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NATD in the news
Book review
Cisco
Cloud
Conferences
Frontiers
Market
Security
Voice

NATD in the news

NACR named Avaya U.S. Enterprise Partner of the Year for 2011 
NACR announced it has been recognized as the 2011 Avaya U.S. Enterprise Partner of the Year. The award was presented at Avaya’s 2012 U.S. Sales & Partner Conference in Las Vegas, NV.  NACR is one of the largest Avaya channel partners worldwide and the leading independent integrator of best-in-class communications, collaboration and customer interaction solutions. NACR works closely with Avaya and other leading technology innovators to integrate the latest hardware, software and applications into end-to-end multivendor solutions. NACR has been honored and recognized as Avaya’s top Business Partner of the Year eight times. For 2011, the company won the award based on its business expansion in both people and technical capabilities and its strong sales performance in all categories over the previous year.
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Book review

Network Security Auditing
Reviewed by Jeff Owen, Independent IT Consultant

The need for securing IT networks is nothing new.  This book explains in detail how you can constantly improve your security via auditing.  An audit, done correctly, is nothing more than a learning opportunity.  This is a well laid out book that will be useful to not only learn about various issues and implementation strategies for conducting a network security audit, but also as an ongoing reference.

Written as a primer, this book assumes the reader is new to network auditing, in general, and Cisco networks, in particular.  The author thoroughly covers the 5 pillars of security auditing, namely: assessment, prevention, detection, reaction and recovery.  Useful for anyone wanting to build and maintain a program to measure the security effectiveness of their networks (especially Cisco networks), the book contains several checklists, an introduction to various IT governance frameworks (e.g. COBIT, ITIL, and ISO 17799/27001) and references to several federal and state statutes governing IT security.

Jeff Owen is an independent consultant with 30+ years experience in telecommunications/networking and IT. Contact him at [email protected].

Author: Chris Jackson
Paperback: 528 pages
Publisher: Cisco Press (June 2010)
ISBN – 10: 1-58705-352-7
ISBN – 13: 978-1-58705-352-8
List Price: $70.00; Amazon: $51.49
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Cisco

Cisco unveils new ways to collaborate in the post-PC era
At the Cisco Collaboration Summit 2011 event, Cisco unveiled new solutions to help people collaborate more effectively in the “post-PC” era. The advancements Cisco introduced — from Cisco WebEx to Cisco Jabber — can change how people meet utilizing expanded cloud-based services, and can give workers an easy way to collaborate directly from Web applications they use every day, driving new levels of business productivity and competitiveness. Cisco unveiled the next generation of Cisco WebEx. Additionally, Cisco is extending cloud conferencing to more people with a new free basic edition of WebEx designed for three people or less. Cisco is also transforming the workspace by dramatically changing how people collaborate from Web applications they use every day, like SAP Streamwork, Cisco Quad or Google Apps. Cisco is making collaboration much easier by advancing Cisco Jabber with a freely downloadable Web browser plug-in that will help extend collaboration to tens of millions of people that use Web browsers on Windows- or Mac-based OS devices.
Visit www.cisco.com.
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Cloud

Alcatel-Lucent connects communications networks and cloud
Alcatel-Lucent is introducing a new solution called CloudBand, which brings together the computing power and flexibility of the cloud with the high performance, reliability and security of communications networks. CloudBand is the foundation for a new class of ‘carrier cloud’ services that will enable communications service providers to bring the benefits of the cloud to their own networks and business operations and put them in an ideal position to offer a new range of high-performance cloud services to enterprises and consumers. CloudBand is comprised of two distinct elements: the CloudBand Management System – which delivers orchestration and optimization of services between the communications network and the cloud; and the CloudBand Node, which provides the computing, storage and networking hardware and associated software to host a wide range of cloud services. CloudBand will be available for deployment in the first half of 2012.
Visit www.alcatel-lucent.com.
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Conferences

The SIP Forum announces dates for the second annual SIP Network Operators Conference
The SIP Forum announced that it will host the second annual SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC US 2012), a two day educational conference focusing on the challenges and opportunities related to the deployment of SIP-based carrier services globally. SIPNOC US 2012 will be held in Herndon, VA on June 25-27, 2012 and will build on the success of the inaugural event last spring, which attracted leading technical and operations personnel from the global carrier community and earned high praise from attendees for its educational, non-commercial and technical content that focused on the real-world challenges operators face when deploying SIP services in global IP networks. The conference, which is designed specifically for SIP network operations personnel and engineering staff, will feature well-known industry speakers and a number of highly technical educational and instructional panels and sessions.
Visit www.sipnoc.org.
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Frontiers

