Categories
Business voip

GenBand set to rock and roll with Nortel acquisition

Next up in the guest stitched up to play the guitar in front of a totally uncritical audience is Jason Dackins of GenBand. Up until a few months ago I had never heard of Genband.  Now they are about to become one of my most important strategic partners as they acquire the Nortel carrier division, CVAS.

GenBand is being financed by One Equity Partners (JP Morgan) and is putting together what I believe will be a major force in the carrier VoIP market.  Other assets in the stable include the Session Border Controller NexTone. 

I was happy to entertain them and little did they know that they would be entertaining us.  Jason is playing Yviva Espana (I think).

Jason Dackins of Genband plays Yviva Espana for the Timico NetOps department
Jason Dackins of Genband plays Yviva Espana for the Timico NetOps department
Categories
Business voip

Date set for end of Nortel era

Nortel has set February 25th as the date for the auction of CVAS, the jewel in its crown. The acronym stands for Carrier VoIP Applications Solutions and is basically the world leading Nortel carrier division.

The current bid in from GENBAND is a low US$282 million.  This however is just a starter with the end point expected to be much higher by the end of the bidding process. There are apparently 6 or 7 runners with three of them being serious.

This will either be the end of the beginning, beginning of the end or some other combination of beginnings and ends that will bring the bankruptcy process to a close. I’m not sure what happens to the Nortel brand name – Avaya seem to be continuing to use it in conjunction with the Enterprise PBX division they bought in a similar auction process. What I do hope is that the name CVAS is immediately dispensed with.  Presumably the name was the last act of someone who has subsequently left the company.

Categories
Engineer internet

First 100Gbps commercially available optical network rolled out by Nortel and Verizon

Nortel yesterday announced that Verizon had implemented the first commercially available 100Gbps network on a 893km link between Paris and Frankfurt.

There are several significant (or at least  I think they are interesting) points to be made regarding this milestone.

First of all Nortel is clearly a leader in Optical technology, as it is in a number of its other areas of business. 100Gbps has been discussed at the last few meetings of the London Internet Exchange (LINX) but largely in terms of the fact that 100Gbps equipment has only been achieving 40Gbps, an interim step.

It is a crying shame that the mismanagement of the business during the earlier parts of the decade resulted in the Chapter 11 situation we now see today and the break up of the business. From Timico’s perspective this is at least focussing minds at Nortel and we have seen a significant improvement in responsiveness and keeness to get things done. Good I suppose.

The 10Gbps standard was ratified in 2002 and, doing a quick trawl the first network rollouts seem to be around 2005 –  this is the case at LINX who tend to be up there amongst the leaders. Truth be told it was probably earlier than this.

The 100Gbps standard has not yet been ratified so there are clearly commercial pressures and advantages to running with the technology for a commercial operator to push ahead with it. Historically this has been 4x the cost for 10x the throughput. So it is clear that the cost of bandwidth is going to continue on a downward trend the more people use it, which they are doing.

This is an interesting wave for ISPs and network operators (surfers) to be riding.  We have to be nimble atop the big rollers making sure that we keep our network costs down quickly enough to match the competitive pricing pressures of the market place.

Categories
Archived Business

Timico conference wrap up

I’d just like to thank all who came to the Timico conference at Stapleford Park in Leicestershire on Wednesday.  This is an annual event that we hold to get closer to our customers and to brief them on up and coming technologies and products.

We crammed 120 or so guests into the Grand Hall at the hotel and had a mix of both internal and external speakers.  I would particularly like to thank Dennis Turner, Chief Economist at HSBC bank,  Nigel Scott, Director of Customer Engagement at BT and  David Hiscock, Director of Product Management of the Nortel Carrier business for their valuable contribution and insights on the day.

Dennis Turner in particular made a bold prediction that he recession would end and lo and behold I woke up this morning to the BBC news telling me it had done so!  What  foresight!  I’m thinking I might even change banks to HSBC – provided they can agree to my suitably large overdraft requirements  🙂

Stapleford Park, luxury country house hotel and scene of the Timico 2009 customer conference
Stapleford Park, luxury country house hotel and scene of the Timico 2009 customer conference

Footnote: Friday’s news regarding the recession is somewhat more sombre – in fact the economy shrank by 0.4% over the last quarter.  Perhaps I’ll stick with my existing bank!

