Nortel Obtains Further Extension of Stay Period Under CCAA

TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – June 30, 2011) - Nortel* Networks Corporation [OTCBB:NRTLQ] announced today that it, its principal operating subsidiary Nortel Networks Limited and its other Canadian subsidiaries that filed for creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) have obtained an order from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Canadian Court) further extending, to December 14, 2011, the stay of proceedings that was previously granted by the Canadian Court. The purpose of the stay of proceedings is to provide stability to the Nortel companies to continue with their divestiture and other restructuring efforts and to continue to work toward the development of a plan of arrangement under CCAA.

The materials filed in the CCAA proceedings are available on the Restructuring Document Centre of Ernst & Young Inc. (the “Monitor”) at http://documentcentre.eycan.com/Pages/Main.aspx?SID=89&Redirect=1 or by contacting the Monitor directly at 1-866-942-7177.

Cisco Unveils A First-of-Its-Kind Enterprise-Class Application and Business Tablet Ecosystem for Cisco Cius

Customers Worldwide Are Redefining Mobility in the Workplace with Cisco Cius

SAN JOSE, Calif, June 29, 2011– Cisco today introduced AppHQ™, an application ecosystem built specifically for Cisco Cius™ that provides new ways to create, manage and rapidly deploy tablet applications in the enterprise. Cisco Cius, an Android-based tablet created for the enterprise, combines voice, video, collaboration, and virtualization capabilities unlike any other tablet on the market today. With Cisco Cius, organizations can now deliver an optimized tablet with enterprise-grade security, as a natural extension of the enterprise network. The device provides customers with mobility, centralized manageability, virtual content creation and computing capabilities, and a comprehensive suite of collaboration applications.

AppHQ provides developers with tools and resources to create, test and market applications for Cisco Cius, and allows IT managers to control which applications can be used on the devices. Additionally, companies can create private, custom-branded application storefronts for their organizations where employees can find, publish and procure applications that complement their business environments.

During a series of media events hosted today, Cisco highlighted that CDW, Nervecentre Software, Nottingham University Hospitals, Palomar Pomerado Health, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Verizon are among customers using Cisco Cius to help employees remove barriers to mobile productivity in the office, around campus, at home or on the road.

Introducing Cisco AppHQ: A Trusted Source for Business Applications

Cisco AppHQ is a highly secure, cloud-based user storefront that provides capabilities for end users and IT managers not found in other application stores today. Some of these capabilities include:

• Testing and validation:IT managers want to know that applications deployed in their environment are appropriate for the enterprise. Cisco AppHQ provides IT managers and users with a “trusted source” for applications, ensuring that every application within AppHQ goes through Cisco validation testing, whether developed by Cisco, third-party Android developer partners, or users within the enterprise. The validation process includes interoperability testing both for the application itself and in typical configurations within the device.
• Store-within-a-Store: Enterprises will have a Cisco hosted, highly-secure and private application store within AppHQ. Businesses can customize the storefront, following their corporate branding guidelines, including use of logos, icons and color schemes. Beyond customization, the store-within-a-store is a platform that customers can use to deploy applications efficiently in their organizations. For example, a financial services company could deploy applications pertaining to their back office operations, such as human resources or payroll apps, and populate those applications on the devices of relevant employees.
• Empowers IT management:With AppHQ Manager™, IT will have the ability to allow (or deny) access to application marketplaces by user role or device and to grant (or deny) access to applications by type, source or category. This unique capability will let IT organizations balance the individual freedom of users with the enterprise-class policies on security and cost efficiency.

Additional Details about Cisco AppHQ and Cisco Cius

• The AppHQ ecosystem will include Cisco selected, industry-leading business and consumer applications that deeply integrate Cisco collaboration capabilities, as well as validated business-to-business and business-to-consumer applications from developer partners. Cisco will continue to add applications to AppHQ based on customer requirements. IT managers can also select from approximately 200,000 applications in the Android Marketplace.
• Cisco AppHQ offers a user-friendly interface to find and install applications, and a platform for user feedback about applications. End users can find information about an application, such as the publisher and release date, and install or update apps and even sort by category, such as most popular or new.
• Cisco Cius offers integrated access to the comprehensive suite of Cisco® Collaboration applications, including Cisco WebEx® meeting applications, Cisco Quad™ social software, Cisco Jabber® messaging, and Cisco TelePresence™.
• Cisco Cius is scheduled for global availability on July 31, 2011. The estimated street price is below $750 USD and Cisco has made available a new promotion* called “Triple V” (for Voice, Video and Virtualization) that could enable further price reductions below $700 USD. Pricing may vary by country. Basic access to Cisco AppHQ is included with every Cisco Cius device.
• With Cisco Cius, customers benefit from enterprise-class warranty and support with a single number to call. If necessary, a replacement can be obtained in 24 hours. There are also one, two and three-year warranty options from Cisco Services available, which follow an enterprise customer model.

