Advantages of the Avaya Software Communication System SCS

Unified communications (UC) simplifies how people connect with each other, and with applications, eliminating the challenge of disparate workforces and numerous devices and systems. Presence, real-time and near-real-time communications are unified into a single environment that enables more effective collaboration, faster decision making, and ultimately, accelerated business processes.

But as the traditional line between IT and communications continues to blur, companies are looking for a new type of solution to meet their communications requirements — a solution that is cost-effective, easy to use, support and manage and that will integrate seamlessly into an existing IT environment.

Now you can stop imagining — SCS is a unified communications solution that addresses all this for small and medium sized businesses, in a simple, easy-to use form factor. SCS not only enables you to use the communication device of your choice to reach who you want, when you want, it also allows you to communications-enable your web based applications. It’s a solution that can drive down total cost of ownership, provide you with a competitive edge and make life simpler.

Avaya introduces Software Communication System (SCS), a multi-award winning, innovative solution that will establish a new industry paradigm: simple and truly open unified
communications.

A call server that’s distinctly different

Based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the universal standard for communications interoperability, the future proof SCS has the power to accelerate communications and collaboration between employees, partners and customers.
This advanced yet easy-to-use solution provides robust unified communications capabilities, including secure presence and instant messaging, integrated voice conferencing, unified messaging, single number reachability (i.e., Simultaneous ringing or Find Me/Follow Me), desktop-based video conferencing, and application integration with Microsoft™ Outlook and IBM™ Lotus Notes™/ Sametime. Rounding out the SCS solution is a full suite of hard clients, soft phones and application plug-ins.

Saves time and boosts productivity

A robust suite of UC features can help save time and enhance employee productivity. In fact, research indicates that highly mobile, highly collaborative employees can save 30 to 60 minutes every day1 by deploying features such as unified messaging, presence and IM, and single number reachability.

Up to 52% Lower Total Cost of Ownership vs. the Competition

SCS helps you eliminate or reduce the expense of several ongoing costs, including outsourced conferencing fees, tele-worker costs (second line charges), real estate costs, legacy PBX maintenance costs and service provider charges (e.g., long distance, cellular, calling card and trunk connections). In fact, independent research studies have proven the Avaya SCS Total Cost of Ownership is up to 52% less than competing solutions from Cisco and ShoreTel2.

Unique in many ways

SCS includes several unique attributes that set it apart from other competitive solutions. It is a software-based solution that runs on industry-standard IT servers. Based on an open source foundation, it is entirely SIP-based. It’s simple to install, use and maintain, and allows businesses to perform their own adds, moves and changes. Additionally, SCS provides a full suite of UC features in one all-inclusive user fee. No additional hardware or application- centric licenses are required, which can lead to a significant reduction
in overall total cost of ownership.

Eliminates vendor lock-in to ensure an open future

SCS is unique in that it is developed in close collaboration with the global open source community. The value is that it allows for real-time peer review and access to instant feedback to improve SCS. It also helps Avaya stay connected with end users, partners and developers — evolving the solution based on their needs.

This open SIP-based architecture also gives customers the freedom of choice. Rather than being locked into proprietary hardware and handsets, businesses have the ability to build custom communications solutions that address their specific business needs. To facilitate deployment of open, interoperable solutions, SCS has been included as part of the Avaya Developer Program, which enables companies to conduct testing to attain recognition of the interoperability or compatibility which exists between the developer’s product and SCS.

The other unique attribute of the SCS design is that it has been developed using a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach. This means each communications feature is broken down into its own modular and open component. Individual applications (e.g., conferencing) can then be deployed independently on their own dedicated servers to increase reliability and scalability. In addition, each feature can integrate with other web-based applications — without impact to other features. It is through these open web services interfaces that web-savvy partners and customers can easily communications-enable their business processes and create new application mash-ups.

It’s all about simplicity — from start to finish

SCS offers top-to-bottom simplicity that’s virtually unmatched in the industry.

Packaging
The SCS package includes a fully integrated set of UC features that are bundled and available for one single user fee. Users receive all features and applications, including those that are typically more expensive (e.g., voice and video conferencing). With SCS, no additional core hardware or applications are required. And there are no additional license fees for features. It’s an all-inclusive structure that simplifies ordering and can dramatically improve total cost of ownership.

Installation
SCS installation follows best practices for call servers and is designed for efficient provisioning and configuration to minimize time spent on-site. SCS can be deployed on a variety of industry-leading hardware platforms and basic installation can be completed in a matter of minutes.

Administration
From an ongoing management perspective, SCS offers an intuitive user interface that allows users to do moves, adds and changes in-house. Adding a new user, for example, is a five-step process that takes just a couple of minutes.

Managing permissions is simple, thanks to a sophisticated subscriber management capability that allows you to put users/devices into groups and control access when required (e.g., disabling long-distance calls from lobby or lunchroom phones).

Intuitive applications
From an end-user perspective, an intuitive, integrated portal empowers employees to control and customize all UC applications with just a few clicks.

Smooth scaling
SCS can adapt and grow to keep pace with your changing business needs. Ideally suited for businesses with 50 to 250 employees, SCS can support growth for more than 1000 users.

No IT company is greener than Cisco

Greenpeace evaluation finds company doubled score from previous measure

By Cisco Subnet on Fri, 04/30/10 - 2:34am.

Cisco is the greenest IT company out there, according to the latest "Cool IT Leaderboard" from environmental activist and awareness group Greenpeace. Cisco doubled its score from the previous Greenpeace Leaderboard "by demonstrating the effectiveness of its greenhouse emissions-saving solutions," the group said.

Ericsson came in second; Google was sixth; Panasonic was last.

The latest version of the Leaderboard is Greenpeace's third evaluation of the climate leadership demonstrated by the global IT sector. It measures a company's overall green solutions - like smart grid, smart meters, home energy management, and carbon tracking software - carbon footprint and advocacy.

Greenpeace wants evidence that IT company's are "walking the talk" by not only developing solutions for their customers, but measuring and reporting their own carbon and energy savings potential.

"The sector is ramping up technological solutions to fight climate change," Greenpeace states. Some still have a ways to go, however.

"(Leaders are) demonstrating the potential of IT solutions to help reduce energy wastage and greenhouse gas emissions, while others seem unable to decide if IT climate solutions are a significant business opportunity or a mere marketing strategy," the group states. It notes that cloud computing, a major IT industry initiative, poses "a major challenge" to IT's positive contributions to climate control by centralizing compute power and resources in energy-hungry data centers.

What is the difference between Cisco Unity, Unity Connection and Unity Express

ttrentler on Thu, 04/29/2010 - 15:12

Cisco has three voicemail products that will work with CME, the UC500 and Unified Communications Manager.

A friend of mine at Global Knowledge, Joey DeWiele, goes through the differences in this short video.

Cisco SVP: Every Cisco Partner Needs To Understand Video

By Chad Berndtson, ChannelWeb

Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) is fond of touting video as the "killer app," and has for much of the past year been urging partners to invest in video strategies. In a move to drastically expand its own video presence in the channel, Cisco this month finished acquiring Tandberg, by most estimations the worldwide market share leader for videoconferencing.

Solution providers welcomed the deal for the muscle Cisco brings to the space, though with the Tandberg portfolio now exposed to the galaxy of Cisco partners, they also worry about squeezed margins for Tandberg-driven video deployments.

Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Group, and one of Cisco's top executives in charge of new and growing markets, sat down with ChannelWeb.com Networking Editor Chad Berndtson at this week's Cisco Partner Summit in San Francisco to hear more about why Tandberg is so significant an acquisition for Cisco and why video is crucial for every Cisco partner.

Video has been around for a while as a channel play but there are still a lot of folks out there who see traditional video endpoint re-sale and are only starting to understand the broader opportunity. How do you articulate that opportunity to them?

When it comes to video, we've been on this bandwagon for about three years and investing in this space for about five. But I think people are seeing this happening -- we have reached an inflection point. I don't seen every Cisco partner jumping on, but there are more customers asking for this, and I think we'll continue to see more and more interest from partners as well. If we over-distribute, that's not good, and we want to be smart about it. But I will say that Tandberg was a big, bold move that gives us an additional 1500 partners we didn't have before, partners that are big believers in video. They will have access now to bigger opportunities and also the ability to tie video to the network.

But even if you're just selling routing and switching, every partner needs to understand video and know that there is a play and know to make a choice whether they want to invest aggressively or just scale what they do today. That's their choice. The trend is inevitable, you can't argue with that. And one thing I didn't say [in De Beer's keynote] this morning is that we have consistently under-guessed the growth of video. We have been wrong every year, it's always exceeded our expectations.

It's been growing all a long, and we've been saying video is going to be the next big thing for so many years, but what's changed that makes this year 'the year'? Availability?

We entered this market on the very end and we invested a lot in creating TelePresence, which is the market name we used for high-end video conferencing, because we wanted to show customers that there is a better way than the remote control. It can be both a great experience and easy to use. We did that but our system has been very expensive. The big bold move with Tandberg is to round out the entire portfolio, starting with an HD webcam at $199 and all the way up to a full, three-screen TelePresence system. It's a transformational deal not just for Cisco but for the industry as a whole. Many partners have told me that and it's exciting for everyone involved. Everyone will benefit in a big way.

Why do you see Tandberg as such a good fit? They're the market share leader for sure, but there are other companies in the space with rich channel plays.

We looked at a lot of companies, and would say that beyond the table stakes of the technology, the leadership and the culture of Tandberg is so similar to Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO).

We never acquire any company for the technology they have today but for the people that can help us create the next generation of where we want to go. Tandberg fit that to a T. What was risky about this is that they're Norwegian and London-based, and we've been shy about acquiring big companies outside of where we are, more than a few time zones away. In fact, this is the first public company we ever bought outside the United States. We took that risk -- and the reason John [Chambers] and the board was willing to sign off -- was that both of these teams are passionate about culture. We have the best two teams in the world that believe in using this technology. I'm putting my two top leaders in TelePresence over in Europe for a year and some of their leaders are coming to San Jose for the first year so there will be some cross-pollination as well.

Some of your competitors are circling the wagons and looking at ways to entice channel business away from Cisco-Tandberg. Polycom is perhaps more of an apples-to-apples comparison with Tandberg, and LifeSize is a different animal, and one that would paint Cisco-Tandberg has having HD presence systems that are too expensive and thus unrealistic for many customers. How do you respond to that?

It depends on what they mean by expensive. If you're a business buyer, I wouldn't call $199 expensive. Tandberg combined with Cisco has a very complete product line from the very high end to the very low end, and we will continue to innovate and drive down price points.

One product we've talked about publicly but haven't announced is our home telepresence solutions. That play in the channel will not be to sell to consumers -- that will be through retail -- but it's a business-to-consumer play that's so attractive to our business customers. You're talking about millions of endpoints, not just a few thousand. If you can now deliver video and connect to your accountant, or your doctor, right into the home, it's a lot like what we saw with e-commerce in its early days. This is an e-services model delivered to your home.

In the channel, video became a services play a few years ago; you're not going to enter the market selling only endpoints anymore. Can you give some key examples of the play for VARs beyond basic video endpoint re-sale? Is it hosted services? A managed model?

I think they can go deeper than they have been going because in many cases, if you rewind 5 years, they were resellers of video conferencing. Now, they can work with customers to create new value by innovating to deliver new experiences. HD, the availability of the network, the fact that it's based on UC, these make it easy to transform experiences. A number of [partners] will go much deeper, and a number will go wider as well, picking up digital signage, or maybe video surveillance. The good ones will go not just deep but wide and connect, on a horizontal plane, these businesses as well. I think all of that will come into play, whether you add more specializations, both top and bottom line for partners.

As video also becomes more affordable for SMBs and the partners that service them, what are the plays there? I know we've talked before about managed video services through the cloud.

To expand a little on your previous question as well, services have to be part of the equation. You can't just resell the box, you really, truly have to deploy it the right way, and make sure the network is ready for it, then create the right experience that will truly solve the problem that customer has. It'll be a lot about how they can do business in a virtual model that helps them be more effective and helps them scale. That's where both the on-prem[ise] and/or the hosted solutions deliver. If you think of B-to-B services delivered by carriers it's very expensive, but with new options, it'll be a lot less expensive and there'll be opportunities for partners to take video outside the firewall for all companies.

We've heard a little bit about how the two channel models [Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) and Tandberg] will eventually converge, in about nine months time. Many Tandberg partners that don't also work with Cisco are concerned that with more exposure for the Tandberg portfolio, there's going to be unavoidable margin pressure. What do you tell them?

It'd be silly for us to destroy a Tandberg business model that's brought partner profitability. We have put in place very disciplined processes to ensure we don't disrupt that. We do have two different channel business models. We discount deeper versus Tandberg and our list pricing is higher, so what we're going to do is, if someone brings us a deal and pushes us for a Cisco-like discount on a Tandberg [product], the answer is going to be no. The net price for Tandberg is not going to change.

We're not going to over-distribute, either. We have now about 90 Cisco TelePresence partners, and Tandberg had 1,600 partners. About 50 Cisco TelePresence partners were Tandberg already, so we're only adding a net of about 40 additional partners. I'm not saying we won't add any additional partners but if we do it will be on a carefully selected basis.

OK, so for partners who are selected, is there a process in place for picking them? Is it folks specialized in UC? Service providers?

It could be all of the above, though I think UC partners would be the natural. But video is a very different animal than voice. It's very important that we attract the right partners with the right mindset. Our focus is not going to be growing the overall number of partners, but rather to invest in the partners we have to make them really successful. If we have a region in the world where we don't have enough coverage, we will recruit. But Tandberg operated globally and so does Cisco, so there aren't a whole lot of gaps to fill. We feel over the next year we have more than sufficient capacity to absorb the demand we've seen.

We heard at Partner Summit that Cisco will be introducing a specialization for video. Can you talk about what that will entail?

It's going to center around the broader video play and include the combined portfolio of TelePresence and Tandberg. We want people to start thinking more holistically about video and break down the silos. That's where we think the biggest value for customers will lie.

Will Cisco look to make additional acquisitions in video? I mean, you're always on the lookout, right, but is that a priority right now?

We're always on the lookout. Obviously I can't comment on anything that hasn't been announced, but as you know, that's all part of our model, so if we have a gap, we will look to either build or acquire and make the best decision for the business at the time. There's nothing that's a burning priority for us at this time. We've got a pretty big bite to swallow right now.

