Author: Betanews

By Jack M. Germain, E-Commerce Times

Voice-over-IP technology is getting a makeover, and service providers hope it will reinvent the industry. There’s a shift away from VoIP toward hosted unified communications — that is, integrated voice, instant messenger, e-mail, workflow applications, and procurement.

Eight companies formed the Cloud Communications Alliance at the Cloud Computing Expo held last month in New York City, banding together to help drive the development of cloud-based unified communications.

The alliance includes Alteva, Broadcore, Callis Communications, Consolidated Technologies, IPFone, SimpleSignal, Stage 2 Networks, and Telesphere. Together, the companies represent more than USD$100 million in combined annual revenue and collectively serve more than 110,000 business customers in the United States.

Businesses that have become comfortable with the cloud computing concept are beginning to recognize the advantages of converging cellphones, office phones and computers, as well as the redundancy and cost savings gained through allowing enterprise voice and data communications to reside in the cloud, noted Clark Peterson, chairman of the Cloud Communications Alliance and CEO of Telesphere.

To provide a true hosted unified communications solution for small businesses, Alteva has developed a way to interconnect its cloud-based voice and messaging services with Microsoft Communication Services’ product suite. Alteva’s new technology is also compatible with Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS). Alteva is marketing the new UC solution to both its small business and enterprise customers.

Microsoft is actively pushing the capability of a fully integrated communications platform by partnering with Alteva, Comcast, and GoDaddy, among others. The goal is to provide users with more productive communications, improve employee productivity, and enhance office efficiency.

“The Cloud Communications Alliance is not just about Voice-over-IP, hosted PBX or unified communications. We’re introducing an entirely new way to build, deploy and scale enterprise communications systems that provide HD voice services along with a platform of advanced apps and features that allow businesses to work in ways they never imagined,” said Alteva CEO Bill Bumbernick.

It was very awkward sitting in a room full of telecom competitors when future alliance members first started meeting at quarterly trade shows two years ago, Louis Hayner, chief sales officer of Alteva, told E-Commerce Times.

The companies providing VoIP service were starting to recognize the growing need for end-users to be able to connect with other providers — a process called “IP Peering,” he explained.

One of the common problems those corporate representatives shared was how to come up with a standardized training approach. Not all VoIP service providers have the same level of features and functionality, noted Hayner.

“Cloud is all about collaboration,” he said. “Unified Communications is much like VoIP was in its early early days when the cost was too prohibitive. Collaboration among service providers will thrust the new technology forward.”

VoIP in the residential space continues to do well, according to Diane Myers, directing analyst for service provider VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research, and there are several different flavors of VoIP that will continue to grow with business on PBX.

“Last year was tough on the enterprise. Most were keeping a lock on new technology spending, but we saw at the end of last year things were starting to pick up,” Myers told E-Commerce Times. “We saw a really big spike for interest in hosted VoIP service.”

That interest, both from SMB users and larger enterprises, provides fresh opportunities for service providers, she said.

With over 100 vendors in this space, the choices for customers can be overwhelming. Hosted services can be scaled to fit the changing needs of users. Providers that can offer flexible solutions will take the lead in leveraging the emerging interest in hosted unified communications, suggested Myers.

Another opportunity driver is that more businesses are getting comfortable with outsourcing, she said.

A key challenge for smaller service providers is dealing with the hesitancy on the part of larger companies to work with them. Smaller companies come and go in the business world, so the business maturity of the service provider can be a deal breaker.

The eight founding companies of the Cloud Communications Alliance use a software platform provided by BroadSoft to deliver a range of cloud-based IP multimedia communications to enterprises and consumers, said Joe Gillette, CEO of Stage 2 Networks.

These unified communications components include hosted-IP private branch exchanges, video calling, unified communications, collaboration, and converged mobile and fixed-line services.

The organization of the Alliance marks an important milestone in the development of the cloud-based communications category. The group’s commitment to evangelizing cloud-based communications services will help drive customer adoption and broad-scale investment into this next generation of communications, said BroadSoft CEO Mike Tessler.

Besides the typical business benefits from banding together, each alliance participant must have attained certain levels of success. Each of the eight companies grew its business through last year, said Tessler.

