M2M Players Form Open Source Working Group
A handful of M2M players this fall formed a working group aimed at expediting the deployment, development and testing of machine-to-machine solutions. Founders of the effort include the Eclipse Foundation, integrator Eurotech, IBM, and Sierra Wireless.

Talking Mobile Wallet with TMNG's Rich Nespola
INTERNET TELEPHONY recently interviewed Rich Nespola, chairman and CEO of TMNG Global, which provides consulting and advisory services to companies in the mobile wallet ecosystem, about what's happening on the mobile wallet front.

Prospecting for Gold
One way is the carrier lit building list. Many carriers that own fiber provide these lists to their agents and sales people. It is a ready-made prospecting list.

Making Smart Investments in Infrastructure
CIOs and IT managers are taking a critical eye toward infrastructure investments. I've spoken to a number of industry colleagues and they agree that while the economy has loosened things up somewhat, investments must first prove their worthiness in order to trigger the spend.

SIP Trunking and Beyond: Call Recording Made Easier?
Businesses across many vertical industries are facing regulatory compliance and oversight from government agencies that include a long list of regulations such as SEC 17a-4, HIPAA, SOX, PCI-DSS, FSA and MIPPA. A major component of being compliant means that businesses need to record interactions with their customers. At minimum, recording voice calls provides a record of these interactions in the event that proof is required if a dispute arises. These recordings serve to demonstrate that all necessary regulations were met in a call between a customer service representative and their client.

Preparing for the Cloud
Everyone is talking the cloud. Carriers are looking at cloud to increase both margins and stickiness. Telco, TDM, T1 are commodities with razor-thin margins. Cell, TV, broadband, and voice are flat or declining. Layer 7 is the only way to gain revenue.

Deep Packet Inspection: A Critical Security Measure
Deep packet inspection is a powerful way to protect not just SIP traffic, but also the network. Deep packet inspection is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data (or datagram) and UDP/TCP header part of a packet as it passes through an enterprise session border controller.

Presence for the Present
Like peanut butter and chocolate, or cookies and milk, presence - typically in the form of colored jellybeans - has gone hand in hand with desktop instant messaging applications since the very beginning. For the last decade, users have been trained to know that a green-colored jellybean means that a user is available, while a red one means they are not. While there are variations in the colors and meanings across different clients, everyone - from Skype to Windows Live Messenger to Google Talk have used these little colored jellybeans in very similar ways.

For Unified Communications, a Future Unclouded
The IT industry is prone to get enthusiastic about emerging technologies. In many cases, this enthusiasm drives support for technologies that go on to make a real difference to business performance or, in some cases, people's lives.

Sangoma Talks Strategy, Including Its Recent Acquisition
Sangoma recently acquired VegaStream. INTERNET TELEPHONY used that announcement as an opportunity to connect with Jeff Dworkin, Sangoma's director of marketing, to find out more about the deal and about the company's open source strategy as a whole.

Planning for SIP Trunking; Considerations to Take into Account
No matter where I travel in the world, telecom managers' eyes gleam when the topic of SIP trunking arises. So it wasn't much of a surprise to me as I looked at a SIP Trunking Snapshot to see that the viewpoint on adoption is still, for the most part, looked at from a futuristic standpoint, but that more and more people are expressing excitement about it.

UC in the Post-PC Era
The post-PC era is characterized by the consumerization of IT. This is a time where the laptop stays plugged into the wall for the most part, and more nimble devices like smartphones and tablets take on the role of the computer on the go. People, the world over, have eagerly embraced the new paradigm of anywhere, anytime, any device communication, collaboration and digital media consumption. By 2012, mobile users will make up 73 percent of the enterprise workforce, according to Forrester Research. With so many mobile employees, ubiquitous access to network resources has become business-critical.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure Taps XO Communications for UC
For example, while Susan G. Komen for the Cure liked the opex model of its former shared tenant PBX services, it found the solution's costs and turn up times excessive when it came to adds, moves and changes. That - and the breast cancer organization's desire to add call center functionality, do call recording, better support its mobile workforce, and integrate the communications capabilities of its Dallas and Washington, D.C., offices - led it to issue a request for proposals for all of the above.

