NATD in the news
Meet the new members
Upfront
Avaya partners
Call center
Education
Mitel
Nortel
Open source
Software

NATD in the news

Veramark hires seasoned veterans to help launch new initiative
Veramark Technologies, Inc. announced Thomas McAlees has been appointed to the position of Vice President of Engineering and Operations and Joshua Bouk joined as Vice President of Customer Services. McAlees and Bouk will be instrumental in deploying Veramark's new Communications Intelligence Software and Services (CISS) strategic initiatives. In this position, McAlees will be responsible for the strategic planning and leadership of all technical, operational and engineering activities at Veramark. He will draw upon his more than 20 years of executive leadership and information systems management, design engineering and operations expertise to develop a new operations structure that best supports the company's strategic initiatives and utilizes the talent, experience and strengths of the current engineering and operations team.  Bouk will be responsible for Veramark's Managed Services, Customer Support, Order Management and Field Support teams. He will oversee all aspects of the company's world-class customer support operations and drive growth of Veramark's expanding managed service offerings. With Veramark's customer satisfaction at over 90%, his mission is to continue to improve these ratings as the company expands into its new CISS initiatives.
Visit www.veramark.com.
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Meet the new members

Oberon Supply Inc.
Oberon Supply Inc. supplies the secondary market with replacement housings, handsets, parts and pieces for the Nortel product line.  Not only do we sell the component parts, we also have a full staff to do the refurb process for you if you are short on space or don't have the employees!  Need repair too?  Oberon can take care of you with our in house repair facilities.  Give us a call today!

Jeff W. Kostecki
18077 Edison Ave.
Chesterfield, MO 63005
V - 636-812-3610
F - 636-812-3618
[email protected]
www.oberonsupply.com^Back To Top

Upfront

Cisco grabs No. 2 spot in enterprise telephony
Cisco Systems has jumped from fifth to second place in market share in the worldwide enterprise telephony market, according to Infonetics Research's latest survey. In its "Enterprise Telephony" report Infonetics found that Cisco had climbed over Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel and Siemens to grab the second-largest market share behind leader Avaya. The overall enterprise telephony market topped $9.6 billion for 2007, up 6 percent over 2006, despite the fact that the market for traditional TDM (time division multiplex)-based PBXs was down 20 percent to just over $1 billion. For the fourth quarter of 2007, the overall market generated $2.4 billion, which was down by 7 percent sequentially. Notably, the market for IP softphones hit a growth hockey stick in 2007, when it saw a 55 percent jump to 385,000 units. Worldwide shipments of both IP phones and soft phones were up 29 percent from 2006 to 2007. Infonetics in its forecast for enterprise telephony expects double-digit growth for the next couple of years, slowing down to single-digit growth by 2011.
Visit www.cisco.com or www.infonetics.com.
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Avaya partners

AudioCodes media gateways deployed by Global Crossing
AudioCodes announced that Global Crossing has selected the AudioCodes Mediant 3000, Mediant 2000 and Mediant 1000 digital VoIP Media Gateways and MediaPack analog VoIP Media Gateways as trunking and enterprise access gateways in Latin America. Global Crossing is providing telephony services to enterprises and carrier peering and has deployed the Mediant 3000 and Mediant 2000 for trunking applications to connect its VoIP network with internal and peering PSTN networks. These gateway platforms provide an ideal fit to Global Crossing's varying capacity needs around Latin America, while providing the flexibility to be controlled by a third party softswitch using MEGACO call control. In addition, Global Crossing is using the Mediant 3000 for enterprise aggregation, whereby multiple enterprises are connected via TDM trunks to the Mediant 3000, which in turn provides SIP interworking towards the IP backbone. The Mediant 1000 and MediaPack gateways are deployed within enterprises and connect legacy PBXs via SIP trunks to the Global Crossing VoIP network.
Visit www.audiocodes.com or www.globalcrossing.com.
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Call center

North American contact center applications markets poised for greater growth
The North American contact center applications markets made considerable progress in 2006, growing by a healthy 6.9 percent. Although inbound contact routing (ICR) is the dominant component of the applications market, the interactive voice response systems (IVR) and multimedia systems (MM) markets are likely to achieve maximum growth in the next two to three years. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, North American Contact Center Applications Markets, finds that the markets earned revenues of $2.49 billion in 2006 and estimates this to reach $3.67 billion in 2013. As expected, the tier one contact center solutions vendors lead the aggregated market share. Avaya’s dominant presence in the ICR market carries forward to the overall numbers and combined with the company’s play in outbound dialing (OBD) and IVR markets, its revenues exceed the total of its next four closest competitors. At the same time, significant merger activity has resulted in relatively niche participants grabbing significant shares of the market. NICE Systems’ mid-2006 acquisition of IEX gave it a healthy 4.2 percent overall share – all of it in the agent performance optimization (APO) space. Oracle’s acquisitions of Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft strengthened its play in the North American customer relationship management (CRM) market, giving it a lion’s share of the MM systems.
Visit www.contactcenters.frost.com.
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Education