“Flat sales is not a part of the membership criteria, but new positioning is important to separate us from a new round of competition to leverage the public Internet,” Stage 2’s Gillette told E-Commerce Times. “We need to focus on quality and service.”

All VoIP services are not the same, and unified communications is not the same thing as VoIP alone.

“Other companies claim to offer UC, but in actuality they are only referring to basic VoIP features such as voice mail messages as a .WAV file in your e-mail,” said Alteva’s Hayner. “True UC is much more than that.”

Alteva’s UC product — with the full suite of Microsoft Communication Services products integrated with Voice over IP phone service — allows for a truly cloud-based UC environment. The cloud environment combines basic business-based technology like voice with office communications such as instant messenger, video conferencing, desktop sharing and telepresence.

“This capability is changing the landscape of enterprise businesses, creating unprecedented productivity enhancements,” Hayner said.

Verizon, AT&T, NGT, Cbeyond, and 8×8 ranked among top business VoIP services leaders in the annual North America Business VoIP Services Leadership Matrix from Infonetics Research.

“VoIP services sold to the residential/SOHO market still make up the lion’s share (about three-quarters) of total VoIP service revenue,” said Infonetics’ Myers.

However, there was a pickup in business VoIP service revenue growth in late 2009, her research indicates.

Furthermore, service providers reported increasing interest in hosted VoIP services across all sizes of businesses, including large enterprises, Myers noted.

“We expect this trend to continue as more companies turn to hosted services for their voice needs, with business VoIP services making up almost a third of all VoIP service revenue by 2014,” she predicted.

The smaller VoIP service providers may face a fight for survival. Their challenge will be to pull customers away from the large established providers, according to Myers, and the way to do that is through meeting highly specific client needs.

Originally published on LinuxInsider.

© 2010 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.

© 2010 BetaNews.com. All rights reserved.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
















United States – SimpleSignal – BroadSoft – Voice over Internet Protocol – Unified communications

By Charles King, E-Commerce Times

Intel’s next-gen Atom processor-based platform (formerly “Moorestown”) caused quite a stir in the news and among mobile computing aficionados. On the technical side, Intel seems to have delivered the goods. The platform includes Intel’s Atom processor Z6xx Series Family (formerly “Lincroft”), the Platform Controller Hub MP20 (formerly “Langwell”) and a dedicated Mixed Signal IC (MSIC) (formerly “Briertown”).

It adds 3D graphics, video encode and decode, and memory and display controllers into the single system-on-chip (SoC) design. Also included are the MP20 Platform Controller Hub and a dedicated MSIC, integrating power delivery and battery charging, and consolidating a range of analog and digital components.

What does this mean in plain English? That the new Atom platform is simply the best performing solution for handheld computing devices Intel has ever developed.

How much better? Try >50x reduction in idle power, >20x reduction in audio power and 2-3x power reductions in browsing and video compared to the previous-generation Atom (a.k.a., “Menlow”) processor. These efficiencies translate into >10 days of standby, up to two days of audio playback and four to five hours of browsing and video life with common 1500mAh batteries.

Along with power savings, Intel’s new Atom platform offers highly enhanced audio/video features that are critical to consumer experience and satisfaction. How enhanced? Compared to “Menlow,” the new platform delivers 1.5-3x higher compute performance, 2-4x richer graphics, >4x higher JavaScript performance and support for full HD 1080p high-profile video decoding and 720p HD video recording.

Compared to Menlow, Intel hit the ball out of the park with the new Atom, most analysts seemed to agree, but many were less impressed with the platform’s commercial prospects. That was not particularly surprising given the turmoil in the mobile marketplace that began with Microsoft’s February announcement of its Windows Phone 7 Series OS, followed by the weeks of hype leading up to Apple’s April iPad launch and its acquisition of Intrinsity, and HP’s purchase of Palm and the reported cancellation of its Windows 7-based Slate tablet.

Given those events, the conventional wisdom on Intel’s new Atom platform appears to be that 1) Apple’s dominant mindshare in all things mobile makes it the company to beat; 2) close relationships with Apple and smartphone market leader RIM make ARM-based microprocessors virtually unstoppable; and 3) despite impressive improvements, Intel’s new Atom is simply too late to the mobile game to be a viable player.