The Importance of E-SBCs
E-SBCs sit at the edge of the enterprise network to provide control over the SIP traffic. They serve as a crucial element in enabling SIP deployments for SIP trunking, UC and more.

On Rad's Radar: The Transactional Agent in Cloud
One is describing the transactional model as lame or broken or dying. Bandwidth is a commodity business. So are cellular and TV - both flat markets. In a commodity market, where customer acquisition is actually about taking customers away from a competitor, for a lack of value, price is how replacement services are sold via a transactional model.

M2M Offers DHL Visibility on Urgent Shipments
During his 4GWE keynote speech earlier this fall in Austin, Matt Groppe, director of global business development for DHL SAMEDAY, said that the shipping market is changing as customers are demanding more visibility into their deliverables.

8x8 Buys Cloud Contact Center Vendor Contactual
In a move that likely came as a surprise to many in the communications industry, 8x8 this fall announced its acquisition of contact center vendor Contactual. In reality, the merger is more of a logical evolution of a four-year collaborative relationship - 8x8's contact center customers have actually been using Contactual's cloud-based services for some time.

Mobile Mashups
Last August Skype bought GroupMe, a startup based on group messaging, the clever idea of assigning a phone number through which a group of people can exchange SMS messages (text messages). Each message sent to that number is relayed to all the members of the group, to create the effect of an SMS-based chat room.

GCS Unveils Inter-Carrier Management Portal
Global Convergence Solutions (GCS) has launched a carrier-to-carrier portal as part of its OSS and BSS solution for communications service providers. The GCS Dynamic Carrier Portal is delivered through the GCS cloud computing platform under a software-as-a-service-based pricing model.

Streamline Your Business with Notifications and Surveys
"This is a reminder to make your six-month dental checkup appointment." "This is a reminder for your car service appointment tomorrow at 8 a.m." "Tornadoes have been reported in your area, please take shelter." "There is a power supply failure on server HSV12." "Please indicate your satisfaction with your recent repair."

ITEXPO Austin Highlights the Next Generation of Technology
On any given day, as I look through my vendor news, my Google Alerts, and the content on TMCnet, I'm amazed at the breadth of innovation our industry achieves on a daily basis, constantly bringing new products and services to market, or enhancing existing product offerings to enable customers to conduct business more efficiently and effectively.

Alliance Foursome Partners on SEP2 Interoperability Effort
Smart energy has generated a lot of buzz in recent years, but putting all the necessary pieces in place to make it happen is no small task. To move smart energy forward, various governmental and industry groups are formulating standards and forging alliances around interoperability.

Cracking the Multi-Screen Entertainment Nut
A year ago this month media outlets reported that the DBS outfit had trademarked the Nomad name after having used the same term in surveys to describe the ability of users to view TV content across their various television, computer and mobile device screens.

Naysaying the Naysayers of Video
All too often in our industry, we look at technologies in black-or-white terms. Every now and then, there is a meme as to whether chat will kill e-mail, whether video will kill voice, or whether SMS is dead. This talk misses a very important point: Different communications modalities are appropriate choices for different types of conversations.

Intuittech, Strateq Target Asia with Asterisk
Strateq Sdn Bhd has entered into an strategic partnership with Intuittech Sdn Bhd, which says it's the world's largest Asterisk solutions provider. Through the alliance, Strateq becomes the primary sales interface to market and distribute the complete portfolio of Asterisk-based telephony solutions from Intuitttech in the Asian region. Intuittech will be placing its technical and implementation team at all Strateq's regional offices starting with Singapore and Thailand this year.

Quickcomm CEO: More Indie TEM Outfits Will Be Acquired
Telecom expense management used to be a niche business about which players had to educate the market place. But today TEM is well understood - so well understood, in fact, that some of the world's most important telephone companies have pulled telecom expense management solutions into their portfolios. Vodafone is one such example.

ITS to Add Cloud, Wireless to Its Services Solutions Portfolio
There's a lot of talk about innovation in the world of communications these days. But you won't find Integrated Telemanagement Services Inc. on the leading edge. Instead, the data, voice - and soon-to-be wireless - provider focuses on delivering a high level of customer support and a single bill for multiple services, says Rick Minyard.

