Small and medium businesses are becoming more comfortable using cloud services, a new study says,

The survey, conducted by Webtorials for VoIP provider Fonality found that 14 percent more SMBs say they understand cloud-based service options but most still are focused on optimizing the total cost of operations.

Those findings, said Fonality, create a window of opportunity for cloud-savvy vendors.

"These findings suggest that SMBs are beginning to connect the cost-saving potential of (cloud) services to their overall mission of reducing expenditures and minimizing TCO," said Fonality CEO David Scult. "While controlling costs by investing in new technology seems contradictory, cloud-based communications tools, in particular, can be leveraged to drive competitive differentiation and maximize operational expenses. As a result, this technology can help spur growth through enhanced productivity and efficiency."

The survey also revealed that a quarter of respondents felt flexibility and mobility with communications solutions are important, and more than 85 percent believe they need to provide access to communications solutions for remote employees.

"It is encouraging to see that SMBs are taking the initiative to learn more about cloud-based services," said Steve Taylor, editor-in-chief and publisher for Webtorials. "This is a needed first step for SMBs to realize the tools and solutions available to achieve the goals they stated as unattainable."

Scult earlier this month was named CEO of Fonality, the third chief executive for the company in the past two years. He replaced Dean Mansfield.

For more:
- see this release

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Unified communications specialist Mitel (Nasdaq: MITL) has scored a win with the Canadian government, landing a deal with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to deploy its IP telephony solution.

The company said the DFAIT would be installing Mitel's Freedon architecture, giving it the flexibility to connect its users around the world and adding new capabilities as part of its future communications needs. The agreement covers a rollout of a new communications infrastructure to support DFAIT's international users in its Canadian missions, consulates and embassies around the world.

DFAIT said that Mitel's flexibility of deployment options, which addresses the range of needs it had across multiple locations and supports virtualization, was central to the decision.

The Mitel solution incorporates:

• Mitel Communications Director software, a single stream of software deployable on multiple hardware platforms, in virtualized data centers, on industry standard servers or on Mitel hardware;
• Mitel Communications Director, which extends Dynamic Extension and hotdesking capabilities to all users; users can select up to eight devices in their personal ring group, regardless of type, so calls to a business number can ring on a mobile phone, home phone, remote office or on any other device;
• Mitel NuPoint Messenger IP, a scalable way to relay, store and retrieve messages from a phone, fax machine, pager or PC.

UC is hot with the government market as it looks to cut costs. A variety of vendors have seen success in local, state and federal markets in the U.S.

Also gaining speed is the mobile UC market, and Mitel in September rolled out UC apps for the iPhone and iPad.

For more:
- see this release

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Webcasting specialist MediaPlatform has added a couple of new features to its WebCaster platform, both designed to enhance its cloud-based webcasting software to meet increasing demand worldwide.

The Los Angeles-based company added support for UTF-8, a universal character set transformation format, which now will allow WebCaster to include text in any language.

The company also said it had incorporated Adobe Stage Video feature into the WebCaster video player, enabling improved video playback quality and reducing processor usage by up to 85 percent.

"Video use is increasing significantly in the enterprise, but it will explode even more when these companies are able to reach their international audiences more effectively with high quality video and lower processing requirements," said Denis Khoo, chief technology officer at MediaPlatform.  "By adding support for features such as UTF-8 and Stage Video, WebCaster continues to add the functionality our customers are demanding to make webcasting an even more attractive means of communicating company-wide."

Adobe's Stage Video helps websites and webcasts deliver video across screens and browsers by enabling access to hardware acceleration of the entire video pipeline.

MediaPlatform offers WebCaster as both a cloud-based and premise-based platform.

For more:
- see this release

Network provider Sidera Networks, which in May was rumored to be up for sale, today announced it has been selected by La Salle University to provide high speed, scalable Internet solutions for its campus-wide network upgrade.

The Philadelphia-based school said the upgrade will support its dynamic learning environment and communications applications, including email and e-learning platforms as well as students' daily online needs.

The upgrade gives LaSalle more bandwidth, improved network performance and lowered costs. Sidera also is offering La Salle 24/7 tech support.

Some 50 education and research institutions in the Northeast U.S. use Sideras' solutions to support their bandwidth requirements. The company's offerings include Ethernet, SONET, Wavelength, Dark Fiber, Internet Access, Colocation and more.

The competitive fiber-based service provider is the result of a $1.2 billion acquisition by Abry Partners of RCN Corp. in 2010; the business division, RCN Metro, was renamed Sidera Networks and was rumored in a Wall Street Journal story to be on the block for about $800 million.

For more:
- see this release

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Cloud email currently makes up only 3 to 4 percent of the overall enterprise email market, Gartner says in a new report, but that number is expected to rapidly grow during the next 10 years.

And, while Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Gmail currently only has a one percent share of the enterprise market, Gartner said it is a real threat to players like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), which leads the segment, because it makes up some 50 percent of the cloud email market overall.

