Unified Communications

3CX Sponsors Maltese Waterpolo Team

2011-06-30T01:40:00.000-07:00

The unified communications provider 3CX, which makes an award-winning business phone system for Windows, is now sponsoring a Maltese waterpolo team.

In conjunction with its sister company Acunetix, a developer of website security scanning software, 3CX has signed a sponsorship deal with the Exiles Sports Club. The team will henceforth be known as the 3CX Exiles.

3CX and Acunetix are expanding an already large profile which sees 3CX used by renowned companies such as Lotus Formula One and Acunetix being chosen for security by NASA.

The sponsorship deal has allowed the Exiles waterpolo team to offer many of its best players permanent contracts. 3CX and Acunetix will also allow the Exiles to concentrate on youth development and getting more young people to play waterpolo.

The 3CX CEO Nick Galea said. “3CX and Acunetix are proud to sponsor the Exiles Sports Club. We have a long-standing presence in Malta and so plan to expand our operations and workforce on the island. We are pleased to show our commitment to Malta and its community by sponsoring this formidable sports club”.

Malta is just one of the many countries worldwide in which 3CX has offices.

Texas School Uses Unified Communications Solution

2011-06-28T05:09:00.000-07:00

A Houston Texas School is switching to a unified communications solution to replace its outdated proprietary phone system.

There are more than 4,000 pupils at the YES Prep Public Schools and the staff have migrated to the new offering from Microsoft Lync Server to service their needs.

The main benefit will be cost savings across the board, typically only $3,000 dollars to install communications in one of their public schools compared with the $60,000 in costs that a PBX would incur.

Troy Neal, the director of IT engineering and support at YES Prep, said: “With the cost savings associated with deploying Lync instead of traditional PBXs, every school in the country should be doing this.”

He added: "No one here has a desk phone. We give all our staff $7 cheap headsets, and then if someone wants a handset, we purchase Polycom products."

And so along with Microsoft Lync and Aruba wireless gear, the school is offering its employees various Polycom phones including the CX300 desktop phone. That will allow new unified communications features such as videoconferencing.

That means that staff will be able to share data, make cheap Voice over Internet Protocol phone calls and message instantly. Because the system is secure and scalable it fits in with the need of the YES Public Prep Schools to expand significantly over the coming years.

Polycom and Microsoft Unified Communications

2011-06-27T06:40:00.000-07:00

It is hardly surprising that Polycom Inc. is a unified communications market leader considering that the company picks up awards left, right and centre.

The latest honour bestowed on Polycom is the 2011 Microsoft Unified Communications Innovation Partner of the Year Award. The award will be handed out at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in July.

The award is recognizing Polycom’s powerful UC solutions, particularly in fields such as videoconferencing.

The Polycom CEO Andrew Miller “We are honoured to receive this award as it demonstrates our strong relationship with Microsoft. Together we are collaborating to deliver comprehensive and innovative UC solutions which are valuable to customers.”

Mr Miller went on to add that both Polycom and Microsoft unified communications are focused on being easy-to-use with a view to amplifying business efficiency and productivity.

Together their main target is Communications within Business Aspects and Processes (CEPB). The main tool for delivering this on Polycom’s part is their new UC Everywhere product. Meanwhile Microsoft has the market leading Microsoft Lync which is an all-round complete UC solution that offers enterprise voice, instant messaging and more.

Polycom and Microsoft have had a long strategic relationship but they took it to the next level in 2010 to capitalize on the booming Unified Communications market. Since they then have helped employees of various businesses and various sizes to collaborate quickly and effectively, whether they are in the office or working remotely. What is really attractive about their combined unified communications solutions is that there is a low Total Cost of Ownership.

Facebook Offers Social Inbox

2011-06-24T01:12:00.000-07:00

Facebook will create a new unified communications platform where you can get all your correspondence into one inbox.

Known as the social inbox, it will store emails, voice messages from phones, chat messages and SMS, and is to be rolled out gradually over the next few months.
The Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that the social inbox would unify communications by making them more "seamless, immediate, personal, simple and minimal."