What Makes a Good Channel Manager?
The channel manager is the front line player interfacing with the agent for carriers and master agencies. In my research for my panel at CVx Expo, I asked agents on LinkedIn and on a TCA tele-seminar what their thoughts were.

Kutenda Helps Telecom Agents, IT Outsourcers Get the Word Out
Effective marketing can be a significant challenge, even for companies and individuals who have a clear idea of what they want to say. Telecom agents and IT outsourcers looking for ways to get their messages and services to the small and medium business set can get that assistance from a company called Kutenda.

Securing the Smart Grid: 3eTI Solutions Opens the Door to Energy Conservation, Closes It to Hackers
Government leaders have long talked about the need for our nation to formulate a policy on energy conservation. Today, the government is leading by example, as federal agencies aim to reduce their energy expenses by approximately 25 percent by 2020, as compared with 2008.

Utilities & Telecom Partner at the 'Edge' of the Smart Grid
Smart grid applications such as smart metering, distribution automation, street lighting control, renewables integration and building energy management are delivered by distributed energy control networks that thrive on interconnectedness. The hundreds of millions of elements that make up control networks worldwide, such as smart meters and sensors, must be reliably, easily and cost-effectively connected to other elements such as control nodes and to enterprise business applications - aka headends.

SIP Trunking for Small Businesses
Lately we've seen (in Ingate's business) a surge of small businesses installing SIP trunks. SIP trunks were first adopted by SMBs that saw the cost-saving potential with shifting voice traffic to SIP. Larger enterprises have also caught on as they realized that the productivity benefits with unified communications were exceptional. UC also offers them a competitive edge.

Elfiq LB-800E Delivers Robust Link Balancing
We all know data is critical to just about any business. The real question is how to handle business continuity in the event a data connection is lost. While there are myriad ways of handling the loss of a data connection, the simplest method is the usage of a link balancer. A link balancer is a network-based appliance that proactively manages bandwidth from multiple ISP or private links. Should one or more links go down, the link balancer can automatically switch the traffic to the available ISP link(s) until the troubled link returns to normal.

Dual-Mode Mobility
Wi-Fi and cellular technologies are turning out to be complementary. Cellular technology is relatively long range, and it can handle clients moving at car speeds; but it can have capacity and coverage difficulties, especially indoors, and the equipment is relatively expensive. Wi-Fi is predominantly an in-building solution; it is short range, high density, high capacity and commodity priced. Wi-Fi is ubiquitous in the devices that consume most mobile data: smartphones, tablets and laptops. Wi-Fi access points are cheap and widely deployed. Consequently, mobile data is evolving to a dual-mode solution, with Wi-Fi indoors and cellular technologies outdoors, with an overlap in large indoor spaces like airports and malls.

Top 3 Ways to Improve
We all need to get a little better, especially with all the changes happening in the channel. We have to do more and more to get the same result, it seems. Here are three ways to see marked improvement.

Wondershare Seeks Channel Partners
Wondershare - which sells photo, video, PDF and PC utility software - is seeing "explosive growth" and it's looking for some good channel partners with which it can share the wealth.

IPTV Excellence Award Winners
IPTV Excellence Award Winners

Adobe Labs Discusses Its HTML5 Initiatives
Adobe last month took the wraps off a new HTML5-based tool for creating interactive and animated web content. Called Adobe Edge, the product initially will be free for download, during which time the company will collect feedback on it.

UC in the Cloud: Understanding the Benefits and Challenges
Forsythe says that interest and adoption of unified communications technologies and solutions remain high. Lots of Interactive Intelligence customers, he says, want to move to VoIP across the entire enterprise.

The More Things Change...The More They Stay the Same
It's hard to believe that more than three years have passed since I started sharing my thoughts and experiences with you. During this time, unified communications has changed from a poorly understood term to a well understood cost saver for the CIO. And unified communications combined with collaboration provide even greater savings but, perhaps more importantly, productivity improvements for workers across the Internet.

