Avaya to add VoIP to Google Apps
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InfoWorld - Avaya said on Thursday that it will develop communications solutions for small business that combine Google's updated Apps Premier Edition suite of Web applications with its own IP telephony technology.
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(InfoWorld) - Nearly one year after Skype stole the headlines at the 3GSM World Congress with itsÂ plans to offer a mobile versionÂ of its Internet phone, a couple of nimble startups -- and not the Net telephony pioneer itself -- appear to have found a way to make this type of service work, both technically and commercially. Earlier this week, JajahÂ announced aÂ new mobile VOIPÂ serviceÂ that allows smart-phone users to make low-cost and, in some cases, free international calls. Customers simply enter Jajah's mobile Web portal through their handset's browser, enter their user name and password and then make a either a free or low-cost call. The launch of Jajah Mobile Web comes on the heals of a mobile VOIP (voice over IP) offering by Fring, which, unlike Jajah, requires users to download software and install it in their Internet-enabled handsets. The Fring service gives mobile users access to P-to-P (peer-to-peer) VOIP offerings such as Skype and Google Talk. Microsoft appears to have its finger on the pulse of mobile VOIP, too. Next week in Barcelona, the U.S. software giant will unwrap aÂ new version of its Windows Mobile OSÂ that will supposedly enable carriers and device maker to add VOIP functionality to Windows Mobile devices. All these announcements -- and the many more expected at this year's 3GSM World Congress -- come as Skype, which essentially stunned the mobile phone industry last year with its VOIP plans, acknowledges technical and commercial hurdles. In a recent interview in Finnish newspaper, Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas ZennstrÃ¶m spoke of "technical obstacles" and conceded that efforts to make Skype work had been taking "much longer than expected." At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, Eric Lagier, Skype director of business development for hardware and mobile, called the lack of attractive flat-rate fees for most mobile phone services a key commercial hurdle to mobile VOIP usage. He said the company didn't want to be in a position of claiming that its service is free, but facing users who at the end of the month are docked with a huge broadband usage fee. At last year's 3GSM World Congress, Skype and the Hutchison 3 Group (Hutchison 3G)Â announced a partnershipÂ to provide what they had hoped to become the world's first commercial VOIP service for mobile phones. Hutchison 3G, which operates IP-based mobile broadband networks in several European markets, was one of the first mobile phone operators to embrace VOIP, a technology many in the industry view as a major threat to their cash-cow voice business. But industry experts admit that challenges remain.Â One hurdle in providing quality VOIP serviceÂ over mobile handsets is the uplink, which is currently too slow to support quality voice calls, John Giere, chief marketing officer at Alcatel-Lucent, said in an earlier interview. To increase uplink speeds, operators of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks, which dominate Europe and many parts of Asia and Latin America, will need to upgrade their networks with HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) technology, which will give operators "the bidirectional capability they need to run real VOIP," he said. The high-speed technology is not expected to become commercially available in volume until the latter part of 2007 or early 2008. Operators are presently busy rolling out the downlink counterpart HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).
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(InfoWorld) - Following Google's announcement on Thursday that it would offer an enhanced version of its Google Apps, dubbed Google Apps Premier Edition, the company left no doubt about the direction in which it was heading. Not only has it added key business applications -- a word processor and spreadsheet -- to Google Apps, but the company is offering the kind of support corporate IT would expect: IT management tools, technical support, and service level agreements for uptime. Even all that, however, does not tell the entire story or give the scope of Googleâs plans. In its press announcement and in an interview with a Google executive, Dave Giroud, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Unit, Google made it clear that it will offer APIs for business integration, thus creating a business platform not unlike what Salesforce.com offers with AppExchange. [Related story: "Avaya to add VoIP to Google Apps" | Podcast: Google's Rajen Sheth discusses Apps | Talkback: "Can Web-based applications outwit, outplay, outlast the desktop?"] If that happens it could become the center of an application ecosystem that leaves traditional desktop applications in the dust. Both Avaya and Postini participated in the Google announcement on Thursday saying they would develop a "variety of solutions" based on Google's APIs. Included among those third-party applications will be e-mail gateways, enhanced security, calendar synchronization, and VoIP integration between Avaya and Google Talk. The reason some analysts have characterized the announcement as historic rests with the fact that Google is the first top-tier company to offer a 21st century solution that will compete with Microsoft Office, a suite of applications created in the 20th century and well before the Internet or HTML existed. With the addition of word processing and a spreadsheet as well as support, Google Apps could very well represent a watershed moment in a wave of online applications from many other new companies