Cisco's ‘Connecting Sichuan' Program Transforms Regional Education and Healthcare after Disaster

CSR Program with a Total Contribution of over US$50 Million from Cisco - Designed to Build 21st Century ICT Models in Healthcare and Education

CHENGDU, China – June 27, 2011 – Cisco and the Sichuan Provincial Government today celebrated the successful completion of Cisco's ‘Connecting Sichuan' program, which has achieved remarkable results in rebuilding and improving local education and healthcare systems after the devastating earthquake. The ‘Connecting Sichuan' program, carried out over the last three years, is the first successful public-private partnership program between Chinese government and a foreign corporation.

Huang Xiaoxiang, vice governor of Sichuan, Wim Elfrink, Cisco EVP for Emerging Solutions and chief globalisation officer, Owen Chan, chairman and CEO of Cisco Greater China, and Amy Christen, vice president of Cisco Corporate Affairs, attended an official handover ceremony today. The two sides also jointly published the three-year summary report for the ‘Connecting Sichuan' program, which details the programs successes and lessons learned.

After the major earthquake that hit Wenchuan in Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008, Cisco, the world's leading networking solutions provider immediately built a unique public-private partnership with the Chinese government to engage in the post-quake rebuild efforts with support from government organizations and its partners. Together they launcheda three-year corporate social responsibility program—‘Connecting Sichuan'—with a total commitment of over US$50 million (or over RMB 300 million) designed to help with the rebuilding efforts.

The ‘Connecting Sichuan' program is not only one of the largest and most prominent public-private partnerships during the post-quake rebuild process, but also a paradigm in the Sino-U.S. friendly cooperation. The program is designed to improve the healthcare and education environments in Sichuan, and to effectively promote local workforce training. Itis also the first between the Chinese government and a U.S. private-sector company.

Through government and private sector engagement focusing on common objectives, Sichuan and Cisco made continuous efforts to screen for aid targets, advance the implementation process, and create a sustainable development model for the future. Together, they have put into place modern connected IT infrastructures for 66 healthcare organizations and 102 education organizations in more than ten counties and cities. The Sichuan Provincial Government has highly recognized Cisco's contributions to improving healthcare and education in the disaster-affected regions, and is very confident of the public-private partnership model, which is replicable and scalable to other regions and related fields.

In healthcare, ‘Connecting Sichuan' has built 32 smart and digitized hospitals, fourconnected regional healthcare collaboration networks, sixregional healthcare data centers, and three modern mobile clinics. In education, the program has designed and delivered threesolutions including 21^st century schools, education cloud, and virtual education, and has set up 25 globally recognized and future-oriented Cisco® Networking Academy® venues aiming to support higher vocational education in the local regions.

"After three years continuous hard work, the ‘Connecting Sichuan' program is now successfully concluded with the original goals met and exceeded. Thanks to the program, modern informationization infrastructures are built to facilitate the post-quake reconstruction and sustainable development in the quake-hit areas especially for reconstruction of the education and healthcare systems," saidHuang Xiaoxiang, vice governor of Sichuan. "In addition, the performance of the program also helped to train a large quantity of IT professionals for the development and prosperity of the disaster areas. As a sound reference for other regions, the ‘Connecting Sichuan' program has become a typical case of successful participation of a multinational company actively involved in the post-disaster reconstruction of the Wenchuan Earthquake.

"Giving back is a core value of Cisco and we are very pleased to be part of the Sichuan rebuild efforts," said Owen Chan, Chairman and CEO, Cisco Greater China. "Through this remarkable public-private partnership, we have been able to contribute to the healthcare and education transformation in Sichuan with the 21^st century technologies and solutions developed by Cisco and our partners. What we have done for the schools and hospitals in Sichuan can also be replicated in other parts of China to benefit more people."

Delivering holistic and collaborative healthcare systems to help improve healthcare

Given that the healthcare facilities, the number of healthcare practitioners and the healthcare service levels in the disaster-affected regions were not able to effectively meet the actual demands of the local people, the ‘Connecting Sichuan' team and its partners worked in concert to bridge the gap by creating a replicable and scalable collaborative delivery network. Taking advantage of its advanced ICT technologies, Cisco delivered a collaborative healthcare model for Sichuan, which supports the communication and resource sharing across the entire healthcare sector.

‘Connecting Sichuan' was designed not just to support individual healthcare organizations affected by the earthquake, but to improve the healthcare service capacity of a region as a whole, to solve the difficulty in seeking medical care in terms of service quality and accessibility. In regions receiving the support, not only has the level of IT-enablement in the entire healthcare sector achieved a leapfrog development, but the healthcare sector as a whole has realized sustainable improvement. In addition, in alignment with the government's Healthy China 2020 reforms, Cisco focused on creating a 21^st century medical delivery system that would bridge the gap between urban and rural healthcare with advanced communication and collaboration technologies.

