Avaya buying video conferencing company Radvision

We are very excited about Avaya buying Radvision. This is a huge step forward for Avaya and sould help increase their market share in the video conferencing world.

By The Associated Press

"BASKING RIDGE, N.J. - (AP) -- Telephone and computer software company Avaya Inc. is buying Israeli video conferencing company Radvision Ltd. for about $230 million in cash.

Under terms of the deal announced Thursday, Radvision stockholders will receive $11.85 per share, which is a 6 percent premium to the stock's closing price of $11.20 on Wednesday.

The companies said the deal was worth $230 million when stock options are exercised and added to the company's current 18.4 million shares outstanding.

In midday trading Thursday in New York, Radvision shares gained 50 cents, or 4.4 percent, to $11.70.

Avaya is privately held and is based in Basking Ridge, N.J. Radvision is based in Tel Aviv, Israel,

Radvision would become an Avaya subsidiary. Avaya said that Radvision's video infrastructure will be integrated with its Avaya Aura Unified Communications platform.

"With this acquisition we will seek to extend videoconferencing to any device, anytime, anywhere, making it as easy as a phone call," Avaya President and CEO Kevin Kennedy said in a statement.

The deal, which has been approved by both companies' boards, is expected to close within about 90 days. The majority of Radvision stockholders must still approve the transaction. There is no financing condition.

Once the acquisition closes, Radvision shares will no longer trade on the Nasdaq or Tel Aviv exchanges."

Enterprise security to grow 8%; IBM has high hopes for cloud services

BYOD drives rise in enterprise network security: As more workers bring their own mobile devices into the workplace, a trend known as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), enterprises are rethinking their network security plans. Because of this, Infonetics Research forecasts that spending on network security appliances will grow 8 percent in 2012 to battle an ever-growing array of security threats. "The consumerization of smartphones and the proliferation of smartphones, iPads, netbooks, and other mobile devices connected 24/7 to the Internet are driving companies to reassess how critical infrastructure in HQ, branch offices, remote offices, and data centers is protected from malware," said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics. In Q4 2011, the global network security appliance and software market grew 8 percent in to $1.58 billion. Leading the charge for network security appliance sales was Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), whose revenues rose 11 percent in Q4 2011. Following Cisco was Check Point (Nasdaq: CHKP), which beat out Juniper (NYSE: JNPR) for second place as network security appliance and software revenue jumped 19 percent during the quarter. Release

Routers slow down in Q4: While the demand for IP-based routers in Asia Pacific and Latin America remained strong in the fourth quarter of 2011, that growth was offset by slow sales in North America and Europe, two regions where carriers were a bit more cautious with late year spending. As reported in Dell'Oro Group's study, contraction in North America and Europe drove the router market down 7 percent $2.7 billion in Q4 2011. "From the beginning of 2010 through mid-2011, router sales grew more than 20% each quarter, but started to decelerate last summer," said Shin Umeda, vice president at Dell'Oro, adding that "this is a temporary lull that will carry into the middle of this year, and we expect the market growth to accelerate in the second half of the year." The top five Service Provider Router vendors for Q4 2011, in ranking order, are Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU), Huawei, and Ericsson (Nasdaq: ERIC). Release

Cloud deployment set for major growth: An IBM (NYSE: IBM) survey says that while only 13 percent of businesses are using cloud-based services, that number will grow to 41 percent by 2015. In its survey of 572 business and IT leaders, Big Blue addressed what's prompting businesses to adopt cloud services and which ones have adopted a cloud strategy. Of the survey respondents, 72 percent said they had some use of cloud technology, while 38 percent said they have done a cloud pilot, and 21 percent said they have adopted a cloud platform. However, 90 percent of the respondents said that over the course of the next three years they plan to be involved in cloud activities. Article

BigMarker.com Showcases Social Video Conferencing at SXSW Trade Show

By Rajani Baburajan

TMCnet Contributor

BigMarker.com, a social network for communities offering unlimited Web conferencing options, will be displaying its social video conferencing and collaboration tools at the SXSW (News - Alert) Trade Show in Austin, TX taking place from March 12-15, 2012.

Offering a feature-rich videoconference solution that integrates social communities and collaboration, BIgMarker.com delivers unlimited Web conferencing with recording and collaboration tools that allows user to assign tasks, share files, track progress, send announcements on the community bulletin.