Varnish Extends Web Acceleration Solution
Varnish Software's latest web accelerator, Varnish Cache 3.0, has module support, which allows business and application logic - which can determine such things as what content to serve to what user, for example - to reside in the caching layer of the network.

Hotels Turn to Fixed Wireless Connections for HSIA, Business Continuity
Unless you've been distracted playing Angry Birds, it should come as no surprise that wireless technology is the new communications cornerstone of our highly mobile society. It has also grown to be the bane of IT's existence. Nowhere is that fact more pronounced than in the hospitality industry where guests' bandwidth-hungry devices can cripple network capacity quicker than you can say trouble ticket.

The Next Frontier
The MSOs are interconnecting their networks. This will allow for out-of-region multi-location deals. Cablecos are like baby bells in that they don't compete in a franchise region, so there isn't any overlapping network. The NNI allows for a larger footprint.

Going Beyond Traditional TEM for Deepest Cost Savings
With CIOs focused on cutting expenses, many companies rely on telecom expense management to better control their substantial telecom expenditures. While TEM providers deliver bill auditing, provisioning and inventory management, more comprehensive cost-cutting activities frequently fall outside their core offerings. Additionally, with limited integration into enterprise network management processes, TEM providers can lack the visibility necessary to identify many savings areas. To avoid leaving money on the table, companies should ensure they address the following five often-missed telecom cost-cutting opportunities.

Beyond Price
Recently on an agent webinar, one agent was talking about how he collects five quotes for a prospect to find the cheapest possible T1. My jaw dropped. That's a lot of work for the sale - not just for the agent but for five carriers. It's a funnel management nightmare.

OpenStack Turns One
This summer marks the one-year anniversary of OpenStack, a cloud-focused open source effort initiated by Rackspace. Already OpenStack has seen 20,000 downloads, involvement from such major players as Cisco and Citrix, and deployments by enterprises and top-level service providers including Internap, KT and NT.

Google Offers Assurances That Android Will Remain Open Source
Recent new stories have brought into question the extent to which Android remains truly open source. According to reports from media outlets such as Bloomberg Businessweek, Google is now taking a firmer hand in controlling software tweaks, partnerships related to Android, and approvals. Google, which declined to be interviewed for this piece, is discounting all this.

Do You Want Fries With That?
A couple of years ago, conferencing was a side act in telecom. Not many agents sold it. Those that did kind of specialized in it. Today, it has gone a little main stream. One reason is that the conferencing providers like Intercall and RollCall starting providing agents with extra tools that most CLECs did not: value propositions.

Cedarville University Branches Into VoIP
It's a familiar refrain: An organization has an existing Nortel phone switch that's nearing end of life and needs to decide where to turn. For Cedarville University, the answer was an open source solution from eZuce.

Differentiation
This is one reason why our industry is sold on price. There's not much difference between carriers for many services. It's not a message that the marketing departments of the carriers do a good job of expressing.

Continua, HL7 Provide Underpinnings for Connected Health Care
But communication-enabling medical devices; allowing existing and new health care applications to run on new and different platforms; and making all these devices, applications and data work together in a useful and seamless way doesn't happen by itself. It requires a fair amount of industry collaboration. Two of the key organizations helping to make all work in an efficient and integrated way are Continua and Health Level Seven International.

Small Service Providers - Competing Amongst Giants
In these tough economic times small service providers are finding it harder than ever to remain competitive with the giants. Many have been swallowed up, or their client base has dried up as tier 1 service providers grab what little territory is left. Recently, we sat down with Philippe Babin, general manager at Media5 Corp., to discuss the changing role of the small service providers and the solutions that Media5 has put forward to address this interesting marketplace.

VoIP Test Solutions: Is It Time for Them to Jump on the Open Source Bandwagon?
It is an open secret that the first choice of any new OEM or service provider in VoIP product or service rollout would be to use open source tools. The myth, though, is that the usage is restricted to new entrants, while established service providers prefer the variety of commercial products that are available in the market.

How to Sell DIA
One thing you must do in the sales process is point out that broadband is best effort without a service level agreement. T1 DIA is a hardy, reliable circuit that is dedicated bandwidth. No "up to" - but dedicated 1.5 mbps up and down. I don't think enough buyers understand that difference.

