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August 2009 | Volume 12 / Number 8
Special Focus

Presenting the 2009 TMC Labs Innovation Awards, Part II

By: Tom Keating (News - Alert) and Richard “Zippy” Grigonis

Innovation is defined as the introduction of a new idea into the marketplace in the form of a new product or service, or an improvement in organization or process. TMC (News - Alert) Labs has been testing, examining, and reviewing products since 1994. The favorite part of our job is seeing new products and technologies, as well as improved versions of the classics.

2009 marks the 10th anniversary of our TMC Labs Innovation Awards. TMC Labs is proud to announce our 16 picks for this year’s awards, published in two parts. The individual write-ups will appear in alphabetical order — beginning with Cypress Communications through LifeSize Communications in the July 2009 issue, and Microsemi through Zed-3 (News - Alert) in this (August) issue.

Once again, our congratulations to those companies that continue to make this industry interesting for all of us.

Microsemi (News - Alert) Corporation
PD9000G Family of High Power PoE Midspans
www.microsemi.com

Microsemi’s PD-9000G Family of High Power PoE Midspans for Enterprise Ethernet systems come in 6-, 12-, 24-port models. As the industry’s first high-power gigabit-class Power over Ethernet (PoE) midspan power injectors that fully support IEEE (News - Alert) 802.3at-draft4.1 specifications, they simultaneously deliver great system efficiency features, backup capabilities and smart network power management. Microsemi PoE midspans can be installed in conjunction with Ethernet switches, new or existing, that don’t have PoE capability. The PD-9000G Family provides up to 30 watts of power per port (even on all 24 ports simultaneously) over standard Cat 5 cabling, double over prior PoE standards and yet supporting pre-standard devices without restrictions or limitations. They also provide comprehensive network power management features for WiMAX (News - Alert), PTZ and dome network cameras, 802.11n access points and thin client applications. They also have an interconnection capability to provide back-up in the event of power supply failures. They can even be used with external power supplies to increase power capacity or provide redundancy.

Mitel (News - Alert)
Mitel TeleCollaboration Solution
www.mitel.com

Mitel’s new TeleCollaboration Solution is a high-quality video conferencing system that immerses remote participants in a real-time collaborative environment meant to rival or exceed face-to-face meetings. It combines Mitel’s HD Video Codec with advanced desktop collaboration capabilities, large (46-inch or greater) HD (1080p x 1920) screens, full 30 fps video, wideband audio, all operating in carefully managed room configurations. The Mitel Virtual Shared Space (VSS) technology ensures life-size video with ability to modify to optimize the collaboration experience. The system takes into consideration eye gaze angles of life-size images, enabling super-realistic multipoint video conferences. Advanced signal processing technologies such as H.264 and MPEG-4 that work across public IP networks keep bandwidth requirements low (e.g., 2.25 Mbps for 1080p HD). Mitel stresses that true “telecollaboration” is more than just video telepresence, involving as it does the ability to share and collectively edit documents, presentations, files and more. This integration of high-end video conferencing and desktop/application sharing is an affordable, impressive alternative to business travel. For example, Mitel reports that one Fortune 500 utility company uses the TeleCollaboration Solution to connect multiple call center sites together, with a 25 percent improvement in agent efficiency.

Mu Dynamics (News - Alert), Inc.
Mu Test Suite
www.mudynamics.com

Mu Dynamics (formerly known as Mu Security (News - Alert)) makes hardware and software to test network services, enabling users to quantify their product’s or service’s reliability, availability and security. Their Mu Test Suite monitors services for any reliability or security problems while inserting both conventional real-world and “unexpected”-type traffic. Having evolved into a proactive, service assurance solution, the Mu Test Suite can help network operators and vendors of next-gen network services and products throughout the service deployment lifecycle of VoIP, IPTV (News - Alert) and IMS. The suite’s flexibility is such that it’s even used to test other types of IP-based products and services, such as SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) and other industrial control systems. Thus, Mu troubleshoots software implementation flaws in virtually any IP-based product or service, isolating faults automatically based on user-defined fault criteria. Network operators should add the Mu Test Suite to their portfolio of service assurance best practices, while product vendors (including network equipment makers and vendors of IP-based applications) will employ Mu Test Suite Modules throughout the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) to isolate and remove software bugs before making products generally available.