He contends that many of the new generation of internet users don’t like email because it is too slow. Imagine that! If people increasingly find email too slow then the letter is definitely going to die out.

Facebook always has it ear to the ground for new trends and after discussion of a new Facebook phone this will integrate communications on another level.
Indeed while UC platforms like Microsoft Lync server allow you to access all these communications and more, the idea of a social inbox is one that they might like and take time to expand upon.

However there are many pitfalls for this product. First all of Facebook has gained a reputation for disregarding privacy, especially after the recent automatic tagging fiasco.

Secondly many people will ask whether they really need all their communications into one inbox. Will it save that much time or will it just be unnecessarily confusing?
Not that I use Facebook anymore, but I am a big fan of Gmail and even if I was a Facebook user I doubt I could be persuaded to switch provider.

Gmail provides an ideal way to deal with both business and personal correspondence whereas Facebook does not have that professional feel. I still think Facebook is great for social media purposes but having worked in an office where they decided on prospective employees by Facebooking them, I know that it is a dangerous tool.

Facebook may be right to embrace unified communications, but users will have to decide whether they trust Facebook to handle all of their correspondence.

Fujitsu Creates Unified Communications Mobile App

2011-06-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

The Japanese Computer hardware manufacturer Fujitsu has created a unified communications mobile app that allows users on the move to access instant messaging, videoconferencing and more.

The groundbreaking new product will be showcased at the CommunicAsia technology exposition in Singapore and is the result of a partnership between Fujitsu and Atmail.

The portal will allow interactive location based services to provide mobile communications through such mediums as social networking sites.

Subscribers get a single sign on which allows them to organize and access all their communications including VoIP and chat. They will have the use of all their contacts from one directory and the ability to use presence detection to tell who is available to communicate.

In combination these sorts of tools can provide firms with powerful marketing opportunities through precise targeting.
While Fujitsu is one of the largest companies in Asia, Atmail has more than 4,500 customers across 135 countries.

Mr Raj, the regional Vice President for Network Services in Fujitsu Asia, said: "We are privileged to partner Atmail exclusively for ASEAN service providers. The constant pursuit of innovation is in the DNA of both Fujitsu and Atmail. Our combination of technologies has allowed us to develop a platform that promises to improve the user communication experience.”

Google Chrome could Unify Communications

2011-06-22T01:57:00.000-07:00

Microsoft may have purchased Skype, but Google is also taking its bid for domination of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services to the next level.

The Google Chrome browser is a challenge to Internet Explorer which is supposed to provide a faster and smoother internet browsing experience.

Google has started to build a real-time open source project for audio and video into Chrome. The project is known as WebRTC.

In 2010 Google acquired an IP telephony company called GIPS with a view to eventually adding VoIP, instant messaging and videoconferencing to Gmail and Chrome.

Along with ‘call phones’ and Gmail chat, Google also has a voice service but it has not taken off in the way that the company would hope. Allowing easy access to VoIP through the Chrome browser would strip down one layer of accessibility, making the product more obviously desirable.

Google therefore has big plans for WebRTC, which it hopes will become the future of leisure communications and even business conferencing.

Texas University Works on Emergency UC Solution

2011-06-21T06:09:00.000-07:00

A Texas University has chosen an Avaya unified communications solution to deliver a nationwide emergency response system.

The Texas A&M University is developing a national Next Generation 9-1-1 emergency communications system and will do so with the support of the Avaya Aura platform.

Avaya Aura gives the right UC architecture to securely make emergency calls and utilize real-time communications like instant messaging, videoconferencing and VoIP. End-to-end Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) will also be utilized.

The university is making use of a $90 million federal grant
as provided by the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. There is also a separate $6.6 million grant to build the U.S. Community Anchor Network broadband system and NG9-1-1 infrastructure.

The next step is interoperability testing in conjunction with research by the National Emergency Number Association (NENA).

Walt Magnussen, the Director of the Internet2 Technology Evaluation Center at Texas A&M, said: “With the Federal Communications Commission now taking an assertive leadership role an upgrade of America emergency services communications infrastructure is finally underway.