Anything else you can tell me about home telepresence at the moment?

We are in trials, and you will hear more during John [Chambers'] keynote [Thursday]. All we can say is we're very excited about it. It's going to be a home run product for us, I think, and will tie directly into our strategy. I can't wait for Christmas to come.

Nortel Avaya Software Communication System SCS for educational institutions

Education institutions are faced with exciting opportunities as well as numerous complex challenges. College and university leaders are under intense competition to attract students. Primary and secondary education leaders are struggling to meet the needs and interests of students and teachers while facing budget cutbacks. Education decision-makers agree that technology is the enabler to transform learning and empower faculty and staff to be more effective, but they strugle to find the funding and resources required. Of course, it doesn’t end there — schools and campuses must be safe; protecting students, staff and physical resources is paramount.

One of the ways that educational institutions can meet these challenges is by deploying a cost-effective unified communications (UC) solution that can empower staff to be more efficient as it transforms teaching by giving students the flexibility to learn anytime from anywhere. UC solutions based on an open architecture — such as the Avaya Software Communication System (SCS) — bring unified communications to a new level by being able to integrate communications with existing web-based educational tools and processes, such as learning management systems.
The Avaya Software Communication System is a scalable, easy to manage, user-friendly unified communications software solution.Based on open standards using SIP, the Avaya SCS provides powerful and extensive UC capabilities, including secure presence and IM, integrated voice conferencing, unified messaging, find single number reachability (i.e. simultaneous ringing or Find Me / Follow Me), desktop-based video conferencing and integration with Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes/Sametime. Additionally, SCS’s open architecture allows educational intuitions to create their own custom application ecosystem to meet their unique requirements. Unlike competitive solutions, SCS has a cost-effective packaging solution in which all features and functionality are offered in a single per-user license. Furthermore, all applications run on a single standard IT server, for a feature-rich solution delivered at a compelling total cost of ownership.

The Avaya SCS solution is complemented by Avaya data networking switches and routers to provide a comprehensive and extremely costeffective, energy-efficient communication solution delivering excellent service to educational institutions.

The SCS value proposition for education Lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with ongoing cost control.

SCS has been third-party validated to deliver the lowest TCO across leading UC vendors. Specifically, InfoTech Research (July 2009) found the cost of Avaya SCS was 33 percent to 52 percent lower than Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager and 18 percent to 50 percent less than ShoreTel’s Unified Communications System. This allows educational institutions to direct that cost savings to other IT projects or to staffing and other critical programs.
Migration to SCS can also lead to ongoing cost reduction and cost savings. In many scenarios, a fullyloaded SCS deployment can be less costly than recurring maintenance fees associated with a legacy PBX. Also, with SCS’s integrated SIP trunking capabilities, trunking costs can be reduced by migrating digital PRI trunks to more cost-effective SIP trunks. Additionally, with SCS meet-me conferencing capabilities and integrated softphones for every user, third-party conferencing, long distance and calling card expensescan be reduced or eliminated. Based on customer and partner feedback, the payback period for an SCS solution can be as little as six months.

Improved efficiency for staff, teachers and faculty

SCS makes teachers and faculty more efficient by providing a full suite of UC applications that enhance individual productivity. Using SCS’s Find Me /Follow Me feature, teachers and faculty can have a single phone number and be reached wherever they are. Teachers and faculty can also share best practices, get mentoring from a colleague, or remotely tutor a student through SCS’s meet-me conferencing capabilities and integrated video conferencing capabilities — which are provided to every user at no extra charge. Furthermore, using IM, presence and click-to-call from SCS’s softphone or email application, teachers and faculty can get expert opinions instantly, as well as inform students about their accessibility. With a web-based management system, true plug-and-play capabilities for phones, softphones and gateways, and intuitive “self-controlled” end-user applications, SCS is simple to implement, manage and administer. Adding new users and phones — or making adjustments to existing phones — takes just a couple of clicks and can be completed in minutes, dramatically increasing the efficiency of your IT department.

Transforms the learning experience while helping institutions of higher education attract and retain students.

Using unified communications, students can be tutored remotely via conferencing, so learning is no longer confined to the classroom. Through SCS federation with popular IM platforms, such as GoogleTalk, students can see if their teachers or professors, using SCS, are online — improving teacher and faculty accessibility to their student population.
By utilizing SCS’s advanced open Web 2.0 technologies — e.g., SOAP, REST and WSDL — there is a tremendous opportunity to integrate communications into the education system’s web-based application environment to deliver converged services with minimal manual overhead and cost. For example, Avaya SCS can be used to communications-enable popular student web sites with click-to-call capabilities, allowing them to get access to the right staff member immediately. SCS can also be integrated with open learning management systems, allowing professors and teachers to give detailed voice and video feedback to students on completed projects.

Optimal communications platform for student development projects.

The open web-based architecture also allows SCS to be easily incorporated into student development projects to help enhance IT education. Some examples of projects that students could work on include writing a new IM platform to federate with SCS, writing an application to initiate click-to-call capabilities from a web site or writing a new collaboration application for SCS. Because SCS is based on open source code, students have the opportunity to tap into SCS’s open source community (SIP Foundry1) to learn from other like minded individuals around the globe.Working on these projects allows students to expand their expertise within an industry ecosystem to prepare for future careers in software and the communications industry.

Improved responsiveness to E911 calls.

Safety is top of mind today for schools and campuses everywhere. In addition to a suite of features designed to keep the voice network secure, SCS also offers alarm notification for emergency calls. As soon as an emergency number is dialed, the SCS alarm server can send email (or in the future, SMS) to a previously designated group such as a local emergency response team, who can then provide invaluable assistance until the police, fire or ambulance arrives.

SCS is a future-proof solution.

Standards-based and designed with a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA)development methodology, SCS easily integrates into third-party applications for a flexible, future-proof solution. With SCS’s open source foundation, educational institutions can create their own educational ecosystem with other leading open source application vendors such as Sakai, Zimbra Dim Dim and Skype — all commonly used in higher education institutions. With SCS’s built-in flexibility, educational institutions get a solution that links applications and communications together and allows them to evolve the SCS system to meet future requirements.

Education made simple.

When it comes to affordable unified communications solutions that reduce costs, enhance productivity and transform learning, look no further than Avaya — a company that has been delivering integrated communications solutions for decades, and continues to lead the market in unified communications.

Telepresence at a Turning Point with New Opportunities for Service Providers and Systems Integrators

LONDON - 28 April 2010 - The unique benefits offered by telepresence - further highlighted by the enforced ground stop of European aviation in April - has attracted growing interest and increased sales. However, rapid development in the capabilities of videoconferencing systems and Internet protocol (IP) networks over the last three years is creating alternative means to deliver these highly valued benefits. Videoconferencing products and custom solutions will more frequently present the value proposition of the immersive-user experience, thereby creating further opportunities for service providers and systems integrators.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.conferencing.frost.com), Telepresence Global Market, estimates the market value of $396.2 million for 2009, and forecasts this to reach $825.9 million in 2015. The visual collaboration endpoints covered in this research are both ready-built telepresence room solutions, and kits of telepresence component parts that are used by third parties to construct customized telepresence room solutions.

