Business News Holding

Tag: smb

  • Storage Predictions for 2012: Infiltration of ‘Small Data’ and a New Kind of Cloud

    Drobo has released storage industry predictions for the coming year. These predictions are based on the company’s interactions with thousands of customers, analysts and industry luminaries.

    "The pace of change in the storage industry is going to accelerate in 2012," said Tom Buiocchi, CEO of Drobo. "Cloud strategies are evolving rapidly, solid-state media will have its day, and Big Data technologies will find their way to 'Small Data' customers. Any vendor with an old school product line is going to learn some new lessons the hard way in 2012."

    Among Drobo's predictions:

    • It’s the end of cloud storage as we know it today.  Pure cloud adoption will become less common than a hybrid approach that tightly integrates public and private cloud architectures with modern on-premise storage systems. This trend will hold true for both home users and small-medium businesses (SMBs). According to recent cloud usage research conducted by Drobo, 96 percent of SMBs (up to 500 employees) report they will store at least 50 percent of their data on-site for a minimum of the next three years. Factors cited included cloud performance, security and reliability concerns. Both businesses and individuals did state that they wanted tighter and more automated integration between their on-site data and their cloud provider. As stated by Buiocchi, "The cloud is going to have one foot on the ground for some time to come."
    • 'Small Data' eclipses Big Data in importance.  Today there is big buzz around Big Data, but the fact of the matter is Big Data is relevant to only the largest of companies and data hoarders—similar to the perspective that only one percent of the population owns 99 percent of the nation’s wealth. It’s the one person, family or business having to navigate the protection and management of their own data that affects the largest group of people: 100 million individuals and small businesses nationwide alone. This is the more pervasive problem (when compared to Big Data), and it highlights a persistent oversight of the entrenched, legacy storage system vendors that focus on the one percent while under-serving the "little guy." The numbers are too big to ignore—while Big Data will continue as a top issue in 2012, it’s the 'Small Data' opportunity that will explode.
    • Consumerization of IT continues as enterprise storage features hit the SMB and home user market.  It happened with PCs years ago and now it’s happening with tablets. In 2012 it will happen with personal and small business storage. Automated data protection, advanced thin provisioning, and powerful data-tiering with solid-state drives (SSD) are among the innovative technologies that entered the enterprise market first, but in 2012 they will further permeate home and small business offices. Will most new home or small office users know how to describe these cool, geeky storage features? Probably not, but they will know that storage has never been so easy to use, reliable and fast. 2012 will be the year that the idea of storage for the rest of us takes on a larger role in our lives, better protecting our rapidly growing digital universe.

  • Google Mobilize Comes To Help Small Businesses

    Google takes initiative and wants to help the small and medium businesses to create websites for mobile phones. The project is called Google Mobilize and it was launched at a conference held in London. The concept involves converting web pages in order to be accessed through mobile phones.

    This is the first time when Google choose to launch an application in the United Kingdom before the United States, the impulse for this being given by a research project made by the company, which revealed that 28% of Britons are using their mobile phone when making a purchase online.

    "Many people are making purchases by using their smartphones, but what we do not know is that there are many sites adapted to the mobile phones, enabling them to order directly from the phone",briefs us Ian Carrington, successful sales manager of Google in Eastern and Northern Europe.

    He has also announced some official statistics registered in the UK. From these, it results that 36% of the population are using a smartphone, and 20 million people are connected to the Web by phone, compared to 14 million, in 2010. Also, the number of those who once saw an ad on TV, are using their smartphone or tablet for searching additional details about the product or about the brand.

    Android Market has reached 4.5 billion for the downloaded applications and games. "A year ago the figure was one billion, and it took two years to get here," said Carrington. Now, it reached one billion in 60 days. If this number will continue to grow in direct proportion to the number of daily active devices, the figure will explode by the end of the year.

    You may also want to read:
    iPhone in a Smaller and Cheaper Version for Emerging Markets
    The Most Efficient Mass-Media Apps for iPad
    Adobe Facilitated Android, iOS and BlackBerry with its Updates for Flash Builder and Flex

  • Broadvox and Cypress Communications Announce Merger Agreement

    VoIP and unified communication service providers – Broadvox and Cypress Communications – announced the signing of a merger agreement.

