IT Oct2014 PDF

Gaining an
EDGE
Edgewater Networks Helps

Service Providers Introduce
New Business Services Today
Top of Mind
By Paula Bernier
Group Publisher and Editor-In-Chief,

Rich Tehrani, (rtehrani@tmcnet.com)
EDITORIAL
Group Editorial Director, Erik Linask (elinask@tmcnet.com)
Executive Editor, IP Communications Group,
Paula Bernier (pbernier@tmcnet.com)
TMC LABS
CEO, Rich Tehrani
(rtehrani@tmcnet.com)
ART/DESIGN
Associate Vice President of Creative, Alan Urkawich
Graphic Designer, Mary Beth Weiss
Production Manager, Stephanie Thompson
EXECUTIVE OFFICERS
Nadji Tehrani, Chairman and Founder
Rich Tehrani, CEO
Dave Rodriguez, President
Michael Genaro, EVP of Operations
ADVERTISING SALES
Sales Office Phone: 203-852-6800
VP Business Development
Anthony Graffeo, 203-295-0234 (agraffeo@tmcnet.com)
VP Events
Joe Fabiano (jfabiano@tmcnet.com)
AVP of Client Services
Jaime Hernaez, ext. 217 (jhernaez@tmcnet.com)
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Circulation Director, Steph Thompson, ext. 157
(sthompson@tmcnet.com)
INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine is published monthly

except February and August. Annual digital subscriptions are free
to qualifying U.S., Canada and Foreign subscribers. Annual print
subscriptions are free to U.S. qualifying readers; $69.00 U.S.
non-qualifying, $99.00 Canada, $119.00 foreign qualifying and
non-qualifying. All orders are payable in advance in U.S. Dollars
drawn against a U.S. Bank. Connecticut residents add applicable
sales tax. For more information, contact our Web site at www.
itmag.com or call 203-852-6800.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: INTERNET TELEPHONY, Technology Marketing Corporation, 800 Connecticut
Ave, 1st Floor East, Norwalk, CT. 06854-1628 USA. Canada Post:
Publications Mail Agreement # 40612608, Canada Returns to be
sent to: Pitney Bowes International, PO Box 25542, London, ON N6C
6B2, CANADA
EXHIBIT SALES
Sales Office Phone: 203-852-6800
VP of Events, Joe Fabiano (jfabiano@tmcnet.com)
Companies whose names begin with A-L or #s:
Sr. Global Events Director, Maureen Gambino
(mgambino@tmcnet.com)
Conference Sales Director,

Frank Coppola (fcoppola@tmcnet.com)
About INTERNET TELEPHONY
Internet telephony is revolutionizing telecommunications
through the convergence of voice, video, fax, and data, creating
unprecedented opportunities for resellers, developers, and service
providers alike. INTERNET TELEPHONY focuses on
providing readers with the information necessary to learn about
and purchase the equipment, software, and services necessary to
take advantage of this technology. INTERNET TELEPHONY
readers include resellers, developers, MIS/networking departments, telecom departments, datacom departments, telcos/LECs,
wireless/PCS providers, ISPs, and cable companies.
Subscribe FREE online at www.itmag.com
A Taxing Situation:
Are Inversions, Windstream Tax
Avoidance Efforts the REIT Move?
Theres been some interesting news of late about recent moves by U.S. companies to
avoid paying taxes in this great nation of ours.
Im referring, of course, to the fact that U.S. telco Windstream has decreased its tax
bill significantly by reclassifying the bulk of its copper and fiber optic lines as real
estate and to the fact that in late July the IRS gave this practice its blessing.
Im also talking about the rise of inversion, which
involves U.S. companies purchasing foreign
companies and then moving their businesses (in legal terms, anyway) to the home
countries of the acquired where tax
rates are lower than in the U.S. of A.
The good news here is that businesses never stop innovating and
looking for ways to benefit themselves and their investors.
The not so good news is that this
kind of thing means the U.S. loses
out on those important tax dollars at
a time in which the country is still clawing its way out of the post-recession era.
U.S. telco
Windstream has
decreased its tax
bill significantly by
reclassifying the bulk
of its copper and
fiber optic lines
as real estate.
But the news that businesses continue to find

new ways to avoid the cost of doing business in
the U.S. is really not news at all. The inversion and Windstream efforts (which, reports suggest, other companies are almost certain to join
in on) are just the latest in a long string of moves by select U.S. businesses to take
advantage of the benefits the U.S. has to offer while taking their money elsewhere.
If such moves are legal, many business people would probably agree, these organizations would be remiss not to take steps to save big bucks in an effort to be more
competitive, retain and potentially create jobs, and build value for their stockholders.
Indeed, one article recently referred to the U.S. tax code as an albatross around the
neck of businesses, and noted that the federal government is expected to tighten tax
laws in the near future.
So, certainly, such moves add up for businesses.
Whether these tax avoidance moves are patriotic or good for the country at large,
however, is another question. IT
Table of Contents
October 2014
INTERNET TELEPHONY 1
Publishers Outlook
By Rich Tehrani
The Acer Aspire Switch 10

Changes the Tech Landscape
The Acer Aspire Switch 10 two-in-one
touchscreen tablet/laptop may be the
ultimate device for students and consumers. In short, it offers all the good of a PC,
meaning you can run full Microsoft Office
applications like Word and Excel, and at
the same time it is a touchscreen tablet,
which can be used for media consumption. This device also is cheaper than a
high-end desktop phone, yet could easily
double as a phone.
could pay up to $100 a year for the honor

of using Office since you have to purchase
an Office 365 subscription. Moreover, this
is a recurring annual fee. On the Switch,
Office for Home & Student is included.
It runs Flash, so all the challenges many

other tablets have with this Adobe creation arent a problem. It is fast much
faster than you would expect from a
device that starts at $350. It is infinitely
configurable as a media consumption device as the tablet inserts into a keyboard
both front- and rear-facing and can also
be used in a tent configuration.
This brings us to competition with a laptop.
There are drawbacks. The laptop has on 2

GB of memory, but in tests of opening many
apps with 10 or more browser tabs open,
this didnt prove to be a problem. The tablet
is heavier than the keyboard, which means
the device can tip backwards on occasion.
The $350 price gets you only 32 GB of
storage; $400 gets you 64 GB. But you
can insert a USB drive in the keyboard,
a Micro USB drive in the tablet, and/or a
Micro SD card in to add more memory.
Plus, there are myriad cloud services,
including one Acer provides, that you can
use for extra storage as well.
Battery life is another issue as real-world
testing pegs it in the five- to six-hour
range (the company claims eight).
Moreover, the screen does need to be on
a very bright setting to be easily read,
meaning you may not get away with dimming the screen to extend battery life.
When compared to an iPad or Android
tablet or even a Chromebook, this device
wins in most every case where productivity is needed. The reason is, you get full
Microsoft Office with all the keyboard
shortcuts, which makes you that much
quicker at working. The iPad version of Office is extremely limited, and Google Docs
still arent at the level of polish as what Microsoft delivers. Moreover, on an iPad you
2 INTERNET TELEPHONY
Its worth noting there are far fewer apps

in the Microsoft App store as opposed to
Google or Apple. This is in a large part
offset by the ability to run all websites
those with Flash included.
The Macbook Air is a premium laptop

for education, but if a user is familiar
with Windows, there is a learning curve
required for what many believe is an
easier OS to navigate. Its also expensive
at a starting price of $900. To make up
for the premium, there is tight integration with iOS, which is great for FaceTime
and iMessage users. The downside is no
stylus or touch support on Macs.
Windows 8.1 is not perfect. It is like
having a computer with multiple personalities. Perhaps, though, this is the point.
For many productivity apps you can use it
as a Windows 7 machine, but when you
want to use touch apps, you can access
the app store and take advantage of a
different interface. It isnt that unlike what
many people do when they create documents on a laptop and then take a break
to play Angry Birds on a phablet or tablet.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about
this device is the price. The computer
can come bundled with Office Home &
Student and starts at $350, meaning you
are paying only $210 for a full-powered
touch-enabled 10-inch laptop/tablet/hybrid which runs Flash and Office applications. The weight is also amazingly light
at 2.6 pounds, and the tablet is just 8.9
mm thick. The iPad Air is 7.5 mm thick
and costs $599 for the 32 GB model.
Even if you can afford a $900 MacBook
Air, by the time you factor in software, you
can buy almost three Aspire Switch 10s!
Some might say there is just no justification for spending the extra money for the
MacBook unless you must have the longer
battery life. Ditto for the iPad Air. IT
October 2014
Table of Contents
TMCnet (www.tmcnet.com)
TMCnet EDITORIAL
Group Editorial Director, Erik Linask
Senior Editors, Paula Bernier, Peter Bernstein
Assignment Editor, Stefania Viscusi
Contributing Editorial, Gary Kim, Tara Seals
Ed Silverstein, Oliver VanDervoort
TMCnet PRODUCTION
Webmaster, Robert Hashemian
Associate Vice President of Creative, Alan Urkawich
Senior Designer & Director of TMCnet Communities
and Channels, Maxine Sandler
Senior Web Designer, Director of Strategic
Web Initiatives, Chhityz Thapa
Operations Manager, Tim Goins (tgoins@tmcnet.com)
MARKETING
EVP of Operations, Michael Genaro
Creative Director, Alan Urkawich
FINANCE
VP Finance, Allen Frydrych
Senior Accountant, Betsy Estes
Accounts Coordinator, Charles Hendricks
READER INPUT
INTERNET TELEPHONY encourages readers to contact
us with their questions, comments, and suggestions. Send
e-mail (addresses above), or send ordinary mail. We reserve
the right to edit letters for clarity and brevity. All submissions
will be considered eligible for publication unless otherwise
specified by the author.
INTERNET TELEPHONY is a registered trademark of
Technology Marketing Corporation. Copyright 2014 Technology Marketing Corporation. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or part without permission of the publisher is prohibited.
REPRINTS AND LIST RENTALS

For authorized reprints of articles appearing in
INTERNET TELEPHONY, please contact:
The YGS Group Reprint Division
3650 West Market Street, York, PA 17404
717-505-9701 or 800-501-9571 x105 tmcnet@theYGSgroup.com
integrated publishing solutions
FOR LIST RENTALS

please contact Jill Olsen at jolsen@listincorporated.com or
call 914-765-0700 ext. 105.
A Technology Marketing Publication,

River Park, 800 Connecticut Ave. 1st Fl.
Norwalk, CT 06854-1628 U.S.A.
Phone: 203-852-6800 Fax: 203 295-3773 or 203 295-3717
Contents
Vol. 17 No. 8
COVER STORY
Gaining an Edge:
Edgewater Networks
Helps Service
Providers
Introduce New
Business Services
Today
October 2014
COLUMNS
1
Top of Mind
Publishers Outlook
Ask the SIP Trunk Expert
Disaster Preparedness
Regulation Watch
20
Subscribe FREE
Today!
A Taxing Situation:
Are Inversions, Windstream
Tax Avoidance Efforts the REIT Move?
The Acer Aspire Switch 10

Changes the Tech Landscape
SIP Trunking and UC with Lync:

The Role of the E-SBC
Bank Robbers, Cattle Thieves

and Dangerous Gunmen
Time to Call the Pinkertons
FCC Takes Steps to Modernize

E-Rate Program
10 Hosted VoIP
Hosted PBX: Network Monitoring
Departments
12 Infrastructure Peering
Roundup
Network Infrastructure
Business Case
50 Birch Continues to Grow
48 GENBAND Offers a Taste of KANDY
24 Videoconferencing
40 Keeping IT Relevant
51 Ericsson Acquires Billing Company
The Channel
Unified Communications
44 On Rads Radar: The WebRTC Craze
52 UC Excellence Awards
44 Channel Briefs
52 UC Briefs
Cloud & Data Center
Security
46 The Future of Cloud Services
54 CIO Roundtable Reveals State,

University Leaders Thinking
on Network Security
46 Cloud & Data Center Briefs

47 ABPTech, DrayTek Enable SMBs
to Ensure Access to the Cloud
Ad Index
55 Ad Index
Network Infrastructure Investment

Its a Jungle Out There
14 Rethinking Communications
Is the Internet of Things
Good for Your Business?
16 WebRTC to WebComm
Conferencing vs. Representation,

Individual vs. Organization in
Communications & Collaboration
18 Wireless Wonk
Groundbreaking FCC Action:

Fallow Spectrum is Available for Use
56 Convergence Corner
Enterprise SBCs The Race is On
48
24
4
INTERNET TELEPHONY October 2014
Ask the SIP Trunk Expert

By Steve Johnson
SIP Trunking and UC with Lync:

The Role of the E-SBC
Enterprise session border controllers play an important role in
enabling SIP trunking and all unified communications applications
with Lync. Ingate Systems E-SBC, the SIParator, is fully certified for
use in Lync environments and meets or exceeds both the required
and optional test parameters, making it one of the few E-SBCs that
can support TLS and other security features offered by Microsoft.
SIP traffic. Traditionally E-SBCs were seen as just providing NAT

traversal and firewalling protection the security for SIP-based
voice networks. Todays E-SBCs provide that crucial, businessclass security, and also resolve interoperability issues between
other on-premises equipment such as the Microsoft Lync server,
resulting in a fast, simplified, and robust installation.
The E-SBC serves many roles in a Lync deployment, as it does in

deployments with other IP PBXs. Microsoft Lync has several unique
requirements when deployed for SIP trunking. First is the use of
Transmission Control Protocol Transport. The TCP Transport, as
compared to User Datagram Protocol Transport, provides a more
reliable means of communication between services and can be
effective in unified communications. However, many SIP trunk
service providers deploy SIP trunking only using the UDP Transport
(referred to as a streaming protocol, as data is sent without
confirmation of receipt/delivery, whereas TCP is sent in small
segments and confirmation is sent before the next segment is sent).
Microsoft has a rigorous certification process for E-SBCs. Certified

