by webredactie
28. April 2010 13:29
In a big announcement made last week at the Cloud Computing Expo, eight BroadSoft customers unveiled the Cloud Communications Alliance, a consortium dedicated to bringing unified communications to businesses in a smarter, easier and more strategic manner – because it’s delivered as a hosted “cloud” application.
This consortium is made up of a great group of companies. Alteva, Broadcore, Callis Communications, Consolidated Technologies, IPFone, SimpleSignal, Stage 2 Networks, and Telesphere have all been huge innovators in this space. And this Alliance shows that they’re just as innovative in business models as they are with technology and market offers.
Next to issues like hosted voice or hosted PBX – the alliance is focusing on other topics as well, like:
* End-to-End High Definition Voice for business-to-business HD (not just intra-company islands);
* End-to-End availability of video for business-to-business video;
* Mobile phone integration, including apps like IPFone’s iPhone applications;
* Nationwide disaster recovery and business continuity; and
* Business App mashups with Microsoft Office Communicator, Salesforce.com, and much more.
The Alliance has gotten tons of well deserved press on this already (Network World, TMCnet, VoIP Planet, Billing & OSS World and WirelessWeek). This is great coverage, which brings a lot more visibility to the power and benefits of hosted business communications.
Visit the Cloud Communications Alliance site.
by webredactie
5. October 2009 08:06
Cisco is offering approximately $3 billion for Tandberg stock, an 11% premium on the latest trading price and a three times multiple of revenues. If the deal is completed, Tandberg’s current CEO will head up the group’s worldwide telepresence business – he will be responsible for two-thirds of the telepresence estate in enterprise global services.
We think this is a smart deal for Cisco. Tandberg has the full toy box for videoconferencing systems. And while Cisco has made a big noise with Cisco TelePresence since it launched in 2006, videoconferencing is much more than big-screen suites – which make up only 25% of the market.
Question marks over Cisco’s services strategy
Strategically, the big question is where the services are. If there’s something unexciting about this deal it is because it is a bit of classic box-buying and not a services acquisition. All of Cisco’s product development news is around service architectures and service support, and this isn’t. Services account for 16% of Tandberg’s revenues, and while Cisco CEO John Chambers purred at the near-50% service “attachment rate” in telepresence, that’s only at the top end of business video communications. Also, for fellow CEO Fredrik Halvorsen, service attachment is probably a new term; for him service is something that’s included in the package.
The two will need to sort out what’s important here – more box-shifting, or an earth-moving shift to service packages on video.
Tandberg is ahead of the curve on the server side with multimedia content software, so maybe Cisco can profit from that in its own infrastructure products. Otherwise, Tandberg is 60% endpoints (screens), which just suggests a big headache on branding, price points and channel management.
The financials are unexciting. Tandberg’s gross margin is already 66.1% against Cisco’s 64.1%, so the integration wizards at Cisco won’t be busy. This is not like the Scientific Atlanta deal which diluted Cisco’s gross margin to less than 50% at a stroke – a situation Cisco turned around within two quarters. However, Tandberg people will be pleased with the price tag. And enterprises have the mouth-watering prospect of “boardroom to desktop” business video – if Cisco and Tandberg can act together quickly.
Business video is the standout service for straitened times
We have found videoconferencing to be the most resilient of all communications technologies through the downturn. The requirement for inter-company conferencing is increasing as companies federate more with partners and suppliers, and that is helping to drive a second wave of deployment of telepresence networks with 100 or more sites – compared with the typical 5–30 sites we have seen so far. This looks like a rapid-growth market right now, and we expect revenues from equipment and services will reach $892 million in 2011 before tailing off as the global MNC rush to deploy loses pace.
What was disappointing about the Cisco’s briefing was that we didn’t get much of a feel for how the combined Cisco-Tandberg entity will alter the motivation for the use of video within the organisation beyond the RoI case around operational cost savings. The combination makes senses because the Tandberg toy box allows the enterprise to expand video solutions in a more complete manner.
The vision is clear; the execution path is not. Cisco will put its weight behind the service provider in the telco channel to more aggressively push video at all layers of the enterprise. John Chambers said as much in his answer to our question yesterday (on a telepresence call, of course). That said, Cisco does have a record for successful execution.