Creating the 21^st century ICT-enabled education model, to help with the balanced development of education in the disaster-affected regions

In education, taking advantage of its leading technologies, Cisco actively collaborated with the local government to introduce quality teaching resources and advanced teaching concepts, including diverting teachers from regions with sufficient numbers of high-quality teachers to provide manpower support for schools in the disaster-affected regions during certain periods of time. ‘Connecting Sichuan' not only created the 21^st century ICT-enabled education model, but also designed and implemented multiple solutions based on this model, aiming to help improve the quality of education in rural areas, enhance training for teachers, address the shortage of teachers, strengthen talent training, and improve the overall regional education level.

Such a 21^st century ICT-enabled education model has effectively reduced the gap between rural and urban schools, and has further promoted the implementation of China's education reform plans. Through this model, students can study more easily in an interactive learning environment and teachers in various regions can engage in more effective collaboration to provide more specific tutoring for their students. With the continuous improvement of ICT-enabled education at the grass-roots level in the disaster-affected regions, the innovative education model generated in the ‘Connecting Sichuan' program will no doubt be able to benefit the educators and children in the disaster-affected regions in the future.

While implementing the 21^st century healthcare and education solutions in disaster-affected regions, Cisco also ensured the replicable nature and continuity of the program's results. Although the three-year program has come to an end, the momentum—and Cisco's commitment to supporting the people of China, and Sichuan in particular—continue.

Appendix--Summary of Accomplishments for Connecting Sichuan during the three-year period:

Healthcare:

• The ‘Connecting Sichuan'program provided extensive infrastructures and technology investments for Sichuan, including ICT infrastructures in 66 healthcare organizations, six regional healthcare data center, oneregional healthcare operation center, onehealth emergency command center, and onehealthcare information technology training center.
• Currently about 7,000 doctors are using the healthcare facilities equipped with Cisco technologies, and each month about 15,000 in-patients and 280,000 out-patients are benefiting from these facilities.
• The data centers built by Cisco manage the new rural-cooperative medical insurance records for 60 million farmers and more than 400,000 electronic health records.
• Cisco deployed the advanced information networks and information systems in 32 newly built "smart"hospitals and community healthcare centers, to significantly increase the operational efficiency of these hospitals and improve their management level.
• The regional healthcare data centers and regional collaborative healthcare networks enable people in remote villages and townships to enjoy the quality services from higher-level hospitals, and can provide healthcare services for patients living far away from cities.
• The tele-health networks equipped with Cisco TelePresence®video conferencing technology allow doctors to examine and treat patients remotely, making decisions more timely and reducing travel and medical costs. This technology also enables caregivers to complete network-delivered training sessions.
• Cisco equipped mobile clinics with medical and networking technologies to enable healthcare service delivery in earthquake-devastated areas and to extend services to less-accessible regions of Sichuan.

Education:

• The program implemented the 21^stcentury education model in the earthquake-devastated urban and rural areas, built more than 1,100 interactive multimedia classrooms, and provided training for nearly 4,500 teachers, so that they can take advantage of this new teaching environment. In the multimedia classrooms, traditional blackboards are replaced by the interactive electronic whiteboards, and teachers can develop better teaching plans by utilizing collaborative resources through the Internet.
• Provincial and county-level education clouds were established to connect schools with each other and with centralized resources and services. Six curriculum resource centers were created to serve 16 counties in Sichuan.
• Rural students can now receive instruction from expert teachers in city schools by attending virtual classes delivered over the network.
• Remote education centers were created, so that expert teachers in city schools can instruct rural schools remotely and interactively.
• 51 new Cisco Networking Academy programs were created (of which 25 were directly funded by ‘Connecting Sichuan'), training more than 7,400 students, representing an annual growth of 88% since 2008.
• Aba Teachers College, Southwest University of Science and Technology, and Mianyang Normal University were equipped with wireless networks, to connect the equipment throughout the campus, and to enable easier communication for teachers, students and school workers.
  

Collaboration is a mindset

By Jon Alperin | 21 Jun 2011

This week, Gartner issued a press release in support of their recent PPM and IT Governance Summit entitled "5 collaboration myths." Number one myth on their list? "The right tools will make us collaborative."

Perhaps this sounds heretical from someone working for Avaya, especially as we significantly increase focus on collaboration technologies and solutions, but I wholeheartedly agree with Gartner's statement.

A couple of months ago, I took part in some Avaya leadership training, and we spent a good bit of time discussing corporate norms and behaviors that had the potential to limit our success. A lot of this dialog centered around increasing the value and effectiveness of collaboration across Avaya organizations, our customers and our channels.

You've undoubtedly heard the adage "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink."

Most businesses should have a similar saying -- "You can provide collaboration tools, but you cannot make 'em collaborate."

Effective collaboration (and the key word here is "effective") requires more than just putting powerful, intuitive tools in the hands of your users and customers. It requires a mindset to commit oneself to exploiting the benefits of these tools, and doing so consistently and with purpose.

As an example, I have a peer who refuses to use instant messaging tools, viewing them as intrusive. This individual doesn't want to be bothered by ad-hoc, distracting messages from anyone and everyone, demanding instant attention to their questions and interruptions.

I can understand that. But there are times, particularly when we are on a conference call with customers, channel partners, or peers, that instant messaging and multi-party chat capabilities can be a powerful back-channel, testing proposals and verifying facts before speaking publicly.

