Latest Departments

Network

Equalizing Opportunities for VoIP through Simplification and Harmonization of Rules
A significant legal classification available to traditional telecommunications competitors remains out of reach for the interconnected VoIP industry because interconnected VoIP carriers cannot offer their services on a private carriage basis, or take advantage of certain deregulatory benefits associated with private carriage.

Enterprise Communications

Some Noises Reduce Productivity, Others Can Aid It
Noise can inhibit productivity, but if you choose the right noise, it's possible to boost productivity.

Strategic Solutions Series

Ready, Set, Go! Titanium Cloud Provides Carriers Billions of Dollars in Upside
Network virtualization promises to provide communications service providers with billions of dollars in upside through the fast delivery of new revenue-generating services and lower operational expenses.

Strategic Solutions Series

Aquantia Leads the Multi-Gig Revolution
Aquantia is addressing the need for Multi-Gig Ethernet solutions which serve a variety of markets and products at both ends of the network, where data is stored and consumed, and where more and more bottlenecks are occurring.

Corporate Profile

Telesystem: The New Name in Communications
If you are not yet familiar with the name Telesystem, you probably should be. Telesystem is a growing brand that is now going head-to-head with some of the biggest names in communications.

Networks

Cisco Working on Standalone OS
Just about everybody in this industry likes to talk about software-centric networks that allow for greater agility and economies of scale. The actual strategies and deliverables behind these conversations vary greatly, however.

Networks

ECOMP, OPEN-O Orchestration Efforts to Merge
ECOMP and Open Orchestrator Project (or OPEN-O) are merging under the new Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) Project of The Linux Foundation.

Networks

Future NPAC Administrator iconectiv Begins Testing
Ericsson's iconectiv in mid-May began industry testing related to its future role as the nation's Local Number Portability Administrator.

Networks

How to Design Advanced Communication Infrastructure
Access to high-quality, dependable technological infrastructure doesn't start with a business' IT department - it starts with the building in which it resides.

Enterprise Communications

Human Capital Management: Analyzing the Tech Talent Gap
There's a whole lot of talk lately about the tech talent gap. This widening crevasse exists across a wide array of job types and technologies.

Enterprise Communications

Telecom CEOs Face Personal Risk When Reputation Attacks Occur
When corporate reputations are damaged in today's unforgiving culture, individuals in corporate leadership take the heat as stakeholders seek satisfaction through blaming, shaming, and directing their anger and disappointment toward the most visible personification of the company they can find - usually meaning the CEO.

Enterprise Communications

The Changing UC&C Supplier Landscape: Toshiba Exits, Mitel Expands & Contracts, Mavenir Resurfaces
It's not an easy time to be in the unified communications and collaboration space. As in many areas of technology, the players are changing and morphing quickly in an effort to address their own internal challenges as well as outside forces.

Enterprise Communications

Enterprise Briefs
INTERNET TELEPHONY'S Enterprise Briefs give you a snapshot of many of the newsworthy happenings in enterprise communications space.

Wireless

Verizon Grabs Straight Path from AT&T
Cellular spectrum has really become a game of musical chairs in recent years as the Internet of Things expands and companies jockey for control of the airwaves that will help connect the IoT.

Wireless

Wireless Briefs
INTERNET TELEPHONY's Wireless Briefs gives you a quick look at what's happening in the world of wireless communications.

Video

WebRTC: The Answer to Scalability for Remote Video and Voice Services
As the technology commanded by the average web user improves - and as easy access to video and voice channels is culturally preparing us for ubiquitous face-to-face interactions - we may be looking at a renaissance in interpersonal communications.

Developer & Open Source

Open Networks, Open for Business
Open networking offers service providers a route to much-needed rapid service deployment, agile innovation, and leaner spending.

The Channel

AVANT Helps Salespeople Become Trusted Advisors
Today every organization is - or should be - a digital business. So companies need help in selecting and implementing the right communications and networking solutions for their needs.

The Channel

The Argument for Verticals
After my last column (Why Hasn't UCaaS Taken Off?) was published, Garrett Smith, former VoIP blogger and current marketer, commented: "Because what's unified for one business is not for the next. True UC requires vertical comms unification, not mass market standardization."

The Channel

Channel Briefs
INTERNET TELEPHONY's Channel Briefs bring you a snapshot of the latest action around the tech channel.

