that stands alone in its own right, but when you combine it [with our other solutions], you really leverage all the capabilities that we have towards reducing TCO and resolving problems quickly,” says Martin.
VoIP is a great solution for real-time communications—provided you have a system configured to properly monitor, secure, and allocate your voice and video data. Santa Clara, Calif.,-based Edgewater Networks understands this caveat. The company has been specializing in making VoIP-based communications easy to set up since 2002, and its heritage descends from a virtual who’s who of companies that pioneered this space, including Cisco, Siemens, Nokia, and First Virtual Communications.
“The management team has a lot of experience in TDM (time-division multiplexing) and packet-based networking of voice and video,” says Dave Martin, vice president of marketing at Edgewater Networks (www.edgewaternetworks.com). “We were founded on the belief that real-time communications over IP networks were going to be the next big thing in networking, and IT operators and service providers faced challenges in rolling them out.”
Secure & Reliable Real-Time Communications
Martin explains that the primary applications that tend to cause the most trouble for IT departments are converged networks, videoconferencing over IP, hosted voice and video over IP, connecting an existing PBX via SIP trunking, and secure access for remote employees working either in home or branch offices of an organization. “There are so many issues with security, quality of service (QoS), ongoing maintenance, and troubleshooting that we wanted to create solutions that would optimize real-time communications over IP networks and provide security and reliability for our customers,” Martin says.
According to Martin, Edgewater’s value lies in its ability to simplify the setup and monitoring of real-time applications, which in turn helps its customers reduce their costs and deliver a best-of-breed end-user experience when converging voice and video data with conventional data. “If you’re a service provider, we can reduce the TCO for delivering managed voice and video services and reduce customer churn because the service will work more reliably. If you’re an IT administrator, we can simplify branch office connectivity for you and provide a better experience for users of these applications,” Martin says.
Modular & Synergistic Solutions
Edgewater Networks takes a modular approach with its solutions. Each product line works well individually and often is all an enterprise needs. Combined, however, Edgewater’s product lines work in synergy to provide the sort of results that make VoIP a near no-brainer.
For example, Edgewater offers its EdgeMarc Network Services Gateways as access devices that are deployed as part of a network infrastructure. “Enterprise IT use [the EdgeMarcs] for branch office or office connectivity or secure remote access for their road warriors or remote workers who need secure connectivity into the enterprise for voice and video,” Martin says. The EdgeMarc product line is so broad that it scales to fit everything from a SOHO environment all the way up to a large enterprise.
Edgewater also offers the EdgeView, a hardware-based VoIP support system that works as an integrated VoIP quality probe, monitoring and troubleshooting the entire VoIP network. “When someone places a call using an IP [phone], the EdgeView generates statistics around the audio quality that user experiences during that call,” says Martin. “If that user has a bad experience, the EdgeView helps to isolate where you might have network impairments within your distributed enterprise that are affecting the call quality.”
The EdgeView typically is deployed in a network operations center or the primary data center, where it can monitor the entire network, while EdgeMarc routers are more often used as gateways to branch offices or remote locations. Either product line offers excellent functionality and seamless integration with existing VoIP networks, but the two really shine when they are used together. “If you have a user who tells you he had a [poor-quality] call an hour ago, it’s hard to start to figure out what is going on, given the distributed nature of IT networks,” says Martin. “The EdgeView provides you with visibility into the quality of your VoIP application. You can take problem resolution times from hours down to minutes because you are now able to monitor call quality at all different points of your network.”
Prioritizing The Right Data
Perhaps the most important thing a VoIP solution can do is to ensure that voice and video traffic gets priority over other traffic in order to maintain end-user call standards. With real-time communications, Martin says, “If you don’t have QoS built into the network, you’ll find that other data traffic can delay voice or video packets, which causes obvious problems for the person making the call.”
Edgewater’s EdgeMarc appliances are protocol-aware, which enables them to determine which devices need priority treatment should congestion occur within the network. “The EdgeMarc will automatically place them in the priority queue for the network operator or service provider, so it is not required to set up a complex access list or identify all the end points by IP address and so forth,” says Martin. “Because it is voice-aware, it can use that intelligence to simplify the prioritization and traffic shaping that has to happen.”
Martin says that the EdgeMarc is so effective in this regard that many service providers use the devices even when they do not own the actual infrastructure. “They will drop an EdgeMarc appliance behind someone else’s copper and essentially use it as a demarcation point for the service and provide the needed quality of service over that access point,” Martin says.
Making VoIP Seamless
In addition to prioritizing voice and video data, Edgewater’s products give users the ability to maintain stringent security and high availability standards in a range of scenarios. “If you’re offering a hosted service and the access point goes down, our devices can provide call control so that your employees and your customers continue to get voice services,” says Martin. “Or if you’re an enterprise with your own PBX connecting to a SIP trunk provider, we can provide the proper security and QoS and then help ensure interoperability between the service providers, SIP trunking network, and the PBX itself.”
Edgewater’s EdgeConnect managed power over Ethernet switches are optimized for converged networking environments such as a hybrid PBX/VoIP environment just described and can provide inline power to IP phones, as well. “You can see we’ve created another networking solution that stands alone in its own right, but when you combine it [with our other solutions], you really leverage all the capabilities that we have towards reducing TCO and resolving problems quickly,” says Martin.
Thursday, 25 March 2010
VCOMM Take on Master Distribution for Extricom
Extricom, a designer and manufacturer of high-performance, next generation wireless LAN (WLAN) infrastructure solutions, today announced a master Distribution Agreement for its innovative family of wireless switches and access points with VCOMM, a UK-based specialist distributor of IP telephony and Fixed Mobile Convergence solutions and part of Coms Plc. The agreement forms part of Extricom's ongoing strategy to form alliances with partners that have the skills, knowledge and resources to take advantage of the growing market for mobility-focused WLAN infrastructure.
VCOMM brings many years of experience in delivering high margin, niche solutions to market. "We constantly are looking for the most innovative Wi-Fi products to provide to the Service Provider and Reseller channel," stated Taffy Johal, VCOMM's Sales Director. "Extricom is focused on seamless mobility and the Channel Blanket architecture excels in support of multi-application environments, particularly VoIP. As such, Extricom is a natural complement to our range of IP telephony products and services. Add to that Extricom's deployment simplicity, stellar performance, and operational flexibility, and we believe it will be a critical infrastructure offering for our integration partners."
Extricom's Wireless LAN system is a new generation of business-class wireless infrastructure that scales from a single office to multi-building corporate campuses. The system's unique Channel Blanket architecture delivers simpler design and maintenance, robust wireless connectivity, and seamless mobility. Developed to tackle real-world business challenges, the Extricom WLAN has established its reputation by providing reliable service in some of the harshest environments possible where other WLANs have failed to perform to expectations. The Extricom system is also the industry's most versatile platform for 802.11n implementations; whether in a greenfield deployment or in mixed mode, Extricom delivers maximum performance for both 802.11n and 802.11a/b/g clients from the same infrastructure.
"One of the things that's been holding back widespread adoption of VoWLAN solutions is the lack of reliable, resilient wireless infrastructure that will support any mobility requirement." commented Gideon Rottem, Extricom's CEO. "Extricom's multi-layer wireless LAN is a highly technologically differentiated solution that has an outstanding field record in support of IPT and FMC deployments. Our partnership with VCOMM, a well-established vendor in this market space, will create tremendous opportunities for both companies"
About VCOMM
VCOMM is a trade only, value added distributor that provides IP Telephony products and services to the UK Service Provider and Reseller channel. VCOMM is a part of the Coms PLC network, which also includes Coms.Com and Coms.Net. VCOMM's staff bring many years of experience in delivering high margin, niche solutions to market and are ideally placed to move quickly and decisively within this exciting and evolving space.
VCOMM brings many years of experience in delivering high margin, niche solutions to market. "We constantly are looking for the most innovative Wi-Fi products to provide to the Service Provider and Reseller channel," stated Taffy Johal, VCOMM's Sales Director. "Extricom is focused on seamless mobility and the Channel Blanket architecture excels in support of multi-application environments, particularly VoIP. As such, Extricom is a natural complement to our range of IP telephony products and services. Add to that Extricom's deployment simplicity, stellar performance, and operational flexibility, and we believe it will be a critical infrastructure offering for our integration partners."
Extricom's Wireless LAN system is a new generation of business-class wireless infrastructure that scales from a single office to multi-building corporate campuses. The system's unique Channel Blanket architecture delivers simpler design and maintenance, robust wireless connectivity, and seamless mobility. Developed to tackle real-world business challenges, the Extricom WLAN has established its reputation by providing reliable service in some of the harshest environments possible where other WLANs have failed to perform to expectations. The Extricom system is also the industry's most versatile platform for 802.11n implementations; whether in a greenfield deployment or in mixed mode, Extricom delivers maximum performance for both 802.11n and 802.11a/b/g clients from the same infrastructure.
"One of the things that's been holding back widespread adoption of VoWLAN solutions is the lack of reliable, resilient wireless infrastructure that will support any mobility requirement." commented Gideon Rottem, Extricom's CEO. "Extricom's multi-layer wireless LAN is a highly technologically differentiated solution that has an outstanding field record in support of IPT and FMC deployments. Our partnership with VCOMM, a well-established vendor in this market space, will create tremendous opportunities for both companies"
About VCOMM
VCOMM is a trade only, value added distributor that provides IP Telephony products and services to the UK Service Provider and Reseller channel. VCOMM is a part of the Coms PLC network, which also includes Coms.Com and Coms.Net. VCOMM's staff bring many years of experience in delivering high margin, niche solutions to market and are ideally placed to move quickly and decisively within this exciting and evolving space.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Quintum's intelligent VoIP switches and gateways are 'The Perfect Fit' for converged communications applications
Quintum's 'Any to Any' connectivity enables Tenors to integrate VoIP applications into any network environment, including PBXs, IP-PBXs, Legacy TDM endpoints, SIP endpoints and both PSTN and IP-based Service Providers. Quintum supports companies around the world, utilizing Tenors in a variety of VoIP applications.
ENTERPRISES
Quintum's Tenors offer VoIP functionality at the edge of the enterprise network ... unmatched by any other vendor - including dynamic call failover, out-of-the-box interoperability, SIP and H.323 support, and more.
Quintum's Enterprise Tenors support Unified Communications, IP-PBX survivable branch office, call centers and multi-office trunking.
SERVICE PROVIDERS
Service providers have to provide consistent local access and a superior customer premises equipment (CPE) solution. The CPE has to install easily into your customers' existing environments - regardless of what kind of environments they may have. It has to protect call quality and has to help control initial provisioning costs and ongoing Operational expenses.
Service Providers use Tenors to support Hosted IP-PBX, SIP Trunking, VoIP Termination and Calling Card applications.
PBX/IP PBX Compatibility
Tenor VoIP Gateways and VoIP MultiPath Switches have been designed to be compliant with all major international telephony interface standards and signaling protocols. This results in these products being compatible with the majority of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connections, and the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices that connect to them. Quintum has a long history of successfully deploying Tenor products throughout the world.
PBX/IP PBX Compatibility
Tenor VoIP Gateways and VoIP MultiPath Switches have been designed to be compliant with all major international telephony interface standards and signaling protocols. This results in these products being compatible with the majority of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connections, and the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices that connect to them. Quintum has a long history of successfully deploying Tenor products throughout the world.