E-SBCs ensure a seamless and reliable use of Lync applications.
However, not all certified E-SBCs have been qualified to include the
same security options. Some only comply with the basic requirements.
Another Lync requirement is the use of Fully Qualified Domain

Names in many of the SIP addressing fields. Many SIP trunk
service providers deploy SIP trunks using only IP addresses in
the SIP addressing fields.
Only a handful of Lync-certified E-SBCs have been successfully

tested to support optional features such as TLS, SRTP, DNS load
balancing, full failover and full consultative transfer, ensuring
the secure connection between the SIP trunking service and
the Microsoft Lync environment. Ingate E-SBCs include these
optional features, and have also been used by SIP trunking
service providers to offer Microsoft Lync-qualified SIP trunks,
with or without additional security such as TLS and SRTP.
The same Ingate product can also integrate PBXs and other UC
solutions into the Microsoft Lync environment.
E-SBCs can solve these problems. E-SBCs can provide a seamless

format conversion of UDP to TCP, and change IPs to FQDNs,
enabling seamless interoperability between the SIP trunking
service provider and Lync.
As Microsoft Lync gains market share, enterprises (and service

providers) can be confident that with an Ingate SIParator as the
E-SBC, Lync deployments will be quick and result in a robust and
secure SIP trunking and unified communications environment. IT
E-SBCs sit at the edge of the network to provide control over the
Steven Johnson is president of Ingate Systems (www.ingate.com).
Table of Contents
Disaster Preparedness
By Rich Tehrani & Max Schroeder
Bank Robbers, Cattle Thieves and

Dangerous Gunmen Time to Call the Pinkertons
Sheriff White-Hat (alias) of Golden Gulch
learned that a dangerous gang of thieves
was planning to rob his town. The possible
targets were the bank, a gambling emporium, and a gold processor with a vault full
of ingots resulting from a secret new purification technology. Lastly, a cattle ranch
was about to auction $5 million of prized
breeding stock. The sheriff only had himself
and his deputy to protect these five diverse
targets and decided he needed backup.
Was the year 1887, 1910, or 2014?
The correct answer is 2014. This scenario is
fictional, but the threats are real. Banks and
e-gambling sites are constantly threatened
by intrusive attacks, thieves use various
destructive tools to rig auction results, and
even foreign governments are hacking
into private businesses to steal technology. Guns remain a threat as vandals are
using fiber optic cables for target practice to
further imperil business continuity.
The surge of new technologies such as

WebRTC, M2M, dark fiber, SaaS, and
EaaS dramatically improve speed and
convenience but also introduce additional
security risks. Plus, the thieves propensity
to immediately try to break into anything
new makes it increasingly difficult for
the White-Hats to keep pace. Granted,
todays crooks are definitely more
sophisticated than in the Old West, but
even in those simpler times many businesses relied on outside organizations for
protection. Pinkertons National Detective
Agency was founded by Allan Pinkerton in
1850. The name may conjure up mental
images of the Old West, but it continues
as a leader in todays risk management
services market along with a host of very
sophisticated applications providers,
consultants, and resellers.
The key questions you need to ask are: are
we fully protected or, is our IT team a little
unclear on how to secure the considerable

range of emerging technologies? If the
answer to 2 is yes, them the answer to 1
has to be no.
Many IT departments are reluctant to
request outside assistance confusing the
request with an admission of inadequacy
rather than a demonstration of the confidence required to take charge and fully
secure a companys data and communications. Do not make that mistake! A good
starting point is TMCs Online Communities www.tmcnet.com/community to find
the latest information on todays leading
technologies. IT
Max Schroeder vice president emeritus of FaxCore Inc. (www.faxcore.
com) and managing director of the
DPCF. Rich Tehrani is CEO and group
editor-in-chief at TMC, and conference
chairman of ITEXPO.
Regulation Watch
By William B. Wilhelm & Jeffrey R. Strenkowski
FCC Takes Steps to Modernize E-Rate Program

On July 23, 2014, the FCC released an
order modernizing the Schools and Libraries
Program of the Universal Service Fund,
commonly called the E-Rate program.
Primarily, the order begins the process of
de-emphasizing voice and other legacy
services for E-Rate support, and instead
increases support for broadband, Wi-Fi,
and other advanced technologies. The
order establishes a number of connectivity,
speed, and scalability targets for E-Rate
broadband service funding, and sets
funding goals for Wi-Fi services for the
next two years. To increase the number
of applicants that receive funding, the
percentage of support for purchases is
being decreased from 90 to 85 percent.
Based on the funding levels and expected
8
demand, funding will likely be prioritized

based on the poverty of a school district.
If a school is run independently from a
district (for instance, for a charter school)
the schools individual poverty rate will
be used. Funding is also prioritized for
broadband and other outside connectivity
technologies over Wi-Fi and other internal
connectivity technologies.
Effective 2015, the commission will defund certain legacy components like circuit
cards, interfaces, gateways, antennas,
software, storage devices, telephone
components, video components, VoIP
components, and certain data protection services. It will also cut funding for
services like e-mail, text messaging, paging, directory assistance, custom calling
Table of Contents
service, 900/976 blocking, voicemail, and

web hosting. To encourage efficiency with
broadband connections, the fund will
instead provide move support for managed Wi-Fi services if an applicant wishes
to hire an entity to provide and maintain
the Wi-Fi on behalf of the school. Caching
services will also be supported.
The commissions E-Rate eligibility rules
are complex, and we expect that they will
continue to evolve over time as the agency
strives to modernize the program with 21st
century technologies. IT
William B. Wilhelm is a partner and
Jeffrey R. Strenkowski is counsel at the
global law firm of Bingham McCutchen
LLP (www.bingham.com).
Hosted VoIP
By Micah Singer
Hosted PBX: Network Monitoring

In my last article I made some suggestions for you, the service
provider, to assure uptime on your hosted PBX services clearly
one of the most crucial elements for reducing churn of your
enterprise users. If uptime is essential, then putting in place
proper network monitoring systems allows service providers
to both get ahead of emerging technical issues and to communicate with confidence to their customers. With this valuable
information, service providers can create transparency in their
complex networks which, in turn, de-mystifies the technology. My goal below is to highlight the areas of concern and to
suggest monitoring tools that will lead to more robust management of your hosted PBX services.
Enterprise LAN: Many service providers struggle with quality
issues introduced before a call even leaves the corporate LAN
of their business customer. Some service providers that use VoIP
Logics platform maintain that they will not sell to an enterprise
unless they have full visibility (or control) within the customer
LAN its not worth the inevitable headaches. Others take
pains to explain to the prospective customer the value of separate routing and/or separate bandwidth dedicated to voice.
Suggestions: There are two levels of precaution you can take
to help assure that you and your enterprise customers minimize challenges when routing calls across their internal LANs.
First, pre-screen the LAN and put in place a LAN monitoring
a wealth of diagnostic data to quickly identify weaknesses via

both SNMP traps and network ping monitoring. Second, many
E-SBCs have a counterpart system in the core that provides constant monitoring of the call signaling and media path. We make
extensive use of the Edgeview, in particular, to provide monitoring information. The added benefit of telecom-specific devices
is they often combine information about data networking and
about SIP communication (see below).
SIP Monitoring: While the two items above give you full visibility to the data network, which allows you to narrow down
your diagnostics, SIP monitoring tells you in very specific detail
about the conversation between the devices that deliver phone
service. In a single phone call there are dozens of messages
along the ladder of communication from the customers phone
through the devices of the core hosted PBX platform and out to
the terminating or originating carrier. Accessing this communication can reduce diagnosis time significantly.
Suggestions: Many of the NMSs that are used by telephony
carriers have developed SIP monitoring add-ons. This is true of
Opmanager, Nagios, and Solarwinds. We use and provide to our
platform customers the Palladion software (from Oracle Communications) to great effect. It along with comparable tools from
Empirix and others provides ladder diagrams, PCAP reports, device registrations, and historical SIP messaging information so the
days of forcing customers to reproduce
a fault to diagnose are all but gone.
If uptime in your hosted PBX service is king, then

network monitoring is the way to govern your realm.
tool. Fluke Networks Network Time Machine or WildPackets
Virtual Network Analysis both provide transparency to the LAN.
Second, segment voice traffic from data traffic either physically
with different IP bandwidth links or virtually by carving out dedicated voice bandwidth or implementing QoS. Enterprise SBCs
from ADTRAN, Audiocodes, Edgewater Networks, GENBAND,
and Oracle all can provide visibility and prioritization to voice
on the corporate LAN.
Public Internet or Managed WAN: The WAN network connecting the corporate LAN to the core hosted PBX platform is an
ever-changing environment, especially if you rely on the public
Internet as transport. Lost packets and inefficient media paths
can cause jitter, latency, delayed device registrations, and other
events that undermine voice quality. In these cases the issue is
compounded because the blame is often outside of the control
of both the enterprise customers and the service provider.
Suggestions: First, a network monitoring system is a central
part of monitoring the network between the LAN and the core.
Systems like Opmanager, Nagios, and Solarwinds can provide
October 2014
Transparency: Once you have tools that

monitor the IP network and the SIP
communications along the way, you are
in a good position to provide a level of
transparency that will lead to more enterprise customer trust. In particular, larger
enterprises often have enough in-house technical knowledge to
understand the complex information coming from a VoIP network.
Suggestions: It is important to provide a status page. Enterprise
customers want to know what is happening when things are
not working perfectly. There are a number of cloud services to
provide status that are used widely Ducksboard, LogicMonitor, and StatusPage.io to name a few. Transparency is not just
to let your customer know about service-effecting events it
also sends the message about how serious you take network
monitoring. Enterprise customers appreciate the visibility. It is a
competitive advantage to be transparent and accountable.
If uptime in your hosted PBX service is king, then network
monitoring is the way to govern your realm. As you select a
platform and decide which technologies to piece together into
the unique bundle you want to offer to business customers,
make sure you allocate budget to build a network where you
have full visibility. IT
Micah Singer is CEO with VoIP Logic (www.voiplogic.com).
Table of Contents
Infrastructure Peering
By Hunter Newby
Network Infrastructure Investment

Its a Jungle Out There
Amazon.com Inc. has continued to innovate, inspire, and
invest in the future of not only retail commerce, but also the
entire outsourced cloud computing universe. It is not without
risk though.
The companys public market investors have recently learned
that this is a long-term investment as the company just announced that it is forecasting a loss of up to $810
million for the third quarter that ended
in September. As if the shock of that
kind of loss in a single quarter is
not enough, consider the loss
of sales tax revenue being
experienced by the various
counties and states in
the U.S. to Amazon and
other online retail sales
where no sales tax is
generated. Not only
are the states losing
revenue to fund local
services, such as police
departments, but the
primary entity they are
losing that revenue to is
also losing money. That does
not sound like a good recipe, or
is it? To change one must be willing
to completely depart from the past and
discover the future. Doubt and uncertainty
loom in the time of transition.
having a physical presence in those states. Apparently physically being somewhere is a necessity to do business though.
This is a curiosity for many that believe everything is just on the
web or in the cloud these days. The physical world still exists,
and it costs a lot of money to build it. The investment Amazon
is making is huge, but as its Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak
recently said, Amazon has a tremendous amount
of opportunities and its investments were
certainly impacting short-term results.
He added: Were going to continue
to invest on behalf of customers
with the understanding that
long-term has to come.
Amazon has signaled

that the time for new
investment in infrastructure
for online retail sales as well
as outsourced cloud
computing, at the sake
of short-term profits,
has come.
There are many dimensions and facets to this from an investor

perspective, but the key point is that there is a major change
occurring in the way that commerce itself is conducted it is
all moving to a network-based interaction with the consumer.
While Amazon continues to dominate in online retail sales in
a seemingly virtual world, it has begun building large fulfillment centers in various states to compete against foes such as
Walmart. This is a step back in to the brick-and-mortar direction, which seems odd for a .com business, particularly considering it opens up the company to local tax regulation based on
12
Just as an investment
was made in Lewis
and Clark to explore
the West, discover and
develop a new world
without any immediate
return on that initial investment being calculated
other than knowledge
and the sheer benefit of just
taking that first step, the new
retail economy is being created
by Amazon, and it is based on a
similar, long-term view. This flies in the
face of many with the mindset of short-term
investment horizons with high yields, as if the equity
values of hard assets would be suppressed forever, or there
would never again be a need to build any new, physical assets.
Amazon is the canary in the coalmine for that mentality. It has
signaled that the time for new investment in infrastructure for
online retail sales as well as outsourced cloud computing, at the
sake of short-term profits, has come. Thanks Amazon! Hopefully there will be a book available online soon that accurately
chronicles the amazing time we are living in right now. IT
Hunter Newby is CEO of Allied Fiber (www.alliedfiber.com).
Table of Contents
Rethinking Communications
By Jon Arnold
Is the Internet of Things Good for Your Business?

