Upcoming Meeting Notice:

2011 SUMMER RECEPTION
Wed., June 15, 2011 in Chicago
5:30 PM - 10:00 PM at BEYOND THE IVY
We will be ROOFTOP watching Chicago Cubs vs. Milwaukee Brewers while eating, drinking and networking!
BEYOND THE IVY - 1048 W. Waveland Ave., Chicago

(Click here for more information.)

NATD in the news
Avaya
Awards
B2B
Cisco
Cloud
Contact center
Headsets
Voice

NATD in the news

NACR continues to expand full support for former Nortel customers
NACR continues to build its multivendor resource pool in support of Avaya's heritage Nortel customers, adding new certifications, implementation expertise and a team dedicated to meeting the needs of this unique customer base. NACR recently expanded its Nortel implementation resources with the hiring of staff for a core Nortel team including a Tier 3 Implementation SupportEngineer, a Senior Project Manager, a Senior Software Specialist and an Implementation Technician/Engineer. Heritage Nortel customers were already supported by a dedicated maintenance team based out of NACR's high-tech Network Operations Center (NOC) in Eatontown, NJ. Additionally, the company's commitment to supporting Nortel customers includes the NACR Blue Council — a group of dedicated employees with certifications and experience in Nortel sales, technology and marketing. The council, which is chaired by Behnken, meets regularly to discuss Nortel customer needs and challenges, and is available to consult with individual customers to offer specific solutions and support. NACR will also reach out to Nortel customers as a Bronze sponsor of the upcoming International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) Global Conference 2011.
Visit www.nacr.com.



ASCDI/NATD Japan Relief Fund
The Association of Service and Computers Dealers Charity Foundation and the North American Association of Telecommunications Dealers Charity Foundation are raising money to help in relief efforts in Japan.  The ASCDI and NATD have members throughout the world, including Japan.  We are in communication with our Japanese Members and with their help, will choose appropriate recipient(s) for the funds.

The ASCDI and NATD are calling upon our members, the members of the ASCDI and NATD Trading Networks (ATN & NTTN) and all technology resellers worldwide to join us in this effort.

We need to give a special “thanks” to KULJIT PARMAR from Knowledge Computers who has graciously agreed to match the first $5,000.00 in donations dollar for dollar.

We are accepting donations in any amount.  Just CLICK ON THE LINK TO SEND US YOUR DONATION: CLICK HERE TO DONATE TODAY TO THE ASCDI/NATD JAPAN RELIEF FUND

Our thoughts and prayers go out to our friends in Japan.

Thank you,

Joe Marion
ASCDI President
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Avaya

Acme Packet presents at IAUG Global Conference 2011
Acme Packet announced the company will participate in the International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) Global Conference 2011 held in Las Vegas. Acme Packet executives will be addressing attendees at three different sessions and the company will be exhibiting its enterprise session border control solutions. At 6,000 members strong, the International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) combines the previous Avaya and heritage Nortel user groups into one of the world's largest international organizations for communications technology professionals. As the forum for the global Avaya customer community, IAUG provides a voice and resource for Avaya customers everywhere.
Visit www.acmepacket.com and www.iaug.org.
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Awards

Talari Networks wins Best of Interop 2011 - Performance Optimization
Talari Networks, Inc. has won Best of Interop 2011 in the Performance Optimization category. The coveted honor recognizes Talari’s role in optimizing network performance while significantly reducing connectivity costs. Best of Interop winner Talari’s Mercury T750 is the new mid-range platform of Talari’s two-ended WAN Virtualization solution, providing business-class (99.99 percent or greater) reliability and predictable performance by using inexpensive public WAN links. As a result, enterprise WAN customers gain 30 to 100 times the bandwidth per dollar, can reduce monthly WAN service costs by 40 percent to 90 percent, and have greater reliability and application performance predictability than existing private WANs using single-provider MPLS services. The Best of Interop Judging Committee, comprised of InformationWeek Analytics editors and analysts, reviewed 135 entries and selected nine winning products with the most significant technical impact.
Visit www.talari.com.
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B2B

Sprint continues to emerge as B2B market leader in 1Q 2011
Sprint’s Business Markets Group continued to make a strong contribution to the company’s quarterly performance, finishing the first quarter with demand for business solutions, continued push-to-talk leadership, momentum in the M2M market, and notable third-party endorsements. Sprint continued to win contracts and renew others to provide 4G, global IP, converged and M2M solutions to business customers. Two notable sales were announced in the quarter including VHA, a health-care purchasing network, who agreed to a three-year, $1.2 billion contract extension with Sprint. Sprint announced the availability of HTC EVO View 4G tablet – a 4G device that adapts as an e-reader, media player and portable computer. Sprint also launched the Nexus S 4G – the first pure Google 4G device. The company also announced the availability of the Motorola i576s, a rugged clamshell handset targeting field workers, and the Overdrive Pro 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot by Sierra Wireless, a Wi-Fi enabled device that connects up to eight users to laptops and other devices. Sprint announced plans to expand its gold-standard push-to-talk leadership, unveiling fourth-quarter launch plans for next-generation push-to-talk capabilities powered by Sprint’s broadband CDMA network.
Visit www.sprint.com/business.
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Cisco