3Com
Aastra
Aastra Intecom
Aastra-DeTeWe
Alcatel-Lucent
Allworx
Altigen
Avaya
Brekeke
BroadSoft
Cisco
CosmoCom
Deltapath
Dialexia
Digium/Asterisk
Ericsson
Fujitsu
Genesis
Hitachi
Inter-Tel
Interactive Intelligence
Matra
Microsoft
Mitel
NEC
NEC Philips
NEC Sphere Communications Inc.
NetSapiens
Nortel
Oracle
Panasonic
Samsung
ShoreTel
Siemens
Tadiran
Toshiba
Vertical
SBC Compatibility
Tenor VoIP Gateways and VoIP MultiPath Switches have been designed to be compliant with all major international telephony interface standards and signaling protocols. This results in these products being compatible with the majority of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connections, and the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices that connect to them. Quintum has a long history of successfully deploying Tenor products throughout the world.
Acme Packet
Audiocodes
Cisco Systems
Data Connection
Ditech Communications
Emergent Network Solutions
Huawei Technologies
IntereXchange Carrier
Juniper Networks
MERA Systems
NeoTIP
Newport Networks
NextPoint Networks
Sansay
Sonus Networks
Tekelec
Veraz Networks
For further enquiries please contact VCOMM UK Ltd on : +44 (0) 16352 32437 or email us on info@vcomm.co.uk
ENTERPRISES
Quintum's Tenors offer VoIP functionality at the edge of the enterprise network ... unmatched by any other vendor - including dynamic call failover, out-of-the-box interoperability, SIP and H.323 support, and more.
Quintum's Enterprise Tenors support Unified Communications, IP-PBX survivable branch office, call centers and multi-office trunking.
SERVICE PROVIDERS
Service providers have to provide consistent local access and a superior customer premises equipment (CPE) solution. The CPE has to install easily into your customers' existing environments - regardless of what kind of environments they may have. It has to protect call quality and has to help control initial provisioning costs and ongoing Operational expenses.
Service Providers use Tenors to support Hosted IP-PBX, SIP Trunking, VoIP Termination and Calling Card applications.
PBX/IP PBX Compatibility
Tenor VoIP Gateways and VoIP MultiPath Switches have been designed to be compliant with all major international telephony interface standards and signaling protocols. This results in these products being compatible with the majority of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connections, and the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices that connect to them. Quintum has a long history of successfully deploying Tenor products throughout the world.
PBX/IP PBX Compatibility
Tenor VoIP Gateways and VoIP MultiPath Switches have been designed to be compliant with all major international telephony interface standards and signaling protocols. This results in these products being compatible with the majority of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connections, and the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices that connect to them. Quintum has a long history of successfully deploying Tenor products throughout the world.
3Com
Aastra
Aastra Intecom
Aastra-DeTeWe
Alcatel-Lucent
Allworx
Altigen
Avaya
Brekeke
BroadSoft
Cisco
CosmoCom
Deltapath
Dialexia
Digium/Asterisk
Ericsson
Fujitsu
Genesis
Hitachi
Inter-Tel
Interactive Intelligence
Matra
Microsoft
Mitel
NEC
NEC Philips
NEC Sphere Communications Inc.
NetSapiens
Nortel
Oracle
Panasonic
Samsung
ShoreTel
Siemens
Tadiran
Toshiba
Vertical
SBC Compatibility
Tenor VoIP Gateways and VoIP MultiPath Switches have been designed to be compliant with all major international telephony interface standards and signaling protocols. This results in these products being compatible with the majority of Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) connections, and the Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) devices that connect to them. Quintum has a long history of successfully deploying Tenor products throughout the world.
Acme Packet
Audiocodes
Cisco Systems
Data Connection
Ditech Communications
Emergent Network Solutions
Huawei Technologies
IntereXchange Carrier
Juniper Networks
MERA Systems
NeoTIP
Newport Networks
NextPoint Networks
Sansay
Sonus Networks
Tekelec
Veraz Networks
For further enquiries please contact VCOMM UK Ltd on : +44 (0) 16352 32437 or email us on info@vcomm.co.uk
Polycom Introduces SoundStation IP 5000 Conference Phone Delivering HD Voice Conference Calls at a Breakthrough Price Point
Conference Phone Icon and Market Leader Polycom Brings Remarkable Voice Quality and Open SIP Interoperability to Small Conference Rooms, Private Offices and the SMB Market
LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 23 Mar 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communication solutions, today announced the Polycom SoundStation® IP 5000 conference phone. The SoundStation IP 5000 features Polycom HD Voice™ and offers robust SIP-based VoIP interoperability at a price that is well within reach of organisations of all sizes. Designed specifically for the needs of private offices and small meeting rooms, the voice quality of the SoundStation IP 5000 far surpasses that of traditional desktop speaker phones.
"Polycom is an innovative company and continues to lead the conference phone market with more than 80 percent market share," said Paul Waadevig, principal consultant, Unified Communications, Frost & Sullivan. "The SoundStation IP 5000 rounds out the company's high-quality conference phone portfolio and fills a gap in the market by providing a high-quality conferencing solution for private offices and smaller-sized conference rooms."
As the conference phone market leader and provider of conference phones for the world's leading unified communications (UC) providers, Polycom is the most recognised brand in conference rooms worldwide. With the introduction of the SoundStation IP 5000, Polycom redefines what businesses can expect from VoIP conferencing endpoints in terms of price and performance. The small footprint of the SoundStation IP 5000 makes it ideal for small conference rooms and private offices. Leveraging the Polycom Open Collaboration Network (POCN) strategy, the SoundStation IP conference phone family delivers a best-in-class collaboration experience that enables businesses to leverage existing UC investments as well as tightly integrated, end-to-end, standards-based solutions that deliver an unrivaled communications experience.
High Quality Conferencing with Immediate ROI
"We have been using Polycom SoundStation IP conference phones in our larger conference rooms, and their clarity and ease of use have delivered tangible benefits during our conference calls," said Michael Smith of Maricopa Property Development. "The SoundStation IP 5000 is a great fit for our smaller meeting rooms and private offices. It offers the great voice quality I expect from Polycom at a price that is affordable, and being able to conduct high-quality conference calls from our offices and other smaller rooms is improving our productivity."
"We traditionally relied on desktop speaker phones for conference calls, because we felt that while the sound quality and microphone pickup was superior on high-performance conference phones, they were cost-prohibitive for a business of our size," said Darren Loher, chief architect of Envysion. "The SoundStation IP 5000 breaks down barriers in terms of price and performance. It's affordable, and it also delivers the amazing acoustic quality for which Polycom conference phones are known. It is already making our internal and customer meetings more productive."
Features & Benefits
•Polycom HD Voice technology for crystal-clear calls that sound as natural as being there
•Patented Polycom Acoustic Clarity™ technology – delivering the best IP conference phone experience without compromise
•Small footprint fits easily on desk or small table
•Robust VoIP interoperability – Compatible with a broad array of SIP call platforms to maximise voice quality and feature availability while simplifying management and administration
•High-resolution display – enables robust call information and multi-language support
•Interference resistance from mobile phones and other wireless devices while delivering clear voice conferencing with no distractions
"As a VoIP service provider, we are excited to be able to offer an affordable conference phone with great voice quality to our customers," said John Real, vice president of the Colorado Region for Zayo Enterprise Networks. "With its advanced features at a breakthrough price, the SoundStation IP 5000 is sure to be a hit with our new and existing customers."
'With the introduction of this groundbreaking HD Voice conference phone, customers can now experience high quality, productive conference calls in their private offices and small meeting rooms at an affordable price," said Jim Kruger, Polycom vice president of Solutions Product Marketing. "Our customers can leverage their VoIP investment for easier deployment and configuration, as well as interoperability with the largest number of IP PBXs and hosted IP services in the industry."
Pricing & Availability:
The Polycom SoundStation IP 5000 conference phone is available through certified Polycom reseller partners at an MSRP of €439/$599. It is expected to begin shipping in April throughout North America and Europe, and in other select countries worldwide.
Supporting Links:
•Polycom SoundStation Conference Phones
•The Polycom Conference Phone Product Finder
•Top 10 Conference Phone Etiquette Tips
•Follow Polycom on Twitter and Subscribe to Polycom News RSS
Tags / Keywords:
Polycom, SoundStation, voice over IP, VoIP, conference phone, conference call, collaboration, telecommunications, audio conferencing, audio conference, VoiceStation
About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Polycom's integration efforts with its partners supports Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing an open and interoperable collaboration solution that gives customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration solutions as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit http://www.polycom.eu for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 23 Mar 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communication solutions, today announced the Polycom SoundStation® IP 5000 conference phone. The SoundStation IP 5000 features Polycom HD Voice™ and offers robust SIP-based VoIP interoperability at a price that is well within reach of organisations of all sizes. Designed specifically for the needs of private offices and small meeting rooms, the voice quality of the SoundStation IP 5000 far surpasses that of traditional desktop speaker phones.
"Polycom is an innovative company and continues to lead the conference phone market with more than 80 percent market share," said Paul Waadevig, principal consultant, Unified Communications, Frost & Sullivan. "The SoundStation IP 5000 rounds out the company's high-quality conference phone portfolio and fills a gap in the market by providing a high-quality conferencing solution for private offices and smaller-sized conference rooms."
As the conference phone market leader and provider of conference phones for the world's leading unified communications (UC) providers, Polycom is the most recognised brand in conference rooms worldwide. With the introduction of the SoundStation IP 5000, Polycom redefines what businesses can expect from VoIP conferencing endpoints in terms of price and performance. The small footprint of the SoundStation IP 5000 makes it ideal for small conference rooms and private offices. Leveraging the Polycom Open Collaboration Network (POCN) strategy, the SoundStation IP conference phone family delivers a best-in-class collaboration experience that enables businesses to leverage existing UC investments as well as tightly integrated, end-to-end, standards-based solutions that deliver an unrivaled communications experience.
High Quality Conferencing with Immediate ROI
"We have been using Polycom SoundStation IP conference phones in our larger conference rooms, and their clarity and ease of use have delivered tangible benefits during our conference calls," said Michael Smith of Maricopa Property Development. "The SoundStation IP 5000 is a great fit for our smaller meeting rooms and private offices. It offers the great voice quality I expect from Polycom at a price that is affordable, and being able to conduct high-quality conference calls from our offices and other smaller rooms is improving our productivity."
"We traditionally relied on desktop speaker phones for conference calls, because we felt that while the sound quality and microphone pickup was superior on high-performance conference phones, they were cost-prohibitive for a business of our size," said Darren Loher, chief architect of Envysion. "The SoundStation IP 5000 breaks down barriers in terms of price and performance. It's affordable, and it also delivers the amazing acoustic quality for which Polycom conference phones are known. It is already making our internal and customer meetings more productive."
Features & Benefits
•Polycom HD Voice technology for crystal-clear calls that sound as natural as being there
•Patented Polycom Acoustic Clarity™ technology – delivering the best IP conference phone experience without compromise
•Small footprint fits easily on desk or small table
•Robust VoIP interoperability – Compatible with a broad array of SIP call platforms to maximise voice quality and feature availability while simplifying management and administration
•High-resolution display – enables robust call information and multi-language support
•Interference resistance from mobile phones and other wireless devices while delivering clear voice conferencing with no distractions
"As a VoIP service provider, we are excited to be able to offer an affordable conference phone with great voice quality to our customers," said John Real, vice president of the Colorado Region for Zayo Enterprise Networks. "With its advanced features at a breakthrough price, the SoundStation IP 5000 is sure to be a hit with our new and existing customers."
