Upcoming Meeting Notice


SAVE THE DATE:


OCTOBER 6 - 7, 2008
TECH EXEC FORUM for technology resellers
Hyatt Regency - Chicago, IL
Click here for more information.

OCTOBER 2, 2008
Regional Midwest Meeting
The Loon Cafe - Minneapolis, Minnesota

OCTOBER 23, 2008
Northeast Regional Meeting
Dinner at the Meadowlands Racetrack - East Rutherford, NJ

JANUARY 21 - 24, 2009
Annual Meeting
Hard Rock Hotel - San Diego, CA

(Click here for more information.)

Breaking news
NATD in the news
Air filters
Avaya
Case study
Cisco
Europe
Legal
Open source
Power
Quintum
Resellers

Breaking news

Strategic Products and Services and PhoneXtra complete company merger
Strategic Products and Services (SPS) and PhoneXtra announce they have successfully completed due diligence reviews, signed purchase agreements and completed all necessary transactions required to successfully merge the two companies. The combined companies will operate as Strategic Products and Services (SPS). SPS and PhoneXtra both specialize in the design, installation and support of converged communications solutions, advanced IP telephony applications, unified communications, network infrastructure and mobility solutions. As Avaya Platinum Certified BusinessPartners, both SPS and PhoneXtra have strong market presence, customer relationships, plus technical and service capabilities. The merged company creates the most dominant communication solution provider in the eastern half of the United States. The merged company employs more than 380 individuals in over 25 cities nationwide. Existing PhoneXtra locations in Fairfield and Freehold, NJ; New York, NY; Horsham, PA now add to the overall SPS footprint. PhoneXtra-Atlantic, a former subsidiary of PhoneXtra, is not part of the merger with SPS and will become a standalone entity through its divestiture.
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NATD in the news

3CX delivers a business soft phone completely free of charge
3CX has announced the release of a totally free new VoIP phone that allows users to make and receive calls from their computer using popular VoIP providers or SIP servers. 3CX VoIP Phone has a straight forward, business-style interface and includes important business features such as call transfer. 3CX VoIP Phone has a user-friendly and intuitive interface with dial pad and buttons that make transferring or forwarding calls a breeze. It also allows users to review their history of calls, put calls on hold, to easily accept, reject or ignore calls with a mouse click, and much more. One of the key features of 3CX VoIP Phone is its integration with Microsoft Outlook. The new 3CX VoIP Phone can be downloaded totally free of charge from http://www.3cx.com/VOIP/voip-phone.html.
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Air filters

UAF offers one-piece, quick-mount assembly unit
Thanks to Universal Air Filter’s expanding, one-piece assembly unit, which includes a filter, mounting bracket, fan guard and air flow plenum, design engineers or end-users no longer need to specify multiple parts to serve the same function. Clients also can install the air filter media quickly without complex installation kits and procedures. To ensure a prompt mount of the assembly, Universal Air Filter can match an existing hole pattern or provide captive fasteners and high-bond adhesive tapes. In addition, UAF offers special metal finishes to match existing enclosures and/or provide protection in corrosive indoor or outdoor environments. Filters with Quadrafoam media also provide an additional layer of protection for flammability, ultraviolet light, hydrolytic stability and fungus resistance. The low-profile assembly unit can be used for new design or field retrofit and can be configured to meet UL and/or other safety standards for finger and tool probe safety tests.
Visit www.uaf.com.
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Avaya

Avaya certified as Juniper's J-Partner Elite
Avaya GlobalConnect has announced that it has been accredited with Juniper’s J-Partner Elite—the highest partner certification and solution specialization tier for Juniper Networks Inc.  Avaya GlobalConnect has demonstrated strong competencies in a broad range of Juniper products and technologies and this reinforces Avaya’s consistent enhancement to Juniper’s business in India.  This is the highest level of partner accreditation in the Juniper partner framework. This recognition represents Avaya’s significant technical knowledge transfer and certifications on Juniper routing, switching, security, application acceleration products and solutions. Avaya’s continued support has helped enhance sales and marketing programs, which directly benefit the customer in terms of solution designing and optimization and hence better utilization of investments. This also signifies a robust post sales support to the end customer provided by Avaya GlobalConnect.
Visit www.avaya.com.
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Case study

Avaya and Extreme Networks infrastructure help Iowa Valley Iowa Valley Community College District, which operates two community colleges and a satellite campus, is using unified communications from Avaya and a high-performance network infrastructure from Extreme Networks to link faculty, staff and students across 15 buildings located within a 90-mile radius. "Iowa Valley wanted to consolidate seven disparate phone systems and five different voice mail systems to take advantage of the cost-saving and productivity benefits of voice over IP," said Jim Wilson, director of technology, Iowa Valley Community College District. Iowa Valley also needed a better process to ensure performance and reliability for its busy, 24/7 web site that students use to register for classes and apply for financial aid.

Avaya provided a comprehensive IP communications solution, including an Avaya S8720 Media Server at the main site, with its IP telephony platform, Avaya Communication Manager; Avaya S8300 Media Gateways at the remote campus locations; Avaya Modular Messaging; and more than 400 Avaya IP phones. Extreme Networks provided a complete, campus-wide network fashioned for high availability, gigabit performance, and high reliability, based on its portfolio of switches.