"As a leading Telecommunications research institution we are delighted to employ the Avaya Aura platform as an emergency unified communications solution.”

The development will mean that emergency response centers can track many different types of media communications, not just phone calls. That means that not only can alerts be processed faster, but contextual information can be transmitted to the right response centre.

For instance if a tornado is approaching a city in Texas, warning bells could be triggered by a tweet or SMS message from someone who has seen the threat materializing in real time.

Unified Communications Races Ahead

2011-06-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

Expect huge uptake in unified communications solutions, according to CompTIA, the Computing and Technology Industry Association.

The organisation just undertook a massive survey of company decision-makers and found that half thought their UC spend would grow faster than their overall IT spend over the next year.

However of the 600 executives interviewed for the Unified Communications and Collaboration Market Trends study, two thirds of large firms predicted a rapid uptake of UC compared to one third of small firms (for the study a large firm was classified as having more than 500 employees).

The VP of research for CompTIA, Tim Herbert, told CRN: “This likely reflects the complexity of communications at a large firm compared to a small firm. More staff, more locations, more end points and possibly more IT systems make for a more complex communications landscape and a stronger desire to simplify through a UC strategy.”

Despite the positivity shown to UC though, some concerns still remain. They are, in descending order – cost, reliability, security, Return On Investment and ease of use.

Nevertheless the technology is all but mainstream these days with two thirds of people using unified communications solutions to hold regular videoconferences, and more than 50% using VoIP and other forms of collaboration such as instant messaging.

Clark Atlanta University Uses UC Solution

2011-06-19T04:04:00.000-07:00

A USA higher education body has employed Unified Communications for ease of communication and as a cost saving measure.

The Clark Atlanta University in Georgia is using the UC solution to make its enrollment programme more efficient at a time when they needed to shift to a more modern communication platform. The university has 38 graduate, undergraduate and development degrees.

A change in the finance policy at federal level in Georgia meant that Clark Atlanta University was flooded with three times more calls than usual as the questions poured in.

Their traditional Phone Branch Exchange could not cope with all the call traffic and so it had to make the transition to a Unified Communications solution.
Since then things have improved, said Reggie Brinson the associate vice-president at the university.

He explained: "This year I will create a virtual call centre whereby individuals will not need to leave their offices. This is done by programming in their extensions so that both manage incoming and outgoing calls can be dealt with quickly.”

When it came to choosing which UC product to use, they evaluated offerings from all the market leaders and then settled on the Siemens Enterprise Communications OpenScape Voice Application and OpenScape Contact Center.

Despite both Brinson and the Unified Communications platform being in their first stages, the plan has already started to achieve Return on Investment. This is all part of a three year university plan to improve the student experience.

Skype's Poor Customer Service

2011-06-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

After the recent hack into my Skype account I received an email which told me that Skype would not issue any refunds. Well they must be short of funds, they were only recently valued at $8.5 billion in the sale to Microsoft.

However, I got to thinking. What if its not Skype that is contacting me? My security has already been breached once today with charges for a skype service set up that I did not order.

I replied to the first email asking for some CC info. Now they want my paypal details too. Why would I give them that if they are not willing to refund me?

Thank you for your reply.
Our records indicate that a recent three order paid by PayPal has been disputed (charged back) and the payment returned to your PayPal account.

To protect the assets of our customers, we automatically block users with a chargeback status. A chargeback may indicate unauthorized use of a PayPal account to purchase Skype features.

In order to resolve this matter on our side we need to check your payment information with our data. Please provide us with the following information.

1. Your PayPal registered email address.
2. Your first name, last name and full billing address details from your PayPal account.

To send this information just reply to this email.
Once we receive the information, we can verify your transaction and enable your account.
We look forward to your response, so we can assist you further.

VoIP Drives Unified Communications to 2015

2011-06-15T03:28:00.000-07:00

The Voice over Internet Protocol market could annually be worth a staggering $40 billion by 2015 according to analysts at Point Topic.

