| By Marketwire - Medical and Healthcare |
| Tuesday, 21 February 2012 06:35 Avaya Receives Frost & Sullivan 2011 Customer Value Enhancement Award for Improving Patient Care With Unified Communications BASKING RIDGE, NJ--(Marketwire - Feb 21, 2012) -
Avaya, a global provider of business communications and collaboration systems and services, today announced it has received Frost & Sullivan's 2011 Customer Value Enhancement Award for delivering superior customer communications to healthcare customers using unified communications (UC). Frost & Sullivan is an independent research firm that annually recognizes best-in-class companies for excellence in growth, innovation and leadership. Avaya received the award for its continuous focus on customer value enhancement for healthcare clients. According to Frost & Sullivan, this is driven by the company's dedicated internal resources, solutions portfolio and a commitment to providing open architecture support. Other characteristics companies must demonstrate to win the Frost & Sullivan Award for Customer Value Enhancement include:
Avaya is a global provider of UC applications in the healthcare market, and approximately 5,500 healthcare facilities worldwide have deployed Avaya technology. The company's healthcare solutions portfolio helps hospitals, healthcare organizations and care providers anticipate, prepare and respond to changing market requirements, including trends in care coordination, patient interaction and telehealth/home-care delivery. Avaya solutions encompass the entire lifecycle of patient care -- from pre-admission preparedness and the delivery of care in treatment to post-discharge care and follow-up. Avaya is showcasing its UC innovations in mobility, social media and videoconferencing at the recent 2012 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas. Read more about the Avaya Healthcare Solutions debuted and demonstrated at HIMSS here. Supporting Quotes: "This recognition from Frost & Sullivan reinforces the consistent value Avaya delivers to healthcare companies through our unified communications and collaboration offerings. We are helping healthcare providers around the world improve clinical workflows, patient care and remote and home-based care with a wide range of innovative communications solutions." About Avaya: About Frost & Sullivan: 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. 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. Read more http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=1621930&sourceType=3 |
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Avaya Recognized by Frost Sullivan for Delivering Superior Communications Solutions to Healthcare Customers
Avaya could Go Public in a $1BN IPO
Cisco Systems Inc., the top manufacturer of networking equipment and a competitor to Avaya, slumped 11 percent last year, while rival Juniper Networks Inc. dropped 45 percent. The weakness reflected concerns that customers would delay upgrades amid economic turmoil. The outlook brightened in recent weeks after quarterly results from Cisco exceeded profit and sales estimates and analysts predicted that AT&T Inc., the largest U.S. telephone company, would step up capital spending.
Avaya is still a long way behind its two biggest competitors, but it has been making definite progress in at least one area. It’s the second largest vendor of enterprise telecommunications solutions, following Cisco. The latter has maintained parallel ventures in the consumer space, the umi and Flip, but shut them down a few months ago.
That was the result of an internal overhaul to the networking giant’s internal decision-making and fragmented businesses, which has gone on for almost a year and is starting pay off. The process of consolidation with a refocus on the enterprise market is similar to processes others in the tech sector are undergoing.
Cisco beat Wall Street’s average expectation with its Q2 earnings announced earlier this month. The company reported 43 cents per share on revenue of $11.23 billion, higher than the 37 cents analysts forecasted.
By | FEBRUARY 20TH http://siliconangle.com
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Dell Canada, Fongo Partnering on Free VoIP Calling App
With the PC market waning, Dell Canada is venturing into the VoIP app market through a new partnership with Fongo.
The two companies have launched a new VoIP phone alternative called Dell Voice, an Android and iOS app that enables users to leverage their existing data connection to place and receiving free calls using their mobile phone or their computer.
Like other competing apps, Dell Voice will target users who want to avoid long distance charges on their house phone or who routinely go over their allotted minutes on their mobile phone. The app may also be particularly attractive for small businesses that want to cut costs by running their office communications through their computer and their mobile communications through a VoIP app.
The app is free and the calls are free (to most parts of Canada), but know that VoIP works over 3G and 4G networks when a Wi-Fi connection is unavailable. Data charges from your wireless carrier or Internet service provider may apply. If you have an unlimited data plan, no need to worry.
Users who download the free app can choose a local Canadian phone number and can make emergency 911 VoIP calls if needed.
"Dell and Fongo want to tilt the competitive playing field by offering smartphone users everything we believe they need in a mobile phone service - for free," John Stix, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Fongo, noted in a statement.
"Dell Voice aims to help Canadians reduce the cost or even eliminate the need for a voice plan," he added. "I believe Dell Voice is a game changer that has the potential to transform the telecommunications industry, while helping to put money back into the pockets of Canadian consumers and business owners."
Dell partnered with Fongo to take advantage of the company's privileged access to Fibernetics, a Canadian CLEC that operates a coast-to-coast network in Canada.
The app is currently available at the App Store and the Android Market. Ironically, Canada-based RIM's Blackberry won't get the app until March.