"The effectiveness of the latest technologies and the impact of the global economic downturn are impelling businesses to re-assess visual collaboration such as video telephony, videoconferencing and telepresence as viable solutions to facilitate reduced operations costs and create new sources of productivity. The volcano ash clouds from Iceland are just the latest in a long line of issues that have impacted business travel," says Frost & Sullivan Principle Analyst Dominic Dodd. "Telepresence in particular, has played a pivotal role over the last two to three years in helping build greater awareness and in re-focussing executive-level attention on visual collaboration."

Telepresence offers a unique proposition that can deliver effective and reliable visual communications. Its development and growth in popularity parallels advancements in other forms of visual collaboration, notably the rapid emergence of high definition videoconferencing and managed service, which together, will eventually challenge the telepresence space.

Visual collaboration is also an essential component of unified communications (UC). The technological and industrial structural changes, which are still playing out, are part of a process of fully integrating all forms of visual collaboration into the wider UC portfolio of products and services.

Despite the rising awareness about the benefits offered by immersive telepresence solutions, the combined impacts of the recession and the increasing power of high definition videoconferencing are causing prospective buyers to move more cautiously. Additionally, the majority of telepresence systems continue to rely on significant network bandwidth and quality of service management to perform up to their maximum potential. Globally, reasonably priced and accessible network and managed services remain patchy.

"There is growing opportunity for visual collaboration in general – being driven by an irresistible combination of technological developments and increasing customer need," explains Dodd. "While telepresence can uniquely offer a number of attractive customer benefits, there are concerns about the cost and availability of the network required to support it, and also how effectively it may work with other parts of a customer's video estates."

Visual collaboration endpoints are expected to fare well in the long term. Although the product format by which immersive telepresence is delivered is likely to change, the overall demand for its unique features and benefits will continue to grow. The emerging custom telepresence solutions segment is expected to gain further importance over the next three to four years with several opportunities for systems integrators, visual collaboration applications developers and managed services providers.

"While the latest research indicates that the market for today's ready-built systems will ultimately reach its upper-limit within the next five years, it also shows how growth demand for the immersive experience can accelerate as it is fed by other product sets such as high definition videoconferencing and custom telepresence solutions," concludes Dodd.

If you are interested in more information on this study, please send an e-mail to Joanna Lewandowska, Corporate Communications, at joanna.lewandowska@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail address, company website, city, state and country.

Telepresence Global Market is part of the Conferencing & Collaboration Growth Partnership Services programme, which also includes research in the following markets: unified communications, visual collaboration and conferencing services. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 40 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit http://www.frost.com.

Telepresence Global Market
M46C - 64

Contact:

Joanna Lewandowska
Corporate Communications – Europe
P: +48 22 390 41 46
E: joanna.lewandowska@frost.com

http://www.frost.com

Cisco SVP: Every Cisco Partner Needs To Understand Video

By Chad Berndtson, ChannelWeb]
2:46 AM EDT Thu. Apr. 29, 2010

Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) is fond of touting video as the "killer app," and has for much of the past year been urging partners to invest in video strategies. In a move to drastically expand its own video presence in the channel, Cisco this month finished acquiring Tandberg, by most estimations the worldwide market share leader for videoconferencing.

Solution providers welcomed the deal for the muscle Cisco brings to the space, though with the Tandberg portfolio now exposed to the galaxy of Cisco partners, they also worry about squeezed margins for Tandberg-driven video deployments.

Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Group, and one of Cisco's top executives in charge of new and growing markets, sat down with ChannelWeb.com Networking Editor Chad Berndtson at this week's Cisco Partner Summit in San Francisco to hear more about why Tandberg is so significant an acquisition for Cisco and why video is crucial for every Cisco partner.

Video has been around for a while as a channel play but there are still a lot of folks out there who see traditional video endpoint re-sale and are only starting to understand the broader opportunity. How do you articulate that opportunity to them?

When it comes to video, we've been on this bandwagon for about three years and investing in this space for about five. But I think people are seeing this happening -- we have reached an inflection point. I don't seen every Cisco partner jumping on, but there are more customers asking for this, and I think we'll continue to see more and more interest from partners as well. If we over-distribute, that's not good, and we want to be smart about it. But I will say that Tandberg was a big, bold move that gives us an additional 1500 partners we didn't have before, partners that are big believers in video. They will have access now to bigger opportunities and also the ability to tie video to the network.

But even if you're just selling routing and switching, every partner needs to understand video and know that there is a play and know to make a choice whether they want to invest aggressively or just scale what they do today. That's their choice. The trend is inevitable, you can't argue with that. And one thing I didn't say [in De Beer's keynote] this morning is that we have consistently under-guessed the growth of video. We have been wrong every year, it's always exceeded our expectations.

It's been growing all a long, and we've been saying video is going to be the next big thing for so many years, but what's changed that makes this year 'the year'? Availability?

We entered this market on the very end and we invested a lot in creating TelePresence, which is the market name we used for high-end video conferencing, because we wanted to show customers that there is a better way than the remote control. It can be both a great experience and easy to use. We did that but our system has been very expensive. The big bold move with Tandberg is to round out the entire portfolio, starting with an HD webcam at $199 and all the way up to a full, three-screen TelePresence system. It's a transformational deal not just for Cisco but for the industry as a whole. Many partners have told me that and it's exciting for everyone involved. Everyone will benefit in a big way.

Why do you see Tandberg as such a good fit? They're the market share leader for sure, but there are other companies in the space with rich channel plays.

We looked at a lot of companies, and would say that beyond the table stakes of the technology, the leadership and the culture of Tandberg is so similar to Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO).

We never acquire any company for the technology they have today but for the people that can help us create the next generation of where we want to go. Tandberg fit that to a T. What was risky about this is that they're Norwegian and London-based, and we've been shy about acquiring big companies outside of where we are, more than a few time zones away. In fact, this is the first public company we ever bought outside the United States. We took that risk -- and the reason John [Chambers] and the board was willing to sign off -- was that both of these teams are passionate about culture. We have the best two teams in the world that believe in using this technology. I'm putting my two top leaders in TelePresence over in Europe for a year and some of their leaders are coming to San Jose for the first year so there will be some cross-pollination as well.

Some of your competitors are circling the wagons and looking at ways to entice channel business away from Cisco-Tandberg. Polycom is perhaps more of an apples-to-apples comparison with Tandberg, and LifeSize is a different animal, and one that would paint Cisco-Tandberg has having HD presence systems that are too expensive and thus unrealistic for many customers. How do you respond to that?

It depends on what they mean by expensive. If you're a business buyer, I wouldn't call $199 expensive. Tandberg combined with Cisco has a very complete product line from the very high end to the very low end, and we will continue to innovate and drive down price points.

One product we've talked about publicly but haven't announced is our home telepresence solutions. That play in the channel will not be to sell to consumers -- that will be through retail -- but it's a business-to-consumer play that's so attractive to our business customers. You're talking about millions of endpoints, not just a few thousand. If you can now deliver video and connect to your accountant, or your doctor, right into the home, it's a lot like what we saw with e-commerce in its early days. This is an e-services model delivered to your home.

In the channel, video became a services play a few years ago; you're not going to enter the market selling only endpoints anymore. Can you give some key examples of the play for VARs beyond basic video endpoint re-sale? Is it hosted services? A managed model?

