Business News Holding

Tag: hardware-and-technology

  • Virtual PBX And Gizmo5 Announce Business Voip Service


    Virtual PBX and Gizmo5 have announced a new collaboration that they claim offers a business phone solution with the industry’s deepest feature set at a price level well below current standards.

    Built on an open-system VoIP peering platform, the new service combines the products of both companies.

    As part of the announcement, Virtual PBX has launched iVPBX, a new product that provides customers with unlimited inbound calling and no per-minute fees at a price of just under USD $10 per seat.

    The company estimates this is about one-fourth to one-fifth the cost of most competing plans.

    Gizmo5 clients who use the new iVPBX product can send calls by IP directly to their Gizmo phones at no cost.

    Virtual PBX’s deeper relationship with Gizmo5 follows on from its open VoIP peering technology announced last November.

    Virtual PBX client companies using the service typically have one main business number for clients to call.

    Virtual PBX takes those calls, answers them with a "virtual" attendant, and then delivers them to employees using any kind of phone, in any location.

    The solution enables small firms and those with distributed employees to portray a professional phone image and get top-end features – without the expense or maintenance hassles of purchasing their own telecommunications hardware.

    Traditional Virtual PBX pricing plans include a varying number of free minutes with a price of 4.4 to 6.5 cents per minute for additional usage, according to a statement from Virtual PBX.

    It said with the new iVPBX product, available now, calls coming in on a local number and sent to a Gizmo5 phone will have no per-minute fee for unlimited use.

    By adding the Virtual PBX service, business users of Gizmo5 gain all the advantages of a high-end PBX, such as an auto-attendant, transferring calls between users, and routing calls to departments though ACD queues.

    Paul Hammond, CEO of Virtual PBX, said the new iVPBX product gives users a very low-cost plan with unlimited usage.

    "And the combination of Virtual PBX and Gizmo5 delivers the best of both worlds at a fraction of the cost of typical hosted IP-PBX offerings," he said.

  • Skype Announces iPhone App,Video Calling Coming Soon?


    STORY UPDATED: see below

    Skype is now available for the iPhone – and will be coming to BlackBerry in May.

    The VoIP app on the iPhone will only work over Wi-Fi and not 3G.

    It will allow iPhone subscribers to use phone numbers in their existing iPhone address book – without the need for duplicate lists.

    As always, it allows free calls between Skype users and charges for calls to landlines or mobiles.

    The free application began appearing in the app store early on Tuesday.

    UPDATE: Since being released on Tuesday it has emerged that Skype on iPhone does works over 3G, despite being intended only for use with WiFi.

    Users report it working over the 3G data connection if the beta 3.0 firmware is being run.

    Since VoIP over the 3G cellular is clearly forbidden in the SDK rules, it’s obviously due to a bug on 3.0 that it works.

    This raises the question of how long it will be before Apple closes the hole?

    But also, how did was the app "approved" and certified by for the App Store without first "testing" if Skype would work on the 3G connection?

  • Avaya Announces SIP Architecture That Connects Users, Applications and Systems


    Avaya today announced the launch of a new SIP-based architecture that integrates communications across multi-vendor, multi-location and multi-modal businesses.

    Called Aura, the company said it is centered on the new open standards Aura Session Manager, which centralizes communications control and application integration.

    Session Manager orchestrates a wide array of communications applications and systems by decoupling applications from the network.

    The software simplifies complex communications networks, reduces infrastructure costs and delivers voice, video, messaging, presence, Web applications to employees anywhere.

    Kevin Kennedy, CEO and president Avaya

    Kevin Kennedy, president and CEO of Avaya, said that as a result, services can be deployed to users depending on what they need rather than by where they work or the capabilities of the system to which they are connected.

    He said Session Manager instantly reduces complexity and provides the foundation for broader unified communications strategies.

    "With Avaya Aura, organizations can achieve rapid returns on their business communications investment, while simplifying the development and deployment of applications that improve operational performance," he said.

    "We’ve seen some organizations use SIP routing to reduce trunking costs by 20 to 60 per cent.

    "With this new architecture, for the first time, the way we communicate is defined by the applications and the user, not the network."

    Avaya Aura will be available globally in May 2009.

    The company said Avaya Aura offers the following benefits:

    • Ability to create new applications and quickly extend them to users anywhere
    • Map applications to individual employee profiles, making the appropriate features globally available regardless of the location, system or device to which they are connected
    • Reduce costs through centrally managed, enterprisewide dial plans and on-net calling, global least-cost routing and PSTN access from the most cost-effective location.
    • Eliminate local application servers and optimize software licensing across the full breadth of the enterprise rather than for a single location
    • Massively scale to 250,000 business users and 25,000 locations.

  • VOICECON: 8×8 Intros Enterprise Version of Hosted IP PBX Service


    8×8 today announced the availability of an enterprise version of its hosted IP PBX phone service.

    The solution is intended for deployment in larger organizations located in either a single building, a campus environment or distributed across multiple locations.