'With the introduction of this groundbreaking HD Voice conference phone, customers can now experience high quality, productive conference calls in their private offices and small meeting rooms at an affordable price," said Jim Kruger, Polycom vice president of Solutions Product Marketing. "Our customers can leverage their VoIP investment for easier deployment and configuration, as well as interoperability with the largest number of IP PBXs and hosted IP services in the industry."
Pricing & Availability:
The Polycom SoundStation IP 5000 conference phone is available through certified Polycom reseller partners at an MSRP of €439/$599. It is expected to begin shipping in April throughout North America and Europe, and in other select countries worldwide.
Supporting Links:
•Polycom SoundStation Conference Phones
•The Polycom Conference Phone Product Finder
•Top 10 Conference Phone Etiquette Tips
•Follow Polycom on Twitter and Subscribe to Polycom News RSS
Tags / Keywords:
Polycom, SoundStation, voice over IP, VoIP, conference phone, conference call, collaboration, telecommunications, audio conferencing, audio conference, VoiceStation
About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Polycom's integration efforts with its partners supports Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing an open and interoperable collaboration solution that gives customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration solutions as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit http://www.polycom.eu for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Announcing New SoundStation IP 5000 Conference Phone
Overview
Polycom is pleased to announce the new SoundStation IP 5000 conference phone. Designed for smaller conference rooms and executive offices, it features a small footprint and new, modern design at a breakthrough price.
This new product is being publicly announced on March 23, 2010, and this information is to remain confidential until that date.
Polycom HD Voice for Crystal-Clear Interactive Conversations
The SoundStation IP 5000 features Polycom HD Voice technology, boosting productivity and reducing listener fatigue by turning ordinary conference calls into crystal-clear interactive conversations. It delivers high-fidelity audio, capturing both the deeper lows and higher frequencies of the human voice for conference calls that sound as natural as being there.
Advanced Audio Performance
For all calls, the SoundStation IP 5000 conference phone delivers advanced audio performance that is designed for executive offices and smaller conference rooms with up to 6 participants. From full-duplex technology that eliminates distracting drop-outs to the latest echo cancellation advancements, only Polycom can deliver a conference phone experience with no compromises. Conference calls are made more productive and efficient by three sensitive microphones with 360° coverage that allow users to speak in a normal voice and be heard clearly from up to 7 feet away. The phone also features technology that resists interference from mobile phones and other wireless devices, delivering clear communications without distractions.
Advanced IP Functionality
It shares the same SIP phone software with Polycom’s award-winning SoundPoint IP products – the most comprehensive, reliable and feature-rich SIP products in the industry, featuring proven interoperability with more IP PBX and hosted solutions than any other IP phones. Plus, the SoundStation IP 5000 includes integrated Power over Ethernet (PoE) and a high-resolution backlit display for vital call information and multi-language support.
Service Overview
Support services are available for the SoundStation IP 5000. Polycom’s high value support contracts can provide your customers with software upgrades, advanced exchange hardware replacement, and telephone technical support. Polycom branded maintenance is available for end user customers with at least 500 Polycom SoundPoint IP and SoundStation IP units deployed, while Partner branded maintenance contracts can be purchased at any quantity. Support pricing for Polycom’s SoundStation IP Conference Phones can be found at the end of this bulletin. Contact your Polycom service sales representative for more information.
Availability & Ordering Information
The SoundStation IP 5000 is now available for order, and is expected to begin shipping April 1, 2010.
Please note, the conference phone supports Power over Ethernet (PoE), and does not ship with an AC Power Kit. Customers who need to connect the device to AC power should also order the separate SoundStation IP 5000 AC Power Kit accessory.
Polycom is pleased to announce the new SoundStation IP 5000 conference phone. Designed for smaller conference rooms and executive offices, it features a small footprint and new, modern design at a breakthrough price.
This new product is being publicly announced on March 23, 2010, and this information is to remain confidential until that date.
Polycom HD Voice for Crystal-Clear Interactive Conversations
The SoundStation IP 5000 features Polycom HD Voice technology, boosting productivity and reducing listener fatigue by turning ordinary conference calls into crystal-clear interactive conversations. It delivers high-fidelity audio, capturing both the deeper lows and higher frequencies of the human voice for conference calls that sound as natural as being there.
Advanced Audio Performance
For all calls, the SoundStation IP 5000 conference phone delivers advanced audio performance that is designed for executive offices and smaller conference rooms with up to 6 participants. From full-duplex technology that eliminates distracting drop-outs to the latest echo cancellation advancements, only Polycom can deliver a conference phone experience with no compromises. Conference calls are made more productive and efficient by three sensitive microphones with 360° coverage that allow users to speak in a normal voice and be heard clearly from up to 7 feet away. The phone also features technology that resists interference from mobile phones and other wireless devices, delivering clear communications without distractions.
Advanced IP Functionality
It shares the same SIP phone software with Polycom’s award-winning SoundPoint IP products – the most comprehensive, reliable and feature-rich SIP products in the industry, featuring proven interoperability with more IP PBX and hosted solutions than any other IP phones. Plus, the SoundStation IP 5000 includes integrated Power over Ethernet (PoE) and a high-resolution backlit display for vital call information and multi-language support.
Service Overview
Support services are available for the SoundStation IP 5000. Polycom’s high value support contracts can provide your customers with software upgrades, advanced exchange hardware replacement, and telephone technical support. Polycom branded maintenance is available for end user customers with at least 500 Polycom SoundPoint IP and SoundStation IP units deployed, while Partner branded maintenance contracts can be purchased at any quantity. Support pricing for Polycom’s SoundStation IP Conference Phones can be found at the end of this bulletin. Contact your Polycom service sales representative for more information.
Availability & Ordering Information
The SoundStation IP 5000 is now available for order, and is expected to begin shipping April 1, 2010.
Please note, the conference phone supports Power over Ethernet (PoE), and does not ship with an AC Power Kit. Customers who need to connect the device to AC power should also order the separate SoundStation IP 5000 AC Power Kit accessory.
Polycom Broadens Portfolio of Seamlessly Integrated Voice and Video Solutions Optimised for Microsoft Unified Communications
Polycom Offers Enhanced Collaboration for Microsoft Communications Server "14" and Video Experience with Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Exchange Server
LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 22 Mar 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions, today announced it is expanding its relationship with Microsoft Corp. to jointly develop and deliver an extended portfolio of unified communications (UC) solutions that will enable more effective collaboration for its customers. Polycom is the only company that offers a comprehensive portfolio of integrated solutions spanning voice, video and application integration for Microsoft Office Communications Server R2 and Microsoft Communications Server "14," Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft SharePoint Server, and Microsoft Active Directory.
Expanded Portfolio of Solutions for Communications Server "14"
Polycom is introducing three new CX series phones. These new network-based IP phones include two handsets and the industry's first and only IP conference phone optimised for Microsoft Communicator "14." The new phones are also the first Microsoft-optimised phones to feature Polycom HD Voice™ technology and offer the most robust feature set of any endpoints designed for Communications Server "14". The latest additions to the Polycom CX series include:
•The Polycom CX500 IP phone – designed for use in public areas such as lobbies, break rooms or hallways
•The Polycom CX600 IP desktop phone – delivers rich presence and exceptional voice quality to a mid-range desktop phone
•The Polycom CX3000 IP conference phone – provides outstanding voice quality and rich presence for more productive and efficient conference calls and is the only conference phone currently optimised for Microsoft Communicator "14"
The CX series' native integration with Communications Server "14" simplifies phone deployment and management and provides an unparalleled, rich communication experience. Polycom phones feature a familiar Microsoft user experience, such as presence, contact lists, single sign-on capabilities, user-associated numbers (as opposed to device-specific numbers), and easy, click-to-call and click-to-conference capabilities.
"A unified communications infrastructure that includes Polycom and Microsoft solutions will give CDOT the reliability, flexibility and scalability we need to collaborate on demand throughout the state using voice, video and more," said Thom Rivera, enterprise architect for the Colorado Department of Transportation. "As we begin our journey to further integrate a Polycom experience with Microsoft Office Communications Server, we look forward to the possibility of synchronising our entire UC environment with capabilities such as scheduling, calendaring, IM and Active Directory."
"Polycom is widely regarded as one of the pioneers in collaboration technologies and is taking a leadership role in articulating the value of integrating into leading UC environments," said Matt Davis, director of Consumer and SMB Telecom Services, IDC. "Microsoft's user interface at the PC level with Polycom's user experience at the device level provide a flexible, scalable and intuitive UC solution that enables customers to leverage the latest technologies."
Expanded Integration with Microsoft Collaboration Tools
The new Polycom CX series phones enhance Polycom's broad portfolio of solutions for Microsoft environments which also include deep telepresence and video conferencing integration. Recent telepresence and video conferencing developments include:
•Polycom Conferencing for Microsoft Outlook – This breakthrough solution for Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook dramatically simplifies how users schedule and join video meetings with Polycom HDX room systems. By putting Polycom visual communication into the normal Outlook workflow, Polycom Conferencing for Outlook can reduce administrative support requirements and drive higher use of productivity-enhancing and cost-saving visual communication investments.
•Polycom Microsoft SharePoint Server Solution – Video-enabled SharePoint Server sites make it easy for users to publish, manage and view video media content securely, offering the capabilities of the Polycom Video Media Center™ (VMC™) 1000 within the SharePoint Server site. Users can leverage Polycom video endpoints to easily and cost-effectively create their own high-quality video content that can be automatically uploaded to the Polycom VMC 1000.
"Polycom delivers a broad portfolio of exceptional voice and video experiences in a Microsoft environment," said Kirk Gregersen, senior director of Communications Server Marketing at Microsoft. "Our customers are looking for flexible solutions that integrate seamlessly and are highly reliable. Polycom is working to expand its offering of fully integrated end-to-end solutions for Microsoft environments as well as develop next-generation communications that will result in higher productivity and enhanced collaboration for businesses around the globe."
"We continue to deliver on the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy by bringing to market the industry's broadest solutions portfolio that integrates with the market-leading UC solutions," said Jim Kruger, Polycom vice president Solution Product Marketing. "Microsoft is clearly a leader in delivering Unified Communications. Our expanded partnership will benefit our customers by allowing them to leverage their existing UC environments and protect their long-term investments in technologies such as Communications Server, Exchange Server, Outlook and other key Microsoft business applications."
Polycom offers the most comprehensive voice and video collaboration solutions for Microsoft Unified Communications environments, including a highly scalable infrastructure platform for enabling reliable, broad-scale video deployments across organisations; industry-leading telepresence, HD video conferencing and desktop video collaboration systems that enable people to work more effectively across distances; integrated recording and streaming for capturing and sharing conferences and video content, allowing teams to use real-time communication to create video assets for more effective communication; and a complete line of VoIP phones designed specifically to leverage the presence-based contact capabilities of Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to simplify everyday communications.
Availability:
The enhanced Polycom integration with Exchange Server, Outlook and SharePoint Server are planned for availability in the second quarter of 2010. The new Polycom CX IP phones are scheduled for release when Communications Server "14" becomes available.