I think they can go deeper than they have been going because in many cases, if you rewind 5 years, they were resellers of video conferencing. Now, they can work with customers to create new value by innovating to deliver new experiences. HD, the availability of the network, the fact that it's based on UC, these make it easy to transform experiences. A number of [partners] will go much deeper, and a number will go wider as well, picking up digital signage, or maybe video surveillance. The good ones will go not just deep but wide and connect, on a horizontal plane, these businesses as well. I think all of that will come into play, whether you add more specializations, both top and bottom line for partners.

As video also becomes more affordable for SMBs and the partners that service them, what are the plays there? I know we've talked before about managed video services through the cloud.

To expand a little on your previous question as well, services have to be part of the equation. You can't just resell the box, you really, truly have to deploy it the right way, and make sure the network is ready for it, then create the right experience that will truly solve the problem that customer has. It'll be a lot about how they can do business in a virtual model that helps them be more effective and helps them scale. That's where both the on-prem[ise] and/or the hosted solutions deliver. If you think of B-to-B services delivered by carriers it's very expensive, but with new options, it'll be a lot less expensive and there'll be opportunities for partners to take video outside the firewall for all companies.

We've heard a little bit about how the two channel models [Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO) and Tandberg] will eventually converge, in about nine months time. Many Tandberg partners that don't also work with Cisco are concerned that with more exposure for the Tandberg portfolio, there's going to be unavoidable margin pressure. What do you tell them?

It'd be silly for us to destroy a Tandberg business model that's brought partner profitability. We have put in place very disciplined processes to ensure we don't disrupt that. We do have two different channel business models. We discount deeper versus Tandberg and our list pricing is higher, so what we're going to do is, if someone brings us a deal and pushes us for a Cisco-like discount on a Tandberg [product], the answer is going to be no. The net price for Tandberg is not going to change.

We're not going to over-distribute, either. We have now about 90 Cisco TelePresence partners, and Tandberg had 1,600 partners. About 50 Cisco TelePresence partners were Tandberg already, so we're only adding a net of about 40 additional partners. I'm not saying we won't add any additional partners but if we do it will be on a carefully selected basis.

OK, so for partners who are selected, is there a process in place for picking them? Is it folks specialized in UC? Service providers?

It could be all of the above, though I think UC partners would be the natural. But video is a very different animal than voice. It's very important that we attract the right partners with the right mindset. Our focus is not going to be growing the overall number of partners, but rather to invest in the partners we have to make them really successful. If we have a region in the world where we don't have enough coverage, we will recruit. But Tandberg operated globally and so does Cisco, so there aren't a whole lot of gaps to fill. We feel over the next year we have more than sufficient capacity to absorb the demand we've seen.

We heard at Partner Summit that Cisco will be introducing a specialization for video. Can you talk about what that will entail?

It's going to center around the broader video play and include the combined portfolio of TelePresence and Tandberg. We want people to start thinking more holistically about video and break down the silos. That's where we think the biggest value for customers will lie.

Will Cisco look to make additional acquisitions in video? I mean, you're always on the lookout, right, but is that a priority right now?

We're always on the lookout. Obviously I can't comment on anything that hasn't been announced, but as you know, that's all part of our model, so if we have a gap, we will look to either build or acquire and make the best decision for the business at the time. There's nothing that's a burning priority for us at this time. We've got a pretty big bite to swallow right now.

Anything else you can tell me about home telepresence at the moment?

We are in trials, and you will hear more during John [Chambers'] keynote [Thursday]. All we can say is we're very excited about it. It's going to be a home run product for us, I think, and will tie directly into our strategy. I can't wait for Christmas to come.

Alianza Launches Accelerate VoIP Ecosystem

Alianza, a provider of hosted voice solutions for 4G wireless broadband operators, announced the launch of Accelerate VoIP Ecosystem.

The ecosystem is created to bring together the industry’s leading providers of technologies, products and services together to accelerate service providers’ success with voice over Internet Protocol or “VoIP,” the company said.

Initially the ecosystem includes 20 key market leaders such as Alvarion, Airspan (News - Alert) Networks, Aptilo Networks, Cisco Systems, Huawei Technologies, Level 3 Communications, Polycom, Oracle Corporation, TNISolutions, 360networks, Global Crossing, AT&T (News - Alert) and so on.

Company officials say Alianza’s hosted voice platform enables wireless broadband operators to quickly deliver market leading voice services and applications to residential, small-medium business and enterprise customers.

All of the individual platform components are fully integrated with each other to maximize administrative efficiencies, minimize total cost of operation, and optimize end-user experience.

Alianza (News - Alert)'s set of features and applications maximizes service provider's competitive advantage and gives operators the tools needed to seize new market opportunities and provide sustainable growth, company officials added.

“The Accelerate VoIP Ecosystem is creating an open forum for cooperation, collaboration and sharing of best practices specifically dedicated to voice over 4G networks.” Scott Bell, Alianza’s chief technology officer and chairman of the WiMAX (News - Alert) Forum’s Voice Task Force, said. “All core platform components are unified into a single interface, providing a seamless back-office experience that is fully customizable.”

The Accelerate VoIP Ecosystem consists of four segments: 4G Network, Device, Carrier and Integration. These four segments have direct impact on the joint customers’ success with voice. .

Alianza uses latest technology and industry-based standards to build the VoIP. Advantages of using Alianza are maximum profitability, outsourced development and maintenance, unmatched speed to the market and peace of mind, according to the company.

“By working together and contributing to the Accelerate VoIP Ecosystem, all members will be better equipped to leverage past accomplishments and help optimize service providers’ ongoing success with voice,” Brian Beutler (News - Alert), Alianza chief executive officer, said.

Company officials said that the success of launching of VoIP is the teamwork from their multiple vendors.

Early last year Alianza announced it has been selected to provide hosted VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services for Transworld Network and Zing Networks, a TMCnet report said.

To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page

Interop: Avaya breathes new life into Nortel enterprise

Company officials insist they are committed to data business

LAS VEGAS -- Avaya's data networking business – obtained from its recent $900 million acquisition of Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions group – grew 30% in the company's second quarter, while its government business grew 15%, indications that momentum has returned following Nortel’s bankruptcy.

At last year's Interop conference, Nortel enterprise chief Joel Hackney said customers had "hit the pause button" while Nortel sorted through its bankruptcy restructuring. But things are now looking up after the Avaya purchase and the company plans to ride the wave.

"Avaya is committed to the (Nortel) data business," said Hackney, now an Avaya senior vice president and president of the company's Government Solutions and Data Business, during an interview at the Interop conference this week. "We've demonstrated innovation is still alive."

With that, Hackney gave a high-level overview of the raft of new products Avaya unveiled this week, including the next-generation Ethernet Routing Switch 8800, the Advanced Gateway 2330 – which is designed to take on Cisco's ISR branch routers – and the Wireless LAN 8100 controller for 802.11n deployments.

"You'll hear again from us in the fall," Hackney promised, adding that his focus will be on networking. "We're not trying to be a server or storage company," a thinly-veiled jab at competitors Cisco and HP.