The fact that my peer is simply unwilling to use the collaboration tools put in front of them under any circumstances, simply because there are certain circumstances (many circumstances, perhaps) where they find the tool to be less than ideal, means the overall collaboration experience in which they participate is certainly less than ideal. And, in turn, that makes everyone involved in the collaboration effort less effective.

Gartner explains that "Technology can make it easier to collaboration when applications mirror a more intuitive, fluid work style, but selecting a tool without addressing the roles, processes, metrics and the organization's workplace climate is putting the cart before the horse."

Or, as I said at our leadership team discussion, "Collaboration is a mindset, not a toolset."

So as your organization considers the metrics and KPI's you'll use you measure the value of investments in collaboration technologies, take time to also assess your organizations mental fortitude and attitude to make collaboration itself work effectively. It could make a major impact to your ROI calculations.

Microsoft Patents VoIP and Skype Wiretapping

Microsoft was recently granted a patent for a technology called Legal Intercept, which apparently enables Microsoft to secretly intercept, monitor and record Skype calls. I'm skeptical. Many Skype calls are peer-to-peer (P2P) with the packets traveling across different router hops. There's no way to predict exactly where the packets are going.

Of course, if you know the target user's ISP, a government entity could put a packet capture device at the ISP where all the user's traffic goes first. However, Skype uses 256 bit AES encryption, which is very difficult to crack. So simply capturing the packets doesn't seem like a feasible way to wiretap Skype. Unless Microsoft's patent involves remotely turning off the encryption within the Skype client, I just don't see how this would work. Of course, this would be classified as a "back door", which Skype users won't be happy about.

According to Computer World, Microsoft's patent application for Legal Intercept was filed in 2009, which is before Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype. The patent was apparently granted last week. The abstract description of the patent doesn't really explain how exactly Microsoft intercepts peer-to-peer Skype traffic, but perhaps this patent only covers when Skype calls touch the PSTN? Here's what the abstract says:

Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to silently recording communications. In aspects, data associated with a request to establish a communication is modified to cause the communication to be established via a path that includes a recording agent. Modification may include, for example, adding, changing, and/or deleting data within the data. The data as modified is then passed to a protocol entity that uses the data to establish a communication session. Because of the way in which the data has been modified, the protocol entity selects a path that includes the recording agent. The recording agent is then able to silently record the communication.

Later in the patent application it mentions Skype and reads:

As mentioned previously, traditional techniques for silently recording telephone communication may not work correctly with VoIP and other network-based communication technology. As used hereafter, the term VoIP is used to refer to standard VoIP as well as any other form of packet-based communication that may be used to transmit audio over a wireless and/or wired network. For example, VoIP may include audio messages transmitted via gaming systems, instant messaging protocols that transmit audio, Skype and Skype-like applications, meeting software, video conferencing software, and the like.

So the patent application points to the unique challenges of recording VoIP conversations, but doesn't explain how Microsoft solves these challenges. Also, in reading the entire patent, it isn't Skype specific, but mentions any VoIP offering. Perhaps this patent only involves capturing VoIP when it touches the PSTN, which is much easier to wiretap than P2P Skype calls with 256-bit AES encryption. But there are already patents and techniques going back decades for wiretapping calls that touch the PSTN. I just don't get it. The patent application mentions diagrams and images, which would have been helpful, but they wouldn't load for me. If anyone else has any insights, post a comment.

U.S. House of Representatives Approves Skype for Video Calls

Looks like the U.S. House of Representatives is adopting Skype to lower costs. According to Skype's Big Blog:

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Administration announced that they will open up the world of Skype communications to Members of Congress and their staff. Now, Members of Congress can reduce travel time and related costs while increasing and improving communications, transparency, and government accountability through the experience of Skype video calling. Skype enables lawmakers to hold meetings with their constituents who are unable to travel to the Congressional office, participate in virtual town hall meetings when the Member is not in her District, and build relationships and collaborate more effectively with other Members on important legislative efforts.

Skype's engineers worked closely with the Congressional network security team to ensure that Skype is used safely for official business.

That's great that Congress is looking to save costs by leveraging Skype. Of course, I wonder if U.S. Representatives will now avoid contentious in-person town hall meetings like the raucous town hall meetings during the Obamacare debate. Some legislators even called constituents who voiced their disagreement with the healthcare plan "unAmerican". Do we really want our representatives hiding behind a webcam?

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of our government using Skype to improve communication with constituents. Just as long as townhall meetings aren't replaced with a computer monitor in the center of the room. What's next? Instead of 435 Representatives sitting in Congress, we'll see 435 computer monitors running Skype with Representatives working remotely? I can picture it now...

And of course you know once Congress starts using Skype and sees how it easy it is to conduct business, they'll want the ability to work from their home district and use Skype. I guess that's not necessarily a bad thing, considering the corrupting influence Washington D.C. seems to have on politicians. Perhaps if they stay closer to home more often they'll actually listen to what the American people want.

