Unified Communications

Distribution Central has signed on with communications vendor, Alcatel-Lucent, for its range of voice and data products.

Cisco Systems will be making aspects of its IP voice technology available virtually and sold as a service as part of a continuing set of improvements to its cloud computing strategy, the company's CTO said today.

Unified communications has been a technology specialty of networking vendors for years, but Google Inc.'s recent forays into Google Voice and Google Wave, launching later this year, could drastically upset the competitive landscape.

Juniper this week announced enhancements to its service provider edge routers that are designed to improve multimedia service delivery to users.

Cisco's biggest challenge in gaining market acceptance for its new Unified Computing System is to convince data center managers to buy blade servers from the router giant instead of from traditional, incumbent suppliers.

For years, IT and business have heard the sexy promise of "IP convergence," which would allow all sorts of voice- and video-enabled applications to appear in business. However, for most organizations, this Jetsons-like vision has yet to occur.

A slew of new WLAN hardware and software suggests that 802.11n high-throughput WLANs are fast becoming more affordable and manageable across all industry segments.

When we tested the DiVitas Mobile Convergence Appliance in May 2007, the value proposition was straightforward. By leveraging VoIP, wireless LAN connections, and dual-mode Windows Mobile phones, the DiVitas solution allowed mobile users to save precious minutes on their voice plans and even turn long distance into local calls. It was all about the mobile phone bill.

Imagine an IP voice and unified communications system that can be integrated into any application and customised to meet business needs. Sounds great, right? Well that project is the Asterisk IP-PBX and it's free to use and you get the source code. A far cry from proprietary PBX systems perhaps, but Asterisk has a vibrant ecosystem and is replacing systems from more established telephony vendors. Following interviews with the leaders of the Horde and Free Telephony projects, the Open Source Identity series talked to Asterisk founder and Digium CTO Mark Spencer about how one application can have such a profound effect on businesses and how open source can be a tough competitive landscape.

Charles Giancarlo spent more than a decade at Cisco Systems and was widely considered a likely heir to Chairman and CEO John Chambers before he left last year for investment company Silver Lake Partners. Then Silver Lake orchestrated a private-equity buyout of Cisco rival Avaya, and Giancarlo stepped in as interim president and CEO. In January, former JDS Uniphase chief Kevin Kennedy will take over day-to-day operations as president and CEO, and Giancarlo will become chairman. Stephen Lawson of the IDG News Service spoke with Giancarlo on Tuesday after he delivered the opening keynote at VoiceCon in San Francisco.

Interim Avaya CEO Charles Giancarlo is winding down his tenure at the helm as the company narrows down a permanent replacement for former CEO Lou D'Ambrosio, who stepped down earlier this year for health reasons.

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As the dust settles from the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, here are four trends worth looking at based on some products that were announced at the show. On my radar screen for the year:

Cisco has won much attention from consumer news sites since the New York Times reported Monday that the networking giant at CES this week is expected to unveil a digital stereo system that can move music wirelessly around a house, among other consumer offerings. But analysts and pundits say there are hurdles that Cisco must overcome in a market where Cisco is an unknown brand. Pundits also point to similar offerings from Sonos, Logitech and Apple.

Whether fixed-mobile convergence is for you in the near-term depends in part on how you define it, but for most, there's no rush.

While it's still early days, Australian companies are quickly warming to UC. In fact, Gartner research vice-president, Geoff Johnson, believes we are just as advanced as any economy in Europe or North America. However, as no one vendor is able to provide a complete UC solution - and are not expected to do so for the next three years - there is a vital need for partnering and cooperation between suppliers over the coming years.

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