Cisco and Living PlanIT announce alliance
Cisco and Living PlanIT announced a strategic alliance and the signing of a definitive framework agreement to develop new business models for city management, through the use of networking technology, to advance sustainable urban living. This collaboration between Cisco and Living PlanIT is based on a shared vision of revitalizing communities and accelerating innovation in urban development. Through this agreement, the companies intend that PlanIT Valley, near Paredes in Northern Portugal, will become Europe’s largest sustainable development, deploying Cisco Smart+Connected Communities solutions. Living PlanIT appointed Cisco as the master planner for information technology and communications design and architecture for PlanIT Valley; and the companies announced that they will explore integrating the Living PlanIT technology platform with Cisco’s networking technology. The two companies moved a step closer to establishing a technology innovation zone and a research and development center in PlanIT Valley in Paredes.
Visit www.cisco.com/go/smartconnectedcommunities and www.living-planit.com.
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Cloud

Juniper Networks unveils Junosphere Classroom
Juniper Networks announced Junosphere Classroom, a new cloud-based service designed to enable educational institutions, partners and customers to efficiently and cost-effectively educate networking students and professionals. Junosphere Classroom is based on Junosphere, a new cloud environment that enables the creation and modeling of virtual networks and elements running the industry-leading Junos operating system. Juniper Networks hosts Junosphere Classroom resources in data centers, designed using Juniper’s networking and security technologies, which are accessible to students via a secure Internet connection. “In Princeton University’s Network Systems Group, whether we are teaching students or researching next-generation network systems, we rely on networking labs to provide practical applications,” said Jennifer Rexford, Princeton University. “I am excited to see Juniper’s Junosphere Classroom product, because it allows research and education with commercial networking technology in an on-demand, virtual environment without the expense and complexity of physical network labs.”
Visit www.juniper.net.
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Contact center

ShoreTel announces Contact Center 7
ShoreTel announced the availability of ShoreTel Contact Center 7, which further strengthens the ease of use and powerful administration capabilities with redesigned Web-based management, enhanced reporting and new diagnostic tools. Every agent can now answer a call while pushing an existing call into their personal queue with a single click. This can be used for routing higher priority calls or previously answered calls. Call centers can apply advanced logic to route calls to the personal agent queue, which can be done through scripting. Supervisors can also monitor all agent queue activity and generate reports that display how often a call had to be re-queued by an agent. Contact Center 7 can now be managed through an intuitive Web-based management interface that makes the administration and management simple. Contact Center 7 also introduces power diagnostic tools for contact center super administrators and support staff, and now supports multiple years of retention of statistical and interaction reports.
Visit www.shoretel.com/solutions/contact_center.
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Headsets

Sennheiser completes multiple interoperability certifications
Sennheiser Communications announced that its OfficeRunner wireless DECT headset has successfully completed interoperability and certification testing by leading networking and communication manufacturers including Cisco, Polycom and Avaya. The OfficeRunner is a wireless office headset designed for busy office professionals who need to keep in touch with customers and colleagues safely and securely. The OfficeRunner successfully completed compatibility testing with Avaya one-X Communicator and Avaya one-X Agent soft clients and Avaya 1600 and 9600 series desktop telephones under the Avaya DevConnect program. The OfficeRunner also successfully completed Interoperability Verification Testing with Cisco IP Phones 7942G, 7945G, 7962G, 7965G and 7975G as well as with the Cisco IP Communicator 7.0.3. Sennheiser Communications is also now a Registered Developer within Cisco’s Unified Communications technology category. Additionally, the OfficeRunner has been formally recognized as being compatible with Polycom’s entire range of SoundPoint IP and Business Media phones.  Polycom also named Sennheiser an ARENA Partner, which allows software application providers, hardware device manufacturers and conferencing solution providers to integrate their products with Polycom’s industry leading unified communication platform to create new applications.
Visit www.headsets.com/support.
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Voice

Nuance Mobile Developer Program signs over 2500 developers in first 90 days
Nuance Communications, Inc. announced that its Nuance Mobile Developer Program has signed over 2500 developers in its first 90 days. In fact, the program has successfully launched dozens of voice-enabled apps globally for iOS and Android – some in just 30 days or less – including AirYell from Avantar, iTranslate from Sonico, and Taskmind from Catalyst. The Nuance Mobile Developer Program provides developers with easy access to the powerful Dragon Mobile SDK – featuring the core Dragon speech recognition capabilities – that allows them to fully voice-enable virtually any app and bring it to market faster than otherwise possible. The Dragon Mobile SDK powers the voice recognition and text-to-speech capabilities of some of the most popular apps on the market, including Siri, Price Check by Amazon, Ask for iPhone, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, SpeechTrans, Aisle411 and others.
Visit www.nuance.com.
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