Recognition

2017 IT TMC Labs Innovation Awards
Welcome to the 18th annual INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine TMC Labs Innovation Awards, where we honor innovative technologies from a wide range of areas. Winners this year are quite diverse - from phones to BSS and 911 solutions. There has been emphasis on bringing solutions to market more quickly, which has obviously been enabled by the cloud.

Video

Video Briefs
Many of us tap into Facebook with our computers and smartphones. And now the company wants to make it easier for us to tune into Facebook on our televisions as well.

Recognition

INTERNET TELEPHONY, TMC Name NFV, SDN Award Winners
Network functions virtualization and software-defined networking are two of the biggest trends in communications infrastructure today.

Security

How to Keep Hello Barbie from Becoming a Hacker????
What a time to be alive! Computers are talking to cars, and Barbies can connect to your phone. Even connected shirts are getting some skin in the IoT game. Some of these devices can make our lives easier by creating a world in which you can get freshly brewed coffee right when you wake up, and you can check your fridge from the grocery store to ensure there's milk for breakfast.????

Enterprise Communications

Enterprise Briefs
Unified communications software-as-a-service company BroadSoft in February announced 22 percent revenue growth between 2015 and 2016. The company's total revenue last year was $341 million. BroadSoft President and CEO Michael Tessler also noted that the company ended 2016 with its first-ever greater than $100 million revenue and billings quarter.

Enterprise Communications

Combatting Software Audit Angst
When under the microscope, unprepared organizations can have their carefully planned budgets disrupted by punitive true-up fees and heavy fines incurred through lack of compliance, often unbeknownst to them. Like in any situation of appraisal, lack of preparedness quickly becomes evident during a vendor software audit, causing worry for many. It's no wonder software and IT asset managers around the globe shudder at the thought of an audit request letter from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and other like providers.

Enterprise Communications

Why Cisco Is Spending Billions on AppDynamics
Business processes and communications are increasingly moving to applications. As applications proliferate, so do management challenges related to them.

Networks

Network Briefs
Comcast Business recently announced plans to invest $25 million to expand its fiber-based network in Boston and Cambridge. That, the company said, will enable it to reach more than 3,000 businesses directly and reach tens of thousands more with 100 gigabit per second capacity. The build will entail the deployment of more than 40 miles of new fiber optic cable in the Back Bay, the Financial District and parts of Cambridge.

Networks

Study Assesses NFV MANO Vendor Offerings
Netcracker Technology made a big impression in the network functions virtualization management and orchestration arena market research recently published by Current Analysis.

Networks

Cabinets, CORD & OCP: Making Carrier Facilities More Like Data Centers
The desire for more agility, the move to open systems and virtualization, and the need to scale more efficiently are changing networking as we know it.

The Channel

Channel Briefs
GloboTech Communications has added VMware's software-defined data center to its portfolio. This solution enables organizations to self provision virtual machines in their private environments and have those resources available on demand. VMware Cloud Foundation is the name of the SDDC solution. It brings together VMware's NSX, vSAN, and vSphere. And it supports qualified vSAN ready nodes from Dell, HP, and QCT.

NETWORKS

Innovating Our Way Out of NFV Disillusionment
With more than 200 companies already dedicated to NFV and access to a vibrant open-source community, the issues with NFV are not technical; quite the opposite in fact. We are in danger of creating sub-optimal solutions in an effort to show quick progress. What is needed now for NFV are solutions designed from the ground up specifically to address the overall requirements of NFV. Developing and delivering these solutions will require a collaborative effort between carriers and vendors to not only provide solutions that work, but also to address the bottom line NFV requirements for success.

The Channel

Channel Briefs
Gemalto has introduced a customizable portal that addresses the unique software supply chain needs of its customers. Those customers are companies that sell hardware in which software is a key component, or just pure software.

The Channel

The IoT and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
Think of the IoT like a moving elephant - you are not going to be able to stop it or slow it down, but maybe you can carefully turn it in a direction favorable to your organization.

Recognition

INTERNET TELEPHONY Announces TMC Product of the Year Award Winners
It's an exciting time for tech. New and improved products and services come to market every day. Here's a look at some of the solutions deemed the best by our TMC panel of judges.