Given that the theme of this column is rethinking communications, it should come as no surprise to see me writing about
things that are seemingly far-removed from the telephony
world we know so well. Of course, thats the point, and if
youve been following me here, youll know that rethinking
telephony is really just the first step forward.
The technology world is evolving so quickly that I can earnestly
say nobody is in charge, and the implications are only superficially understood. It wasnt so long ago that telephony only
meant telephony that world was fully formed, high-functioning and well-understood. On the other hand, familiarity breeds
inertia, and telephony remained static for decades.
is a big push to ramp up automation, which may reduce human

error and lower costs, but could also kill a lot of jobs.
There are many reasons why IoT is a hot topic now, and according
to Cisco, only 1 percent of devices are Internet-connected, so were
a long way off from robots doing everything. However fast this
moves along, IoT is really just the first phase. Cisco has been heavily advocating IoE, which is the big payoff once most or all of your
people and devices are connected this way. It talks about a bigger
picture where people are connected to things, places, processes
and outcomes. In UC parlance, this is akin to CEBP communications-enabled business processes, but on a grander scale.
This may seem a bit far-fetched, and you might be a little bit
concerned about the depersonalization that comes with all this
automation, but you should also be optimistic about the upside.
Even a little dose of IoT could be good for your business, and
there are lots of proof points already.
Like UC, IoT can have a positive impact
Even a little dose of IoT could be good for your business, even if deployed on a modest scale.
VoIP changed all that, but in fact, much more. By putting telephony on a crash course with the Internet, VoIP fundamentally
shifted the balance of power whereby its value is defined not
and there are lots of proof points already. Like UC, IoT can
have a positive impact even if deployed on a modest scale.
by lowering the cost of phone calls, but by integrating voice
with other communications modes. Telephonys orbit has now
been forced out of its self-contained galaxy and aligned with a
much vaster universe that is continuously expanding.
That short-hop analysis quickly takes us to the acronym du jour,
IoT, and its second cousin, IoE. If the Internet of Things and the
Internet of Everything arent yet part of your vernacular, consider yourself now at the vanguard of technology evolution.
In short, IoT refers to the notion that the next level of communications involves connecting people to things and things to
things. The latter has been around for a long time, best known
as M2M machine-to-machine. The IoT version of M2M,
however, is more powerful, as the common thread for all these
forms of connectivity is the Internet.
This means that simple communicating such as relaying a
command to turn a meter on is just the starting point. IoT
takes this many steps further by creating a real-time, two-way
flow of data that ties a simple event to a more complex web of
related processes. Ultimately, this yields more intelligence to improve performance and decision-making. You could argue this
14
A simple example is in your home if

you have a smart meter and a smart
thermostat. Once your home and utility
are connected via the web, there are
many applications available to help manage energy consumption from inside or outside your home. As connectivity expands
to other devices your stove, refrigerator, washer/dryer, etc.
the possibilities are endless.
Many vertical sectors such as health care, manufacturing, field
service, and education have developed similar capabilities, and
theres nothing stopping you from doing the same. The key is to
understand that person-to-person is just one mode of communication, and that IoT creates another layer of value using the
same technologies.
This is still very new territory, and Im just laying out the basics
here. For this to make more sense, you need to understand
why this is happening now and identify the main deployment
considerations. Ill address those in my next column, and from
there you should be ready to engage with vendors to determine
IoTs potential value to your business. IT
Jon Arnold is principal of J Arnold & Associates
(www.jarnoldassociates.com), an independent telecom
analyst and marketing consultancy with a focus on IP
communications, and writes the Analyst 2.0 blog.
Table of Contents
WebRTC to WebComm
By Phil Edholm
Conferencing vs. Representation, Individual vs.

Organization in Communications & Collaboration
As we move forward with new technologies, media types, and
services, the array of communication and collaboration services
that are coming into the market is both wonderful and potentially bewildering. We used to just have a phone line, then we
expanded to mobile, audio conferencing, web conferencing,
are more focused on the incoming customer or contact and less

on the internal, except for optimizing who in the organization is
engaged for the interaction.
If we map these two categories on a graph, the focus of the current market becomes clear. The larger
question that emerges is whether an
organization needs one solution for all
of these categories or optimized solutions for each category that is required.
What becomes clear is that many
companies in todays market are starting in one area, for example starting
with a conferencing service and moving
to having representation. To decide
which is best for your organization, a
clear view of how you plan to manage
the complexity of communications in the new world is critical.
Next month we will talk about understanding your needs and
whether you should pick the best one category and accept the
rest or go for a best-of-breed offer across the categories. IT
The larger question that emerges is

whether an organization needs one solution
for all of these categories or optimized
solutions for each category that is required.
videoconferencing, IM, presence, web apps, WebRTC, and much
more. The new challenge is not getting what you want or need,
it is choosing wisely from the myriad of offers in the market.
A second categorization is whether the client focus of

the offer is individuals or an organization. Some services
are designed for individual use, both conferencing and
representation, while others are focused on enabling the
organization as an entity, typically for what are considered
customer interactions. Individual solution offers enable
services that make sense to individuals in the organization
and their reachability and control, while organization offers
16
Conferencing
TYPE
Representation
An interesting way to segment the market is by using two

categories, first whether the type of offer is purely a conferencing solution or if it enables representation out. Representation
is the concept that the system is enabled to represent you to
people who you are not asking to communicate with you. In the
telephony network, your phone number is a unique representation address that allows anyone with PSTN phone access
to request a connection to you. So, the phone system is
a representation network. Similarly, an e-mail address
is representation into the network world, an account on
LinkedIn is another form of representation, albeit neither
of these are as real-time as the phone. Similarly, Skype
is a representation service, though it is generally limited
to other Skype users unless you have additional services.
A conference, on the other hand, is a meet-me location
where people come if they are invited. A conference is
generally not advertised and requires an active invite from
the owner, so it is not representing you in an open way.
Phil Edholm is the president and founder of PKE Consulting LLC (www.pkeconsulting.com) and works with
INTERNET TELEPHONY parent company, TMC, to stage
the WebRTC Conference & Expo.
End-user focused
services that enable
the user to engage out
to a large set of potential
communications.
Organization-focused
the organization to
receive interactions from
the marketplace
Unified communications
Traditional communications
Contact center
Customer interaction
End-user focused
meetings and
conferencing with
invitations
Organization-focused
the organization to
manage large external
meetings
Audio conferencing
Videoconferencing
Web conferencing
Webcast services
Meeting services
Virtual space meetings
Individual
Table of Contents
CLIENT
Organization
Wireless Wonk
By Barlow Keener
Groundbreaking FCC Action:

Fallow Spectrum Is Available for Use
At long last, the FCC has seen the light of spectrum efficiency
and approved the use of fallow spectrum. On June 2, 2014,
the FCC issued the TV Incentive Auction Report and Order.
One of the highly controversial issues the FCC addressed was
providing regulatory certainty for the ecosystem of database
providers and innovative radio equipment vendors using
unlicensed 600mHz spectrum allocated by the FCC in an earlier
2010 order. The technology employed by this ecosystem is
enabling spectrum efficiencies in other bands like 3.5gHz and
is now authorized to be utilized for licensed but
fallow spectrum.
TV spectrum, in the rural areas. The FCC also took away for
auction some of the 600mHz spectrum.
In a break from the past less-efficient use of spectrum, the FCC
broke new ground, approving the use by the agile broadband
radios of spectrum auctioned to mobile licensees but not yet
turned up and operating. Various proponents of spectrum
efficiencies have contended that where spectrum is licensed
but not used in other words spectrum in geographies
where no cell sites are operating and there are
no bars showing on a mobile device
that the unused spectrum should be
available for use by others pending
operation.
The FCC now has

the tools developed
In the past, such use could
by the TV white spaces
arguably have resulted in
interference if the geographical
ecosystem, in the form of
licensed area was turned up
but the unlicensed users did
a cloud database directing
not move to another spectrum
band.
However, with the ability
agile radios, to open up
for the FCC to instantly deliver
all the poorly used
information to the unlicensed
agile radios through the cloud
fallow spectrum.
databases directing the agile radios
The FCC 2010 order opened up

unused TV spectrum for unlicensed
agile radios first called TV
white spaces devices. The FCC
encouraged innovators to invest
in designing and manufacturing
the new agile spectrum sharing
radios with extremely strict outof-band limitations to prevent
interference to TV stations in
adjacent channels. Because the
TV stations assigned channels
vary by micro-geography, meaning
from town to town, a cloud-based
spectrum access system database was
required to be constantly connected to the
radios to ensure that when the radios were used in
the micro-geography, the channel selected by the agile radio
was not one assigned to a TV channel. Software database
cloud providers like iConectiv (Ericsson), Google, Spectrum
Bridge, and Microsoft followed the FCCs guidance and built
cloud-based spectrum access system databases that are used
to direct the agile broadband radios to unused TV spectrum.
In 2012, Congress ordered the FCC to auction some of the

unused 600mHz TV spectrum the FCC had just assigned in
2010 to the new unlicensed cloud-directed ecosystem. The FCC
both took and gave in the June 2014 order. For example, the
FCC provided regulatory certainty to the unlicensed ecosystem,
by assigning several nationwide bands for unlicensed use.
Before the order, the largest cities like New York City and
Washington, D.C., were so heavily populated by TV stations
that there was little bandwidth available. Now, after the
auction, the agile radios will have spectrum nationwide and
will continue to have significant swaths of unused, former
18
to automatically and instantly move off

newly used mobile, there is no longer any
likelihood of interference.
Since the early 1980s, the FCC has either licensed free of
charge or auctioned large swaths of spectrum across the
country. Some of the spectrum has been built out, but as we
all know when driving through some rural areas like Western
Massachusetts, some of the spectrum lies fallow. The FCC now
has the tools developed by the TV white spaces ecosystem, in
the form of a cloud database directing agile radios, to open
up all the poorly used fallow spectrum. The cloud-database
technology is designed to even operate on very small microgeographies down to 50 meters to accommodate wireless
microphones. Such capability would potentially allow the use
of fallow spectrum in very small geographies such as between
two towers where mobile device bars drop to zero and the
call is lost. IT
Barlow Keener is the principal with Keener Law Group
(www.keenerlawgroup.com) out of Boston.
Table of Contents
Cover Story
By Paula Bernier
Gaining an
EDGE
Edgewater Networks Helps Service Providers
Table of Contents
ver since the telecom and web worlds

began their collision course, the broadband service providers that began life
as cablecos and telcos have worked to
adjust from their slower, more deliberate,
way of doing things to Internet time
that is, move at a much faster rate.
Software-defined networking is an important move in that direction, as is network functions virtualization. Indeed, most major
service providers have now embraced NFV and SDN strategies in
an effort to lower their costs and, more importantly, better position them to expedite the delivery of new features and services.
lining configuration, automating routine tasks, and simplifying

the diagnosis and resolution of networking issues.
Between 6 million and 7 million Edgewater Networks E-SBC
sessions are currently in use by some of the largest service providers, including one of the two largest U.S. carriers and three
of the top five U.S. cable operators. And more than 250,000 of
the companys E-SBC units are currently deployed.
Hitting the Marc
One tenet of the Edgewater Networks strategy involves the
expansion of its existing product lines.
Just last month, in fact, Edgewater Networks introduced a new
member to its EdgeMarc portfolio: the EdgeMarc 4700. Edgewater Networks
refers to the
EdgeMarc 4700
as its 100-100100 box, because it has 100mbps connectivity on the upstream
and downstream links, and it can support 100 concurrent calls,
explains John Macario, vice president of marketing.
Introduce New Business Services Today

However, most of the early communications service provider
efforts on the SDN front revolve around the network core, and
will likely involve lengthy timelines for full implementation. In
the meantime, service providers which already have seen
over-the-top players capture 30 percent of voice traffic in seven
years need solutions that support them on their paths to
network transformation while allowing them to quickly and efficiently introduce new revenue-generating services today.
Edgewater Networks is working to provide solutions to enable
them to do just that, says CEO Dave Norman.
That strategy involves expanding Edgewater Networks existing
product lines; virtualizing its appliances; and delivering edge
network platforms on which service providers can layer on new
services and functionality over time, and providing a simple and
scalable way to manage them.
Gaining an Edge
The company brings to the table more than 10 years of experience
in providing managed services platforms for the delivery of real-time
communications, including IP-based voice, video, and data services.
The Edgewater Networks portfolio includes EdgeMarc Enterprise Session Border Controllers, which simplify the deployment
of converged voice and data services while improving call quality, security, and the overall end user experience; EdgeProtect
Enterprise Session Border Controllers, which enable enterprises
to securely and simply extend the delivery of voice, video and
unified communications applications to remote employees; and
the EdgeView VoIP Support System, which allows service providers and enterprises to reduce operating expenses by streamSubscribe FREE online at www.itmag.com
The EdgeMarc 4700 addresses the middle ground between