Interoperability was highlighted as a key feature, focused not just in-house between Cisco and Tandberg but between Cisco and other collaborative tech vendors such as Microsoft, as Cisco drives its network technology to be the centre of collaborative working. At the global operations level, AT&T, BT and Cisco will now have to sort out which of BT’s Global Video Exchange, Cisco’s Intercompany CTS or even Tandberg’s Global Exchange Service should be the global interoperability standard.
by webredactie
1. October 2009 13:48
Cisco® today announced a definitive agreement for Cisco to launch a recommended voluntary cash offer to acquire TANDBERG. TANDBERG, based in Oslo, Norway, and New York, is a global leader in video communications, including a broad range of world-class video endpoint and network infrastructure solutions with intercompany and multi-vendor interoperability. With this proposed acquisition, Cisco will expand its collaboration portfolio to offer more solutions to a greater number of customers, further accelerating market adoption globally.
Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will commence a cash tender offer to purchase all the outstanding shares of TANDBERG for 153.5 Norwegian Kroner per share for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $3.0 billion. This represents an 11.0% premium to the previous day closing price of TANDBERG's stock, and a 25.2% premium to the 3-month volume weighted average closing price for TANDBERG's stock. The proposal was recommended unanimously by TANDBERG's board of directors.
The acquisition is expected to close during the first half of calendar year 2010; however, the close date is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory review in the United States and elsewhere. Cisco expects the acquisition to be accretive to Cisco's non-GAAP earnings in fiscal year 2011.
Highlights / Key Facts:
- Cisco's collaboration vision is to enable a sustainable, new level of enterprise productivity, agility and innovation by transforming the way people interact, share knowledge and deliver productive outcomes within and across organizations.
- TelePresence and high-quality video have redefined how users communicate through easy-to-use, immersive, high-quality video experiences and are becoming a larger segment of the broader collaboration market.
- TANDBERG's leading video endpoints and network infrastructure solution will be integrated into Cisco's world-class collaboration architecture. This will enable intercompany and multi-vendor interoperability and ease of use across the full product portfolio -- from desktop to immersive, multi-screen TelePresence. This interoperability will benefit Cisco's customers, but also competitors and partners by accelerating customer interest in video collaboration globally.
- Cisco continues to invest in the European market as a center of innovation across all market segments, and will continue to drive global growth by positioning TANDBERG's Norway operations as a European center of video excellence alongside our Service Provider video team in Diegem, Belgium.
- TANDBERG's 1,500 employees globally, with innovation centers in Norway and the United Kingdom, will be extremely important as Cisco's team continues to drive video innovation and growth.
Upon completion of the transaction, TANDBERG's CEO Fredrik Halvorsen will lead the new TelePresence Technology Group, reporting to Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Group.
by webredactie
23. September 2009 00:15
Sybase and Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN) Group announce a partnership that will provide customers with a fully integrated mobile and fixed line voice and data solution that supports and includes the management of a range of device types through a completely heterogeneous environment.
According to leading independent research company Forrester Research, Inc., 73 percent of the global enterprise workforces will be mobile users by 2012. This represents 187.9 million mobile users in 2008, growing to 397.1 million users in 2012 (Enterprise Mobile User Forecast: Mobile "Wannabes" Are The Fastest-Growing Segment, October 2008).[i]
The new solution marries Sybase’s mobile device management capabilities with the SEN Group’s leading-edge Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) technology providing a complete end-to-end solution that businesses can deploy to vastly simplify the management of a hugely diversified communications infrastructure. The solution will also help businesses to effectively manage operations such as inventory and expenses, logistics, mobile devices and applications.
The SEN Group chose Sybase as a strategic partner based on the capabilities and strength of its enterprise device management platform and rich expertise and proven leadership in the enterprise mobility space. Sybase® Afaria® enables the SEN Group to significantly reduce the complexities associated with managing multiple device types at a time when consumers are increasingly bringing personal smart phones into the workplace.
Afaria will be fully embedded into the SEN Group’s HiPath MobileConnect V2.3, an enterprise solution that seamlessly unifies fixed enterprise VoIP, VoWLAN and cellular mobility. The solution consists of two components:
MobileConnect Appliance
- Located at the central site, sitting on the wired network between the WLAN and the SIP PBX
- Continually monitors and manages mobile user sessions regardless of whether they are on the corporate or public network
MobileConnect Client
- Software that resides on the dual-mode handset and works with the MobileConnect Appliance to navigate enterprise-cellular exchange
by webredactie
9. September 2009 00:55
The market for Unified Communications (UC) is expected to grow significantly in the next five years. Even in the midst of the economic downturn, Ovum estimates over 16 million enterprise-owned mobile devices will be connected to UC platforms by 2014. Fixed telecoms operators, IT services providers, UC technology vendors and specialists are all jostling to take a share. In the midst of this, Ovum has identified a significant opportunity for mobile network operators (MNOs) to influence and profit from UC.
