VoIP over IP (VoIP)

Cisco VARs consolidate: INX acquires NetTeks

INX Inc. snapped up Cisco VAR NetTeks Technology Consultants this week, continuing a trend in VAR consolidation.

The acquisition went for an initial $1.35 million in cash and 30,770 shares, with a potential payout of $2.8 million if NetTeks hits performance targets. NetTeks saw revenue of approximately $12.7 million for the 12 months ending September 30, 2008. Continued »

Cisco fights channel partner over deal registration in court

Cisco is in Superior Court of Orange County, Calif. this week facing off against a former channel partner that claims the networking giant violated a deal registration agreement and poached a $3 million dollar IP telephony customer, turning the business over to AT&T.

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Interop: Are tradeshows dead?

I was truly confused Wednesday morning when I jumped off the bus near the Jacob Javits Center in New York for Interop and saw armies of tight skirts and multi-colored stilettos trotting up the ramp to the convention center. This is not IT conference wear. These are not tech rats. No wrinkled khakis. Too many cutesy chicks. Continued »

Will IBM acquire Nortel?

In case the speculation of a Microsoft-Nortel acquisition wasn’t enough to keep partners talking, now there are rumors that IBM could snap up the networking company, according to Mark Evans at the All About Nortel blog.

Those rumors (and Evans stresses that they are rumors) aren’t exactly shocking. For one, as Evans points out, Nortel is trading at under $6 now. That makes me think two things: 1. If I were Nortel, I might spin these rumors just to raise my share value. 2. (The more likely one) If I were IBM, I would be thinking two words: fire sale. OK, maybe I would be thinking a full phrase: Fire sale on a once-solid company that still has incredible potential. Continued »

Will Microsoft acquire Nortel?

Summertime is the time to mull.

Today I have the time to consider whether Microsoft and Nortel — currently unified communications (UC) partners — will move from heavy dating to marriage.

According to channel partners of both companies, rumors of such an acquisition have been swirling for some time. They say that while an acquisition is not apparent in the near term, none would be surprised to see it happen eventually. Continued »

Avaya executive-go-round

Avaya appointed former Motorola channel executive Jeremy Butt to be its worldwide channel chief today. The appointment is the latest in a series of executive changes at the company in recent months.

Butt most recently served as vice president of worldwide channels for Motorola’s enterprise mobility business, and he is credited with greatly expanding the division’s channel reach globally. Continued »

Microsoft touts updated Response Point

If you’ve ever worked for a small company, you know how painful office telephony can be. Case in point: At my last gig, I inherited the desk and phone of another reporter who had left the company.

No one in that office knew how to change the voicemail options and phone calls to the telephony provider went unreturned for days. Finally I  had to call the reporter — now with a competitor — and beg him for his password so that I could get into voice mail and change the configuration. Luckily, he was a mensch.

Sadly, that is not an exception to the rule when it comes to small businesses.

 Microsoft Response Point is supposed to remedy that situation by making it a no-brainer to move extensions around and reprogram options. 

This week, the company will tout Response Point Service Pack 1 that will  add outward-facing VoIP capabilities to the year-old small business phone system.  

The full Response Point system – Microsoft software bundled with D-Link, Quantas or Aastra hardware — plugs into a company’s LAN and from that point promises easy and flexible phone management.

It can work with traditional analog or VoIP lines or a combination, says Jason Harrison, president of Harrison Technology Consulting, a Nashville, N.C.-based small business specialist. Harrison’s been a fan since the inaugural release.

Microsoft will talk up SP 1 at its annual Small Business Summit this week. SP1 should be available as a download to existing customers and make its way into new hardware this summer.

The product competes with small business phone systems from Avaya, Digium and others.

One Microsoft talking point will be integration with Outlook email and Business Contact Manager. In theory, that will enable it to suck up all a user’s contact information and the user can then, click a button, speak the name of the client, and the system will place the call. It uses the company’s Speech Server technology.

The outbound-VoIP capabilities means companies can easily assign new phone numbers (and discard them if needed.)  The previous release has internal VoIP capabilities and some partners say SP1 is adding features that had been promised in the initial release.

The target market is companies with up to 50 employees.  Harrison says the outbound VoIP-essentially direct SIP trunking is done within the server

“The fact that it works with VoIP and non-VoIP lines is a plus for smaller customers who may want to try out VoIP,” Harrison said. For his company the product opens up all sorts of telephony-oriented doors

“This is an area we haven’t been involved with before. This product lets customers try VoIP and add it as they want,” Harrison noted. 