IP Reflections – SIP and Serve Blog: David Byrd
In attempting to better understand the impact of the FCC rules change regarding InterCarrier Compensation (ICC) and Universal Service Funding (USF), I found myself lost in a sea of IP related missives. Ignoring the obviously flawed reasoning behind the rules change, I looked for studies that could summarize their effects upon an ITSP like Broadvox. On the surface the changes appear to create a level of fairness by addressing unfair termination and access charges. However, the reality is they will negatively impact rural carriers and VoIP service providers. All of whom are analyzing the financial impact upon their revenue streams in order to determine the proper path forward. Since the FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, indicates that the change is his solution to expanding the reach of broadband and implementing a fairer approach to funding that expansion, I view the overall action as misguided. In prior blogs, I have indicated that focusing our efforts on expanding the reach of broadband is premature given our poor position relative to the rest of world in delivering competitive broadband to the majority of the country. Whereas, it is possible to get 1 gigabit speeds in various countries, the US is struggling to provide speeds in excess of 20 megabits at a reasonable price point. This becomes increasingly important with the adoption rate of multimedia mobile devices.
Bandwidth consumption is experiencing a dramatic increase because of video on demand, video conferencing and streaming applications, all of which are provided by a growing number of content delivery networks. Frost and Sullivan are projecting a nearly 30% increase in 2012. Amazingly, this may be a low forecast given the adoption rate of smartphones and tablets. Consider that nearly 500 million such devices were sold last quarter. Perhaps, it is appropriate to remind you of Google’s intent to deliver a gigabit IP network to Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas. Construction on the project began in earnest just this month. After completion residents will be able to experience Internet speeds 100 times the current average equaling the top speed available throughout Kiev, Ukraine and by the end of year every home in South Korea.
The US has a penchant for ignoring what is happening in other countries. It is a detriment that we continue to do so despite having the greatest international presence of any country. Our lack of awareness and knowledge results in poor planning and misplaced priorities. Our ability to navel gaze is not the result of our political system but is the nature of our culture. We do not embrace true diversity well (multiple languages, international concepts, interracial neighborhoods and social environments).
IP communications has become the foundation for technological innovation, financial markets, education, entertainment and global communications. I support making it universally available in the US after we make it competitive with the rest of the world.
Polycom Names Eric Brown Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer
Brown to increase efficiency and scale
PLEASANTON, Calif. – Feb. 8, 2012 – Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM), the global leader in standards-based unified communications (UC), today announced that Eric Brown will join the company as chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and executive vice president, starting Feb. 21, 2012. In his dual roles as CFO and COO, reporting to Polycom President and CEO Andy Miller, Brown, 46, will manage all financial, operational, and IT functions at Polycom, which are being consolidated under one leader for greater efficiency and scale as the company looks to accelerate its momentum and grow faster than the overall UC market. Polycom today also announced that Mike Kourey will retire from his position as EVP & CFO of Polycom in order to pursue other opportunities, including spending more time on corporate boards and on various charitable activities (see related release here).
Brown comes to Polycom from Electronic Arts, the world’s leading publisher of video game software, where as chief financial officer and executive vice president, he led the company successfully through rapid change. Brown was instrumental in leveraging advances in wireless and mobile technologies, shifting EA to online distribution of products and services, and streamlining EA’s portfolio to drive profitability. He also served as key architect of a recent strategic acquisition designed to drive expansion and growth of digital offerings and make EA products available through mobile, social and cloud-based delivery. Prior to Electronic Arts, Brown was COO and CFO at McAfee, Inc. Before that, Brown was President and CFO of MicroStrategy, Inc, and also co-founded DataSage, Inc., where he also served as CFO. Brown earned his bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
“As Polycom drives toward our vision to make video collaboration ubiquitous, I am very pleased to welcome a leader of Eric’s caliber and proven operational excellence to our executive team,” said Miller. “Eric’s strengths and track record in finance, operations, and IT are exactly what Polycom needs at this time of unprecedented growth at the company. With Eric on board, we can put even more focus on innovation, and I look forward to spending additional time with customers and focusing on our long-term strategy. Eric brings deep knowledge of enterprise software and delivering software through mobile, social, and cloud-based models, all of which are integral to Polycom’s software strategy. Eric will be an asset to our team and will play a leading role in the next era of growth at Polycom.”
“I am delighted to join Polycom at such an exciting time,” said Brown. “Polycom® RealPresence™ video collaboration is truly transformative technology, increasing business productivity, ensuring business continuity, and speeding time to market by eliminating the barriers of distance and time, and bringing people together virtually face-to-face. The growth trends in mobility, cloud-delivered services, and business social networking are the driving forces behind a whole new paradigm for communication that is centered on the power of video collaboration. With Polycom’s software strategy, open platform approach, broad ecosystem of partners, and strong brand loyalty among its huge installed base, I believe the company is ideally poised to capitalize on this new model.”
Polycom announced fourth-quarter and full-year 2011 financial results on Jan. 23, 2012. The company confirms its financial results, first-quarter 2012 financial guidance and the long-term operating model given at that time.