that some day might overwhelm giant Microsoft. However, Josh Greenberg, senior analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting, offers more cautions than he does encomiums about Google Apps and how successful Google can be against the Redmond giant. "Google is the number one media company and they have a great search. That doesn't mean they have the credentials to be a player in desktop applications," Greenberg said. Greenberg says Google needs to "dress up" Google Apps to make it look corporate in terms of security, feature functionality, and interoperability. But perhaps more importantly, Microsoft is not standing still, Greenberg adds. Microsoft is no longer a collection of stand-alone applications. It is morphing into a strategic interface for ERP and other transaction processes, Greenberg says, pointing out the recent deal with SAP and the co-developed Duet technology. "Every single enterprise player of note has an Office interface," Greenberg said. And despite Google's wide appeal in the consumer market, corporate uptake of Office drives a tremendous amount of personal use, he added. Is this a play on Google's part to go head to head against a player in its own backyard, Salesforce.com and its AppExchange? For that to happen it would require a huge uptake on the part of third-party application developers. Tony Meadow, president of Bear River Associates, an application development company, says the promise of a huge, available market for third-party applications does not always guarantee that developers will follow it. Meadow says that idea already exists with Microsoft and it has only been successful to a limited extent. "There are people who develop complete spreadsheets with Excel that are sold as products, so it is not inconceivable that it will happen with Google but at this point it is an unknown," Meadow said. Despite the roadblocks to gain entry into the enterprise all indications point to Google gearing up to do just that. Sources say Google is buying up a great deal of dark fiber all around the country and at the same time hiring telecommunications engineers and delivering during the past year or two thousands of server blades to what are called Peering Centers, datacenters where networks converge to optimize connectivity. This could be happening so that Google can offer the kind of quality of service, so-called five 9s uptime, required by the very biggest of enterprises before they would consider using an online streaming application. Finally, Google executives are already making it quite clear where they are heading. Both Douglas Merrill, CIO and vice president of Engineering at Google, and Eric Schmidt, CEO, are increasingly going on the record about Google Apps in the enterprise. "The hardest thing to build is a million-user consumer application with no downtime. We have taken that opportunity to bullet proof [for] large scale enterprise applications," Schmidt said. Merrill even touches on the current climate of government regulations and the fact that Google Apps were built to meet those new demands. "We built applications to meet regulatory requirement for even the largest enterprise companies. That means Google Apps already have enterprise security built into them," Merrill said. Nevertheless, Google isn't the first company to attempt an Office killer. Whether it is Sun's Star Office most recently or WordPerfect from a previous generation, with 450 million users, chipping away at the Microsoft Office user base won't be easy. Greenberg has reservations about whether or not Google understands this part of the market well enough to be a serious competitor. And he warns that one of the lessons of capitalism in the 20th century is that "extreme verticalization" doesn't succeed. Companies need to outsource functions that companies are not an expert at. And, some would say, what Google does best is search and they should not get diverted by what other companies do best. Only time will tell. Jeffrey Falk, director of product development at The Members Group says his company, which has about 150 people and revenues in the $50 million range, would consider Google Apps as a replacement for Microsoft Office mostly for the cost savings. But, he added it would have to meet a number of stringent requirements first. "If we could find an ironclad solution that would deliver a quick time to market as far as the learning curve for us and we could overcome the hurdles of security and become comfortable with that, Google Apps has some legs," Falk said.
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Israeli start-up Fringland is offering a mobile phone client that enables free VoIP calls, not only to other users of its technology, but also to fixed-line VoIP clients for internet telephony, such as MSN, Googletalk and Skype.
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Network equipment manufacturer Avaya Inc. late Monday agreed to a $8.2 billion cash buyout by private equity firms TPG Capital LLP and Silver Lake Partners, the companies announced.
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In the name of developing simpler voice over IP solutions, Vonage Holdings has teamed with Boingo Wireless. Initially, the companies will target business travelers with Boingo&#39;s Wi-Fi service and Vonage&#39;s SoftPhone service.
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Avaya Inc.  said on Monday it agreed to be acquired by private equity firms TPG Capital and Silver Lake for $8.2 billion, the latest in a string of deals in the telecommunications-equipment industry.
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AccessLine Communications, a leading provider of hosted VoIP (Voice over  Internet Protocol) services, today announced that its SmartVoice Service  for business now offers U.S.-based customers the ability to utilize  local phone numbers in Great Britain.