Edgewater Networks existing E-SBCs that support up to 70
concurrent VoIP calls and are targeted at small to medium businesses, and its EdgeMarc 7000 Series solutions, which support
fiber-based locations that need to field up to 1,000 or 2,000
concurrent calls, and serve up to 8,000 registered devices.
The company came out with the EdgeMarc 4700 Series, which
targets users with 300 to 400 employees, at this point in time
to address the fact that bandwidth prices are coming down, so
more SMBs are moving to hosted voice or SIP trunking solutions, Macario explains. As more businesses are served by
higher speed connections, Norman adds, virtual appliances can
run as an extension of a data center, and that opens the door to
the use of virtual appliances.
Virtualization Reality
That said, Edgewater Networks is working to virtualize its solutions.
At ITEXPO and the co-located Software Telco Congress event
in mid August, at which Edgewater Networks was a Diamond
Sponsor and provided a keynote speech, the company showed
a virtual version of its EdgeProtect E-SBC. The product, which
handles data, voice, and also video traffic, will be commercially
available in virtualized form starting in the fourth quarter. The
ITEXPO demonstration featured multiple virtualized E-SBCs, as
well as third-party solutions being managed by an Edgewater
Networks system.
Table of Contents
October 2014
Cover Story
so they dont have to reinvent the wheel

with each new offering.
While EdgeProtect solutions tend to be

implemented in low numbers (like one or
two of them) per organization, Macario
adds, the companys EdgeMarc E-SBCs
tend to be used in broader deployments.
Every time a service provider sells a
hosted service to a business, it ships an
EdgeMarc to that customer, which means
over time a service provider may have
thousands of EdgeMarcs in the field.
That way, its cost effective and service

providers can deliver enterprise solutions to
a broader and broader base of customers,
he adds.
Those solutions could include anything
from a unified threat management service
that a service provider could use to upsell
its existing hosted service customers, to
an MCU bridging capability to support
videoconferencing.
In that case, he notes, virtualization

becomes more complicated due to the
scale involved.
A New View
To address that challenge, Edgewater
Networks is transforming its EdgeView
product into a multitenant edge service
delivery platform that can enable
SBC functionality and support new
business services such as unified
threat management.
Show Me the Money

This strategy adds up both for service providers, and for Edgewater Networks itself.
In April, Edgewater Networks announced
it had raised $5 million in debt financing
from Eastward Capital to develop NFV and
SDN solutions. And in June Edgewater
Networks brought former Polycom executive Steve Pattison
aboard as vice president of corporate development to drive
growth for its existing lines of E-SBC products, and its NFV
and SDN efforts.
Edgewater Networks CEO Dave Norman
Referred to internally at Edgewater Networks as Apollo, this

new SDN orchestration solution will allow a service provider
to control thousands or more of the EdgeMarc devices
without having a single instance for each one.
Edgewater Networks overall SDN strategy, Norman elaborates,
involves leveraging distributed controllers in the cloud and
virtualized appliances to allow service providers to do flow
orchestration and policy management, and to get new services
to market faster by leveraging carriers existing edge platforms
We believe that SDN and NFV are driving significant transformation in service provider networks and opening new
avenues for service delivery, Norman says. We are excited
about the expansion of our product portfolio and how it will
help our customers to easily deliver a new class of profitable
business services. IT
The new EdgeMarc 4700 Series was

designed for sites with 300 to 400 employees.
22
Table of Contents
Roundup
By Paula Bernier
Videoconferencing
Roundup
ideo represents the bulk of traffic on networks

around the world, and this bandwidth-loving
medium continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
IP video traffic last year represented 66 percent of all global
traffic last year, and by 2018 its expected to hit the 79
percent mark, according to Ciscos Visual Networking Index.
Acano
www.acano.com
Indeed, video continues to weave its way into the fabric of our
lives, both for business and pleasure. Not only do many of us
commonly watch home video, movies, TV, and YouTube clips on
our computers, smartphones, tablets, and Internet-connected
TVs for entertainment and education, video is also beginning to
play a bigger role in our interactions.
Amazon made a big splash on that front recently with the introduction of the Mayday button, which allows Kindle users to call
up a video interaction with a customer service rep with just one
click. And theres a lot of talk about the potential of videoconferencing to enable customers and company representatives to
work together on troubleshooting and/or installation.
Indeed, videoconferencing is springing up in some interesting
new, and sometimes unexpected, places. Whats more, videoconferencing at work is no longer a capability exclusive to the
C suite; in recent years, its become widely accessible as video
cameras and simple conferencing applications have become
available as part and parcel of our connected devices. But the
news about videoconferencing-related solution sales is mixed,
as reflected by this data from Infonetics Research.
The worldwide enterprise videoconferencing and telepresence market was dealt a strong seasonal blow in 1Q4 and is
down 22 percent sequentially.
Demand for videoconferencing capabilities remains strong,
but buyers preferences for less costly personal systems is
slowing revenue growth.
Sales of PBX-based systems are up 32 percent in 1Q14 from
the year-ago 1st quarter (1Q13).
Videophones were once again the fastest-growing segment of
the hardware endpoint market, with unit shipments increasing
48 percent in 1Q14 from the same period a year ago.
Growth in Asia Pacific has been slowing, but it is still poised
to become the strongest performing region in 2014.
Infonetics projects global enterprise telepresence and video conferencing revenue to grow in the single digits through at least 2017.
Here is INTERNET TELEPHONYs Roundup of some of the suppliers of teleconferencing and videoconferencing solutions.
October 2014
Acano brings together previously incompatible audio, video,

and web technologies in coSpaces virtual meeting rooms
only radically better. coSpaces are always available and can
be accessed from any device. With coSpaces, people work
wherever their ideas and creativity thrive. In the market for just
one year, the company has more than 200 customers globally,
and was named a Cool Vendor in Unified Communications by
Gartner in 2014. The driving philosophy is everyones invited.
All devices are welcome, for example PCs, iPads, smartphones,
Lync clients, Jabber, and videoconferencing systems and
multiple devices can be used at one time, like an iPad for video
and phone for audio. Every user in an organization can have a
persistent coSpace with its own unique URL and phone number.
For Microsoft Lync users, the Acano solution extends their reach
into the non-Lync world while preserving the native Lync experience, including IM, presence, drag and drop, and shared content. In addition, people outside of an organization can connect
by clicking a link via WebRTC and browser access. The Acano
platform leverages existing investments without requiring rip
and replace. Acano is available through partners as on-premises
hardware, VM, cloud, or a hybrid of these.
Table of Contents
Roundup
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
www.alcatel-lucent.com/enterprise
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise OpenTouch is a core communications platform for corporations of all sizes and is customizable
for multimedia collaboration inside and outside a company.
OpenTouch supports video collaboration on smart desk phones,
laptops, workstations, mobile devices, and videoconferencing
endpoints for personal use or in boardrooms. In OpenTouch,
video functions at the same level as a phone call, where it is
possible to shift a complete multimedia conversation from one
device to another. This standards-based, multi award winning
OpenTouch Communications Suite makes video accessible,
without complex installation or operations, for both the system
administrator and end user. OpenTouch Suite is available for
CPE, hybrid and pure cloud deployment models. From the
beginning Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise selected Lifesize, a leading player in the video business, to be a privileged technology
partner for the OpenTouch Communications Suite. With several
years of co-development, there is tight integration between
OpenTouch and the full Lifesize Icon endpoints as well as the
UVC multipoint conferencing units. Combining our respective
equipment and services, we offer our customers very valuable,
end-to-end video communication solutions.
Avaya
www.avaya.com/usa/solution/video-collaboration
The Avaya Scopia Video Collaboration portfolio is a feature-rich
combination of hardware and software solutions that deliver
26
the highest performance and uncompromised HD video quality

over any network, device, or location. It delivers advanced HD
video, voice and data collaboration and includes endpoints for
board rooms, conference rooms, desktop, personal and mobile
video collaboration. Scopia Desktop and Mobile allows users to
connect to a virtual videoconference room from anywhere on any
device. In one click, users can join multi-party video meetings
with any PC, Mac, or the latest mobile device and experience rich
HD voice, video collaboration, and content sharing. The simple
web browser plug-in or mobile application is centrally managed,
distributed, and deployed without complex licensing fees or
installation issues. Scopia XT Video Conferencing includes a complete range of advanced HD videoconferencing room systems to
fit virtually any budget. The systems, including the Avaya Scopia
XT5000, incorporate the latest video communications technology
including dual full HD video channels, Apple iPad control, and
advanced video compression for bandwidth efficiency and error
resiliency on the public Internet and other IP networks. Scopia
Video Network infrastructure allows for multi-party conferencing,
network connectivity and firewall traversal. This next generation
infrastructure supports media processing for advanced videoconferencing room systems and delivers high scalability and distributed processing for boardroom, desktop, and mobile deployment,
and interoperates with third party H.323 and SIP endpoints.
Avaya also offers management software for scheduling, directory
services, device and bandwidth monitoring and control. That
includes management, control and call scheduling for any size
video network and supports all videoconferencing devices including third-party endpoints and infrastructure devices.
Blue Jeans Network
www.bluejeans.com
At Blue Jeans Network, our mission is to make video communications as easy and pervasive as audio communications, enabling
more effective collaboration at work, at home, and on the road.
Our cloud-based conferencing service makes this possible by
enabling customers to connect with each other seamlessly anytime, anywhere, and from practically any device. The Blue Jeans
Network extends high quality video communications beyond the
traditional boundaries of specialized conference rooms and into
the mainstream, allowing individuals and employees throughout
an enterprise to interact more effectively with each other, and
with their customers, partners, suppliers, family, and friends.
Cisco
www.cisco.com
Ciscos range of videoconferencing solutions allows businesses
in small, medium, and enterprise markets to scale video with
the clear and quality video needed to give workers in the office,
at home, and in the field a face-to-face collaboration experience
Table of Contents
Roundup
on every device, from the browser to the boardroom. Solutions

range from market leading software and cloud solutions such as
WebEx Meetings, offering features such as recordable HD video
and voice, presence, and file sharing across any device; to sleek
desktop endpoints such as the DX80 and EX series solutions,
which bring a modern look and intuitive user experience to the
desktop while offering instant connect video and touch-screen
capabilities for the combined productivity of real-time video collaboration and content sharing at price points for every office.
Ciscos Collaboration Meeting Room provides always-on cloud
videoconferencing via Ciscos Collaboration Meeting Room, enabling instant collaboration for up to hundreds of people at one
time from any device (from Cisco or other standards-based endpoints and mobile/desktop clients). And Ciscos fully-immersive
TelePresence, including the recently released MX series, brings
the best of industrial design and intuitive experience including
voice-activated camera zoom to conference room meetings.
Crestron
www.crestron.com/crestronrl
intuitive room control solutions of Crestron with the full collaboration features of Microsoft Lync 2013. With just one touch of a
button, anyone can walk into a conference room and instantly
start a collaboration session. Share your desktop with local and
remote participants, view and annotate over PowerPoint, and
use the interactive whiteboard to sketch out ideas. Remote participants can join via Lync on their desktop, and adding attendees on the fly in the conference room is just as simple and fast as
typing in their names. Crestron RL lets you share ideas and notes
collaboratively with remote colleagues and clients anytime,
anywhere, with any device. Crestron RL provides a turnkey unified collaboration solution right out of the box and requires no
additional licenses, maintenance fees, or MCUs.
Dialogic
www.dialogic.com
Dialogics PowerMedia XMS is a powerful, cloud-ready media
server with WebRTC support. PowerMedia XMS addresses media
processing challenges facing communications service providers, telephony developers, web developers and integrators.
Key capabilities include multi-party conferencing, transcoding,
WebRTC-to-SIP network media interworking, recording, stream
processing and analysis, and person-to-machine applications.
Common use cases include audio and video prompts, interactive voice (and video) response, agent coaching, call progress
analysis, video-enablement, remote web agents, video kiosks,
web access, embedded web communications, and more. PowerMedia XMS is completely software-based and runs on a variety
of hypervisor environments for easy deployment into cloud
environments. Standard media control interfaces allow for rapid
integration with existing applications and infrastructure. Weboriented interfaces enable developers to easily build server-side,
real-time media processing into nearly any application.
Edgewater Networks Inc.

www.edgewaternetworks.com
Microsoft Lync provides a consistent, single client experience for

presence, instant messaging, voice, video, and a great meeting
experience. Crestron RL extends the Lync experience to the conference room so groups can communicate and collaborate in real
time regardless of physical location. Crestron RL combines the
28
The EdgeProtect series enterprise session border controller

enables organizations of all sizes to provide seamless, reliable,
and secure videoconferencing services between employees and
with customers in disparate locations. EdgeProtect provides
a complete NAT and firewall traversal solution for video and
voice communications and includes standards-based SIP/H.323
call control to simplify secure remote access. Remote users can
seamlessly and securely conduct videoconferencing from any
Table of Contents
Roundup
Grandstream Networks Inc.

