COVER STORY PACKAGE

ITEXPO 2017 Keynoter Sumit Dhawan Talks Digital Transformation
VMware's Sumit Dhawan will present a keynote at the upcoming ITEXPO about how technologies like business and cloud are allowing businesses to quickly adapt to new business models and what disruption of the workspace means to enterprises and end users.

MSP Expo: What Managed Services Providers Can & Should Bring to the Table
Digital transformation, security breaches, and just keeping the network and applications up and running - all of the above are challenges that businesses of all sizes are facing. The good news is that they all represent an opportunity for managed service providers.

Collocated Education and Networking Opportunities at ITEXPO
In case the wide array of ITEXPO tracks and sessions, the robust collection of collocated events, the action-packed exhibit floor, and the wealth of networking opportunities have not been enough to convince you to participate in TMC's Feb. 8-10, 2017, event in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., you may also want to consider the various workshops and training events in store at the Greater Ft. Lauderdale/Broward County Convention Center.

Security Will Also Be a Major Theme at ITEXPO
They've accessed our corporate networks and data, hacked into retailer systems to steal our credit card numbers, broken into the accounts of major public figures like Mark Zuckerberg and others, and tapped into the Democratic National Committee's communications. And now there's a realistic expectation that computer criminals could use their know-how and the connected world around them to mess with our election process, takeover our connected cars and bathroom mirrors, and even pull the plug on widely used infrastructure like our air traffic control systems and electrical grids. So it's no wonder security remains in the headlines and is among the top concerns keeping IT professionals and C-suite executives up at night.

All About the API: How Your Business Can Benefit from this ITEXPO-Co-Located Event
Telephones were not of much use until the people that wanted to call one another had them. Cellular phones and networks had limited value until carrier interconnection and roaming agreements enabled subscribers to make calls to others, even if they were on another provider's network, and to enjoy their services in a broader geography. And the promise of ubiquitous communications was not realized until we moved away from the walled garden to the open internet model.

Columns

Departments

Intel Cuts a Deal with ARM
ARM technology has cemented its position in the smartphone market. It's become so popular, in fact, that none other than Intel Corp. is licensing technology from ARM Holdings Plc.

TMC Congratulates the IT Excellence Award Winners
INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine and its parent company, Technology Marketing Corp., in this issue are happy to announce the winners of the IT Excellence Awards. This award program recognizes the creators of technologies and solutions that demonstrate leadership and innovation in the industry.

Lifesize CEO: Reinvented Company Seeing Strong Customer Traction
It's been a crazy few years for Lifesize, but the company's founder and CEO Craig Malloy is happy to report that the recently reorganized and once again independent business has had a lot of success in the last year and seems to be on the right track.

How Life's Abundance Beat Ransomware in Two Hours
Life's Abundance makes healthy products that are inspired by nature and informed by science. Its product mix includes dog food, cat food, pet insurance, people supplements, and eco-friendly cleaners. With a focus on safety, it is the company's commitment to use as many natural ingredients as possible, to ensure our product's quality and efficacy, and to back that up with first-class customer service. As an employee-owned company, it is dedicated to prosperity and generosity with a structure that supports a non-profit foundation and that offers people the opportunity to achieve their goals by sharing our products with others.

Luxoft: Businesses Seek Near-Shore Partners as Complexity Intensifies
Plenty of companies outsource their software development to remote parts of the world, namely India. But, increasingly, as their requirements become more complex, organizations are looking to near-shore software development.

Developer & Open Source Briefs
Codeship has raised $7 million in its Series A round of funding.????????? The round was led by Ascent Venture Partners.????????? "We've positioned Codeship as an attractive investment, especially through the launch and subsequent expansion of our Docker initiatives, which have aligned the company with a hugely successful technology," said Moritz Plassnig, CEO of Codeship. "In addition, our increased focus on enterprise clients has generated a significant influx of new users, each of whom have seen dramatic reductions in the amount of time it takes to move new products into production."?????????

The Training Revolution: How the Cloud, the Distributed Workforce & Video Are Impacting Learning
There's a lot of talk these days about how companies with engaged employees deliver the best customer service and are otherwise more productive than their less excited peers. So some businesses are working to figure out what it takes to keep their teams engaged. That's a growing challenge, however, particularly in light of the growing incidence of distributed workers. But new tools and solutions are coming available to help businesses keep their people informed about and involved in what they're working to accomplish.