    While both companies deliver a hosted VoIP and hosted unified communications solution, neither customer base is expected to be affected by the merger. Customers using Cypress’ C4 IP product and those using Broadvox’s GO!VBX will see no changes in their current feature sets, phones, or technology platforms. The Cypress C4 IP solution is ideally suited for enterprises, while GO!VBX primarily targets SMBs.

    According to Stephen L. Schilling, CEO and President of Cypress Communications, “The merger positions the combined Broadvox and Cypress company as a broad-based market leader, serving both carriers, SMB and SME VoIP segments. The combined company will boast one of the largest VoIP networks and will continue to provide 24×7 support and service for the more than 10,000 business customers and hundreds of thousands of users each and every day.”

    Cypress will gain access to Broadvox’s network backbone for direct origination and termination of voice traffic to more effectively serve the needs of its expanding customer base.

    Broadvox will benefit from the increased utilization of its network backbone and the ability to enhance its carrier, SMB and SME offerings with the Cypress Communications’ unified communications suite of services.

    The closing date of the merger is subject to certain terms and conditions customary for transactions of this type, including regulatory approvals. The companies announced that the finalization of the transaction is expected within 60-90 days. Because the two companies are privately held, no other merger details will be made available.

    "We are excited about this opportunity to enter into a merger agreement with a leader in unified communications as a service," remarked Andre Temnorod, Chairman and CEO at Broadvox. "The new, combined company will be in a position to expand its ability of providing high-quality and innovative services to our target markets and this strength will be a key to our continued future success. While we look forward to finalizing the transaction, it’s important for our customers, partners and other stakeholders to know that it is ‘business as usual’ at both Broadvox and Cypress Communications."

    Hosted unified communications provider Cypress Communications is known for helping to define the unified communications as a service (UCaaS) category and has been providing hosted communications to small and mid-sized businesses and enterprises (SMBs and SMEs) for more than 25 years.

    Broadvox has nearly a decade of experience in providing SIP Origination and Terminating services to carriers. In 2007, Broadvox began offering SMBs and SMEs various SIP Trunking products and this year expanded the offering with virtual PBX hosted services.

  • 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

  • IPsmarx Introduces IP-PBX And SIP Trunking To Its “All In One” Solution

    IPsmarx has just announced the addition of a Multi-level IP-PBX and SIP trunking to its integrated VoIP softswitch/billing platform.

    According to the company, it’s a “complete solution for competitive service providers” to offer the portfolio of services demanded by the Small Mediums Business market.

    The Multi-level IP-PBX supports popular capabilities such as voicemail, unified messaging, auto attendant, DID management, E-911 and a host of calling features such as call waiting, call forwarding, 3-way calling, shared line appearances, Follow me services and more.

    Ipsmarx says this single integrated softswitch application server „allows service providers to simplify the management of customer accounts and reduce operations costs, while providing rich billing, reporting and invoicing functions, all in a single platform with the reliability and scalability not found in open source, or low end solutions.”

    The new solution of IPsmarx allows service providers to offer SIP Trunking to SMBs needing multiple channels for SIP connectivity of their premise-based PBXs. It also provides support for SOHO businesses and residential access with a complete set of Class 5 services.

    It has unified customer management console with web access for online account management. This allows service provider network administrators, customer service reps and resellers to create multiple rate plans and unlimited minutes packages.

    IPsmarx assures that end user customers are provided with access to their own system, allowing self-service extension management, extension group management, extension range flexibility, flexible auto attendant routing, direct phone number assignment and DID assignment.

    The system also offers integrated marketing capabilities: its promotion marketing system includes an integrated email platform to cross-promote services. It supports multi-lingual IVR, as well as multiple currencies. There is also an e-store function that includes a user portal, customizable features, automated sign up, and online payment processes.

    “We listened to our service provider customers and added the services and capabilities to address their needs in serving the SMB market,” said Arash Vahidnia, CEO of IPsmarx.

    “They needed a platform that is easily managed and provide the reliability that come from the IPsmarx testing protocol.

  • IP Becomes More Attractive to SMB's: Interview with Jeff Howe, President of Allworx

    In the world of communication services and VoIP technology there are a lot of companies out there providing services to large businesses and enterprises to help streamline their communication needs and offer them money saving options that will benefit the enterprise and help increase profits.