    Called 8×8 Virtual Office Enterprise, it is the latest generation of 8×8’s broadband agnostic hosted IP PBX business phone solutions.

    Bryan Martin, 8×8 chairman and CEO, said that unlike premise-based PBX phone systems that require a significant financial investment plus management and maintenance resources, the business phone solution delivers advanced PBX calling features combined with cost-effective IP dial tone service.

    He said this eliminated the need for expensive on-site equipment.

    "Core enhancements to the Virtual Office hosted PBX platform and additional redundancy in our network now enable us to offer this solution to larger organizations that are analyzing the cost and functionality of their current telecommunications infrastructure alongside a requirement for high quality, availability and redundancy from this mission critical service," he said.

    8×8 recently upgraded its service infrastructure, deploying a new triple redundant architecture across three independent data centers with each data center connected to redundant IP access providers.

    Martin said this new architecture allows for failure of any software component, server, cluster or even a complete data center failure without affecting service to the end customer.

  • Hitachi Beats Competitors with Fastest Midrange Storage System


    Hitachi Data Systems Corporation has announced that its next-generation midrange storage platform, the Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage (AMS) 2000 Family, achieved overall best-in-class Storage Performance Council (SPC-1) benchmark results for a midrange storage system.

    In SPC-1 benchmark testing, the Hitachi AMS 2500 achieved the fastest throughput results among all midrange storage competitors with dual controllers.

    It had a throughput result of 89,491.81 SPC-1 IOPS and an 8.98 millisecond average response time.

    Mike Walkey, senior vice president of channels, Hitachi Data Systems, said that with key business applications such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL, Oracle, SAP or any other online transactional processing application, the AMS 2500 allows users to more effectively scale their workloads at a best-in-class price point.

    The Hitachi AMS 2100 achieved among the best SPC-1 Price-Performance ratio in its class at $5.95/SPC-1 IOPS.

    Walkey said it brought high performance to a new affordable price level and allowing customers to realise a lower total cost of ownership.

    He said that with companies scrambling to find ways to manage data growth without increasing storage expenses or performance penalties, this price-performance ratio reiterated Hitachi’s efforts to help customers establish a path towards optimising their storage environment.

    This results in greater return on their storage asset investments and lower overall power and cooling consumption.

  • Will HP and Dell Follow Xyratex And Support Savvio's SFF HDDs?


    Xyratex recently announced support for Seagate’s Savvio 15K.2 and Savvio 10K.3 Small Form Factor (SFF) enterprise hard disk drives.

    As a result, Seagate’s Savvio 2.5 inch hard drives have been completely incorporated into Xyratex’s OneStor SP1224s, 2U 24 drive storage system, writes Samantha Sai for storage.biz-news.

    Currently, this is the only fully integrated external storage subsystem to convey the high-performing, energy resourceful drives for enterprise storage systems.

    Xyratex says that when compared to the standard 3.5-inch drives, these SFF drives burn up less power with twice the functioning density.

    The company says this makes the OneStor SP1224s perfect for transaction-intensive use, allowing consumers to get enhanced time to data devoid of any penalties with decreased capacity or higher electric bills.

    IDC is anticipating that 2.5-inch drive consignments will overtake 3.5-inch ones later this year – largely because of their improved performance and lesser power profile.

    This raises the prospect of both HP and Dell coming out with storage products using the 15K.2 Savvios.

    Both companies provided supporting quotes in the Seagate release.

    The 2.5-inch Seagate Savvio 10K.2 enterprise hard drive offers up to 146-GB capacity and has the premier consistency rating in the world.

    Savvio 10K.2 drives are 70 per cent smaller than 3.5-inch drives, enabling more drives per system for improved performance per U (vertical usable space) and optimized performance per watt.

    The Savvio drive also uses less power and enables more airflow to cool faster processors.

    Carla Kennedy, vice president of enterprise PLM at Seagate, said Xyratex and Seagate were committed to meeting the key data center requirements of reduced power consumption and improved system performance with Small Form Factor hard drives.

    "In addition to delivering the highest performance and largest capacity SFF drives in the industry, these new drives enable new levels in system efficiency when the market needs it most," she said.

    The Xyratex OneStor SP1224s is the SFF companion of the company’s highly flexible OneStor Extensible Storage Platform family. The SP1224s is a 2U, 24-drive storage system supported on 2.5-inch drives and make available eighty-five percent proficient power translation.

    While no set time for the shipment has been planned, both the 15K.2 and 10K.3 drives may be ready to go out sometime in December.

    However, the self-encrypting versions won’t be released at least until the beginning of 2010.

  • Visualon Integrates On2 VP6 Video Into Mobile Apps


    On2 Technologies has licensed its On2 VP6 video format and software to VisualOn Inc.

    VisualOn is to integrate VP6 decoding software into its multimedia application suite for mobile platforms.

    These software applications allow consumers to play rich multimedia content on mobile devices without expensive dedicated hardware.

    The power-efficient software codecs and multimedia applications offer everything needed to enable video, audio, and still image applications on a range of devices.