"BigMarker demonstrates how organizations and individuals can organize online to engage consumers, train staff, and reach new audiences," said Zhu-song Mei, CEO at BigMarker.com, in a statement. "In our booth, educators, marketers, managers, and organizers can see how easily BigMarker can educate, engage, and empower."

The company will present its "Live Pitch Station” that broadcasts pitches from the BigMarker SXSW Virtual Conference Room. Startup firms and non-profits can participate in the event and make their pitch to BigMarker members from around the world.

During the event, participants will be allowed to create communities for business or personal use.

In addition, team BigMarker members are available to explain to investors and VCs how BigMarker powers knowledge sharing.

The company will also announce the BigMarker mascot, the newest addition to Team BigMarker. As a promotional offer, the company is giving participants an opportunity to win an HP Touchscreen by creating a community at SXSW and having the most members by March 18th, 2012 at 11:59 pm CT.

BigMarker's Public Communities are always free, while Private Communities are priced at a monthly fee of $19.95. The difference between Free Public Communities and Paid (News - Alert) Private Communities is that the paid community has customizable privacy settings.

Launched lat year, BigMarker's mission is to equip communities around the world with unlimited Web conferencing and collaboration tools, empowering anyone to make a visible and lasting impact.

BigMarker will be at the Austin Convention Center for the SXSW Trade Show with seven demo stations plus the "Live Pitch Station," broadcasting from booths 835, 837, 934, & 936 during trade show hours.

New Cisco Unified Computing System Innovations Help Customers Build Clouds, Deploy Business Applications Faster

Additions to Cisco Unified Computing System portfolio quadruple memory capacity, double switching capacity and simplify management for large-scale UCS deployments

SAN JOSE, Calif. – March 8, 2012 – IT organizations today are striving to establish data centers that support virtualization and cloud computing to become more competitive and agile, reduce the cost of physical infrastructure, and support the demands of data growth and Big Data analytics. Cisco today announced innovations across the Cisco Unified Computing System™ to deliver a third-generation fabric computing platform– which integrates network, compute, virtualization and management– to address these challenges and help customers respond rapidly to changing business needs, scale their data centers, and accelerate transition to virtualization and cloud computing.

The Cisco UCS™ third-generation fabric computing platform incorporates the new Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 product family and includes multiple server form factors delivering the industry's highest server density and efficiency, with up to eight times the memory capacity and four times the I/O compared to previous UCS servers. The Cisco UCS Manager now allows IT administrators to manage both blade and rack servers as a common entity, and extends the management domain to span thousands of servers across data centers around the world.

UCS customers report dramatic operational and cost improvements up to: 30 percent lower infrastructure expenses, 90 percent reduction in deployment times, 40 percent improvements in application performance, and 60 percent reductions in power/cooling costs.

News Highlights

Unified Management with Cisco UCS

• Through enhanced integration with Cisco Unified Fabric technology, Cisco UCS Manager now unifies management for both blade and rack servers within a single domain. This industry-first capability reduces the cost of server connectivity, provides resource flexibility, and allows IT administrators to add data center capacity without additional complexity.
• In the second half of 2012, Cisco will introduce technology to support large-scale UCS deployments through centralized management for multiple UCS domains, spanning thousands of servers either in a single data center or spread across data centers around the world, providing industry-leading automation and orchestration for cloud environments.

Cisco UCS Integrated Networking and Virtualization

• The chassis I/O module 2204XP provides options for 80Gbps and 160Gbps down to each chassis to handle workload bursts. The module also offers port channeling, which allows load balancing across all ports to improve efficiency and resiliency through higher link utilization and bandwidth.
• The Cisco UCS 6296UP Fabric Interconnect doubles the switching capacity of the UCS fabric (from 960Gbps to 1.92Tbps) and reduces end-to-end latency by 40 percent to deliver industry-leading application performance. The fabric interconnect provides infrastructure agility at scale with unified ports and greater energy efficiency, lowering watts per port by 36 percent.
• The Cisco UCS 6200 Series combined with the Cisco Nexus® Fabric Extender extends Cisco UCS Manager benefits to larger scale UCS deployments for both blade and rack form factors.