NICE Systems (News - Alert) Ltd.
NICE Perform 3.2
www.nice.com

NICE Perform 3.2 includes ground-breaking SIP-based recording and enhanced virtualization capabilities that help customers deal with current economic challenges by reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) while bolstering system performance. Just about any kind of organization can benefit from NICE Perform 3.2: enterprises, contact centers, outsourced contact centers, service providers, healthcare, financial services, retail, Fortune 500, telecoms, retail banks, trading floors, insurance, etc. NICE’s full support for recording in SIP-based environments facilitates integration with leading Session Border Controller (SBC) vendors. Companies can achieve cost-savings by standardizing on SIP across the organization and eliminating redundant network infrastructure by reducing resources through data center consolidation, enabling the organization to reduce call recording costs while increasing call capacity. With the introduction server virtualization enhanced support, NICE helps organizations consolidate/reduce operational IT and other data center-related costs such as floor space, hardware and maintenance related costs, and overhead and consolidate the number of servers in use.

ooma (News - Alert), Inc.
ooma Hub and Scout
www.ooma.com

The ooma Hub and Scout make possible free phone calls in the U.S. using any phone or service, and you even get Caller-ID, call-waiting and web-accessible voicemail without extra charge, along with up to 9 virtual phone numbers selectable from any calling area in the U.S. The Hub is a small softswitch/PBX (News - Alert) running on a hardware accelerated two-port wire-speed Ethernet router. It connects to your broadband, your POTS line, and up to four configurable FXS extensions through ooma “Scouts” — the Scout is essentially a HomePNA (News - Alert) Analog Telephone Adapter-like device that uses home phone lines for your telephone LAN instead of Ethernet. With ooma technology and services you can now deal with a single number and voicemail box for both your home phone and cell phone, and you can call between the two seamlessly as you enter and leave your house, upload contacts online and access them via your home phone or cell phone. The managed CPE device runs as a node on ooma’s distributed routing and service architecture over a secure VPN overlay network. Recently, ooma announced an integrated a set of ooma Premier Google (News - Alert) Voice Extensions (GVE) to compliment Google Voice capabilities with ooma’s current and upcoming next-gen system. Moreover, ooma will launch their next-gen VoIP home phone system, Telo, in the fall of 2009, based on a DECT (News - Alert) 6.0 cordless handset having HD voice, a connected phonebook, mobile transfer, speaker phone, and musical ring tones.

Openet
Partner Service Controls solution V 1.0
www.openet.com

Openet’s (News - Alert) Version Number: Partner Service Controls solution V 1.0, helps tier 1, wireless, wireline and cable service providers monetize value-added services such as video and music streaming, e-books and online gaming. By creating a converged IP ecosystem with providers using Openet’s Partner Service Controls solution, operators can now establish of revenue-generating partnerships with 3rd-party providers of content, applications, services and devices by subsidizing access to ensure an optimized end-user experience for subscribers’ access to 3rd-party content on operator networks. With the Partner Service Controls solution, operators become an integral part of the value chain, instead of “dumb pipes” mere transporters of bandwidth. Openet’s software, built on their FusionWorks product suite, is an on-premise solution situated at the customer site. Operators can manage the software on their own, completely outsource management to Openet or anything in between.

Sunrise Telecom (News - Alert)
SunLite GigE™
www.sunrisetelecom.com

With its wide range of test functions, Sunrise Telecom’s SunLite GigE provides all the tools that service providers need to verify Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between them and their customers.
Easy-to-use and very cost-effective, the SunLite GigE is a full-featured, dual media Gigabit Ethernet tester that fits in the palm of your hand. It’s for field technicians responsible for installation
and maintenance of Ethernet/IP products and services. The SunLite GigE’s test capabilities include cable diagnostics, BERT, Layer 2/3 RFC 2544, ARPScan, Traceroute, and Ping.

Zed-3
GTXT software for SMS
www.zed-3.com

Zed-3’s GTXT software provides seamless integration with Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook that makes sending and receiving an SMS between a PC and mobile phone as easy as sending an email. Users can call upon contacts already in his or her address books. When the GTXT software runs on a PC without Outlook, a user can create SMS contacts locally. A user can also schedule the sending of a message at a particular time or recurring multiple times in the future. GTXT software can also link to a database, with the software extracting various content from the database fields to create the text message and send the SMS to a contact whose mobile number is also in the database. The sending of the message may be triggered by a change to a field in the database or upon a schedule. Again, the schedule could be for a single occurrence or a recurrence. IT

Tom Keating is TMC’s CTO. Richard “Zippy” Grigonis is executive editor of TMC’s IP Communications Group.

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