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InfoWorld - Capgemini&#160;, a major global services provider, has just partnered with Google to enable large-scale adoption of the enterprise version of Google Apps.
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(InfoWorld) - Raketu Communications will add two new mobile phone features to its integrated communications, entertainment, and social networking service in a move to attract consumers on the go. Next week, Raketu will introduce a new domain, www.raketu.mobi, which will allow mobile phone users to more easily navigate the Raketu site and use services such as the company's RakWeb service launched earlier this week, said CEO Greg Parker in an interview. By the end of the month, the company intends to launch a new mobile phone version of the Raketu application, which users can install on their phones to make VoIP calls, send text messages, chat, and more, Parker said. Raketu, which is based in New York, is trying to carve out a niche in the highly competitive market for Web-based services by offering an integrated communications, online entertainment, and social networking service that can be used on both desktop PCs and mobile phones. "We have a tightly integrated package of services that we believe is unique and attractive to consumers," Parker said. Many rival Internet companies tend to focus on one service, such as VoIP or online entertainment, but not on three as Raketu does, he added. The company offers a peer-to-peer VoIP service similar to Skype's, a unit of eBay. Users who have dial-up or broadband connections and have installed the Raketu application can make free VoIP calls to each other as well as to landline and mobile users in 42 countries, paying a low fee for calls outside these areas. The Raketu application also allows users to view streamed IPTV (Internet Protocol television) and VOD (video on demand) channels, as well as news and information feeds. Text messaging, IM, and podcasts are among several additional features. The "fully integrated" service, Parker said, allows to view an IPTV or VOD stream and chat via IM or VoIP at the same time. Fringland (Fring)Â and Jajah, which already offer mobile phone VoIP service, provide no online entertainment or social networking services. The new RakWeb application can be used without installing software on a computer. Users have access to Raketu services such as VoIP, e-mail, IM, and IPTV, and can make call-back calls, linking, for instance, two mobile phones. Raketu calls between two mobile phones in Germany, for instance, cost around $0.30 per minute for the person who initiates the call. Raketu calls between a phone in Germany and one in the U.S. cost $0.15 per minute. If outside their home market, however, users have to pay a roaming fee to initiate or receive a call. For comparison, the German subsidiary of Vodafone Group charges â¬0.75 ($1.00) to both initiate and receive a roaming call, with each minute billed according to the customer's tariff package. The minute fee, depending on the package, can range from â¬0.06 to around â¬0.30 for contract customers and â¬0.59 for prepaid customers.ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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(InfoWorld) - Aiming to let enterprises do more with their IP (Internet Protocol) telephony systems and keep them available when a network goes down, Avaya introduced new software, phones, and a gateway at this week's VoiceCon Spring conference. On Tuesday, the company announced Avaya Communication Manager 4.0, the latest version of its software platform for enterprise VOIP (voice over IP). At the same time, it unveiled the G860 Media Gateway for large offices and call centers. Avaya also announced three fixed-line phones and said it will provide industry-standard SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) firmware for all its high-end phones. Like other big voice vendors, Avaya is gearing up for increasing adoption of IP telephony, which is on its way to replacing traditional phone systems in enterprises. The Communication Manager 4.0 server software can support 12,000 standard T-1 phone trunks in a company's headquarters and other locations, said Steve Hardy, a director of product marketing at Avaya. That is 1.5 times the number that the previous version could handle. The software also has features to keep enterprise calling features working and maintain call detail records in case of a WAN (wide-area network) failure. It is set to ship this month. The G860 Media Gateway lets enterprises consolidate multiple gateways at a large enterprise site, which are used for communication between the internal VOIP network and the public switched telephone network. It has a T-3 interface -- 45MbpsÂ -- versus the 1.5Mbps links on Avaya's earlier gateways. The G860 also can use SIP, the emerging standard for linking IP telephony devices and integrating voice features with productivity applications. It is set to ship in the third quarter. Also Tuesday, Avaya said its IG550 Integrated Gateway for branch offices, announced last year, will be available this month. It is a module that fits in Juniper Networks Inc. J-series routers. The company fleshed out its 9600 series of high-end IP desk phones, also introduced last year. It announced the 9640 IP Telephone, with a color display, for sales people and other employees who use the phone as a key work tool. The new 9650 is for receptionists and others who manage calls for themselves and other employees, and the 9610 is designed for common areas with simplicity in mind, according to Avaya. The new phones are already shipping and priced at $679, $525, and $215, respectively. Avaya expects to have SIP firmware available as a free software download for all the 9600 series phones beginning in May. One Avaya customer, an IT administrator for a national transportation company, said SIP was a key criterion in his company's choice of an IP telephony system. The company is rolling out Avaya's 9620 and 9630 IP phones to about 40 facilities. SIP should give the company a choice when shopping for additional devices, such as speakerphones, he said. VoiceCon Spring, taking place in Orlando, has been a busy conference for Avaya. Also at the show, it announced the Avaya one-X Portal, a Web browser-based interface for accessing voicemail, managing conference calls, and setting call forwarding to a cell phone, among other things. And Tuesday the company revealed a deal with Lenovo GroupÂ in which Avaya's softphone client will be integrated with Lenovo's fingerprint-scanner security system for logging in to the client. The companies also discussed using the keyboard backlight feature as a message-waiting light for the softphone client in the future. Pricing for Communication Manager starts at $200 per seat. The G860 Media Gateway costs $140,000 list. The IG550 gateway module starts at $3,000 and line cards start at $1,000.
