Your industry review for: May 1, 2006

Business preparedness	Markets	Phones	Tom’s Corner
Avaya	Mitel	Nortel	Siemens

Nortel channel partners in North America recognized for excellence

Siemens deploys multi-functional campus smart card solutions

Upfront

Citel releases EXTender IP6000, enabling gradual VoIP migration path for distributed enterprises

Citel, The VoIP Migration Company, announced general availability of the EXTender IP6000, enabling enterprises with multiple locations to take a cost-effective, phased approach to IP telephony migration with minimal business disruption. Rather than supporting multiple PBX systems and remote connections, Citel's EXTender products allow enterprises to connect remote call centers, home workers and branch offices to a central digital PBX over an IP network, significantly reducing telecom operating costs and simultaneously improving business operations by providing single voice mail and call center applications, central reception, and four digit dialing throughout the enterprise. As the business case evolves and the enterprise is ready to complete the migration to SIP, the EXTender IP6000 can be software upgraded to accommodate a premise or service provider hosted IP PBX, leveraging the existing handset and wiring infrastructure at each location. This phased migration path allows enterprises to immediately realize the advantages of a central PBX platform, then complete the full migration to SIP telephony in the future, without having to "rip and replace" existing infrastructure.

Visit www.citel.com.

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News in Review

Business preparedness

Expand Networks' Compass platform supports organizations with disaster recovery and business continuity initiatives

Disaster recovery infrastructures may bring peace of mind to network managers, but they come with a cost as data replication could as much as double network traffic. Even with sufficient bandwidth, congestion can dramatically hamper the speed of backups and synchronizations, or worse, slow down other business critical applications. Fortu-nately, Expand Networks' recently unveiled Expand Compass platform provides companies with a cost-effective disaster recovery solution, offering high business availability without sacrificing productivity. After deploying Expand's application acceleration technology, Susquehanna Bancshares' peak bandwidth use of 60 megabytes per second dropped to a maximum of seven megabytes per second, and Susquehanna's average bandwidth of six megabytes per second plunged to an average of just two megabytes per second. Susquehanna also improved its disaster recovery capabilities from 36 hours using a third party recovery contract to 30 minutes using in-house replication - an improvement of more than 98 percent. Susquehanna Bancshares selected and deployed Expand Networks' technology one year ago after consolidating its IT operations. The company cited Expand's extensive support and competitive price point as leading differentiators in the decision-making process.

Visit www.expand.com.

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Markets

CommPartners acquires IT integrator channel partner

CommPartners, an IP-based network operator and telephony services and solutions provider, announced that it has completed the acquisition of Las Vegas-based Anexeon Communications, its joint venture partner developing a national IT integrator channel for the sale of wholesale hosted VoIP services to the SMB and Enterprise markets. Anexeon Communications management, staff and operations are being consolidated into CommPartners. Both companies are privately held and terms were not disclosed. IT integrators in the Anexeon Communications channel will now contract directly with CommPartners for private-label wholesale VoIP services and IP applications. CommPartners currently provides wholesale VoIP services to over 80 service providers and several domestic and foreign carriers utilizing its privately managed, controlled, and fully-redundant network and applications platform.

Visit www.commpartners.us or www.anexeoncomm.com

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Phones

TeleMatrix and Scitec announce merger
TeleMatrix, Inc., a leading supplier of telephones, and Scitec, Inc., an ISO-9001-certified telephone set manufacturer and VoIP solutions provider, have announced a merger of the companies. Designed to leverage manufacturing, distribution, sales and brand assets, the companies share core business values and many joint hospitality industry customer and distributor relationships. Each company, associated brands, product designs, products and distribution channels will retain their current individual identities in the marketplace.
Visit www.telematrixusa.com or www.scitecinc.com.

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Tom’s Corner: Understanding technology better with Tom Cross

Special VoIP TECH-Tip
VoIP Server Security Part 1 of 2
VoIP Server and other Server security may be the most important means of "risk management." While we just reviewed some of the TCP hacker attempts, internal voice/data server controls may be an easier target for many criminal efforts. That is, the majority of computer crime comes internally from disgruntled or dishonest employees. Even unintentional mistakes from undisciplined or untrained staff represent a major source of computer problems. Tactical - Server security control used in conjunction with router and firewall security policy adds internal controls. This tutorial is not about pass/phraseword management but on server security controls which can, among other things: 1-Block access to all in/outbound TCP-Transmission Control Protocol and UDP-User Datagram Protocol ports. Before you can 1-Block access to all in/outbound TCP-Transmission Control Protocol and UDP-User Datagram Protocol ports, you need to understand TCP/UDP ports. Shown is a self-repeating animation to answer how TCP-Transmission Control Protocol Port Level Security and TLS-Transport Layer Security functions. TCP setups with the Destination Port number via SYNchronizes the connection manages the transmission of data sending SEQuences (parts), sends an ACKnowlegement to confirm receipt of data and when FINished disconnects the session. This is where Port Level Security or TLS-Transport Layer Security takes place. That is, control access by the Port Number such as deny access to Port 25 for email, Port 80 for HTTP-Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (web surfing) Port 21 for FTP-File Transfer Protocol or access to any other function. This is called a Stateful Inspection for a firewall (see Exhibit 1) to check, alert or audit the status (state) of the TCP connection - SYN, SYN-ACK or FIN. TCP setups with the Destination Port number via SYNchronizes the connection, manages the transmission of data sending SEQuences (parts), sends an ACKnowlegement to confirm receipt of data and when FINished disconnects the session. The animated version is available at www.techtionary.com.