Security

Ransomware Threat Continues Surge
The ransomware problem is bad, and it's only getting worse. Ransomware is, of course, malware for which the hackers demand payment.

Developer & Open Source

How RAD Platforms Can Move New App Deployment Forward
Rapid application development platforms ¬- the low code and no code tools that have proliferated in the last few years - have given rise to the phenomenon of the citizen developer. A citizen developer is someone who is, or can become, proficient in RAD development, either independently or in support of a professional developer.

Developer & Open Source

Software Licensing and Monetization: Why More Businesses Now Require These Solutions
The digital transformation has begun. Companies and their customers are moving to software-centric solutions and on-demand usage. That calls for an entirely new way of pricing and packaging so the organizations that provide the software can get the best possible return on their product.

Developer & Open Source

Developing Mobile Applications: How to Meet the Challenge of Quality
Based on a survey of the leading sites in the U.S., an average 55.67 percent of traffic in the fourth quarter 2015 came from mobile devices. We can expect this figure to grow steadily over the coming years.

Enterprise Communications

Business Process Management: How Digital Transformation is Prompting its Evolution
The desire to be more agile, the rise of big data, and the advance of communications and networking technologies are shaking up business to its very core - so much so that even the term business process management is evolving. Indeed, Gartner now tracks a category called not BPM, but rather iBPMS.

Enterprise Communications

Don't Forget Voice in the Digital Workplace
In pursuit of ever greater workforce productivity, today's enterprises are adopting myriad digital tools to enable superior team collaboration, customer relationship management, data analytics, and administrative efficiency. And yet, despite this widespread push for a firing digital workplace, one business-critical activity - the conference call - is still struggling to escape its painful, non-digital past.

Enterprise Communications

Unifying an Approach for Today's Growing Distributed Workforce
According to a Global Workplace Analytics study, 3.7 million employees now work remotely at least half the time. This number is expected to grow in the coming years as employers realize the financial and operational benefits of remote work. Evolving workplace realities require both a paradigm shift and new resources. It's becoming business critical for companies to invest in the right technology to support a distributed team's ability to connect, collaborate, and engage.

Wireless

What to Expect from 5G
We've been hearing a lot about 5G lately. But the fact is that this newest iteration of cellular technology has yet to even be defined.

Networks

Google Fiber Goes on Pause, Embarks on Hybrid Broadband Strategy
The future of Google's broadband services business is in question after Craig Barratt, the leader of the effort, announced plans to step down from his CEO role and talked about putting its exploratory fiber activities on hold.

Networks

Facebook's Voyager Could Disrupt the Optical Transport Space
Facebook's influence on networking continues to expand. In the most recent evidence of this, the social media giant has come out with an open DWDM transport solution called Voyager that is shaking up the optical networking arena. The company says Voyager is the industry's first white box transponder and routing solution.

Networks

How NFV Empowers Network Efficiency and Service Improvement
Traditionally, network functions have been hosted on purpose-built hardware, which is expensive and slow to deploy. Any changes to that functionality must be made by the equipment provider at a substantial cost, which creating a huge barrier to ongoing development. VNFs change this dynamic - they are hosted in data centers, in environments that offer flexibility, that enable rapid adaptation.

The Channel

Weatherly Provides an Update on PGi's Channel Partner Effort
PGi is a 25-year-old company that lays claim to being the largest pure-play collaboration provider. At the moment just under 20 percent of the company's sales come from the channel. But in the next three to four years PGi expects channel partners to account for about half of its revenues.

The Channel

8x8 Expands Channel Effort, Customer Base
Unified communications as a service leader 8x8 Inc. has doubled down on its commitment to the channel with the introduction, and ongoing support, of what it calls Channel 2.0.

Case Study

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.

Recognition

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.

Video

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.

Case Study

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.

Developer Tools & Open Source

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 Tools & Open Source

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."?????????

Enterprise Communications

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 Communications

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.

Enterprise Communications

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.

Networks

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.

Networks

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.

Security

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.

Networks

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.

Networks

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

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.

Security

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?

Channel

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.

Channel

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.

Channel

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.

Developer Tools & Open Source

An Application Developer's Dilemma: To Integrate or Not, and With What?
Not since the dot-com bubble, which peaked in 1999, have we seen so much activity in the software arena. Software developers have more work than they can handle, new tech companies are launching every day, and investors are investing again. The last few years of growth have definitely made software king of the world once again.