How Montage Companies is Using Hosted VoIP Internationally
In this technology charged economy, it's important for small organizations that want to scale their businesses to implement technology services and resources that will help them grow. Implementing hosted technologies, like VoIP and other hosted unified communications solutions, helps streamline a business to become faster and more efficient for both customers and employees.

Are We Looking at VAR 2.0?
There has been a plethora of merger activity in the second half of 2010, including in the indirect channel space. MSPs are merging. VARs are merging with telecom agencies. Much of that activity has to do with the cloud movement. As the cloud takes up more oxygen in the room, sectors of our industry have to figure out how to stay relevant.

Keeping It Fresh: Pace Picks Up Savings with MegaPath Services
Preservation is important, whether you're talking about maintaining the freshness of fruits and vegetables, or controlling costs to ensure your business's longevity. In the case of Pace International, a hosted voice solution from MegaPath helps it address all of the above.

Ameristar Jet Taps NEC for UC Contact Center
One of the country's largest operators of on-demand cargo jet aircraft, Ameristar Jet was ready to move to the next level with its contact center and communications solutions.

Where's the Beef?
Agents and VARs have to figure out quickly where they fit in the cloud ecosystem. It could just be on the edge as the pipe. Carriers currently are looking at that dumb pipe position and saying there's not a lot of value in being a dumb pipe provider. There's not a lot of value in being a dumb pipe order taker either.

Things That Make Me Go 'Huh'
Letting more and more people go. All the telcos are doing it. To their detriment. It continues to be a struggle to use the AT&T portals to order anything. It's challenging to get an update, to get circuits installed and turned up properly.

Latitude and Longitude: Interactive Intelligence Continues Vertical M&A Strategy
Interactive Intelligence sells unified business communications solutions for contact center automation, enterprise IP telephony, and business process automation. This fall it purchased Global Software Services Inc., which does business under the name of Latitude Software, for approximately $14 million. Latitude sells software and services that aid in debt collection.

UC's Continued Growth in SMB Market Expected for 2011
Software-based offerings will continue to grow within the SMB market. Smaller organizations have relied on several data-centric applications for some time now.

Where's The Money in 2011?
The consolidation resulting from all the M&A this year is probably making agents nervous over whether their commissions are safe or not.

Vie de France Relishes Benefits of Hosted IP Communications
Baking is an exact science - adding too much of one ingredient or too little of another can result in culinary disaster. The same might be said about communications.

The Integrated Solution Model Is the Next Step for Higher Education
The higher education sector is continually evolving, with trends emerging from political, economic and social influences. Colleges and universities can now begin building upon the success of migrating to IP technology by adding services and infrastructure that will enable them to better respond now and in the future.

Certified Telecom Professionals
Many industries offer a professional certificate. It is a designation of a qualification. It can re-shape an industry segment. Look at what Cisco's certifications have done for networking: Solid educational levels with demonstrated proficiency.

Ford Revs up Vehicles with Advanced On-Board Communications Features
The smartphone, wireless technology and app stores are enabling consumers to manage their communications and access applications whenever they want, wherever they are - whether that's at home, at work, outside, or even in their vehicles.

What's Next for Novell?
As of press time in late September, rumors were swirling about the potential acquisition of Novell Inc., one of the large companies that contributes to and distributes products and services supporting the popular open source technology known as Linux. Most reports indicated that VMware Inc. is the most likely company to take control of Novell.

On the Road with Samsung Business Communication Systems
Premier Transfer & Storage Inc. is always on the move, whether that involves transporting its clients' household, industrial or office goods; enabling its personnel to relocate to get the job done; or expanding its own business. So flexibility in how the company's communications system works is of the utmost importance. That's why the Virginia-based Mayflower transit agency recently adopted an IP-based phone system from Samsung.

Unified Communications within the Retail Market
In such a competitive market, customers are likely to remember and return to retail establishments that have exceeded their expectations. Retailers can leverage UC to enhance communication at every level of the purchase cycle, to enhance the customers' shopping experience and drive loyalty.