Ovum interviewed a number of global wireless operators and UC platform providers. While many operators were aware of the opportunity UC provided, most were holding back from launching services in a market which is poised for dramatic growth. Based on feedback from enterprises large and small, Ovum has identified a gap in service provision which should be filled by mobile operators.
Evan Kirchheimer, Principal Analyst, comments, “Connecting enterprise mobile devices to a UC platform may be undertaken by enterprise IP telephony vendors, by large SIs, local IT-oriented VARs, device manufacturers, or by small independent middleware vendors which enable fixed-mobile convergence”.
“With such a varied array of players, Ovum has found that MNOs are not in the driving seat when it comes to mobile UC market development. There have been some early UC service launches, but for the most part many operators have held back”, adds Mr. Kirchheimer, based in London
Kirchheimer believes the key for hesitant mobile operators is to focus on SMEs. MNOs have a natural advantage in their strong relationships with SMEs. In contrast, larger businesses most often have complex and varied fixed Private Branch Exchange (PBX) estates, and PBX vendors and large SIs will be in a more natural position to extend UC functionality to mobile devices via the PBX than will MNOs. SMEs will not benefit from such high-end attention, and will be attracted to simpler solution bundles on simple terms. Several operators indicated that they plan to base their UC solutions for SMEs on mobile centrex services, thereby eventually aiming to fully displace fixed handsets with mobile devices in many smaller businesses.
However, continues Kirchheimer, “centrex-based solutions will not appeal to all, especially larger enterprises with significant fixed investments”. “To attack this base of prospects, mobile operators should develop partnerships with some of those very firms they may one day compete against: IP telephony vendors, local value-added resellers and messaging software vendors (e.g., Microsoft).”
The report highlights that mobile providers should not be distracted by the buzz about mobilizing enterprise applications. Our recent survey of 2000 SME telecoms buyers indicated that most SMEs express much greater interest in core UC features (directory, presence, unified messaging) than in horizontal applications like mobile field force automation or fleet management.
by webredactie
6. August 2009 00:55
ShoreTel announced an agreement with IBM to deliver a unique unified communications (UC) and collaboration offering that combines a small business appliance, presence awareness, instant messaging and VoIP telephony in an "out-of-the-box" integrated solution for small and midsize businesses (SMB).
The ShoreTel offering leverages the newly announced Lotus Foundations Reach, which customizes and extends the IBM Sametime UC and collaboration capabilities, in an appliance designed for SMBs that does not require an enterprise administrator. The result is designed to be a tightly integrated solution that delivers on ShoreTel's commitment to brilliantly simple solutions and lets SMB customers quickly realize the productivity gains and simplicity associated with UC solutions. The combined solution will bring enterprise-class reliability, rapid scalability and lower IT costs to the SMB market that frees them from vendor lock-in and upgrade requirements.
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ShoreTel & IBM Lotus Foundations: Complete UCC Solution in a Box |
ShoreTel's easy-to-use IP telephony will connect to Lotus Foundations Reach to provide an all-in-one integrated communications and collaboration solution. ShoreTel takes advantage of the self-managing capabilities of the Lotus Foundations appliance to further simplify deployment and reduce costs for smaller businesses that often have limited IT resources and skills. The combined simplicity and autonomic management capabilities of ShoreTel and IBM help eliminate the complexities of UC typically associated with other systems, and result in a simple, affordable and comprehensive communications solution.
Under the agreement, ShoreTel plans to integrate the IBM Lotus Foundations platform with the intuitive ShoreTel Director Management platform in a single "office in a box" appliance. ShoreTel's use of open standards leverages IBM's standard-based software to easily extend its telephony solutions to help increase employee productivity, speed business processes and reduce overall costs. This open approach also allows smaller businesses to expand without worrying about upgrade costs or requirements to purchase additional technology.