Developer & Open Source

Developer & Open Source Briefs
Dynatrace this year again captured the lead position in Gartner Inc.'s report about application performance monitoring. The APM vendor has more than 8,000 customers and reports double-digit growth. Meanwhile, the worldwide APM market as a whole grew 10.6 percent in 2015, reaching $2.7 billion.

Networks

Docker Offers Adoption Update, Addresses Orchestration, Security
Docker has taken the networking world by storm, having played a starring role in the popularization of containers.

Networks

MAVIN Means Money: Why to Watch Mexico, Angola, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Nigeria
When investors try to get a head start on the next big technology wave, the first markets they normally turn to are the traditional powers and the trendy emerging markets; Brazil, China, India, and so on.

Networks

Network Briefs
TelePacific Communications is piloting SD-WAN technology to bring over-the-top services to customers who may not be on its network. "This opens up tremendous possibilities for us, as a managed services carrier, and for our customers, who can now simplify, secure, and supercharge their communications," says Jared Martin, TelePacific's director of network architecture and security. "One of our customers needed to bring up a new site and connect it to their existing TelePacific MPLS network, but the site was outside of our traditional footprint. With SD-WAN we are able to securely tunnel all of their MPLS traffic through our gateway back to the TelePacific core and connect it to their private MPLS network of sites."

Video

Getting Your System Ready for Video
Whether you work for a massive global powerhouse or a scrappy startup with a single office, your workforce is likely more geographically disparate than ever. To attract and retain top talent, more business leaders are considering candidates from the other side of the country or globe, while even your local teammates likely sometimes take a meeting from the road or at home.

Wireless

Wireless Briefs
AT&T recently revealed it is experimenting with leveraging drones to provide LTE-based broadband connectivity to people at remote and/or temporary locations, like music venues. John Donovan, chief strategy officer and group president of AT&T Technology and Operations, blogged that drones both enable AT&T to remotely inspect its cell sites and offer the promise of new applications like expanding the network for disaster response or special events.

Video

Video Briefs
Taiwanese digital signage company CAYIN Technology has launched new versions of its solutions. SMP-NEO2 is a new software from the company that is leaner and lighter than the previous iteration, and that offers new security features. CAYIN's SMP-2100 is a metal-build player with two HDMI outputs.

RECOGNITION

INTERNET TELEPHONY Announces the Winners of the 2016 TMC Labs UC Innovation Awards
INTERNET TELEPHONY, TMC, and TMC Labs are elated to present this year's winners of the TMC Labs UC Innovation Awards. We have selected a diverse set of winners across the spectrum of technologies in the space. We think we have something for everyone here, and we are thrilled to have judged and selected this year's winners.

Enterprise Communications

Intangible Concrete- Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins and Constitutional Standing
In Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, the United States Supreme Court provided guidance on, but no definitive answer to, the question of whether a plaintiff who suffered no tangible harm has sufficient standing to maintain a federal cause of action under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

Enterprise Communications

MSP Brings SharePoint to AWS
Data Resolution is a global Microsoft provider of managed technology solutions. In fact, it has been named Microsoft Dynamics Hoster of The Year for three consecutive years. It supports businesses of all sizes, and it offers a wide range of services, including Microsoft ERP, CRM, unified communications, messaging, portals, and collaboration. Its solutions include software hosting (SaaS), managed virtual environments, business continuity solutions, cloud computing, and advanced data center services. The company, which has five global SSAE16- Type 2 certified data centers, works with customers in an array of industries, including financial services, health care, manufacturing, professional services, and retail.

Enterprise Communications

Enterprise Briefs
Intellinote Purchased by BroadSoft BroadSoft in late May announced it is buying enterprise messaging company Intellinote. Intellinote delivers virtual spaces in which groups and individuals can manage and track projects and tasks, and share and store documents. Fonality earlier this year had announced an integration with Intellinote.

Channel

What Microsoft's Acquisition of LinkedIn Says About Sales Strategy
The importance of better understanding customers and acting strategically were front and center when Microsoft this summer announced plans to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

Channel

Not Now
Seth Godin says "The largest enemy of change and leadership isn't a no, it's a not yet. Not yet is the safest, easiest way to forestall change." In sales, not now is the obstacle. Getting over that is difficult when selling change. Cloud is change. UCaaS is a huge change from PBX.