www.grandstream.com
location, using any available network access, such as enterprise,

home, public or mobile users. EdgeProtects application security
provides the flexibility to integrate with existing network
security infrastructure and adapt to enterprise security policies,
securing who is authorized to access the video network. EdgeProtects multi-vendor interoperability provides the flexibility of
the enterprise to choose its mode of network service delivery.
EdgeProtect also offers SIP trunking to secure enterprise PBX
solutions. EdgeProtect is the only single appliance that delivers
an enhanced communication experience and improves corporate productivity.
Esna Technologies
www.esna.com
Esna is a global leader

in cloud-enabled
communication and
collaboration solutions. Esnas solutions
allow people to
communicate anytime, anywhere by
integrating real-time
communications inside
the cloud, SaaS and
social applications
they use daily, like
e-mail and CRM. Esna
iLink for WebEx is a
browser extension that
makes it easy to book
WebEx meetings from
inside Google Apps,
Salesforce and Jive
Software, or anywhere on the web. With Esna iLink for WebEx,
users can schedule WebEx meetings just like any other calendar event; eliminate the need to book meetings on the main
WebEx site; update WebEx automatically any time meetings are
changed in Google, Salesforce or from a smartphone calendar;
and even start an instant WebEx meeting right from any web
page or application. Esna iLink for Cisco is a browser extension
that enables access to Cisco Jabber video communications from
any cloud application or web page. With Esna iLink for Cisco,
users can make Jabber voice and video calls from Chrome and
Internet Explorer browsers.
30
Grandstream brings desktop voice, video, presence and advanced unified communication capabilities to new heights with
the new GXV3275 Video IP Phone for Android. For $319, this
7-inch touch-screen videophone is the first 3-in-1 communications device to fully leverage Android and integrate it with the SIP
platform. By doing so, the 6-line executive IP phone with six SIP
accounts, integrated Wi-Fi and PoE is truly a multiplatform device
giving users the universal experience and familiarity of mobile
smartphone/tablet functionality along with full access to the hundreds of thousands of Android Apps in the Google Play Store such
as Microsoft Lync, Skype, SalesForce1, GoToMeeting, Outlook,
Gmail and more. Additionally, this desktop phone eliminates the
cost barrier of larger videoconferencing solutions and gives businesses affordable free enterprise-grade video collaboration with
crystal clear HD video calling and multi-person videoconferencing
using various different technologies and protocols such as the
open SIP standard, Microsoft Lync, Skype, Google Hangout, ooVoo, etc. For $219, the new GXV3240 IP Video Phone for Android
with 4.3-inch capacitive touch screen is available offering the
same features as the larger 7-inch touch screen GXV3275.
InFocus Corp.
www.InFocus.com
InFocus video collaboration solutions provide small and large

businesses with flexible offerings they can mix and match to
Table of Contents
Roundup
Lifesize
www.lifesize.com
fit their environments and budgets. Whether they use the

giant Mondopad collaboration solution in the boardroom,
the MVP100 Video Phone on desks, or BigConnect software
on a laptop, InFocus products and services work together to
enhance teamwork anywhere. InFocus 121 Video Calling is
a high-quality video dial tone service for point-to-point calls
with SIP or H.323 devices included for one year with every
InFocus video calling device. When people in multiple locations need to collaborate via video, InFocus offers ConX Video
Meeting. Up to 12 endpoints can join a cloud-based ConX
Meeting room from an InFocus video calling device, another
SIP or H.323 device, MS Lync or an Internet browser using
the InFocus QuickConX plugin. Mondopad is a massive touchscreen SIP device that allows groups to whiteboard, annotate,
and share content in real time over a video call. MVP100 Video
Phone is a SIP device that works with the ease of a standard
desk phone. BigConnect is an easy-to-use Windows SIP video
calling application that enables clear HD video calls and content sharing to and from other SIP endpoints.
IVCi LLC
www.ivci.com
IVCi is a leading provider of collaboration solutions
designed to bring people together, no matter where they are
located or what technology they have access to. With more
than 18 years of experience in the collaboration industry,
IVCi focuses on the successful deployment of collaboration
solutions by providing services that aim to align technology
with business goals and objectives. Whether collaborating
from a state-of-the-art conference room or joining a video
meeting on the go from a tablet, IVCi ensures that every
collaboration session is a success. IVCis Cloud Video
Experience takes the guesswork out of an enterprise video
implementation and provides a total infrastructure as a
service solution that eliminates the need to purchase costly
hardware infrastructure and makes it easy to equip rooms,
desktops and mobile devices with full HD video. CVE offers
a global quality assured network to ensure the highest level
of video fidelity. Additionally, Virtual Meeting Rooms make it
possible for up to 80 participants to connect with any device
including standard videoconferencing systems, Microsoft
Lync, or even a web browser.
32
Lifesize provides HD videoconferencing solutions that are simple

to buy, adopt, manage, and use. Its cost-effective software-asa-service and room video systems connect people wherever
they are, across laptops, tablets, or smartphones, and especially
conference rooms. Lifesize delivered the worlds first highdefinition videoconferencing solution in 2005, and in May 2014
introduced Lifesize Cloud, the first cloud-based videoconferencing offering for organizations that want business-class video
collaboration without taxing their budgets or IT resources.
Lifesize Cloud helps companies maximize productivity and
communicate naturally through an easy-to-use interface that
supports spontaneous or scheduled meetings. It is purposebuilt so that organizations of all sizes can implement a scalable
videoconferencing solution with little to no need for IT involvement. Its fully interoperable with existing videoconferencing
resources and supports up to 25-way calls in HD video or audio,
so admins no longer need to manage scarce multiparty bridging
ports. Lifesize Cloud has a flexible subscription plan for all sizes
of teams and budgets. Founded in 2003 and acquired by Logitech in 2009, Lifesize addresses organizations demand for high
quality and reliable video that is affordable and simple to use.
Lightpath
https://golightpath.com/
Lightpath, a provider of Ethernet-based communication solutions
for New York metropolitan area businesses, in July announced the
addition of Lightpath Video Conference to its expanding lineup
of managed service offerings. The cloud-based service provides
virtual meeting rooms and managed video services that enable
mid-market and large businesses to conference and connect with
up to 25 attendees worldwide from nearly any device. Lightpath
Video Conference delivers an end-to-end feature set that includes
system design and installation, virtual meeting room services that
support existing or new equipment and can be launched from
any device, 24/7 help desk access and optional proactive monitoring. Lightpath is a division of Cablevision Systems Corp.
Table of Contents
Roundup
Polycom
www.polycom.com
Polycom helps organizations unleash the power of human collaboration with secure video, voice, and content collaboration solutions designed to increase productivity; speed, including time to
market; and to connect people regardless of device, protocol, or
bandwidth. Polycoms RealPresence Platform offers organizations,
large or small, the best user experience, the broadest multi-vendor interoperability, and unmatched investment protection. The
platform also allows users to not only share content internally,
but also with customers, partners, and other stakeholders. The
RealPresence Platform can be customized to meet the needs of
Pexip AS
www.pexip.com
The RealPresence Platform

can be customized to meet the
needs of any organization and
offers simple implementation
and seamless connectivity, while
leveraging cloud technology.
The Pexip Infinity Scalable Meeting Platform allows an enterprise to scale and provide every one of its employees with
high-definition video, audio, and data conferencing. Pexip
Infinity seamlessly joins any version of Microsoft Lync, WebRTC, SIP, and H.323 endpoints in conferences irrespective of
manufacturer and provides any-to-any media transcoding for
true universal interoperability. Thanks to Pexip Infinitys unique
software-only architecture running on off-the-shelf Intelbased servers as a virtual machine in the organizations data
center the solution can be deployed in minutes, and capacity
can be scaled to suit the organizations needs and requirements
from a central location. Its native distributed architecture enables a system administrator to quickly and simply deploy local
conferencing capabilities anywhere in the world, and manage
the application just like any other virtualized enterprise software application. Infinity has an enterprise-oriented licensing
scheme, and organizations deploy capacity based on concurrent users, where all consume licenses from a central pool, not
constrained by endpoints, users, or hardware.
34
any organization and offers simple implementation and seamless

connectivity, while leveraging cloud technology. Through Polycom
RealPresence Cloud, partners and service providers alike can take
advantage of video-as-a service, a growing commodity in todays
workplace. In addition, Polycom offers the Polycom RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite, which runs on the RealPresence Platform
and includes the industrys first presence-aware directory that
integrates contacts from social applications such as Google Talk
and Facebook, enabling users with just a click of a button to
invite contacts into a secure, Polycom-powered video meeting,
regarless of their location or device.
ReadyTalk
www.readytalk.com
ReadyTalk delivers audio, video, and web conferencing services
that empower customers to conduct conferences of all sizes from
small ad hoc meetings to large webinars. ReadyTalk combines
ease-of-use with sophisticated marketing tools to increase audience engagement, event ROI, and meeting productivity. Unlike
other services, ReadyTalk gives customers a full suite of tools for
training, collaboration, sales demos, webinars, and more. Youll
Table of Contents
Roundup
always have access to the right features when you need them, no
need to upgrade to another product. Powerful videoconferencing
from ReadyTalk allows you to share up to four simultaneous video
feeds with up to 25 total participants. Enable a videoconference
from our intuitive icon-based controls, use it with VoIP for effective
collaboration, and it doesnt require any additional downloads.
Improve personal interaction with remote colleagues, remove miscommunications by sharing non-verbal cues, strengthen customer
and prospect relationships regardless of distance, and increase
audience engagement by personalizing your message.
Sangoma
www2.sangoma.com/video-mcu
Sangoma Vega Video Multipoint Conferencing Unit mixes video

and audio in a single unified system. It makes videoconferencing
really easy and affordable for the smaller enterprise because of its
compatibility with virtually any existing PBX, including Asterisk,
FreePBX, and FreeSwitch (e.g. one that may not be able to afford
a system like Microsoft Lync). The goal is to make adoption of
video as easy as a simple audio conference, i.e., press 7 for video.
Ease of use is geared to encourage adoption of this premisesbased hardware appliance. Sangoma prides itself on quality and
reliability at an affordable price. The company is built on the belief
that its solutions simply must work. The award-winning Sangoma
Video MCU provides video to SIP phones, IP PBXs, desk phones,
tablets, and smartphones.
ShoreTel
www.shoretel.com
Through ShoreTel Communicator, the desktop call-control suite
within ShoreTel 14.2, users can participate in room-based videoconferences using industry standard H.264 AVC technology.
This enhanced video support enables users to communicate from
their desktop or laptop, whether in the office or working remote,
adding a new level of simplicity to collaboration. Via the ShoreTel
Mobility Client, ShoreTel customers can communicate via video
between iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, with single
36
video calling from the keypad. With ShoreTel Mobility, users can
also participate in multi-party video sessions from mobile devices
to room-based video communication systems. ShoreTel enables organizations to leverage investments through integration with best
of breed room-based systems that support open industry standards (H.264/AVC), including Lifesize and Polycom. Video calls are
supported over local or remote Wi-Fi and cellular data worldwide.
Sonus Networks
www.sonusnet.com
The Sonus SBC 7000 Session Border Controller allows service
providers and large enterprises to offer videoconferencing capabilities on a large scale. As video becomes more ubiquitous in
the work place, the SBC 7000 preps the market for the inevitable
change in business models toward increased collaboration
through videoconferencing. The SBC 7000 works behind the
scenes to ensure that voice, video, and data communications flow
smoothly and securely between networks and the people who
use them. Sonus is the only vendor with the ability to provide
video interworking among endpoints from various vendors without compromising SBC performance or scale. The foundational
strength of the SBC 7000 is its ability to support high capacity
requirements for real-time, multimedia SIP traffic. The SBC 7000
touts the industrys highest scale up to 150,000 sessions with
fully enabled security, media, and transcoding features two
times more than what any other SBC provider is currently offering. The SBC 7000 effectively addresses the unprecedented traffic
demands that services such as HD voice and video, VoLTE, and
RCS will place on networks at access and interconnect borders.
Tely Labs
www.tely.com
Tely Labs is the leader in simple, secure, and affordable video

communication and collaboration systems that fundamentally
Table of Contents
Roundup
Yorktel
www.yorktel.com
change the way people communicate. Its solutions help organizations effectively communicate through videoconferencing
whether it is from executive boardrooms, to secondary conference rooms, or remote offices. Thus, organizations gain the
benefits of videoconferencing and content sharing without the
investment in expensive on-premises video networking by being able to connect meeting rooms to a wide variety of videoenabled devices including tablets, smartphones, laptops, and
traditional room-based videoconferencing systems. Tely Labs
solutions are beneficial to all types of industries including education, financial services, health care, legal, manufacturing, public
sector, and service providers. The telyHD Pro delivers high quality
experience at unprecedented value, perfect for conference rooms
and remote offices. It includes standards-based interoperability
and integrated Skype support, enabling the telyHD Pro to immediately connect with millions of users. It also comes along with
a one-year subscription to telyCloud, which provides multi-party
conferencing without the need for any additional equipment.
Note: We do our best to include as many

of the players in a given Roundup as
possible. But this exercise does rely on the
companies listed submitting entries, so
this is not intended as a comprehensive
list of market players, but rather as a
sampling of whats available in the
category. Check out our editorial calendar
to see what categories will be featured in
future issues, in case your company would
like to submit a listing for an issue later
this year. There is no cost for a listing.
38
Yorktel VideoCloud is an enterprise-class, cloud-based

videoconferencing service that enables organizations to
leverage Yorktels global hosted infrastructure in lieu of
purchasing costly infrastructure. With vendor-agnostic and
device-agnostic support, three distinct models comprise the
VideoCloud portfolio: VideoCloud Virtual Meeting Room,
a reservation-less, on-demand videoconferencing service;
VideoCloud Managed Conferencing Service, a fully managed
conferencing service; and VideoCloud B2B Service, which
enables UC&C, interoperability, and secure connectivity. The
core of Yorktels Managed Services is a 24/7/365 multi-lingual
VNOC and service desk, which provides a reliable, consistent user experience across all platforms and geographies.
Managing both cloud-based and on-premises videoconferencing systems, two tiers of services include call scheduling,
launching, monitoring, troubleshooting, usage reporting,
onsite staff augmentation, and much more. Yorktel also offers
professional services, from assessment of the customers current video environment and strategy, through recommendations for today and tomorrows scalability, to integration and
implementation of new or refreshed infrastructure. Yorktel
specializes in system interoperability, BYOD, and enablement
of unified communications strategies. Yorktel also expands
beyond corporate videoconferencing with the VideoKiosk, a
remote, highly secure customer service kiosk; multiple grades
of telehealth/telemedicine mobile video carts; and self-navigating mobile i-Robots for applications that require mobile,
autonomous video. IT
Table of Contents
By Paula Bernier
Business Case
Keeping IT Relevant
IT
staffs at organizations tend to

