We realized a 25 percent savings by purchasing our phone system through VoIP Supply

Glimcher Realty Trust, a real estate investment trust, is a recognized leader in the ownership, management, acquisition and development of regional and super-regional malls. Glimcher currently owns or manages 28 properties in 14 states. Of the 28 properties, 24 are enclosed regional or super-regional malls, many of which are located in the country’s top-growing metropolitan statistical areas.

Siraj Haji, Director of Information Systems at Glimcher, said that their recent move to an innovative new office space was an opportunity to implement the new technology, and that with the new SwitchVox phones system, they “have set the foundation to integrate our data and communication network across all our properties.”

Mr. Haji worked closely with a team of VoIP Supply product specialists to identify Glimcher’s communication needs. After conducting a thorough needs assessment, VoIP Supply discussed numerous possible solutions and based on analysis of the potential solutions, then proposed a solution which fit Glimcher’s current needs and allowed for future growth.

“We realized a 25 percent savings by purchasing our phone system through VoIP Supply,” said Haji. “The VoIP Supply sales team was very helpful and their pre-sales support team was able to answer all our questions. We are very pleased with the service and support we received from VoIP Supply.”

Benjamin P. Sayers, President and CEO of VoIP Supply, is happy about the sale and said, “We are pleased to be working with Glimcher, a national real estate leader, and expand our services to another viable sector of the business community.”

For more information about the phone systems offered through VoIP Supply, please visit take a look at our real estate phone systems.

About VoIP Supply:
VoIP Supply LLC, a division of Sayers Technology Holdings, is a leading Internet Retailer of Voice over IP Hardware. In addition to a comprehensive catalog of IP Phones, Telephone Adaptors, VoIP Gateways, and Small Business IP PBX solutions, the company offers technical support, extended warranties, and logistical services for end-to-end customer solutions. VoIP Supply was recognized nationally as number 359 on the 2007 Inc. 500 fastest growing privately-held companies in America and number 45 on the Entrepreneur Magazine’s Hot 100 fastest growing companies in the U.S. VoIP Supply has also been recognized as one of the Best Places to Work in Western New York by Buffalo’s Business First Newspaper, one of the Top 100 privately held companies in WNY, as well as the sixth fastest growing company in WNY by the Business First Fast Track 50 Award.

SunRocket’s competitors have been staffing up in an effort to manage the increased business but many are finding it difficult to keep up. According to one leading VoIP provider “Were getting as many orders in 2 hours as we would get in one week” and “We’ve been working around the clock even hiring people at midnight and training them through the night to help cover the increased demand for our VoIP service.”

Avaya in the launch of its latest IP Office offering took several steps to make IP telephony accessible and affordable for businesses with as few as four users, although the sweet spot for the new offering is 10 to 20 users, according to Joe Scotto, global director of product marketing for SMB solutions at Avaya in Basking Ridge, N.J.

Avaya in version 4.0 of its IP Office software made it possible for small businesses to use the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) trunking services from carriers or service providers such as Verizon for their outside phone lines, cutting calling plans in many cases by half.

“Service provider resellers can package in services. With Verizon, for example, the typical cost for a 24 channel T-1 [line] is $650 [per month]. This with a calling plan included is $350 [per month],” said Scotto.

At the same time, SMBs can use those cheaper IP-based lines without having to buy SIP-based IP phones, thanks to a SIP-gateway implementation in the new, modular IP Office 500 communications server.

The server supports analog, digital and SIP phones, providing users of those phones with voice messaging, telephony and a customer service suite of functions.

“This enables that small business expecting growth and needing more sophisticated capabilities to get in at a very affordable price and have a path going forward that enables them to add capacity, locations and intelligence as needed,” said Scotto.

That capability to easily upgrade as the business grows “is very important for small businesses,” said Maria Carolina Guedes Smith, senior consultant at AMI Partners in New York.

The new Avaya IP Office 4.0 release, in addition to SIP trunking, adds a multisite hot desk feature which allows users to move from one office to another and “log into a phone as if they were using their own office phone,” said Scotto. That capability works across analog, digital and IP phones.