12 ways the cloud changes everything

4 IDC analysts offer their tips for how enterprises can best prepare for cloud computing

By Julie Bort, Network World

Despite fears over reliability and security, enterprises are slowly but steadily moving their applications to the cloud, and the migration is going to change those companies in profound ways.

Some 80% of new enterprise apps will be developed for the cloud in 2011, and in the past year, adoption has moved into the "early majority" phase, says Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst for IDC.

TIPS: 7 deadly sins of cloud security

Gens was part of a four-analyst panel that discussed the promises and gotchas of the cloud Monday at the Cloud Leadership Forum conference in Santa Clara, Calif. Each IDC analyst offered his thoughts on how enterprises can prepare for what they viewed as a massively disruptive technology.

Together, they offered 12 observations:

1. The cloud is the third platform. Mainframe was the first platform, which in its heyday offered enterprises about 2,000 applications. Client/server came next, leading to the PC revolution, where the number of applications grew to the tens of thousands. Today, the cloud has enabled the work-anywhere mentality. It will create tens of millions of applications and spawn an explosion of new services, including mobile apps, social technology and analytics/big data (which gives rise to uses like smart grids and e-government), says Gens.

2. Infrastructure vendors will create a fourth leg beyond servers, storage and networks, and this leg will be known as "shared cache." The impact of server virtualization is just beginning, says Rick Villers, IDC analyst and vice president of storage systems. IT wants to rid itself of silos and move to "converged IT." Virtualization is one step in the infrastructure architecture of that process, but there will soon come a day when IT is designing for 100 virtual machines per physical server instead of today's eight to 20 VMs. When it comes to recovering data, performance, high availability and scaling, our current IT architecture won't cut it. Data centers need to have this shared cache space, faster than shared disk/storage, where VMs are kept.

3. Bring your own license. IT executives say that software enterprise agreements are a barrier to cloud adoption. The enterprise software companies that survive the transition to cloud computing will adapt their licenses so that software can be accessed from multiple locations at a single cost to users, says Robert Mahowald, IDC research vice president for SaaS and cloud services. For instance, a user may access SQL Server from on premises, from Amazon and from Windows Azure (first look), all at a single cost. The choice of open source licenses for new software will also factor into which app IT chooses when it moves from data center to hybrid to cloud. Not all enterprise vendors are onboard with the idea yet, but some, such as Microsoft, are moving in this direction. As of July 1, Microsoft's Software Assurance customers will be able to use their current license agreements to move server applications from internal data centers to cloud computing services in what Microsoft calls "license mobility."

IT professionals such as Steve Turner, director of information technology at Amherst Securities Group in Austin, Texas, applaud the concept. "New models for licensing in the cloud are a good a idea and needed. Microsoft and other companies are making that transition. Not all vendors will."

4. The business will view IT's role as the "internal app store." The role of IT will shift from building custom apps and customizing large apps toward offering users a smorgasbord of services, accessible on any device, through clouds public and private. IT will need to reorient itself around the "IT services" concept, says Dave McNally, IT executive adviser for IDC. This movement began with the SOA idea some years back, but as SOA never completely succeeded with many enterprise application vendors, the cloud will progress the idea of IT as a collection of services once again.

5. Public clouds will become more important than private clouds, says Gens. "A lot of IT executives I talk to are thinking, 'How can I deploy cloud in my comfort zone, which is in my data center?' That is looking the wrong way," he says. Instead, IT executives need to be looking at this third platform for the new qualities it offers, not simply to re-create what the business is already doing on a potentially cheaper platform.

6. Clouds are big source for big data. A small number of cloud services of the Google, Amazon or iTunes ilk are gobbling up a large chunk of the storage capacity sold -- or 9.8 exabytes of hard drive capacity, says Villars. They have begun to realize that the data stored there is valuable information about consumers. Analytics companies are sprouting up to do everything from analyzing information on Twitter, to providing custom analytics for specialty retailers, all farming the data individuals are posting to the cloud. This holds compliance implications for enterprises, but also gives IT staffs the chance to lead the charge on researching their own companies' customers and markets.

7. IT organizations will become cloud services brokers. As part of the new self-image IT will take on as the enterprise app store, IT will become the master of all cloud services agreements. Rather than business units going around IT to hire SaaS services, IT will find and bundle cloud services for business, says Mahowald. IT will also perform asset management services that manage all IT resources used by the business, in-house, hybrid and via the cloud. This will also require more interaction and monitoring of vendors beyond the annual check-in, true-up or contract negotiation. IT organizations are providing the infrastructure that needs to service the business.

8. The cloud disrupts and potentially scares off the traditional IT workforce. "If we believe change is coming, a company needs to prepare its workforce," advises McNally. "How will the cloud impact the people?" IT workers fear that the cloud will commoditize IT work, and that cloud works hand-in-hand with outsourcing. This could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Students entering IT careers want to pursue careers where they can make a difference and may not feel that enterprise IT jobs offers that prospect. This could create a skills gap that encourages outsourcing.