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OEM Roundup

Avaya

Tello solution now rated “Avaya compliant”
Tello Corporation, a provider of instant communi-cation and collaboration solutions, announced that its Tello Enterprise application is compliant with key IP telephony solutions from Avaya. Tello Enterprise enables business users to quickly and easily locate, contact and collaborate with coworkers, customers, suppliers and partners in real-time across disparate networks, devices and applications. The Tello Connect hosted service platform, which provides the Tello Enterprise service to business users, is now compliance-tested by Avaya for compatibility with Avaya Communication Manager (CM 3.0.1) IP telephony software and SIP Enablement Services (SES 3.0). Tello is a member of the Avaya DeveloperConnec-tion Program -- an initiative to develop, market and sell innovative third-party products that inter-operate with Avaya technology and extend the value of a company's investment in its network. As a member of the program, Tello is eligible to submit products for compatibility testing by the Avaya Solution Interoperability and Test Lab in Lincroft, N.J. There a team of Avaya engineers develops a comprehensive test plan for each application to verify whether it is Avaya compliant.

Visit www.Tello.com or www.devconnectprogram.com.

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Mitel

Mitel and ProCurve Networking by HP help imaging center see the big picture
Mitel, the trusted IP communications provider, has teamed up with Epic Technologies LLP, a Tennessee-based channel partner, to help a diagnostic imaging center upgrade the care it offers its patients. Premier Diagnostic Imaging, the only full-service outpatient medical imaging center between Nashville and Knoxville, has selected the Mitel 3300 IP Communications Platform (ICP), Mitel Customer Interaction Solutions, Mitel Teleworker Solution, Mitel Your Assistant Softphone and Mitel IP phones to vault Premier onto the first wave of IP communications. After considering a hybrid system, Premier chose a combined solution of Mitel IP products and applications and a network by ProCurve Networking by HP. The center selected the solution because it delivers greater cost efficiencies with a single, powerful, centrally-managed IP communications solution that consolidates voice, data and video traffic across LAN/WANs and allows for shared resources and improved ease of communications.
Visit www.mitel.com.

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Nortel

Channel partners in North America recognized for excellence
Nortel channel partners were recently recognized at the Company's Executive Partner
Forum for U.S. and Canada. The leaders:

Elite Advantage: The Presidio Corporation (U.S.); Saskatchewan Telecommunications Inc. (Canada)
Premium Advantage: Nortech Telecommunications Inc. (U.S); Charter Telecom Inc. (Canada)
Advantage: All-Mode Communications, Inc. (U.S.); Integra Data Systems Corp. (Canada)

For dramatically increasing their customer satisfaction scores over the previous year:

The Presidio Corporation (U.S.)
Lexsys Networks Inc. (Canada)

For creating innovative solutions for Nortel that effectively solve a business need:

Elite Advantage: AT&T
Two Premium Advantage Partners tied: Intelli-Flex Inc.& Barry Communications Inc.
Advantage Partner: All-Mode Communications, Inc.

For the strongest growth in North America:

Elite Advantage: Shared Technologies Inc.
Premium Advantage: Mutual Telecommunications Services
Advantage Partner: Kelly Communications Systems, Inc.

Visit www.nortel.com.

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Siemens

Siemens enhances wireless LAN security, management control and regulatory compliance

Siemens Communications Inc. announced the availability of HiPath Wireless Manager Advanced (HWMA), a modular extension for the Siemens HiPath Wireless family of wireless local area network (LAN) solutions. Enhanced features of the HWMA solution are designed to help enterprises improve wireless LAN security - with built-in intrusion detection and prevention. The solution, with user location services, also provides management tools to help optimize network performance as well as integrated reports that help assist organizations in complying with security regulations.

Visit www.usa.siemens.com/communications.

Siemens deploys multi-functional campus smart card solutions

Siemens Communications Inc. announced that Nova Southeastern University (NSU), the nation's seventh largest private university, has chosen Siemens to deploy, service and integrate multi-functional smart card solutions using a new generation of contact and contactless smart card technologies. Smart card solutions are essential components of NSU's "academical village" vision to bring a number of leading-edge technology advancements to its campus environment over the next decade. The new smart card technologies will help NSU to more efficiently manage and control security privileges for buildings, residence halls, laboratories, IT infrastructures and critical shared applications. In a strategic relationship to help provide NSU with a wide choice of smart card benefits such as cashless payment, biometric applications, e-Ticketing and much more, Siemens is working with SmartCentric Technologies International Ltd. to integrate the Siemens HiPath SIcurity family of solutions with SmartCentric's SmartCity multi-application smart card portfolio.

Visit www.usa.siemens.com/communications or www.smartcentric.com.