Avaya in its IP Office Release 4.0 upgrade created two software options—Standard and Professional Editions.

Standard Edition supports up to 32 ports at a single site, provides a conferencing bridge for up to 64 parties and includes a new system status application that allows resellers to add on remote monitoring and support services.

License options with Standard Edition allow customers to add wireless mobility, the SIP Trunking, voicemail and the option to upgrade to Professional Edition.

The new system status application allows Avaya channel partners to remotely identify and resolve problems with a customer’s system. “If something’s happening with the system, the reseller gets an alert and they can resolve it remotely. They don’t have to send a technician onsite, and the customer gets the problem solved quicker,” said Scotto.

That capability is key for small businesses that rely on the systems for their day-to-day activities but don’t have an IT staff to maintain them, said Guedes Smith.

Professional Edition for its part can scale to support up to 270 ports, provides secure conferencing through personalized pins for each party and gives access to small community networking. License options for it include unified messaging, integrated voice response, a contract center application, audio conferencing control and storage for call search and replay.

To read more about Avaya’s VOIP offerings for midsize companies, click here.

For small businesses looking to add LAN capabilities, Avaya is teaming up with Extreme Networks to offer specially-priced packages that include Extreme Ethernet switches through their joint resellers.

The modular design of both the server and software allows resellers to customize their offerings for smaller businesses. “It also enables the channel to deliver a more holistic solution. They can wrap around services, data networking and applications for a particular industry,” said Scotto.

Avaya in addressing the needs of very small businesses is addressing a highly competitive space. IP Office competes with similar offerings from NEC, Toshiba and Panasonic as well as Nortel Networks and to a lesser extent Cisco Systems.

“There is a broad number of competitors including global and local players from voice and data backgrounds. They’re all developing specific strategies and products to reach this segment. They all have different approaches,” said Guedes Smith, adding that Avaya is unique in its understanding of the voice requirements of SMBs.

IP Office Standard Edition with the IP Office 500 communications server starts at $700 list, and a series of line cards supporting handsets and trunk lines starts at $250. The upgrade to Professional Edition lists for $1,000.

A typical configuration supporting 20 users with phones, voicemail, eight trunks and the Standard Edition software would list at $7200.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2094186,00.asp?kc=EWRSS04069TX1K0000701

In our ZDNet neighborhood, as well as in the blogosphere and among friends and neighbors, this perception has taken on a disturbingly common truism: bought a Dell, had a problem, called customer service, got someone in India, they weren’t especially helpful.

Oftentimes this lack of helpfulness is blamed on confusing directions, other times on language and diction issues.

While I am quite uncomfortable with attacking people for the way they speak, I do have to wonder why Dell has been tone-deaf to the criticisms about problem with their Tier I consumer-level tech support. Perhaps it is because it has been part of their corporate lore that the money saved by outsourcing this support overseas will successfully influence the bottom line and then the stock price.

But perhaps not. The decline in Dell’s stock price is a key reason cited for Michael Dell’s return. It is his name on the door, you know.

Michael’s off to a good start, cutting bonuses and trimming management layers. But he needs to do more.

So in light of these problems, I would suggest that Michael Dell and key staffers look at bringing consumer tech support back to the U.S.A. Such an evaluation should not be performed strictly as a cost-benefit analysis based on quantifiable expenditure factors, but with sensitivity for the sales lost as former customers bolt and tell their friends to, as well.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1426

Juniper Networks and Intelliden have teamed up to help by bridging the gap between quality-of-service mechanisms and policies to allow service providers to dynamically allocate more bandwidth to those high-bandwidth applications as they traverse the core of the carrier network.

The two companies will jump out ahead of the demand curve on Jan. 24 by launching their combined Dynamic Networking Automation offering for bandwidth-hungry IP services.

The DNA offering was created by integrating Juniper’s SDX (Service Deployment System) platform for its carrier switches and Intelliden’s Dynamic Resource Provisioning software.

