Upcoming Meeting Notice


SAVE THE DATE:

MIDWEST REGIONAL RECEPTION
OCTOBER 14, 2009
Hotel Lumiere - St. Louis, MO


2010 WINTER CONFERENCE AND EXHIBIT SHOW
JANUARY 20 - 22, 2010
Royal Sonesta Hotel - New Orleans, LA

(Click here for more information.)

Upfront
NATD in the news
ACUTA
Cisco
Mitel
Security
Software
Stock market
VoIP

Upfront

Nortel deflects Verizon, Avaya deal moves ahead
Nortel's $900 million deal to sell off its Enterprise business assets to Avaya is moving forward.  U.S Bankruptcy Court judge Kevin Gross issued an order authorizing and approving the sale. Avaya was named the winner of the Nortel Enterprise auction; the Nortel division has been up for sale since July when Avaya entered its first bid. The deal had been facing opposition from Verizon on the grounds that the sale would impact U.S national security interests. Verizon is a Nortel customer and they were concerned that a sell-off would impact the support agreements the two companies currently have. Verizon's opposition to the deal could potentially have delayed or derailed the Avaya Nortel deal, but that is no longer the case. In court documents filed by Nortel in response to Verizon's opposition, Nortel struck out at Verizon's opposition as being one influenced by money. Joel Hackney, Nortel's president of Enterprise Solutions stated during a press conference call that Nortel did not expect Verizon's opposition to hinder the deal. For its part, Verizon is still working toward ensuring that their Nortel equipment is supported under Avaya's ownership.
Visit www.avaya.com or www.nortel.com. ^Back To Top

NATD in the news

XETA Technologies comments on Avaya/Nortel Networks combination
XETA Technologies commented on Avaya’s pending acquisition of the enterprise assets of Nortel Networks. The Company said that the resolution of the auction, and the subsequent court approval, creates clarity around the relevance of Nortel in the enterprise market. “A significant concern for our Nortel customers, and a major reason for delayed purchasing decisions, has been how their investments in the Nortel platform will be supported by the winning bidder. Avaya has clearly articulated its plans to continue to support Nortel products and pledged to provide investment protection for customers, which should alleviate concerns and get customers buying again,” said Greg Forrest, CEO and President of XETA Technologies. As one of the only channel partners with the highest level of certification from both Nortel and Avaya, XETA is uniquely positioned to help with this transition. XETA has made significant investments to build a nationwide sales and service footprint and the highest levels of competencies with these two vendors. XETA is a key channel partner for each of these vendors and has a significant influence on their go-to-market strategies.
Visit www.xeta.com or www.NorteltoAvaya.com



Merrill & Associates continues to grow technical and engineering resources
Merrill & Associates, a Platinum Avaya Partner and solutions provider, announced a key component to their technical team to further increase their efforts around unified communications and applications. With more than 20 years of experience as a Program Manager, Sam Samari joins Merrill after 2 years with Avaya. He has delivered more than 20 large-scale contact center (inbound, outbound, and blended media) and CTI/CRM projects using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), deploying skills-based routing in customer service organizations, for over 40,000 contact center agents. Before joining Avaya, Mr. Samari was a consultant, and previously worked as a Senior Manager at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young where he helped create packaged CRM solutions for CGEY's concept of Touchpoint Integration. He also delivered several sophisticated solutions based on the Siebel CRM, mySAP CRM, and Genesys Labs suite of applications. Before CGEY, he worked as a Director of Contact Center Practice at Cambridge Technology Partners for the West Coast. Mr. Samari also held a variety of positions at Genesys Telecommunications Labs, a CTI middleware developer, and Fujitsu Business Communication Systems, a switch maker.
Visit www.merrillusa.com.
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ACUTA

ACUTA Issues Matrix updated
The ACUTA Issues Matrix is a summary of the key issues being addressed by the ACUTA Legislative and Regulatory Affairs Committee.  It is updated quarterly and includes topics of direct impact on higher education information communications technology. It has been updated for the third quarter of 2009.  ACUTA has made the document easier to navigate and divided it into Open Active Issues, Open Inactive Issues and Archived Inactive topics. The Table of Contents navigation panel makes it simple to jump to topics of interest. The Issues Matrix is available at http://www.acuta.org/Relation/downloadFile.cfm?DocNum=767. ACUTA, the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education, is an international non-profit educational association serving colleges and universities.  ACUTA represents over 1700 individuals at nearly 800 institutions of higher education with members ranging from small schools and community colleges to the 50 largest U.S. institutions representing diverse Carnegie classifications in all 50 states, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  ACUTA also has Corporate Affiliate members, representing all categories of communications technology vendors who serve the college/university market.
Visit www.acuta.org.
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Cisco