"While cloud email is still in its infancy, at 3 to 4 percent of the overall enterprise email market, we expect it to be a growth industry, reaching 20 percent of the market by year-end 2016, and 55 percent by year-end 2020," said Matthew Cain, research VP at Gartner. "The intense competition between Microsoft and Google will make both vendors stronger and enable them to apply cloud expertise to other enterprise cloud endeavors."

Enterprises have taken a shine to cloud email provider The Chocolate Factory, one of the more successful enterprise providers aside from Microsoft Exchange.

Gmail's growth will depend on its willingness to make it easy for enterprises to customize.

As Gartner's report said: "While Google is good at taking direction and input on front-end features, it is more resistant to the back-end feature requests that are important to larger enterprises. Large system integrators and enterprises report that Google's lack of transparency in areas such as continuity, security and compliance can thwart deeper relationships."

For more:
- see this Register article

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Research earlier this year predicted that small office spending on IP telephony was likely to grow 83 percent this year, and other research suggested that enterprise VoIP was leading a resurgence of the wireline NGN market. Now, new additional research from Companies and Markets posits that the unified communications market in the United States is poised for a breakout.

The firm said it expects the hosted UC market to grow at nearly 33 percent CAGR by 2017, as it and the larger hosted IP telephony market is reaching maturity.

And, while premises-based solutions still presents strong competition, it estimates that some 20 percent of business telephony will be hosted by 2020 as consumers become aware of the benefits and the technology becomes more accessible.

The increasing awareness and acceptance of cloud-based technologies, including stricter security around those technologies, has resulted in "positive interest and demand for hosted solutions and software as a service."

Enterprises, though, continue to embrace premises-based communications systems because they have high levels of functionality, reasonable total cost of ownership and a high level of system control.

But, as UC and PBX costs continue to decline, some PBX companies are initiating their own hosted services, potentially restraining market value.

For more:
- see this release

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Level 3 Communications (NASDAQ: LVLT) has decided to give its enterprise customers something to be excited about this week. They've launched their Coverged Business Network service which provides enterprises with a comprehensive solution for all their IP needs.

The new services handles an enterprise's voice, Internet and data networking needs on one bill from Level 3. The service is aimed at providing an economic bundle for companies as well as providing effeciency in dealing with networking needs. Level 3's Converged Business Network includes Level 3 Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), Level 3 Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network (IPVPN) and Level 3 Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Trunking voice services.

"Level 3's efficient IP, VPN and SIP networks offer enterprises a set of reliable and scalable infrastructures for their critical telecommunications needs, and Level 3's Converged Business Network ensures that resources are not wasted by combining each of these assets into a series of enterprise-focused bundles," said Sara Baack, senior vice president of Product Management for Level 3 in a release. "We are pleased to offer enterprises the chance to optimize their voice, data and Internet services so that they can focus on those core elements that drive their businesses forward."

For more:
- read the release

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Well, let's throw out this morning's rumor mill because we now have some real news! Microsoft has announced the release candidate of Microsoft Lync, the next gen version of the software company's unified communications software MS Communications Server "14".

Lync will be the brand name for the family of products previously under the title Communications Server, Communications Online and Communicator. The offering also adds Lync Web App, and Lync Online. Microsoft Lync is being billed as providing face-to-face communication service for every engagement with video and audio conferencing, application and desktop sharing, instant messaging, and telephony. The system has also been designed to work seamlessly with Microsoft Office, SharePoint, and Exchange.

"Over the past five years we have been on a journey to transform communications with the power of software," said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Unified Communications at Microsoft in a release. "Lync delivers on this vision by unifying enterprise voice, instant messaging and web-, audio- and videoconferencing into a new, connected communications experience."

Over 100 customers and nearly two dozen partners have enrolled in the early adoption program of Lync and more than 20,000 seats will be active before the final product launches by the end of this year. Lync should be generally available before the end of 2010.

For more:
- read the release

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LifeSize has upgraded its videoconferencing offering with some nifty new data features.

In version 4.7 of their system software, LifeSize now lets users to share data like spreadsheets and presentations during video conferences with the use of LifeSize's Passport and LGExecutive system. The company also released a new software application called LifeSize Virtual Link which allows data sharing using a PC or Mac.

In addition to the new data sharing capabilities, the new software allows LifeSize Passport and LGExecutive to stream and record live HD Video using LifeSize Video Center. LifeSize Desktop has also been updated to Version 2.0 adding datasharing and 720p HD transmit capability.

For more:
- read the release

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According to a survey condected by Information Week, 30 percent of their respondents had already done some sort of unified communications (UC) upgrade, while another 30 percent are planning on it. Check out the rest of their findings.

No Jitter took some video footage at Interop and caught some five minute briefings related to VoIP and unified communications (UC). Today they've got Marty Parker of UniComm Consulting and UCStrategies giving a brief tutorial on a few approaches to adding UC to the enterprise. See the video here.

Carl Weinschenk over at ITBusinessEdge has an interesting take on some of the latest numbers coming from a survey of businesses looking to launch unified communications (UC). He thinks maybe we shouldn't get too excited about the results because UC is so broadly defined we might not really be getting a clear picture from surveys if the questions are vague. Does planning to install AOL IM on all your company's computers count as UC? Read the analysis here.