9. One-third of your key vendors will become "wiki-trivia," says Gens. On the right track are vendors that are right now embracing cloud, looking to deploy their own cloud services, and modifying their license agreements to bring their customers to the cloud. Vendors holding onto the old way of doing things will become the next Wang or DEC, which failed to see, understand and adapt to the PC revolution wrought by the rise of client/server technologies. Adds Turner, "I agree with the idea that we are at a big line in the road similar to where client/server was. We need to pay attention to which vendor adopts cloud and which does not."

10. When it comes to the public cloud, vertical specialization will prevail. In the last wave, companies digitized their processes. Now, some of them see value in offering these processes as new cloud services for their industries, says Villers. He offers the example of Technicolor, which began life as a video post-production service that fixed colors and sound after a movie was edited and before it was replicated and sent to movie theaters. Because Technicolor digitized its methodology, it was able to offer cloud voice and video services.

11. You can't avoid the personal cloud. End users already are building their own personal clouds, typically accessed through mobile devices like smartphones, says Mahowald. These clouds are important to the users and the model by which they will want to receive the enterprise app store apps. With desktop virtualization, mobile applications and SaaS, IT can adapt to users' expectations. Ultimately, end users are building their personal cloud to be a mix of their business apps and their personal apps. IT can't stop that train and shouldn't try to, even for compliance reasons. Much like the PC revolution, the people most successful at this next-generation, cloud-based IT will be the ones who know how to balance the enterprises' needs with the users' work styles.

12. Cloud services foster innovation. The rapid adoption of cloud is another opportunity for the CIOs, network executives and the whole IT team to lead the business into faster, more economical IT tools. From the view of clouds in the year 2011, it looks like resistance is futile.

ISI Solution Now Rated Avaya Compliant

Infortel Select 8.1 Telecom Reporting Application Is Compatible With Key Avaya IP Telephony Solutions; Helps Businesses Monitor and Manage Telecom Expenses and Networks

SCHAUMBURG, IL–(Marketwire – Jun 13, 2011) – ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of Telecom Expense Management products and services, today announced that its Infortel® Select 8.1 Telecom Reporting application is compliant with key Internet Protocol (IP) telephony solutions from Avaya, a global leader in business collaboration systems, software and services.

Infortel® Select 8.1 helps businesses monitor and manage their telecom usage across the entire enterprise. The application now is compliance-tested by Avaya for compatibility with Avaya Aura® Communication Manager 6.0.1.

“We are proud to be compliant with the latest Avaya Aura Communication Manager 6.0.1 technology. ISI’s many Avaya-based customers can now feel confident they will be able to continue to use the reliable Call Management and Telecom Reporting tools with the newest technology platforms from Avaya,” said Irwin Friedman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for ISI.

ISI Telemanagement Solutions is a member of the Avaya DevConnect program — an initiative to develop, market and sell innovative third-party products that interoperate with Avaya technology and extend the value of a company’s investment in its network.

As a Gold member of the program, ISI is eligible to submit products for compatibility testing by the Avaya Solution Interoperability and Test Lab. There, a team of Avaya engineers develops a comprehensive test plan for each application to verify whether it is Avaya compliant. Doing so ensures businesses can confidently add best-in-class capabilities to their network without having to replace their existing infrastructure — speeding deployment of new applications and reducing both network complexity and implementation costs.

“By offering compliance testing to the many innovative companies like ISI who are members of our DevConnect program, Avaya promotes interoperable solutions that help businesses unleash powerful new possibilities,”said Eric Rossman, vice president, Developer Relations, Avaya. “As a result, Avaya customers are able to connect employees and customers to information from wherever they are, over whatever device they have available — getting more out of their multivendor network and delivering new value to their bottom line.”

www.isi-info.com

Telepresence No Longer Just for the Board Room – New Cisco Value-Priced Endpoint Makes Widespread Enterprise Adoption More Affordable

Enhances "Any to Any" Interoperability; Makes Telepresence Conferencing Easier, Smarter and More Cost Effective to Deploy

ORLANDO, Fla. - June 14, 2011 - Cisco today introduced a number of new telepresence products and enhancements as part of its collaboration portfolio designed to give customers new ways to simply, quickly and cost effectively scale telepresence throughout their organizations. The advancements also enhance "any-to-any" interoperability between Cisco TelePresence® endpoints and any standards-based devices, and make the telepresence experience even more intuitive with user-friendly features and capabilities.

New Cisco TelePresence MX200 endpoint

Today's announcements, combined with Cisco's previously announced medianet architecture, advances Cisco's objective to unlock the power of video for its customers. Cisco is making video easier to use, helping customers rapidly deploy video everywhere, and putting people back in the center of collaboration.

The "Telepresence Everywhere" Endpoint

To complement its portfolio of TelePresence offerings ranging from immersive systems to desktop solutions to PC and Mac software clients such as Movi, Cisco is introducing the Cisco TelePresence MX200. The MX200 is ideal for team meetings or personal offices and priced so that customers can telepresence-enable many rooms in their organization. The endpoint is easy to set up with auto-provisioning and can be up and running in as little as 15 minutes. The MX200 has a list price of $21,600 with pricing flexibility to the customer based on volume purchase agreements. The endpoint is scheduled to be available globally in July.

