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At the InfoComm show, Cisco and Polycom are rolling out telepresence products aimed at a wider range of customers, particularly midmarket and smaller businesses. – When Cisco
Systems bought telepresence rival Tandberg last year for $3.3
billion, analysts said Cisco would be able to leverage Tandbergs presence in
the midmarket space to expand its video-conferencing offerings into that area.
It was a
market Cisco needed to access to continue growing its vis…

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Two days after speculation surfaced, communications technology vendor Avaya filed papers with the SEC to sell $1 billion of stock. – Avaya officials have filed the
necessary papers for a $1 billion IPO following two days of speculation.
The Wall Street Journal had reported
June 7 that Avaya, a networking and communications technology vendor, was
preparing to go public again, taking advantage of a newly energized IPO market
b…

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Vidyo officials said VidyoPanorama will offer businesses a high-quality telepresence experience at about 10 percent of the price of solutions from Cisco and Polycom. – Vidyo, best
known for software that lets users collaborate visually over their desktops, is
now taking on the likes of Cisco Systems and Polycom with a telepresence
offering that officials say will provide better quality across more screens and
at a fraction of the price.
With
VidyoPanorama, c…

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Mitel CEO Rich McBee is revamping the UC vendor to target the midmarket, and is relying on the channel to help. – Mitel CEO Rich
McBee has spent the last few days mingling with the people hes most anxious to
court: business users and channel partners.
McBee, who in
January assumed the CEO post of the UC (unified communications) vendor in hopes
of injecting some life back into a company that had become fina… Read the rest of this entry »

Polycom needs to prove it can leverage its deals with HP and Microsoft before it can challenge Cisco, according to analysts. – Polycoms $89 million purchase of Hewlett-Packards video collaboration
business, including its Halo telepresence products, gives it significantly more
ammunition in its growing competition with Cisco Systems.
Now
Polycom will need to leverage that investment, as well as its expanded
partnership… Read the rest of this entry »

Polycom is stepping up its competition with Cisco in the video collaboration space by buying HPs telepresence business, growing its partnerships with HP and Microsoft, and joining an interoperability consortium. – Polycom is buying Hewlett-Packards video collaboration business and
expanding its partnership with Microsoft as it looks to bolster its competition
with Cisco Systems in the fast-growing visual communications market.
The
moves, announced June 1, came at the same time that Polycom officials said … Read the rest of this entry »

Almost one-quarter of U.S. Web users have made a phone call via the Web with Skype, Vonage or some other VOIP service, according to Pew Internet. – A new report
from Pew Internet sheds some light on why Microsoft felt it necessary to pay
$8.5 billion for voice over IP giant Skype this month.
Nearly
one-quarter (24 percent) of U.S. adult Web users, or 19 percent of all American
adults, have made calls online using Skype, Vonage or some othe… Read the rest of this entry »

Skype has terminated its partnership with Digium, effectively killing Skype for Asterisk, which integrated the VOIP service with the open-source telephony platform. – Two weeks after Microsoft
said it would acquire Skype, the voice over IP company has begun cutting
its ties with the open-source world. Asterisk was the first partner cut loose.
Skype decided not to renew
its agreement with Digium, which allowed Asterisk, the open-source telephony
system, to be… Read the rest of this entry »

Avaya is enhancing its Avaya one-X solutions to enable businesses to improve communications with an increasingly mobile workforce. – Avaya officials are bulking up the companys Avaya-one X solutions to offer
greater communications capabilities to mobile workers.
At
its International Avaya User Group event in Las Vegas May 23, Avaya announced
the new enhancements to Avaya-one X, which include support for a wide range of
mobil… Read the rest of this entry »

Sprint smartphone users choosing to place calls that show their Google Voice number as their outbound call number are finding their recipients are getting hit by overage fees. Found out why. –
Sprint customers who have linked their Google Voice account
with their smartphones are experiencing some unexpected overage fees, according
to the help forums for both companies.
Google Voice, the search engine’s free call management
service, lets users associate calls and text messages made … Read the rest of this entry »