Together they deliver policy and real-time network resource management into the core of the network, now the weakest point in the carrier’s network, according to Rahul Sachdev, vice president of marketing at Intelliden, in Menlo Park, Calif.

“Until now a lot of those problems that have been addressed have been at the edge of the network—not the core. We are extending intelligence to the core to set quality of service, control bandwidth and so on,” he said.

Carriers to this point have thrown bandwidth at the core of the network to ensure enough resources during peak times. Those practices will no longer scale or be economical when carriers begin to offer more bandwidth-intensive services such as video on demand, IPTV and VOIP (voice over IP).

The integration work was driven by joint customer Telus, a small but innovative carrier in Western Canada. Telus was looking for a way to bridge the communications gap between those responsible for policy creation and those that handle day-to-day network operations, according to Brian Lakey, director of OSS architecture and strategy at Telus, in Edmonton, Alberta.

“The network provides quality-of-service metrics through [Multiprotocol Label Switching]. This is about merging the policy with those end-to-end controls and keeping them in sync. Policy is based on an accurate representation of QOS, and it can be dynamically reprovisioned to meet policy needs,” he said.

“The needs between different sites change,” Sachdev said. “You have to flex the network in real time to support different policies for different applications for different users. Today there is no integrated way to do that across the end-to-end network.”

As carriers move beyond smaller pilots for high-bandwidth services such as IPTV, the need for such flexibility will grow, believes Larry Goldman, co-founder of OSS Observer in Sugar Grove, Ill.

“This is ahead of the real demand, but it’s indicative of where things are going,” he said. “There are hundreds of service providers in the world all intending to offer video on-demand services. The usage of video on telco networks is still comparatively low, but it’s growing rapidly. The usage of the network will dramatically change because each individual service will be much more bandwidth-intensive and service providers are anticipating billions of subscribers.”

The joint DNA offering will use the APIs in Juniper’s SDX platform to allow dynamic resource awareness in the network and allow dynamic provisioning of network elements and paths based on real-time application requirements.

DNA is due early in the second half of the year.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2086931,00.asp?kc=EWRSS04069TX1K0000701

The alliance, launched in the summer of 2006, has yielded over the last six months a series of integrated offerings due out this year. First of the new deliverables is to be a joint Unified Messaging offering that provides interoperability between Nortel’s Communication Server 1000 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. It represents the first integration of Exchange with Nortel’s native implementation of the industry standard SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). Nortel will supplement the offering with its professional services for design, deployment and support.

Due later in the fourth quarter of 2007 are the UC Integrated Branch and a new Conferencing offering. The UC Integrated Branch will provide a single hardware device that combines routing, switching, VOIP (voice over IP) and unified communications.

“With this we’ve converged branch infrastructure from many boxes to one solution with a truly seamless experience. This combines routing, switching VOIP and all the capabilities from Microsoft in a single device that is cost-effective and can be the engine for new growth in branch offices,” said Nortel Networks CEO Mike Zafirovski at a press event in New York.

The new Conferencing offering will deliver the functions of Nortel’s Multimedia Conferencing product in Microsoft Office Communicator 2007. The aim of that integration is to provide a consistent user experience across voice, instant messaging, presence, and audio and video conferencing, the companies said.

Both companies, in providing firm dates for product deliveries this year, sought to answer critics who have dubbed their efforts slideware.

“We’ve been working diligently on these new solutions in the past six months. They will give second-to-none investment protection, and we have services offerings as part of this on how to help you evolve,” Zafirovski said. “We’ve both worked hard to drive this vision into reality.”

The two companies will also this year address unified communications for large enterprises and carriers by adding support in the Nortel Communications Server 2100 for a unified desktop and soft phone for VOIP, e-mail, instant messaging and presence. The Communication Server 2100 supports as many as 200,000 users on one system.

The road map outlined by the two companies describes a shared vision of how small and large enterprises will move from today’s segmented market with separate “islands” of text messaging, voice mail, e-mail and instant messaging into more advanced integration and finally a transformation in which users interact with a common smart client and integrated back-end infrastructure, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

“We’re the only company whose road map talks about a smart, unified client that largely builds on the popularity of our Windows and Office software,” Ballmer said. “We’re the only company to talk about a unified development and management platform at the server level. Other firms will talk about using standard hardware [or] standard operating systems, but making it easy to write a program that combines e-mail, voice, video, and so on—we’re unique on those dimensions as we work together.”

