Departments

Unified Communications

INTERNET TELEPHONY Congratulates Winners of the UC Excellence Awards
After years of debate, unified communications even today remains a hotly contested term. But the companies that consider themselves to be within the UC space continue moving forward with new, better, and more full-featured solutions -- often which have an important mobile component.

Network Infrastructure

Birch Continues to Grow: Service Provider Tucks in Cbeyond
Birch Communications Inc. in July completed the acquisition of Cbeyond. This $323 million all-cash transaction expanded the Birch IP network, added fiber assets, business customer base, data centers and other assets. INTERNET TELEPHONY recently interviewed Birch President & CEO Vincent M. Oddo on his company's history and strategy.

Ericsson Acquires Billing Company MetraTech
A few years ago Ericsson bought Telcordia for $1.15 billion in an effort that gained the telecom equipment giant a treasure trove of billing and operational support system product and expertise. Recently Ericsson struck again in this general arena, with the acquisition of billing outfit MetraTech. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

GENBAND Offers a Taste of KANDY
The arrival of the over-the-top application and the connected consumer has changed the game both for service providers and for businesses of all types. The new, quick rate of change means organizations need to get solutions to market more quickly, and deliver better and faster customer service. GENBAND is addressing all of the above with a new solution called KANDY.

Cloud & Data Center

ABPTech, DrayTek Enable SMBs to Ensure Access to the Cloud
More and more businesses - including SMBs - today rely on the cloud for such applications as CRM, e-mail, security, and more. The rise of the cloud means more services are available to more organizations at more affordable prices. And many businesses are migrating even their mission-critical applications to the cloud.

The Future of Cloud Services
Given the significant interest in and demand for cloud services, there's been a rush by service providers - existing and new - to roll out cloud offerings. In fact, of the around 20,000 service providers in North America, about 20 percent of them offer cloud services. But there will be a lot of fallout on this front, because a lot of these companies are regional in nature and provide just one or two products.

The Channel

On Rad's Radar: The WebRTC Craze
Right now, WebRTC is trending. It's the newest buzzword in the telecom space. It is outpacing UCaaS.

Security

CIO Roundtable Reveals State, University Leaders Thinking on Network Security
The federal government may be following our every virtual move, but the state governments of Nevada and Washington, as well as the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, are surprisingly open in the freedom they grant users on their networks, while still ensuring that important data on those networks is secured.

Roundup

Videoconferencing Roundup
Video represents the bulk of traffic on networks around the world, and this bandwidth-loving medium continues to grow by leaps and bounds. IP video traffic last year represented 66 percent of all global traffic last year, and by 2018 it's expected to hit the 79 percent mark, according to Cisco's Visual Networking Index.