Indeed, Nortel's data networking business may have found new life at Avaya even though some industry pundits suggested Avaya would be better off divesting those operations. At Nortel, the enterprise switching and routing group – mostly obtained from 1998's acquisition of Bay Networks – always felt "underneath" the carrier business, Hackney said.

But enterprise is the sole focus at Avaya and advances on the data networking side will continue, he said. Examples include the ability of the Advanced Gateway 2330 to go into Avaya's installed base as a SIP gateway from VoIP, yet attain full routing capabilities through an optional software upgrade.

This is the inverse of Cisco's ISR, which goes into branch offices first as a router, and then attain VoIP and other capabilities through upgrades, Hackney said.

Another is the eventual ability of the 8100 WLAN controller to bifurcate its forwarding and control plane capabilities to handle scaling of 802.11n access points. As the number of 802.11n access points grow, the controller can pass off packet forwarding to Avaya's 8800 core, and 4500 and 5500 edge switches while retaining control intelligence for the 802.11n traffic.

This allows the customer to avoid buying more controllers as the WLAN scales, Avaya officials said. This capability for the switches and WLAN controller will emerge in the second half of 2011, they said.

In about two years, the control capability will be offered as a software CD for servers, the Avaya officials said.

Meanwhile, the VSP 9000 data center core switch Nortel unveiled at last year’s Interop is in controlled release with a handful of large customers who are testing the switch, Hackney said. It will be generally available in the second half of this year, he said.

Four Cisco Innovations tagged as Finalists for Best of Interop 2010 award

It is Interop week at Las Vegas – a veritable Internetworking hotbed and dubbed the IT event of the year. Amidst the jugglers, showgirls, freebies and gizmos (I’m talking about the exhibition floor here :-)), the amount of innovation on display can be quite staggering. While a majority of topics in the conference this year are trending towards virtualization and cloud computing, it is clear that the entire Enterprise network is evolving significantly, as businesses add video, mobility and Web 2.0 to their networks.

Speeds and feeds are still important. But also important is being able to deliver compelling business value. Can a new innovation continue to deliver on performance, while increasing uptime, saving energy, providing better manageability and in the process save cost, reduce TCO and increase productivity? Mapping a technical capability or technology advancement to business impact is important, and it is what our customers are looking for.

In fact, the Best of Interop award epitomizes this by recognizing exhibitors with innovations that have the most significant technical impact on their segment and are helping to move business technology forward.

This year, Cisco has four major innovations that have been selected as “Best of Interop Finalists 2010”. These include:

• Cisco Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV) – Data Center and Storage category
• Cisco WAAS Mobile for Public Clouds – Performance Optimization category
• Cisco ASA 5500 Series Version 8.3 – Security category
• Cisco CleanAir Technology – Wireless and Mobility category

The Cisco CleanAir Technology was actually announced on the day of Interop. A few other announcements are pending. The winners are going to be announced tomorrow, but it has been a great ride thus far to be picked as Finalists in these categories.

By: Shashi Kiran

Ericsson to Acquire Nortel's Stake in LG-Nortel

Ericsson, a provider of technology and services to telecom operators, has entered into a share purchase agreement to acquire Nortel's majority shareholding in LG-Nortel, the joint venture of LG Electronicsand Nortel Networks.

The transaction however is subject to customary regulatory approvals.

Officials with Ericsson (News - Alert) said that this acquisition will significantly expand company’s footprint in the Korean market and provide Ericsson with a well established sales channel and strong R&D capability in the country.

Company officials said that the acquisition will also provide Ericsson with an industrial base and the ability to build new customer relationships.

The joint venture includes important contracts with Korean operators such as KT (News - Alert), LG Telecom and SK Telecom.

The new joint venture, to be known as LG-Ericsson, will become one of the major telecom players in Korea.

"Korea is one of the largest telecom markets with advanced end-user demand of new services. A strengthening of our position through the collaboration with our new partner LG Electronics will enhance our position for future technology shifts such as LTE," said Hans Vestberg (News - Alert), president and CEO of Ericsson.

Yong Nam, vice chairman and CEO of LG Electronics said Ericsson will provide global industry experience and technical expertise that will benefit both customers and employees.

“We look forward to a fruitful future collaboration," said Nam.

Cisco Extends Security Leadership With Advances in Cloud Protection

Enhanced Web Reporting and Data-Loss Prevention for E-mail Build on Secure Borderless Network Architecture

LONDON - April 28, 2010 - Cisco today continued its momentum around cloud protection and the Cisco® Secure Borderless Network architecture by introducing significant enhancements to its cloud security platform. The company today introduced best-of-breed e-mail and Web security services that, when combined with Cisco's leading global threat intelligence resources and strategic investments, deliver stronger cloud security for enterprise users.

Many businesses are demanding cloud-based collaboration and communications solutions that provide mobile workforces with the ability to access vital data anytime, anywhere and from any device. Naturally, this magnitude of collaboration and communication carries increased security risks, because much of the network access happens outside the traditional corporate firewall. To address these concerns, Cisco is introducing the always-on cloud-based Cisco IronPort^TM Email Data Loss Prevention and Encryption and Cisco ScanSafe Web Intelligence Reporting. These services offer enterprises more flexibility for their security solutions, reducing management requirements, stabilizing costs, providing control over the network with better visibility, and maintaining compliance with regulations.

Cisco's most recent enhancements to its cloud security offerings include:

• Cisco ScanSafe Web Intelligence Reporting – WIRe is a business intelligence platform developed by ScanSafe, which was acquired by Cisco in December 2009. WIRe gives enterprises insight into how their Web resources are being used, focusing on ensuring that business-critical applications are not being affected by non-business-related traffic. In a matter of seconds, WIRe can deliver detailed user-level information and provide extensive information about Web communications activities. More than 80 predefined reports are available, and WIRe enables activities to be reported and filtered by 87 different attributes, including search terms and employee bandwidth usage over time. By clearly seeing the types of traffic coming into and exiting the network, enterprises can have a high degree of confidence that their corporate information is highly secure and that all malware and inappropriate content has been blocked.
• Cloud-based Cisco IronPort Email Data Loss Prevention and Encryption – Cisco's cloud e-mail data-loss prevention solution utilizes the power of Cisco Cloud Security Services to help protect outbound e-mail in the cloud, helping enable customers to meet compliance requirements with a comprehensive, accurate and simple-to-use solution. This data-loss prevention and encryption solution is designed for enterprises that require high levels of protection of their sensitive data but do not want to manage the infrastructure themselves. Additionally, it provides customers with hosted mailboxes as well as the advantage of regulating compliance and acceptable-use policies. The solution offers more than 100 predefined policies related to global compliance, regulatory compliance, regional laws, intellectual property protection and acceptable use. A powerful in-depth scanning engine examines 150 parameters, scanning files within files and analyzing the proximity of keywords, which can result in a false-positive rate of less than one in 1 million. Providing integrated encryption as a remediation option solidifies the strength and value of this unique offering.

Cisco's Investment in Cloud Security

In support of its Secure Borderless Network architecture, Cisco has constructed one of the industry's most powerful cloud security deployments. Cisco operates more than 30 global data centers, which serve customers in 100 countries with extreme reliability. In fact, Cisco customers have enjoyed more than seven consecutive years of near 100 percent uptime. Cisco cloud security solutions handle massive amounts of activity each day, including 2.8 billion reputation look-ups, 2.5 billion Web requests and the detection of more than 250 billion spam messages. The Cisco IronPort Anti-Spam solution is in more than 235 million seats with organizations all over the world. These solutions are supported by automated intelligence and by 100 engineers dedicated to ensuring that Cisco cloud security is there to fortify customer networks.

