AT&T
Avaya
Conferences
Conferencing
CRM
Mitel
Partnerships
Services
SIP trunking

AT&T

AT&T announces new contract with the American Legion National Headquarters
AT&T Inc. announced that The American Legion National Headquarters has awarded AT&T a three-year contract to provide voice network services. With headquarters in Indianapolis, The American Legion is the world’s largest Veterans Service Organization, with nearly 3 million total volunteers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, France, Mexico and the Philippines. Under the agreement, AT&T will integrate The American Legion's voice services with AT&T Business Network (ABN), AT&T ISDN Primary Rate Interface (PRI) and a Nortel Private Branch Exchange (PBX). The solution bundles local and long distance voice and data services into a single contract — with a single bill — and provides discounts across services. The solution by AT&T will merge services under a single brand and upgrade The American Legion’s current PBX platform to include call center features that create both administrative and operational efficiencies. In addition, The American Legion will have high-volume access to the public-switched telephone network and the ability to consolidate and transmit traffic at high speeds.
Visit www.att.com or www.legion.org.
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Avaya

Avaya extends lead in worldwide enterprise IP Telephony revenues
Avaya Inc. extended its lead in worldwide enterprise IP Telephony revenues, according to Synergy Research Group's 3Q 2007 Enterprise Voice Market Shares Report. The report shows that Avaya led with 28 percent of the IP Telephony market, the largest quarterly share the company has achieved in this segment. This places Avaya as the #1 vendor in IP Telephony for a third consecutive quarter, marking another period of accelerating growth for the company.  According to Synergy's latest report, Avaya's leading market share placed it nearly 2 points ahead of its nearest competitor. Avaya also outpaced industry revenue growth both sequentially and when compared with the year-ago quarter. This comes at a time when the enterprise IP Telephony industry is experiencing strong growth. The top four vendors for worldwide enterprise IP Telephony revenues, according to Synergy, are: Avaya, Cisco, Nortel and Alcatel-Lucent.
Visit www.avaya.com.


XETA Technologies selected to join Avaya’s Partner Program
XETA Technologies announced that it been selected to join Avaya’s National Business Partner Program. The National Partner Program includes a small group of partners that have demonstrated consistent growth and investment in the Avaya partnership. Having already achieved Avaya’s highest level partner designation of Platinum Business Partner, the National Business Partner Program will further differentiate XETA as a leading provider of Avaya systems. As part of the program, XETA will receive dedicated marketing planning and execution resources from Avaya and will gain a seat on Avaya’s Business Partner Council.
Visit www.xeta.com or www.avaya.com.
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Conferences

TMC University offers SIP certification course at INTERNET TELEPHONY conference
Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC), in conjunction with Dialogic, announced that their TMC University division will offer SIP certification courses at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO East 2008 in Miami, Florida. The daylong course, which includes a 30-minute certification exam, will be held Wednesday, January 23rd - day one of the three-day conference. Titled “SIP: The Foundation for Building Enhanced Services,” this TMC University course offers six individual training sessions teaching service providers how to use SIP to create profitable enhanced services they can roll out to new and existing subscribers. TMC has partnered with Dialogic, a leading provider of open systems platforms to both enterprise and service provider markets, to build the comprehensive curriculum for TMC University. Registration for the course and the entire conference is now open. Anyone interested may register by visiting http://www.itexpo.com. Limited booth space is still available as well.
Visit www.tmcnet.com or www.dialogic.com.
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Conferencing

Whaleback introduces OrcaMeeting group conferencing service
Whaleback Systems introduced OrcaMeeting, an integrated audio and web conferencing service for SMBs. OrcaMeeting features a unique flat-fee pricing plan for unlimited monthly multi-party conference calls, reshaping how SMBs can use and pay for web and audio conferencing services. For the first time, SMBs can replace the unpredictable monthly expenses of usage-based conferencing with a fixed-price service that offers unlimited usage for a set monthly fee. OrcaMeeting is available in five or ten seat bundles as a standalone web and audio conferencing service or as an integrated solution with Whaleback’s CrystalBlue Voice service. As a managed service, OrcaMeeting is deployed by a Whaleback channel partner and centrally managed via the Whaleback Network Operations Center. Each conferencing seat features unlimited use and is provided a special Personal Identification Number (PIN) that can be assigned to individuals or shared among groups. Conferences can be easily scheduled via the OrcaMeeting Conference Scheduler, which allows users to schedule a conference, invite the participants and email out the dial-in number, conference ID and PIN. OrcaMeeting is available on December 1, 2007 from Whaleback and its channel partners.
Visit www.whalebacksystems.com.
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CRM