While it is no secret that VoIP has enjoyed amazing success recently as people take advantage of the internet to make low cost calls, these figures will be a wake-up call for companies that rely on traditional telecoms.

The Skype service alone is estimated to have 170 million worldwide subscribers and it is just one of a number of VoIP products on the market.
The market as a whole has grown by twelve and a half per cent since 2010 and only looks set to improve. That is even in spite of setbacks that Skype has had recently with poor quality service.

John Bosnell, a Senior Analyst at Point Topic, said: "The growth of VoIP has been bumpy but is showing signs of acceleration.VoIP has all the hallmarks of a classic substitution commodity where customers favourably compare a new product to an old product and decide to switch.”

VoIP is considered to have many benefits over traditional analogue phones and Public Switched Telephone Networks, chiefly efficiency and cost savings. Once you are using VoIP there are also other available features like video conferencing which can be tied in while instant messaging can also be added as part of a Unified Communications Solution.

Defining Unified Communications

2011-06-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

Unified Communications is a rapidly expanding industry, as denoted by the recent decision of one of the market leaders to file for an Initial Public Offering.

While the Avaya IPO is ostensibly to cover debts incurred, it also shows that Unified Communications is becoming an integral part of businesses of all sizes.

But what exactly are Unified Communications solutions? It seems that there is plenty of confusion even within the industry itself – after all UC is comprised of a complex mix of different technologies including Voice over Internet Protocol, instant messaging and presence detection.

Well I just came across the most succinct definition that I have seen in the Daily Mirror of all places. This is what newspaper journalism does best, cut through the jargon and BS to strip something to its core properties, define it and tell the truth.

To paraphrase it says: “UC denotes the seamless integration of real-time communication methods with non-real-time communication methods making it possible for a message to be sent from one end using one medium and the same message to be received on the other end through another medium. Here real-time communication methods mean such services as IM VoIP and video conferencing. Non-real-time communication methods include e-mail, voicemail and SMS.”

The idea of the merging of real time and non real time communications is one which not many people pick up on.

In practical terms if you have a voicemail message that you are having trouble getting to grips with, UC solutions can allow you to transcribe that voicemail message in a number of different ways so that the meaning becomes clear. There’s nothing quite like clearing the mud from the water…

Unified Communications - Avaya Files for IPO

2011-06-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

Unified Communications provider Avaya has filed for an Initial Public Offering in an effort to raise revenue and clear debts.

The IPO could be as much as $1 billion and once the main priority of clearing debt has been done money could also be invested into its products.

So said Richard Costello, a senior analyst for research company IDC, when speaking to InformationWeek: "I can certainly see that they could use the cash for research, development and investment in addition to clearing the debt that they have,” he explained.

The Avaya IPO was filed on Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission and will be handled by a number of companies including Goldman, Sachs & Co, Citigroup Global Markets Inc and the UBS Investment Bank.

Money could go towards clearing debts from the $900 million cash acquisition of Nortel Networks 18 months ago although Avaya did not specify this and only mentioned ‘paying down certain long-term indebtedness.’

Avaya had acquired Nortel Enterprise Solution assets from a bankruptcy court after a bidding war with Siemens AG.

But Avaya will also want to stay on top of the Unified communications solutions market, in which their main competitor is Cisco.

Unified Communications includes such communications and collaboration tools as instant messaging, voice over internet protocol and presence detection to make office communications cheaper and more efficient.

While Cisco makes more money from selling Phone Branch Exchanges (PBXs), Avaya actually shifts more PBX units. In spite of this success Avaya has seen its sales trends go flat in recent years.

Mr Costello added: "The numbers have not been good and Avaya has not been growing revenue over the last couple of years, which they will want to change.”

Most recently Avaya has released the Avaya Aura UC platform which delivers a complete desktop system.

Microsoft Releases Summer UC Solutions

2011-06-09T04:50:00.000-07:00

The unified communications product Microsoft Office 365 is launching this summer.