So is the conventional wisdom particularly wise? I have my doubts. Certainly Apple, as well as leading smartphone vendor RIM, deserves applause for some terrific product and service offerings. Apple, in particular, has seized the public imagination regarding the smartphone and tablet experience to a remarkable extent. Plus, the company’s App Store has defined the critical role a deep application portfolio plays in platform success.

However, recent APD Group research suggests first quarter sales of Android-based phones blew past iPhone sales. If Android’s success continues, it could indicate that Apple’s single-vendor development and manufacturing model faces significant barriers in the global market for handheld computing.

In addition, though the iPad has enjoyed extraordinary sales to date, it is the lone occupant of an essentially nascent market that will be crowded with enticing new products by the holidays. Some of these will almost assuredly be based on the new Intel Atom platform.

What about ARM? Can Intel really hope to prevail against so dominant a competitor? That’s certainly problematic, especially given ARM’s deep client roster. However, the sizable semiconductor investments of one of its most important customers — Apple — could mean future problems for ARM. More importantly, a core (no pun intended) Intel strength is its ability to play the long game, as was clear in the company’s response to AMD’s Opteron processor.

How so? AMD’s singular pursuit of 64-bit x86 computing solutions allowed the company to develop a sizable market and mindshare lead. Though it initially dismissed Opteron, Intel eventually dove into the market with a vengeance and eventually left AMD in its wake. That point is worth remembering in still-evolving markets like mobile computing.

The new Atom platform demonstrates, yet again, Intel’s ability to effectively adapt to changing circumstances by leveraging its considerable intellectual and human capital.

This is not to say that the new Atom platform will be a slam-dunk success. Mobile computing is far less homogeneous than the PC, laptop and server markets, with a technologically diverse vendor ecosystem and highly (some might say wildly) differentiated global customer groups. In other words, it’s a world that will be harder to engage with and work within than the more predictable PC/server networks Intel is used to.

Yet that same world is also populated with dynamic, astute vendors and customers willing to embrace new innovations. Bottom line: Known and unknown challenges aside, I believe the potential opportunities for the new Atom platform are enormous, and worth every bit of Intel’s time, effort and investment.

Charles King is principal analyst for Pund-IT, an IT industry consultancy that emphasizes understanding technology and product evolution, and interpreting the effects these changes will have on business customers and the greater IT marketplace.

This story was originally published on E-Commerce Times.

© 2010 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.

© 2010 BetaNews.com. All rights reserved.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
















Intel Atom – Microsoft – Apple – IPad – IPhone

By David Liu, MacNewsWorld

Flash, sharply rejected by Jobs and Company, has moved on to Apple’s competitors, hoping for a warm welcome and the promise of a place in the mobile market. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ recent open letter deploring Adobe’s Flash managed to do little in terms of settling the argument as to who was right in the debate, it did point out many of the problems with the oft-buggy software that may indeed plague the smartphone experience.

With Flash Player 10.1 set to debut later this year and a slew of Flash alternatives moving into the forefront, the need for compatibility between third-party developers and designers has grown significantly. In 2009, Avi Greengart, the research director of consumer devices at Current Analysis, predicted that if Apple were to leave Flash out of its lineup, then it must be coming up with its own video support setup since it would end up being a disadvantage.

After Apple’s public support for HTML 5 was announced, Greengart noted that “there is still enough Flash-only content on the Web that full mobile Flash support could be a short-term competitive differentiator against the iPhone. However, mobile Flash 10.1 has been repeatedly delayed…By that time, the gap may have been closed further.”

Greengart’s words may not have hit Adobe’s front doors, but the Flash developers have officially jumped ship and embraced the rest of the mobile market. While the official release date has yet to be set, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen has promised an official launch before the end of the year, along with a plethora of Android, webOS, and Research In Motion smartphones and tablets that will be fully supported.

There have been recent reports that Adobe’s employees are already testing Android 2.2 (or Froyo) with a fully functional Flash Player installed, and a video of the process has been making the rounds on the Internet. The main gripe from Jobs, as well as from Web users, is that Flash on slower systems tends to be buggy and cause crashes. In the video, speeds for both using Flash Player for videos as well as for browsing proved faster than anything either Android or mobile Flash had exhibited before.