think of themselves as support
teams. Instead, they need to
look at things through a different lens and
consider what they can be doing to drive
the business at large forward.
Thats the advice of Hollis Terry Bradwell III, executive vice

president and CIO at AARP, who gave a keynote speech called
Unleashing the Hidden Value of IT at the recent ITEXPO event.
What Im proposing is really not a flavor of the week, he said.
What Im suggesting is that this is more of a paradigm shift;
Richardson recommended that technology leaders within

organizations leverage technology not for technologys sake,
but rather to address specific pain points, which everybody has.
Setting out on that path should begin with talking to line of
business people, said Richardson, who explained thats how he
spends a lot of his time.
Youve got to become relevant, he said. If you get in the
mode of IT and say: This is what we do, we do this one thing,
you become irrelevant, he added.
Bradwell explained how he and his team at AARP expanded
their roles at the membership-based organization and, in the
process, helped move the entity forward.
It all began when his team noticed there was a lot of member
demand at AARP events to get advice on using
smartphones and tablets, and the applications and services related to them. It got this
sense because long lines were forming at
the small tech-related booth AARP offered at its trade shows.
Getting IT staffers to look beyond

simply supporting internal needs
and consider how they can help grow
business is becoming more and
more important.
that IT organizations need to start thinking this way, need to

start thinking about the bottom line of their business.
The idea of IT folks shifting gears in this way seems to be
gaining steam. It was also the subject of an ITEXPO panel titled
Leading Change: Taking Your Business and Technology to the
Next Generation, during which Louis Richardson of IBM and
Sam Liu of Soonr encouraged audience members to be proactive in setting the course for IT and, especially, positive business results at their companies.
40
But, although there was clearly

demand by the 50-plus set for
assistance with digital literacy,
Bradwell said that digital literacy was not anywhere in AARPs
strategic plan. So his team shifted
to an entrepreneurial mindset and
worked to expand AARPs Technology
Education Knowledge effort to something
that had been a small booth at its event, to
a key part of the organizations strategy.
TEK is now a high-touch program, through which

AARP goes into communities and events to offer digital training
and information. AARP now also offers content and facilitates
communities through its expansive TEK online effort.
Getting IT staffers to look beyond simply supporting internal
needs and consider how they can help grow business is becoming more and more important, said Bradwell, considering data
from Gartner indicating 70 percent of new revenue streams
created by organizations these days result from technology
enablement. IT
Table of Contents
Archived View Today!
SIP, SBCs and Lync

The Knockout Punch for
Productivity and Profitability
The ROI of Integrated

Communications: Replacing an Aging
Infrastructure while Cutting Costs
S P O N S O R E D B Y:
http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/sonus/
SIP-SBCs-and-Lync-The-Knockout-Punch
-for-Productivity-and-Profitability.htm
http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/
ringcentral/The-ROI-of-IntegratedCommunications.htm
Solving the top

5 SMB Challenges with
Video Conferencing Appliances
Ask the Expert:

SIP Trunking and WebRTC
http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/telylabs/
Solving-the-top-5-Challenges-withVideo-Conferencing-Appliances.htm
http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/
ingate-systems/Ask-the-Expert-SIPTrunking-and-WebRTC.htm
New Marketing Rules for

Generating and Converting Inbound
Sales Calls in a Mobile World
Identity Related Risks:

What is the Real Insider Threat?
http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/ifbyphone/
New-Marketing-Rules-for-Generating-andConverting-Inbound-Sales-Calls.htm
http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/centrify/
Identity-Related-Risks-What-is-theReal-Insider-Threat.htm
Interested in upcoming
and past archived webinars?
Visit http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/
Manage the Risk and Reap

the Reward of Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP)
http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/sonus/
Manage-the-Risk-and-Reap-the-Reward.htm
On Rads Radar
By Peter Radizeski
The WebRTC Craze

Right now, WebRTC
is trending. Its the
newest buzzword in
the telecom space. It
is outpacing UCaaS.
Now with Wi-Fi and a Chromebook

you could make video calls as easily as
Facetime is for Apple users. That is the
sizzle. That is why were hearing all
the buzz.
Its interesting because WebRTC is really

just five lines of code that enable real-time
communications in a web browser via a
W3C-defined application programming
interface. It makes conversations more
user-friendly by taking away the plug-in.
You know, when you want to use web
conferencing, and you have to download
that file and run it to attend the webinar.
It removes that hurdle (the plug-in).
However, its a feature; its code. It isnt

going to sell anything. What it does can
assist the sale of a solution, but WebRTC
by itself is just a software component.
Actually, it will be attempting to replace
Skype (which rumor has Microsoft
killing off); Lync; Cisco Jabber; Google
Hangouts; Facetime; and a bunch of
other video chat apps too numerous to
mention or remember.
When I was working with Vidtel, I was

on quite a few video calls. The novelty of
using Chrome or Firefox instead of a specific piece of software like Cisco Jabber or
Skype had an appeal.
The one advantage to a service provider

of WebRTC is that the video chat could
be made cross-platform. Google and
Apple are much like AOL in that they
keep people in their garden. (Google
supports the WebRTC project, but mainly

just to sell Chrome browsers into the
enterprise space.)
GoToMeeting has already incorporated
WebRTC for video chat in its free version.
GoToMeeting Free can serve up to three
people on video and includes features
like desktop sharing, audio controls,
meeting scheduling, recording, and
phone audio. It can complement premium versions of GoToMeeting or work
on its own.
TelePresence gear has significantly
dropped in price. WebRTC components help that happen and also
accelerate the price erosion. In the
end, WebRTC enhances user experience, which is how you market products with WebRTC baked in. IT
Peter Radizeski is head of telecom
consulting agency RAD-INFO Inc.
(http://rad-info.net/).
Channel Briefs
InterCall to Resell Esna Solutions
Esna Technologies, a cloud-enabled communication and
collaboration software provider, announced a partnership
with InterCall. Under the terms of the agreement, InterCall
will market and resell Esna iLink for WebEx and Esna iLink
for Cisco to its customers worldwide. InterCall is the largest
conferencing service provider in the world, doing business
with more than 80 percent of the Fortune 100. They have a
rich array of services that help enterprises become more productive and drive bottom line value, said Davide Petramala,
Esna executive vice president of business development.
Were excited to partner with them to bring our WebEx and
Jabber integration capabilities to their customers.
Vtech Seeks Channel Partners
Vtech Communications Inc. was at the recent ITEXPO showing a
variety of new products including the Eris terminal SIP phones,
which it announced in February and launched in the May/
June time frame; a line of SIP phones designed for the hospitality vertical; and a new wireless conference speaker phone for
businesses called the Eris Station, which became available in the
spring. The company said it has been recruiting service provider
channel partners for its SIP phones. Vtech is also now talking
to partners in the retail channel to make sure its products are
positioned well to be where they need to be to keep up with
where retail is going in the next 5 years and beyond.
44
TNCI Partners with Salestream

TNCI Operating Company LLC, a national telecommunications provider, has a new partnership with Salestream,
the company behind the MasterStream telecom business
automation software. As a result, current MasterStream
subscribers and TNCI Agent partners can instantly generate customized quotes for TNCIs suite of cloud, voice, and
data telecommunications services while achieving seamless automation of the entire quoting, sales, ordering and
back office functions.
ViaWest Introduces New Affiliate Program
Colocation, managed services, and cloud provider ViaWest
has launched a new Affiliate Program. This program offers
incentives and compensation to affiliates who promote
ViaWests IT infrastructure services through advertising
and lead generation initiatives. Affiliate partners, including technology bloggers, technical forums, search engine
marketers, small businesses, and channel partners, that
display ViaWest advertisements on their own websites and
generate qualified leads and closed sales will be rewarded
via what the company says is an aggressive compensation
structure with commissions on qualified leads and increasing earning potential based on product line sales. Affiliates
are also eligible for commission for submitting qualified
partner program referrals. IT
Table of Contents
Cloud & Data Center

By Paula Bernier
The Future of Cloud Services
iven the significant interest in and demand for cloud services, theres been a
rush by service providers existing and
new to roll out cloud offerings. In fact, of the
around 20,000 service providers in North America,
about 20 percent of them offer cloud services. But
there will be a lot of fallout on this front, because
a lot of these companies are regional in nature and
provide just one or two products.
branded services from the likes of Carbonite, Salesforce, and

others. But because they often dont bring any extra value to
the table, he said, their churn can be high and their days may be
numbered unless they find a way to bring special, sticky services
or capabilities into the mix. (This advice applies to pretty much all
the cloud players actually, he said.)
Thats the prediction of Ashar Baig, a research director at Gigaom,

who offered his perspective on the future and the recent past of
cloud services at the recent ITEXPO in Las Vegas.
The good news is that the growth in data, compliance and security requirements, and the economic downturn that resulted in
lower employee headcounts, all favor cloud services, he said. That
helps explain why the number of cloud offerings in the market
place continues to multiply.
Many of one trick pony cloud providers, he suggested, will either

go out of business or be acquired by larger service providers, such
as the tier 1 telcos.
The future is not particularly bright for the cloud service broker
space either, he said. These are the middlemen that provide
The pricing of cloud services is also decreasing, he said, noting

that AWS, Google, and Microsoft recently lowered their prices 50
to 60 percent. Because cloud service costs have gone about as
low as they can go, he added, differentiation will center on things
like delivering the lowest latency or the most available service.
Going forward, Baig said, well also see security in the cloud improve
tremendously; the introduction of higher value services (such as BC/
DR offerings as opposed to just backup, as just one example); and
more specialization that addresses the needs of specific verticals. IT
Cloud & Data Center Briefs

Athletic Wear, Networking Giants Collaborate
NIKE has tapped Juniper Networks to co-create a new
highly scalable next-generation data center cloud and
retail network infrastructure. NIKE will leverage Junipers
MetaFabric architecture to virtualize its data centers around
the world as part of the deal. Junipers technologies enable
customers to realize the benefits of carrier-class, ultra-scalable cloud data center solutions that are virtualized, secure
and flexible enough to accommodate the performance
demands of their clients anywhere, anytime, says Juniper
CEO Shaygan Kheradpir.
Compliance Cloud Offering Goes Live

Lumen21 Compliant Cloud Computing is a new cloud computing infrastructure-as-a-service built to be fully compliant
with an organizations specific regulatory requirements. It
follows the Common Security Framework of HITRUST, which
46
is a certifiable framework used by organizations. HITRUST CSF

provides organizations with a comprehensive, flexible, efficient and certifiable approach to regulatory compliance and
risk management. Eduardo Don Jr., president of Lumen21,
commented: Failure to meet HIPAA and other compliancy
laws can have devastating consequences for an organization. Our HITRUST CSF-compliant solution is one less thing an
organization has to worry about.
Unity Addresses Cloud Visibility, Optimization

Silver Peak has unveiled Unity, an intelligent wide area network fabric that unifies the enterprise network with the public cloud. Most enterprises use dozens of cloud-based services, whether IT knows about them or not, David Hughes,
CEO of Silver Peak, explains. That usage will only increase as
enterprises shift computing workloads to the cloud. The problem is, IT staff have no insight into that traffic once it leaves
Table of Contents
By Paula Bernier
ABPTech, DrayTek Enable SMBs

to Ensure Access to the Cloud
ore and more businesses including

SMBs today rely on the cloud for such
applications as CRM, e-mail, security,
and more. The rise of the cloud means more services are available to more organizations at more affordable prices. And many businesses are migrating
even their mission-critical applications to the cloud.
Thats the good news.

