TMCnet Unified Communications Week in Review

TMCnet covers all aspects of UC and features and news came from all corners of our coverage this week including items on M&A activity, partnership announcements, research findings, new product and service announcements, channel strategy, and even a friendly and timely advice item on selling C-levels on UC.

First,Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, IP Communications Magazine, reported that cloud-based unified communications company Alteva (News - Alert) is being acquired by Warwick Valley Telephone Co  for about $17 million. Warwick Valley – a full service telecommunications company operating in southern Orange (News - Alert) County, New York and portions of central New York and northwestern New Jersey – says the deal (expected to close Q3) will add 30 percent to its consolidated revenues, and help achieve strategic objectives. Warwick plans to combine Alteva with its CLEC business, USA Datanet.

The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference was the site for two partnership announcements for cloud-based communications provider IntelePeer Inc. TMCnet Contributor Rahul Arora detailed the extension of IntelePeer’s partnership with Enabling Technologies, a Microsoft (News - Alert) UC Partner of the Year. This will allow IntelePeer to serve as the exclusive SIP trunking service provider for Microsoft Lync Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) deployments. And, as highlighted by TMCnet Contributor Madhubanti Rudra, in a press conference at the event, IntelePeer announced that Microsoft (News - Alert) National Systems Integrator Catapult Systems is the latest to join the IntelePeer Partner Program which is designed to allow UC solution providers add SIP trunking to their UC solutions.

On the research front, Techaisle, a global SMB IT Market Research and Industry Analyst organization, revealed results of its multi - country study on SMB Mobility Adoption. Results showed that the United States SMBs were likely to increase the amount spent on mobility solutions. TMCnet Contributor Mini Swamy’s story on focused on bottlenecks SMBs face implementing mobility solutions.

AltiGen (News - Alert) was busy on two fronts. TMCnet Contributor Mandira Srivastava provided details on the showcasing of the company’s MaxMobile Server 2011 for Lync, a new unified mobile convergence solution for Microsoft (News - Alert) Lync Server 2010 at Microsoft's 2011 Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, California. At the same time, as Calvin Azuri, TMCnet Contributor reportedon AltiGen's MaxACD for Lync being offered by Outsourcery (the UK’s top cloud service provider) in conjunction with its Unified Lync Solution.

In other news regarding new products and services, TMCnet Contributor Anamika Singh had a feature on VOSS (News - Alert) Solutions general availability of VOSS 7.4 —a scalable fulfillment management platform that overarches complex UC&C networks for managed service providers and large enterprises that supports the latest release of Cisco’s (News - Alert) (News - Alert) UC applications, including Unified Communications Manager 8.6. Also read TMCnet Contributor Mandira Srivastava’s posting on Esna Technologies introduction of UC software for Windows Phone 7.

Frank Stinson, Partner and Senior Analyst, IntelliCom Analytics (News - Alert), who will be will be hosting a session called, “UC in the Cloud: Understanding the Benefits and Challenges,” at ITEXPO West in Austin, Texas, presents insights into what the C-Suite needs to know about UC in the Cloud which can help suppliers gain better traction with high-level executives, particularly CIOs.

 Read TMC (News - Alert) executive editor Paula Bernier’s interview of Louis Hayner, Alteva chief sales officer, about the company's channel strategy. With so much concentration on technology, insights about marketing can be extremely valuable.

And, speaking of marketing, it should be noted thatPanTerra Networks, a provider of cloud-based UC solutions for SMBs has appointed Gene "Skip" Lane as executive vice president of sales and marketing.

Peter Bernstein is a technology industry veteran, having worked in multiple capacities with several of the industry's biggest brands, including Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), Telcordia, HP, Siemens, Nortel, France Telecom, and others, and having served on the Advisory Boards of 15 technology startups. To read more of Peter's work, please visit his columnist page.