New M3 Generation Unified Computing System Servers
Cisco broadens the Cisco Unified Computing System portfolio with one blade and two rack-mount servers based on the latest Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600. Available in March, Cisco's new server lineup improves workload delivery with enhanced performance, flexibility, and efficiency to support increasing data center demands. With more cores, cache, memory capacity, and internal storage and faster communication pathways to move data more quickly, Cisco UCS with the Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 offers the industry's best performance, power efficiency, features, and cost.

• Cisco UCS B200 M3 Blade Server: The enterprise-class Cisco UCS B200 M3 server provides performance, versatility, and density in a half-blade form factor, delivering balanced, industry-leading density through its 24 DIMM slots and up to 80 gigabits of I/O bandwidth. Greater density, performance and bandwidth mean business applications can run faster, more cost-effectively, and more efficiently.
• UCS C220 M3 Rack Server: The Cisco UCS C220 M3 Rack Server is a one-rack-unit (1RU) server designed for performance and density for a wide range of business workloads, from Web services to distributed databases.
• UCS C240 M3 Rack Server: The Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server is a two-rack-unit (2RU) server designed for both performance and expandability over a wide range of storage-intensive infrastructure workloads, from big data to collaboration.

Application Performance Leadership

• Since Cisco UCS was introduced in 2009, it has captured 63 industry benchmark world records. With industry-leading application performance and a rapid, automated configuration model that speeds the deployment of applications, UCS makes performance predictable and increases business productivity. Cisco UCS is the ideal platform to support databases, Big Data, virtualization software, Java applications, HPC applications, and Web services.

Cisco Unified Computing System Industry Adoption

• Since it was introduced in, 2009, nearly 11,000 customers worldwide have deployed Cisco UCS to unify their data centers. Cisco UCS provides far greater benefits than simple convergence by unifying the compute, networking, virtualization, storage access, and management software as an integrated system to provide superior data center design flexibility and remove management barriers between blade and rack servers across bare metal, virtualized, and private/public cloud environments. Unifying data centers in this way allows customers to deploy business applications more rapidly, enhance revenue streams, introduce new business models, and grow their businesses while reducing IT costs.
• With approximately $5.8 billion in annual R&D spending, Cisco continues to innovate, driving data center transformation and helping businesses establish cloud computing environments more rapidly and cost-effectively. Cisco® Cloud Enablement Services, a comprehensive range of cloud professional and technical services, together with the Cisco CloudVerse architecture (which includes Unified Data Center technologies like UCS, intelligent networking, and applications working together), help customers build private, public or hybrid clouds; More than 70 percent of the top 50 public cloud providers deploy UCS.
• Cisco also collaborates with industry leaders like BMC Software, CA, Citrix, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, Microsoft, NetApp, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, VCE, and VMware, on developing data center solutions that ease deployment and management of data center infrastructure and take the risk out of solution planning and speed deployment.

Supportive Quotes

Indu Kodukula, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, SunGard Availability Services

"The conversation around cloud today has changed from 'if' to 'how', and IT organizations are trying to figure out how to use the cloud for running tier-1 production applications," said Indu Kodukula, Executive Vice President Products and Chief Technology Officer at SunGard Availability Services. "An enterprise-grade cloud service such as SunGard's, built and delivered on pre-integrated, premium infrastructure such as Cisco UCS and VBlock from VCE, is critical to making cloud ready for production. The pre-integration of compute and networking in VBlock, combined with open standards and customizable service profiles, enables virtual data centers to be spun up on short notice and provides a level of business agility without sacrificing application availability."

Robert Taylor, director of IT, Hendrick Automotive

"As the second-largest privately owned dealership group in the United States, we experienced server and desktop sprawl that required a more manageable, cost-effective unified data center approach, and we chose shared infrastructure FlexPod, with unique integration management of UCS and NetApp unified storage, as the best solution for our private cloud infrastructure," said Robert Taylor, director of IT, Hendrick Automotive. It used to take weeks to deploy a new business application, but now we can do it in a day. Now senior management views IT as a business enabler that significantly increases our business agility."

Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst ZK Research

"Companies are not using the same networking gear they were a few years ago, so why should they use the same servers," said Zeus Kerravala, Principal Analyst at ZK Research. Customers are not averse to change if the benefits are high enough. Cisco built UCS with virtual and cloud computing in mind and now its competitors are trying to catch up. And Cisco has an especially strong offering now with its latest advances in fabric computing and enhancements to UCS Manager."