In the second integration phase, which Ballmer said he believes will start this year and will move into full swing by 2009, the two companies expect the “notion of separate PBX and server software will give way to a world in which [Microsoft’s] Office Communications Server and Nortel’s feature server [deliver] the full telephony experience on Intel [-based hardware], Windows development and management tools, and deliver a common experience,” Ballmer said.

The transformation phase emphasizes the integration of back-end infrastructure “with collaboration or business process types and common management,” he said.

In this phase, “even more powerful things happen at the upper layers. When you have one common platform for e-mail, IM voice, video and CRM [customer relationship management], ERP [enterprise resource planning], customer billing, [and] the call center, there is one way to build these applications. It leads to a platform in which line-of-business applications will be broadly enhanced with communication capabilities,” Ballmer said.

Concrete deliverables planned for the later two phases include a unified communications contact center, a Nortel feature server, expanded hosted Unified Communications solutions, mobility and client solutions, and application-aware networking enhancements.

Nortel Networks will also deliver a range of new professional services for enterprises. The company announced 11 new core integration services and a structured convergence integration methodology. Also as part of that effort, Nortel announced that has opened 20 regional collaboration or demonstration centers and intends to increase that number to 100 globally. The centers will be staffed by both Microsoft and Nortel personnel.

The new services include IT business consulting to help create business cases for convergence; VOIP, data network and security assessments to help determine the ability of the customer’s network to support new converged applications; network and security design; implementation services for Nortel Communication Server 1000; configuration services for Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005; dialing plan modification; program management; and ongoing technical support.

Nortel to date has 2,200 VOIP experts globally and it said it intends to increase that number as more enterprises adopt unified communications.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2084941,00.asp?kc=EWRSS04069TX1K0000701

User sensitivity to any disruption of service in voice communication and knowledge that IP telephony relies on the same systems they know are vulnerable to viruses, worms and Trojan horses make it hard for any more than 50 percent of those surveyed to say they could rely on the technology, up from 48 percent a year earlier, researchers said.

“People are much more sensitized to disruptions in voice communications than they are with data communications,” said John Venator, president and chief executive officer, CompTIA, which commissioned the study.

“If the delivery of an e-mail is delayed by 30 seconds, neither the message sender nor the receiver is likely to notice. But a 30-second gap in the middle of a phone call is another story entirely.”

Conversely, 82 percent of the 350 respondents said they trust the security of traditional telephone systems, 72 percent trust Ethernet data networks and 60 percent wireless local area networks, according to CompTIA.

“Security concerns continue to present a significant obstacle that has to be overcome to sell converged solutions to SMB customers,” Brian McCarthy, chief operating officer for CompTIA, told eWEEK.

“There is still a level of newness to IP telephony for many businesses that may make them skeptical about its quality, reliability and security,” he said. “Organizations have high confidence in the security of their legacy telephone systems but in the new IP-based communications environment, the system’s functionality resides on standard computing platforms, which are vulnerable to the same types of attacks that plague the data environment.”

IDC queried 350 SMB users, defined as businesses with 500 or fewer employees for the study commissioned by CompTIA.

Large enterprises face the same concern for “good, secure voice and data communications,” but “SMBs may not have the sufficient resources to understand or implement the best practices,” McCarthy.

McCarthy said the industry expects to level of confidence in IP telephony solutions grow as “customers become more educated about and comfortable with the technology.”

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2085417,00.asp?kc=EWRSS04069TX1K0000701

“Hosted VOIP: Steady Growth, But Will the Boom Come?” found that small businesses have the most hosted VOIP deployments in the 20-to-50-seat range and that hosted VOIP will continue to grow over the next few years with revenues expected to exceed $2 billion by 2010.