The product is aimed at small to medium sized businesses and enterprises. It offers an office suite of desktop based applications and hosting options including Sharepoint, Exchange Server and Lync Server. That allows the easy planning of meetings with calendar features, emails and contact capabilities. Exchange server offers an easy to use look and feel despite being a feature rich client.

With Sharepoint you can manage and share documents easily and it is offered both online and on your desktop. The online version is excellent for allowing public access while the team site of Sharepoint can be used internally on your desktop. Not only is Sharepoint easy to install but it can even be synced with the Windows Phone 7.

For a complete unified communications solution there is Microsoft Lync Online
which provides enterprise voice, video conferencing, instant messaging and more. Microsoft Lync Online is the web version of Microsoft link but it allows file transfer, PSTN connectivity and support for SIP Trunking.

Australian City Unifies Communications

2011-06-07T04:38:00.001-07:00

The Unified Communications provider Mitel has just provided a software solution to an Australian city to improve the council’s customer service.

That will allow the organization to communicate quickly and effectively about issues such as waste collection, property planning and road maintenance.

Janelle Sollitto, who works at Information Services for the City of Charles Sturt, said: “Our organisation delivers a wide range of services for the community, so making our team easily accessible to the public is a key concern.

She added: "In 2010, we decided it was time to improve our ability to communicate between our various offices, and streamline customer service delivery. Our goal was to build on a platform that could flexibly handle our needs for many years.”

The chosen UC solution uses freedom architecture and is aimed at 105,000 residents of the City of Charles Sturt in Adelaide, South Australia. They will get fast council based information thanks to the Mitel Intelligent Queue, the Mitel Communications Director the Mitel Live Business Gateway and the Mitel Contact Center Enterprise.

Furthermore the 450 council employees will now be able to streamline their work processes. With the organisation spread out over many offices it is essential to have real-time cost effective communication in the form of instant messaging, presence detection and Voice over Internet Protocol.

The Mitel Unified Communications solution has been designed to be safe and secure with provision for communications disruptions. It was implemented in a single stage last month with the help of accredited Mitel partner Data Mobility Voice.

Switchvox 5.0 Unified Communications Solution

2011-06-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

Digium has released an update to their open-source VoIP-PBX called Switchvox 5.0. It adds fixed mobile convergence to unified communications solutions.

That allows any type of phone to be integrated by users, whether it is an analogue phone, a VoIP phone or a smartphone. Up to six phones can be supported by seamless call transfer.

Features include call logs which show all call queues and abandoned calls. The Application Programme Interfaces (APIs) allow you to easily integrate third party applications.

Tristan Barnum, the product line director for Switchvox at Digium., said: "The biggest request we get is for more devices that are supported with no big gaps in features. The growth of Switchvox has helped Digium scale its solutions beyond its SMB base."

If you already have Switchvox then the new update will be sent to you. If you want to use Switchvox for the first time then it costs $3,195 for an infrastructure to cover up to 30 users.

Unified Communications is the Future

2011-06-06T02:54:00.000-07:00

Unified Communications is the future according to new research from the 2012 IBM CIO Study.

IBM’s report showed that two thirds of CIO’s in highly ranked organisations believed that key innovations lay in developing internal collaboration and communication.
That involves instant messaging colleagues when you need to communicate in real time without having to waste time getting up from your desk and potentially walking over to a new department.

Furthermore presence detection is a useful feature to find out whether your colleagues are available to collaborate in the first place. By setting the feature to say whether they are free to work on a project or otherwise tied up in meetings valuable time can be saved trying to contact people who may not be available.
Voice over Internet Protocol calling allows you to make very cheap calls and these can be combined with video conferencing to allow virtual meetings with two or more particpants.

That is why the IBM research found that three quarters of CIOs see collaboration and communication as a key driver in transforming their organizations. The combined benefits of unified communications solutions are allowing a lower Total Cost of Ownership and streamlining the efficiency of your organization to boost productivity.

UC Solutions need Planned Architecture

2011-06-05T09:55:00.000-07:00

Unified Communications can benefit small and medium sized enterprises but there need to be the right set of factors in place.

