Enterprise :: VoIP Biz-News.com

Number of results 18 for enterprise

21/01/2010 - The Future of Enterprise UC in the Age of Skype

Reliability. Security. Scalability. Quality. These are the reasons why enterprise UC offerings are here to stay. A great take from a No Jitter blogger.

23/09/2009 - SPIRIT tech driving HD audio in snom phones

Snom 870 SIP phones are getting an HD audio boost from SPIRIT DSP's TeamSpirit Voice Engine Embedded, according to a TMC report. Licensing the SPIRIT technology allows snom devices to provide wideband audio even to users on overloaded networks, according to the company.

The companies said the including the SPIRIT technology in the snom 870 phones assures that enterprise communications have the highest possible quality, by providing HD call quality and cutting-edge IP telephony features. Snom launched the 870 in June in North America, after rolling it out first in Europe.

For more:
- see the TMC report here

09/09/2009 - ShoreTel first to get Skype for SIP

ShoreTel will serve as Skype's first partner in its Skype for SIP play, which will try to take share in the SMB market. ShoreTel's 11,000 enterprise customers now can sign up for a beta version of the Skype for SIP offering, which allows incoming Skype calls to be routed over a company's PBX and allows outbound calls to be made at normal Skype rates.

Skype is hoping the cost savings from being able to make Skype calls into and out from small businesses will open a new revenue stream in this market, where it has yet to develop significant traction. Since the test program is free of any up-front charges, it is likely to see good trial numbers as small enterprises search for ways to save money during the recession. The companies did not announce what sort of incentive ShoreTel received from Skype to facilitate the arrangement, but access to Skype's more than 400 million customers certainly didn't hurt matters.

For more:
- see the GigaOm article on the announcement here

31/08/2009 - Analyst: SIP trunking could drive SBC market

Yankee Group VoIP analyst Zeus Kerravala thinks the session border controller (SBC) market will see significant expansion as enterprises deploy SIP trunking solutions, cloud services and VoIP networks that integrate with public networks, according to a research note at No Jitter. Zerravala wrote that SBC manufacturers stand to gain the most from additional SIP deployments, as an SBC would allow the enterprise to move the network "edge" into the SIP hosting provider's cloud.

He also noted that SBCs would allow enterprise-to-enterprise communications that currently access the PSTN network to bypass it and do direct VoIP calling. SBCs can handle voice security better than traditional firewalls and other security equipment because they can handle bidirectional communications traffic, according to the report.

For more:
- see the article on No Jitter here

18/06/2009 - NetIQ to monitor MTS Allstream UC deployments

MTS Allstream, a Canadian provider of unified communications solutions, announced it has selected NetIQ to manage its enterprise UC applications and infrastructure. With the addition of MTS Allstream's customers, NetIQ now manages more than 1 million VoIP lines worldwide, according to the company.

MTS Allstream will deploy NetIQ's AppManager for network assessment, end-to-end monitoring and reporting on MTS Allstream customer UC deployments, according to the release.

For more:
- see the joint press release here

11/06/2009 - UC Desktop Prices Drop in Q1

Average selling prices in the UC desktop market, which has been holding steady over the past six months, dropped slightly in Q1 2009.
This weakening indicates the growing competitive nature of the industry, according to the authors of a Synergy Research Group report on the global market for collaborative applications.

26/05/2009 - IP Desktop Market Revenues to Decline Until 2011

The IP telephony endpoint market will be affected by the economic downturn - despite the fact an increasing number of enterprises are recognizing the benefits of both IP desktop phones and enterprise soft clients.
That's the conclusion of Melanie Turek, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, which has just released its latest global study of the sector's enterprise market.

05/04/2009 - PICTURES - VoiceCon East 2009

Like all tourists who go to Orlando, FierceVoIP took pictures of the items and people we met during our travels at VoiceCon East 2009 in Orlando. We have grouped them into three categories:

Sights and Signage of VoiceCon East 2009 illustrates a few of the more interesting banners and signs we came across in Orlando. Companies spend a lot of money on banners and signs to make sure conference attendees know they are there and have a new story to tell.

Interesting IP phones at VoiceCon 2009 shows off some of the slick new media phones and telepresence devices we saw on the show floor.

People at VoiceCon 2009 has pictures of some of the IP communications executives we met with at the show.

01/04/2009 - VoiceCon 2009: Verizon Business boosts hosted IP Centrex

ORLANDO, Fla. - Verizon Business has announced significant enhancements to its hosted IP Centrex service, including expansion of its burstable shared trunks capability, softphone support, easier E-911 provisioning, and local number provisioning.

Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunking (BEST), previously available on Verizon's IP trunking service, allows businesses to distribute inbound calls among multiple business locations, avoiding overloading when lots of calls come into one location. It also provides loadsharing of concurrent calls across the enterprise, so customers don't have to purchase more call capacity than they need for a group of locations.

Softphone support is being offered as an advanced feature under Hosted IP Centrex and includes a web management interface. In addition, a web tool allows users to register quickly and manually their physical location for E-911 purposes; other services require a more lengthy help desk service call for E-911 registration.

Another area where Verizon is coming a bit late (but still welcome) to the party is support for local number presence across North America. Businesses can now get local numbers regardless of the physical location of the office to enable a local presence. A Verizon Business spokesperson indicated that overseas locations will be available down the road.

30/03/2009 - VOICECON: 8x8 Intros Enterprise Version of Hosted IP PBX Service

8x8 today announced the availability of an enterprise version of its hosted IP PBX phone service.
The solution is intended for deployment in larger organizations located in either a single building, a campus environment or distributed across multiple locations.

25/03/2009 - Gizmo5 CEO Challenges Skype For SIP

The CEO of Gizmo5 Michael Robertson has responded to last week's announcement of Skype for SIP by posting a comparison (see below) of the new service and his own company's OpenSky.
While welcoming Skype's initiative, he described it as a "vaporware announcement" with "murky pricing details".

24/03/2009 - VoiceCon GM talks projected attendance, hot enterprise topics

Speaking to Fierce last week, Fred Knight, general manager of VoiceCon, was cautiously optimistic that the enterprise-focused communications show would have the same number of attendees as it did last year. "We've been at it for a long time and we hope everyone who is signed up can come," said Knight. "In this economic climate, you never know."

Tracking numbers last week were on par with the same as last year, putting projected attendance in the 5,000 to 5,500 range, depending on whether or not everyone who says they are coming is coming, noted Knight. "It's consistent with last year."

Knight believes that there will be little impact upon show attendance because of the big wireless show in Las Vegas going on at the same time. "VoiceCon is focused on the enterprise," he said. "CTIA has enterprise-related stuff, but it's hardly focused at an enterprise market. I think that over the years, VoiceCon has established itself as a location that if you're in enterprise communications, it's one of the focal points; arguably it is the focal point... VoiceCon is targeted at people responsible for enterprise communications. It's been a pretty clear and singular focus."

At least 50 percent of VoiceCon attendees are IT professionals from organizations with a thousand or more employees - this show is not designed for the crowded and sometimes confusing SMB market.

What are attendees looking for when they come? There's still a lot of demand for what Knight called "Traditional IP Telephony" with people looking at how to build the right platform and to make the right architectural/design choices for an IP phone infrastructure, as well as how to leverage an IP communications once it is operational.

"Overall, we're seeing more and more interest in video." said Knight. VoiceCon will have a day-long conference-within-a-conference track focusing on choices for enterprise video and encompassing products, network issues and internal support issues.

Cloud computing also gets a look, with a specific panel to focus on the cloud from the standpoint of enterprise computing. Enterprises have a number of options, ranging from tapping into idle computing resources for an in-house cloud solution, to subscribing to a commercial cloud service on an as-needed basis when computing resources surge on a seasonal or other basis.

11/03/2009 - Hosted VoIP goes better with UC

Frost & Sullivan says integrating unified communications (UC) applications such as chat, presence and conferencing, as well as more enmeshed apps such as CRM and ERP, into so-called communications-enabled business processes will provide the most opportunity for the hosted VoIP market.

Close to 1 million installed hosted IP telephony lines were installed at the end of 2008, says Frost's new report "North American Hosted IP Telephony Service Markets." The firm expects the number to grow to about 3.6 million lines in 2014, with small businesses attracted to hosted offerings for cost-effective voice communications. Medium and larger businesses will seek out hosted solutions so they can focus on "core business processes," as well as to get access to apps and capabilities they can test without a capex spend.

IP telephony vendors will have to develop "astute" channel strategies since most service providers are smaller, next-generation providers with limited geographic footprint and support capabilities, no established brand-name recognition, and no established customer base, says Frost.

Frost recommends that service providers expand and diversify their channels, but believes the market will still remain "extremely fragmented" due to the reluctance of incumbent carriers to grow market share at the expense of cannibalizing legacy service revenues, along with limited demand for next-gen hosted services among their existing Centrix base.

Regardless of who is selling - CLEC, SaaS/hosted providers, VARs, or system integrators - channel support will determine the success of each provider's chances.

The crystal ball also sees providers taking advantage of M&A opportunities based on complementary technologies, expertise or channels, since consolidation can help improve customer awareness and margins.

For more:
- Frost summarizes its new report.

11/02/2009 - From VON to the trinity/quad-play of events

Once upon a time, there was VON. It was all things to all people under the large purple umbrella. Then it went away, leaving a vacuum in its wake. So where's everyone going in 2009?