Channel

Channel Briefs
Autom8 Group, Nixxis Partner Belgian contact center software company Nixxis has a new distribution partnership with the Autom8 Group, which provides customized, end-to-end contact center solutions to companies of all sizes and industries. Autom8 Group has added the Nixxis solution to its product portfolio and will act as national distributor of Nixxis Contact Suite.

Recognition

TMCnet's Mobility Tech Zone Names Product of the Year Award Winners
TMCnet, the online entity of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine's parent company TMC, and the TMCnet community known as Mobility Tech Zone are pleased to announce the winners of the Mobility Tech Zone Product of the Year Awards.

Case Study

Why CSPs Are in a Unique Position to Deliver Digital Home Services
Telephone companies started out offering telephone services. They then got into broadband Internet access and cable TV services. Then they began packaging the three together in triple play packages. The cablecos followed a similar path, but came at it from a different angle, starting out with cable TV services, followed by broadband, and then the more difficult telephony services.

Networks

The Ethernet-InfiniBand Convergence: A Patent Law Perspective
The past few years have seen fascinating developments in the evolution of the InfiniBand and Ethernet protocols, and in particular, a convergence of the two at the physical link level, if not also arguably at the market level. Intellectual property issues, and most prominently patent rights, are typically intertwined with technological developments. The Ethernet-InfiniBand convergence is no exception, and some of the potential patent implications merit careful consideration by developers, vendors, and users of these interconnect solutions.

Recognition

INTERNET TELEPHONY Announces 2016 Channel Excellence Award Winners
TMC and INTERNET TELEPHONY are proud to announce the winners of our Channel Excellence Awards. This marks the third iteration of this award program, for which the number of applications and award categories continue to multiply.

DEVELOPER TOOLS & OPEN SOURCE

What's the Hold Up? How to Meet Application Development Demands
Below are four ways businesses can meet development demands and four ways they can make the development process more efficient, all of which help prevent the mobile application development bottleneck.

Special Focus

Yeastar S100 Deemed an 'Incredible Value'
The S100 phone system from Yeastar Information Technologies is the next evolution of the company's PBX platform and with this release, the company aims to go way upmarket. This solution, and the S-Series as a whole, provides an array of components and new features that should help Yeastar differentiate itself in the marketplace to win more and larger customers.

Networks

Network Briefs
AT&T Delivers Network Functions on Demand AT&T has launched a new solution that lets businesses easily and flexibly manage their network services. AT&T Network Functions on Demand is now available in 76 countries and territories. With it, businesses can deploy a single universal piece of equipment, choose virtualized functions, and deploy them in different countries simultaneously. (Virtual routers from Cisco and Juniper Networks, Fortinet virtual security, and the Riverbed virtual WAN accelerator are the first solutions to be supported under AT&T Network Functions on Demand.)

Video

Emerging Enterprise Streaming Platforms Open the Door to User-Centric Solutions
The world of enterprise streaming video is changing right before our eyes. As an analyst tracking this tiny little hamlet of the technology landscape for more than a decade, I can readily admit that change is not always a word that has been closely associated with purveyors of business streaming solutions.

Networks

The ABCs of Selling the Cloud to SMBs
When it comes to selling cloud services, VARs should not overlook the enormous market potential small to mid-sized businesses have to offer. Main Street requires the same storage, processing, and security as Wall Street, and they're much easier to approach.

Networks

Corsa Introduces Virtualized Hardware Solution with Ease of Access
Corsa Technology has come out with a new product called the DP2000 that marks the introduction of virtualized hardware. You read that right folks, hardware virtualization, in a product designed for use in metro networks.

Networks

How to Ready Your Network for Video
In today's ultra-connected world, enterprises are increasingly relying on video to communicate, inform, and educate their workers. According to a recent report, 50 percent of the Fortune 100 companies have their own corporate YouTube channels, and many organizations have installed their own media centers, enabling them to produce professional quality videos in house.

Case Study

How LTE Can Help Address Growing Transportation Requirements
"Cities have been the world's economic dynamos for centuries, attracting skilled workers and productive businesses and benefiting from economies of scale," notes McKinsey Global Institute in a 2012 report. "Urbanization and per capita GDP tend to move in close synch as countries develop. But what is different about today's wave of mass urbanization is its unprecedented speed and scale. It is not hyperbole to say that we are observing the most significant shift in the earth's economic center of gravity in history."