First and foremost of these is having a simple architecture. A simple architecture makes the UC solution easy to use and reliable which are the two main requirements for consumers and businesses. Furthermore a simple architecture allows for scalability which is ideal for a small or medium sized enterprise which has future growth plans.

All together this amounts to a low cost of total ownership when you factor in the initial outlay and the month by month running costs. These are kept down by such features as affordable voice over internet protocol and presence detection which can save you wasting time and therefore boost productivity.

Once the right set of factors are in place then a unified communications solution should deliver a combination of instant messaging, video conferencing and enterprise voice.

To make the system work smoothly as few servers as possible are employed and using cloud computing can also allow more uptime with low maintenance costs and legacy free builds.

The idea is to have as few dropped calls and unsatisfied customers as possible. Poor service is otherwise multiplied across the company giving your business a bad name.

Polycom Consolidates Unified Communications Market

2011-06-03T05:07:00.000-07:00

Polycom is now forming an Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC) to promote interoperability between unified communications providers and products.

The move comes on the back of their new Hewlett-Packard partnership and shows a clear attempt to consolidate their place in the unified communications market. Rivals such as Cisco have made beneficial mergers with Tandberg and so Polycom also wants to form partnerships with Unified communications solution providers.

This battle for premium space in the UC market is what Art Schoeller called the Unified Communications Civil War.

According to Michael Vizard at ITBusiness Edge Polycom is moving closer to HP to become more of a software company that leverages core networking infrastructure.

He explained: "This is a transition that both companies are hoping to smooth by mutually supporting each other’s managed services offerings."

Polycom is also hoping to achieve better integration with Microsoft Lync. Whichever product they are integrating with it is all about great customer use and a smooth transition to interoperability according to the Polycom CEO Andrew Miller.

3CX Offers SMBs Call Centre Functionality

2011-06-02T01:41:00.001-07:00

The international telecommunications developer 3CX has just released their Call Center Module for the 3CX Phone System 10 installation.

The module aims to give small and medium sized businesses the same features that a call center would expect to have. It is available as an add on to the 3CX Phone System 10 so that no further installation is required.

The 3CX CEO Nick Galea said: “Customer service is key in today’s cut throat market. The 3CX Call Center Module allows SMBs to deliver superior customer service without having to purchase an expensive enterprise call center.”

Some of the valuable features that it adds are real time agent and queue status and statistics, additional advanced queue strategies and detailed reporting.

Therefore supervisors can now see the number of callers in a queue and the number of answered and unanswered calls so that they can better address their customer service strategy. If you see that a call has been waiting for too long it is now possible to just take it directly.

For a full list of the 3Cx call center features including call back options and SLA Alerts visit the 3CX website.

Polycom and HP Agree Strategy

2011-06-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

Polycom has agreed a strategic partnership with HP.

Together they will deliver telepresence and other video UC Solutions having worked on interoperability for the last few years.

The Polycom chief Andrew Miller said: "This announcement is a groundbreaking development for the Unified Communications industry. It allows Polycom and HP to offer customers an end-to-end UC solution with an unparalleled interoperability, ease of use and deployment."

The deal allows Polycom to purchase the HP Visual Collaboration unified communications solution and the Halo line of managed services. Polycom will now also offer its video applications on the TouchPad tablet and the HP WebOS platform.

Meanwhile HP will be able to offer more products in the cloud computing sphere as a result of its partnership with Polycom.

While Polycom handles the unified communications infrastructure and software, HP will deal with the marketing and reselling.

As long as it gets regulatory approval the deal will go through in the third quarter of 2011.

Unified Communications Need Integration

2011-05-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

Unified Communications integration could be a future problem according to an unnamed industry insider.

He said that he didn’t care which standard wins as long as there is integration. Right now too many different vendors have too many different security standards.

The story was run by Informationweek and given an editorial in OneStopClick.
They concluded that the only way that integration could be monitored was by having ‘a standard set of unified communications guidelines.’