"The District achieved the capacity, redundancy and security it needed, including the ability to troubleshoot and monitor its own network and handle similar tasks for all switches simultaneously, which saves time and money," Wilson said.
Visit www.avaya.com or www.extremenetworks.com. ^Back To Top

Cisco

NICE adds voice recording solution to Cisco AXP branch platform
Voice recording in branch offices and retail stores are becoming mandatory requirements as executive management seeks to capture customer interactions to better understand and optimize customer and market dynamics.  Also new and stricter regulations for financial organizations are driving the need to record customer interactions at the branch level. NICE Systems has teamed up with Cisco Systems to deliver their Network Embedded VoIP logger on top of Cisco's AXP or Application eXtension Platform, which resides within its Integrated Services Router (ISR).
Visit www.cisco.com or www.nice.com. ^Back To Top

Europe

'Plenty of life' left in PBX says distributor
Distributor Nimans is reporting ‘plenty of life’ in traditional PBX voice infrastructures despite the emergence of powerful unified comms and IP-based technologies. Hybrid platforms remain the most viable route for many end users according to Nimans’ systems sales director, Phil Adams, who points out that running IP ‘end to end’  does not represent a universal one-fit solution. Adams says that whilst resellers have embraced the latest IP developments, lots of businesses are still ideally served by running separate voice and data networks - which is reflected in current sales. “New build virgin sites are a different proposition because high speed data networks can be put in place from scratch. The resellers I am coming across are not skeptics where the latest technologies are concerned; they have all embraced them in a market being driven by the many different applications and business solutions available - the ability to get all your communications to a single work station.” But he points out: “You don’t have to go pure IP to access these services as many office environments still operate on a standard digital platform where there is a tremendous amount of resilience and reliability.”
Visit www.nimans.net.
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Legal

Continuant wins legal victory against Avaya
In a ruling that could pave the way for increased competition in the market for service and maintenance of Avaya telecom equipment, U.S. District Court Judge Garrett E. Brown, Jr. has upheld certain of the claims of Pacific Northwest-based Continuant contending that Avaya, Inc. violates U.S. antitrust law in its business practices by stifling competition for maintenance and service of Avaya's telephone systems. Continuant maintains that Avaya has illegally attempted to prevent purchasers of Avaya equipment from choosing anyone other than Avaya or its "authorized" BusinessPartners to perform post-warranty maintenance. The Court's ruling allows Continuant to move forward with proving its claims that Avaya has violated the Sherman Act by monopolizing the market for post-warranty maintenance of Avaya telephone systems and conspiring with its BusinessPartners to harm competition in that market. The case is Avaya Inc. v. Telecom Labs Inc., case number 06-cv-02490, in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Visit www.continuant.com or www.avaya.com.
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Open source

snom joins Fonality open source telephony ecosystem
snom technology announced that it has joined the FACE program (Fonality Authorized Certified Ecosystem), a program that certifies third party products for its trixbox  CE, trixbox Pro and PBXtra  so customers and resellers can deploy them with complete confidence. With this announcement snom's 3xx series VoIP phones and m3 IP Dect phone become certified as field-ready products for Fonality's fully open and free trixbox CE software platform. Fonality FACE partners provide the highest quality technology and the deepest integration with the trixbox CE platform. Fonality provides support discounts and incentives to resellers and IT consultants who choose FACE-certified hardware products when building Fonality phone systems for their customers.
Visit www.snom.com, www.fonality.com or www.trixbox.com/partners.

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Power

Eaton UPS advances green initiatives
Diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton Corporation announced the introduction of its new addition to the Powerware series, the Eaton 9130 UPS, which will help Information Technology managers carry out green initiatives in their IT environments. The new 700 to 3000 VA UPS models feature a high-efficiency design that saves energy without sacrificing reliability.  The Eaton 9130 features a 0.9 output power factor for delivering full power to equipment that may have a wide range of leading and lagging power factors. Ideal for servers, networking equipment, telecommunications, VoIP and security systems, the Eaton 9130 delivers clean, continuous power to protect critical equipment from power anomalies in utility power. In addition, the Eaton 9130 can operate in a high-efficiency mode of greater than 95 percent when power conditions are within acceptable limits.
Visit www.powerware.com.
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Quintum

Quintum and Brekeke announce joint IP-PBX solution
Quintum Technologies announced that it has completed interoperability testing of its Tenor VoIP MultiPath switches and gateways with Brekeke Software, Inc.'s IP-PBX, which is a highly scalable business IP phone system. An award-winning product, Brekeke PBX is an SIP-based IP-PBX system that provides reliable and scalable IP communications for enterprises and service providers. The Brekeke PBX provides all essential IP-PBX features that enterprise users require, including voicemail to e-mail, "confirm call" and number portability. The newly introduced edition of Brekeke PBX, Multi-Tenant Edition, provides a simple and flexible yet easy to deploy solution for service providers that want to offer hosted IP-PBX services. Brekeke PBX supports both Windows and Linux platforms.
Visit www.quintum.com or www.brekeke.com

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Resellers

ONECALL TELECOM joins AltiGen’s growing reseller network
AltiGen Communications, Inc. announced ONECALL TELECOM, LLC is offering AltiGen’s products to its customers. ONECALL chose to offer AltiGen’s products based on Max Communications Server’s rich feature set and scalability. “AltiGen will allow us to sell into businesses that are looking for a complete Unified Communications solution,” said Bob Chance, President of ONECALL TELECOM.  “When IT Managers are looking for a new phone system, often with exacting requirements, AltiGen’s robust feature set with native integration to Microsoft’s Exchange Server 2007 gives ONECALL a critical advantage to win the deal by instilling high product confidence with the IT Manager and often exceeding the organization’s communications requirements.”  Chance continued, “We are most excited about AltiGen’s lead generation program. The fact that AltiGen invests marketing dollars on behalf of their reseller channel to assist them in driving incremental business will help us accelerate our growth and mutual success.”
Visit www.altigen.com or www.onecalltelecom.com.
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