About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Polycom's integration efforts with its partners like Microsoft support Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing an open and interoperable collaboration solution that gives customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 22 Mar 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions, today announced it is expanding its relationship with Microsoft Corp. to jointly develop and deliver an extended portfolio of unified communications (UC) solutions that will enable more effective collaboration for its customers. Polycom is the only company that offers a comprehensive portfolio of integrated solutions spanning voice, video and application integration for Microsoft Office Communications Server R2 and Microsoft Communications Server "14," Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft SharePoint Server, and Microsoft Active Directory.
Expanded Portfolio of Solutions for Communications Server "14"
Polycom is introducing three new CX series phones. These new network-based IP phones include two handsets and the industry's first and only IP conference phone optimised for Microsoft Communicator "14." The new phones are also the first Microsoft-optimised phones to feature Polycom HD Voice™ technology and offer the most robust feature set of any endpoints designed for Communications Server "14". The latest additions to the Polycom CX series include:
•The Polycom CX500 IP phone – designed for use in public areas such as lobbies, break rooms or hallways
•The Polycom CX600 IP desktop phone – delivers rich presence and exceptional voice quality to a mid-range desktop phone
•The Polycom CX3000 IP conference phone – provides outstanding voice quality and rich presence for more productive and efficient conference calls and is the only conference phone currently optimised for Microsoft Communicator "14"
The CX series' native integration with Communications Server "14" simplifies phone deployment and management and provides an unparalleled, rich communication experience. Polycom phones feature a familiar Microsoft user experience, such as presence, contact lists, single sign-on capabilities, user-associated numbers (as opposed to device-specific numbers), and easy, click-to-call and click-to-conference capabilities.
"A unified communications infrastructure that includes Polycom and Microsoft solutions will give CDOT the reliability, flexibility and scalability we need to collaborate on demand throughout the state using voice, video and more," said Thom Rivera, enterprise architect for the Colorado Department of Transportation. "As we begin our journey to further integrate a Polycom experience with Microsoft Office Communications Server, we look forward to the possibility of synchronising our entire UC environment with capabilities such as scheduling, calendaring, IM and Active Directory."
"Polycom is widely regarded as one of the pioneers in collaboration technologies and is taking a leadership role in articulating the value of integrating into leading UC environments," said Matt Davis, director of Consumer and SMB Telecom Services, IDC. "Microsoft's user interface at the PC level with Polycom's user experience at the device level provide a flexible, scalable and intuitive UC solution that enables customers to leverage the latest technologies."
Expanded Integration with Microsoft Collaboration Tools
The new Polycom CX series phones enhance Polycom's broad portfolio of solutions for Microsoft environments which also include deep telepresence and video conferencing integration. Recent telepresence and video conferencing developments include:
•Polycom Conferencing for Microsoft Outlook – This breakthrough solution for Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Outlook dramatically simplifies how users schedule and join video meetings with Polycom HDX room systems. By putting Polycom visual communication into the normal Outlook workflow, Polycom Conferencing for Outlook can reduce administrative support requirements and drive higher use of productivity-enhancing and cost-saving visual communication investments.
•Polycom Microsoft SharePoint Server Solution – Video-enabled SharePoint Server sites make it easy for users to publish, manage and view video media content securely, offering the capabilities of the Polycom Video Media Center™ (VMC™) 1000 within the SharePoint Server site. Users can leverage Polycom video endpoints to easily and cost-effectively create their own high-quality video content that can be automatically uploaded to the Polycom VMC 1000.
"Polycom delivers a broad portfolio of exceptional voice and video experiences in a Microsoft environment," said Kirk Gregersen, senior director of Communications Server Marketing at Microsoft. "Our customers are looking for flexible solutions that integrate seamlessly and are highly reliable. Polycom is working to expand its offering of fully integrated end-to-end solutions for Microsoft environments as well as develop next-generation communications that will result in higher productivity and enhanced collaboration for businesses around the globe."
"We continue to deliver on the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy by bringing to market the industry's broadest solutions portfolio that integrates with the market-leading UC solutions," said Jim Kruger, Polycom vice president Solution Product Marketing. "Microsoft is clearly a leader in delivering Unified Communications. Our expanded partnership will benefit our customers by allowing them to leverage their existing UC environments and protect their long-term investments in technologies such as Communications Server, Exchange Server, Outlook and other key Microsoft business applications."
Polycom offers the most comprehensive voice and video collaboration solutions for Microsoft Unified Communications environments, including a highly scalable infrastructure platform for enabling reliable, broad-scale video deployments across organisations; industry-leading telepresence, HD video conferencing and desktop video collaboration systems that enable people to work more effectively across distances; integrated recording and streaming for capturing and sharing conferences and video content, allowing teams to use real-time communication to create video assets for more effective communication; and a complete line of VoIP phones designed specifically to leverage the presence-based contact capabilities of Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to simplify everyday communications.
Availability:
The enhanced Polycom integration with Exchange Server, Outlook and SharePoint Server are planned for availability in the second quarter of 2010. The new Polycom CX IP phones are scheduled for release when Communications Server "14" becomes available.
About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Polycom's integration efforts with its partners like Microsoft support Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing an open and interoperable collaboration solution that gives customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
NET Delivers Valuable SIP Phone Options for Microsoft OCS
Expanded choice, lower cost, and IP phone investment protection
Network Equipment Technologies – NET – is adding even more value to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS). In addition to the enhancements now available with the NET VXe Series Voice Switches delivered last October, NET will formally announce its new SmartSIP module to support connection of a wide variety of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) phones to Microsoft OCS. Availability of SmartSIP is expected almost immediately, in April 2010.
The first hint of the new capability came with the acquisition of the core technology from Evangelyze Communications in February, as reported here on UCStrategies.com. Clearly, it did not take NET long to package the functions into the new NET SmartSIP module.
Here’s an early preview of the new offering. NET SmartSIP will provide three major values for any enterprise that deploys Microsoft OCS:
1. Connect existing or new SIP phones to OCS: The NET SmartSIP module will connect a wide range of SIP phones to Office Communications Server. Currently, only phones that use the Microsoft IP Protocol can connect to OCS; but with NET SmartSIP, customers are able to use SIP phones they already own and also have a broader range of choices when selecting phones for OCS uses.
The SmartSIP module also provides investment protection for those companies that already own SIP-based phones such as the Cisco 79xx series, Polycom SoundPoint IP series, Linksys SPA942, Aastra 6571/67, or X-Lite Soft Phone. NET has tested each of these SIP phone types to assure they will work properly with OCS, using the SmartSIP module.
NET plans to continue testing other brands and models of SIP phones supported by SmartSIP, but points out that many SIP phones currently in the market are likely to work with SmartSIP, even without NET testing and certification.
2. Integrate SIP phones with Microsoft OCS features: The SmartSIP software links the SIP phones to OCS to provide important features. For example, with SmartSIP the OCS users will see the SIP phone status in OCS presence indications and will know if the SIP phone user is on a call before even starting an IM session or attempting to call them.
Of course, SmartSIP supports all the major telephony functions on the SIP phones including: Call Hold; Call Retrieve; Call Waiting; Call Transfer; Call Forwarding – Busy, No answer, Unconditional; and Message Waiting Indicator. In addition, SmartSIP provides calling party name identification through Active Directory lookup.
3. Automatic Provisioning for reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): SmartSIP provides a very easy and convenient provisioning module through which each SIP phone can be automatically linked to any user’s Active Directory entry and OCS account simply by association of the SIP phone’s unique MAC address. Each phone is entered only once in the master inventory table and from that point on, the SIP phone will automatically register when it is plugged into the network and will be associated with the user and extension defined in Active Directory and OCS.
All of this functionality is delivered by the SmartSIP software module, which can run in any of three configurations. For smaller businesses, the SmartSIP module can reside on the same Windows Server as the OCS Mediation Server role. For mid-sized operations, the SmartSIP module can run on an NET Tenor Hybrid gateway. For large enterprises, unlimited scale is available by running SmartSIP module(s) on standalone 64-bit servers using Windows Server 2003 or 2008.
SmartSIP is expected to be licensed via a server license for the SmartSIP module, plus a quantity-based license for each phone in the list price range of $30 per phone. An economical support agreement is also available, if desired.
The bottom line on this upcoming announcement is pretty compelling, since it expands customer choices, lowers customer costs, and protects customer investments – always good things. Early on, Microsoft arranged for partners to develop a number of special-purpose voice and video terminals and devices to complement the OCS software. Now, NET is expanding that range of choices by attaching SIP phones that look and act like traditional desk phones, but benefit from the functionality of OCS. The fact that these SIP phones have very attractive price points (or are already owned) and that SmartSIP streamlines the administration and device management is just icing on the cake.
by Marty Parker,
Network Equipment Technologies – NET – is adding even more value to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS). In addition to the enhancements now available with the NET VXe Series Voice Switches delivered last October, NET will formally announce its new SmartSIP module to support connection of a wide variety of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) phones to Microsoft OCS. Availability of SmartSIP is expected almost immediately, in April 2010.
The first hint of the new capability came with the acquisition of the core technology from Evangelyze Communications in February, as reported here on UCStrategies.com. Clearly, it did not take NET long to package the functions into the new NET SmartSIP module.
Here’s an early preview of the new offering. NET SmartSIP will provide three major values for any enterprise that deploys Microsoft OCS:
1. Connect existing or new SIP phones to OCS: The NET SmartSIP module will connect a wide range of SIP phones to Office Communications Server. Currently, only phones that use the Microsoft IP Protocol can connect to OCS; but with NET SmartSIP, customers are able to use SIP phones they already own and also have a broader range of choices when selecting phones for OCS uses.
The SmartSIP module also provides investment protection for those companies that already own SIP-based phones such as the Cisco 79xx series, Polycom SoundPoint IP series, Linksys SPA942, Aastra 6571/67, or X-Lite Soft Phone. NET has tested each of these SIP phone types to assure they will work properly with OCS, using the SmartSIP module.
NET plans to continue testing other brands and models of SIP phones supported by SmartSIP, but points out that many SIP phones currently in the market are likely to work with SmartSIP, even without NET testing and certification.
2. Integrate SIP phones with Microsoft OCS features: The SmartSIP software links the SIP phones to OCS to provide important features. For example, with SmartSIP the OCS users will see the SIP phone status in OCS presence indications and will know if the SIP phone user is on a call before even starting an IM session or attempting to call them.
Of course, SmartSIP supports all the major telephony functions on the SIP phones including: Call Hold; Call Retrieve; Call Waiting; Call Transfer; Call Forwarding – Busy, No answer, Unconditional; and Message Waiting Indicator. In addition, SmartSIP provides calling party name identification through Active Directory lookup.
3. Automatic Provisioning for reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): SmartSIP provides a very easy and convenient provisioning module through which each SIP phone can be automatically linked to any user’s Active Directory entry and OCS account simply by association of the SIP phone’s unique MAC address. Each phone is entered only once in the master inventory table and from that point on, the SIP phone will automatically register when it is plugged into the network and will be associated with the user and extension defined in Active Directory and OCS.
All of this functionality is delivered by the SmartSIP software module, which can run in any of three configurations. For smaller businesses, the SmartSIP module can reside on the same Windows Server as the OCS Mediation Server role. For mid-sized operations, the SmartSIP module can run on an NET Tenor Hybrid gateway. For large enterprises, unlimited scale is available by running SmartSIP module(s) on standalone 64-bit servers using Windows Server 2003 or 2008.
SmartSIP is expected to be licensed via a server license for the SmartSIP module, plus a quantity-based license for each phone in the list price range of $30 per phone. An economical support agreement is also available, if desired.