Otherwise the number of different multi channel communications could run out of control. An example of this is the recent Microsoft purchase of Skype. No sooner had the deal been done than Skype suffered a global outage. Being part of the huge
Microsoft Corporation means that where once Skype was neutral, now they may be targeted by the makers of software bugs.

Interactive Intelligence Exhibiting in Middle East

2011-05-30T04:57:00.000-07:00

The Unified Communications and IP telephony provider Interactive Intelligence will be showcasing its products at the Middle East Call Centre (MECC) 2011 conference and exhibition.

The main exhibit will be the Customer Interaction Center solution which is a Unified Communications solution that works with VoIP and SIP. This multichannel processing solution is standards-based and offers instant messaging, enterprise telephony and other features right across all departments of a business.

Shaheen Haque, the Interactive Intelligence territory manager for Turkey and Middle East, said: "VoIP technology has transformed the way global organizations are communicating, and the Middle East is no different despite sometimes having a strict regulatory stance. VoIP promises significant cost savings and improved levels of efficiency for all organizations embracing the technology.”

The Customer Interaction Center gives call center functionality regardless of your physical location. This software-based IP contact center solution provides an alternative to hardware-based, multi-point systems.

Interactive Intelligence will also be demonstrating its all-in-one communications-based process automation solution, Interaction Process Automation (IPA). IPA allows different sectors of a business to interact easily.

MECC 2011 takes place May 31 to June 1 in Dubai at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Dubai Interactive Intelligence is exhibiting in booth E2.

Avaya Releases SIP UC Solution

2011-05-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Avaya has released a new Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) product to enable unified communications on various devices.

The VoIP telephony leader showcased its SIP client at the Avaya user conference in Las Vegas. Known as the one-X soft client it can be used with all the most popular smartphones including the Android, the iPhone and the Research in Motion Blackberry.

Avaya has been trying to get SIP broadly adopted for some time now. One of their main clients for this new SIP technology is United Airlines as it allows staff around the world to contact each other easily and cheaply.

The SIP client allows you to make calls and use other features over cellular, 3 and 4G networks. Those features include presence detection (to alert you as to which team members are available to collaborate), unified contact lists and consolidated UC client applications.

An Avaya spokesperson said: “Our aim is to provide mobile device users with all the features that they might expect to have at their fingertips in the office.

“As well as Avaya unified communications being supported on Windows and Symbian, it will be available on the Android OS Samsung Galaxy II and the Research in Motion Blackberry. We are also introducing the first version of one-X on Mac OS.”

The SIP client works for the Apple iPhone 3GS and 4G, the iPod Touch and the Apple iOS on iPad. It would allow iPhone users to connect to a business telephone system. Meanwhile One-X, which works with the Avaya Aura System Manager, allows seamless handoffs between wired phones and mobiles.

Is Unified Communications an Oxymoron?

2011-05-27T06:31:00.000-07:00

Unified Communications is a war zone according to industry expert Art Schoeller who just released a paper entitled the Unified Commnications Civil War.

The UC industry, he says, is doing itself an disservice by not rallying around to achieve a singular goal - better service and Return on Investment.

Instead UC Solutions are becoming fractured which is limiting user adoption. While each company claims to have a best of breed UC solution, in truth each has its own set of unique flaws. Intergrated suites and vendor consolidation is just entrenching this inefficient approach. Until the issue is resolved Unified Communications is in danger of becoming an oxymoron.

Part of the problem, says Schoeller, is that a unified communications strategy will digress according to a team's favoured features such as Enterprise Voice through companies such as Avaya, video conferencing via Polycom and data networking through companies like Cisco.

You must also take into account what software to use and the choice is becoming ever bigger including the heavyweight offerings from Microsoft and IBM. Of course it depends on the size of the business and whether you are catering to the needs of an SMB, an SME, or a corporation.

"Everyone's feeling a different part of the elephant. One person thinks it's the trunk, one person thinks it's a floppy ear and one person thinks it's a big leg. Not being able to get people to take the blinders off and look at the entire element is a pain point."

Schoeler did the research and thinking for this paper in his role as a Principal Analyst for Forrester Research.