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The FLAG: EU & International news

Upfront

Zultys allays fears about financial stability
IP telephony vendor Zultys has claimed it is business at usual for its UK partners, despite channel concerns over its financial stability. Ian Milnes, president of Zultys, said the vendor had been seeking additional capital funding, but a deal to secure this fell through in the final stages. He confirmed jobs had been lost as a result. “After missing out on the funding, we had to make a reduction in our workforce, which mainly affected our US office,” Milnes said. “We are at a reduced size, but still building and shipping products. Now we have scaled back we are profitable, and the urgency for funding is not so great. We have time to find the right investment partner for a smaller round of funding.” However, Alex Waterman, managing director of Zultys's recent distributor signing and new market entry Datafonix, said: “Communication from Zultys has been weak. The message we have given to our partners is to wait and see what happens.” Waterman added that Datafonix has put all Zultys orders on hold and is pushing its other vendor offerings while the situation unfolds. David Thompson, managing director of Zultys distributor Siracom, said: “Our relationship [with Zultys] is continuing and we have been reassured [by the company]. It is less of a drama than it seems.”
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Member in the news

Multi-Tech solution now rated "Avaya Compliant"
Multi-Tech Systems, Inc. announced that its FaxFinder Fax Server Appliance is compliant with IP Office solutions for small and medium businesses from Avaya. By connecting to analog ports of a PBX, Multi-Tech Systems' FaxFinder appliance converts faxes to TIFF files allowing users to receive faxes as e-mails and to send faxes from any application that can print. The solution provides distributed faxing capabilities over a wide-area network (WAN) from a corporate office to small remote offices and field sales people. In addition, it provides secure, convenient faxing for local-area (LAN) users — offering a high degree of privacy for both the sender and recipient. Multi-Tech Systems' FaxFinder is now compliance-tested by Avaya for compatibility with IP Office 3.1, a flexible and easy-to-use converged voice and data system designed for small and medium businesses.
Visit www.multitech.com.
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Aastra

Aastra Intecom announces strategic alliance program for CVCC
Aastra Intecom introduced a strategic alliance program for VARs and strategic partners to offer its Hosted Contact Center solution, Centergy Virtual Contact Center, to their customers as a value-added service with no capital investment. Hosted Contact Centers are among the fastest growing telecommunications market segments, growing at 38% CAGR, according to a 2005 Frost & Sullivan study. This market segment has historically been available only to large service providers who can afford the hardware and software infrastructure and experienced human resources required to deploy a hosting center. Aastra Intecom removes barriers to entry for resellers by taking on the operational and support responsibilities of managing a hosted contact center, allowing partners to focus on the customer relationship.
Visit www.aastraintecom.com.
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Avaya

Avaya extends No. 1 leadership in voice self-service
Avaya Inc. announced the company has been identified as the North American market leader in interactive voice response (IVR) in a market study by Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company. Frost & Sullivan research shows Avaya leading the competition with a 22.9% share of the IVR market for 2005. The speech solutions driving Avaya's market leadership also took top honors in a recent competition sponsored by Speech Technology Magazine, a leading trade journal covering the speech industry. Avaya won two product awards - 'Best Enterprise Voice Platform' for the Avaya Interactive Response and Avaya Voice Portal solutions and 'Best Tool' for Avaya Dialog Designer. The awards were based on votes cast in an online poll and it is the third year in a row that Avaya has taken top honors for the best enterprise platform in the Speech Technology Magazine competition.
Visit www.avaya.com.
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Cisco

Cisco and HP to deliver Pervasive Indoor Wireless solution
Cisco Systems and HP announced a joint effort focused on helping enterprise customers take advantage of a wide array of new applications and services based on Cisco's Pervasive Indoor Wireless technology. The new applications and services include security, guest access, voice over Wi-Fi and location-based services and allow for the creation of a variety of new applications, such as IT asset tracking, presence-based applications, dual-mode voice and integrated intrusion detection and prevention. HP will provide systems integration services for the new and enhanced products within Cisco's Unified Wireless Network Family, including the Cisco Catalyst 3750G Integrated Wireless LAN Controller and the Cisco Unified Wireless Network Software Release 4.0. The companies' joint work is intended to improve operational efficiencies and reduce costs associated with WLAN services.
Visit www.hp.com or www.cisco.com.
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Mitel