Categories
Business engineering

Cisco on acquisition trail

I see that Cisco is notionally on the acquisition trail which doesn’t come as a surprise.  It is a good time to be cash rich.

It wouldn’t surprise me either to find out that Cisco has been sniffing around the Nortel Carrier Division.  It would be a great fit.  I don’t think it will be too long before we find out.

We haven’t really seen consolidation happen on the big scale in the tech world yet this turndown.  Timico has picked up some ADSL customers from defunct ISPs and may yet pick up a business or two.

Tiscali has been trying to be “consolidated” for a while now but is struggling to make it happen!  It should only be a matter of time one way or another.

Categories
Business internet UC

Project Chainsaw web.alive and Lenovo

In my systematic tour of the UC09 Exhibition yesterday I sat through my first real life Telepresence demo on the Cisco/BT stand. Very impressive technology. It really was just like being in the same room, such was the quality of the video.

I then sauntered along to the Nortel stand. Nortel have similar technology but seem to have made significant strides in moving the whole online meeting and web collaboration experience forwards.

Project Chainsaw has been in the Nortel pipeline for some time and I was pleasantly surprised in seeing that it was now a production item. It has now surfaced with the marketing moniker “web.alive”, a  reasonably descriptive name though  I think Project Chainsaw is more impressive 🙂 . 

The technology allows you to mimic more of a real world environment. For example it could be embedded into an online “world” populated with shops. You can walk up to a virtual shop and begin communicating with a virtual shop assistant to help you with your purchases, The virtual shop assistant might well of course have a real person doing the talking behind the avatar.

Web.alive integrates with existing enterprise network and security and with existing software tools (so they say). You can check out more on the Nortel Website here and take a look at the Lenovo demo example here at the Project Chainsaw microsite.

I’ve unashamedly nicked a picture of web.alive in action from the Nortel website:

webalive_meeting_800x493

Categories
Business voip

“Unified Communications” is dead on its feet

As 2009 evolves it is becoming much clearer where the world of Unified Communications is going. UC has always meant different things to different peopleYesterday I saw it move on with the Twitter coverage of SocComm.

What is now becoming obvious that we are moving to a world where everything interoperates with everything else.  A bit of a generalisation and very dramatic I know but anyone expecting to be a player in communications markets in the future needs to have an open approach to doing business.

So vendors traditionally associated with fairly closed UC plays, such as Nortel, Cisco and Microsoft need to make it easy to integrate their tools with new kids on the block such as Facebook and Twitter. They are all moving towards this slowly. Timico is in the middle of a major platform upgrade with its Nortel UC capability and the new offering will optionally enable Instant Messaging with other networks such as MSN, jabber, yahoo etc. 

It is only a short hop then to see Nortel soft clients embedded in Facebook (they already do this with traditional business tools such as Outlook and Lotus Notes),  Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds embedded in corporate websites and vice versa and wall posts embedded wherever you care to embed them (plasma display on the fridge?!).

There was a time when I thought that the world of UC would be dominated by a few giant players. Now, we are seeing that new companies can  easily develop applications that sit well with existing systems.  2009 is looking like a year of accelerated integration and I think that the phrase Unified Communications is already dead on it’s feet because I don’t think it adequately describes what is actually happening.

Categories
Business voip

"Unified Communications" is dead on its feet

As 2009 evolves it is becoming much clearer where the world of Unified Communications is going. UC has always meant different things to different peopleYesterday I saw it move on with the Twitter coverage of SocComm.

What is now becoming obvious that we are moving to a world where everything interoperates with everything else.  A bit of a generalisation and very dramatic I know but anyone expecting to be a player in communications markets in the future needs to have an open approach to doing business.

So vendors traditionally associated with fairly closed UC plays, such as Nortel, Cisco and Microsoft need to make it easy to integrate their tools with new kids on the block such as Facebook and Twitter. They are all moving towards this slowly. Timico is in the middle of a major platform upgrade with its Nortel UC capability and the new offering will optionally enable Instant Messaging with other networks such as MSN, jabber, yahoo etc. 