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Deploys new VoIP prefix, then steps back
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InfoWorld - Google pushed further into the communication and collaboration applications market with a major upgrade Thursday of Google Apps, a hosted suite for organizations of all sizes that analysts say could soon become a real competitor to Microsoft Office.
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Additions to the new Asterisk Version 1.4 include support for GoogleTalk and Cisco's IP phone protocol, as well as several other protocol and application support upgrades.
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(InfoWorld) - The great thing about SOA is that when you add a service, you instantly increase the potential of any application that can consume that service. Today, Avaya threw a new set of VoIP services into the enterprise SOA mix in the form of its CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processes) solution. For most enterprises, the benefits of VoIP have been limited to the cost savings of retiring legacy phone systems and the added productivity of a few voice/data applications -- almost exclusively for call centers. CEBP exposes an array of voice communications features as Web services, which can be called upon by any number of applications from IT operations to supply chain management. Avaya sees CEBP as a way for enterprises to optimize business processes and respond swiftly to events. For example, based on certain criteria, a temporary interruption at a manufacturing plant might cause SAP R/3 to ping CEBP, which would send an automated advisory message with a return receipt to the appropriate manager via phone, e-mail, or SMS. In the event of a total meltdown, the Notify & Conference feature could be invoked, initiating voice calls to a preset list of people and dropping them all into an emergency conference call. In other instances, CEBP could merely ensure that composite workflow applications, oft cited as a big payoff of SOA, aren't stopped in their tracks by people who aren't sitting at a computer and can't respond promptly. As Avaya senior vice president Stuart Wells puts it, "by bringing our innovation in advanced and open technologies to business processes, Avaya gives organizations the unique competitive advantage that can only arise with more intelligent communications." One customer, Whirlpool, has been experimenting with a pre-release version of CEBP for more than a year. Brian Murphy, director of e-services in Whirlpool's global development division, has already applied CEBP's array of services to IT processes, shortening response times. "If a system goes down ... that's an issue we want to be able to do something about in minutes, not hours. Straightaway, we want to be in action mode," he said. Avaya is not the first vendor to provide a Web services platform for voice communications capabilities. Last September, BlueNote Networks introduced its SessionSuite SOA Edition, designed to enable developers to embed telephony capabilities in a range of applications. But Avaya's large customer base and professional services group could help jump start the use of voice-based Web services. Whirlpool's Murphy, for one, is looking at expanding the use of CEBP in a number of areas, including supply chain management and manufacturing. "We're taking a strategic look at all parts of our business," he said.
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Telecoms equipment-maker Avaya accepts an $8.5bn takeover offer from private equity groups.
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(InfoWorld) - Google announced on Thursday evening that a domain name search and registration service will be added to its Google Apps for Your Domain offering. Google will partner with GoDaddy and eNom, two domain registration companies to offer the service. Registration fees are a nominal $10 per year, which will include private registration to protect personal information and will support .com, .org, .net, .biz, and .info domains. Besides search and registration, the service also includes the creation of an administrative account for managing the site and a configurator to ensure the Google Apps are immediately available on the new site. Google Apps for Your Domain includes Gmail, calendar, shared calendaring, Google Talk instant messaging, Google Page Creator, and the Start Page for creating a home page. The domain name service is available now.