The bad news is that when the broadband connections that give
these companies access to the cloud go down, it can bring business to a complete standstill.
To ensure SMBs that leverage cloud services always have access
to those services, distributor ABPTech is now offering a complete
line of DrayTek routers with multiWAN functionality.
the WAN. They cant troubleshoot problems or optimize applications the way they would on their own network.Silver
Peak Unity represents an entirely new approach to wide area
networking that steps beyond WAN optimization. We are
providing the enterprise with a complete map of the clouddriven network and applying new routing and intelligence
that helps enterprise IT see, control and optimize connectivity
to the cloud from anywhere in the world.
ALU, Fujitsu Join UDNC Effort
AT&T has added Alcatel-Lucent and Fujitsu as suppliers of its
User-Defined Network Cloud effort, which is expected to accelerate time-to-market for advanced products and services.
They join Juniper Networks, which was named previously.
The architecture and deployment teams are finalizing their
planned introduction of this new architecture, which we
expect to roll out later this year and early 2015, said Tim
Harden, president, AT&T Supply Chain.
MultiWAN functionality means that SMBs can now affordably manage multiple connections, even of various types, so
they can create primary and secondary access methods. The
routers can also allow for load sharing between two or more
connections.
In addition to WAN failover, DrayTek Multi-WAN routers support
true load-balancing, according to ABPTech. This way additional
bandwidth from [the] secondary WAN is aggregated and not just
sitting idle. DrayRek routers are sophisticated enough to recognize and remember sessions and perform session load balancing.
Stateless Packet load balancing would break VoIP, HTTPS and
other protocols.
The breakthrough here, according to ABPTech, is that while
routers to enable that traditionally cost thousands of dollars and
are designed with the needs of enterprises in mind, the DrayTek
routers offer SMBs an affordable option. The per appliance cost of
the routers start at $300. IT
POC Addresses Reduced Set Up Times

AT&T, IBM and Applied Communication Sciences have announced a proof-of-concept technology they say reduces
set up times for cloud-to-cloud connectivity from days to
seconds. The work was performed under the auspices of
the U.S. Governments DARPA CORONET program, which
focuses on rapid reconfiguration of terabit networks. AT&T
was responsible for developing the overall networking architecture for this concept, drawing on its industry leadership in bandwidth-on-demand technologies and advanced
routing concepts. IBM provided the cloud platform and
intelligent cloud data center orchestration technologies
to support dynamic provisioning of cloud-to-cloud communications. ACS contributed optical-layer routing and
signaling. The program was visionary in anticipating the
convergence of cloud computing and networking, and in
setting aggressive requirements for network performance
in support of cloud services, said Ann Von Lehmen, the
ACS program lead. IT
Table of Contents
October 2014
By Paula Bernier
Development Platforms
GENBAND Offers a Taste of KANDY
he arrival of the over-the-top application and the connected

consumer has changed the game both for service providers
and for businesses of all types. The new, quick rate of
change means organizations need to get solutions to market more
quickly, and deliver better and faster customer service. GENBAND is
addressing all of the above with a new solution called KANDY.
KANDY, which was previewed in June
at GENBAND Perspectives14 in Orlando,
is a platform-as-a-service that allows
service providers like the telcos expose
their network resources using APIs, SDKs,
and Quick Starts so developers can more
easily leverage them to bring real-time
communications to their applications.
The great thing about KANDY is that
it enables businesses to connect with
their customers in the places they
choose to be and work, and it allows
them expedite the introduction realtime communications features in the
interfaces of their choice by providing

an array of network resources in easyto-use building blocks, according to
GENBAND. Importantly, it also allows
GENBANDs customers, the service
providers, to insert themselves into the
OTT application value chain.
KANDY changes everything it lets you
build an OTT experience LEGO style
using only the components you need,
Roy Timor-Rousso, CEO of GENBAND
fring, explained. It lets companies,
be they the service providers or other
developers, quickly bring new over-thetop services to market and to customize
them to address particular customer
needs, he continued.
Adding real-time communications
to an application has traditionally
required specialized
skills, but with KANDY,
GENBAND explained,
developers tool
belts just became
much more powerful.
In a presentation in
which he stated
resistance is futile
and wore Willy Wonkastyle glasses, Paul
Pluschkell, executive
vice president of strategy and cloud services
at GENBAND, said
48
Table of Contents
KANDY will help create new business

models and new consumption models.
Pluschkell and his colleagues
demonstrated how KANDY can help
bring together customer transaction
history. This demo showed a scenario
in which a customer had a check that
didnt clear, so he was overcharged. The
customer was able to connect in real
time via video chat with a representative
at his bank, who was able to fix the
issue immediately.
Another demonstration highlighted a
sporting goods retailer that uses crowdsourcing to enable online shoppers to get
information in real time from others who
have purchased the products they are
considering buying. Shoppers can use the
same app to contact customer support,
tapping once to launch a real-time video
interaction. KANDY was used to bring
real-time communications capabilities to
all of the above, in the process reducing
friction in the sales process.
KANDY and WebRTC, another technology of which GENBAND is a big
proponent, are also useful in bringing
real-time communications to dispatch
and field service applications. GENBAND
highlighted a transportation service
for elderly patients called DriverBuddy,
which allows drivers and dispatchers
to video chat, and access geolocation
information for routing purposes.
A big portion of KANDY is WebRTC, Brad
Bush, GENBAND executive vice president
and chief marketing officer, said during his
speech about WebRTC Use Cases.
Companies of all stripes are struggling
to deal with the rapid rate of change,
and with competition, said Pluschkell.
KANDY gives those companies the ammunition to address that change and the
fact that the always-on customer now
has a lot of power in the marketplace.
He described KANDY as innovation in a
box that enables organizations to share
and be shared. IT
By Paula Bernier
Birch Continues to Grow

Service Provider Tucks in Cbeyond
irch Communications Inc. in July completed the acquisition of Cbeyond. This $323
million all-cash transaction expanded the
Birch IP network, added fiber assets, business
customer base, data centers and other assets.
INTERNET TELEPHONY recently interviewed Birch
President & CEO Vincent M. Oddo on his companys history and strategy.
How and when did Birch Communications get started?

Birch was founded in 1996 in Macon, Ga., as Access Integrated Networks Inc., in the wake of the historic Telecom
Act of 1996. This law ushered an unprecedented wave of
new competition into the telecom industry.
Birch began as a reseller of telecom services
focused on the underserved small- and
medium-sized business customer segments.
By 2002 we had grown to nine states and
had annual revenue of $40 million.
tion with relative ease. Specifically with regard to Cbeyond,

we recognized an opportunity that fit well with that strategy.
Now that the acquisition is closed, our annualized revenue
is almost $700 million and we serve nearly 200,000, mostly
business, customers.
How will Birchs acquisition of Cbeyond impact
existing Cbeyond customers?
The combination of Cbeyond and Birch is a long-term commitment to our customers to provide a broader array of services
priced and designed to make their businesses successful. Today,
our customers are served by a company with strong financial
resources. There will be no notable changes in rates or billing
cycles for the Cbeyond customers, and they can look forward
to an expanded network that will provide them access to
improved communications, IT, and managed services. We have
already greatly improved customer care support by addressing customer needs in a faster
and more responsive manner. Birch is known
for outstanding customer service, and it will
continue to be our number-one priority as we
move forward.
When did you come aboard and what

Cbeyond is Birchs 21st acquisition
have been some of your key initiatives?
since 2006. What were some of the
In 2003, I took over as president and CEO, and
others?
one of three shareholders, and I implemented a
Birch completed the asset acquisition of
major shift in business strategy. The initiatives
certain Ernest Communications Corp. assets in
Birch President & CEO
that were implemented spearheaded the build
August 2013. This strategic acquisition added
Vincent M. Oddo
out of our IP network, which enabled us to proa significant number of enterprise customers
vide more sophisticated voice and data services
and broadened Birchs capabilities to sell and
to our business customers. In addition, the company embarked
manage enterprise-sized customers. Birch completed the ason a multiyear effort to acquire smaller competitors in the rapidly
set acquisition of certain Lightyear Network Solutions assets
consolidating telecommunications marketplace. To date, we have in September 2013. Along with the addition of several thouclosed 24 such acquisitions worth more than $500 million.
sand customers, this acquisition expanded the Birch network
service area in Kentucky and provided additional capabilities
What does Birch sell to whom and where?
for Birch to expand its cloud service offerings. Birch comBirch sells communications, IT and managed dervices to busipleted the asset acquisition of certain EveryCall and Selectel
ness customers in all 50 states across the United States, as well assets in the second quarter of 2014. These acquisitions
as Washington D.C., Canada and Puerto Rico. We deliver our
expanded the Birch customer base in several areas around
services using our IP network, our cloud facilities, our managed the United States. Birch completed the asset acquisition of
services platform, and our data centers. [That includes an] IP
certain Liberty-Bell assets in the second quarter of 2014.
network covering 22 states plus Washington, D.C.; 31,000 fiber This acquisition expanded the Birch business customer base
route miles; 580 fiber-lit buildings; 600 network POPs; 200
in the Denver area.
Ethernet over Copper POPs; and six tier 3/4 data centers.
Whats next?
Birch recently bought Cbeyond. Why?
Birch isnt through growing just yet. We intend to continue
During the past few years, we have closed and integrated 24
our growth strategy through both organic sales and, of course,
tuck-in acquisitions. The term tuck-in refers to the acquisition
tuck-in acquisitions. In addition, our growth will also be enof assets that complement our footprint, product offerings, or
hanced as we significantly expand our IT and managed services
customer base, allowing us to tuck them into our organizaportfolio of services. IT
50
Table of Contents
By Paula Bernier
Ericsson Acquires Billing Company
few years ago Ericsson bought Telcordia

for $1.15 billion in an effort that gained
the telecom equipment giant a treasure
trove of billing and operational support system
product and expertise. Recently Ericsson struck
again in this general arena, with the acquisition
of billing outfit MetraTech. The value of the
deal was not disclosed.
Ericsson saw a similar trend happening earlier on in the telecom space when it announced the acquisition of Telcordia,
a company that evolved out of Bellcore, the Bell telephone
companies former R&D entity. At the time, Ericsson and
Telcordia talked about how telecom was (and still is) experiencing a move from services that were essentially facilities
to an environment in which services can be activated virtually; application-awareness and quality of service become
paramount; and a wider variety of ecosystem partners may
be involved to deliver total solutions.
As noted in the Billing Roundup in last months issue of

INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine, even before the MetraTech
deal, Ericsson had been offering a comprehensive OSS/BSS
product and services portfolio that helps
operators achieve customer agility,
service agility, and network agility. As
a result, Ericsson says, they are able
The acquisition
to be fast, flexible, and in complete control.
MetraTech, Ericsson
A 2013 Stratecast Global Technology Innovation in Complex Relationship Billing Award winner, MetraTech offers
MetraNet brand commerce and settlement
solutions, which allows service providers
to expedite new service introduction.
The acquisition of MetraTech
Ericsson says, will extend its
billing leadership beyond
telecom into other important
markets such as transport
and utilities, and better
position it to move on
opportunities related to
the Internet of Things and
as-a-service models. It will
do that, the company says,
by outfitting Ericsson and its
customers with flexible billing
solutions that can quickly and easily
support new revenues and shifting
business models that may entail
personalized, multi-party agreements.
of
says, will extend its billing
leadership to markets such
as transport and utilities,
and better position it to
move on opportunities
related to the IoT and
as-a-service models.
Ericssons full spectrum of

OSS/BSS solutions, known
as the Ericsson Agility
Suite, is based on a
modern convergent
architecture that is open,
modular, and cloud-based.
Cross-domain, crosstechnology solutions allow
agility in all major process
areas, including Plan-toProvision, Lead-to-Cash, Troubleto-Resolution, Converged Billing, and
Partner Interaction.
Boston-based MetraTech, which was founded in 1998, has

140 employees and contractors, all of which Ericsson plans
to bring aboard as part of the acquisition, which is set to
close before the end of the third quarter.
Scott Swartz, MetraTech founder and CEO, who authored
an article in the April 2012 issue of TMCs INTERNET
TELEPHONY magazine, wrote: Business models with
sales-driven, enterprise customer agreements; interrelated,
multi-party partnership arrangements; and integrated
channel compensation programs must all be configurable,
evolved and manageable throughout the lifecycle of the
business. The machine-to-machine commercial world will
deliver a dynamic, relationship-driven marketplace that is
setting the pace for a new generation of commerce. It will
also deliver a unique opportunity for those in position to
harness it.
Ericsson service enablement solutions deliver customized

subscriber offerings that create value for partners and monetize assets through agility, responsiveness, and unique user
experiences. The companys convergent billing and revenue
management solutions solve billing and charging challenges
to increase revenues and customers. Ericsson revenue assurance solutions provide a structured approach to detect and
prevent revenue leakage. Ericssons fulfillment suite of products includes activation, configuration, and remote device
management that speed time to market and enable accurate
service fulfillment. Ericsson assurance solutions analyze and
address customer experience, so operators can meet expectations and secure revenue. Ericsson domain management
solutions enable successful service delivery through reliable
network operation and control. The companys M-commerce
platform enables operators to offer secure access to mobile
money and create new revenue sources. IT
Table of Contents
October 2014
INTERNET TELEPHONY Congratulates
fter years of debate, unified communications

even today remains a hotly contested
term. But the companys that
consider themselves to be
within the UC space continue moving
forward with new, better, and more fullfeatured solutions -- often which have an
important mobile component.
2014
Here are some of the best and brightest

offerings on the UC solutions front.
Unified Communications Briefs

Cloud PBX & UC Forecast to Hit $12B by 2018
Infonetics Research analyst Diane Myers in a new report says
that while sales of premises-based PBX systems have been
stagnant to declining over the past few years, the market for
cloud services continues to expand with businesses worldwide
seeking out hosted alternatives. Hosted services seats, she
added, grew more than 20 percent worldwide in 2013, and
revenue is on track to grow 13 percent this year, with positive
activity in every major geographic region. Infonetics expects
continued strong worldwide growth for the cloud PBX and UC
market over the next 5 years, projecting it will reach $12 billion
in 2018 with 62.6 million seats in service.
Tadiran Intros New Version, Partners with Ingate
Tadiran Telecom recently introduced Version 2.3 of Aeonix, its software-based unified communications and collaboration platform.
The company also recently certified Ingates SIParator as its enterprise session border controller, which Tadiran Telecom will resell
as part of the solution related to Aeonix. New with Aeonix Version
2.3 are support for HTML5 on its dispatch console, which means it
can now run on any operating system and any device; security enhancements; new contact center functionality, so agents no longer
require desktop applications but instead can simply use the phone;
simplified installation; and support for PMS (or property manage52
ment systems), to meet the needs of the hospitality vertical. As for

the new relationship with Ingate, it will enable Tadiran Telecom to
provide customers with complete UC security for all their devices,
explained Mike Long, marketing manager. Lindsay Kintner, Tadiran
Telecoms vice president of product management, added that the
solution allows for failover for SIP trunk and SIP devices.
PanTerra Expands on Mobile
PanTerra Networks in August announced the addition of new
mobile functionality to its SmartBox cloud file-sharing and storage
service to deliver real-time collaboration and unified communications capabilities. SmartBox-UCC combines the functionality of the
companys Mobile UCC application with its SmartBox file-sharing
application for a more unified solution. Additionally, customers
will receive improved security features, including built-in multifactor authentication, in-transit/at-rest encryption and remote
blocking for additional IT peace of mind. The application is immediately available for Apple and Android operating systems.
iHub Taps GENBAND
British hosted communications supplier iHub has selected
GENBANDs NUViA cloud service, a UC offering that delivers
videoconferencing and collaboration, WebRTC, mobility, and
Table of Contents
Winners of the UC Excellence Awards