It is only a short hop then to see Nortel soft clients embedded in Facebook (they already do this with traditional business tools such as Outlook and Lotus Notes),  Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds embedded in corporate websites and vice versa and wall posts embedded wherever you care to embed them (plasma display on the fridge?!).

There was a time when I thought that the world of UC would be dominated by a few giant players. Now, we are seeing that new companies can  easily develop applications that sit well with existing systems.  2009 is looking like a year of accelerated integration and I think that the phrase Unified Communications is already dead on it’s feet because I don’t think it adequately describes what is actually happening.

Categories
Business voip

Nortel Has Filed For Chapter 11 – Bankruptcy Protection

The hot news this afternoon is that Nortel has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the USA. This, as I recall, gives them a year to restructure their business under protection of the US Government without having to “worry” about action from creditors. There were  noises on the airways for some weeks regarding the company taking advice over Chapter 11. It goes to show there is no smoke without fire.

Nortel’s asset levels of around $1Bn are dwarfed by their liabilities of $12Bn. With debt due for repayment in 2011 they will have found it difficult to reschedule this debt under current market conditions. I understand that $107M was due tomorrow.

Speaking to staff at Nortel the whole company is affected and an interim “committee” has been appointed as an adviser to the board.

The biggest problem the company was facing, aside from the repayment of debt, was the funding of R&D moving forward. In particular in the enterprise and carrier VoIP space. The Metro Ethernet business, where Nortel is market leader but which is no longer core to their future VoIP plans, has been for sale for some time in order to provide working capital to fund R&D. I understand that some (unspecified) bits have been sold but a further announcement regarding this will be due in a couple of days.

Life is never boring. Nortel expects to come out of Chapter 11 as a new debt free entity. The brand is strong and the company itself is one of the oldest in the telephony business, if not the oldest. I can’t see it disappearing.

Bloomberg’s comment on the news is here.

Categories
Business fun stuff

A day in the life

Life is rich. If yours isn’t you should seriously think about doing something about it. I was wondering what to write about today out of the many things that are going on. In the end I thought I’d just rattle off a list of things I was involved in during the day because I believe it illustrates the point of those opening three words.

Got in and made a cup of tea. Then spent time discussing a contract we are about to sign with BT. Checked up on progress of our 21CN trial orders. Sat with tech support discussing a Virtual Machine project we are looking at. Discussions with our new Business Development Director who starts in January (more on him in due course I’m sure). Meeting with Cisco to discuss marketing plans for the Cisco Small Business portfolio for 2009. Lunch with Cisco. Meeting with Nortel to discuss hosted VoIP propositions. Drop Nortel off at station. Arrange tech meeting to discuss SPAM strategy for 2009. Conference call with VoIP Operations Manager to discuss specific customer technical issue. Home to take kids to cubs. Catch up chat with CEO. Go to school prize giving evening (son Tom won prize for English  and yes of course I am proud of him). Chat with headmaster congratulating him on chosing son as prizewinner. Home. Kiss wife. Do emails and write blog post.

Tomorrow is another day, another blog post. Friday is a day off to take the kids to the Lincoln Christmas Market. Check it out here. They get hundreds of thousands of visitors each year (or so I’m told). We live slap bang in the middle of the action so it is difficult to ignore. One of the kids’ school shuts down for the duration because access to it is impossible. The parents run a cafe which raises around £10,000 each year for the school PTA funds. Thats one heck of a lot of teas and coffees at a pound each. 

Categories
Business UC voip

Nortel Launches BCM450 Today

Timico sells a lot of Nortel BCM systems. The BCM is Nortel’s telephony/Unified Communications solution for the Small and Medium sized business market and has so far come in three main flavours – 50, 200 and 400. The biggest runner of these for us is the BCM50 which we sell mainly into businesses with between 10 and 20 users per site. The 200 supports 90 users and the 400 196. The BCM50 has a more up to date firmware load than the 200 and the 400 making it a generally more attractive product.

Today Nortel releases the BCM450. The new system supports up to 300 users and has a similar firmware load to the BCM50. The attractions of the platform include a meet me conf bridge and support for the new 1200 series handsets.