Some reviewers are suggesting the process is nearly flawless and see Adobe as effectively proving Apple’s accusations wrong. Flash 10.1 on Google’s Nexus One, the phone used in the video demo, can be turned off as well as optimized to work only on Flash-enabled websites.

While Android and Adobe’s partnership has been anything but secret, with Adobe’s Web programmer population having all been given Froyo phones to work with, other mobile OS companies have been more than mum on the subject.

Neither RIM (BlackBerry) nor HP (webOS) has come out publicly with efforts to help move Flash 10.1 forward for mobile phones, even while both companies announced plans to support Adobe. RIM went so far as to join the Open Screen Project in 2009, a broad initiative to open up standalone applications and Web-browsing access to more than 50 industry leaders. The Open Screen Project is led by Adobe, and includes partnerships with Motorola, Nvidia, HTC and Nokia, among others.

David Wadhwani, the general manager and vice president of the Flash platform business unit at Adobe, said, “It’s a natural fit for both companies [RIM and Adobe] to work together to bring Flash technology-based video and Web content to BlackBerry smartphone users.”

While the respect seems to be mutual for all members of the Open Screen Project, not many have come out to publicly defend Adobe or Flash after Steve Jobs’ public letter that criticized the platform.

Even so, it does not look as though Flash 10.1’s omission on the iPhone — or Windows Phone 7, for that matter — will manage to hurt Adobe as long as all the other players stick to the plan and wait for the eventual release. As for advocates of HTML 5 in place of Flash, the coding standard is not expected to be fully developed for years to come. Adobe’s 10.1 — if released in June, as many have speculated — will likely be able to establish a necessary lead by the time HTML 5 is widespread.

Unlike Apple’s expectations for its “walled garden” of available platforms, the rest of the Internet would benefit from the availability of Flash on mobile browsing, considering that a majority of websites currently still use versions of the Flash player to support their videos — for example, Hulu.

Even with Web polls from tech blogs like PC World and InfoWorld declaring that a larger percentage of their readers (55%) agree with Apple on the matter of Flash, the largest players are still the other platforms. If Android’s Froyo, RIM’s newest OS, and HP’s newest tablets all support Flash, then they will still represent a large majority of the smartphone market share — something that Apple does not seem to mind.

David Liu writes about business and technology through Resource Nation and other online venues. Liu is also a professional comedian based in San Diego, Calif.

This story was originally published on MacNewsWorld.

© 2010 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.

© 2010 BetaNews.com. All rights reserved.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
















Steve Jobs – Flash Player – Apple – Google – Open Screen Project

By Jack M. Germain, LinuxInsider

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Download gedit text editor for Linux from Fileforum now.

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Text editors are becoming more essential in today’s Web-based computing world. Gone are the days when users need hard-copy versions of their documents. Also gone are the days when documents need to be gussied up with fancy fonts and fanciful page formatting.

Now HTML handles the visual tune ups for online document displays converted from text documents. For the bulk of documentation now created with computers, text displays suffice. Content is what matters. When a more formal document requires graphical alure, word processors such as AbiWord and OpenOffice will take a plain text file to the more visual level. The Linux OS probably has more text-writing apps than any other computing platform. For many users, a text editor will meet or exceed writing needs most of the time. Two popular text editors are gedit and Leafpad.

Text editors are not all the same. Some have a basic feature set that makes the app more suitable to a variety of writing tasks. Others are very simple with basic text-entry capability.

Gedit falls into the first category. It is text editor bundled in the Gnome desktop environment. Leafpad is a simple GTK+ text editor that focuses on simplicity. Its lightweight structure makes it a good choice for compact distro configurations.

Gedit is relatively simple to use, but do not dismiss this app as being wimpy. It has all the power typical users need for general purpose text handling.

For instance, gedit has full support for internationalized text (UTF-8) coding. It also supports configurable syntax highlighting for C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, Python, Perl and many other programming languages.

One of gedit’s most useful enhancements is its ability to handle multiple open files. The app uses a tabbed page structure. Clicking on a page tab displaying the file title across the top of the app window lets you move quickly through the list of open files.