COMPANY
7signal
ADTRAN Inc.
BroadSoft Inc.
Digium Inc.
Estech Systems Inc. (ESI)
Fonality
Intermedia
IPitomy Communications
Rack-Soft Inc. 4PSA
Sonus Networks
Star2Star Communications
Votacall
PRODUCT
Sapphire System of Wi-Fi Performance Management
NetVanta 1235P/1535P Ethernet Switches with ActivReach
BroadSoft WebRTC
Switchvox Cloud
ESI SIP Trunking
Fonality Heads Up Display
Office in the Cloud
IPitomy Unified Communications Dedicated Virtual PBX System
VoipNow 3 OnDemand
SBC 5000 Series
Star2Star Unified Communications System
Votacall UCaaS
high-definition voice over IP. This strategic deployment follows

iHubs selection of GENBAND in 2013 to enhance the organizations SIP trunking and UC offerings.
Aussie Telco Takes UC Global
Telstra has launched a global cloud-based unified communications service it says enables businesses to communicate and
collaborate in real time regardless of their location around the
world. This is the offering the service provider launched in Australia last year in partnership with Cisco. Its now available across
four continents in 25 countries, running on Telstras worldwide
network, which extends to more than 2,000 points of presence.
Teliax, snom Come Together
The snom 7xx series desktop phones are interoperable with
Teliaxs VoIP management solution, the companies announced recently. snoms 710, 715, 720 and 760 endpoints have passed rigorous interoperability and integration testing by Teliax, qualifying
these endpoints as preferred devices for operation with Teliaxs
IVY voice management and service platform. The combinations of
snom endpoints with Teliaxs IVY platform allows enterprise and
Teliax reseller partners to efficiently configure, deploy, and manage business premises-based IP PBX or hosted VoIP services.
ShoreTel Updates Mobility

A major update to ShoreTel Mobility, version 8, enables
seamless mobile-enabled videoconferencing to ensure
employees can always stay connected with their colleagues
wherever they may be working. It has integration with
the ShoreTel Communicator desktop call-control suite, and
the new software introduces a virtualized ShoreTel Mobility Router so IT departments can easily mobile-enable
the company workforce to encourage collaboration and
productivity.
Telephone Numbers Endure Despite OTT
What is the future of the telephone number in a world in
which unified communications is increasingly moving to an
over-the-top model? That was the question posed during an
ITEXPO panel titled OTT and UC: The Future of the Telephone
Number. The answers from the panelists differed somewhat,
but all seemed to agree that until the industry decides to come
together on another common method of identification, the
phone number will live on. The panel included Craig Walker
of Firespotter Labs; Chris Carabello, senior director of product
marketing at Metaswitch; Scott Navratil, executive vice president of Vitelity; and Hugh Goldstein, vice president of strategic
alliances at Voxbone. IT
Table of Contents
October 2014
By Paula Bernier
Security
CIO Roundtable Reveals State, University

Leaders Thinking on Network Security
he federal government may be following our every

virtual move, but the state governments of Nevada
and Washington, as well as the University of Nevada
at Las Vegas, are surprisingly open in the freedom they grant
users on their networks, while still ensuring that important
data on those networks is secured.
That is the impression the CIO Roundtable

at the recent ITEXPO in Las Vegas left with
audience members, at least this audience member. The event featured David
Gustafson, CIO for the State of Nevada; Bill
Schrier, OCIO of the State of Washington;
and Lori Temple, vice provost for IT at UNLV.
UNLV has virtually no restrictions on
where users on its network can go on the
Internet, said Temple.
If you dial things down too far, you just
stifle innovation, she said, and thats not
just the case with education.
Speaking of innovation, there is some application creation happening even by govern-
54
ment employees, said Schrier. For example,

a police officer has created a mug shot
application that allows officers to more easily compare mug shots; a firefighter wrote
a Google Glass app to help with driver
navigation; and the City of Philadelphia is
encouraging city employees to create apps
and introduce them within 90 days.
So where are these government IT leaders
when it comes to thinking about, and
creating strategies and policies related to,
security?
Temple said her team focuses on securing
the applications available on the network.
She added that her group is also working
feverishly on identity management, to en-
Table of Contents
sure only people who are supposed to be

on the system are on it, and to ensure they
only see what they are supposed to see.
The ability to give different stakeholders
within government access to select information and only that information for which
they are authorized is also key, agreed
Schrier. For example, you want EMTs to be
able to access your medical records if you
have a heart attack, but the water department should not have access to it.
Gustafson said that a few years ago his
team was really struggling with how
to secure its network, which bad guys
were trying to get access to frequently.
Ultimately, he said, he realized that securing the network as he wanted to was
unrealistic. So, instead, his team focused
its efforts on protecting the data and assets that it, as a state entity, is required to
hold in the community trust.
My first and foremost priority is to secure
the data at all cost, he said. So I had to
change my thinking. IT
INDEX
Advertising Index
ANPI........................................................... back cover

anpi.com/partners
Mobile Payments Conference................................15

mobilepaymentconference.com
Contact Center Solutions

Global Online Community......................................19
http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/
Next Generation Communications

Global Online Community......................................23
http://next-generation-communications.tmcnet.com
Edgewater Networks................................................7
www.edgewaternetworks.com
SIP Print....................................................................27
www.sipprint.com
GENBAND................................................................17
www.genband.com/mobile
Sonus........................................................................29
www.sonus.net
Genesys Angel.........................................................31
Angel.com
Sprint........................................................................25
M2m.sprint.com/sprint2G
Grandstream...........................................................ibc
www.grandstream.com
VoIP Innovations.......................................................5
www.voipinnovations.com
iAgent Network.......................................................13
www.iagentnetwork.com
VoIP Logic..................................................................3
www.voiplogic.com
Ingate.......................................................................39
www.ingate.com
Yamaha fontel............................................................9
www.fontel.com
Interactive Intelligence...........................................11
purecloud.inin.com
Yealink......................................................................ifc
www.yealink.com
Call Recording
Hosted/Cloud VoIP & UC Roundup
OSS and Network Management
Convergence Corner
By Erik Linask
Enterprise SBCs The Race is On

With the continued growth of both SIP trunking and unified
communications, its hardly surprising to have seen the enterprise SBC market grow in parallel. In fact, the market has grown
steadily not only in terms of customers, but also vendors, with
well more than a dozen players in a space that not long ago
held only a small handful. On its way to a projected $1.6 billion
by 2018, the market reached $65 million in the second quarter
of this year, according to Infonetics Research. Not surprisingly,
the top tier of players, according to Infonetics, includes Cisco,
AudioCodes, Sonus, and Oracle, with Ingate and Edgewater
following closely in the second tier.
A few things stand out in the latest report, including AlcatelLucent being pulled out from the Others, presumably growing
in market share enough to warrant its own pie piece which is
no trivial pursuit in this growing market. The question remains
whether this is but a flash in the pan or if ALU can sustain
growth and become a major player. It appears that Infonetics is
waiting as well, before adding it to the so-called second tier.
The global enterprise SBC market is highly fragmented,
with vendor revenue share shifting rapidly
Cisco
Other
Cisco
AudioCodes
Sonus
Oracle
Sonus
Oracle
Alcatel-Lucent
2Q13
2Q14
Infonetics Research, Enterprise Session Border Controllers:

Quarterly Market Share, Size and Forecasts, August 2014
More interesting are AudioCodes and Sonus, which seem to

be slugging it out for much of the available business. Each has
gained significant market share in the past year, with AudioCodes effectively doubling its share in the past year, including
market-leading growth of 35 percent in the second quarter.
Along with Acme Packet (Oracle), the two are the recognizable names among Microsofts E-SBC partners. It shouldnt be
surprising, when you consider the relationship AudioCodes
has built with Microsoft and its recent announcements around
integration with Microsoft products, including One Voice for
Lync (its complete product and service portfolio designed to
simplify Lync deployment and use), One Box 365 (a turnkey
Lync solution for Office 365 users), and One Voice Operations
Center (a suite of Lync management applications for the One
Voice ecosystem).
56
One Box 365, for instance, also includes AudioCodes SBC code,
making it an easy way for integrators to bring Lync unified
communications to Office 365 shops which also seem to be
growing steadily. That, along with the network management
capabilities of One Voice Operations Center, makes a compelling
case for integrators who, as Borovsky explains, dont like to do
too much integration, but would rather work with a one-stop
shop with the integration already done.
Further to AudioCodes benefit is the large ecosystem of partners it
has built. Borovsky doesnt hesitate to point out that the companys
success, while largely driven of late by Microsoft, wouldnt be where
it is without partners like Interactive Intelligence, Genesys, BroadSoft,
and the dozens of other technology partners it has nurtured over the
years (the list reads like a whos who of communications).
Between the interop work and expanded portfolio, Borovsky
notes the market is seeing AudioCodes as a serious competitor,
whereas only three years ago the company would have been
considered an SBC wannabee by many.
Other
AudioCodes
AudioCodes Vice President of Marketing Nimrod Borovsky, while

quick in his acknowledgement that the relationship with Microsoft has been a key driver, also points out that AudioCodes has
built a reputation as the easy choice, because we leverage the
exact same software across our entire line, so even the lowerend platforms have the same features as the high-end.
Well, three years ago much of the market would have been
considered such, but the multi-faceted benefits of E-SBCs have
helped build the product category from what most would have
considered a two-horse race to a full field. As many predicted,
Oracle wasted little time losing market share, as it is clearly focusing on the high end of the market, which Borovsky believes
is the source of much of AudioCodes significant growth. The
same can likely be said for Sonus, which, while having its roots
in the service provider market, has reinvented its attention to its
enterprise business. Cisco, too, has lost some of its share, and
though it retains the overall market lead, Ive noted previously
that Ciscos market share is kind of like Pepsis share of soft
drink sales at NFL stadiums you just dont have a choice.
We are seeing Oracle on the decline, and we are taking a big
chunk of that business, says Borovksy. AudioCodes, Sonus,
and probably two or three others are competing for that share,
and the majority of our increase comes from where Acme Packet
is falling short delivering on customer expectations.
If the trend continues, Oracle and Cisco may find themselves
boxed in, while AudioCodes and Sonus could be on pace to go
head-to-head down the home stretch. IT
Table of Contents

IT Oct2014 PDF

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Descrizione originale:

Titolo originale

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

IT Oct2014 PDF

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Gaining an

Edgewater Networks Helps

Group Publisher and Editor-In-Chief,

INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine is published monthly

Conference Sales Director,

Subscribe FREE online at www.itmag.com

But the news that businesses continue to find

The Acer Aspire Switch 10

could pay up to $100 a year for the honor

It runs Flash, so all the challenges many

This brings us to competition with a laptop.

There are drawbacks. The laptop has on 2

Its worth noting there are far fewer apps

The Macbook Air is a premium laptop

REPRINTS AND LIST RENTALS

integrated publishing solutions

FOR LIST RENTALS

A Technology Marketing Publication,

Subscribe FREE online at www.itmag.com

Ask the SIP Trunk Expert

The Acer Aspire Switch 10

SIP Trunking and UC with Lync:

Bank Robbers, Cattle Thieves

FCC Takes Steps to Modernize

Hosted PBX: Network Monitoring

50 Birch Continues to Grow

48 GENBAND Offers a Taste of KANDY

51 Ericsson Acquires Billing Company

44 On Rads Radar: The WebRTC Craze

Cloud & Data Center

46 The Future of Cloud Services

54 CIO Roundtable Reveals State,

46 Cloud & Data Center Briefs

Network Infrastructure Investment

Conferencing vs. Representation,

Groundbreaking FCC Action:

Enterprise SBCs The Race is On

INTERNET TELEPHONY October 2014

Subscribe FREE online at www.itmag.com

Ask the SIP Trunk Expert

SIP Trunking and UC with Lync:

SIP traffic. Traditionally E-SBCs were seen as just providing NAT

The E-SBC serves many roles in a Lync deployment, as it does in

Microsoft has a rigorous certification process for E-SBCs. Certified

Another Lync requirement is the use of Fully Qualified Domain

Only a handful of Lync-certified E-SBCs have been successfully

E-SBCs can solve these problems. E-SBCs can provide a seamless

As Microsoft Lync gains market share, enterprises (and service

Steven Johnson is president of Ingate Systems (www.ingate.com).

INTERNET TELEPHONY October 2014

Subscribe FREE online at www.itmag.com

Bank Robbers, Cattle Thieves and

The surge of new technologies such as

unclear on how to secure the considerable

FCC Takes Steps to Modernize E-Rate Program

demand, funding will likely be prioritized

INTERNET TELEPHONY October 2014

service, 900/976 blocking, voicemail, and

Hosted PBX: Network Monitoring

a wealth of diagnostic data to quickly identify weaknesses via

If uptime in your hosted PBX service is king, then

Transparency: Once you have tools that