    What seems to lack is the company that serves the SMB‘s as a provider of similar services in both an easy to use and affordable package.

    Of the few companies out there, Allworx is dedicated to offering a seamless, easy-to-use service that extends the benefits of a VoIP and an integrated communication infrastructure that SMB’s can focus their attention on doing what they were set up to do, focus on the business.

    In a conversation with President of Allworx, Jeff Howe, he explains why they’ve focused on the SMB market,”If you look at IP as an industry all together there are a lot of moving parts right now. For example, from a pure industry perspective, a lot of the key features for the SMB space from a lot of our other competitors are typically missing.”

    The missing part is what he hopes Allworx is able to fulfill for their clients. He notes that many companies have older communications systems in place that make it difficult to to integrate from a TDM to VoIP.

    Integration and Use

    Despite the complexity what Allworx has determined is that companies are looking for mobility and flexibility, along with scalability with their systems.

    Whether a phone call needs to ring on multiple lines, a call needs to be forwarded to another extension or another phone, or if a customer needs the use of a remote phone, these services are vital for a VoIP communications company and necessary to thrive in today’s fast paced industry.

    Jeff Howe

    Jeff Howe makes sure to point out during our discussion that he is currently communicating with me on an Allworxs phone that he simply plugged into a public internet connection with a unique IP that taps into a remote phone application.

    Excited at this prospect Jeff shares his enthusiasm,”So we give them exactly everything they have today but we’re going to give them all the flexibility that VOIP brings to them to enhance their productivity and allow them to be more flexible as they are becoming more of a mobile environment.”

    Making the Switch

    It’s not uncommon for a company to be uncertain when making a large adjustment to existing standards that perhaps have been in place for a long time. Especially difficult, technology is something many fear, and making the switch sometimes takes some convincing. Two of the key factors that become a selling point for VoIP is the ease of use and, secondly, the cost savings.

    Allworx President, Jeff Howe, breaks it down in simple terms, “An Allworks system is really a server and phones. Within that server you have all the capabilities that you’d normally need.”

    He goes on to include, “We talk about the fact that it’s easy to install, simple to install, very simple to maintain because in a server environment, certainly with remote access, the customer doesn’t have to wait for the service trucks so to speak. With remote access I would say that 90% of the issues that arise are all handled remotely and then certainly for the server there are no blades, there are no gateways, everything is right within the Allworks server so its very very simple.”

    In terms of value to the customer, Jeff feels that the packages that Allworx offers are surprising to many because they are robust. Offering many things that competitors typically charge extra for.

    An extra added value for Allworx is their continued success in award winning products from their equipment to their handsets that have been repeatedly awarded for their sound and durability. Jeff truly believes because of the quality of service and quality of product, this helps keep Allworx a viable solution in the SMB market.

    Industry Musings

    When asked about the industry as a whole, Jeff was quick to note that adoption of VoIP technology is still fairly knew for many SMB’s so he’s not seen a tidal wave of new entrants in the market. He does note that with the status of the economy, he’s noticing that the integration into the IP industry is starting to crest, more so than in “normal” times.

    Specifically discussion adoption rates of SMB’s, Jeff Howe says, “I think initially there is a bit of a resistance to migrate to an IP based service for customers right now because at the end of the day it involves investment in the infrastructure with significant capital and then compared to all of the competitors out there, whether its the capable companies or other providers, there tends to be an initial reduction in overall margin.”

    He notes that customers are now being forced to look into options, and IP is becoming more and more attractive to many SMB’s worldwide.

    A transition to new services can actually save enough money that those savings can be added to a company’s bottom line as opposed to being spent on service visit fees.

    In response to whether technology is moving faster than the customers needs, Jeff notes that he does believe this is the case, but it does not necessarily represent a bad thing.

    “I think its just a matter of time before the customers either take on the adoption rate as to what the technologies are. There just seems to be a lot of technology being developed in a lot of different ways,” Jeff notes.

    He continues, “There’s a lot of technology being developed and I think it just depends on what the customer is looking for and for them to pick and choose which technology meets their particular needs.”

    Like any other industry in the market, Allworx is no stranger to conferences. They will be speaking and displaying at the Comptel Plus Fall 2009 Convention & Expo.

  • 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.