ACUTA’s Spring seminar focuses on VoIP technology, challenges of staffing
An examination of VoIP technology from all angles, including the issue of finding the right employees with the right skills in a world of converged networks, is featured in the Spring Seminar of ACUTA, the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education. The seminar is April 6-9 in St. Louis at the Sheraton St. Louis. With a twin topical focus on “VoIP: Costs, Challenges, and Opportunities” and “Staffing in a Converged IT World,” it will feature presentations by representatives of large and small colleges and universities from all over the country. Representing schools such as Yale, Indiana University, Texas A&M, Columbia, Emory University, Loyola, Washington University, Johns Hopkins and Juniata College, presenters will share their insight, experiences and successes with their peers. Educational sessions concentrating on VoIP technology will explore topics such as upgrading the infrastructure in older buildings and optimizing the converged network for distance learning, and will look at specific deployment details on various campuses. On the staffing side, presenters will cover the mix of skills employees need now and in the future, how to attract them to campus employment, and how to lead them to success.
Visit www.acuta.org.
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Mitel

Mitel recognized by CE Pro
Mitel has received the CE Pro High Impact Product (CHIPs) award for 2007 for the Inter-Tel 3000.  “The CHIPs are unlike any other awards in the industry,” says Jason Knott, editor-in-chief of CE Pro. “The winners are exclusively nominated, and then voted on, by integrators. The winners really do represent the best among the rank-and-file of custom installation.” Products are gauged on criteria such as whether they help a dealer open up a previously “untapped” market segment, boost an integrator’s efficiency by making installations faster and less complicated, or increase a custom installer’s profitability by offering a solid margin. Products from categories such as audio, video, control / automation, installation, power management, phone systems, screens and more are recognized. The Inter-Tel 3000 provides residences and small offices with advanced features such as conferencing, centralized voice mail and an automated attendant for greeting and routing of incoming calls to make communications more efficient.
Visit www.mitel.com or www.cepro.com.
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Nortel

PROGNOSIS extends its popular IP telephony management software to support Nortel environments
Integrated Research announced the official launch of support for Nortel IP communications technology through version 9.5 of its market-leading PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Manager software. This expanded functionality now means that PROGNOSIS is the only specialized IP telephony management solution on the market supporting multi-vendor environments where Nortel, Avaya and Cisco systems co-exist. Filling a gap not covered by traditional PBX administration, network management and event management tools, PROGNOSIS has become the provider of choice for the world’s largest enterprises and service providers since its introduction in 2000. This new development gives PROGNOSIS an opportunity to address the combined install base for the world’s 3 largest enterprise IP telephony vendors: Cisco, Avaya and Nortel. It also provides a highly attractive solution for the increasing number of large organizations faced with the challenge of managing a multi-vendor deployment. For homogeneous Nortel environments, PROGNOSIS IP Telephony Manager 9.5 provides real-time monitoring and management in critical areas such as voice quality, device status and utilization as well as system performance and fault notification.
Visit www.nortel.com or www.prognosis.com.
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Open source

ISPhone solves billing problems for VoIP providers
Many service providers are offering VoIP services using Asterisk software but have invested in billing systems based on RADIUS. Since Asterisk is not based on RADIUS, service providers need a way to make Asterisk 'talk to' their billing systems. The Asterisk Connector makes this possible. Asterisk is an open-source PBX application that can be adapted for use as a service provider switch. Asterisk Connector, designed by ISPhone, is a plug-in that allows Asterisk to operate with software that uses the RADIUS protocol. This product was designed to solve billing software issues for VoIP service providers, enabling them to utilize Asterisk to offer enhanced features to their customers. Asterisk Connector is installed on an Asterisk server and provides a bridge between Asterisk and any RADIUS-based billing system.  
Visit www.isphone.net.
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Software

Symon acquires Dacon plc telecommunications distributor
Symon announced the acquisition of UK based Dacon plc, a value added distributor of telecommunications solutions specialising in contact centre products. The purchase of Dacon is a strategic move for Symon who will benefit from Dacon's reseller relationships, solid reputation and presence in the United Kingdom. The new combined organisation with over 2,650 installations will be located in Hertfordshire, UK and is to be named Symon Dacon Ltd. Because of Dacon's leading strategic relationships with key resellers in the UK, Symon has an opportunity to quickly increase its market share and global reach. Dacon's philosophy is built on bringing relevant products to the market and selling them through trusted and reliable resellers. The products and services available through this network of resellers comprise a wide range of contact centre and telecommunications solutions. Dacon has maintained a long term relationship with Centergistics Solutions who offer comparable contact centre products to Symon. Symon Dacon, Ltd. will continue to provide first class support now and in the future for Symon and Centergistic products and customers in the UK and Europe.
Visit www.symon.com or www.dacon.co.uk.
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