ShoreTel is adding its popular UC features, such as telephony presence, click to call, unified messaging and a single management console for voice applications, to the UC and collaboration capabilities of Lotus Foundations Reach. The result is an out-of-the-box solution that houses all of a user's communications tools, including e-mail, calendars, contacts, office productivity tools, network security, remote access, file and print sharing, and instant messaging, in one place to improve the overall user experience.
Read the complete information.
by phermans
22. July 2009 08:57
Polycom announced that its digital enhanced cordless telephony (DECT) wireless voice systems have been certified for use with
ShoreTel's Unified Communications (UC) solutions.
The solutions now certified for use with ShoreTel include the Polycom KIRK® Wireless Servers (KWS) 6000 and 300, as well as the full portfolio of KIRK handsets. The addition of the KIRK products to the ShoreTel-certified portfolio offers more flexibility and choice for customers deploying ShoreTel's UC solutions.
The Polycom wireless IP DECT solutions are popular among businesses of all sizes:
- The KWS300 is a SIP-based wireless telephony system that is ideal for smaller sized businesses. The KWS300 is a single-cell system that can support up to 12 handsets and four simultaneous calls. A total of six KIRK repeaters can be added to extend the coverage area.
- The KWS6000 is a SIP-based wireless telephony solution that can fulfill the wireless needs of more than 4,000 mobile employees. It is a multi-cell solution that is extremely scalable, whether an end-user needs radio coverage of a large geographical area or a large number of mobile employees need the flexibility of wireless telephony. Since it can grow as the business grows, it provides strong investment protection and is ideal for midsize businesses and large enterprises looking to support a rapidly evolving wireless strategy.
Polycom also offers a full range of KIRK wireless handsets that targets both carpeted environments and industrial facilities that need durable and ruggedized handsets. Organizations can choose a combination of handsets in the wireless DECT solution to meet the individual needs of every employee.
by phermans
21. July 2009 17:02
Avaya has announced that it has entered into a ‘stalking horse’ asset and share sale agreement to purchase Nortel’s enterprise business for $475 million. The combined entity would account for over 30% of the global contact center market and cement Avaya’s market share lead in North America while fortifying its position in other global regions for the next several years. However, the combined company would face a confused product portfolio with a good deal of overlap and a channel that has been beaten, bruised and battered during Nortel’s long sunset.
Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel is not yet a done deal
While Avaya intends to purchase Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions business, it is not a done deal as other qualified bidders may submit higher offers in the auction period slated to begin in August. There’s also the possibility that Nortel’s enterprise unit will be broken up by regions and sold to the highest bidders. If Avaya is the victor in the upcoming bidding war and acquires all of Nortel’s enterprise unit, it stands to increase its already large market share, inherit Nortel’s large reseller network and leverage new upsell opportunities among Nortel’s customer base.
Nortel’s channel would be Avaya’s real prize
Over the past year or so, Avaya has been working on two main priorities: product portfolio simplification and channel expansion. It would be nigh on impossible to successfully argue that Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel would aid it in its efforts to have an easy-to-understand product list; clearly, Nortel’s broad base of products would create the need for another round or two of portfolio rationalization. Therefore we see the primary driver behind Avaya’s interest in Nortel to be channel expansion and a renewed play for mid-market customers.
Nortel, however, presents something of a mixed bag for Avaya in this regard. Nortel once had a vibrant and active channel, and its dealers were some of the most loyal in the tech industry. However, the long downward spiral Nortel has suffered left the channel dispirited and depleted in number. Many of Nortel’s competitors have spent the last six months wooing channel partners. Admittedly, Avaya was one of those vendors attempting to poach the Nortel channel as a means to both hurt a flailing competitor and bolster its own indirect sales efforts. Clearly those efforts were not enough to obviate the need for a full buyout of Nortel Enterprise.
Because Avaya will likely eventually replace much of the Nortel technology with its own in the product lineup, it will also have to win over most of those channel partners one by one. This will take some doing since the resellers have stocks of inventory, existing processes and lots of Nortel-specific training. This is not to say that Avaya won’t ultimately succeed in converting at least most of Nortel’s channel to its cause; if the acquisition goes through, Avaya will eventually have bought its way into being a channel-friendly company and that will likely be worth the purchase price for Nortel.