The bottom line on this upcoming announcement is pretty compelling, since it expands customer choices, lowers customer costs, and protects customer investments – always good things. Early on, Microsoft arranged for partners to develop a number of special-purpose voice and video terminals and devices to complement the OCS software. Now, NET is expanding that range of choices by attaching SIP phones that look and act like traditional desk phones, but benefit from the functionality of OCS. The fact that these SIP phones have very attractive price points (or are already owned) and that SmartSIP streamlines the administration and device management is just icing on the cake.
by Marty Parker,
Monday, 15 March 2010
Comdasys and TELES deliver hosted mobile UC solution
TELES partners with Comdasys to combine FMC solution with Class 5 application for enterprises and service providers.
Berlin and Munich,, March 04, 2010
TELES, the Berlin based Next Generation Networks and Access Gateway vendor, has sealed a technology partnership with Comdasys, the leading provider of Mobile Unified Communications Solutions to extend full softswitch functionality to mobile users of TELES C5 service provider and enterprise solution.
Comdasys' award winning MC Solution is the industry's most comprehensive fixed mobile convergence solution. It has been designed for enterprises to help them deploy and mobilize voice and UC applications. This increases productivity while at the same time reducing mobile communications costs. The Comdasys MC Solution now supports VoIP and UC features on Symbian, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android based smart phones.
Combined with the Comdasys solution, TELES advanced and feature-rich Class 5 NGN softswitch provides carriers with a unique and compelling solution for their enterprise customers by expanding the services offered to include a fully hosted mobile UC solution with hosted PBX functionality.
TELES Product Marketing Director, Thomas Haydn, is convinced that the addition of Comdasys’ FMC application is in touch with service provider and enterprise customer requirements: “Comdasys have designed an excellent solution for enabling fixed-mobile-convergence for all established smart phones on our Class 5 softswitch. Mobile users will gain a completely new spectrum of functionality including PBX features, mobile least cost routing, and a seamless handover to wireless networks. All of this adds up to a very comfortable and convenient unified communications experience for the mobile user regardless of location and network.”
Comdasys General Manager Marco Genoni also welcomes the collaboration: “TELES Class 5 solution is the perfect platform for our fixed mobile and unified communications solution and we are very pleased to support TELES efforts to provide enterprise customers with increased functionality and lower costs.”
Berlin and Munich,, March 04, 2010
TELES, the Berlin based Next Generation Networks and Access Gateway vendor, has sealed a technology partnership with Comdasys, the leading provider of Mobile Unified Communications Solutions to extend full softswitch functionality to mobile users of TELES C5 service provider and enterprise solution.
Comdasys' award winning MC Solution is the industry's most comprehensive fixed mobile convergence solution. It has been designed for enterprises to help them deploy and mobilize voice and UC applications. This increases productivity while at the same time reducing mobile communications costs. The Comdasys MC Solution now supports VoIP and UC features on Symbian, iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android based smart phones.
Combined with the Comdasys solution, TELES advanced and feature-rich Class 5 NGN softswitch provides carriers with a unique and compelling solution for their enterprise customers by expanding the services offered to include a fully hosted mobile UC solution with hosted PBX functionality.
TELES Product Marketing Director, Thomas Haydn, is convinced that the addition of Comdasys’ FMC application is in touch with service provider and enterprise customer requirements: “Comdasys have designed an excellent solution for enabling fixed-mobile-convergence for all established smart phones on our Class 5 softswitch. Mobile users will gain a completely new spectrum of functionality including PBX features, mobile least cost routing, and a seamless handover to wireless networks. All of this adds up to a very comfortable and convenient unified communications experience for the mobile user regardless of location and network.”
Comdasys General Manager Marco Genoni also welcomes the collaboration: “TELES Class 5 solution is the perfect platform for our fixed mobile and unified communications solution and we are very pleased to support TELES efforts to provide enterprise customers with increased functionality and lower costs.”
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Avaya and Polycom to Jointly Develop and Market Video and Voice Communications Systems
Agreement reflects companies' shared commitment to open, standards-based unified communications
LONDON/GUILDFORD/SLOUGH, UK - 09 Mar 2010 : Avaya and Polycom, Inc. [Nasdaq: PLCM], are expanding their existing relationship and will jointly develop and market integrated video, voice and collaboration solutions. The companies plan to deliver fully integrated, end-to-end unified communications (UC) solutions that use the Avaya Aura™ Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based platform and the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy.
The planned joint solutions will provide Polycom's full range of voice and video systems integrated with Avaya Aura delivering real-time collaboration to customers. Avaya Aura will enable companies to administer, schedule and manage the joint solutions in a single, consistent manner, and control bandwidth to support a superior user experience and optimal deployment of network resources.
The expanded partnership supports Avaya Aura as a fundamental control point for managing and delivering communications across organisations.
"Companies are the real winners in the unified communications market because UC can save time, money and other valuable resources," said Roopam Jain, principal analyst, Frost & Sullivan. "As more and more companies flesh out and execute on their UC strategies, interoperability and standards such as SIP are critical."
Jain added, "Because every UC deployment has unique requirements, standards-based solutions are key. It's encouraging to see Avaya and Polycom team to enable this type of open collaboration and feature-rich, purpose-built solutions."
"The Avaya Aura platform enables our customers to integrate, manage and use communications in new ways to improve business performance," said Alan Baratz, senior vice president and president, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya. "By adopting the Avaya Aura platform, Polycom products will benefit from the seamless interoperability it offers. Together we'll offer customers a choice of collaboration solutions with the flexibility and functionality they require."
"We continue to deliver on the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy, and Avaya is leading the charge in adopting open standards as the core for its business communications platform," said Andy Miller, Polycom executive vice president of Global Field Operations. "Avaya is a significant global presence across multiple industries. These existing relationships give us an excellent opportunity to introduce customers to our new UC solutions."
The Avaya Aura platform simplifies existing voice and video communications architectures, including the ability to integrate communications across multi-vendor networks, to deliver business communications with more capabilities, fewer costs and less complexity. The combined Avaya and Polycom offers will support customers who want to maintain their existing communications investments as they adopt new capabilities and solutions.
About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information please visit www.avaya.com. For more information on the Avaya DevConnect program, visit www.avaya.com/devconnect.
About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Polycom's integration efforts with Avaya support Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing an open and interoperable collaboration solution that gives customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with Avaya and other leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions anda visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. Avaya is a registered trademark of Avaya Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
LONDON/GUILDFORD/SLOUGH, UK - 09 Mar 2010 : Avaya and Polycom, Inc. [Nasdaq: PLCM], are expanding their existing relationship and will jointly develop and market integrated video, voice and collaboration solutions. The companies plan to deliver fully integrated, end-to-end unified communications (UC) solutions that use the Avaya Aura™ Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based platform and the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy.
The planned joint solutions will provide Polycom's full range of voice and video systems integrated with Avaya Aura delivering real-time collaboration to customers. Avaya Aura will enable companies to administer, schedule and manage the joint solutions in a single, consistent manner, and control bandwidth to support a superior user experience and optimal deployment of network resources.
The expanded partnership supports Avaya Aura as a fundamental control point for managing and delivering communications across organisations.
"Companies are the real winners in the unified communications market because UC can save time, money and other valuable resources," said Roopam Jain, principal analyst, Frost & Sullivan. "As more and more companies flesh out and execute on their UC strategies, interoperability and standards such as SIP are critical."
Jain added, "Because every UC deployment has unique requirements, standards-based solutions are key. It's encouraging to see Avaya and Polycom team to enable this type of open collaboration and feature-rich, purpose-built solutions."
"The Avaya Aura platform enables our customers to integrate, manage and use communications in new ways to improve business performance," said Alan Baratz, senior vice president and president, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya. "By adopting the Avaya Aura platform, Polycom products will benefit from the seamless interoperability it offers. Together we'll offer customers a choice of collaboration solutions with the flexibility and functionality they require."
"We continue to deliver on the Polycom Open Collaboration Network strategy, and Avaya is leading the charge in adopting open standards as the core for its business communications platform," said Andy Miller, Polycom executive vice president of Global Field Operations. "Avaya is a significant global presence across multiple industries. These existing relationships give us an excellent opportunity to introduce customers to our new UC solutions."
The Avaya Aura platform simplifies existing voice and video communications architectures, including the ability to integrate communications across multi-vendor networks, to deliver business communications with more capabilities, fewer costs and less complexity. The combined Avaya and Polycom offers will support customers who want to maintain their existing communications investments as they adopt new capabilities and solutions.
About Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. The company provides unified communications, contact centers, and related services directly and through its channel partners to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness. For more information please visit www.avaya.com. For more information on the Avaya DevConnect program, visit www.avaya.com/devconnect.
About the Polycom Open Collaboration Network
Polycom's integration efforts with Avaya support Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing an open and interoperable collaboration solution that gives customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By working with Avaya and other leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as an integrated part of core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions anda visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. Avaya is a registered trademark of Avaya Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Thursday, 4 March 2010
Come check out Digium at UC 10 next week (10th and 11th) Olympia, London
DigiumAsterisk World London at UC EXPO is the conference that addresses "Everything Asterisk" for business users, resellers and executive decision-makers.
Come to DigiumAsterisk World to discover how Asterisk, the world’s most widely used open source telephony software, can save you money and empower you to create more flexible telephony solutions.
Asterisk, originally created and maintained by Digium, is the world’s leading open source telephony engine and tool kit. Offering flexibility unheard of in the world of proprietary communications, Asterisk empowers developers and integrators to create advanced communication solutions...for free. The first ever Asterisk event focused purely on Asterisk for business, the DigiumAsterisk World London is "Everything Asterisk" for the business user, reseller, and executive decision maker.
DigiumAsterisk World London is focused on Asterisk business users and potential users who are interested in getting more in depth experience with Asterisk, and who also want to learn more from Asterisk adopters and see what's happening in the Asterisk market. DigiumAsterisk World London at UC Expo is a unified communications and collaboration event, where decision makers will learn they have a cost effective and powerful choice.
DigiumAsterisk World gives these audiences the opportunity to experience the global reach of Asterisk and the world class solutions which can solve traditional problems with new technologies and techniques.
Please join the excitement in London, 10-11 March 2010 and meet several open source-based Asterisk solutions providers, the Digium team, successful users, resellers and integrators and see many demonstrations of feature rich and cost savings solutions! To register, click here.
Come to DigiumAsterisk World to discover how Asterisk, the world’s most widely used open source telephony software, can save you money and empower you to create more flexible telephony solutions.
Asterisk, originally created and maintained by Digium, is the world’s leading open source telephony engine and tool kit. Offering flexibility unheard of in the world of proprietary communications, Asterisk empowers developers and integrators to create advanced communication solutions...for free. The first ever Asterisk event focused purely on Asterisk for business, the DigiumAsterisk World London is "Everything Asterisk" for the business user, reseller, and executive decision maker.
DigiumAsterisk World London is focused on Asterisk business users and potential users who are interested in getting more in depth experience with Asterisk, and who also want to learn more from Asterisk adopters and see what's happening in the Asterisk market. DigiumAsterisk World London at UC Expo is a unified communications and collaboration event, where decision makers will learn they have a cost effective and powerful choice.
DigiumAsterisk World gives these audiences the opportunity to experience the global reach of Asterisk and the world class solutions which can solve traditional problems with new technologies and techniques.