Supporting Quotes:

• Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security, Infonetics Research

"Demand for content security services delivered via software as a service has skyrocketed worldwide during the past year, despite the lasting effects of the global economic meltdown. The cloud security market will continue to grow as organizations of all sizes assess their risk from security threats of all types and seek solutions that are not as complex as historical security offerings for managing a highly dispersed workforce that connects to the network using a variety of devices. We anticipate that the strong interest in cloud security will be a key driver in the significant growth in the overall managed security services market over the next five years."

• Tom Gillis, vice president and general manager, Security Technology business unit, Cisco

"The cloud is a critical component of Cisco's architectural approach, including its Secure Borderless Network architecture. Securing the cloud is highly challenging. But it is one of the top challenges that the industry must rise to meet as enterprises increasingly demand the flexibility, accessibility and ease of management that cloud-based applications offer for their mobile and distributed workforces. With our industry-leading security solutions and threat-information resources as a foundation, Cisco's cloud security products provide the visibility, experience and tools to help protect enterprises' critical and proprietary data."

• Paul Moorman, IT strategist at NewPage Corp.

"With Cisco's WIRe, we have been able to quickly and efficiently analyze our Web usage, which gives us better visibility into our business and our bandwidth needs. Now we are able to pinpoint exactly how and where our bandwidth is being used, and take action to prevent access to individual websites or target users who may be accessing inappropriate content."

• Eric Dumas, networks and systems manager, ID Logistics

• "In our line of business, we must be absolutely certain that our data is secure. Cisco's cloud e-mail data-loss protection solution provides us with the assurance that our cloud-based e-mail and our corporate data have the industry's best protection."

Cisco plays up Borderless, CleanAir at Interop

Executive's keynote highlights initiatives to "transform" networking

HP's Marius Haas used his Interop keynote address to push his company's transformative networking and IT capabilities. Cisco did the same when it was its turn.

Keynoter Brett Galloway, senior vice president of Cisco's wireless, security and routing group, said the company's Borderless Networks strategy has the potential to transform the way companies collaborate and react to business change. Borderless Networks is Cisco's access-anything-anywhere initiative and the umbrella marketing theme for its new enterprise products.

Comparing what's available today vs. what was innovative 16 years ago at Interop, Galloway said we take much for granted in our new Internet-enabled, mobile world. He said we could not conceive back then what we can do now - and that much of the innovation is available at our homes and not at our workplace.

With that, he gave a demonstration of Cisco Virtual Office and its ability to deliver "seamless" mobility between smartphones and laptops while an employee is working from home.

Galloway and an associate also demonstrated Cisco's new CleanAir RF interference avoidance products for wireless networks. CleanAir-enabled access points and Cisco's Wireless Control System Navigator application (WCS) show what's happening in the RF environment around the WLAN and how to mitigate potential interference from appliances like cordless phones and microwave ovens. WCS helps pinpoint where those interference sources actually are.

Borderless Networks and CleanAir can make companies and their workers more nimble, Galloway claimed.

"Companies must be prepared to react quickly with the accelerating change in business," he said.

With transformative technology we couldn't envision at Interop 16 years ago, but will take for granted soon after we have it.

By Cisco Subnet on Tue, 04/27/10 - 7:53pm.

Cisco Makes The Green 30 Based On Eco-Friendly Programs and Practices

Employees Identify "The Green 30" Organizations Based On Eco-Friendly Programs and Practices

Hewitt Associates' Green Index Measures Workplace Perceptions of Employers' Environmental Initiatives

TORONTO, April 22 /CNW/ - The list of Canada's "Green 30" - organizations whose employees are most positive about their record on environmental stewardship - was released today, Earth Day, by Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting and outsourcing company. The list (attached) was compiled from employee feedback using Hewitt's Employee Green Index, which focuses on employers' strategies, activities and efforts to minimize the environmental impact of their operations, products and services.

As part of the 2010 Best Employers in Canada and Best Small & Medium Employers in Canada studies, Hewitt surveyed over 100,000 employees at 230 organizations regarding their employers' commitment to environmental stewardship. At the Green 30 organizations, an average of 86 per cent of employees have a positive perception of their employers' eco-friendly efforts. At the 30 organizations with the least positive reviews, that figure is 58 per cent.

"Our findings show that employees really see the difference when their employer is focused on developing and implementing environmentally-conscious policies and practices," said Neil Crawford, Hewitt's leader of the Best Employers in Canada study. "Effective green programs and practices may persuade certain employees to join or stay with an organization."

However, more employers are gradually adopting environmentally-friendly programs. While all of this year's Green 30 encourage recycling, waste reduction and/or reduced paper usage, so do 86 per cent of the 30 organizations with the lowest rankings on the Employee Green Index. "The gap is higher with respect to other initiatives," stated Crawford. "The Green 30 are twice as likely as the 30 lowest ranked organizations to subsidize carbon offsets for business travel, sponsor programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from business operations, host events to facilitate participation in Earth Day or Earth Hour, and subsidize the costs of bike storage and/or showers for employees who cycle to work. While there are significant variations in the use of some of these practices amongst the Green 30, they all demonstrate real passion and commitment to reducing the impact of their business on the environment in the eyes of their employees."

The Green 30 list appears in the May 3 edition of Maclean's, as well as in the May 10 issue of Canadian Business. Both magazines are available on newsstands today, Earth Day.

Organizations that participate in the Best Small & Medium Employers in Canada (50-399 employees) or the Best Employers in Canada (400 or more employees) studies are automatically eligible for The Green 30 list. The deadline to register for each study - and therefore be considered for the 2011 Green 30 list - is May 31, 2010. For more information and to register online, please visit www.hewitt.com/bestemployerscanada.

About Hewitt Associates

Hewitt Associates (NYSE: HEW - News) provides leading organizations around the world with expert human resources consulting and outsourcing solutions to help them anticipate and solve their most complex benefits, talent, and related financial challenges. Hewitt consults with companies to design and implement a wide range of human resources, retirement, investment management, health management, compensation, and talent management strategies. As a leading outsourcing provider, Hewitt administers health care, retirement, payroll, and other HR programs to millions of employees, their families, and retirees. With a history of exceptional client service since 1940, Hewitt has offices in 33 countries, including Canadian offices in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary and Regina, and employs approximately 23,000 associates who are helping make the world a better place to work. For more information, please visit www.hewitt.com/canada.

