Tag: Linksys

Categories
Business voip

Cisco/Linksys SPA9000 begins to roll out

We had a Linksys reseller on the phone needing help with setting up his SPA9000. This is a small PBX for the small business market. It sitts very nicely below the Nortel BCM50 in our portfolio of communications systems for business.

Timico recently launched the SPA9000 in a Webinar held jointly between Cisco/Linksys and KeConnect. Yours truly said a few words. It is very satisfying to see the outcome of such marketing activities resulting in channel partners generating sales.

This particular partner needed help with setting up his SIP trunk. He hadn’t read the manual – ah well. That’s what we are here for. It took a few seconds. The solution worked. He is happy and has other customers lined up for the product/service.

the SPA9000Picture of SPA9000

Categories
Business voip

Webinar on Linksys LVS2.0

The Linksys LVS2.0 is a voice system (ie PBX) for small offices. It’s pretty amazing how compact and low cost these systems have become. This one is being sold through KeConnect channels into the small business market.  Timico subsidiary KeConnect has partnered with Linksys to jointly offer a solution to their combined channels which number between 1,500 and 2,000 resellers specializing in the small business market.

Linksys will provide the system and KeConnect the communications. KeConnect was the first company to offer support for SIP Trunks for the Linksys product in the UK.

For the uninitiated a SIP Trunk is effectively a telephone line that runs over an IP connection such as ADSL. The beauty of a SIP Trunk is that you can run multiple calls/lines over a single broadband connection. The underlying analogue line can of course only support one call at a time.

A SIP Trunk can be used for both inbound and outbound calls. The LVS2.0 allows the use of both traditional analogue lines and SIP Trunks thereby giving small businesses a level of resiliency in their communications that they haven’t seen before.

Linksys is of course a Cisco brand and the LVS2.0 represents part of Cisco’s push into the SMB market. The Timico Group also supports Nortel and Avaya PBXs and has its own hosted Unified Communications service that is ideal for distributed offices and remote workers.

The Webinar takes place on Monday 14th July at 3pm via Webex. Anyone interested in attending should leave a comment and I’ll send them the login and access details. I won’t publish the comment.

In my bit of the Webinar I’ll be talking about best practice for SIP Trunks.

For more information on the LVS2.0 click here.

For more information on KeConnect click here.

 

Categories
Business UC voip

SMB drivers

I gave a talk at the Linksys by Cisco reseller day yesterday. There was a good turnout despite the torrential rain and the venue, the Williams Formula1 Conference Centre was a top notch attraction. The day went well with ISP KeConnect demonstrating SIP trunks into a Linksys SPA9000.

 

The content of some of the presentations was also very interesting and I wrote down some salient facts.

 

The top three priorities for Small and Medium Sized businesses in the next 12 months are enhancing IT security and privacy 47%, deploying DR solution 40%, enhancing internet access speeds  35%.

 

Laptops represented 47% of all PCs shipped in 2006, up from 35% in 2004 and there is a 14-15% annual growth in handheld/PDA shipments. 14% of Small Businesses offer telecommuting and over 50% SMBs have mobile staff

 

Group calendaring the norm in MB, growing in SB. Web conferencing, Intranets the norm, IP voice and applications connect growing in MB with growth in business utility of IM and soft phones.

 

SBs are rapidly transitioning to broadband (60%) and the desire to upgrade bandwidth is universally strong. Strong growth in WiFi, acute sensitivity to security and data protection, a strong desire to connect multiple sites and SaaS, virtualization adoption were also key forces.

 

Finally all this indicates that on-premises IT complexity is increasing and managed/hosted services are becoming more viable. There is also an increasing preference for “better” channel partners and SMBs are reassessing their choice of “trusted partner”.

 

This world is full of opportunity…

me holding the constructors\' trophy next to a Williams F1 carMe with constructors’ trophy next to Williams F1 car