NATD in the news
Cisco reseller
Companies in the news
The FLAG: EU and International news
Infrastructure
J2ME
Market
Nortel
Op-Ed
VoIP

NATD in the news

ADTRAN enhances North American Channel Program
ADTRAN, Inc. announced that the company has enhanced its ADTRAN ADvantage Partner Program for North America with the addition of a mid-tier partner level and a number of new benefits designed to attract new partners. The enhanced program offers more advantages for resellers targeting the SMB market with ADTRAN's award-winning family of NetVanta routers, switches, and IP telephony solutions.  As part of the ADTRAN Global ADvantage Partner Program introduced in 2006, the North American program has two main goals: ­ to increase our partners' ability to win in the SMB segment and to increase their profitability when doing so. The combination of NetVanta internetworking solutions that are specifically geared to solve critical SMB challenges and a strong channel support program make it easy for resellers and solution providers to satisfy customers and to find new opportunities to grow their businesses.
Visit www.adtran.com/partner.
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Cisco reseller

Network Hardware Resale continues increased market momentum
Network Hardware Resale (NHR) announced record annual revenues for 2006, fueled by the company’s steady international expansion, the introduction of new products and services, as well as an ever-increasing global customer roster. Revenues for 2006 were $138.2 million, representing a 31 percent year-over-year growth rate. The milestone 2006 financial performance contributed to positive EBITDA for the 28th consecutive quarter. NHR also continued its global expansion plans, reinforced by a fourth-quarter sales surge in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2006, sales to the APAC region grew 58 percent over 2005 while the company also experienced continued market momentum throughout the United States and Europe. In delivering optimum support to its worldwide customers, the company expanded its distribution facilities in the U.S. and the Netherlands.
Visit www.networkhardware.com.
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Companies in the news

Avotus completes a strong year, books 13 major enterprise contracts in Q4
Avotus Corporation announced that it closed 13 major contracts in the fourth quarter of 2006 for Avotus Intelligent Communications Management (ICM), a comprehensive communications lifecycle management solution that enables companies in all industries to manage, gain visibility into, and significantly reduce their voice and data spend. Avotus ICM enables organizations to automate and streamline sourcing and procurement processes, communications inventory management, invoice reconciliation and processing, purchasing and usage management.  Using the data set contained within Avotus ICM, users, managers and executives have easy-to-use visibility into spending trends, policy adherence, organizational voice and data costs, and usage patterns.  The TEM contracts include orders for all components of the Intelligent Communications Management solution including ICM eProcurement, ICM Expense Management and ICM Usage Management.
Visit www.avotus.com.
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The FLAG: EU & International news

Pioneering research centre opens its doors to industry
Companies participating at CeBIT will have the opportunity to meet and collaborate with Europe’s newest and most visionary telecommunications research centre. The Institute of Advanced Telecommunications at Swansea University (UK) is a major, European funded initiative that has created a research-led environment focussing on creating products with real commercial potential. Financially supported by European Objective 1 funding and a number of private sector partners, IAT has access to state-of-the-art laboratory facilities providing extensive optical, wireless, and networking test facilities. The Institute provides a world class research and development facility that integrates academic research with providing solutions to the world’s leading multinationals and entrepreneurial small businesses.  IAT is collaborating with some of the world’s most innovative blue-chip telecommunications companies as well as tomorrow’s sector leaders to pioneer research into real-life problems that span today’s rapidly evolving world in areas such as entertainment, industry, education, health and our changing environment.
Visit www.swansea.ac.uk/iat.
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Infrastructure

New York Law School replaces network core and upgrades edge infrastructure with Foundry Networks
Foundry Networks, Inc. announced that its switching solutions were selected by the New York Law School, one of the oldest independent law schools in the U.S., for their campus core-to-edge network redesign. Throughout history, its graduates founded many prominent law firms, served with distinction on federal, state and local benches, and have been major leaders of the bar, business and government. New York Law School's Foundry-powered network is one of their essential technological foundations required to help retain and attract the nation's top students and faculty members.  In order to maximize performance, each building within New York Law School has the capability to be linked with multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) connections in which Foundry's FastIron SuperX convergence-ready edge switches connect to a 10GbE core comprised of the award-winning BigIron RX series of backbone switches. New York Law School is also in the process of deploying additional FastIron Series of Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches in preparation for their next generation VoIP system in order to maximize efficiency and lower telecommunications costs.
Visit www.foundrynetworks.com.
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J2ME

Esnatech extends enterprise communications to J2ME enabled devices
Esnatech announced the support for J2ME enabled wireless devices with its UC Mobile Link software. The new J2ME version will be available for the next release of its unified communications platform Telephony Office-LinX. UC Mobile link delivers enhanced Presence and fixed to mobile convergence for a wide range of wireless devices with enterprise PBX systems such as Cisco, Avaya, Mitel, Nortel, Iwatsu, AASTRA, 3COM and Asterisk.  It provides a complete communications and collaboration solution for mobile users, integrating presence, messaging, mobility and computer telephony to users over mobile devices. The integration of unified communications onto these wireless devices will dramatically increase the ability of mobile users to connect to the office and be able to communicate as if they were at their desk.
Visit www.esnatech.com.
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Market