“Most business customers adopt hosted VOIP with the expectation of cost savings, but soon come to value the feature functionality and integration with data networks the application provides,” David Lemelin, senior analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz., told eWEEK. “As a result, hosted VOIP solutions are becoming more valuable.”

The study goes over a wide variety of topics such as factors increasing the adoption of hosted solutions, mobility convergence, differences in service providers, sales tactics and a VOIP provider’s approach to the market.

“As business managers assess their resident ability to deploy and manage enterprise-like VOIP services, many are finding themselves lacking the capital and expertise required and as a result, hosted VOIP solutions are becoming more attractive,” Lemelin said.

The study from In-Stat found the following:

• U.S.-hosted VOIP seats in service are expected to continue to increase consistently to more than 3 million in 2010, up from 373,000 in 2006
• For hosted VOIP services, cost savings is the main appeal
• Businesses that have several office locations as well as the mobile worker are most attracted to hosted VOIP solutions

Lemelin believes that “business customers looking to outsource voice and data integration to a trusted provider, rather than having to handle integration and ongoing maintenance themselves” is one of the factors that has contributed to the growth of hosted VOIP.

When it comes to the future of hosted VOIP services, Lemelin said: “I see solid growth for the foreseeable future because this is a solution aimed at a massive SMB [small to midsize business] target.”

“I think as we see increased convergence of voice, data, video and mobility, hosted VOIP solutions will be part of integrated solutions bundled to meet the needs of the SMB market,” Lemelin said.

Today he writes of his incalculable frustration attempting to port his Vonage number over to Charter Cable. He had intended to do so because he was frustrated with some Vonage call quality issues, but was also attracted by Charter’s multiple-services offering.

And no, Tom does not give up easily. He doesn’t only write about technology, but he is Founder of TMC Labs. Tom holds a B.S. Computer Engineering, and has 12 years telecom experience.

I’ll spare you the TMI. The gist of it is that when he called Charter to place his order, he was told his Vonage number (a Connecticut number) is not in his rate area (also in Connecticut).

” I was a bit annoyed Charter couldn’t port my number, but I wasn’t entirely surprised eithe,” Tom writes. “Since my wife and I didn’t want to give up our number, we decided to stay with Vonage - held hostage to a phone number that Vonage owned.”

Then Tom admits he doesn’t understand why Vonage was able to port his number while not having a rate center/geographical footprint in his home exchange.

So at this point, Tom was ticked off at Vonage (for service issues) as well as at Charter, his cable provider.

Ever the resourceful guy, Tom decided he’s mad as heck and won’t take it any more.

“What did I end up doing?,” he asks rhetorically. He says he went with AT&T’s double play $50 a month voice and data package for $50a month. He dropped Charter cable and went with DirecTV.

I went with SBC’s “double play” package (voice & data) for $50/month with unlimited voice calling. I also dropped Charter cable and went with DirecTV.

Total savings: $45 a month.

Tom:

“So let me just finish this by saying “number portability my ass!”

http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1223

The acquisition, which closed last week, gives AT&T control of mobile phone service provider Cingular Wireless. The companies previously ran Cingular in a joint venture.

“The biggest asset we bought here was Cingular,” AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Edward Whitacre said, according to the Journal. “We’re about to become a company with wireless at its heart.”

AT&T will begin selling wireless service under its own brand name to its pool of corporate phone and Internet customers, the Journal reported. Control of Cingular will allow it to offer discounts for bundles that were impossible when the wireless carrier was a separate entity, the paper reported.

Consumers will get the choice of signing up for a new package of mobile phone and Internet service rather than the traditional bundle of land-line phone and Internet service, the paper also reported.

AT&T has been testing cellphones that can run on Wi-Fi networks when at home, which could let consumers save money on their mobile phone bills and perhaps get better reception indoors, the paper said.

It also reported that AT&T will begin selling advertising on mobile phones, television and Internet access service this year.

Advertisers will be able to buy spots for TV and broadband beginning early this year, with wireless ads following later this year, the Journal said. The advertising business could generate several billion dollars in revenue per year in the next five years, the paper cited the company as saying.