Top 4 WAN Obstacles and Solutions to Cloud Migration
But Cloud has never been a new concept: IT professionals have been migrating applications to centralized datacenters for decades now…mainly to share recourses and save money by having less IT personnel supporting branch offices. Unfortunately, application performance as well as reliability and uptime requirements quickly became barriers to this centralization. And while headquarters is where you often have the most skilled IT professionals and reliable facilities, branch offices often have the most customer interaction, requiring the most performance and reliability.
Today, WAN connectivity is much more reliable with higher performance, and bandwidth costs are dropping. This enables companies to have bigger links and backup links (that are more closely to the primary link). Companies can once again start migrating to a centralized datacenter, a private cloud, or public cloud applications.
The customer premises router (CPE router) is located at each branch, but often it is only providing WAN connectivity –and not many necessary services for Cloud migration.
You’ll now have to rely on your WAN connectivity for any day-by-day tasks, and if for some reason you lose it, it becomes instable or slow, your productivity and customer satisfaction will drop. You need the mechanisms to guarantee that WAN connectivity is always up, the correct applications are using your bandwidth, and the applications have good behavior even when used over a WAN, providing predictable performance for any applications, as well as survivability and fault tolerance.
Obstacle 1: Application Visibility and Prioritization
You need to have a better visibility of which applications are using your WAN:, what the needs are for each application, and control mechanisms to prioritize mission critical traffic so that correct application have priority over not unimportant applications. With embedded functionalities like NBAR, NetFlow, and IPSLA, Cisco enables network administrators to get an in-depth view of WAN utilization, and mechanisms like quality of service (QoS) and hierarchical QoS (HQoS) enable administrators to control the environment prioritizing traffic as needed.
Now we are going a step forward, with Application Visibility and Control (AVC) and PA (Performance Agent). AVC supports over 1000 applications using NBAR2, enabling a granular and smarter application control. It also has an advanced graphical reporting interface and management with CiscoPrime Assurance Manager and Cisco Insight.
Cisco Performance Agent (PA) measures application response times at branch edge, extending visibility into remote sites. PA is embedded on the IOS, so there is no need to change the router or add/change any equipment.
Obstacle 2: Application Acceleration
Once you have WAN utilization visibility and apply the correct mechanisms to ensure proper prioritization, you have to focus on how we can deliver applications to branches with the same performance as we have in the datacenter. Applications were written for a LAN environment -- not to a WAN -- and WAN latency increases application response time and degrades user experience. If now we have to access applications on the cloud, we have to create mechanisms that accelerate applications, providing similar performance for branch users.
TCP/IP optimization, compression, and caching has become a must have. Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) is the family of application acceleration from Cisco, from the equipments that is seated on the datacenter, to appliances for branches, or even integrated on the CPE.
Cisco WAAS Express is the solution for application acceleration embedded on IOS and is enabled via licensing, avoiding the need of an extra box on the branches or replacement of the access router.
Obstacle 3: Reliability
Consolidated data center and cloud environments also increase reliability demands and need to adapt to change in the network conditions. Also, the backup WAN link is often underutilized, wasting money and increasing convergence time.
Performance Routing (PfR) is technology used to guarantee the maximum usage of WAN links, performing intelligent load balancing based on applications needs, and providing a much faster convergence time in the case of error or failures.
Using IPSLA, NetFlow or even RTP, Cisco Integrated Services Routers Generation 2 (ISR G2s) keep a table of link conditions, such aasjitter, delay and latency, and perform load balancing based on those conditions and on the application needs. This ensures that all WAN links are being utilized in a manner that applications uses the best link for their needs, while also ensuring a much faster convergence time if one of the links fails.
Obstacle 4: Survivability
If everything goes wrong, you’ll still need to have mechanisms to stay productive. You can extend the datacenter to the branch, extending virtualization to the remote office and guaranteeing survivability for applications. This is not only important for productivity, but is also a requirement to stay in compliance with several policies that still may require local presence.
The solution that Cisco presents for this need is the UCS Express on the ISR G2, the extension of the virtualization to the branch router. UCS Express is based on the SRE (Service Ready Engine) blade and can be used in any router with an SRE slot, which means ISR G2 2911 or bigger. The SRE blade is a full PC that can be inserted o the router; it has its own processor, memory and hard-drive, and is internally connected to the router by two GB interfaces. On this blade, you can run the VMWare’s vSphere Hypervisor, and on top of it you can run any OS (Like Windows, Unix,..) and have your own applications running inside the router. UCS Express enables extension of the datacenter rto the branch router, providing survivability to applications and meeting compliances policies that requires local presence.
In conclusion, migration to Cloud is something that will happen. The good news is that today we have enough WAN bandwidth and reliability that enable this transition, and the Router plays an important role on this. Mechanisms embedded on the router allow us to have visibility and control on what is going on over the WAN, accelerate application ensuring an adequate response time, intelligent load balance mechanism ensuring the best utilization of all WANs links and faster convergence time, and finally extending the virtualization to the branch router guaranteeing survivability and policy compliancy. Cisco ISR is the only router in the market that can provide all of those in one box, ensuring a seamless migration to Cloud. For more information, please visit www.cisco.com/go/isrg2.