    Last month, On2 Technologies announced a 1080p video encoder aimed at improving image quality and compression performance in battery operated devices and consumer electronics.

    The new hardware design, the Hantro 8270, supports H.264 Baseline, Main and High Profile video along with 16Mpixel JPEG still images.

    Yang Cai, CEO of VisualOn, said the widespread presence of On2 VP6 content on the web makes it an essential format for VisualOn’s product portfolio.

    "Adding VP6 to our application suite will enable mobile users to watch high-quality VP6 without requiring a bleeding-edge processor or a pocketful of batteries," he said.

    "Our customers as well as consumers ultimately benefit from the high quality, lower power, and reduced cost achieved through VisualOn’s partnership with On2."

    On2 VP6, through its inclusion in the Adobe Flash and Sun JavaFX application platforms, has become the de facto format for web video and a fundamental requirement for Internet-connected mobile devices.

    Matt Frost, COO and interim CEO of On2 Technologies, said that when compared to H.264 Baseline profile (a video format used in wireless applications) On2 VP6 content offers 10-20 per cent better video compression performance while requiring less computing power to play.

    He said that as a result, VP6 enables a wider range of mobile devices to play high-quality content without sacrificing battery life.

    "We are pleased to have VisualOn optimize and integrate On2 VP6 to their application suite," he said.

    "They have exceptional skill and experience in delivering highly optimized multimedia software for mobile devices, and we look forward to seeing high-performance playback of our codec as an integral part of their solutions."

  • GE Delays Launch of HDTVs


    General Electric is to delay its re-entry into the television market after a 20-year gap as a result of "marketing issues".

    The company announced in September that it was to offer GE-branded HDTVs in partnership with a Taiwanese company.

    Now it has emerged that the company is pushing everything back by around three months, according to Engadget.

    It reports that the setback isn’t due to "operational or manufacturing issues", but suggests it may have more to do with a desire to better implement connected HDTV features.

    Whatever the reason, GE hasn’t picked the time to be re-entering the market – and its pre-launch jitters certainly don’t inspire great hope in the as-yet unseen product.

  • Canon Offers First Entry-Level DSLR With HD Video


    Canon today launched its Rebel T1i DSLR – its first-ever entry-level DSLR with 1080p HD video recording.

    The 15.1-megapixel camera uses the DIGIC 4 imaging processor to record either full 1080p video at 20 frames per second or 30 frames per second at 720p.

    Other notable specs include a 3.0-inch Live View screen, a Digic IV processor, ISO 12.8k sensitivity, and the same 18-55 IS EF-S kit lens as the XSi.

    Yuichi Ishizuka, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Imaging Group, Canon USA, described the latest addition to Canon’s Rebel lineup as "an entry-level juggernaut".

    "We are witnessing the emergence of a new phase in digital imaging history, as high-resolution still images and HD video can now both be produced in a hand-held device, for under USD $1,000," he said.

    The EOS Rebel T1i DSLR is scheduled for delivery by early May at an estimated retail price of USD $799.99.

  • Skuku Provides Cheap InFlight GSM Calls to Air Passengers


    Skuku has announced today that it has formed a partnership with the German company TriaGnoSys to provide the next generation of inflight GSM services for airline passengers.

    The new service allows travellers to avoid costly roaming charges while placing phone calls aboard commercial airlines.

    It takes advantage of existing technology, including in-seat screens, seat-back phones and Internet connectivity, and allows airlines to offer roaming-free voice and SMS functions to their passengers.

    Skuku’s technology will not require the installation of any onboard GSM equipment.

    Axel Jahn, managing director of TriaGnoSys, said the new service allows airlines, as well as business jet owners and operators, to exploit the technology they already have on their aircraft in order to provide an additional passenger service.

    "The installation process is a simple software upgrade, bypassing the need for the expensive and time-consuming fitting of hardware," he said.

    "In addition, Skuku’s technology can easily be integrated into current generation IP-enabled IFE systems."

    Skuku’s technology uses SIM card data in ground-based GSM servers to provide roaming-free services for voice and instant messaging.

    TriaGnoSys, experts in aeronautical communication, has developed the software to enable Skuku to be used on aircraft.

    Jahn said that from the success of current inflight GSM services, it is clear that passengers want access to SMSs and voice calls during flights.

    He added: "This is a highly efficient way of providing that service."

    To use the service, passengers insert their own SIM card into a SIM card reader.

    On aircraft with Internet connectivity, passengers can send and receive SMS messages using the IFE screen, while softphones can be used for voice calls.

    Seat-back phones can also be used to place and receive voice calls, in addition to Inmarsat and Iridium satellite phones.

    Colin Blou, VP of sales and marketing at Skuku, said that from the passengers’ perspective, using the Skuku/TriaGnoSys service was very similar to current inflight mobile phone services.

    "Passengers can continue to use their mobile number and contacts list, and they are billed through their normal bills at national rates, without having to pay costly roaming charges,"he said.