Industry consolidation points to market maturation and market shifts
Whether Avaya or another incumbent switch vendor (Aspect and Siemens were the other two vendors rumored to have been in the running for Nortel) acquires Nortel’s enterprise business, it is clear that the contact center market is maturing. Incumbent switch vendors (Aspect, Avaya, Mitel, NEC, Nortel and Siemens) are facing stiffer competition from vendors that have different approaches to contact center routing and platform technology, such as Cisco, CosmoCom, Genesys and Interactive Intelligence. In addition, the entry of Microsoft (unified communications), hosted contact center service providers and potentially Google (in the cloud) is expected to further challenge incumbent switch vendors in the greater communications space.
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Tags: unified, communications, avaya, nortel, aspect, mitel, nec, siemens, microsoft, cisco, cosmocom, genesys, interactive intelligence
General | Hardware developers stuff | services | Software developers stuff
by phermans
16. July 2009 10:22
Polycom announced its digital enhanced cordless telephony (DECT) based wireless voice systems have been certified for use with Cisco Unified Communications Manager (UCM) by tekVizion, an independent third-party lab. The solutions certified for use with Cisco UCM include the Polycom KIRK® Wireless Servers (KWS) 6000 and 300 as well as the full portfolio of KIRK handsets. With this interoperability verification, customers using Cisco UCM now have a DECT-based option to mobilise their employees for improved responsiveness and productivity within the workplace.
“Polycom has a rich heritage in delivering high-quality, full-featured, standards-based endpoints to market,” said Elka Popova, North American Program Director, Unified Communications, Frost & Sullivan. “By rounding out their telephony portfolio with products that are interoperable with Cisco UC solutions, Polycom enables Cisco customers to deploy best-in-class communications networks that include the familiar, reliable devices for which Polycom is known.”
Polycom offers wireless IP DECT solutions to businesses of any size.
- The entry-level KWS 300 is a SIP-based wireless telephony system that is ideal for smaller sized businesses. The KWS300 is a single-cell system that can support up to 12 handsets and four simultaneous calls. A total of six KIRK repeaters can be added to extend the coverage area.
- The KWS6000 is a SIP-based wireless telephony solution that can fulfill the wireless needs of up to more than 4,000 mobile employees. It is a multi-cell solution that is extremely scalable whether an end-user needs radio coverage of a large geographical area or to equip a large number of mobile employees with the flexibility of wireless telephony. It also provides strong investment protection and can grow with the end-user as the business grows and is therefore ideal for medium – and up to very large sized businesses.
The Polycom DECT-based KIRK solutions join the Polycom VVX™ 1500 C business media phone in the company’s portfolio of UC solutions compatible with Cisco Unified UCM.
by phermans
7. May 2009 17:14
According to the latest research by IDC, the unified communications (UC) market in Europe was worth $2.6 billion in 2008, and will grow at a CAGR of 39% to a value of $13.5 billion by 2013. This makes it one of the brightest spots in a very tough technology market.
"In such a challenging market, where spending is plummeting, there is a strong opportunity for solutions that can reduce expenses, such as travel, in the short term. This means that UC, which includes video and audio conferencing and collaboration solutions, is one of the few technology areas well placed to grow during the recession. In addition to cost savings, we see that in Europe environmental issues are becoming a major driver of the overall UC market, and specific submarkets such as high-end videoconferencing in particular. Not only can UC reduce an organization's travel budget, it can also reduce that company's carbon footprint and improve its corporate social responsibility standing," said Chris Barnard, research director, European Telecoms and Networking at IDC.
"In addition, we believe that the real longer term UC opportunity lies with communications event management platforms that enable the enterprise to build new applications and enhance existing applications in order to streamline voice-intensive processes and deliver productivity gains."
IDC also believes that UC could change the way European enterprises buy voice and data solutions. In the past, most of the sales efforts have been focused on selling to the ICT department, but now the integration of voice and data with business-critical applications requires line-of-business (LOB) managers to have seats at the negotiating table. Other findings include:
IDC believes that UC will offer significant opportunities for network-related services players (from both the service provider and systems integrator sides) in the short and medium term. Services companies can act as a single point of contact for the enterprise and resolve issues (ranging from licensing to network and application integration) by interacting with desktop UC players such as Microsoft and IBM, as well as voice vendors.
IDC believes that in the first half of the forecast period, premises-based UC solutions will lead the way, but that later on in the forecast, hosted solutions will offer interesting opportunities as fixed and mobile providers work out their UC strategies.
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