Intelligent Conferencing Increases TelePresence Usage

As more customers realize the benefits of telepresence, the desire to engage in more multiparty conferences often grows as do requests to meet "on the fly." While this behavior is great for collaboration, it can be problematic for administrators. How do they ensure that they always have enough conferencing ports to accommodate these requests? If there are not enough ports available, these meetings can be put in jeopardy. To solve this problem, Cisco is introducing the Cisco TelePresence Conductor. The Cisco TelePresence Conductor simplifies and scales multi-party conferencing by intelligently assigning meetings to the most appropriate conferencing unit for the best possible experience. It also can automatically divert conferences to another unit should the power go down. Additionally, TelePresence Conductor enables customers to provide their employees with virtual meeting room "ID" numbers. Employees can provide these numbers to others and meet impromptu, which can help dramatically increase productivity. The Cisco TelePresence Conductor scales from small businesses to large enterprises. Anticipated global availability for the TelePresence Conductor is late second half of 2011.

Delivering Any-To-Any Calling with Standards-Based Interoperability

Cisco is fully committed to open, standards-based connectivity which extends any-to-any video calling to colleagues, partners, and customers, regardless of vendor. With key enhancements to the endpoint software (TC5.0, CTS 1.8), Cisco broadens its multipoint interoperability support and products designed to deliver native point-to-point interoperability between all Cisco TelePresence endpoints and standards-based third party endpoints without requiring an additional hardware transcoding device. This innovation will dramatically increase the simplicity of connecting video calls across the Cisco TelePresence portfolio and between Cisco and endpoints made by other manufacturers.

Additional Highlights

Cisco also announced a number of additional product enhancements to help customers and partners deploy and scale Cisco TelePresence throughout their organizations and provide a more seamless user experience.

Bringing Cisco TelePresence to More Users

• Cisco TelePresence Server 8710 and 7010 v.2.2, Cisco's flagship multi-screen interoperability solution now delivers greater scalability and better resolution on more screens with support for up to 64 meeting participants in high definition (HD) (720p30) mode and up to 48 participants in full HD mode (720p60 and 1080p30).
• Cisco TelePresence Multipoint Switch v. 1.8 now supports the Cisco's C Series and EX Series and all Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP)-based endpoints. A new auto attendant feature allows users to easily join a scheduled call from any endpoint. Additionally, scalability enhancements enable meeting sizes to increase from 48 to 90 screens, nearly doubling the number of endpoints that can participate in a single telepresence meeting. The TelePresence Multipoint Switch 1.8 is scheduled to be available in August.
• Cisco MXE 5600 (Media Experience Engine) is a video infrastructure product that now delivers real-time content sharing, WebEx® OneTouch, and recording and streaming interoperability across standards-based video endpoints from any vendor.

Raising the Bar with the Most Consistent User Experience

• Cisco TelePresence Management Suite 13.1 and Cisco TelePresence Managerextends Cisco's innovative "one button to push" capability to the EX and C Series endpoints. This enables scheduled meetings to be started with one button, based on calendaring integration with Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes.
• Cisco TelePresence TMS 13.1 and Cisco TelePresence Manager (CTS-MAN) extend Cisco's innovative "one button to push" calling capability across the portfolio to include the CTS, EX Series and C Series endpoints. This enables scheduled meetings to be started with one button, based on calendaring integration with Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes and other groupware applications.
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.6 adds native call control and session management for EX Series and C Series endpoints. With these additions, Cisco is delivering on its commitment (announced in November 2010) to establish Cisco Unified Communications Manager as the common call control platform for both voice and video, providing improved ease of use and manageability.

Quotes

• Alberto Mazagatos, chief executive officer, Unitronics

"We believe the new values and the outstanding usability of MX200 will enable a massive adoption of TelePresence in large market segments. Cisco has managed to achieve a perfect balance of functionality, simplicity and cost efficiency with the MX200. This will allow us to broadly promote TelePresence across all customer segments. It's just a homerun."

• Michael Stanton-Jones, principal architect, Communications and Collaboration Group, Vodafone Group Services

"We are working very closely with Cisco and are testing and trialling Cisco TelePresence Conductor. Vodafone is an innovation hungry company and we are always pushing the limits of technology to deliver leading edge solutions. Cisco TelePresence Conductor is in line with this strategy and it allows us to simplify multiparty video communications and to vastly improve the ease with which we administer our bridging capability. Users get simple, easy access to multiparty conferencing wherever they are and whenever they need it. This will improve teamwork and increase productivity for our organisation."

• OJ Winge, senior vice president and general manager, TelePresence Technology Group, Cisco

"Affordability, scalability, interoperability and exceptional experiences are all key to helping people use video more effectively. As these new advancements are brought to market, it's no surprise that the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index predicts that by 2015, 1 million video minutes --the equivalent of 674 days--will traverse the Internet every second. Cisco is focused on taking telepresence, a key component of Cisco's video offerings, to the next level by offering customers a broad portfolio of solutions designed to maximize interoperability that are simply scalable and user-friendly. We are enabling telepresence to everyone, everywhere."