Enterprise Communications

The Power of Natural Language Generation
For years, scientists have been heralding the artificial intelligence revolution. We've been able to program robots and vacuums, play chess, and even win at Jeopardy. But, before now, technology has not been able to produce artificial intelligence that can do one of the most fundamental human skills: communicate. The emergence of natural language generation is changing all of that.

Enterprise Communications

Workato Brings Enterprise Apps Together
Workato for the past two years has been offering a cloud automation service that bridges various enterprise applications. It enables different enterprise applications to sync data and prevents users from having to jump from one application to another to do their work.

Channel

Channel Briefs
Ayscom, Procera Partner Procera Networks Inc. has a new partner. Ayscom has joined the Procera Premier Partner Program. Ayscom provides test and monitoring solutions in Spain and Portugal. "Service providers are constantly looking for the best virtualized analytics tools to drive their big data projects," said Federico Hornillos, engineering director at Ayscom. "Being part of Procera's Premier Partner Program, and having access to its eVolution technology, gives Ayscom the ability to offer more comprehensive network and subscriber intelligence for our service provider and enterprise customers."

Channel

On Rad's Radar: How to Sell Cloud Services
The struggle is real for direct and indirect salespeople to transition to selling cloud services. Network is so much easier because it is transactional and replacement services. Cloud, however, is about selling change. Certainly you can sell hosted VoIP as cheap dial-tone replacement. Good luck with that. It is a disservice to the customer and yourselves.

Channel

Telax Pairs Up with Metaswitch, CSPs to Reach Business Customers
Communications services providers today are challenged with finding new revenue sources. Much of this discussion centers on tier 1 CSPs, but more medium-sized and small service providers are in the same boat. One new revenue source they may not have seriously considered is delivering contact center capabilities. But some of the CSPs that have already moved forward with cloud-based contact center solutions recommend taking the plunge. And three of them recently spoke about how Metaswitch and Telax have helped them do that.

Recognition

TMC Labs Names the Winners of the IT Innovation Awards
Welcome to the 16th annual INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine TMC Labs Innovation Awards, where we honor innovative technologies from a wide range of areas. Winners include entrants from the video space, NFV, a cloud-first telephone, a communications system targeted at mobile-first/millennials, a cybersecurity solution, contact center product, and a player in the optical space.

Getting Vertical — K-12 Education

N.J. School District Hits the Wall with Legacy Connectivity: But That Opens New Doors for Higher Bandwidth, Better Customer Service
It’s amazing how a less-than-ideal situation can sometimes work out so beautifully in the end. That’s the moral of this story, featuring Jeff Janover and the Wall Township Public Schools.

Getting Vertical — K-12 Education

How Schools Can and Should Fit into Our National Broadband Plans
The United States is finally on track to develop a national broadband policy. Unfortunately, there are very few public resources available to carry it out. In this environment of limited government funding, the bang-for-the-buck question becomes paramount: What broadband policies will deliver the greatest value? While many focus on unserved and underserved areas, an equally important priority is to ensure that our community anchor institutions — our libraries, schools, and health care entities — have sufficient broadband capacity.

The Channel

Business Automation Software Companies Address Managed Services
Managing all the internal and external jobs and workflows at an IT company can be a daunting task. But business automation software companies like ConnectWise and Tigerpaw Software Inc. help networking, telecommunications, and systems integration companies manage their various processes. Both companies, which have close relationships with the channel, recently have made some significant changes, as well as introduced new initiatives to help better address marketplace requirements, such as needs related to the emergence of managed services.

On RAD's Radar

Net-Head Part II
Last month I wrote about the shift in mentality between traditional Bell-head telco types and the data-centric net-head. In a move that can be considered net-head-ish, everything is moving to the cloud, including voice.

The Channel Perspective

UC is Even More Beneficial to Post-Recession SMBs
It is said that small- and medium-sized businesses feel the impacts of a recession earlier than large companies, but they also recover faster. Well here’s a newsflash: We’re in a recovery, and SMBs are starting to buy again, albeit with a critical eye. This is good news for the channel, because unified communications lends itself easily to a positive discussion around improved efficiency and return on investment.