While the tabbed navigational structure is essential to my workflow, gedit has a feature set that includes must-have writing tools such as several levels of Undo/Redo and File reverting options.

This text editor also has Print and Print Preview, so I can check on the hard copy results if I need to have more than a digital copy of the document. The Clipboard support is also essential for cut/copy/paste functions.

The Search and replace feature has a nifty option or two I do not see in most other text editors. It has an incremental search command that lets me step through locations in the document containing my search string. Couple this with he Clear Highlight command and gedit is a very convenient app for processing text.

Gedit has settings for auto indentation and text wrapping. It supports line numbering and bracket matching as well the ability to turn on/off the right margin line and set the right margin column number for wrapping. For me, being able to turn off current line highlighting is a big plus. So is the ability to configure fonts and colors.

In fact, it is in the preferences panel that gedit excels. Program options for viewing and editing choices are a check box away. For example, under the Editor tab, I can set the tab width and whether or not to insert spaces instead of tabs. There I can also choose to create a backup copy of files before saving and set the autosave interval.

One of the most powerful features is Plugins, which is built into the preferences panel. This feature really puts gEdit in the high-end class of text editors. For example, it is here that options for changing the case of selected text, turning on document statistics and spell checking, adding a file browser pane, and snippet insertions are controlled — and there’s much more.

Leafpad has a much smaller feature set than text editors typically labeled “high end,” such as gEdit or Kate. However, the Linux OS is filled with not-so-able text editors that do much less than Leafpad. In a Linux world of high-end and low-end text editors, Leafpad claims the middle ground.

Download Leafpad text editor for Linux from Fileforum now.

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Leafpad lacks the ability to open more than one file at a time, but that is OK if you need a fast and simple app for entering notes or maintaining To-Do lists and such.

This text editor has a tiny footprint on system resources, and it allows multiple instances to run. That makes for an ideal workaround. I open several copies of Leafpad, adjusting the size of the window for the tasks at hand. This lets me refer to several pages of research notes and other reference content simultaneously.

Leafpad’s tiny feature set includes a codeset option (Some OpenI18N registered) and Auto codeset detection (UTF-8 and some codesets). It has an unlimited Undo/Redo feature.

Leafpad taps into the system fonts library so users are not stuck with a single default font. A preview window in the Options tab shows what each font looks like in each of the four accompanying styles — Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic. Similarly, point sizes range from 6 to 72.

The bare-bones feature set includes Auto/Multi-line Indent, the option to turn on/off line numbers display and Drag and Drop editing. The only other enhancements are Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete under the Edit menu and Search/Replace options.

The Print Preview option is also useful. Print Previews are not always a close match to the actual printed page an editor app delivers, but that is not the case with Leafpad. What you see in the preview window is pretty much what you get on the printed page.

Gedit and Leafpad are two handy text editors. Rather than choosing one over the other, use both. Having them both available gives you plenty of flexibility.

Gedit is a more full-featured writing app with most of the high-end bells and whistles needed for fast and efficient text handling. Leafpad is much more basic, but it has enough features to raise it from the muck of unambitious typing-only apps.

Originally published on LinuxInsider.

© 2010 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.

© 2010 BetaNews.com. All rights reserved.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

By Denise J. Deveau, CRM Buyer

As the population ages, financial institutions and other service providers will have to learn to adapt their marketing approaches to appeal to a sector that has high disposable income and substantial spending power. In some cases, they will also have physical limitations that will impede online activities, including vision loss.

Besides the fact that an aging population brings with it a growing number of people with vision loss, the business and legal case for making Web content accessible to the visually impaired is becoming increasingly strong.

There are 3.3 million Americans over the age of 40 who are blind or have low-vision, according to the National Eye Institute. In the next decade, that number is expected to surpass 5 million. In addition, the American Disabilities Act now includes online access for the visually impaired within its accessibility parameters.

“The American Disabilities Act was passed in 1990, obviously before the commercial Internet really grew and definitely before the Web,” noted Paul W. Schroeder, vice president of programs and policy for the American Foundation for the Blind. “There have been extensive discussions around whether the accessibility requirements applied to the Web, including access to statements and to consumer level information,” he told CRM Buyer.