Soni Jiandani, senior vice president, Data Center Group, Cisco

"Our customers care most about time-to-deploy business applications, application performance and unified management of bare metal, virtualized and private/public cloud environments," said Soni Jiandani, senior vice president, Data Center Group, Cisco. "Cisco pioneered fabric computing and service profiles – still not duplicated by any other vendor- which allow IT managers to deploy applications in minutes instead of days. Now with innovations in UCS Manager their integrated management spans rack and blade servers, and scales across data centers to thousands of servers globally. Our open system allows for structured integration with partner and customer solutions, making the Cisco UCS and the Unified Data Center a strong foundation for rapid deployment, performance, scalability, and ease of management."

Avaya Expands Work With a Growing Number of K-12 Schools on Bring Your Own Device Mobile Learning Programs

BASKING RIDGE, NJ -- (Marketwire) -- 03/05/12 --

• Confronting budget constraints, K-12 schools across the U.S. are accelerating implementation of Bring Your Own Device and One-to-One Computing programs


• Economic realities are resulting in changing policies and attitudes; more schools are favoring BYOD programs to encourage students to bring mobile devices to school


• Avaya's device-agnostic approach and expertise in unified communications and networking are cited as key factors in school district IT vendor selection

Avaya, a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions and services, today said it is working with a rising number of school districts across the nation on programs designed to tap the vast array of student-owned computing devices and boost mobile learning initiatives.



Avaya will exhibit its solutions for K-12 schools, including infrastructure services that support Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs, at the 2012 CoSN Conference, March 5-7 in Washington, D.C. CoSN is the acronym for the Consortium of School Networking, which develops and implements programs to foster K-12 technology leadership.



BYOD is quickly taking hold as districts encounter widening gaps in the number of computers they can afford to provide to their staff, teachers and students. Amid dwindling budgets to buy such equipment, demand is growing among educators, students and parents alike for greater student access to computers and wireless devices to access new digital content and online data as part of advanced K-12 curricula.





Avaya works with K-12 school districts to create a modern college-like campus that is more mobile and connected, supporting thousands of disparate mobile devices, ranging from PCs, netbooks, and laptops, to iPod, iPad, iPhone, and BlackBerry devices, along with other tablets and smartphones. Such partnerships are building advanced communications infrastructures that are simpler to operate and maintain, ultimately transforming and improving the education environment to advance student achievement.



Avaya's ongoing work on BYOD and one-to-one computing programs encompass various initiatives at different deployment stages, including:



Kenton County School District, Ky. -- Avaya is working with this school district on the outskirts of Cincinnati, Ohio, supporting wireless Internet access for 23 school facilities, 1,500 teachers and staff and 14,700 students. A commitment to BYOD has quickly closed what had been a yawning gap between the computing needs of students and staff, and the 4,600 district-owned laptops and PCs. To date, the program has more than doubled the number of computing resources previously available, with numbers often exceeding 6,000 personally owned devices on the network at a single time.



Johnson County School District in Eastern Kentucky is adopting a similar approach and, likewise, is seeing immediate momentum. With some 3,800 K-12 students and 600 teachers and staff, the district is working with Avaya on a unified communications platform, while piloting BYOD with 500 students. The district oversees ten facilities, including six elementary schools and an administration building.



The district's network infrastructure will be completed by the fall, and will eventually support wired, wireless, and voice access for nearly 5,000 daily users, including campus visitors.



Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) serves 74,441 students in 20 school districts in and around Buffalo, N.Y. Erie 1 is driving to a hybrid IT environment, encompassing web- and app-based instructional resources, as well as virtual desktop applications. It's part of the district's ongoing drive to offer one-to-one computing, supported by an Avaya networking solution.



Quotes
"In the past, primary and secondary education was all about memorization. The Internet and BYOD are changing that, driving critical thinking and student creativity, fueled by wider access to information. Since our wireless network was built, new equipment has been pouring into the district every day. The influx of technology has been contagious."
-- Vicki Fields, district technology coordinator, Kenton County School District, Ky.



