Upcoming Meeting Notice


SAVE THE DATE:

MINNEAPOLIS REGIONAL MEETING AND RECEPTION
SEPTEMBER 23, 2010
Le Meridien Chambers Minneapolis Hotel, Rooftop Lounge – Minneapolis, MN

TAMPA REGIONAL MEETING AND RECEPTION
OCTOBER 21, 2010
Maggiano’s Little Italy - Tampa, FL

(Click here for more information.)

Avaya
BICSI
Cloud
Contact center
Fax
Mitel
Phones
Solutions
VoIP

Avaya

Aura Alliance eyes Avaya dominance
A global network of top Avaya partners is looking to storm the market after teaming up to capitalize on the vendor’s move away from direct sales. The Aura Alliance came into being last year with London VAR G3 Telecommunications one of the driving forces behind its formation. It has recruited members in Europe, Asia and the US. Standardized service-level agreements and other rules of engagement have recently been agreed. G3 managing director Tony Parish said the Alliance is open to fellow Platinum partners, as well as those holding Gold status. He added that increasing coverage of the US and branching into South America and Eastern Europe are top priorities. Avaya began its drive to migrate the majority of its direct sales to the channel two years ago, offering partners the opportunity to snap up some hefty contracts. Parish claimed the Alliance was closing in on its first major deal.
Visit www.avaya.com.


Catalyst Telecom authorized to deliver certification training for Avaya Enterprise Communications
Catalyst Telecom has become authorized to deliver certification training for the Avaya enterprise communications portfolio to its reseller partners. The classes cover design, installation, implementation and administration and enable resellers to acquire the certification necessary to become authorized to offer Avaya unified communications, contact center and IP telephony solutions to their end-user customers. Catalyst Telecom will provide its training curriculum at its Atlanta, GA training center. These interactive classes are taught by industry-leading instructors with more than 27 years of experience in training on Avaya’s enterprise communications solutions. The following classes will be offered to Avaya resellers, with additional classes to be announced soon: Avaya Aura Design to Win; Avaya Aura Communication Manager Basic Administration; Media Servers and Media Gateways Implementation Workshop; and IP Telephony Advanced Implementation.
Visit www.catalysttelecom.com/training.
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BICSI

BICSI European Conference highlights new trends and data center standard
BICSI’s 2010 European Conference & Exhibition brought together over 250 industry professionals and exhibitors for two days of presentations, workshops, debates, social events and networking. The conference marked the launch of the new Data Center Standard—BICSI 002-2010, Data Center Design and Implementation Best Practices, a comprehensive guide to all the requirements and regulations for data center designers, owners and operators. Providing a holistic approach to data center design, this document will help the roll out of more efficient data centers complying with increasingly challenging regulations. In addition, two after-hours debates allowed a more in-depth focus on key industry trends. The first looked at “Optical Fiber for 40G/100G in the Data Center: Singlemode or Multimode?” The second discussed “10 Gigabits per Second”and such questions as which accuracy measurement it would be essential to assume when testing links and whether testing with patch cords gives reliable and accurate results.
Visit www.bicsi.org/european.
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Cloud

Xorcom deploys MegaPath's Duet Hosted service throughout multiple offices nationwide
MegaPath Inc. announced that Xorcom, a privately-held IP-PBX manufacturer, has implemented MegaPath’s Duet Hosted service. This solution provides Xorcom with a reliable, cost-effective voice and data solution for the company’s in-house IP phones, as well as remote and home office locations. While Xorcom’s previous service provider only delivered the service and routing, MegaPath’s fully-hosted service also provides broadband access and a MPLS network for optimized quality. Unlike other hosted VoIP providers, MegaPath's Duet Hosted offers businesses access to the company's private MPLS VPN network for the highest voice quality and stability. By routing voice and data traffic over a dedicated line, MegaPath ensures cloud-based Quality of Service (QoS) prioritization and built-in security. In addition, Duet Hosted includes a choice of either T1 or SDSL broadband access, a Web-based portal for administrators and users, and an advanced IP telephone feature package with auto attendant, call forwarding options, simultaneous and sequential ring, as well as other options.
Visit www.megapath.com/voice-and-data/duet-hosted.
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Contact center

Primas launches creative solution addressing First Call Resolution issues
The Primas Group, a leading provider of contact center services and products, announced the launch of Evolution FCR software, a new approach for handling repeat callers and retaining customers. First Call Resolution (FCR) is a key measurement of success in the customer contact industry.  Easy to implement, Evolution FCR has five unified steps to process and handle repeat callers.  The solution can even be customized to meet specific contact center needs. Evolution FCR identifies repeat ANI’s and provides a different experience when repeat customers are greeted in the IVR.  It can also eliminate the IVR menus from the repeat caller’s initial experience and transfer them directly to either the agent or the department they selected the last time. The agent is provided with a real-time pop-up window so they can understand the caller’s previous experiences and dynamically apply second call treatment.  After the call is completed an immediate callback to do a quick survey can be initiated. 
Visit www.primas.net.
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Fax