Additional Resources:

• Visit the Cisco TelePresence Virtual Launch Experience to learn about these product announcements and Cisco's presence at Infocomm 2011.
• Collaborative Professional Services for Cisco TelePresence is a partner offering that combines Cisco's intellectual property, best practices and smart services innovation with partners' assets and resources to offer enhanced customer video adoption and operation.
• For more information about Cisco's collaboration news and activities, visit the Collaboration Blog or follow us via Twitter @TelePresence or @CiscoCollab.

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About Cisco Collaboration

From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together integrated network-based collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation, and productivity.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

New Software Release for the Polycom UC Intelligent Core

INFOCOMM, ORLANDO, Fla. – June 14, 2011 – Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), a global leader in unified communications (UC), today at InfoComm 2011 announced the newPolycom® UC Intelligent Core™ software release. This new release features industry-leading enhancements to help customers deploy more devices than ever before; more easily connect any device, standard, or network; provide best-in-class experience; and reduce costs.

“The UC Intelligent Core technology is the heart of unified communications and a key component of our UC Everywhere vision, and is continuing to change the industry by delivering unparalleled scalability and interoperability,” said Sudhakar Ramakrishna, Polycom chief development officer. “We are accelerating the adoption of video collaboration and driving down costs by making the process easier for everyone from the end user to the IT administrator.”

Offering more than five times the scalability of competing UC solutions1, the new release enables the UC Intelligent Core solution to deliver carrier-grade scalability supporting up to 75,000 devices helping large corporations and service providers handle the multiplier effect of new UC devices, from mobile devices to room-based telepresence solutions. Intelligent load-balancing and redundant auto-failover ensures 100 percent failover protection and makes UC as reliable and available as other mission-critical communications such as voice or data.

The UC Intelligent Core platform harnesses the cloud to establish “universal bridging,” an industry first that allows users to connect regardless of protocol standard, device, network, or location helping to reduce costs and increase productivity. The universal bridge will support a vast range of protocols including H.323, TIP, SIP, POTS/ISDN, and RTV, and is ideal for users looking to seamlessly and easily connect multiple organizations. The enhanced UC Intelligent Core solution delivers unprecedented security, scale, reach, access, and availability with lower total cost of ownership than ever before.

The UC Intelligent Core platform is the onlysolution with guaranteed class of service through dynamic Priority Based Communications to ensure a quality experience that maximizes productivity and speeds ROI.The UC Intelligent Core technology also helps drive the broader adoption of video by natively integrating with everyday workflow tools such as Microsoft Lync and IBM SameTime. The native integration allows customers to seamlessly connect two separate communication platforms, such as Lync and video telepresence. End users organically adopt UC solutions because they are easy to use and provide access to all of the workflow tools they need.

By simplifying the use cases for integrated, multi-vendor deployments, the new UC Intelligent Core software offers the broadest available selection of UC solutions to support a wide range of environments, applications, and budgets. Polycom’s efficient use of bandwidth (reducing bandwidth requirements by 50 percent) through the H.264 High Profile technology, combined with enhanced qualityof experience developments, drives video conferencing use and reduces costs across organizations.

The UC Intelligent Core infrastructure simplifies the administration of UC. Native integration with Active Directory drastically shortens set-up by eliminating complex reconfiguration helping to slash expenses and cut deployment from weeks to minutes. The solution also features advanced firewall traversal technology that provides broad B2B communication access through a single port, which eliminates the need to open multiple ports in the corporate firewall while ensuring secure access between locations, organizations, and the cloud.

Unlike any other solution in the marketplace, the UC Intelligent Core platform:

Provides maximum access through cloud-based delivery of real-time and on-demand video content and streaming with Polycom’s Accordent solutions that natively integrate with Microsoft Lync and SharePoint
Expands interoperability and standards-based support for UC solutions and third-party devices including support for Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Windows 7, as well as enhancements to support for Avaya Aura networks and Cisco CUCM networks
Provides load balancing for up to 192 bridges, a unique offering from Polycom unmatched by the competition

Polycom UC Intelligent Core technology is akey innovation platform for enabling service providers to drive visual business-to-business communications, and telepresence interoperability for multi-site, multi-vendor video calls. Polycom and 14 leading global service providers recently announced the Open Visual Communications Consortium™, the first public and open video exchange of its kind, to enable new levels of interoperability for telepresence and video conferencing between organizations worldwide.

The UC Intelligent Core solution will be demonstrated at InfoComm 2011 Conference and Expo, June 11-17 in Orlando, booth #1363. For more information, visit: http://www.polycom.com/company/news_room/press_releases/2011/20110614_2.html

The updated UC Intelligent Core platform will be available in Q3. To assist with planning, designing, and implementation of the Polycom UC Intelligent Core solution, Polycom and its partners offer a full suite of global professional services.

For more information, visit: www.polycom.com/products.