This is good news all round. It means that Nortel should be increasingly more competitive in the “M” sector of the SMB market.

Categories
Business UC voip

Nortel SCS500 – Unified Communications for small and medium sized businesses

Nortel has launched the SCS500. This communications system effectively provides companies with a cross between the features offered by Timico on their Nortel AS5200 hosted VoIP platform and the Nortel BCM phone system.

Timico has found that many companies want to use Instant Messaging in their business but beyond insecure consumer products such as MSN and Skype don’t know how to do it.

Timico’s VoIP for Business service provides IM and is great for businesses where there are lots of distributed locations or many homeworkers. Our real world experience shows that as companies get bigger their needs change and we then sell them a Nortel BCM.

The SCS500 adds neatly to the portfolio with IM and other Unified Communications features. We can now cover pretty much every need of every sized company in our customer base and target market.

All credit to Nortel they have been making great strides to the extent that the Financial Times newspaper recently rated their stock as a “buy”. Their leading position in the Unified Communications market is a reflection of this.

screenshot of SCS500 soft clientThis a picture I pinched from the Nortel website. It shows the SCS500 soft client. I don’t know who Chris Leary is but a larger image would shou you that he needs a shave 🙂 .

Categories
Business olympics

Nortel and the 2012 London Olympics

Nortel just announced that they have been chosen to provide the communications infrstructure for the London 2012 Olympics. This is quite an achievement because as well as voice it involves the provision of a wide area network that one might more normally associate with Cisco. I get the impression from Nortel that power consumption/Carbon footprint played a part here although I’m sure that in such a complex bid there were a great many decisive factors.

Their press release talks about having to support 205 sporting organisations, 20,000 media, nine million spectators and over 4 billion viewers worldwide. I’d like to have been the salesman getting commission from that lot. No doubt there will be a few tickets floating around for Nortel partners wanting to attend the track and field finals:-).

Categories
Business UC video voip

Tesco's new VoIP telecommunications infrastructure

Tesco has just announced a new investment worth £100m over 5 years in a new next gen telecommunications platform connecting 1,800 sites over 14 countries. What the announcement doesn’t say is that it is based on Nortel technology. Specifically the multimedia collaboration features are based on the Nortel AS5200 platform. This is the same platform used by Timico for its multimedia Unified Communications based VoIP services. Tesco is using video conferencing and Instant Messaging as well as file collaboration and VoIP.

The Tesco network is big enough to justify it’s own platform. However Timico provides partitions on its Nortel platform so that smaller organisations than Tesco can benefit from the same feature set (without having to spend £100m).

This is a big milestone for the Nortel platform and an endorsement of Timico’s VoIP strategy.

Categories
Business UC video voip

Tesco’s new VoIP telecommunications infrastructure

Tesco has just announced a new investment worth £100m over 5 years in a new next gen telecommunications platform connecting 1,800 sites over 14 countries. What the announcement doesn’t say is that it is based on Nortel technology. Specifically the multimedia collaboration features are based on the Nortel AS5200 platform. This is the same platform used by Timico for its multimedia Unified Communications based VoIP services. Tesco is using video conferencing and Instant Messaging as well as file collaboration and VoIP.

The Tesco network is big enough to justify it’s own platform. However Timico provides partitions on its Nortel platform so that smaller organisations than Tesco can benefit from the same feature set (without having to spend £100m).

This is a big milestone for the Nortel platform and an endorsement of Timico’s VoIP strategy.

Categories
Business mobile connectivity UC video voip

Nortel carrier strategy

Had a really good meeting with the Nortel Carrier team on Wednesday – I’ve not really had a chance to write it up and post before now. The meeting was held to discuss their SIP/multimedia product roadmap. The Nortel Enterprise Division has been making a lot of noise in the multimedia/Unified Comms space (SCS500 – I’ll write a piece on it soon) but I had been afraid that the Carrier side had sold its soul to Microsoft.

This turns out not to be the case. The Nortel AS5200 platform, which is the SIP platform used by Timico, has been adopted by a number of major Tier 1 operators and is benefiting from what seems to be a large amount of attention and investment. This to me is a very sensible thing for Nortel to do as the 5200 represents a leading edge platform for them – one which is streets ahead of any competition in the hosted VoIP/Unified Comms space.

