VoIP

Cisco Systems publicly launched Quad, its Enterprise Collaboration Platform, at the recently completed Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. I had the opportunity to discuss Quad and the development process with Jim Grubb, Cisco VP of Corporate Communications. Jim may be better known as Cisco's Chief Demonstration Officer, providing fascinating demos supporting John Chambers' mesmerizing keynotes. And actually Quad has a long history in Jim's demos, which frequently feature new tools being developed, tested and deployed for use within Cisco.

At the Cisco Customer Collaboration (aka contact center) Analyst Day, I learned that "scrums" are not just for rugby players, and that they're actually a way for developers to exchange ideas and collaborate. As the Cisco customer collaboration development team moves to an Agile development model, they can reduce risk by developing working, tested, deployable software in incremental stages. And the results are clear, with new products being developed in a fraction of the time it used to take.

The Telecommunication Systems Division of Toshiba America Information Systems announced Fax Features for Strata Messaging, its low-cost Unified Messaging solution for Small to Medium Businesses. Strata Messaging with Fax Features is compatible with Toshiba's Strata CIX IP business communication systems, and is now available through any authorized Toshiba dealers.

It is very important to have a solid architectural design to guide your UC implementations. Of course, UC should start with a high-level UC Strategy, based on our UC definition of "communications integrated to optimize business processes." That strategy will outline the sequence of UC investments and application roll-outs, whether those are for User Productivity (UC-U) or are for Business Process improvements (UC-B), as described in the UC Resources section of our site.

Hosted UC offerings come in many varieties, and Alteva has a solution that brings the best of VoIP and Microsoft together for SMBs.

At TechEd, Microsoft's IT Pro developer conference, additional features of Communication Server 14, formerly OCS Wave 14, were announced, with more announcements expected at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference-including a new name for the product.

With a dozen tracks going into depth on Communication Server 14, as well as a mini-keynote by Gurdeep Sing Pall and a "shout out" during Bob Muglia's keynote, the product got its fair share of attention at the conference.