Rich Calling Has Started
I've been looking at the review for 8x8's Virtual Office Pro today. It seems like a Web-based portal for a fully functioning PBX including call rules, auto attendant, music on hold, and even includes Web conferencing. Easy to use is key.

SIPfoundry Founders Go Commercial with eZuce
This article originally appeared in the October 2010 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY The guys who established SIPfoundry have gone commercial. Their new company, eZuce, aims to deliver all-software-based telephony solutions akin to what Microsoft provides. The twist is that the eZuce solution will offer the added benefit of being open source and its go-to-market will be 100 percent indirect.

Open Source VoIP the Right Way
The implementation of open source voice over IP solutions has graduated from niche status to become a viable and increasingly popular approach for enterprise voice services. A 2009 research study by the Eastern Management Group reported that open source PBXs captured 18 percent of the 2008 market - a 40 percent increase over the previous year, and more market share than any traditional PBX manufacturer.

Various Forces Align to Forward the Smart Grid
This article originally appeared in the October 2010 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY The smart grid has gotten a lot of buzz and drawn a fair amount of dollars in recent months. Of course, the term smart grid means many things to many people. That's because there are a lot of angles and players involved.

ForgeRock Picks Up Where Sun Left Off
If your company uses the Sun Microsystems OpenSSO platform and has felt abandoned as it waited for an upgrade to release 8 that never came, help is on the way. An upstart called ForgeRock, manned by some of the staff that led the OpenSSO charge at Sun, now offers a variety of solutions based on the open source solution.

Internet Security Outfit Seeks Channel Partners
Alston: BitDefender was founded in 2001 in Bucharest, Romania. The company made its entrance [into] the international market by opening offices in Germany, Spain (2003), USA (2004) and the U.K. (2006) and continues to expand globally by strengthening its position with a series of strategic partnerships and entrance into the Asian market. At the end of 2007, BitDefender received an investment to support its global expansion and advance its leadership position in the anti-virus software and data security industry. The investment group is part Romanian, part American, and it has substantial investment experience in the region and in the IT sector.

Is Satellite Sexy Again?
Remember when big companies like Microsoft and Motorola were pinning their hopes, and a whole lot of money, on satellite-based broadband? Well, things didn't play out as they had hoped, but now satellite is getting a second look.

Online Video, Music, Gaming Drive Growth in Colocation
The growth of online video and music is driving demand for co-location space in data centers. That's the word from Brad Hokamp, chief marketing officer at Telx.

UC Will Play an Integral Role in Enterprise Mobility of the Future
The North American workforce is quickly changing into a labor pool of knowledge workers -people who contribute to the bottom line by consuming, managing and processing information from various sources. As the marketplace continues a global expansion, more workers will spend more time away from their desks - whether in the building or on the road - yet still need to communicate in real time, anytime, from any location. To improve employee productivity, companies will need to equip workers with the mobile technology that keeps them connected to the people and information they need at all times.

Hosted VoIP Provider IP5280 Seeks Channel Partners
But it was while he was at ICG that Pearl saw the early decline of traditional telephony and the growth of VoIP. As that transition took place, customers needed a place to go, Pearl says, adding that's what prompted him to join forces with Scarborough to launch IP5280.

UC Is a Means to New Roles-Based Strategies in the Enterprise
Companies are leveraging unified communications to respond to constant evolution within the workforce. While it is certainly a worthwhile investment for competitive advantage, a well-planned UC deployment can set the stage for an even more expansive concept: roles-based communication. As new technology enters an already 24-hour enterprise, roles-based communication can help companies to respond better in a continually evolving economy and marketplace

WhiteHouse.gov Expands Open Source Efforts
The White House has jumped aboard the open source bandwagon. And we're not talking about some cleverly named Silicon Valley upstart. This is the real deal.

Payment via Mobile Device? There's An App for That
Right, we've all by now heard about the prospects of mobile payments. But despite years of talk, this concept has yet to materialize in a significant way in the U.S. That may soon change, however, given new momentum in this space as important companies like Apple, eBay, MasterCard and Visa have announced, or delivered tools to help enable, new initiatives on this front.