Timico has been selling services on the back of the 5200 for 2 – 3 years. We are talking hosted VoIP, video, IM, presence, collaboration – perfect for small offices and homeworkers. The Nortel developments look to be adding more PBX type features that fill in some holes in the 5200’s repertoire. Whats more it seems to me that this switch is moving in the direction of becoming Nortel’s main carrier play. After all the CS2k, which gives Nortel its huge lead in the market, is a platform designed to emulate legacy services but in a much cheaper way than its DMS 100 TDM swich.

What’s more, new features such as federated presence, FMC, links to external directories and better support for SIP Trunks will keep Nortel at the forefront of the business communications space and allow tight integration with its Enterprise products – something that we haven’t seen before.

This is reinforced by the movement of Enterprise staff to the Carrier to aid the process.

Lastly but by no means least Nortel is moving the 5200 to Linux which will have a huge impact on the cost of rolling out and supporting 5200 based services and which I whole heartedly welcome.

I look forward to growing our Nortel relationship.

 

Categories
Apps Business security

Access control meets www – and it's not what you think

When I began this blog I intended to cover subjects that I felt would be of general interest to users of business communications services in the UK – Timico customers generally. I didn’t think that this would for one moment include the topic of door entry systems. It does.

Some time ago we began a relationship with a company called Paxton Access. This was because we needed a security system for our new purpose built Headquarters building in Newark (Notts – not New Joisey for the benefit of international readers). Since then we have started installing it as part of an integrated package for customers.

Door locks have moved on a long way. This system comes with a Software Development Kit. I’m not suggesting that this is something particularly useful for general business customers who won’t know one end of a SDK from the other. However the rich engineering talent we have at Timico has been able to put it to good use.

We now have an intranet page that provides access to the door entry system. One click on the web interface and the door can be opened. Is this a security risk? We don’t think so. Access to the web page is controlled via Active Directory authentication and is tied down to specific individuals. This can apply to any door at any of the Timico UK locations and can be tied in with camera visuals so that the person allowing entry can see who they are letting in.

The same door can be opened by anyone holding a registered keyfob or, using the intercom, via any telephone handset on the Newark Nortel PBX. This functionality could be extended to opening by sms pin number from registered mobile handsets, or via command line interface from non Windows PCs as is the case in our Ipswich NOC where the engineers have the traditional geek’s abhorrence of all things Microsoft.  

There is more. This system can be used to set the alarm and turn off all the lights when the last person leaves the building. This is serious use of web technology for mundane but important business needs. 

Categories
Apps Business security

Access control meets www – and it’s not what you think

When I began this blog I intended to cover subjects that I felt would be of general interest to users of business communications services in the UK – Timico customers generally. I didn’t think that this would for one moment include the topic of door entry systems. It does.

Some time ago we began a relationship with a company called Paxton Access. This was because we needed a security system for our new purpose built Headquarters building in Newark (Notts – not New Joisey for the benefit of international readers). Since then we have started installing it as part of an integrated package for customers.

Door locks have moved on a long way. This system comes with a Software Development Kit. I’m not suggesting that this is something particularly useful for general business customers who won’t know one end of a SDK from the other. However the rich engineering talent we have at Timico has been able to put it to good use.

We now have an intranet page that provides access to the door entry system. One click on the web interface and the door can be opened. Is this a security risk? We don’t think so. Access to the web page is controlled via Active Directory authentication and is tied down to specific individuals. This can apply to any door at any of the Timico UK locations and can be tied in with camera visuals so that the person allowing entry can see who they are letting in.

The same door can be opened by anyone holding a registered keyfob or, using the intercom, via any telephone handset on the Newark Nortel PBX. This functionality could be extended to opening by sms pin number from registered mobile handsets, or via command line interface from non Windows PCs as is the case in our Ipswich NOC where the engineers have the traditional geek’s abhorrence of all things Microsoft.  

There is more. This system can be used to set the alarm and turn off all the lights when the last person leaves the building. This is serious use of web technology for mundane but important business needs. 