Enterprise Briefs
Oracle in July revealed plans to buy cloud company NetSuite for $9.3 billion. The deal is expected to close later this year. Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle, emphasized the complementary nature of the two companies' cloud applications, said they "will coexist in the marketplace forever", and expressed Oracle's intention to invest heavily in distribution and engineering for both products. NetSuite's cloud-based business management software is in use by more than 30,000 organizations around the world.

How Robotic Automation is Being Used in Financial Services
Automation is becoming a prevalent theme at businesses, as more organizations look to employ computing resources and software rather than, or in addition to, people to handle repetitive tasks or other work requiring a high level of consistency.

Cradlepoint Unveils SD-WAN Service, SoftBank Partnership
Like many businesses, Cradlepoint is working to transform itself into a cloud-based service provider. But the company, which is best known for selling wireless routers, is unique in that it has technology powerhouse SoftBank as its partner for the ride.

Network Briefs
Oracle this summer revealed plans to buy cloud company NetSuite for $9.3 billion. The deal is expected to close later this year. Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle, emphasized the complementary nature of the two companies' cloud applications, said they "will coexist in the marketplace forever", and expressed Oracle's intention to invest heavily in distribution and engineering for both products.

FCC Considers Stricter Privacy Regulations for ISPs
All indications point to a Federal Communications Commission determined to finalize a landmark privacy rule proposal, the last piece of the Open Internet legacy that has been a priority for FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and the Obama White House. The new rules would regulate the data collection practices of broadband internet access service (BIAS) providers for the first time, in many cases requiring BIAS providers to receive customer opt-in approval prior to sharing data with third parties.

Managing at the Edge: The Infrastructure Challenges of a Next-Generation Telecom Network
Today's telecommunications networks can be viewed as sprawling, service-specific technology quilts, patched together over decades of expansion and equipment upgrades. They feature multiple layers, with a set of statically connected network functions supporting service delivery, provisioning, and operations. Each site requires critical infrastructure systems including power, backup power, and thermal management; however, management and monitoring of these systems has been primarily a manual function limited to alarms when something failed.

Security Briefs
Revenues for distributed denial of service mitigation products reached $517 million last year, according to new data from IHS Markit. Arbor was the market place leader in terms of DDoS prevention appliance revenue in 2015. Radware held the No. 2 position. Worldwide revenue was flat quarter-over-quarter in first quarter of 2016, totaling $147 million, the research firm said. However, year-over-year revenue growth in the DDoS mitigation product market was strong, at more than 30 percent, in the first quarter of this year.

Penetration Testing: Why What You're Doing May Not Be Adequate Protection
OurMine made headlines by accessing major social media accounts, taking Pokemon Go off-line with a distributed denial of service attack, and exploiting an authorization vulnerability in Mojang (among others). To date, their attacks have been nothing short of elementary and in most cases don't even qualify as legitimate hacks. The question is: Do OurMine's hacks represent poor technical capability, or do they represent a failure on the part of the security industry?

Cyber Lessons from Star Trek Beyond
Let's explore this idea of threat detection in Star Trek in context vs. another popular sci-fi franchise. In each of the seven Star Wars movies there is pretty much one threat. The threat goes by different names - the Galactic Empire, the Trade Federation, the First Order - but there's always a clearly defined enemy or adversary in a conventional good vs. evil story.

Channel Briefs
Enterprise cloud solution provider Unitas Global has purchased AOS Cloud for an undisclosed sum. The acquire with give Unitas a broader channel in the U.S. and client base as well as significant engineering resources and technology to expand and strengthen its solutions and strategy globally. Already Unitas has seen 118 percent CAGR over the past 24 months.

Will the Channel Survive?
When I attended the networking session at CompTIA's ChannelCon, I noticed (once again) that almost all of the room was well past 40 years old. The channel is not attracting new people.

NTT Communications Helps Channel Partners Swim Upstream
NTT Communications Corp. recently made available its security offerings to channel partners, created a new program to help the channel better address customers' digital transformations, and offered an update on its overall channel effort.

INTERNET TELEPHONY Newsletter

Sign up for our free weekly INTERNET TELEPHONY Newsletter!

Get the latest expert news, reviews & resources. Tailored specifically for VoIP and IP Communications.

Featured Story

Latest IP Communications News