VoiceCon

IBM Challenges Microsoft to a Cage Match

Its unified communications meets WWF.

IBM had some serious issues during a live demonstration of its UC technologies at the Enterprise 2.0 conference. Its a presenter’s nightmare. I am sure the stuff works better than that and I assume they even rehearsed the presentation just fine. But, during the actual live presentation all of sudden the bandwidth wasn’t there to deliver a smooth experience. C’est la vie.

IBM rebounded from that experience and moved on to issuing challenges to Microsoft. Basically- IBM says its UC solution is superior to Microsoft’s and its willing to prove it in a head-to-head, mano-a-mano, cage match at VoiceCon in Spring of 2010.

What do you think? Will Microsoft accept the challenge? Can IBM hold its own in a cage match with Microsoft UC?

Perhaps IBM can also get Hulk Hogan for a new marketing campaign?

BCI Chooses Sipera for UC Security

Chile-based Banco de Credito e Inversiones (BCI) has chosen Sipera to secure their unified communications infrastructure. Using Sipera’s IPCS unified communications security appliances provides BCI with real-time unified communications security backed by the research and expertise of Sipera’s VIPER Lab.

Sipera also enables BCI to leverage more cost-effective SIP trunking rather than relying on trunk lines, and allows BCI to deploy unified communications more efficiently and provides quality of service monitoring and reporting that BCI didn’t previously have. You can learn more about Sipera unified communications security appliances and services at Voicecon in Orlando this week. Sipera is at Booth 1500.

Follow me on Twitter

Evangelyze Communications Announces SmartVoIP

Many companies are exploring and implementing unified communications. One problem that has faced certain industries though is how to deal with scattered branch offices. Industries like banking, insurance, investing, real estate, and more often have a central headquarters, and several remote branch locations. With no way to bridge the unified communications solution from the headquarters to the branch, the branch offices generally fend for themselves and implement separate communications systems. That leads to a variety of issues related to administration, compliance, costs, etc.

Now there is a simple, cost-effective solution. At VoiceCon 2008 in San Francisco this week, Evangelyze Communications unveiled their new offering- SmartVoIP. Joe Schurman, Founder and CEO of Evangelyze Communications, introduced the solution which integrates Microsoft’s Response Point communications system for small and medium businesses with the more robust Office Communications Server and enterprise class unified communications.

“We are incredibly proud of this achievement and the opportunity that this solution brings to organizations with remote and branch office communications needs. Through the power of VoIP and using our joint collaborative integration service, we are now able to connect offices globally in a scalable manner, leveraging our innovative services and Quintum’s breadth of scalable gateway devices. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner who has achieved the Unified Communications competency Voice specialization, our customers are assured they are hiring a qualified vendor to deploy Microsoft’s latest unified communications voice technologies,” said Schurman.

Microsoft and IBM to Test Interoperability

In my last post, I mentioned that the lack of standards and platform interoperability was one of the biggest issues for early adopters of Unified Communications technologies. Microsoft and IBM are two of the biggest players in the Unified Communications arena. Microsoft is aggressively pushing for its share of the Unified Communications pie with their UCC (Unified Communications & Collaboration) tools. IBM, with their Lotus Sametime product, recently announced that they are investing $1 billion in R&D and acquisitions to strengthen their Unified Communications position. However, there are reports that an impromptu discussion at a VoiceCon Orlando session may lead to the two titans working on testing the interoperability of their products. If they manage to organize the testing, a demonstration of the interoperability may be performed at VoiceCon San Francisco this Fall.