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Tag: hosted-voip

  • Junction Networks Announces 10,000th Account

    Junction Networks has announced that MBLM NYC has become the company’s 10,000th customer of its hosted VoIP services. Following a merger, the New York-based branding firm chose to deploy OnSIP Hosted PBX service to "quickly deploy a complete communications solution and save on upfront investment."

    "When we merged with a larger company and needed to quickly deploy an additional 16 workstations, we decided to move from a PSTN Gateway service with Junction Networks to OnSIP, in order to save on upfront cost and get up and running quickly," said Olaf Kreitz, Partner, MBLM NYC.

    "We love that the service was easy to set up and also offers such a robust feature set. We did a lot of shopping around and found OnSIP to be the best value. The My.OnSIP feature has also become a fast favorite for us, as it allows each individual employee to manage their extension in so many ways," he added.

    OnSIP is available at an industry low average cost per user monthly of under $20 and offers a complete Unified Communications solution: hosted HD calling and conferencing, voicemail-to-email, instant messaging, presence, and more.

    "The addition of our 10,000th customer is a tremendous milestone for OnSIP and Junction Networks. OnSIP is quickly becoming the go-to hosted VoIP service for small businesses because it’s simple to use, a cinch to set up, and extremely cost effective," said Michael Oeth, CEO of Junction Networks. "We will continue to increase our service offerings and keep costs down to provide small businesses the benefits of an enterprise phone system for a fraction of the cost."

  • 8×8 Partners With Polycom

    8×8 announced it has signed a partnership agreement with Polycom enabling it to offer Polycom’s IP telephony and conferencing solutions to 8×8 Virtual Office hosted VoIP subscribers.

    8×8’s initial offering features the Polycom SoundPoint IP 335 desk phone. According to the company, the SoundPoint IP 335 is “a high quality, entry-level SIP phone that seamlessly integrates with 8×8’s systems to deliver advanced telephony features such as auto attendant, voicemail, Caller ID, call forwarding, conference bridge and Polycom HD Voice at an affordable cost.”

    In addition, these phones also include a capability called Voice Quality Monitoring (VQMON), which gives 8×8 the ability to monitor in real-time the quality of a customer’s call. This feature helps the company quickly diagnose customer issues, provide faster problem resolution and ultimately deliver better service.

    8×8 also informed that they will be introducing additional SoundPoint IP desktop phones, SoundStation IP conference phones and Polycom KIRK wireless phones and accessories in the coming weeks and months.

    "8×8 is very pleased to be working with Polycom as we fulfill our separate, but common, commitment to deliver affordable, high quality voice solutions to businesses of all sizes," said 8×8 Chairman & CEO Bryan Martin.

    "Polycom’s reliable, cutting edge offerings will be a valuable addition to our IP phone portfolio and a tremendous vehicle for enabling our Virtual Office customers to experience and benefit from technological advancements such as HD Voice," he said.

    "8×8 has established itself as an innovative and successful provider of hosted PBX and unified communications services and we look forward to working together to offer cost-effective, high-quality voice solutions," said Jim Kruger, Polycom vice president of Solutions Product Marketing.

    He added: "With more and more businesses gravitating toward cloud-based solutions, features like HD voice, integration with key business applications, and other powerful IP-enabled features have become an increasingly important component of any communications solution."

    Related news
    8×8 Awarded Virtual Telephone Extension Patent
    8×8 Announces Voice over 3G Update to its iPhone App
    Leading Technology Companies Announce HD Voice Initiative in the U.K.

  • Alteva Offers Free Complete UC Solution Through Its IP Phone Rental Program

    Alteva has announced another affordable way to leverage Microsoft Communication Services integrated with Alteva’s enterprise hosted VoIP service. Together, Microsoft and Alteva are providing hosted UC solutions for smaller businesses that integrate communication and business processes.

    To further make new IP technologies accessible to the SMB market, Alteva is now offering its complete UC solution to organizations purchasing 10 or more phones through an IP phone rental program. Alteva said that companies that choose to take advantage of the rental program will not have to put any money down to get a new Voice over IP phone system. “This rental option will greatly improve the channel managers’ ability to close sales in this turbulent economy,” said Alteva Chief Sales Officer Louis Hayner.

    Back in April, Alteva launched the complete suite of Microsoft Communication Services, including Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Office Communications Server (OCS) with hosted voice services.

    “Hosted unified communications will change the way that businesses communicate,” said Rich Cannon, Industry Marketing Development Manager at Microsoft.