Layoffs hit Mitel as company pursues IP telephone market
Mitel has laid off an undetermined number of employees as it phases out its legacy digital telephone products in favor of IP-based telephone systems. A statement from the company did not say how many employees had been laid off. Paul Goyette, Mitel's director of public relations, said he could not elaborate on the statement because the company is in the midst of the registration process for an initial public offering of shares, but did indicate that the number of employees involved was "not material." Earlier this year, Mitel reported it had about 850 Ottawa-based employees. "Our early and sustained investment in IP-based research and development and our decision to concentrate our efforts on this new technology have positioned us to take advantage of the industry shift to IP-based communications solutions," the statement said. "Our IP-based product revenues increased by 48 percent in fiscal 2006 compared with fiscal 2005 and 97 percent of our system shipments for the quarter ended April 30, 2006 were IP-based communications solutions.”
Visit www.mitel.com.
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Nortel

Juniper, Nortel open wallets to invest in WLAN vendor
Juniper Networks put some skin in the WLAN game by investing in Trapeze Networks, part of a $30 million funding round secured by the wireless vendor. Trapeze said it plans to use money from the round D funding to support geographic expansion, bolster its channel programs and expand product development. On the channel front, the new funding will support Trapeze's efforts to recruit new partners and add channel personnel, said Jim Vogt, CEO of Trapeze. The two companies are now investigating options for how Juniper can work with Trapeze's wireless technology. Co-development, resale and OEM partnerships are all on the table, he said. First-time Trapeze investor Juniper was joined in the funding round by Nortel Networks as well as several venture capital firms, which all added to previous investments in the wireless vendor. Nortel OEMs wireless technology from Trapeze, as do several other networking vendors, including 3Com, D-Link and Enterasys Networks.
Visit www.nortelnetworks.com or www.juniper.net.
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Solutions

Cleo launches VersaLex v3.1
Cleo Communications released VersaLexTM version 3.1, the technology powering VersaLex Suite, the company's LexiCom and VersaLex Trader (VLTrader) products. VersaLex 3.1 offers several new features and enhancements that add to the products' performance and value, including:

-Automatic synchronization in real-time of user configuration on two or more LexiCom or VLTrader installations.  
-Integrated OpenPGP encryption for FTP.
-Enhanced EDI filtering for file transfer reporting.
-Email configuration without requiring an external mail server.
-Enhanced file naming capability.

Many new pre-configured hosts have been added.  All hosts can now be downloaded from the support web page and easily imported into LexiCom.  Activation of downloaded hosts is limited to the number of licensed connections purchased.
Visit www.cleo.com.

ShoreGroup's solution selected to monitor mission-critical network
ShoreGroup, Inc. announced that following an extensive competitive evaluation it has been awarded the contract and has begun the immediate deployment of its award-winning CaseSentry Systems Management solution to monitor a large-scale national converged network. CaseSentry will provide comprehensive monitoring and management of more than 130 mission-critical Cisco CallManager, Unity Unified Messaging and IP/IVR servers supporting 55,000 IP telephones distributed throughout the United States. The CaseSentry Systems Management solution provides the fully integrated service management and systems management capabilities that organizations need to effectively manage and support their vital networked systems and applications, converged communications, contact centers and complex end-to-end business process transactions.
Visit www.shoregroup.com.
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The FLAG: EU & International news

Telstra awarded Gold status by Avaya
Telstra and Avaya Inc. announced joint plans to bolster the penetration of IP telephony in Australia with Telstra Business Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telstra Corporation Limited, joining Avaya's BusinessPartner program at the Gold certification level. Under the terms of the agreement, Telstra Business Systems will provide sales, marketing, distribution and support for the Avaya enterprise IP telephony range and call center solutions to businesses in Australia. At the same time, Avaya will provide Telstra's team with training and certification for the delivery of converged voice and data networking and applications as well as supporting services to enterprises. The relationship combines Telstra's strength as the leading ICT company in Australia with Avaya's proven leadership as the global leader in IP telephony and contact center solutions. The Gold accreditation status recognizes Telstra's team has the technical and commercial expertise at levels consistent with Avaya's high standards.
Visit www.telstra.com.au.
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