I saw Sipera Systems at the last Enterprise Connect and was intrigued by its market niche: UC and VOIP security. Enterprises are fast to jump on the UC and VOIP bandwagon, but oftentimes they neglect the security aspect of these deployments. Sipera, backed by renowned VCs Sequoia Capital and Star Ventures, was one of the kind to offer comprehensive security solutions with its SBC and UC appliances and software.

Now Sipera has joined the Avaya family. Obviously Avaya will leverage Sipera’s tech portfolio to improve its own UC and SIP products which shouldn’t be too hard since Sipera and Avaya have been close partners for a while now. What’ll be interesting to see is whether Avaya will still offer Sipera solutions for Cisco products.

Read the press release:

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Basking Ridge, NJ – Avaya today announced it has acquired Sipera, a worldwide provider of Unified Communications (UC) solutions, including Session Border Control (SBC) functionality and a range of UC security applications. Sipera will become a fully integrated part of Avaya.

Sipera strengthens Avaya’s UC portfolio with a set of fit-for-purpose, enterprise-class SBC capabilities for Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking that offers customers and channel partners flexibility, security and value.  The company’s open, standards-based solutions work in both Avaya and non-Avaya networks. Combined with Avaya Aura®, Sipera’s solutions will provide customers with secure VoIP, SIP trunks, videoconferencing, cloud-based communications, instant messaging, and collaboration tools for workers in any location using any business or consumer device.

Sipera provides application-layer security that is intuitive, easy-to-manage and can lower the total cost of ownership of UC and Contact Center deployments. Security features include a patent-pending remote worker solution that helps deploy VPN-less solutions and advanced toll fraud protection.

Quotes:
“Sipera’s broad portfolio of open, enterprise-focused security technologies strongly align with our own Avaya Aura unified communications architecture. Together, we will help customers simplify deployment, management and maintenance of secure, multi-vendor UC and contact center environments while providing them with greater flexibility to support remote and mobile employees using the device that best suits their needs.”
Dr. Alan Baratz, Senior Vice President and President, Global Communications Solutions, Avaya

“Integration of our solutions with Avaya Aura is a significant milestone in the evolution of unified communications. With the combined offerings, users enjoy rich, responsive communication experiences that span multiple channels, applications, devices and networks. These communications incorporate security and compliance features that ensure mission-critical information and resources are safeguarded. Together, our solutions simplify and streamline deployment and management of enterprise UC, improving communications flexibility, accelerating user adoption, and maximizing return on investment.”
Jim Timmer, COO, Sipera

“Kelsey-Seybold Clinic is Houston’s first and longest standing Accountable Care Organization. Kelsey-Seybold is home to more than 370 physicians providing more than 50 medical specialties throughout a network of 20 Houston-area clinics.  Robust communication capabilities and security of our integrated voice and data solutions were key considerations in our selection of Sipera’s technology with Avaya’s contact center and unified communications solutions.  We are excited that this relationship is becoming a permanent one.”
Martin Littmann, Director – Information Technology, Kelsey-Seybold Clinic

Tags:
Unified communications, session border control, SIP trunking, security collaboration, business communications, Avaya Aura, Session Manager

About Avaya:
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, data solutions and related services to companies of all sizes around the world.

Certain statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. These statements may be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “might,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “should” or “will” or other similar terminology. We have based these forward-looking statements on our current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections. While we believe these expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections are reasonable, such forward looking statements are only predictions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These and other important factors may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. For a list and description of such risks and uncertainties, please refer to Avaya’s filings with the SEC that are available at www.sec.gov. Avaya disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Media Inquiries:
Deb Kline
908-953-6179
klined@avaya.com

Some folks have half-jokingly said that Skype is a good fit for Microsoft because both companies like proprietary technologies. There’s certainly some truth to that. Even though both of these companies enjoy great numbers of users, they are far from being proponents of open standards and technologies.

