IP Telephony

Room for one more? Barracuda Networks serves up IP PBX

As if there weren’t enough choices already for IP PBX vendors, Barracuda Networks has started up a subsidiary company called CudaTel. The new company’s website describes it as a collaboration between Barracuda and FreeSwitch. FreeSwitch is an open source telephony platform that can be “used as a simple switching engine, a PBX, a media gateway or a media server to host IVR applications using simple scripts or XML to control the callflow.”

A quick perusal of the CudaTel site tells me that these PBX boxes start at $1999 with no per-user license costs. I assume that is for the baseline model, which can support an unlimited number of extensions, but with a limit of 10 concurrent calls and up to two conference calls. The 1U box has 50 GB of voicemail capacity. I highest-end box, whose price I don’t see listed, can support up to 250 concurrent calls, 50 conference calls and 200 GB of voicemail storage. Clearly this is aimed at small businesses and midsized companies that are on the smaller side.

It looks like CudaTel will be reselling Snom and Polycom phones with this PBX as well as Polycom and LifeSize conference phones.

It’s an intersting entry into the market for Barracuda, which is known for its network security appliances. As IDC Research Director Abner Germanow posed in Tweet today, how will Barracuda’s channel sell this? Do you want to buy your PBX from a a security VAR or reseller?

Mitel trying to protect home turf from Cisco

Cisco Systems and Bell Canada thought they had won the bidding for a municipal IP telephony contract with Ottawa worth between $4  million and $7 million. But as I mentioned in a story today about a new fixed-mobile convergence offering, Mitel Networks has - at least temporarily - scuttled the deal.

Mitel is headquartered in Ottawa, and no doubt it blanched at the possibility that Cisco would supply IP telephony to the city it calls home (Currently the city government has about 10,000 phones, 7,000 of which are from Mitel).

After learning that his company was not the winning bidder for the telephony contract, Mitel chairman Terry Matthews tried to sweeten his company’s offer. He sent a letter to the city offering to donate $2 million worth of Mitel IP phones (10,000 phones in all) to the city if it agreed to make Mitel its sole communications vendor “for the next several years.”

After receiving this last-minute offer, the economic affairs committee of Ottawa’s city council voted to suspend negotiations with Cisco and Bell while it explored the legality and feasibility of such an offer.

According to the Ottawa Citizen, Cisco will refrain from commenting on the Ottawa affair until the city completes its procurement process. However, Bell spokeswoman Jacqueline Michelis told the paper, “We’re disappointed. We put in a compelling and competitive bid.”

As I recall from my days as a newspaper reporter, the bidding process for municipal procurement tends to be very strict.  There are lots of legal and ethical issues that could come up.  I’ve seen vendors sue municipalities, claiming a bidding process was unfair, after losing out on a contract. Clearly Mitel executives think this move is worth whatever legal headaches that might arise if it means keeping Cisco out of their home town. Plus, Mitel could use a big customer win in North America, where Cisco, Avaya and Nortel dominate.

A modest proposal

Hello world, this is Shamus McGillicuddy, news editor at SearchUnifiedCommunications.com. I will be a regular contributor to Unified Communications Nation. I hope this blog becomes a good place for you to visit when you want to keep up on what’s happening in the UC industry, or maybe when you just want to blow off some steam and have a laugh.

And with that in mind, blowing off steam is probably something enterprise communications managers need a lot of help with.  I’m thinking of fairly common headaches. For instance, you switch over your legacy voice system to a new IP telephony platform. And overnight your staff emails instructions on how to use the new phones to every user. Just to cover your bases, you make sure  to leave a printed set of those instructions on every desk. And yet, dozens of users still manage to delete the email and recycle the print outs without even reading them. Then they flood your team with complaints such as “On the old phones I had to dial 9 to get an outside line. Now I don’t. That’s so confusing.”

If you were Frank Costanza from “Seinfeld,” then you would probably bellow something like “Serenity now!” to keep your blood pressure down when faced with a snafu like that.  But I’d like to propose a new mantra, or catch phrase for the guys managing voice and video.

I’m thinking of a phrase that would simultaneously help you blow off steam and allow you to say what you’d really like to say to the users who keep misusing the communications technology you’ve carefully installed for them. That perfect phrase, that when spoken with the right amount of rage and contempt, just fills your heart with glee. And it was spoken so perfectly by a fine actor just 27 years ago.

“Let them eat static!”

Let me know what you think.