Please join the excitement in London, 10-11 March 2010 and meet several open source-based Asterisk solutions providers, the Digium team, successful users, resellers and integrators and see many demonstrations of feature rich and cost savings solutions! To register, click here.
Monday, 1 March 2010
Comdasys Enhances its Mobile Convergence Solution Offering with VoIP over WiFi for RIM BlackBerry Smartphones
Comdasys reaches out to Enterprises using BlackBerry Smartphones
Comdasys AG, the leading provider of reliable, secure and scalable Fixed Mobile Communications solution for enterprises and service providers, today announced that its award winning MC Solution now also supports WiFi call routing for BlackBerry Smartphones. The newly released BlackBerry MC Client will be generally available as of December 1, 2009.
Comdasys' award winning MC Solution is the industry's most comprehensive fixed mobile and Unified Communications solution. It has been designed for enterprises to help them deploy and mobilize voice and UC applications. This increases productivity while at the same time reducing mobile communications costs. The Comdasys MC Solution now supports VoIP and UC features on Symbian, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android based smart phones.
"With the release of our newest MC Client we can now provide the advantages of VoIP to enterprise and business users using RIM BlackBerry Smartphones", said Martin Bitzinger, CTO of Comdasys. "The addition of VoIP to our proven Blackberry MC Client further enhances our market leading MC Client offering that now supports mobile handsets of the major smart phone operating systems.", he added.
With this new MC Client supporting VoIP and UC features for RIM BlackBerry smart phones, Comdasys' addressable market is further widened especially in North America and Europe due to the high popularity of the RIM BlackBerry smart phones. In fact, users of RIM BlackBerry can now take full advantage of cost savings and enhanced communications efficiency that the MC Solution provides.
Comdasys' MC Solution has earned great market recognition not only for the number of mobile devices and features supported but also for its reliability and scalability from a dozen to tens of thousands users. The Comdasys MC Solution has two components, the MC Controller and the MC Client. The MC Controller supports a broad range of PBX features through seamless subscriber interface integration. Comdasys sells the MC Controller in three models scaling from 50 to 1500 users. For more users Comdasys licenses the MC Controller software for integration into blade servers and thus scaling to service provider grade. Comdasys delivers the required tools for easy deployment and remote configuration of the MC Client. These tools are part of the MC Controller offering. The MC Client is a software module that is integrated in mobile handsets. It provides an intuitive and homogeneous user Interface for across basebands such as WIFI, Cellular and GPRS/UMTS for rich IP-PBX feature access.
Comdasys AG, the leading provider of reliable, secure and scalable Fixed Mobile Communications solution for enterprises and service providers, today announced that its award winning MC Solution now also supports WiFi call routing for BlackBerry Smartphones. The newly released BlackBerry MC Client will be generally available as of December 1, 2009.
Comdasys' award winning MC Solution is the industry's most comprehensive fixed mobile and Unified Communications solution. It has been designed for enterprises to help them deploy and mobilize voice and UC applications. This increases productivity while at the same time reducing mobile communications costs. The Comdasys MC Solution now supports VoIP and UC features on Symbian, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android based smart phones.
"With the release of our newest MC Client we can now provide the advantages of VoIP to enterprise and business users using RIM BlackBerry Smartphones", said Martin Bitzinger, CTO of Comdasys. "The addition of VoIP to our proven Blackberry MC Client further enhances our market leading MC Client offering that now supports mobile handsets of the major smart phone operating systems.", he added.
With this new MC Client supporting VoIP and UC features for RIM BlackBerry smart phones, Comdasys' addressable market is further widened especially in North America and Europe due to the high popularity of the RIM BlackBerry smart phones. In fact, users of RIM BlackBerry can now take full advantage of cost savings and enhanced communications efficiency that the MC Solution provides.
Comdasys' MC Solution has earned great market recognition not only for the number of mobile devices and features supported but also for its reliability and scalability from a dozen to tens of thousands users. The Comdasys MC Solution has two components, the MC Controller and the MC Client. The MC Controller supports a broad range of PBX features through seamless subscriber interface integration. Comdasys sells the MC Controller in three models scaling from 50 to 1500 users. For more users Comdasys licenses the MC Controller software for integration into blade servers and thus scaling to service provider grade. Comdasys delivers the required tools for easy deployment and remote configuration of the MC Client. These tools are part of the MC Controller offering. The MC Client is a software module that is integrated in mobile handsets. It provides an intuitive and homogeneous user Interface for across basebands such as WIFI, Cellular and GPRS/UMTS for rich IP-PBX feature access.
Thursday, 25 February 2010
Network Equipment Technologies Acquires "SmartSIP" Product Line From Evangelyze Communications
Addition of SmartSIP Extends NET's Solution Set for Microsoft Unified Communications
FREMONT, CA--(Marketwire - February 4, 2010) - Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. ("NET") (NASDAQ: NWK), a leader in network and voice-over-IP solutions, and Evangelyze Communications ("EC"), a Microsoft Unified Communications Voice Specialized Partner, announced today that NET has acquired EC's SmartSIP product line and customer base.
The SmartSIP product line includes both the SmartSIP and SmartVoIP products. SmartSIP enables UC presence and interoperability for SIP phones while providing integration for Microsoft's Office Communications Server with IP-PBXs and integration for ITSP voice providers. SmartVoIP, a 2008 Internet Telephony Product of the Year, is an extension of SmartSIP that provides branch office integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server.
"We are very excited about adding new applications to our UC product portfolio. SmartSIP and SmartVoIP will provide our customers with additional solutions that complement the capabilities of Microsoft's Office Communication Server and facilitate the adoption of unified communications," said Talbot Harty, Chief Development Officer, NET.
"Evangelyze Communications' focus is in providing the most innovative Unified Communications and Collaboration products in the marketplace," said Joe Schurman, Founder and CEO of Evangelyze Communications. "Our SmartSuite portfolio of products have been designed through our shared vision with Microsoft for CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processes) which differentiate Microsoft from other competitors in the telecommunications and Unified Communications marketplace. We believe that SmartSIP fits perfectly with NET's vision and solutions for the unified communications market, while providing our customers with the security and stability that they need. NET's deep UC expertise, global reach, and complementary technology make this a great deal for our customers."
SmartSIP product development and support will be led by NET's Eatontown, NJ engineering team, which came with the Company's acquisition of Quintum Technologies.
About Network Equipment Technologies:
Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. (NET) provides network and VoIP solutions to enterprises and government agencies that seek to reduce the cost to deploy next generation unified and secure communications applications. For a quarter of a century, NET has delivered solutions for multi-service networks requiring high degrees of versatility, security and performance. Today, the company's broad family of products enables interoperability and integration with existing networks for migration to secure IP-based communications. Broadening NET's voice solutions, Quintum Technologies, now a part of NET, is a VoIP innovator whose applications bring the reliability and clarity of public telephone networks to Internet telephony and unified communications. NET is headquartered in Fremont, CA and has 14 offices worldwide including the US, the UK, France, the Middle East, China, Japan, Australia, and Latin America. The company sells its solutions through a direct sales force and an international network of resellers and distributors.
For more information, visit http://www.net.com
About Evangelyze Communications
Evangelyze Communications (EC) is a global Unified Communications provider of customized voice and unified communications solutions. EC is a Gold Certified Microsoft Unified Communications partner specializing and certified in providing CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Process) applications and Voice Specialized infrastructure deployment and configuration services for the Microsoft Unified Communications platform. In addition, Evangelyze Communications provides UC&C (Unified Communications and Collaboration) solutions as part of the EC SmartSuite portfolio of products. EC is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices located in Seattle, WA and New York City, NY.
FREMONT, CA--(Marketwire - February 4, 2010) - Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. ("NET") (NASDAQ: NWK), a leader in network and voice-over-IP solutions, and Evangelyze Communications ("EC"), a Microsoft Unified Communications Voice Specialized Partner, announced today that NET has acquired EC's SmartSIP product line and customer base.
The SmartSIP product line includes both the SmartSIP and SmartVoIP products. SmartSIP enables UC presence and interoperability for SIP phones while providing integration for Microsoft's Office Communications Server with IP-PBXs and integration for ITSP voice providers. SmartVoIP, a 2008 Internet Telephony Product of the Year, is an extension of SmartSIP that provides branch office integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server.
"We are very excited about adding new applications to our UC product portfolio. SmartSIP and SmartVoIP will provide our customers with additional solutions that complement the capabilities of Microsoft's Office Communication Server and facilitate the adoption of unified communications," said Talbot Harty, Chief Development Officer, NET.
"Evangelyze Communications' focus is in providing the most innovative Unified Communications and Collaboration products in the marketplace," said Joe Schurman, Founder and CEO of Evangelyze Communications. "Our SmartSuite portfolio of products have been designed through our shared vision with Microsoft for CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processes) which differentiate Microsoft from other competitors in the telecommunications and Unified Communications marketplace. We believe that SmartSIP fits perfectly with NET's vision and solutions for the unified communications market, while providing our customers with the security and stability that they need. NET's deep UC expertise, global reach, and complementary technology make this a great deal for our customers."
SmartSIP product development and support will be led by NET's Eatontown, NJ engineering team, which came with the Company's acquisition of Quintum Technologies.
About Network Equipment Technologies:
Network Equipment Technologies, Inc. (NET) provides network and VoIP solutions to enterprises and government agencies that seek to reduce the cost to deploy next generation unified and secure communications applications. For a quarter of a century, NET has delivered solutions for multi-service networks requiring high degrees of versatility, security and performance. Today, the company's broad family of products enables interoperability and integration with existing networks for migration to secure IP-based communications. Broadening NET's voice solutions, Quintum Technologies, now a part of NET, is a VoIP innovator whose applications bring the reliability and clarity of public telephone networks to Internet telephony and unified communications. NET is headquartered in Fremont, CA and has 14 offices worldwide including the US, the UK, France, the Middle East, China, Japan, Australia, and Latin America. The company sells its solutions through a direct sales force and an international network of resellers and distributors.
For more information, visit http://www.net.com
About Evangelyze Communications
Evangelyze Communications (EC) is a global Unified Communications provider of customized voice and unified communications solutions. EC is a Gold Certified Microsoft Unified Communications partner specializing and certified in providing CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Process) applications and Voice Specialized infrastructure deployment and configuration services for the Microsoft Unified Communications platform. In addition, Evangelyze Communications provides UC&C (Unified Communications and Collaboration) solutions as part of the EC SmartSuite portfolio of products. EC is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices located in Seattle, WA and New York City, NY.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
VCOMM Named EMEA VoIP Distributor of the Year by Polycom
Polycom recognizes VCOMM for industry-leading performance in 2009
17February 2010 VCOMM, the specialist VoIP distributor, today announced it was named EMEA VoIP distributor Partner of the Year by Polycom, Inc., the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communications solutions. The award was given in conjunction with the 2010 TEAM Polycom, the company’s annual partner conference, and recognizes VCOMM for its outstanding sales performance and excellence in meeting customer solution, service and support needs.
“Even though the financial arena seemed to be in a downward spiral, VCOMM accepted a challenge proposed by Polycom to grow the existing revenue stream by a considerable amount over the next 12 months,” said Philip Jackson, Business Manager of VCOMM “Our success story in growing the Polycom Channel is not only due to the VCOMM team but also due to our Channel partners and Polycom’s effort, support and commitment. We at VCOMM appreciate all that our Partners and Polycom have done through out the year and look forward to all new challenges that are set forth.”
