Archive for the ‘Business VoIP’ Category
Check out this whitepaper from Speakeasy on the benefits of business VoIP:
Speakeasy Business VoIP is a high-performance, no-maintenance Hosted PBX solution—Now we’re talking.
At
Speakeasy, our whole business is helping small businesses. Speakeasy
Business VoIP works harder and smarter than a traditional phone system
to meet your unique needs. It’s a complete solution that includes your
choice of business class connectivity, employee calling plans, long
distance options, and phones.
New IP Powered Business solutions from Nortel (NYSE: NT) are making it easy for service providers around the world to sell and host pre-tested VoIP services to small and medium sized businesses (SMB). These solutions, announced today at the Fall VON Conference in Boston, combine the latest VoIP technology with planning, installation, management and technical support from Nortel’s portfolio of Global Services for SMBs. They also include marketing support to help service providers target and sell VoIP to the growing SMB market.
"As the world leader in both carrier and enterprise VoIP, Nortel is uniquely positioned to deliver a full-range of simple solutions for SMBs that easily allow carriers to offer advanced IP services without the cost or complexity often associated with next-generation communication services," said Alf Decardenas, general manager, Carrier Multimedia Networks, Nortel. "The needs of SMBs vary dramatically, and as a result, they require VoIP packages that can provide a range of options from fully hosted to onsite IP solutions. Nortel’s new IP Powered Business Solutions can help SMBs deliver big business services like unified communications, integrated multimedia messaging and voice services like Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) with a simple yet powerful IP solution made specifically with the needs of SMBs in mind."
Source: Nortel
Targeting organizations with 30 to 250 phone users, 3Com is introducing the 3Com® VCX™ Connect, an all-in-one platform that delivers Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) software-based IP telephony call control and unified messaging in a single-server package. There are two versions of the product. The VCX Connect 100 delivers high-performance voice capabilities for organizations with 30 to 100 users. The VCX Connect 200 delivers the same robust performance for up to 250 users.
As part of 3Com’s commitment to providing the platform and support for clients to implement best-of-breed Open Source solutions, the company also is launching the 3Com Asterisk Appliance, an Open Source voice-over-IP (VoIP) system based on Digium’s Asterisk Appliance. Designed for five to 30 phone users, it delivers plug-and-play operation right out of the box backed by 3Com’s warranty, service and support. The 3Com Asterisk Appliance works with 3Com’s full line of telephone handsets.
"Small and medium-sized businesses demand flexible and affordable communications solutions to ensure effective collaboration and productivity," said Brian Riggs, research director for Current Analysis’ Enterprise Communications practice. "With these new products, 3Com is bringing enterprise-caliber VoIP communications and applications to organizations of all sizes."
Source: 3Com
In another sign of traditional telephony companies targetting digital communications, Verizon Business announced a voice quality and performance assessment service for VoIP and private IP customers, named Network Assessment with Voice.
In addition, to further support the deployment of VoIP, Verizon Business will provide Private IP customers with an industry-leading service level agreement (SLA) that measures audio clarity.
"As customer demand for VoIP deployment increases, we’re enhancing our Private IP services to help improve the quality of voice traffic," said Mike Marcellin, vice president of product marketing with Verizon Business. "We continue to expand Private IP’s presence and capabilities to help ensure that our customers are able to leverage the benefits of the convergence of voice, data and video applications moving across their global corporate networks."
According to a new study by Access Market International, the market for hosted VoIP solutions targeted at small and medium sized businesses is set to hit US$416 million in North America this year, up from only $165 million two years ago.
“In particular, the small business (SB, or companies with up to 99 employees) segment is forecasted to grow at a spectacular 69% on a cumulative basis for the next 5 years,” says Sanjeev Aggarwal, AMI-Partners’ New York-based Vice President for SMB Infrastructure Solutions. “The concept of hosted VoIP is analogous to software-as-a-service (SaaS) where upstarts like Salesforce.com and NetSuite are gaining rapid adoption. Similarly, the concept of voice communications as a service is becoming very appealing as these small businesses have almost no IT/voice communications expertise and resources.”
The market opportunity for hosted business-VoIP solutions for SMBs is huge and growing rapidly – and so is the competition, which is increasing with participation from traditional telecom and cable companies, equipment vendors, and focused complimentary service providers.
There are many drivers that are influencing SMBs to adopt hosted business-VoIP, including predictable monthly voice communications expenses with no up-front capital expense, toll savings for intra- and inter-company long-distance and local calling. “Simple, secure, very reliable, easy-to-use solutions supporting unified messaging and mobility are key for small businesses that never want to miss a customer call,” Mr. Aggarwal says. “Helping SBs appear more professional and larger, especially SBs that have a store presence and web presence.”
Source: AMI Partners
Verizon Business ranks first in overall strategy for voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), according to a recently released Forrester Research study.
The study, "Forrester Wave(TM): US Enterprise-Class VoIP Services, Q1 2007," found that "Verizon Business is best in class on overall voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) strategy, leading others on technology strategy, planned performance and customer service enhancements, and price."
The findings are particularly significant since businesses are increasingly seeking help transitioning from traditional telecommunications services to IP communications.