    “By integrating voice with Microsoft Communication Services, we are opening the doors to service providers and their partners by providing a range of functionalities to offer to the end user that will inevitably change the landscape of their business,” he added.

    In a survey by Infonetics Research, of North American companies and their plans for deploying Unified Communications equipment and services, as well as their ratings of leading Unified Communications vendors, Microsoft is one of the most widely deployed Unified Communications suppliers among survey respondents, enjoying high buyer awareness and receiving high marks from buyers on the most important buying criteria.

    “Against the backdrop of significant enterprise spending reductions on all kinds of products, the unified communication market is holding up remarkably well. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise, as these tools are designed to allow users to communicate and collaborate more effectively,” noted Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data at Infonetics Research.

    Related news
    Microsoft Lync: A New Name for a New Generation of UC Solutions
    SoliCall Releases Personal PBXMate for SMB’s and Private Users
    LG-Ericsson and Accton to Deliver Unified Voice and Data Solutions for Businesses

  • New VoIP Call Recording Solution for SMBs


    CTI Group and CommPartners Connect have announced they are offering a VoIP call recording service aimed at small and medium-sized businesses.

    Called SmartRecord IP it is a hosted VoIP call recording application that gives network operators the ability to offer call recording directly from the switch, rather than as an afterthought.

    Mark Peterson, vice president of sales and marketing for CommPartners Connect, said the application had geographic redundancy and infinite scalability.

    He said applications like SmartRecord IP have great appeal to important segments of the SMB market and helped increases overall demand for VoIP.

    "By responding to the demand for these value-added features and applications, we are enabling our resellers to meet customer needs and win more deals while driving growth of their VoIP business portfolio," he said.

  • Hosted VoIP Solutions Provider Aptela Works with ClearSight to Resolve Network Issues


    Hosted VoIP solutions provider Aptela has announced that its working with ClearSight Networks’ Network Time Machine (NTM) to diagnose problems on customer and carrier networks.

    Matt Smith, vice president of technology and client services at Aptela, said the solution allows them to quickly and easily maintain network uptime and stave off unexpected outages.

    Since Aptela works with so many customer and carrier networks in addition to its own network, it used to be nearly impossible to pinpoint specific issues and their origins.

    He said NTM works like a metal detector for finding needle-in-a-haystack problems across all points within the network.

    "Now, with ClearSight’s NTM, we can take retroactive network data, pull up metrics on any call, and identify the source of the problem.

    "We are able to resolve issues and performance bottlenecks for our customers and carriers faster, more accurately and with less overhead."

    As a hosted-PBX and VoIP service provider, Aptela routes customers’ voice and data traffic via the Internet.

    For SMBs with limited IT resources and budgets, this method provides the benefits of a scalable and powerful VoIP system without the associated price tag.

    However, it also means that Aptela does not have visibility into the network hardware at each customer location. Smith said that using ClearSight’s NTM and pre-established metrics, the company now has greater insight and better visibility into any VoIP call, fax, email or phone registration over the network—and may quickly identify possible causes of latency, jitter and other call quality problems.

    Hosted VoIP services are on a strong growth trajectory, with a recent Infonetics Research report showing that the VoIP services market grew 33 per cent to USD $30.8 billion in 2008.

  • Hosted VoIP Approaches One Million in the US – and Climbing


    The US had almost one million installed hosted IP telephony lines at the end of 2008.

    This figure is expected to grow to about 3.6 million lines in 2014, according to a report by Frost & Sullivan.

    It suggests that integration with other unified communications (UC) applications – chat, presence and conferencing – will provide the most opportunity for the hosted IP telephony market, which it believes is being challenged by the economic downturn.

    Elka Popova, Frost & Sullivan’s global program director, said small businesses will continue to be attracted to hosted IP telephony offerings primarily for cost-efficient voice communications.

    However, she said some of them will also choose a hosted offering for the ability to gain access to a complete UC package from a single provider.

    "Medium and large businesses will also appreciate the economies provided by hosted IP telephony, but will seek such solutions mostly so they can focus on core business processes and gain access to applications and capabilities that they can test without making a capital investment," she said.

    Popova said that integration with other applications can help the hosted IP telephony market plough ahead.

    Barriers to Market

    However, significant technology enhancements to premise-based solutions and extensive private branch exchange (PBX) vendor channels present significant barriers to further market penetration.