"This is an exciting time in the communications industry, and Polycom sits squarely in the middle of this ever-changing, rapidly growing market," said Glynn Jones, Polycom Vice President EMEA Voice Sales. "Our partners are absolutely critical to our success, and we’re proud to be represented by the best, most experienced partners in this industry. We’re also excited to recognize our top-performance partners for continued excellence in meeting customer needs."
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
About VCOMM
VCOMM is a value-added specialist distributor, providing IP Telephony products and wraparound services to the Service Provider and Reseller channel. VCOMM is a wholly subsidiary of Coms plc, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Visit www.vcomm.co.uk for more information and follow us on Twitter @Vcomm_UK's
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom “Triangles” logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom’s products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
17February 2010 VCOMM, the specialist VoIP distributor, today announced it was named EMEA VoIP distributor Partner of the Year by Polycom, Inc., the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communications solutions. The award was given in conjunction with the 2010 TEAM Polycom, the company’s annual partner conference, and recognizes VCOMM for its outstanding sales performance and excellence in meeting customer solution, service and support needs.
“Even though the financial arena seemed to be in a downward spiral, VCOMM accepted a challenge proposed by Polycom to grow the existing revenue stream by a considerable amount over the next 12 months,” said Philip Jackson, Business Manager of VCOMM “Our success story in growing the Polycom Channel is not only due to the VCOMM team but also due to our Channel partners and Polycom’s effort, support and commitment. We at VCOMM appreciate all that our Partners and Polycom have done through out the year and look forward to all new challenges that are set forth.”
"This is an exciting time in the communications industry, and Polycom sits squarely in the middle of this ever-changing, rapidly growing market," said Glynn Jones, Polycom Vice President EMEA Voice Sales. "Our partners are absolutely critical to our success, and we’re proud to be represented by the best, most experienced partners in this industry. We’re also excited to recognize our top-performance partners for continued excellence in meeting customer needs."
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
About VCOMM
VCOMM is a value-added specialist distributor, providing IP Telephony products and wraparound services to the Service Provider and Reseller channel. VCOMM is a wholly subsidiary of Coms plc, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Visit www.vcomm.co.uk for more information and follow us on Twitter @Vcomm_UK's
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom “Triangles” logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom’s products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Convergence Summit North
VCOMM will be demonstrating a live Microsoft OCS environment with two key vendor partners, Polycom and NET Quintum. Addition to this, we will be on hand to answer and assist with queries from resellers and integrators, who wish to partner with us in delivering this emerging and exciting platform.
Alongside the live demonstration, VCOMM will be showcasing Polycom's range of SIP and OCS Handsets, the conference phones including the new CX300, IP335 and IP5000. Quintum's range of feature-rich VoIP Gateways from the dual-port analogue devices through, to the carrier class, multi-E1 chassis-based solutions.
With Polycom and NET Quintum, their pedigree within the Microsoft OCS Unified Communications space is second to none; we believe they are leaders in their class.
Alongside the live demonstration, VCOMM will be showcasing Polycom's range of SIP and OCS Handsets, the conference phones including the new CX300, IP335 and IP5000. Quintum's range of feature-rich VoIP Gateways from the dual-port analogue devices through, to the carrier class, multi-E1 chassis-based solutions.
With Polycom and NET Quintum, their pedigree within the Microsoft OCS Unified Communications space is second to none; we believe they are leaders in their class.
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Conference audio - call waiting...
The more mobile the application, the more useful wireless is. In some cases conferencing dovetails into wireless intercom and into telephone and video link-ups, and this is where wireless solutions can provide a different dimension to the boardroom. One market leader is Polycom, a global solutions company in telepresence and video conferencing.
Glynn Jones is responsible for Polycom's voice products in the EMEA marketing region, from traditional conference phones to VoIP and wireless products. The SoundStation range of conference phones includes a wireless version ideally suited to architecturally sensitive environments, based on DECT: Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, the ETSI standard for digital mobile phones.
"It delivers a degree of portability," Jones explains, "for organisations that perhaps want one conference phone shared between several different rooms. It's standalone in the sense that you can plug the base station into any telecoms socket, but being DECT-compatible it is Generic Access Profile (GAP)-compliant. Any private branch exchange (PBX) within your facility with GAP capability to support DECT will directly support that conference phone as well."
The GAP standard defines how any conforming DECT Fixed Part, namely the base station, interoperates with any conforming DECT Portable Part, namely the handset, to provide basic telephony when attached to a 3.1kHz network. The aim is to enable both wireless connection and call control. A private branch exchange (PBX) caters for a specific business or office, as opposed to one that a telephone company operates for the general public or general commerce.
Glynn Jones is responsible for Polycom's voice products in the EMEA marketing region, from traditional conference phones to VoIP and wireless products. The SoundStation range of conference phones includes a wireless version ideally suited to architecturally sensitive environments, based on DECT: Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications, the ETSI standard for digital mobile phones.
"It delivers a degree of portability," Jones explains, "for organisations that perhaps want one conference phone shared between several different rooms. It's standalone in the sense that you can plug the base station into any telecoms socket, but being DECT-compatible it is Generic Access Profile (GAP)-compliant. Any private branch exchange (PBX) within your facility with GAP capability to support DECT will directly support that conference phone as well."
The GAP standard defines how any conforming DECT Fixed Part, namely the base station, interoperates with any conforming DECT Portable Part, namely the handset, to provide basic telephony when attached to a 3.1kHz network. The aim is to enable both wireless connection and call control. A private branch exchange (PBX) caters for a specific business or office, as opposed to one that a telephone company operates for the general public or general commerce.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Polycom Delivers Breakthrough Video Integration for Microsoft Unified Communications Environments
Polycom delivers industry-first capabilities in scheduling, user experience, management and enabling smart rooms for Microsoft UC environments
LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 09 Feb 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communication solutions, today announced an expansion of its integrated visual communication solutions for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange with breakthrough capabilities that make it easier for organisations to deploy, manage and use Polycom telepresence, high-definition (HD) video conferencing and desktop video collaboration within Microsoft unified communications (UC) environments.
Polycom offers the most comprehensive voice and video collaboration solutions for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, including a highly scalable infrastructure platform for enabling reliable, broad-scale video deployments across organisations; industry-leading telepresence, HD video conferencing and desktop video collaboration systems that enable people to work more effectively across distances; integrated recording and streaming for capturing and sharing conferences and video content, allowing teams to use real-time communication to create video assets; and a complete line of VoIP phones designed specifically to leverage the presence-based contact capabilities of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to simplify everyday communications.
"Polycom and Microsoft are aligned in making people more productive and helping organisations become more efficient and competitive through improved communication and collaboration," said Joe Sigrist, senior vice president and general manager of video solutions at Polycom. "Polycom's integrated solution for Microsoft unified communications environments puts powerful, productivity-enhancing telepresence, desktop video collaboration, multipoint calling, and video recording and streaming capabilities just one-click away - all within the familiar Microsoft applications that millions of people use every day. Polycom is accelerating its efforts with Polycom Open Collaboration Network (POCN) partners like Microsoft to deliver integrated unified communications and collaboration solutions that provide customers with open interoperability, flexibility and investment protection."
As part of its expanded offering for Microsoft UC environments, Polycom is introducing an innovative video scheduling solution for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook that will help organisations realise greater productivity gains and higher return on unified communication and collaboration investments by increasing the use of video collaboration and lowering operational costs.
Polycom Conferencing for Outlook – This breakthrough solution for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook ties productivity-enhancing and cost-saving visual communication capabilities directly into the normal Microsoft Outlook workflow for users. Users can now simply incorporate telepresence, unified voice/video conferences and desktop video collaboration into meetings and enable invited participants to join with a single click of the mouse or remote control. In addition, users can easily record video meetings and make the recordings available for on-demand playback for people that missed the meeting or as a public record – a requirement for some meetings in healthcare, government and legal industries. This capability can also be used to cost-effectively create HD video content such as training materials, company announcements, customer support videos, etc. by leveraging the Polycom video endpoints as recording capture stations, allowing customers to speed return on investment while driving consistent communications and information flow deeper into their organisations.
When a meeting organiser adds video to a scheduled meeting, Polycom Conferencing for Microsoft Outlook will automatically insert links and meeting room numbers within the meeting invitation allowing participants to easily join using a variety of video devices, including Polycom CMA Desktop™ video application, Microsoft Office Communicator, appliance-based desktop systems like the Polycom HDX 4000™, or room-based telepresence or video conferencing systems like the Polycom HDX 8000™ Series. The flexible Polycom infrastructure platform supports unified voice and video conferences allowing people to also join video-enabled meetings by phone. The meeting invitation can also include dial-in information for participants outside of the company, including necessary gatekeeper codes, simplifying inter-company visual collaboration.
The solution also enables conference "smart rooms" by displaying the Microsoft Outlook calendar and scheduled meetings on the room's display as provided by the connected Polycom HDX room or personal telepresence system. The display will also show reminders for upcoming meetings and allow conference participants to join a meeting simply by clicking a single "join now" button. If the Polycom HDX unit resides outside the corporate network, the required dial-in information can be displayed on the meeting details screen.
"Polycom Conferencing for Outlook is a real breakthrough in eliminating some of the key barriers to broader adoption of visual communication within organisations – ease of use and IT support requirements," said Sigrist. "It helps users easily schedule and join video calls using a variety of methods and automates the entire process from a resource standpoint, significantly reducing the support requirements for scheduling and initiating calls."
Polycom is also significantly enhancing its integrated solution for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 with enhanced network scalability and reliability, simplified management and provisioning, advanced security and improved support for remote workers and inter-company collaboration. New developments include:
* Extending scalable and reliable video networks – Polycom is extending the unrivaled scalability, reliability and redundancy benefits of the Polycom Distributed Media Application™ (DMA™) to Microsoft environments. The Polycom DMA is a unique network application that virtualises conferencing resources among multiple Polycom RMX conference bridges and intelligently routes calls. This network intelligence improves the efficiency, reliability and performance of video calls while making it easier and more cost-effective for organisations to deliver on-demand video conferencing services to employees and reducing IT administrative requirements. It also allows organisations to configure and update RMX bridges and add additional bridging resources as needed without impacting video services or resource availability.
* Polycom HDX endpoint provisioning – The Polycom Converged Management Application™ (CMA™), a highly scalable and redundant video network management, monitoring and provisioning solution, now allows administrators to provision and manage a large network of Polycom HDX systems in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 environments. This ensures seamless signaling and presence support allowing users to easily connect with their presence-based contacts and rooms using the Polycom HDX systems.
* Advanced security through SRTP media encryption – Polycom HDX systems now support SRTP, providing system-wide security including authentication, signaling and media encryption.
* Seamless exchange of presence information – Enhancements to the Polycom HDX user interface allow presence-enabled contacts, including contact groups, to be shared between Polycom HDX endpoints and Microsoft Office Communicator clients (in companion mode).
* Improved support for inter-company collaboration and remote workers – Polycom HDX and RMX systems will support Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE), a standardised NAT/Firewall traversal method for SIP clients, providing flexibility for SOHO workers to be able to communicate with teammates inside the corporate network, or for companies with federated Office Communications Servers to enable inter-company communications using Polycom HDX endpoints and Polycom RMX bridges.
Polycom's alliance and integration efforts with Microsoft support Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing open and interoperable collaboration solutions that give customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By developing and natively integrating with Microsoft and other leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as the integrated collaboration core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive, scalable solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
Availability:
The enhanced Polycom solution for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and the Polycom Conferencing for Outlook solution are planned for availability in the second quarter of 2010.
