Unified Communications: News

ARN's Community Manager, Hafizah Osman, has disappeared under a flood of community picture stories and reports of company events, so we thought what better to do than put them all in a slideshow summing up the week in the channel. It stars: Siemens, WhiteGold, Watchguard, Data#3, Fortinet, M. Tech, Sage, Shoretel, Leader Computers, Vivid Systems, A10 Networks, Turnbull, and Equinix. Are you pictured?

It's always been difficult to figure out where to put the hands-free Bluetooth headset in the Cool Yule Tools holiday gift guide. Does it belong in its own category or do we combine them into something else?

With today's flexible workstyles, your office can be in a corporate workspace or the dining room table of your home. No matter the place, sometimes you need more than just a notebook and a mouse to get things done - so we're here to help.

More companies are looking to embrace Unified Communications (UC) tools in 2013 to enable increased mobility for increased efficiency and retaining and attracting top talent, a survey by hands-free communications vendor, Jabra and analyst firm, Frost and Sullivan, has found.

Professional services firm, Deloitte, has named the companies that have made it on its Fast 50 Australia 2012 list.

Allowing the use of mobile devices in the workforce and unified communications (UC) tools may be the key to attracting top talent and retaining staff, according to a new survey.

Cisco has named a former Symantec executive to head its struggling collaboration group, which saw three different leaders in less than a year.

IT infrastructure solutions provider, UXC Connect, has opened its new office in Perth to be led by national mining, oil, and gas manager and Western Australia (WA) state manager, Chris Upstone.

Telco service provider, iiNet has selected business service management vendor, BMC Software’s Remedy IT service management (ITSM) platform as part of the company’s continued investment in service and innovation.

The unprecedented pace of technological change, coupled with maturing customer service expectations, is driving a transformation in the way that organisations source, implement, manage and support technology in contact centres, according to Dimension Data.

Home entertainment today is often provided through a clutter of TVs, tablets, and computers, along with TV specialty boxes for yet more streaming video or music services. But some Hollywood studios are hoping to find better ways to deliver paid content to consumers directly to hard drives and flash storage, according to Cryptography Research, which is working on a futuristic project to do that.

Since publicly launching a communications outsourcing division earlier this year, Avaya says it has seen strong customer adoption, which is why the company is looking to expand its service to smaller and mid-sized businesses.

Unified communications (UC) solutions provider, Polycom, is looking to provide universal access to enterprise-grade video collaboration, and thus expand the entire UC market, through the introduction of its RealPresence CloudAxis Suite, according to Polycom Asia-Pacific vice-president, Michael Chetner.

Southern Cross has opened a branch in Sydney, further expanding its IT infrastructure network

Polycom plans to break down one more set of barriers to videoconferencing early next year with a cloud-based software platform that can set up sessions with anyone who uses Facebook, Skype, or certain other online services.

Australian businesses are confident of seeing returns from their Unified Communications (UC) investment within the next two years, according to a joint survey by Jabra and Frost & Sullivan.

ICT distributor, Express Data, has announced that it is working with Cisco to offer its unified computing system.

Microsoft is talking about its upgraded Lync unified communications platform, revealing client support for more devices, server features for better meetings and collaboration as well as integration with the peer-to-peer voice and video service Skype.

ShoreTel, which made its mark in IP telephony by simplifying unified communications and reducing total cost of ownership, recently broke into the hosted VoIP business with the acquisition of M5. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix caught up with ShoreTel CEO Peter Blackmore to find out how integration of that company is going and where he is taking the company.

Back in February I blogged about "12 Communication Trends for 2012," and this year's trends generated so much interest we decided to take a midyear review. Here are the 12 broken down into hits, near hits and misses, along with commentary.