Aastra Shareholders Approve Sale to Mitel
Big week for industry Canucks eh? Last week the shareholders of Aastra Technologies agreed to be acquired by Mitel. Ballots were dropped in a large toque that was passed around the maple log lodge. Ninety-nine percent of the voters indicated Oui,…
Mitel, Unify, and Amazon
What a week. It was a week of travel. I spent the week in Japan attending the NEC iExpo. More on that coming soon. The flight from Denver to Tokyo is over 12 hours – quite possibly the longest I’ve…
Match the EC13 Vendor to its Tagline
Pop quiz, here’s ten UC taglines spotted at the recent Enterprise Connect (#EC13) conference. Can you match the vendor to its tagline? Vendors Taglines 1 8×8 A Amplify Teams 2 Aastra B Click. Connect. Collaborate 3 Avaya C Cloud Solutions…
A Merry UC Christmas
Dear Santa, It’s been a while since I have written to you. I know you are busy filling the wish lists of deserving children everywhere, but this year the telecom industry needs you more than they do. You see businesses…
Voice in the Clouds
The voice in the cloud is not the creator of the universe, but rather some 800 service providers after your wallet. And they are getting it. Hosted voice and UCaaS is growing at an impressive clip. The premise vendors can’t…
HP: We Don’t Need No Stinking 3Com
The news sparking this post is the HP has put 3Com’s VCX out to pasture. It had already done so with the NBX, so once again – 3Com is dead. 3Com was a highly innovative company that could never turn…
Which One is the Customer Again?
It has been a blur of conferences and ideas, and I haven’t been able to do a proper post. But don’t interpret lack of posts as lack of deep profound thoughts. But I did want to take a moment to…
UC Alliance Anyone?
The Tech Sector had a rough month in May. Kevin Kelleher of CNN Money asks (but doesn’t answer) the question Why Are Blue Chip Tech Stocks So Blue? Exhibit A, of course, is the Facebook (FB) IPO, which in its first…
TalkingPointz Research Resumes
A funny thing happened to me on they way to my new forum. I used to post on Blogger (PinDropSoup.com). Blogger was simple, and with no real effort toward SEO I managed to develop an audience. Blogging was never meant…
Digium Has Big Bells
Digium announces new phones. See my full post here. A few additional thoughts on Polycom, Aastra, and Snom – all three of which have been at every Astricon I’ve attended.
Operators No Longer Standing By
This week Aastra launched InAttend – an attendant solution with advanced collaboration options. Ever call an agent and totally confuse them with a request that’s off the script? It creates all kinds of havoc invariably resulting with an incessant recording…
Cisco and Avaya Leaders Again
Cisco and Avaya were once again identified as industry leaders. This time, by a new IDC worldwide unified communications Marketscape report. The report claims to use a “rigorous scoring methodology that produces a definititive assessment of each vendro’s current market…
HP UC
Is HP a UC player? And if so, “Player” as in vendor or poser? The hot part of UC right now is mobility – and HP doesn’t seem to be in that space. Although that could still change. I’ve written…
Cord-cutting UC
Network World is confusing cord cutting with going mobile. We observed in our newsletter a week ago that the integration of business apps on mobile devices was very important to business, but we weren’t quite sure businesses were willing to “cut the…
Kan Du Saga Aastra?
Just one final conference for the year – Aastra. I am anxious to learn more about Aastra’s vision and strategy. I attended the company’s user group conference last May – I can tell you they have some loyal customers. The upcoming…
Industry Update
The iPhone and iPad have broken more records than the iPod did CDs. Microsoft buying Skype was a game changer, but the new game remains a mystery. Here is the current industry round-up. Read it quickly as things are changing…
MS Lync Gets a Wireless Phone
Well not really. Microsoft Lync is pretty much the only enterprise class telephony platform that does not directly support SIP endpoints. Microsoft insists that doing so will compromise its rich user experience it has worked so hard to craft. Instead,…
It’s a Wrap!
The Aastra User Group conference came to a close today. Thanks Aastra for having me here. This is my sixth telecom conference this year, but my first User Group. User Groups are great. Much less focus on “solutions” than vendor…
Upcoming Conference: Lync User Summit
The Lync User Summit will be taking place this June in Colorado – conveniently close to home. I will be presenting a keynote presentation titled “Lync: The UnAuthorized Roadmap.” It is a fun concept for a presentation. Microsoft has not…
Multi-Modal Communications 1
One term we use fairly often in unified communications is this notion of “Multi-Modal Communications”. There are some interesting new features and services that fall into this category. As with nearly everything in Unified Communications, we start with the obligatory…