  • UC Desktop Prices Drop in Q1


    Average selling prices in the UC desktop market, which has been holding steady over the past six months, dropped slightly in Q1 2009.

    This weakening indicates the growing competitive nature of the industry, according to the authors of a Synergy Research Group report on the global market for collaborative applications.

    The study found vendor sales down generally for the first quarter of 2009 in both the enterprise and SMB market segments.

    It showed that collaboration application vendors had sales of USD $913.3 million for the first quarter.

    Avaya, Cisco and Siemens were the top three vendors in the enterprise category, and ShoreTel, Cisco and Avaya lead the SMB category.

    While Jeremy Duke, CEO, Synergy, said these companies are in strong strategic positions in their respective markets, the top six vendors in both segments experienced quarter-over-quarter sales declines.

    There is also a growing interest in managed UC offerings as small business suffer decreased credit availability.

    Interesting trends spotted in the Q1 2009 and analyzed in the Synergy report include:

    • Social Networking continues to be a hot topic of discussion as UC vendors look to interface or incorporate Social Networking applications into their UC offerings.
    • Conferencing bucked the decreasing trend in collaborative applications by growing revenues 7 per cent quarter-over-quarter. This is on top of a 5 per cent growth in revenues in Q4. Conferencing (web, video and audio) still shows good growth as corporations continue to spend on technologies that are perceived to have relatively short-term returns on investment and a positive effect on employee efficiencies.

  • Vembu Launches Online Backup on Amazon Web Services


    Vembu Technologies has made available for production StoreGrid Cloud AMI, an online backup "virtual appliance" on Amazon Web Services.

    The company says that with the StoreGrid Cloud AMI and the Amazon Web Services infrastructure, it is now possible for service providers to offer a scalable, secure and highly redundant online backup service to their small and medium business (SMB) customers without any upfront capital investment in a data center.

    Online backup service providers can now configure the StoreGrid Cloud AMI virtual appliance to run as a backup server in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2).

    StoreGrid Cloud AMI will use the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to store backup data from client machines at remote locations.

    The StoreGrid Cloud AMI virtual appliance also leverages Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) to store meta-data information in the MySQL relational database.

    Steve Rabuchin, director of Developer Relations and Business Development for Amazon Web Services, said AWS is designed to help alleviate for its customers, the cost and effort associated with building, operating and scaling technology infrastructure.

    "We are pleased that the StoreGrid Cloud AMI is able to leverage Amazon Web Services to extend this service to their customers," he said.

    Even service providers who want to keep backup data in their own data centers can use the StoreGrid Cloud AMI virtual appliance as a replication server. This deployment would enable them to replicate the backup data into the Amazon S3 storage cloud, thus offering more redundancy to the data.

    Sekar Vembu, CEO, Vembu Technologies

    Sekar Vembu, CEO, Vembu Technologies, said that investing, managing and scaling server and storage infrastructure is one of the most complex tasks for any online backup service provider.

    "StoreGrid Cloud AMI for Amazon Web Services eliminates this complexity by virtualizing the computing and storage infrastructure in a cloud," he said.

    Vembu released the Beta version of StoreGrid Cloud AMI in December 2008, and since then more than 50 service providers have been testing it.

    This production release incorporates feedback from these Beta partners, including the enhancement to use Amazon EBS as a temporary cache before uploading backup data to Amazon S3.

    StoreGrid Cloud AMI is available for purchase now and is priced as an annual subscription per StoreGrid backup client, with USD $30 for desktops and USD $60 for servers.

  • VoIP Vendors Failing To Re-think SMB Retail Products


    The economic crisis has frequently been held up as an opportunity for the VoIP industry to introduce businesses to the benefits and efficiencies offered by "non-traditional" telecom services.

    But Kent Hellebust, CMO and general manager of Individual and Digital Phone Services at Telanetix, believes many VoIP service providers are failing to respond to the fast moving pace of the business retail channel.

    He tells voip.biz-news how telecom vendors can effectively capitalise on potential opportunities in the US Small and Medium Business (SMB) market.

    Of the approximately 23 million businesses in the United States, more than 90 per cent have fewer than 50 employees (as reported in a recent AMI Inc Market Study). In total, 15 million have fewer than five employees.

    This is strong evidence that the business of America is truly Small Business.

    The question remains though: how is the current economic climate affecting these small businesses? In particular, how is it affecting their purchase of VoIP services?