Supporting Links:
* Polycom solutions for Microsoft unified communications Website
* Polycom Telepresence and Video Conferencing Solutions Website; Photos on Flickr
* Follow Polycom on Twitter and Subscribe to Polycom News RSS
Tags / Keywords:
Polycom, Microsoft, Microsoft OCS, Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, unified communications, telepresence, videoconferencing, collaboration, video conferencing, visual communication
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
LONDON/SLOUGH, UK - 09 Feb 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communication solutions, today announced an expansion of its integrated visual communication solutions for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange with breakthrough capabilities that make it easier for organisations to deploy, manage and use Polycom telepresence, high-definition (HD) video conferencing and desktop video collaboration within Microsoft unified communications (UC) environments.
Polycom offers the most comprehensive voice and video collaboration solutions for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, including a highly scalable infrastructure platform for enabling reliable, broad-scale video deployments across organisations; industry-leading telepresence, HD video conferencing and desktop video collaboration systems that enable people to work more effectively across distances; integrated recording and streaming for capturing and sharing conferences and video content, allowing teams to use real-time communication to create video assets; and a complete line of VoIP phones designed specifically to leverage the presence-based contact capabilities of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to simplify everyday communications.
"Polycom and Microsoft are aligned in making people more productive and helping organisations become more efficient and competitive through improved communication and collaboration," said Joe Sigrist, senior vice president and general manager of video solutions at Polycom. "Polycom's integrated solution for Microsoft unified communications environments puts powerful, productivity-enhancing telepresence, desktop video collaboration, multipoint calling, and video recording and streaming capabilities just one-click away - all within the familiar Microsoft applications that millions of people use every day. Polycom is accelerating its efforts with Polycom Open Collaboration Network (POCN) partners like Microsoft to deliver integrated unified communications and collaboration solutions that provide customers with open interoperability, flexibility and investment protection."
As part of its expanded offering for Microsoft UC environments, Polycom is introducing an innovative video scheduling solution for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook that will help organisations realise greater productivity gains and higher return on unified communication and collaboration investments by increasing the use of video collaboration and lowering operational costs.
Polycom Conferencing for Outlook – This breakthrough solution for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook ties productivity-enhancing and cost-saving visual communication capabilities directly into the normal Microsoft Outlook workflow for users. Users can now simply incorporate telepresence, unified voice/video conferences and desktop video collaboration into meetings and enable invited participants to join with a single click of the mouse or remote control. In addition, users can easily record video meetings and make the recordings available for on-demand playback for people that missed the meeting or as a public record – a requirement for some meetings in healthcare, government and legal industries. This capability can also be used to cost-effectively create HD video content such as training materials, company announcements, customer support videos, etc. by leveraging the Polycom video endpoints as recording capture stations, allowing customers to speed return on investment while driving consistent communications and information flow deeper into their organisations.
When a meeting organiser adds video to a scheduled meeting, Polycom Conferencing for Microsoft Outlook will automatically insert links and meeting room numbers within the meeting invitation allowing participants to easily join using a variety of video devices, including Polycom CMA Desktop™ video application, Microsoft Office Communicator, appliance-based desktop systems like the Polycom HDX 4000™, or room-based telepresence or video conferencing systems like the Polycom HDX 8000™ Series. The flexible Polycom infrastructure platform supports unified voice and video conferences allowing people to also join video-enabled meetings by phone. The meeting invitation can also include dial-in information for participants outside of the company, including necessary gatekeeper codes, simplifying inter-company visual collaboration.
The solution also enables conference "smart rooms" by displaying the Microsoft Outlook calendar and scheduled meetings on the room's display as provided by the connected Polycom HDX room or personal telepresence system. The display will also show reminders for upcoming meetings and allow conference participants to join a meeting simply by clicking a single "join now" button. If the Polycom HDX unit resides outside the corporate network, the required dial-in information can be displayed on the meeting details screen.
"Polycom Conferencing for Outlook is a real breakthrough in eliminating some of the key barriers to broader adoption of visual communication within organisations – ease of use and IT support requirements," said Sigrist. "It helps users easily schedule and join video calls using a variety of methods and automates the entire process from a resource standpoint, significantly reducing the support requirements for scheduling and initiating calls."
Polycom is also significantly enhancing its integrated solution for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 with enhanced network scalability and reliability, simplified management and provisioning, advanced security and improved support for remote workers and inter-company collaboration. New developments include:
* Extending scalable and reliable video networks – Polycom is extending the unrivaled scalability, reliability and redundancy benefits of the Polycom Distributed Media Application™ (DMA™) to Microsoft environments. The Polycom DMA is a unique network application that virtualises conferencing resources among multiple Polycom RMX conference bridges and intelligently routes calls. This network intelligence improves the efficiency, reliability and performance of video calls while making it easier and more cost-effective for organisations to deliver on-demand video conferencing services to employees and reducing IT administrative requirements. It also allows organisations to configure and update RMX bridges and add additional bridging resources as needed without impacting video services or resource availability.
* Polycom HDX endpoint provisioning – The Polycom Converged Management Application™ (CMA™), a highly scalable and redundant video network management, monitoring and provisioning solution, now allows administrators to provision and manage a large network of Polycom HDX systems in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 environments. This ensures seamless signaling and presence support allowing users to easily connect with their presence-based contacts and rooms using the Polycom HDX systems.
* Advanced security through SRTP media encryption – Polycom HDX systems now support SRTP, providing system-wide security including authentication, signaling and media encryption.
* Seamless exchange of presence information – Enhancements to the Polycom HDX user interface allow presence-enabled contacts, including contact groups, to be shared between Polycom HDX endpoints and Microsoft Office Communicator clients (in companion mode).
* Improved support for inter-company collaboration and remote workers – Polycom HDX and RMX systems will support Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE), a standardised NAT/Firewall traversal method for SIP clients, providing flexibility for SOHO workers to be able to communicate with teammates inside the corporate network, or for companies with federated Office Communications Servers to enable inter-company communications using Polycom HDX endpoints and Polycom RMX bridges.
Polycom's alliance and integration efforts with Microsoft support Polycom's Open Collaboration Network strategy, providing open and interoperable collaboration solutions that give customers greater flexibility and investment protection for their UC environment. By developing and natively integrating with Microsoft and other leading unified communications platform providers, Polycom is able to deliver its productivity-enhancing and cost-saving telepresence, video and voice collaboration products as the integrated collaboration core unified communication environments, making the technologies easily accessible as part of the everyday workflow within a comprehensive, scalable solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
Availability:
The enhanced Polycom solution for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and the Polycom Conferencing for Outlook solution are planned for availability in the second quarter of 2010.
Supporting Links:
* Polycom solutions for Microsoft unified communications Website
* Polycom Telepresence and Video Conferencing Solutions Website; Photos on Flickr
* Follow Polycom on Twitter and Subscribe to Polycom News RSS
Tags / Keywords:
Polycom, Microsoft, Microsoft OCS, Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange, unified communications, telepresence, videoconferencing, collaboration, video conferencing, visual communication
About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is the global leader in telepresence, video, and voice solutions and a visionary in communications that empower people to connect and collaborate everywhere. Visit www.polycom.com for more information and follow us on Twitter @AllAboutPolycom.
© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom "Triangles" logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom's products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Friday, 29 January 2010
The Extricom Experience
The award-winning Extricom Wireless LAN System incorporates multiple breakthrough innovations in a system that raises the bar for WLAN performance, flexibility, and ease of ownership.
Groundbreaking architectural thinking gives you a solution that is fully IEEE 802.11-compliant, but changes all of the paradigms about the Wi-Fi experience.
Provides stable, guaranteed performance, enabling the industry's first Service Level Agreement (SLA) for WLAN users.
Easy to deploy and maintain, without the complexities of RF cell planning.
Delivers both seamless mobility and high capacity, with blanket coverage and no co-channel interference.
Built for enterprise triple play, without performance trade-offs.
WLAN you can count on... just like a wired network... anywhere in your facility
In short, Extricom enables the All-Wireless Enterprise today. Voice (VoWLAN), data, and video, and location services are delivered with an always-on, robust and mobile Wi-Fi connection to any client, in any environment. The Interference-Free™ WLAN System is purpose-built to slash wireless complexity and future-proof your network for tomorrow's multi-service demands.
A New Generation of Business Value
A new generation of applications, such as voice over Wi-Fi, locationing, "access anywhere" data connectivity, and multimedia communications, requires a new type of WLAN.
At the heart of the Extricom solution is a simple yet powerful idea: eliminate the concept of cell-planning, and replace it with Channel Blanket™ architecture. In the Channel Blanket, each Wi-Fi radio channel is used on every access point to create continuous "blankets" of coverage.
The sophisticated Extricom WLAN Switch tightly controls a set of multi-radio 802.11 a/b/g/n UltraThinTM Access Points (APs), to deliver a series of industry firsts:
Multi-layer WLAN, composed of multiple overlapping Channel Blankets on any combination of channels in any band, powered from the same the set of access points.
No AP-to-AP handoff, which ensures seamless mobility, continuity of security session, and optimal service delivery.
The elimination of co-channel interference, the critical component to providing complete coverage, maximum bandwidth, and guaranteed connection rate and bandwidth
TrueReuse™ channel processing, which multiplies per-channel capacity by enabling frequency re-use at higher density than traditional cell-planning.
Simpler. Better. Guaranteed. This is the Extricom Experience.
Groundbreaking architectural thinking gives you a solution that is fully IEEE 802.11-compliant, but changes all of the paradigms about the Wi-Fi experience.
Provides stable, guaranteed performance, enabling the industry's first Service Level Agreement (SLA) for WLAN users.
Easy to deploy and maintain, without the complexities of RF cell planning.
Delivers both seamless mobility and high capacity, with blanket coverage and no co-channel interference.
Built for enterprise triple play, without performance trade-offs.
WLAN you can count on... just like a wired network... anywhere in your facility
In short, Extricom enables the All-Wireless Enterprise today. Voice (VoWLAN), data, and video, and location services are delivered with an always-on, robust and mobile Wi-Fi connection to any client, in any environment. The Interference-Free™ WLAN System is purpose-built to slash wireless complexity and future-proof your network for tomorrow's multi-service demands.
A New Generation of Business Value
A new generation of applications, such as voice over Wi-Fi, locationing, "access anywhere" data connectivity, and multimedia communications, requires a new type of WLAN.
At the heart of the Extricom solution is a simple yet powerful idea: eliminate the concept of cell-planning, and replace it with Channel Blanket™ architecture. In the Channel Blanket, each Wi-Fi radio channel is used on every access point to create continuous "blankets" of coverage.
The sophisticated Extricom WLAN Switch tightly controls a set of multi-radio 802.11 a/b/g/n UltraThinTM Access Points (APs), to deliver a series of industry firsts:
Multi-layer WLAN, composed of multiple overlapping Channel Blankets on any combination of channels in any band, powered from the same the set of access points.
No AP-to-AP handoff, which ensures seamless mobility, continuity of security session, and optimal service delivery.
The elimination of co-channel interference, the critical component to providing complete coverage, maximum bandwidth, and guaranteed connection rate and bandwidth
TrueReuse™ channel processing, which multiplies per-channel capacity by enabling frequency re-use at higher density than traditional cell-planning.
Simpler. Better. Guaranteed. This is the Extricom Experience.
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