Categories
Business UC voip

Nortel SMB Certification

I am proud to announce that Timico today gained it’s Nortel SMB certification. Okay okay so what? The point is that Communications Providers and System Integrators selling a manufacturer’s product into traditional Enterprise markets will have a list of certifications as long as your arm. However none of these businesses will particularly be interested in selling into the SMB market (sorry – small and medium sized businesses).

When you have to pay expensive engineering resources to be around to install kit the money in the deal has to be there to make it worth the effort and traditionally this means selling to bigger customers.

The poor old small business, whose market segment incidentally represents the vast majority of the market, has had to exist on an adhoc basis relying on a variety of local small engineering shops to satisfy their miscellaneous technical needs.

It is unusal for a CP to hang its hat on the small business because of the cost of reaching this customer. However the traditional Enterprise equipment vendors are beginning to wake up to the opportunities in this market and I have already commented on the Cisco play via the “Linksys by Cisco” brand.

Clearly Nortel also see the merits of selling to the SMB and this latest award to Timico is a reflection of the understanding that both companies have that a professional approach to these customers is essential. The SMB is now able to source its communications and networking products from a known and trusted entitity that is called Timico.

Categories
Business video voip

WWF, VC, HD @wembley

You might ask yourself what WWF has to do with VC and HD? In fact you are probably wondering what the acronyms actually stand for and what have they got to do with Wembley.

 

We are talking World Wide Fund for nature, Video Conferencing and High Definition. (I knew that do I hear you say 🙂 ) and all three were being discussed at a Polycom seminar held looking down at the magnificence that is  the pitch at Wembley Stadium.

 

WWF is launching a programme to help businesses cut the number of flights by 1 in 5 and as a leader in the VC game Polycom found it expedient to have representatives along to make a presentation.

 

Obviously Polycom is using Global Warming and the need to reduce carbon footprints as a sales tool for its VC systems but the cynics amongst you should not poo poo this as it is a perfectly valid/nay sensible thing to do. VC does help cut down on business travel and thus helps save the planet as well as reducing costs.

 

One of the reasons I attended was to hear what Polycom was doing with Microsoft on OCS. Turns out they make some of the handsets and are producing a couple of VC products (HDX4000 and HDX8000) that integrate with OCS (more details anon I’m sure).

 

What really interested we was the fact that Microsoft has 11,000 staff working on rich media collaboration, apparently more than the rest of the industry put together. One of the OCS phones doesn’t even have a keypad. Microsoft is saying that you only need your desktop. The Polycom perspective on this is that businesses haven’t gone for desktop VC because of the difficulty of maintaining dispersed resources. It’s hard to see Microsoft getting this wrong.

 

A number of OCS case studies were presented. Gibson guitars reduced calling costs by 75% using OCS.  Prodavka reduced phone costs by 50%

 

There were lots of other interesting facts being bandied around:

 

  • China is the second biggest market for VC behind the USA
  • The biggest issue facing adoption of VC is the ability to reserve resources. ie room booking
  • The average HD system cost is $8k cf $200k for telepresence.
  • In 2008 there will be 1500 telepresence systems sold worldwide. By 2012 this is expected to grow to 17,000.
  • Interoperability between different vendor systems is still an issue
  • 1 long haul flight is equivalent of 12 months driving from a carbon footprint perspective
  • Air travel is the fastest growing contributor of CO2 – 3% today, 25% by 2030
  • The fastest ways of reducing CO2 generation include power saving data centres, extending networks to home workers and increased usage of collaboration and content sharing tools (video and voice conferencing) as alternative to travel.
  • The M4 motorway at Slough is operating at 150% capacity
  • The average traffic speed in London is 8 mph – no increase since the horse and cart !
  • PWC avoided 1.1 million miles of travel through use of VC resulting in the saving of 198kg of CO2
  • BT has claimed £238m benefit to their business by use of VC – £100m based on travel cost benefits and the rest based on productivity improvements including reduced staff sickness
  • Nortel has saved $60k a week on travel due to telepresence with 10 systems worldwide
  • A Yougov survey in 2007 said 37% of face to face meetings were deemed unnecessary
  • If European companies cut travel by 20% there would be a saving of 22m tons of CO2 a year

Finally Polycom played some impressive videos including http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4H0BR_8wy8