A Brief Case of Why More Organizations Are Buying Skype for Business

UC MAGAZINE — February/March 2011

A Brief Case of Why More Organizations Are Buying Skype for Business

Skype got its start as a consumer service, but over time more and more businesses have begun to leverage the company's services as well…

Feature Articles

Inter-carrier Telepresence Takes Flight
Brian Washburn, research analyst at Current Analysis, says that while others have announced their intentions to offer inter-provider telepresence, AT&T and BT are first to take a swing at it on a commercial basis.

Five Obstacles to Growth in Videoconferencing
Why does an industry that delivers so much in the way of value through reduced travel expenses, increased productivity and greater communication efficiency have such a difficult time gaining wide spread usage? Even in the most innovative organizations, there are underlying issues that hinder the adoption of videoconferencing. These problems range from the highly technical to basic user perception. But in reality, the answer is quite simple: Anyone must be able to conference anywhere.

Look to Your Network to Ensure Reliable Real-Time Communications
As companies depend more heavily on unified communications to enrich employee interactions and enhance communication, the reliability of their UC infrastructure is more critical than ever. Deploying UC solutions can present challenges, but maximizing your untapped network capabilities can help you ensure the high availability and resilience necessary to deliver real-time communications.

Vroom Vroom: Auto Companies Embrace UC
Ford is among the automotive leaders providing voice-enabled and driver's dash-based interfaces for drivers and passengers so distraction from using communications in the car is minimized.

FaceFlow Videoconferencing Uses Just a Browser
Well, this new Adobe P2P voice/video technology is exactly what FaceFlow is leveraging. It greatly reduces the need for centralized servers (or supernodes like Skype) as well as the bandwidth requirements. I took FaceFlow for a spin. It was easy to sign up and register. Once registered, I registered a second account on another PC to make my first video call. I "friended" my second account and after accepting the friend invite I made a video call from my first account to the second account all on the same LAN segment. The video frame rate is excellent; however, it seems the company compromised a bit on video quality. The video had artifacts in it at times, especially when moving. But overall, the video was pretty decent.

ITEXPO East Download
We've been hearing about presence for years, but the recent rise of the smartphone and the desire for more unified communications are now enabling presence to take off in a more concrete way. However, to a large extent both users and those offering presence-based solutions are still laying the groundwork for what presence can and should allow.

News Stories

Rebtel with a Cause: Mobile VoIP Player Takes on the Bigger Boys
Rebtel is taking on the likes of Skype, GoogleVoice and Facetime with its mobile VoIP solutions. The latest to its lineup is a new app for the BlackBerry that allows users of the application to make free international calls.

Former UTStarcom Leader Blackmore Takes the Helm of ShoreTel
ShoreTel recently announced Peter Blackmore as its president and CEO. He's already on the job, replacing Don Girskis, ShoreTel's senior vice president of worldwide sales, who had been acting as interim CEO while the company decided on a new leader.

Case Study

California School District Lauds CallTower Solution
The effort involved migrating 26 locations from a Nortel analog phone system, which lacked key voice and e-mail features and had reached end-of-life for maintenance and support, to a CallTower hosted VoIP solution that leverages Cisco VoIP and video products; a Microsoft OCS server, including chat, some video capabilities, and audio extensions for click to call, among other features; and unified message to the school district's Exchange server.