Cisco’s smart grid strategy: embrace everything based on IP
Cisco debuted an ecosystem for partners to make sure systems are interoperable with its smart grid network using Internet Protocol. Cisco has signed up tech companies, utilities and service providers into its ecosystem, trying to find partners at all levels of the network. The more partners Cisco has, the easier it will be to sell its network solutions to utilities. While Cisco said there are more companies in the ecosystem than named, the currently announced list is noticeably absent of network competitors like Silver Spring Network, startups (like the kind working with IBM) and even large players like IBM itself.
Visit www.cisco.com.
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Mitel

Mortgage Outreach Services selects Mitel to drive exponential growth
Mitel announced that Mortgage Outreach Services (The MOS Group) has selected a Mitel Unified Communications Solution to lower IT costs, centralize control, improve its business continuity strategy and reduce power consumption while allowing the flexibility needed to foster company growth. Working with Chesapeake Communications, The MOS Group selected the Mitel Communications Suite (MCS) running on a Sun Fire server from Sun Microsystems. This solution combines the Mitel Communications Director with feature-rich Mitel applications such as Mitel NuPoint Unified Messaging, the Mitel Unified IP Client, and the option to enable Mitel Live Business Gateway for integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. The addition of MCS allows The MOS Group to centralize its control center to easily manage applications and call load across multiple locations, while monitoring resources usage to optimize use of technology and lower IT costs. Plus with a fully resilient architecture to ensure business continuity, MCS reduces the number of servers required, simplifies deployment and increases data center convergence to handle current and future user growth.
Visit www.mitel.com.
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Security

Sipera Systems and Westcon Deliver comprehensive VoIP, Unified Communications security
Sipera Systems announced an initiative with Westcon Group, Inc. to provide comprehensive VoIP/UC security solutions customized for education, healthcare, and finance. This new initiative was made possible by the existing distribution partnership that supports Westcon’s network of resellers and integrators developing solutions for target verticals using Sipera’s solutions and appliances. Among other features, the joint solutions enable:  protection against denial of service attacks, eavesdropping, and toll fraud, as well as reconnaissance attacks and spoofing that lead to social engineering, vishing, SWATing, ID theft and similar criminal activity; pandemic planning, business continuity and remote teleworker capabilities; compliance with HIPAA and patient privacy requirements in healthcare; targeted security architectures that meet FERPA privacy requirements in education; and encryption and privacy compliance that satisfy PCI DSS, GLBA and other mandates in financial services.  The Sipera UC-Sec products are comprehensive, real-time UC security and VoIP security solutions that simplify and protect next-generation communications over any network to any device.
Visit www.sipera.com.

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Software

NCH Software adds voicemail to Virtual Windows PBX
NCH Software announced the latest version of Axon Virtual PBX Software. Using VoIP technology, Axon connects to phone lines and extensions allowing users to place calls through their computers. Axon now comes with standard voicemail capabilities built in. This will allow every extension to have its own voicemail box, further simplifying the steps necessary to get a basic phone system up and running. Previously, Axon users would use IVM Answering Attendant to add a voicemail solution to their PBX. With this new release, users can rely solely on Axon to provide all the traditional features of a PBX telephone management system, including call routing, transferring and hold. Axon easily integrates with IVM for an interactive voice response system, and other products in the NCH Software telephony suite, including: VRS, IMS, DialDictate, Quorum. These additional tools are ideal for building customized phone systems that meet the individual needs of any business.
Visit www.nchsoftware.com.
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Stock market

AltiGen receives notification from NASDAQ relating to minimum bid price
AltiGen Communications, Inc. announced that it received notification, dated September 15, 2009, from the NASDAQ Stock Market that for the 30 consecutive business days preceding the date of the notification, the closing bid price of AltiGen's common stock had been below the $1.00 minimum bid price per share required for continued listing on the NASDAQ Capital Market under NASDAQ Listing Rule 5550(a)(2). In accordance with NASDAQ Listing Rule 5810(c)(3)(A), AltiGen will be granted 180 calendar days, or until March 14, 2010, to regain compliance with the minimum bid price requirement by maintaining a closing bid price of $1.00 per share or higher for a minimum of 10 consecutive trading days. If the Company is successful in meeting this requirement, NASDAQ will provide written notification that is has achieved compliance with the rule. If the Company is unsuccessful in meeting the minimum bid requirement during this initial 180-day period, NASDAQ will provide notice to AltiGen that its common stock will be subject to delisting.
Visit www.altigen.com.
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VoIP

Microsoft OCS 2007 Remote Call Control integrates with Toshiba Strata CIX VoIP systems
Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Telecommunication Systems Division announced integration of Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 Remote Call Control (RCC) capabilities with its Toshiba Strata CIX family of VoIP business communication systems.  With the integration, enterprise users of Toshiba’s Strata CIX family of VoIP business communication systems can Click-to-Dial from Microsoft OCS 2007 using a Toshiba Strata telephone device.  It is compatible with Toshiba’s most popular IP and digital telephones as well as Toshiba’s SoftIPT softphone. Users also gain telephony status information for other callers on the Strata CIX system, viewable from their Microsoft OCS Enhanced Presence screen.  It is available through Authorized Toshiba Dealers.
Visit www.telecom.toshiba.com.
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