Visually impaired groups are not idle in their demand for accessibility. HSBC Card Services, for example, found itself on the line following a complaint from a blind credit card holder and subsequently announced that it would include a fully accessible Web site among enhancements to its policies and systems. Target, Priceline, Ramada, and AOL have all been under the gun at some point for having inaccessible Web sites.

To aid the accessibility cause, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for technology products. These state that Web sites, software products and electronic documents should be built to work with assistive technologies (AT).

“What organizations need to do is build navigation behind the scenes that will drive screen readers to different pages,” explained Peter Ganza, director of product marketing for Xenos Group. “Visually the site remains the same, but tagging will provide the screen reader with top level navigation, while pushing irrelevant information into the background.”

Financial institutions, retailers, government agencies, and other enterprise-level organizations have, for the most part, made significant progress in their accessibility efforts. The one sticking point that could become a major focus as visually impaired numbers grow is PDF files.

“When these forms are one-offs, you can tag them manually,” Ganza said. “But if you are looking at high volumes per month — such as banking or credit card statements — the economies of scale can be overwhelming.”

By way of example, assume that 1% of a financial institution’s 2.5 million customers have a visual impairment, he explained. “It would therefore have 25,000 users that require accessibility services, and would have to generate almost 1 million accessible documents a year — based on three statements per month per client. The costs of contracting third-party agencies to produce statements in large print or Braille format can be staggering.”

The banking industry has done a “pretty decent job” of improving Web access for managing accounts, Schroeder conceded, “but they are not as clear where they are in terms of statement availability. Those that do enable access to statements online use HTML or XML. Those that rely on PDFs — it’s safe to say it’s all fairly iffy, because they don’t have appropriate tags and other information to enable screen readers to read them.”

Software vendors, for their part, are doing what they can in terms of enabling tools, added Schroeder. “Adobe’s done most of the work that needs to be done with their toolset on the consumer side. What needs to happen is that content developers follow the requirements for document construction and tagging.”

Not all tagging is created equal, however, explained Adam Spencer, an accessibility specialist with Accessibil-IT.

“A site might be compliant for accessibility, but it doesn’t mean that the content is delivered in a usable fashion,” Spencer told CRM Buyer. “Don’t assume that if you run a tag wizard in Adobe, it’s automatically accessible. And it’s certainly not usable. If it’s not coded properly, you can end up with mind-numbing loops that continuously read links. Without giving context and understanding for different things like graphics or charts, a lot of information gets lost.”

Businesses should therefore be extra conscious of how they’re coding their sites for the visually impaired, he added. “Often, they forget to code it when they make a change or add content. I see a lot of that happening with forms where only certain parts are accessible. Essentially, you could be withholding information from a segment of users — and that can be a huge legal problem.”

The PDF/UA Working Group, for one, has been developing appropriate tagging requirements for businesses to follow, including the following:

• Read order – Information such as account numbers, overdue notices and charts can interfere with a reader’s ability to clearly state the contents in an order that is useful to the consumer.
• Language specification – Tags should tie to the screen reader to allow it to revert to the appropriate language.
• Alternate text – A PDF should be tagged to provide alternate text for links, logos and graphics that is useful to the user.
• Tables – Readers typically do not understand how to read and interpret boxes and charts. The right tagging will notify readers that information is presented in rows and columns so it can be properly delivered.

Although PDF is getting its due share of attention, there are still issues that have to be addressed, Ganza added. “Of the three types of PDF documents — unstructured, structured, and tagged — only tagged PDF files are optimized for accessibility. However, few authors are currently creating tagged PDF files, either because this requires additional effort or because of lack of awareness.”

Despite the problems, “there is no reason a site can’t be accessible,” said Spencer. “Yes, it’s an extra step, but a conscious one that needs to be made. In the grand scheme of things, the cost to roll it out is significant, but not something that will break the bank for any large organization. With millions of people experiencing vision loss, that’s a pretty hefty segment of the population to miss.”

Originally published on CRM Buyer

© 2010 ECT News Network. All rights reserved.

© 2010 BetaNews.com. All rights reserved.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010