That’s why it’s important to spread the gospel of an open source project such as GNU Telephony:

GNU Telephony is a project to enable anyone to use free as in freedom software for telephony, and with the freedom to do so on any platform they choose to use. We also wish to make it easy to use the Internet for real-time voice and video communication, and in fact for all forms of real-time collaboration. Finally we wish to make it possible to communicate securely and in complete privacy by applying distributed cryptographic solutions. Our goal is to enable secure and private real-time communication worldwide over the Internet that is free as in freedom, and is also free as in no cost too!

Over the weekend the project released GNU SIP Witch 1.0, the first stable release of GNU SIP protocol provisioning and peer-to-peer call server. It’ll also be used in the “anti-Skype” open source project, GNU Free Call (covered here previously).

The acquisition of Skype by Microsoft has made some people nervous about the future of the popular VOIP service. This is exactly why open source projects are important and deserve our support.

The official announcement:

May 14, 2011 (Bayonne, NJ). We are distributing today a 1.0 release of the GNU SIP protocol provisioning and peer-to-peer call server, GNU SIP Witch. GNU SIP Witch is developed within GNU Telephony and has been selected for use in the GNU Free Call project. This will provide a stable release that we will support for existing applications while we actively develop GNU Free Call services.

GNU SIP Witch is available as part of the GNU project. Stable releases will also power a web site later this summer to provide initial worldwide secure calling services for free directly to the general public for use in conjunction with any ZRTP enabled standards compliant softphone applications and SIP devices. GNU SIP Witch can be used to deploy private secure calling networks, whether stand-alone or in conjunction with existing VoIP infrastructure, for private institutions and national governments.

GNU SIP Witch is distributed as free software, that is, it is licensed using the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 3 (or later), explicitly to provide others the freedom to use, modify, learn from, redistribute, and participate in it’s continued development, and can be obtained in source directly fromhttp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/sipwitch. A number of GNU/Linux distributions already distribute GNU SIP Witch in binary form for easy installation. GNU SIP Witch is cross-platform and can also be built on Apple OS/X, BSD systems, and for Microsoft Windows. Future releases will also support Android devices for use in GNU Free Call. Our services and applications are intended to offer the benefits of software freedom on all common computing platforms.

GNU SIP Witch is a free software project and is being developed by volunteers from around the world. The Free Software Foundation and the GNU project provides technical, infrastructure, and organizational support for GNU SIP Witch development. Future work will focus on delivering GNU Free Call services such as self-organizing peer-to-peer calling networks directly to the desktop and mobile devices of users worldwide.

In conjunction with this release, the GNU Free Call project is distributing an initial release of our technological assistance package for common computing platforms by providing our switchview desktop client for use with GNU SIP Witch on your local machine. In the future TAP will enable multi-platform personal encryption, include further support for desktop and mobile secure calling, and provide other basic and common computing services missing on some platforms.

About the Free Software Foundation:
The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users’ right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software—particularly the GNU operating system (used widely today in its GNU/Linux variant)— and free documentation. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software. Their web site, located at http://www.gnu.org/, is an important source of information about GNU/Linux.

About GNU Free Call:
GNU Free Call is a project to develop and deploy secure self-organized communication services worldwide for private use and for public administration. We use the open standard SIP protocol and GNU SIP Witch to create secured peer-to-peer mesh calling networks, and we welcome all participation in our effort.

Contact Information:
Haakon Eriksen – Project Coordinator – haakon.eriksen at far.no
David Sugar – Project Architect – dyfet at gnu.org
Mailing List – Participation – sipwitch-devel at gnu.org

 

As if Cisco needs any more negative publicity in light of the company’s recent developments… Reorganizing its consumer business, killing off Flip, missed earnings, layoff projections, and CEO John Chambers in the hot seat:

Now security researchers have demonstrated how easy it is to attack Cisco IP phones out-of-the-box to intercept calls or cause service disruptions via distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) methods. The vulnerability lies in the phone’s web service capabilities — a feature that Cisco recommends disabling in the user manual.

But who reads the manual in the real world, right? ITelecom administrators usually just open the box, take the phone out, and plug it into an Ethernet port. Done. That’s the beauty of the IP phone, as they’d say.

