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Member in the news
Avaya
Best practices
Book review
Cabling
In the news
Market
Nortel
Training
VoIP

Member in the news

Veramark presentation helps companies evaluate their requirements for business intelligence
Tom McAlees, Veramark Technologies Vice President of engineering and operations, presented "A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Business Intelligence Technology for Telecom Expense Management" at the 2009 annual conference of the International Alliance of Avaya Users (InAAU). McAlees' presentation reviewed the value of telecom expense management for organizations in today's economy and the impact it can have on reducing expenses and improving the bottom line. He discussed the importance of call accounting and key components of telecom expense management and how they work together to optimize telecom usage and maximize savings. Finally, he explained the role of business intelligence (BI) in telecom expense management and why it is so important. "There's a lot of hype about BI today, to select the right business intelligence solution organizations must fully understand their requirements, the software capabilities, and the support they can expect from their telecom expense management vendor. My presentation proposes a Business Intelligence Maturity Model that will help organizations choose a solution that delivers maximum value for users at all levels of the enterprise."
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Avaya

Empire Technologies’ new business strategy fuels national expansion
Empire Technologies LLC., an Avaya Platinum BusinessPartner, recently expanded its footprint to better serve a more national customer base, adding sales offices in eleven states from North Carolina to California. The expansion is the result of a successful new sales strategy that focuses efforts on helping customers to drive cost efficiencies from their communications networks. Empire’s new strategy entails several new customer initiatives, including carrier and cellular optimization services, telecom expense auditing, an “Empire goes green” initiative and special financing options. Bolstering these new initiatives is a new service certification from Avaya, who has certified Empire Technologies as an Avaya Service Delivery Specialist (SDS) for implementation and support. The SDS designation means that Empire Technologies has demonstrated proficiency in the skills and qualifications needed for expert delivery of the full range of implementation and support services to Avaya customers. Currently, there are less than ten partners nationwide that are certified as both Implementation and Support Specialists.
Visit www.getempire.com
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Best practices

SSPA awards companies for best practices
The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) announced that Avaya, Cisco CBG, Cisco Systems, Digital Hands, EMC, Netezza, Riverbed Technology, Symantec and Xerox were named winners of the 2009 SSPA STAR Awards for Best Practices. The STAR Awards recognize companies that have developed, implemented and benchmarked the most innovative and efficient processes for service and support delivery. Companies must pass a rigorous review by a select industry committee, providing specific baseline data, a detailed description of the process, performance metrics, returns and benefits, and other information about what makes their best practice unique. The winners were honored at the Technology Services World (TSW) conference in Silicon Valley. Produced by the SSPA, the Association for Services Management International (AFSMI) and the Technology Professional Services Association (TPSA), Technology Services World 2009 Silicon Valley is the largest gathering of service executives and management in the industry.
Visit www.thesspa.com or www.technologyservicesworld.com.

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Book review

MPLS-Enabled Applications: Emerging Developments and New Technologies,
Second Edition

This book appears to contain everything you could possibly want to know about Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) operations, signaling, and management--excepting perhaps the individual bits in packet and label headers. There is so much here that it's a good place for the guru wannabe to start a major study of MPLS. The book's thoroughness is aimed at the reader who works for a hardware vendor, carrier, or IP service provider because—at least so far—MPLS technology remains largely within the networks of service providers.

If a large enterprise chose to build a private MPLS network, this book offers detailed guidance. There is a complete explanation of virtual routing and forwarding tables, configuration settings for routing protocols like BGP, and how IP addresses can be assigned. Some knowledge of routing protocols (BGP and IGPs) is assumed.

Authors:  Ina Minei and Julian Lucek
Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher:  John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (2008)
ISBN:  978-0-470-98644-8
List Price: $80.00
Digital Guru Price: $72.00

Reviewed by William Flanagan, president of Flanagan Consulting in Northern Virginia, where he works in architecture, design and procurement documentation for converged networks. He may be reached at [email protected].
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Cabling

Installer of the Year announced at BICSI conference
The second annual Cabling Skills Challenge came to an end during the BICSI Exhibition and Reception. In total 24 BICSI-certified competitors participated in the challenge.  After completing several events—including structured cabling; copper cable terminations; fiber termination; cable assembly; cable troubleshooting, technical support; professionalism; and a written competency exam—winners of each level were named during an award ceremony. The overall winner with the highest score of the competition was rightfully named BICSI Installer of the Year. Jessie Spearman, ITS Technician of Vision Technologies, walked away with the honor and $5,000 for the second year in a row. BICSI is a professional association supporting the information transport systems (ITS) industry.
Visit www.bicsi.org.