VON's two key problems were that it tried to be all things to all people and had the millstone of "VoIP = VON" so that it was primarily seen as a VoIP show rather than an IP communications show.

Back in the day, you had a lot of service providers and Tier 1 vendors (IBM, Microsoft, Cisco) going to VON because it was The Place to meet people and find out what was going on in the industry. You also had thought leaders talking about the latest trends in technology and policy. Finally, you had enterprises attending because they wanted to be in on the latest and greatest. VARs and channel types would also be there, but ITEXPO was more their cup of tea.

Service providers and Tier 1 vendors have pretty much returned to the fold of SuperComm over the past few years for carrier issues, but that's been no big secret.

For enterprise issues, they are going where the enterprise guys are - VoiceCon. I'll be down in Orlando at the end of March, and I'll be looking to see if the event has a slight bump in attendance compared to last year. If you take a look at VoiceCon's exhibitors, many of the Tier 1 exhibitors are the guys who spent beaucoup bucks at VON a couple of years ago.

Thought leadership may be taken up by eComm. There's a lot of promise in the event, but we also see some rough edges that we expect will be smoothed out over time; after all, the first VON event in the Puck Building had its moments as well.

To recap: VON gone. Replace with ITEXPO (channel partners/VARs and the people who love them), VoiceCon (Enterprise sales), SuperComm (Carriers/Service providers) and maybe eComm (thought leadership).

- Doug

09/02/2009 - Skype adding 380k users per day, targeting enterprise market

Skype is touting its growth and enterprise uptake, claiming it now adds 380,000 users per day and that one-third of registered members use the VoIP service for business purposes. The end-of-year head count of 405 million registered users used 2.6 billion SkypeOut minutes in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The company is pushing small and medium-sized enterprise adoption of Skype with the release of Skype 4.0, which took three years to develop and offers "super wideband audio." A survey of Skype for Business users found that 80 percent of users reported an increase in productivity and employee collaboration by using the product and 62 percent said Skype allowed for better communication with customers.

"There has never been a better time than now for enterprises - particularly small to medium businesses - to consider switching to Skype for their communications," Dan Neary, Skype's vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific told mis-asia.com. "In this type of environment people are looking for cost savings wherever they can find them, they are looking to ‘recession-proof' their businesses. They don't want to fly from A to B, they want to do video-conferencing."

Skype would love to continue to expand its presence in enterprise telephony, as the market could substantially increase Skype's bottom line.

For more:
- see the mis-asia.com piece here

23/12/2008 - Snom Favors Italy Over UK For Expansion

The VoIP phone maker and developer Snom Technology is opening an office in Milan.
In what could be a barometer of the current state of Europe's economies, the German company ruled out a move to the UK.
Heike Cantzler, marketing manager for Snom Technology, said both the UK and Italy were considered for the expansion.

10/12/2008 - Voxeo buys VoiceObjects

Voxeo accomplished multiple goals in acquiring VoiceObjects, the second company it has bought this year. More acquisitions are expected throughout 2009.

By purchasing VoiceObjects, Voxeo has acquired middleware to enable carrier-grade deployments of over-the-phone self-service apps that are easier and cheaper to deploy - and enable personalization to each caller. There's also a phone self-service analytics package for measuring performance that also allows non-technical staff members to make updates and changes.

VoiceObjects also brings a large European and mobile carrier footprint to Voxeo; Orange, O2 and Vodafone are all VoiceObjects customers, not to mention a bunch of enterprise customers including Adobe, Citibank, Hershey, IKEA, Kellogg, SAP and Volkswagen.

Open standards also play a role in this story. Voxeo and VoiceObjects are big users and advocates of VoiceXML, and it is likely Voxeo's future acquisitions will use VoiceXML to build their solutions. The combined company will continue to enhance the VoiceObjects platforms and launch several new VoiceObjects-based products and services in 2009.

Employee-owned, Voxeo said it has logged twenty consecutive quarters of profitable operations, while sustaining an average yearly revenue growth rate exceeding 60 percent. It's using all that cash to acquire companies, as it has bought four companies in the last four years. Earlier this year, the company bought Beijing-based Micromethod. Voxeo "expects to close additional strategic acquisitions" in 2009.

For more:
- Voxeo talks about buying VoiceObjects. Release.

05/11/2008 - AudioCodes Announces HD VoIP Strategy

AudioCodes has launched new high definition VoIP technology - VoIPerfectHD - that it believes delivers higher voice clarity, better intelligibility and richer sound.
Among key segments expected to benefit from this new introduction are banks, government, military, health, telemedicine and education.

All sections | Sections | All articles | News |