IP desk phone sales top $500 million in the fourth quarter
A recently published report from Dell'Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the networking and telecommunications industries, indicates that IP desk phone market posted strong results in the fourth quarter of 2006, growing 31 percent year-over-year to exceed $500 million.  “Much of the strength in IP desk phone market in the fourth quarter came from large North American vendors, such as Avaya, Cisco and Nortel, selling into Eastern Europe,” commented Alan Weckel, Analyst of IP Telephony Enterprise Research at Dell'Oro Group. “These vendors continue to expand their sales efforts in the region because Eastern Europe has the higher growth rate potential than the more mature Western European market. Many parts of Eastern Europe have antiquated PBXs and there is an opportunity for the region and vendors to transition directly to IP,” Weckel added.  The report also reveals that enterprise PBX market revenues climbed 9 percent over the same quarter a year ago partly on continued replacement cycle strength and strong sales in emerging regional markets. During the recent quarter, the strength in Eastern Europe helped the overall region gain over 3 percentage points of line shipment share.
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Nortel

IBM and Nortel ignite telecom industry innovation with IMS and SOA standards
IBM and Nortel have reached new milestones in helping telecom carriers drive network convergence. It will give their subscribers a seamless voice, data and video communications experience across a wide range of devices accessed from any network -- wireline, wireless or DSL/cable broadband. This includes fostering an expanded ecosystem for third parties to develop and test new converged applications, joint innovation centers, and Nortel integrating with IBM's industry leading WebSphere software. In addition, the agreement facilitates the inclusion of Nortel VoIP and Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) applications in IBM carrier solutions. This new agreement builds on an existing relationship that has led to successful IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) carrier customer trials across the globe. As part of the new agreement IBM and Nortel will use each of their current IMS developer and interoperability testing programs to accelerate and enable telecom application providers and carriers to bring new multimedia services to market, such as: presence capabilities, IP security/surveillance, child tracking, "find-your-buddy," video dating, and enterprise business applications with click-to-call capabilities.
Visit www.nortel.com or www.ibm.com/soa.
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Op-Ed

Is it realistic to expect 100% uptime for enterprise software applications?
A telecom network provider perspective

These days "software as a service" seems to be the industry’s new mantra – referring to the way companies such as Google or Salesforce.com deliver a service over the Internet that is powered by software running on their own servers. Thus companies are refocusing their efforts, even for critical enterprise applications, towards "online" services.  An interesting trend that is perhaps one additional demonstration is the continuous convergence between IT and Telecom. Everything becomes, in the end, communication-related: exchanging of bits regardless of what they are. Applications such as email, voicemail, voice systems, online databases, etc. are all IT, and all Communication simultaneously.

This poses a new focus on what companies should expect in terms of uptime for their applications. The rule used to be "You can’t expect 100% uptime." Under the old rules, applications, even if stored on several servers, run the risk of periodic downtime.  But under the new rules, companies can maintain, either directly or indirectly, hundreds or thousands of servers that "back-up" each other. (Google uses an estimated 450,000 servers.)  When a user needs to access an application, the company or its application provider(s) perform load balancing to allow the user to access applications or content most rapidly from the closest or highest performing server running the application.

That moves the pressure from the server (or the application itself), to the network. And that is why companies are "investing more and more in their global network," says Don Dengel, technical director at Vanco, the leading Virtual Network Operator.  "In recent years, many of our customers are investing in sizeable and efficient backup networks based on IPsec," says Dengel. "That enables them to expect 100% uptime for their applications." Instead of storing the application on only a few servers,  it is distributed onto multiple servers or delivered directly as a service by a third party provider, and it’s always available when needed.

That explains the surge of robust MPLS networks (the new standard for corporate WANs), backed up by cheap and efficient IPsec networks which directly impacts the people in charge of enterprise networks. Before, the attention was on "IT" thought in terms of application, software, servers etc. Now, everything is "network." If it’s not on a network, it isn’t anywhere. Are strong networks, core and backup, the answer to higher 100%-like uptimes? We believe so, and to achieve that goal, companies need to expand their communications and data network. 

Vanco is the world’s first Virtual Network Operator (VNO).
Visit http://www.vanco.com.^Back To Top

VoIP

ACUTA Summit on IP Communications in April
ACUTA, the Association for Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, is pleased to announce an exciting new event that will be held April 1 - 4 in Baltimore.  ACUTA's Summit on IP Communications in Higher Education will showcase how widely VoIP is deployed and the challenges and benefits it presents.  The agenda will interest a broad segment of policy-makers, CIOs, technologists, managers and engineers. Online registration and detailed information about the agenda, hotel, corporate demos and the exhibit hall is now available.
Visit http://www.acuta.org/events/seminars/sse07.cfm.
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