INTERNET TELEPHONY — May 2013

No Boundaries: UNSi Breaks Through Carrier, Growth Barriers

Chances are good that you've never heard of UNSi. The company traditionally has been the kind of organization that just blended into the woodwork...More>>>

Departments

The Channel
On RAD's Radar

A Look at the VAR World
The bottom 20 percent will drop out of the VAR space. Why? The VAR space is a lot like the ISP space. Most of the ISP owners were techies who just wanted to create themselves a job that would be fun.

Network Infrastructure

What Oracle Is Doing with Its Tekelec Acquisition
In February Oracle bought Acme Packet. And in early March it picked up Nimbula, a startup specializing in private cloud infrastructure management software. As of late March, when this issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY was getting ready to head out the door, Oracle had done it again -- swooping in to snap up Tekelec, which only a short time ago had decided to take itself private.

NTT's Enterprise Cloud Goes Global, Major TEMs Reveal SDN Strategies
In the March issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY, we talked about the flurry of activity - and acquisitions around - software-defined networking. In the April issue, TMC leader Rich Tehrani asked: Are You Ready to be a Software Telco? And now, in this issue, we look at the most recent developments on the SDN front, which includes new data on the level of deployment of SDN, an update on NTT's commercial SDN-based service, and the strategies of several leading telecom equipment vendors.

Telarix Makes Intercarrier Interactions More Efficient
The process to place orders and handle settlements among different telecom service providers traditionally has been a manual one, involving faxed forms or e-mail communications, says Vic Bozzo, senior vice president of sales at Telarix Inc. That, he says, is like a bank executing a wire transfer by having a guy write a check and run down the street to deliver it.

OPEN SOURCE

WebRTC Will Deliver a Seamless Customer Experience
Organizations tend to have a website group and a contact center group. But, in the future, it is very likely that many companies will move to integrate the two in an effort to deliver a better customer experience while at the same time lowering their costs. WebRTC is expected to be a linchpin in bringing all this together.

SECURITY

How Bad Practices Can Leave SSH Networks At Risk & What to Do About It
The secure shell data-in-transit protocol has been deployed millions of times by organizations of all kinds and sizes since its inception nearly 20 years ago. Today, it is recognized as an industry gold standard, capable both of securely moving data from one machine to another and providing remote administrator access. Linux, Unix, and Mac OS all ship a version of SSH with every version of their software, and SSH is gaining momentum in the Windows market as well.

Unified Communications

Preventing Costly Mistakes When Installing Enterprise-Wide Communications Solutions
First, it is extremely important that IT evaluate how all UC services (voice, video, instant messaging, collaboration, and mobile) are used in the organization. This requires due diligence and a thorough understanding of the business and its operations. Do you have to support a mobile workforce? What are the geographical demands for the solution - regionally, countrywide, and globally? These and other issues need to be thoroughly vetted before going too far down the deployment path.

Wilson Hurd Pulls Things Together with Esna Cloudlink
Founded in 1904 in Wisconsin, Wilson Hurd is a leading manufacturer of custom metal nameplates, plastic overlays, POP display components and electronic control products. About a year ago, the company began looking for ways to reduce IT cost levels and support time. Executive leadership reviewed various cloud and virtualization technologies that could help them reach these goals and, as a result, the company decided to move away from using Microsoft Exchange for enterprise e-mail to a more cost-effective Google Apps solution that included Gmail.

Unified Office Introduces Total Connect Now
Unified Office is a new service provider on the scene that aims to make the kind of UC solutions that were once only available to the largest companies accessible to the small and medium business set. The company this spring formally unveiled it services, called Total Connect Now, which is a private cloud-based managed service that addresses worker mobility and the bring-your-own-device trend.

VIDEO

Timing-Aware Ethernet Backhaul Helps Carriers Survive the Wireless Multimedia Explosion
According to a recent Reuters article, the cable industry is losing subscribers who opt for less expensive and more targeted broadband services, which deliver streaming multimedia from both from the carrier's content partners and third-party over-the-top services. Typical of this trend is Comcast, which reportedly lost 117,000 video customers in the third quarter of 2012. While revenues from traditional media services continue to erode, some carriers are going on the offensive by offering premium-level services capable of supporting multiple channels of streaming multimedia, a strategy that requires nearly all carriers to upgrade their infrastructures.