                      Organization                            Headquarters
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    Aecon Group Inc.                                       Toronto  ON
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    BC Biomedical Laboratories Ltd.                        Surrey  BC
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    Bentall LP                                             Toronto  ON
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    BLJC                                                   Markham  ON
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    Cascades Inc.                                          Kingsey Falls  QC
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    Cisco Canada                                           Toronto  ON
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    Co-operators Life Insurance Company                    Regina  SK
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    Delta Hotels                                           Toronto ON
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    EllisDon Corporation                                   London  ON
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    Envision Financial                                     Langley  BC
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    G&K Services Canada Inc.                               Mississauga  ON
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    Greater Edmonton Foundation: Housing for Seniors       Edmonton  AB
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    ISL Engineering and Land Services                      Edmonton  AB
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    Ivanhoe Cambridge Inc.                                 Montreal  QC
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    LoyaltyOne Inc.                                        Toronto  ON
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    Lush Fresh Handmade Cosmetics                          Vancouver  BC
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    Marriott Hotels of Canada Ltd.                         Mississauga  ON
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    McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Limited               Toronto  ON
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    Mountain Equipment Co-op                               Vancouver  BC
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    National Leasing                                       Winnipeg  MB
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    Nexen Inc.                                             Calgary  AB
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    PCL Constructors Inc.                                  Edmonton  AB
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    Public Outreach Fundraising Consultancy Inc.           Toronto  ON
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    Ricoh Canada Inc.                                      Mississauga  ON
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    Scotiabank Group                                       Toronto  ON
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    Stewart Weir & Co. Ltd.                                Sherwood Park  AB
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    Stikeman Elliott LLP                                   Toronto  ON
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    TD Bank Financial Group                                Toronto  ON
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    The Co-operators                                       Guelph  ON
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    Vancity Credit Union                                   Vancouver  BC
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Keeping employees connected: A closer look at Avaya IP Phones, soft clients and plug-ins

Although many SIP-compatible IP phones and soft clients work with SCS, you may want to consider choosing one or more of these advanced products from Avaya. SCS provides plug-and-play capabilities with all supported clients (dramatically simplifying moves, adds and changes) and have been fully tested for performance and interoperability quality.

Avaya IP Phones


1200 Series IP Deskphones: An innovative portfolio of Avaya IP Phones that include multiple soft keys, integrated speakerphone, advanced audio quality, headset support and an integrated Ethernet switch.
Polycom SoundPoint Avaya IP Phones: Offer multiple soft keys, integrated speakerphone, superb HD (High Definition) audio technology, and integrated Ethernet switches to suit all types of business users and call volumes.

Polycom SoundStation portfolio: Offers features such as full-duplex technology and the latest advances in echo cancellation and HD audio to deliver remarkable voice quality and superior performance for executive offices, conference rooms and boardrooms. The SoundStation 6000 is ideal for small to medium-sized conference rooms, while the 7000 model is a good fit for executive offices, medium to large conference rooms and boardrooms.

Softphones and application plug-ins
Avaya 3456 UC Client: A contact centric, feature-rich soft phone that allows remote and teleworkers to stay connected. Calls and availability are managed with a comprehensive suite of carrier-grade voice, video, IM and presence features. An intuitive user interface means it’s easy for novice users to make and receive calls, initiate and record voice/video conferencing, and communicate in real time using instant messaging.

Avaya Plug-In 3457 for IBM® Lotus Notes®/Sametime: Brings Avaya IP Phone functionality to a user’s IBM Lotus Notes/Sametime environment, allowing them to make, receive and transfer phone calls without having to leave the Lotus application. In addition to full call-handling capabilities, the Lotus Client also provides users with easy access to their voicemail Avaya Plug-In 3458 for Microsoft® Office Outlook®: Offers communication integration within a user’s Microsoft Outlook environment, allowing them to easily import their address book into or from their contact list and dial directly from the application. They can even establish a call from manual entry, redial, drag and drop, contacts, inbox, profile or directly from an email message.

Arrested persons can now appear for first mention in court via video-conferencing

SINGAPORE: Arrested persons can now be brought before a Magistrate for First Mention through video-conferencing.

Under the new constitution passed in Parliament on Monday, Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng said there are several benefits in expanding the usage of video conferencing to First Mentions.

First, there will be a "reduction in security risk as movement of arrested persons will be minimised".

In addition, there will be a "reduction in the multiple handing over and taking over of arrested persons from one officer to another during the process".

Mr Wong said: "This will enhance the management and security of the arrested person and will also lead to more efficient use of limited manpower resources".

In case of medical contingencies, further mentions can also be conducted via video conferencing without the need to send field magistrates to hospitals.

The Constitution presently requires a person to be brought before a Magistrate within 48 hours of arrest.

This is meant to allow the Magistrate to verify his identity and ensure the protection of his fundamental liberties.

This requirement has its roots in the Constitution of Malaysia and was instituted at a time when video conferencing technology was not available.

Mr Wong said video conferencing technology has advanced considerably.

He said video conferencing usage for criminal proceedings, including First Mentions, has been introduced in overseas jurisdictions such as New Zealand, Australia, UK and some states in the US.

In Singapore, video conferencing has been used in Court proceedings for some time now.

Singapore's Subordinate Courts first used video conferencing with prisons for criminal mentions in 1996.

Since then, the Subordinate Courts, Prisons and the Attorney-General's Chambers have gradually expanded the use of video conferencing to cover pre-trial processes.

These include further mentions, bail reviews, as well as represented and unrepresented pre-trial conferences.

Mr Wong said there will be safeguards to ensure that the use of video conferencing does not affect the fundamental liberty of the arrested person.

"What has changed is just the mode of producing the arrested person before the Magistrate," he said.

First, the arrested person will still be detained for not more than 48 hours unless the Court makes an order for his further detention.

Second, the Court will retain the discretion to call for the arrested person or consider the application of the arrested person to be physically produced in Court at any time before or during the first mentions.

Third, certain groups such as juveniles, by virtue of their age, will continue to be produced in court in person.

Fourth, video conferencing will not be used for accepting pleas or sentencing.

Separately, the new Constitution will also abolish the Citizenship Advisory Committee.

The Citizenship Advisory Committee was introduced via a Singapore Citizenship Bill more than 50 years ago in 1957.

Mr Wong said "there was no concept of Singapore Citizenship prior to that".

After the Constitutional talks that resulted in Singa¬pore becoming self-governing, the Singapore Citizenship Bill was introduced to provide for the granting of Singapore Citizenship to eligible persons so that they could vote in Legislative Assembly elections.

"Many long-term residents were migrants from China, India and the Malay Archipelago, and were called 'aliens'. Those who were born in Singapore were called 'British subjects'. Most of both groups were eligible to be registered as Singapore citizens and become voters," said Mr Wong.

"A Citizenship Advisory Committee was set up to ensure that eligible persons who were qualified to become citizens under the law would not be unfairly excluded, especially in view of the impending general elections for the Legislative Assembly," explained the Deputy Prime Minister.

"The concern that migrant residents who have lived in Singapore for many years might be denied their rights to become Singapore citizens is no longer relevant today. Today's context is very different from the late 1950s. We no longer have the issue of local domiciles," said Mr Wong.

"The applications for Singapore Citizenship that we receive today are from foreigners who want to make Singapore their home. The granting of citizenship to foreigners is a privilege. Singapore Citizenship is not an entitlement or a right of the foreigner resident."

Mr Wong said it is therefore no longer necessary to send all rejection cases of foreigners applying for Singapore Citizenship to a Citizenship Advisory Committee to review.

But even with the abolition of the Citizenship Advisory Committee, foreigners whose applications for Singapore Citizenship are rejected by the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority can still appeal to the Minister, under Section 3 of the Third Schedule of the Constitution. - CNA/vm

By Imelda Saad | Posted: 26 April 2010 2050 hrs