Fonality acquires Insightful, offers integrated CRM-VoIP solution
Fonality announced that it will create the industry’s first phone system that unifies both telephony and customer relationship management (CRM) for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). As part of the initiative, the company has acquired Insightful Solutions Pty Ltd., a leading hosted CRM solution provider and a SugarCRM Gold partner for the Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific regions. Over the past two years, Insightful has made substantial enhancements to SugarCRM’s Sugar Professional product and hosts more than 1,000 seats, in 13 countries, at the company’s three global data centers. By combining Insightful’s CRM expertise with Fonality’s awarding-winning telephony suite, small businesses will have an affordable solution that unifies employees with presence management, instant messaging, fixed and mobile calling, and provides a single 360-degree view of customers and business partners.  As part of the deal, Fonality will also begin selling Insightful’s CRM managed service offering immediately. Called FonalityCRM, it integrates Sugar Professional with Fonality’s PBXtra and trixbox Pro IP-PBX applications.
Visit www.fonalitycrm.com.
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Mitel

Mitel takes big step in green direction
Mitel has reached agreement with Global Investment Recovery (Global), a full-service recycler and processor of electronic equipment, to fully recycle phones and hardware in selected areas where new Mitel equipment is installed. Mitel PARTNERprogram channel partner members will be on the front lines of this important assault on electronic equipment pollution, which will be supported and endorsed by Mitel in various commercial programs. Using a login page on the Global Web site, Mitel channel partners can notify Global about equipment ready for pickup after a new Mitel deployment. Global’s logistics team will provide packing and shipping instructions to safely transport it to one of processing facilities, where the equipment will be shredded, sorted and reused, thus eliminating up to 100 percent of the e-scrap. The resulting shredded commodities will be sold in the commodities markets, and ultimately used again in another manufacturing process, effectively closing the entire loop for the recycling process.
Visit www.mitel.com or www.girpm.com.
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Partnerships

Zeus Technology and SMC Networks announce partnership
Zeus Technology and SMC Networks announced that the two have entered into a partnership through which SMC will market Zeus Technology’s ZXTM (Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager) load-balancing software to its resellers and SMB/e clients for use with SMC’s network switching products. As a pure software solution, Zeus Technology’s ZXTM is ideally-positioned to optimize network efficiency, providing the SMB/e market with a high-performance, easy-to-use Application Load Balancing product.  SMC’s high-performance Gig/10G switching and advanced wireless solutions for the SMB/e market are complemented by the advanced features of ZXTM. The synergies created by this partnership result in the kind of network performance that will allow SMB/e clients to realize the advantages of high-end, enterprise-level networking without enterprise-like overhead. ZXTM is available for Windows, Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD, and is the only load balancing solution available as a virtual appliance for VMware Virtual Infrastructure and on Microsoft Virtual Server.
Visit www.zeus.com or www.smc.com.
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Services

Endeavor Telecom and Polycom team to extend nationwide VoIP installation service
Endeavor and Polycom announced an agreement under which Endeavor’s professional installation services will be available through Polycom’s distribution channel to service provider partners seeking access to professional implementation services on a nationwide basis. In addition to installing, testing and supporting Polycom phones, Endeavor’s certified technicians provide customized installation services and training for various technologies associated with IP PBX deployment, including inside wiring, network switches, traffic shaping appliances, analog telephone adaptors (ATAs) and gateways. With a field organization of more than 9,000 highly trained and certified technicians, Endeavor is uniquely qualified to deliver installation and testing services for Polycom partners anywhere in North America. Endeavor’s services are provided on a white label basis and allow service providers, carriers, system integrators and VARs to offer a nationwide field service capability under their own corporate brand.
Visit www.polycom.com or www.endeavortelecom.com.
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SIP trunking

New alliances help Allworx resellers
Allworx announced a set of new alliances that help to further expand the flexibility and capacity of the Allworx IP-PBX systems, while also providing Allworx’ channel partners with new alternatives for addressing the communications needs of small and medium sized businesses.  Allworx announced that it has completed extensive interoperability testing with new Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs) including: Broadvox, Excel, nexVortex, PAETEC and VocalNet to ensure that end users receive the best voice quality, features and service when using these providers with any Allworx system. These new ITSP relationships complement Allworx’ existing alliances with Cbeyond, Bandwidth.com and NetLogic - to provide Allworx’ resellers with significantly more options for deploying VoIP-based communications solutions to SMB customers. Allworx also announced new alliances with FXO gateway providers, which help SMBs that require additional CO lines to increase the capacity of their Allworx systems. Thoroughly tested and certified interoperability with third-party gateways from VegaStream and Quintum Technologies, Inc. now enable Allworx customers to add additional CO lines to their Allworx systems in the most straightforward and affordable fashion.
Visit www.allworx.com.
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