VoiceCon: Collaboration, Unified Communications Dominate The Agenda

As networking and communications vendors work to build out their portfolio of unified communications applications and services, many have discovered that the quickest way to add new features and capabilities is to enter into partnerships. That was evident at the VoiceCon show in Orlanda, Fla., this week.

Radvision Ltd. has teamed up with Alcatel-Lucent to deliver multipoint video conferencing on top of Alcatel-Lucent's OmniTouch My Teamwork conferencing and collaboration application. The combined application, which utilizes Radvision's SCOPIA video conferencing platform, delivers collaboration capabilities across most popular networks, Radvision said.

"Extending the Alcatel-Lucent Unified Communications solution with the SCOPIA conferencing platform provides a very advanced and affordable video conferencing solution where users of HD, standard definition, and desktop systems can all communicate," said Zeev Bikowsky, general manager of Radison's Networking Business Unit, in a statement.

Psytechnics announced that its Experience Manager voice and video performance management product has been cleared to operate with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. Experience Manager enables large enterprises and managed server environments to deploy Office Communications Server 2007 and provide monitoring, alerting, troubleshooting, and reporting for voice and video quality problems. The approach is designed to notify IT and network operations staff of potential problems and service issues before they affect users, the firm said.

Noting that Psytechnics has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft, Psytechnics CEO Anthony Finbow said that the collaborative arrangement assists in managing "quality of experience" for their mutual customers.

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies introduced a new version of its flagship CallXpress that improves PBX connections between groupware and servers. CallXpress 7.91 uses a "star" network architecture and enables administrators to manage all subscribers from a single view.

"Enterprise organizations are facing a myriad of complex issues regarding the deployment of next-generation Unified Communications in a mixed TDM and IP-PBX environment," said Tom Minifie, AVST VP of product management in a statement. He added that AVST addresses that challenge by offering more than 250 TDM and IP integrations with the capability to support multiple switches on a single CallXpress platform.