    Kent Hellebust, CMO Telanetix

    The smaller the business, the less likely they are to have "redundant staff".

    With fewer than 10 employees, everyone does everything. There are no specialists; no dedicated IT staff, no full time HR person. If the business needs phone service, there’s a very good chance that it’s the owner of the business who does the buying.

    Since all small business employees are generalists, you can count on the fact that purchasing "infrastructure" like phones, phone service, computers, fax machines, etc. is considered an extra burden, not a job.

    The purchaser does not have the time or inclination to become expert and they do not know the industry "standard sources".

    In many respects, they are very close in their purchasing process to that of a consumer.

    These executives are likely to do some quick research online to find what they are looking for, and they are guided by a combination of a need for cost savings, a need for understandability (remember, they are not specialists; they wouldn’t know what "NPA-NXX, PBX, LNP, or RespOrg" meant if you held them at gunpoint), a need for simplicity, and finally, a need to save time and get on with their "real" job of driving revenue for their small business.

    In the current economic environment, the need for savings becomes paramount. You may have noticed that it’s the big companies that are getting offers of federal assistance, not the small ones.

    These small businesses have to reduce any expense they can in today’s market, and phone service is a prime target for them.
    Because of the economic pressures they currently face, they seem to be increasingly willing to try new brands and new services that they may previously not have been willing to try.

    Here at Telanetix, and our VoIP wing of AccessLine Communications, we have been specializing in small business telecommunications services and solutions for over 10 years, and we have never seen the SMB market more willing to consider VoIP as a solution to their infrastructure cost reduction challenge.

    However, this is not to say that selling any type of telecommunications service, VoIP or otherwise, to SMBs is getting easier.

    The SMB purchaser balances a complex set of factors in making their purchase decision. While they are looking for savings, they do not want to be pitched with complex "ROI" savings calculations.

    They do not have the cash flow to invest more upfront in order to achieve greater savings down the road and if the equipment and services they are purchasing have a significant upfront cost component, they are likely to look elsewhere.

    Beyond the savings, they are guided by brands they know and trust. Given that the purchaser is not going to be steeped in telecom industry knowledge, only the very largest telecom brands will have spent enough on brand advertising to be known by them.

    Once you get much below names like AT&T and Verizon, the chance of the customer knowing a non-traditional telecom brand is small.

    However,since the purchaser is a generalist, they are open to non-telecom brands that are affiliated with new telecom services as a sign of vendors they can trust.

    A number of new VoIP providers have taken advantage of this non-traditional business telecom buying process to affiliate with major business retail chains, ranging from Staples to Office Depot.

    Finally, there is the question of simplicity.

    Telecommunications, as an industry, has done its level best over the decades to be as complex as possible in the eyes of the customer.

    Hidden fees and processes, ranging from wiring fees to installation and maintenance fees, have made the acquisition and installation of business phone systems and service an arcane art that only the IT department specialists at midsize and large enterprises are comfortable in navigating.

    Many telecom vendors have failed to re-think their product, making it unsuitable for the fast moving pace of the business retail channel.

    At the same time some of the biggest names in the telecom and IT business have experimented with retail distribution, only to be puzzled and frustrated by their lack of success.

    Only those that have focused on simplifying their message, the offer structure, and the installation of their products and services for the generalist small business purchaser are able to profitably harness this channel.

    At Telanetix, we have taken all these lessons to heart.

    We have created an integrated solution specifically for the SMB market. The product includes a state of the art PBX phone system, sold in conjunction with fully integrated VoIP phone service, serving businesses with between two and 20 employees.

    Business customers hear about the product through major retail channels. We have invested quite a bit of "magic" in the upfront setup and provisioning of the phones and phone system, so that when the customer receives it, it is literally plug and play.

    All the key SMB buying criteria are met: savings, simplicity, and trusted support. There is no need for the business owner to hire a specialist to charge them USD $1,000 or more to install the system.

    There is no need to hire a wiring specialist that charges USD $100 per desk phone to run custom wiring through their office or store.

    We as a company are attempting to meet the SMB business owner on their own turf, talking in clear terms about value, savings, simplicity, and reliability.

    Given that the SMB market drives America’s business, we think that even in the current economic environment, this is a recipe for success.