He sees integration work opportunities with ResponsePoint, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, and Microsoft Office Accounting. With that amalgam a partner can create system in which an “inbound call prompts a popup toast that identifies the customer from caller ID, Outlook does a cross check, and you click on the toast to bring up all the data about that customer or prospect,” Harrison said.

The software also will give D-Link partners an entrée into voice applications.

Hardware/software solutions from all three partners list for about $2,500 for base unit and four or five desktop phones with slight variations depending on the OEM partner.

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.

Big channel questions loom in 2008

What will be the defining partner issues of the coming year? Here’s a completely unscientific take on what solution providers of all stripes should watch for.

One: Will Dell’s new-found (or born again)  channel religion take? Can EqualLogic’s Don Bulens endow what partners see as Darth Vader with his good partner karma?

Two: Will VMware forestall the coming-from-everywhere virtualization onslaught? Current players like Citrix/Xensource are gunning for it as are VM newbies Oracle and Microsoft. If Microsoft stumbles with its Windows 2008/Hyper-V combo, VMware’s head start may prevail and its lock on enterprises continue. Should Hyper-V soar, Microsoft could be the go-to virtualization player at least in smaller companies and then it must wrestle with vexing licensing issues. How to adjust pricing when customers will have to buy fewer copies of the OS?

Three:  Will single-core, single-processor computers go the way of the buggy whip and the Edsel? Could be.

Four: Can/will Google transform itself into a power within the firewall? It’s using its appliance and apps as Trojan horses but will IT really tolerate this consumer-led push? Can it afford not to?

Five: Conversely, can Microsoft transform itself into a software-as-a-service power? Microsoft, unlike Google, has to defend its on-premise turf. Will it figure out how to bring its partners along for the ride? Or throw them under the bus?

Six: Can Hewlett Packard beat back Dell’s new partner efforts to build on its hardware dominance? Will HP partners defect?

Seven: Can Microsoft regroup from its  under delivered Vista? Will SP 1 re-invigorate the market, spur “killer app” development? Or will Redmond simply declare victory and start hyping the next release?

Eight: Will computer retail survive/prosper? Was  CompUSA’s demise a sign of things to come in retail consolidation or just a specific case of mismanagement and missed opportunities?

Nine: Will the iPhone parlay its blockbusting consumer popularity into the enterprise? Will it “work well with others” as in existing  corporate e-mail and other systems? Or will the corporate classes cling to their Blackberries?

Ten: Will Microsoft sort out its self-hosted ERP puzzle? The company wants to offer hosted options for its apps but so far has been publicly mum on what could be called “ERP Live.” Maybe it can’t figure out which of its four (count ‘em, four!) ERP lines should be the underlying code base?

Bonus item: Who will win the unified communications marathon? Networking powerhouse Cisco or application dominator Microsoft? Or could there be a dark horse?

Barbara Darrow, a Boston-area reporter, can be reached at badarrow@comcast.net. 

Who are the real tech buyers/decision makers?

Want to sell some a unified communications solution, skip the tech guys and start with the sales department.

Yes, yes, the idea that business executives will wield a larger decision over technology purchases has been kicking around the channel for several years now. But Mike Thompson, president and CEO of VAR Groupware Technology in Campbell, Calif., says the most relevant sales conversations are starting to happen outside of the IT organization. This is especially true for complex solutions such as unified communications, he says, because the easiest way to justify the investment cost is to talk to those who own or manage operational and facilities costs that fall outside the IT organization.

Of course, this means a different sort of marketing message, Thompson says. He’s investing in a multi-tiered one for unified communications that leans less on the tech specs of the Cisco equipment he sells and more on the tangible business benefits. One of the biggest head turners, he says, is the simple efficiency argument—especially when it comes to linking together organizations with several remote locations that want to look more professional.

Business journalist and channel communications consultant Heather Clancy welcomes your comments, ideas and gripes. E-mail her at hccollins@mac.com.

Cisco acquires tools to clean up airwaves

Cisco Systems Inc. has shopped successfully for a set of tools that can help its wireless customers clean up the interference and improve the efficiency of their networks.

Cisco announced today that it has agreed to acquire Cognio Inc., which makes spectrum analysis products designed to identify, locate and eliminate sources of radio-frequency interference that can do to a wireless network the same thing that high-power lines do to reception on an AM radio.

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