Mac- and iPhone-based PBX phone systems offer small businesses new, lower-cost options
Companies that offer private branch exchange systems have identified Apple products like the Mac and iPhone as a growing frontier in the market. They are targeting new- and small-business owners who increasingly use those devices at home and see the new systems as easy-to-use, low-cost ways of getting a company running. “We think Apple products have made phenomenal inroads in that particular market,” said Mike Storella, chief operating officer of snom, whose snom One PBX software can also be run on a Mac mini. “There’s a natural tendency in those small companies, when they’re building infrastructure, they go with what they know.” Products like FacetPhone and snom One use the Mac as the platform, often—but not always—letting business users save additional money by tying into VoIP services like Vonage instead of traditional telephone landline companies. Other products, like AltiGen’s iFusion phone system, put the iPhone at the center of a more extensive business communication system.
Much more in the full article here.



FXI demonstrates any screen connected computing
FXI Technologies demonstrated the world’s first any screen, connected computing USB device. Codenamed “Cotton Candy”, this sweet little device serves as a technology bridge between any display, the Cloud, and any input peripheral. The vision for Cotton Candy is to allow users a single, secure point of access to all personal Cloud services and apps through their favorite operating system, while delivering a consistent experience on any screen. The device will serve as a companion to smartphones, tablets, notebook PCs and Macs, as well as add smart capabilities to existing displays, TVs, set top boxes and game consoles. “Today’s device functionality is often limited by the size of the screen it inhabits,” said Borgar Ljosland, founder and CEO of FXI Technologies. “We’ve turned things upside down, eliminating the screen and delivering the power of a PC and the web to any screen.”
Visit www.fxitech.com.
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Market

Carrier IP voice market achieved $1.8 billion in third quarter revenues
Dell’Oro Group announced that overall Carrier IP Telephony market revenues experienced a 10% annual decline in the third quarter of 2011 as quarter-over-quarter growth in the Voice Application Server (VAS) segment failed to offset declines in the Media Gateway, Softswitch and Session Border Controller (SBC) segments. Two areas of strengths in the market were evident: Voice over Long Term Evolution (VoLTE) infrastructure spending and, similar to last quarter, business-focused VAS services. “Based on recent interviews with vendors and service providers, we found that 3Q11 was the first quarter of significant revenue recognition for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) equipment for LTE voice services,” said Chris DePuy, Analyst at Dell’Oro Group. “It is exciting to see early signs that VoLTE infrastructure spending is underway. While the services will initially focus on voice, we expect service providers to offer new messaging and entertainment offerings to customers that will compete with Over The Top services such as Skype. We will be watching for handset availability over the next year to confirm that VoLTE services are rolling out as planned,” continued DePuy.
Visit www.delloro.com.
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Security

Norman releases next generation endpoint protection system
Norman announced the availability of Norman Endpoint Protection 9, an advanced IT security defense system that protects PCs and servers against sophisticated malware threats. Norman Endpoint Protection delivers cost effective, easy-to-administer threat protection for small and medium businesses and scales, using a new multilevel architecture, to serve even the largest, most complex enterprise networks. Security policies may be set and managed centrally across multiple sites ensuring rapid security updates and effective local control. Norman Endpoint Protection installs in minutes and its intuitive user interface displays all clients and servers in a network. All computers are updated with the latest protection and stay secure while reporting status to the powerful Endpoint Manager console application. The Endpoint Manager is easy to use through logical, drag-and-drop actions for group handling and security policy management.
Visit www.norman.com/products.
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Voice

Integrated Research releases Prognosis Path Insight and stops the voice quality blame game
Integrated Research (IR), developer of market-leading Prognosis performance and availability management solutions for Unified Communications (UC), announced the launch of Prognosis Path Insight. Prognosis Path Insight pinpoints the network causes of voice quality problems by automatically isolating degraded calls and their paths through the network.  The real-time visualization of the end-to-end voice paths across the data network provides a common frame of reference for voice and network teams to agree on network performance and its impact on voice quality once and for all. The powerful correlation between network performance and voice quality helps optimize IT operations and resources, and avoid expensive outages. This in turn improves user perception and satisfaction and ensures businesses deliver value to their users and customers.
Visit www.ir.com/pathinsight.
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