    The report said that IP telephony vendors will have to develop astute channel strategies since most market participants are small, next-generation providers with limited geographic presence and service support capabilities – and with no established customer base or brand-name recognition.

    It recommended that service providers should seek to expand and diversify their channels and strengthen relationships.

    Moves that will need to be based on specific portfolio requirements, it added.

    "Meanwhile, the low barriers to entry will cause the North American market to remain extremely fragmented," said the report.

    "The incumbent local exchange carriers (LECs) are reluctant to grab larger market shares due to the fear of cannibalizing legacy service revenues and limited demand for next-gen hosted telephony services among their existing Centrex base."

    Diverse Competitive Landscape

    The competitive landscape is also likely to become increasingly diverse with competitive LECs (CLECs), software as a service (SaaS)/hosted application providers, value-added resellers (VARs) and system integrators (SIs) competing for a share of a slowly growing market.

    In such a scenario, channel support will determine each provider’s chances for success.

    Popova said that in order to ensure extensive customer reach and superior customer support, service providers need to develop stronger relationships with various VARs, SIs, and agents that may include real estate companies, IT consultants, and moving companies.

    "Further, providers should seek to develop an eco-system of partnerships to jointly enhance market awareness and be able to offer customers a range of interoperable solutions and capabilities," she said.

    Other recommendations made in the report include:

    • Telephony providers should cooperate with hosted contact center, email, customer relationship management (CRM), Web 2.0 and other communication and business application providers.
    • Service providers may choose to adopt diverse business strategies. For instance, some may focus on businesses seeking inexpensive voice communication packages, while others may choose to target businesses that seek advanced communication solutions such as UC, where application integration provides considerable productivity benefits.
    • Providers could also take advantage of merger and acquisition opportunities based on complementary technologies, expertise or channels, since consolidation can help improve customer awareness, margins and the value proposition of hosted IP telephony.

  • SpiriTel wins EURO 1.1m VoIP contract


    SpiriTel has announced that it has won a network services and hosted VoIP contract with a major European hotel group.

    The business communications service provider said the value of the three year contract is expected to exceed £1 million.

    Under the terms of the agreement SpiriTel will provide integrated network services across all of the group’s UK estate of 21 hotels and its head office.

    The hosted VoIP solution is a managed service which includes the provision of teleworking facilities for field based staff.

    The deal is SpiriTel’s second significant cross sale contract win this month.

    Earlier this month, the Company signed an agreement with another international hotel group, under which SpiriTel replaced BT as the provider of a private UK voice network.

    The two deals take the total value of cross sales orders since the company’s April 2008 year end to over £3 million, according to a company statement.

    Alastair Mills, CEO of SpiriTel said: "I am delighted to have secured another significant contract win for SpiriTel which provides further evidence of the viability of our integrated model in a challenging economic climate."

  • VoIP Service Revenue Up 52% in 2007

    Boom Expected to Continue

    Communications market research firm Infonetics Research reports that worldwide revenue from hosted VoIP and managed IP PBX services jumped 52 per cent to US$24 billion in 2007.

    This follows a rise of 66 per cent in 2006, and is expected to grow in the strong double-digits through at least 2011.

    Infonetics’ report shows that hosted VoIP services continue to outpace managed IP PBX services by far, with residential services fueling market growth.

    Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst for enterprise voice and data at Infonetics Research, said that while VoIP services are being embraced by consumers worldwide, businesses have been comparatively slower in their adoption due to various roadblocks.

    However, he said this was about to change.

    “For example, many PBX manufacturers have already added SIP trunking interfaces to their equipment, and more recently, they’ve greatly expanded the list of certified service providers,” he said.

    “That’s going to fuel the growth in SIP trunking services. These kinds of developments will boost the overall VoIP business services segment for years to come.”

    Other highlights from the report:

    * The number of worldwide residential/SOHO VoIP subscribers grew 60 per cent between 2006 and 2007, to over 75 million, with the largest gains in North America and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), although Asia Pacific still leads

    * Asia Pacific, which had been leading the VoIP scene for a few years, is now neck and neck with EMEA and North America in 2007; EMEA will break away this year and lead the market at least through 2011

    * Business customer (vs. consumer) share of worldwide hosted VoIP service revenue will increase from 26 per cent in 2007 to 41 per cent in 2011

    * Comcast is North America’s largest consumer VoIP service provider, with 20 per cent subscriber market share, France Télécom leads in the EMEA region, Softbank leads in Asia Pacific, and Cableco and Vono Brazil are neck and neck in CALA