"Currently, there are only one or two computers in each of our upper grade classrooms, greatly restricting student access to online educational resources. Given funding cuts faced by most school districts, it's simply impossible to provide devices to every student. BYOD, however, changes that equation by driving one-to-one computing. Avaya's device-agnostic approach fits with our goal of encouraging students to use of a broad number of wireless devices to tap technology resources."
-- Harry Burchett, CIO and district technology coordinator, Johnson County School District, Ky.



"The ultimate question we ask ourselves each day is: How can we provide the educational and technical resources that our kids need? Paradoxically, soft economic conditions will help the BYOD and one-to-one computing movements take hold sooner rather than later. Due to the budget realities, these types of programs are vital to fill the computing needs gap. In a year or two, programs like ours inevitably will be the norm, not an outlier."
-- Jill Holbrook, associate director, Technology, Erie 1 BOCES, Buffalo, N.Y.



Additional Resources

• Mobile learning and BYOD : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331965&type=1& ..(whitepaper and how-to handbook)


• Avaya Networking : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331968&type=1& ..


• Avaya Unified Communications : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331971&type=1& ..

Tags
Avaya, education, wireless networking, BYOD, one-to-one computing, unified communications, UC, K-12 schools, primary education, secondary education, school budgets, mobile learning, bring your own device, cell phones, Department of Education



About Avaya
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331974&type=1& .. .



Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate," "believe," "continue," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "should" or "will" or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward-looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya's filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331977&type=1& .. . Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.



Follow Avaya on Twitter : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331980&type=1& .. , Facebook :ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331983&type=1& .. , YouTube : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331986&type=1& .. , LinkedIn : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331989&type=1& .. , Flickr : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331992&type=1& .. , and the Avaya Connected Blog : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=858941&id=1331995&type=1& .. .




Media Inquiries:
Sami Asiri
408-496-3684
sami@avaya.com :

Polycom Announces Major Push to Video in the Cloud

By Susan J. Campbell TMCnet Contributing Editor

Video for the consumer, the enterprise and the provider continues to be a key focus as consumers want rich content, enterprises want an efficient communication method and providers want the potential revenue streams video can offer. Fortunately, Polycom is offering solutions that can satisfy each segment.

To share what the company has been up to, as well as new technology solutions, TMC’s Group Editorial Director Erik Linask sat down with Jeff Roadman, co-founder and chief evangelist for Polycom at ITEXPO East 2012 in Miami last month. Check out this video to learn how Polycom is focusing on technology advancements in the cloud and enabling its customers to offer video services directly to their customers.

In other video news, Kontiki (News - Alert), a cloud-based enterprise video solutions and content delivery company, just announced the closing of an initial $5.1 million in Series C financing, as well as the acquisition of new partners and new customers. The key to the company’s success is its focus on enabling the enterprise to empower collaboration and communication among the employee base.

Kontiki’s enterprise video solutions are deployed with some of the world’s largest companies in such industries as technology, retail, financial services, manufacturing and telecommunications. Customers include Nestle, Pillar Hotels, Plante Moran, American Airlines and more. NewsGator and TalkPoint just topped the list of strategic partners to join forces with Kontiki.

MK Capital, Cross Creek Capital, New World Ventures, Hatteras Funds and Todd Johnson (News - Alert), chairman of the Board for Kontiki, all renewed their investment in the company, demonstrating the solid positioning it has in the market and potential for further growth. This latest round of financing will be used to support the company’s growth and exploit further market momentum.

“As the usage of video continues to accelerate in the enterprise, companies will increasingly seek out solutions that can provide quality video delivery, without disrupting the network. These companies need to find a solution that can reach and engage all their employees, everywhere and on any device,” said Mark Koulogeorge, managing general partner of MK Capital, in a statement. “We continue to believe in Kontiki's robust technology and the efficiency and scalability it provides compared to traditional hardware-based solutions.”

The demand for video is strong and steadily growing within the enterprise, creating significant opportunities for companies like Kontiki and Polycom. Don’t forget to check out the ITEXPO video to learn more about Polycom and its exciting momentum in the cloud.

Cisco IP Paging System: When and How to Integrate with an Existing System

When is it a good time for an organization to think about making that transition to IP Paging? You know if they have a bunch of buildings that have analog systems in place, can they upgrade in place now?