"This recognition reinforces our strong performance in this emerging growth area of the telecommunications market," said Tom Roche, vice president of marketing for network voice and data services with Verizon Business. "Verizon Business’ expansive global IP network and comprehensive suite of VoIP services enable our customers to make the move to VoIP and leverage IP communications to achieve their specific business goals at their own path and pace."
According to the Forrester Wave(TM) report, Verizon Business "offers the broadest portfolio of VoIP services; this provider is the only one among its peers to offer session initiation protocol (SIP) trunking, hosted VoIP services, managed IP private branch exchange (PBX) services, IP conferencing, IP toll free, and hosted IP contact center services today. Verizon Business leads its peers on VoIP reliability, scalability, and sales capabilities."
As demonstrated by last year’s (alleged) HP corporate espionage scandal, businesses will go to great lengths to get the edge on their competition. It has even been reported that some foreign governments eavesdrop on business communications (phone calls, e-mails) to give domestic companies an advantage.
Aside from the typical benefits of VoIP, including cost savings and flexibility, business VoIP solutions can also provide extra security for phone calls against eavesdropping. High value targets might be calls between top executives, discussions of confidential sales strategies, mergers and acquisitions, or the development or launch of a new product.
Companies should already be requiring employees to use an encrypted VPN (virtual private network) to gain access to the corporate intranet. For enterprise VoIP or other in-house implementations, this makes VoIP security easy: Internet phone calls that your employees make from the road are already protected at least back to your company’s network. This, of course, assumes that you have a secure VPN service running that uses strong encryption, such as AES.
Smaller companies using a hosted VoIP solution should check with their providers. If the company doesn’t have any offers, an add-on such as Phil Zimmermann’s zFone might be useful.
While some argue that Skype 
is a good option because it makes use of encryption, others argue that the encryption is used to protect Skype secrets (it’s not open source) and allow it to pass through filters more easily. Without a professional, independent evaluation of the security features, while Skype offers a good VoIP product, we cannot assume anything about its security.
And don’t forget that phone calls are just one part of the equation. Physical security, shredding documents before discarding them, etc., are as important as ever.
And there are plenty of stories of airline passengers being lucky enough to sit next to a competitor on the way to a sales presentation – a competitor who works with confidential sales materials in plain sight. Listening to Internet phone calls seems like a lot of hassle when presented with this kind of gift!
Post your VoIP security questions below and we’ll answer them in a future story.
According to a new report from technology research firm In-Stat, hosted VoIP service for small businesses (20 to 50 lines) will continue strong growth, with a market size reaching US$2 billion by 2010. Analyst David Lemelin says that small businesses seeking the benefits of VoIP, but that don’t have the capital or technical expertise are find hosted VoIP to be a good solution.
In-Stat predicts 3 million US hosted VoIP "seats" by 2010, citing cost savings as a major factor in the decision, as well as flexibility for multi-location businesses.
As with the consumer VoIP market, we’re predicting another big year in 2007 for business VoIP service. Here are our top five trends and concerns to be on the lookout for this year (in no particular order):
1. Comfort, Adoption Levels Increase
Past surveys have found that businesses are enthusiastic about the benefits of VoIP and most are considering making the switch. VoIP service providers have had a chance to mature and the technology has proven to be flexible, reliable, and help companies save money. In 2007 we’ll see robust and increasing growth in business’s adoption of VoIP, as executives move from being curious about IP telephony to adopting it.
2. Security Concerns Grow
Unfortunately, security concerns follow closely behind the mass adoption of technology. Landlines, while not impenetrable to those with the means, are much more secure than VoIP: physical access to the lines is generally necessary, switches are protected by strong physical security measures, and so on. VoIP phone calls, on the other hand, are routed over the Internet. Attacks, from wiretaps to denial of service can be carried out by hackers, unscrupulous competitors and others from anywhere in the world. As VoIP service is more heavily used, we’ll see more attempts to eavesdrop, shut down companies’ communications, or general disruptions like viruses and worms. VoIP security is not doomed to fail, but investment will need to be made.
3. Mobile VoIP Becomes a Reality (mVoIP)
(more…)
Microsoft has begun a private beta testing phase of its Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, which allows businesses to integrate VoIP with their existing telephony infrastructure.
The new voice server will also allow workers to instantly launch a phone call from 2007 Microsoft Office applications, such as Office Word 2007, Office Outlook® 2007 or Office Communicator, by simply clicking on a colleague’s name to determine his or her availability and initiate a person-to-person or multiparty call.
With native support for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communicator, part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system, interoperate with products from industry partners including Nortel Networks, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., LG-Nortel Co. Ltd., Mitel Networks Corp., NEC Philips Unified Solutions, Polycom Inc. and Siemens Communications Inc. Through these relationships, customers worldwide will be able to support VoIP using their existing desktop phones, data networks and time division multiplexing (TDM) or Internet protocol (IP) private branch exchanges (PBXs). Customers will also able to leverage the softphone capabilities of Office Communicator to make and receive phone calls from their PCs, eliminating the need to purchase expensive IP-compatible phones.
"The convergence of telecom and data networks is happening rapidly. Software will integrate these two worlds, enabling IT managers to deliver new communications possibilities that include VoIP," said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft. "With this open architecture and broad interoperability, Office Communications Server 2007 will give IT managers the flexibility to determine when and how and in what way they move their communications infrastructure forward."
The business VoIP server system can also be integrated with the Exchange 2007 communications package.