Toshiba brings Fax Features to entry-level unified messaging solution for SMB users
Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Telecommunication Systems Division announced Fax Features for its Strata Messaging low-cost, unified messaging solution for the small to medium business (SMB) market.  With Fax Features, Strata Messaging users can manage their incoming and outgoing faxes in a unified messaging format, which improves productivity while reducing fax costs. Among the new capabilities are:  Fax Mail, allowing a mailbox owner to receive faxes in the voice mailbox and view them via unified messaging, or reroute the fax to a physical fax machine; Fax From Desktop; Incoming Fax Target, allowing faxes to be rerouted from an incoming mailbox to a secondary mailbox; Incoming Fax Direct Inward Dialing, which associates a DID number with the mailbox for inbound fax messages, allowing the fax to be stored in the mailbox; Fax Auto Print; and Fax Log, which creates a web-based report that displays the mailbox owner’s outbound faxes. 
Visit www.telecom.toshiba.com.
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Mitel

Mitel awarded 'Most Innovative Channel Product Award'
Mitel announced that it has been honored with the 'Most Innovative Channel Product Award' at the Comms Business Awards ceremony. Mitel won the award for the introduction of Mitel Virtual Solutions software portfolio. Mitel Virtual Solutions offers the channel an industry-leading proposition, with the ability to run Mitel's real-time applications in a virtual environment leveraging VMware vSphere 4. Mitel Virtual Solutions enable unified communications applications to run in a virtualized data center environment and is designed to help customers achieve capital and operational savings, productivity improvements and resource efficiencies in datacenter management, and risk mitigation for business continuity and disaster recovery plans.
Visit www.mitel.com.
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Phones

snom technology AG announces interoperability with headsets from VXi Corporation
snom technology AG announced that VXi Corporation's corded headset products have passed interoperability tests and are approved for use with all of snom's desktop VoIP phones. snom's interoperability includes the VXi Passport 10V, the Passport 21V and the Tria V noise-canceling headsets, all of which provide HD sound from a computer or a snom desktop phone. VXi's suite of wireless headsets are expected to be tested in the near future. The interoperability of snom phones and VXi headsets gives VXi customers access to snom's broad suite of award-winning VoIP phones, including the touchscreen snom 870 and the recently released snom 821. For snom customers and resellers, the partnership provides another industry-leading product in their arsenal of complementary products.
Visit www.snom.com or www.vxicorp.com.
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Solutions

Amcom Software adds iPhone to list of smartphones its hospital pager replacement application supports
Amcom Software, Inc. announced that Amcom Mobile Connect now offers smartphone messaging for the iPhone. Highly mobile physicians and other staff can use this solution to consolidate the messages they currently receive on Wi-Fi phones, cell phones, voice communication badges and/or traditional pagers with a single smartphone. This simplifies the process of communicating code alerts, patient updates, lab results, consult requests and more in an effort to speed messaging and strengthen the speed of patient care. Amcom Mobile Connect integrates seamlessly with Amcom’s unified communications suite. This includes solutions for contact center automation, online employee directories and on-call schedules, and event notification systems, to name a few. Integration with related communications systems means everything pulls contact and schedule information from a central database, improving administration, accuracy, escalation procedures, and above all—speed. Alternately, a hospital could use a simple, stand-alone Web portal to deploy communications from Amcom Mobile Connect.
Visit www.amcomsoftware.com.
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VoIP

Clarus Systems advances automated testing performance for IP telephony and unified communications
Clarus Systems, Inc. announced enhancements to the automated testing capabilities of its flagship product, ClarusIPC Plus+ (2.6.4). The metamorphosis of ClarusIPC Plus+ has been authenticated by the rapid adoption and deployment by Fortune 100 Enterprise customers in commerce-influencing verticals including financial, healthcare, energy, government and education.  After focusing on expanding management capabilities to include Performance Monitoring, Configuration Management and Business Intelligence, this release emphasizes improvements to Clarus’ Automated Testing engine. ClarusIPC Plus+ leverages new algorithms to boost performance of its test engine.  These improvements allow customers to do more testing faster during new deployments, upgrades or continuous regression testing.  Clarus’ improvements allow the most requested and relevant tests such as Direct Inward Dialing (DID), Call Permissions, Forward to Voice Mail, Conferencing and more to completely validate whether a branch office or headquarters location is ready for business, ensuring availability of communication services to the end user.
Visit www.clarussystems.com.
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