Yeah, so there’s a few different ways to look at it. The right time, when you see the most cost savings, is when you’re remodeling a facility, if you’re constructing new facilities, IP speakers definitely fits into a cost savings model at that point.

If you have existing analog technology, we can take advantage of that. So we don’t say you have rip and replace and start all over. Take advantage of what you have, retrofit, and if you need to add supplement using IP or network paging, it’s very easy to do with our products, you can still have your traditional analog system.

But if you realize at one point, “Geez, we really wish we had a speaker in this facility at the entry way,” it’s very easy to add that. to that facility and take advantage of all at one time. So, it can be done multiple ways. So, in practical terms, we go into a closet with a network cable, plug in a box that’s connected to the network and then out of that, connect to your analog system.

Exactly. And that can be done multiple ways. It can be done through IP zone controllers and they can also be done through a station port or a trump port from your PBX to access that system. So, if it already had a connection to your telephone system, we can take advantage of that and utilize any existing connections too but, a number of different options.

Source: http://www.telecomreseller.com

The Advantages of IP Telephony Systems for Businesses

By Nick McDonald, Contributing Writer TMCnews

As customers turn to telephones everyday to get answers to questions, many companies are turning to digital or IP phone services to meet increasing demands. Syndeo Communications is one company helping organizations with these types of needs, as it offers a paramount phone system called the Switchvox (News - Alert) AA355.

The system provides businesses with a well-rounded communication strategy that utilizes many of the features found in other Voice Over IP (VoIP) systems. Thanks to call recording and reporting features, organizations that use this IP telephony system can ensure customer service levels remain high.

Another prominent VoIP equipment provider, TelcoDepot.com has created a new and improved IP phone service that it will advertise on its online site. The TalkSwitch (News - Alert) VSX is ideal for small businesses. Each VSX system comes equipped with 20 auto attendants, 16 remote extensions and a voicemail broadcast feature. All three also support external IP extensions with high quality G.711 voice encoding.

Overall, these types of call controlling systems are not only efficient, but they also provide a control mechanism for business spending. By providing call accounting assistance, a company can get the proper information needed to run an efficient call system. Besides the money it saves, call accounting can also help businesses drive traffic and with proper monitoring, create productivity by reducing the amount of non-business activity.

IP-based systems will also assist call accounting solutions by offering more possibilities. Given the complexities of the corporate environment as calls are routed over a variety of channels and include extra data, such as voice and multimedia communications, it is imperative for organizations to have an IP service that works for them. In this new era of digital media and providers, IP phone systems and services are an element businesses may be overlooking, and it could cost them in the end. Finding a way to efficiently communicate with customers is imperative and IP phone systems are a great tool that will help organizations do just that.

Avaya Launches Outsourcing Solutions to Improve Performance, Reduce Costs of Business Communications Networks

Basking Ridge, NJ – Avaya today introduced a new set of outsourcing services to help companies dramatically increase the performance, reduce the costs and accelerate the transformation of their communications environments. With the new offer, Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions (COS), Avaya takes on the task of managing all of a company’s communications operations—regardless of age, location or vendor—to help them compete in a new era of advanced collaboration.

“More companies are looking to move their communications infrastructure towards a managed or outsourced model. The vendors that offer deep communications expertise and scale will be in the best position to help businesses optimize their communications environments for higher performance and cost-efficiency. Improving one’s communications infrastructure and applications is critical as we enter a new phase of advanced enterprise collaboration.” stated Eric Goodness, research vice president, managed services, Gartner, Inc.

Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions is part of the company’s portfolio of Managed Services, which enables businesses to have Avaya take on the management of their communications infrastructure and applications. COS is Avaya’s first fully-outsourced offering that provides custom-built solutions and comprehensive management of a client’s entire communications environment, including unified communications, contact center, data and video applications. COS offers a higher level of managed services by serving as a client’s communications arm, integrating directly with their IT processes and managing their overall communications functions (such as production, billing, operations and more).

Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions are custom-managed services typically designed for two types of businesses: Those who are ready to migrate their aging infrastructure and transform it with advanced capabilities, but may have constraints around internal resources or budget; and those who are not ready for a technology transformation, but want to improve the cost-efficiency and performance of their existing infrastructure.