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In the news

Dialogic expands product portfolio at two of its North American distributors
Dialogic Corporation announced the expansion and diversification of its product portfolio at two of its North American distributors, Ingram Micro Inc. and Tech Data Product Management, Inc.  Going forward, the two distributors will offer the following Dialogic products: all standard Dialogic Diva products; Dialogic Eiconcard products; Dialogic TDM products; Dialogic Enterprise Media Gateway products; Dialogic Brooktrout products; Dialogic Pro Services; and Dialogic Diva IP software and IP Boards.  "Our expanded distribution alliance with Ingram Micro and Tech Data will play a significant role in strengthening Dialogic’s presence in the North American channel," said Rob Martinez, Dialogic’s Vice President of Sales, Americas.  “Our value-added resellers will have access to a greater selection of Dialogic products as well as more sourcing options.”
Visit www.dialogic.com.
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Market

Infonetics Research predicts strong SIP trunking, VoIP services growth
Communications market research firm Infonetics Research recently released the first of its biannual VoIP and UC Services and Subscribers reports which now tracks SIP trunking, IP integrated access and hosted UC in addition to residential VoIP, VoIP VPN/IP access, IP Centrex and managed IP PBX.  According to the report, demand for residential and business VoIP services continues to grow through the economic downturn because of the cost savings they provide. As a result, in 2008 the VoIP services market had healthy growth of 33% to $30.8 billion. For the first 3 months of 2009, service providers experienced an average of 40% to 50% year-over-year growth for IP Centrex, indicating the demand for outsourcing and managed solutions remains healthy. Infonetics expects hosted UC services to take off, with worldwide revenue doubling between 2009 and 2013, and forecasts SIP trunking service revenue to hit an 89% compound annual growth rate from 2008 to 2013.
Visit www.infonetics.com.
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Nortel

Nortel sells land to Calgary; sales fall 37% in first quarter
Nortel Networks Corp. agreed to sell buildings and land in Calgary to the city government for $97-million as the company sheds assets and restructures. The properties, known as the Westwinds Facility, include a building and several acres of developable land. Nortel has said it will fire at least 5,000 workers this year, about 15% of its staff, and is considering selling some businesses to reorganize into a smaller company. Sales plunged 37% to US$1.73-billion and losses more than tripled to US$507-million, or US$1.02 a share, in the first quarter ended in March compared with a loss of US$138-million a year earlier. The company has been hammered by the global recession and by customers fleeing in the wake of the decision to file for bankruptcy protection in January. Despite the savings of millions of dollars by not paying suppliers, debt holders, dismissed employees and some pension payments, Nortel losses soared. However, the company said that cash reserves of US$2.48-billion were higher than the US$2.4-billion a year earlier. Much of the cash is not easily accessible because it is tied up in operations around the world.
Visit www.nortelnetworks.com.
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Training

OCS Forum announces new tutorials
OCS Forum announced new Top-10 Best Practices tutorials in its SIP and Microsoft OCS-Office Communications Server Release 2 (OCSR2) classroom and webseminar training.  OCS Forum provides classroom and webseminar training as well as a non-production environment for those IT departments without additional equipment, budget or time.  This allows planners and users to test ideas, dial in and dial back out, IM file transfers, remote desktop sharing, video conferencing, run scenarios, break linkages and learning about new telephony features and network access.  OCS Forum is also designed for both the system integrator/consultant who wants to learn about OCSR2 without having to build their own system as well as the enterprise customer who doesn’t have the resources or time to develop one.  OCS Forum Labs are designed to be "hands-on" or "over-the-shoulder" with experts available for Q&A and classes for feature-specific review.
Visit www.ocsforum.com.
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VoIP

Alteva debunks hosted PBX myths with Edgewater Networks solution
Alteva announced that the Edgewater Networks solution is the key to dispelling the hosted PBX perceptions that are still prevalent in the VoIP market.  Alteva’s hosted VoIP solution includes the EdgeMarc and EdgeView platforms that, when combined, ensure that if there is a fiber cut or WAN outage, the phones remain operational either over the PSTN, physically diverse data connection or re-routed locally. With the EdgeMarc, Alteva provides its customers with a truly diverse network redundant path by offering WAN Link Redundancy (WLR). This allows the customer to set up two WAN links through two different service providers and in the case where the primary WAN goes down, the EdgeMarc will automatically failover to the backup data connection such as Cable, DSL or Fast Ethernet Connection. The Edgewater solution consists of the EdgeMarc Network Services Gateways and EdgeView VoIP Support System products. The EdgeMarcs are being used at Alteva’s customer premises as the demarcation point to ensure Quality of Service (QoS), survivability and WLR. The EdgeView VoIP Support system is being used for configuration, troubleshooting and VoIP performance reporting.
Visit www.altevatel.com or www.edgewaternetworks.com.
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