Used Car Report Outfit CARFAX Updates Web Site with Crescendo ADCs
The economy has tightened the belts of car shoppers, and many are opting for pre-owned vehicles over new models to save money. To make sure they're getting a reliable vehicle, many used car buyers turn to CARFAX for a Vehicle History Report before making their final purchase decision.

Coke Taps into Personalization Trend with Freestyle Beverage Platform
Coca-Cola is tapping into the hot trends of self-service and personalization with a new product and brand it calls Coca-Cola Freestyle. Freestyle is a proprietary, self-service fountain dispenser entering market testing this summer.

What's Next in Retail: Barcodes Get a Makeover
It never went away, of course. It's just that recently a lot of pretty important folks have become very excited about the barcode and the new opportunities that can be created when it's married with social networking and mobile technologies.

So You Want to Build a Channel?
One of the most popular topics when speaking to service providers is sales compensation. The other is how to pay agents. It's about more than the number of points. Can you support a channel? The commission schedule gets the agent's attention, but a support structure will keep your agents producing for you (and not your competitors).

ITS Targets Financial Vertical with HFN Deal
While everybody and their brother used to be an agent, in recent years there's been significant consolidation within the channel. For example, Verizon, which used to have 1,600 agents, now has under 90, notes Keith Muller, CEO and founder of master telecommunications agent Interactive Telecom Solutions Inc.

IT Virtualization Can Help Channel Address Business Customers' Requirements
Information technology is making an inevitable shift toward newer computing models that will drastically change our traditional approach to developing, deploying and running enterprise applications. IT virtualization enables many of these newer concepts that promise better scalability, performance and reliability across the organization.

Net-Head Part III: An Agent's Head in the Clouds
Cloud computing is a step removed from collocation. Whereby collocation is about space, power and connectivity, cloud computing is about servers, storage, real-time applications, data integrity, technical skills and management. It's the outsourcing of applications from your IT department. What is Google Apps and hosted e-mail but cloud computing?

Demand for Open Source and Standards-Based Solutions Moves Upward
The market demand for service availability has been growing quietly behind the scenes for more than a decade. In the past, service availability solutions typically were based on proprietary technologies, developed in-house for specific applications in telecommunications and other markets. However, recent activities in the marketplace indicate the growing adoption of open source solutions for service availability in next-generation networks.

ExteNet WiFi System Trumps Others
Wi-Fi has become a must-have amenity for most hotels. ExteNet Systems Inc. has a solution that caters to that need - but without all the muss and fuss or your typical high-speed Internet installation. The company recently went live with such a system at Chicago's Trump International Hotel and Tower. INTERNET TELEPHONY recently interviewed

Amid Travel Slowdown, Communications Advances Help Hotels Leave the Light On
The hospitality industry has taken a hit in recent months due to the recession and fluctuating gas prices. Nonetheless, it remains a key vertical on which telecom and IT solutions providers are focused, and these companies say hotels can use this time to leverage communications to lower costs, build customer loyalty and drive new revenues.

Jump Start Your Business Continuity Project
This column has continually emphasized that business continuity and disaster recovery planning are essential for the long-term survival of an organization. VoIP, FoIP, SaaS, managed and hosted services and cloud computing are some of the possible components of a 21st Century BC/DR implementation that make this process easier than ever before. But how does a novice begin the process of evaluation to determine which combination of these technologies best meets their requirements? Simple - attend ITEXPO West 2010, Oct. 4-6, 2010, in Los Angeles.

FCC Now Requires VoIP Outage Reporting

CTIA Statement on Today's FCC Open Meeting

Frost & Sullivan Recognizes AT&T Leadership in Providing Business Communication Services

Lebanon to resolve Internet congestion in six months

Frost & Sullivan Recognizes AT&T Leadership in Providing Business Communication Services; AT&T wins 2011 North American Business Communications Services Company of the Year

Panasonic Receives Recognition in Today's Facility Manager Readers' Choice Awards

Panasonic Receives Recognition in Today's Facility Manager Readers' Choice Awards

Frost & Sullivan Recognizes AT&T Leadership in Providing Business Communications Services