“Avaya has invested significantly over the past year to provide a level of communications outsourcing support that is truly unique in the industry, bringing dramatic, transformative benefits to customers. With a custom-built solution for each client, Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions can help remove financial and support constraints for companies, and enable them to get the most out of their communications infrastructure investments.” said Ed Nalbandian, vice president, Avaya Operations Services.

These services solve customer issues in four key areas—performance, resources, tools and cost. Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions includes:

• Seamless worldwide multi-vendor support using nine global Network Operation Centers (NOC) supporting 3 million communications ports under contract.
• Full alignment with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards for multivendor environments. ITIL is a best-in-class set of standardized practices to support IT infrastructure.
• A breakthrough communications management platform, Matrix—the result of a $10 million investment in a predictive, preventive cloud-based platform. This includes a customized Web portal to let supervisors get a clear view into Avaya services.
• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) improvements can be delivered by COS. Typically, 15 to 20 percent in TCO improvements are driven by Avaya Managed Services through improved performance and reduced investment needs.

· Extensive communications applications expertise and support, driven by an organization of more than 700 dedicated voice managed services experts.

· New Operating Expense procurement (OpEx) options encompassing hardware, software and services in an all-inclusive per-user price, minimizing or eliminating the need for capital purchase for a technology transformation.

· Customized Service Level Agreements (SLA) delivering guarantees on availability and reliability, helping to ensure peace of mind.

Video Surveillance: Minimizing Cost and Maximizing Return on Investment

By Mae Kowalke http://blog.tmcnet.com/

The use of video surveillance as a public safety and security tool is growing. Partially, that’s because homeland security regulations and initiatives around the world are driving deployment. It’s also because high capacity wireless data networks have brought down the cost of infrastructure to the point where the ability to provide comprehensive coverage is practical and cost-effective.

However, it should be noted that the initial investment and operation and maintenance costs of video surveillance can be significant. This is highlighted by the fact that protection responsibility is shifting from police/military to infrastructure owners.

“In the US energy market, for example, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation-Critical Infrastructure Protection regulations require that utilities tightly control access to their most important infrastructure,” notes Sheridan Nye, Senior Analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media’s Enterprise Verticals practice, in a LifeTalk article, “Is Video Surveillance Worth the Investment?”

Since the security benefits of video surveillance can be significant, companies and organizations either voluntarily looking to deploy this technology, or those compelled to do so by regulations, are considering a variety of strategies to justify the expense and achieve cost savings. One of these is to look at indirect cost savings that can be viewed as return on investment (ROI) for capital expenditures on security network infrastructure.

For video surveillance systems, Nye notes, ROI is usually indirect, and comes from multiple sources. He further states that, “Protecting assets … has a direct impact on insurance premiums as well as meeting regulatory requirements.”

In the U.K., video surveillance is being embraced to counter metal theft, which is a big problem. Copper, which fetches a high (and rising) price, is especially appealing to thieves. The rail industry in the U.K. alone lost £43 million worth of metal in the last three years, and companies are spending at least £12 million each year on security to prevent metal theft.

Although video surveillance may not be able to prevent this theft in the first place, items like pipes and cables can be visibly marked to be traceable if stolen. In fact, situational awareness, public safety officials being able to deploy pervasive video surveillance and potential bad actors knowing it is present, is also a deterrent to potential thieves.

As potentially useful as video surveillance can be for security, it’s especially difficult for public safety agencies to afford the technology, since there have been major funding cuts in the past several years due to the recession. Often, video surveillance is only an option if the cost is shared with other organizations.

“Video is an example of a service that can be shared between the transport service and the police or other agencies like the ambulance service,” Nye points out. This is why being able to leverage the deployment of LTE is so critical since they dramatically cut the costs of deploying a wired-based video surveillance network and can be share by multiple parties.

In addition, complementary technology, such as motion detectors, can also reduce the cost of operating video surveillance systems. Compressing video to lower quality when precise imagery isn’t necessary can also help by boosting efficiency and network capacity.

The most recent issue of LifeTalk which features multiple articles on the issues and value of deploying a comprehensive video surveillance capability is worth a read. It includes a variety of perspective as well as information about the differences between U.K. and U.S. markets, projections for deployment growth along with features on partnering and what the Sao Paulo Militar are doing in Brazil .