These IP phones are more prevalent in businesses now, in the office and even in the contact center where personal and often private data are handled. Such a security weakness in the phone should be taken seriously as there could be severe legal repercussions with leaked private information, or worse yet, finding out one day that all the phones in the company are out of service.

The best practice should be to harden these IP phones just as you would to a PC workstation. Things such as disabling certain services, configuring the firewall, etc. should not be overlooked.

A few days ago Reuters reported that Facebook and Google are fighting to either buyout Skype or form some sort of joint venture with the ubiquitous VOIP company. In August 2010 Skype filed the papers to go public, but has since postponed the IPO until the second half of this year.

It seems that the longer Skype waits to IPO, the more momentum diminishes. Would FaceSkype or Google Skype even make sense?

To me it looks a bit far fetched. Neither of these Internet giants need Skype. Facebook and Google are the two largest Web companies on Earth, and both companies already offer voice (even video) capabilities. Facebook’s focus has always been turning itself into a platform, and has been fairly successful at that. Several third-party VOIP and videoconference apps currently exist on Facebook, and Facebook is just fine by that. How would developers of these VOIP/videoconference apps react if Skype is baked into Facebook? Facebook just wants people to come on the site for everything. It wants to be the Interweb, the place where those voice and video bits pass through. And all that personal data…

Google’s all about its search and online advertising. It has acquired a few communications-related companies in the past, notably GrandCentral and Gizmo, to in turn offer Google Voice to the masses. Furthermore, Google’s latest bedfellow is actually a traditional cell phone company, Sprint, in a deal to offer GV number portability to Sprint subscribers. But ultimately, Google is looking to flood the market with its free services to keep competitors at bay while increasing advertising channels and being able to reach out to greater numbers. While Skype is rushing to appear on smartphones everywhere, Google is aiming for deals with cell phone providers so that even “dumb phone” owners can enjoy Google Voice, just like an Android owner.

Nobody really agrees on Skype’s valuation. EBay bought it for $2.6 billion (but later had written it down for $1.7 billion), then sold off for a valuation of $2.75 billion. Analysts offer valuations between $750 million to $1 billion in the low end, and some speculate as high as $3 billion. Maybe this leak is a ploy to drum up some more excitement about Skype?

On its corporate blog Skype officially announced a new record of 30 million simultaneous users. And it still wants you to reach out and touch someone:

A few hours ago, Skype passed a new milestone. There were 30 million people, online on Skype, at the same time.

As we cut the (blue) cake at Skype HQ, it’s a good opportunity to remind you that if there’s someone in your life who doesn’t use Skype, there’s never been a better time to tell them about all the wonderful things you can do – video calling on computers, mobiles and TVs, great value calls to phones, instant messaging, sending filesand more.

All of which helps you do things with the people who matter, even when you’re on the other side of the world – or right next door.

I don’t know about you, but just about everyone I know is a Skype user. There’s nobody else for me to convert.

With all the talk about unified communications, it appears that Skype would be the first to achieve mass adoption, albeit primarily among consumers. That’s not to say its features are not enterprise-ready, however. Skype has added group video and screen sharing — two common utilities popular among workers.

In an UCC world where vendors seem obsessed with interoperability, Skype’s unprecedented popularity is noteworthy because it’s always used proprietary technology. Yet that hasn’t stopped more users from using it. Which vendor today wouldn’t want to sell 30 million seats of its UC product, right?

Also, Skype didn’t have to make a tablet to push sales, either. Chew on that for a while.

I love Skype. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of this communications tool. The software evolved from desktop-only to an app that also resides on your smartphone. Recent feature enhancements include desktop sharing and group video. The company has grown tremendously to a point that it hired a Cisco exec as CEO and plans to IPO this year.

But I also realize that it uses proprietary technology. It is voice-over-IP but it is not an open standard. Now a new open source project dubbed GNU Free Call will attempt to offer everything Skype has and then some: SIP adoption.

That’s a big “and then some”… An excerpt of its goal:

What
Our goal is to make GNU Free Call ubiquitous in a manner and level of usability similar to Skype, that is, usable on all platforms, and directly by the general public for all manner of secure communication between known and anonymous parties, but without requiring a central service provider to register with, without using insecure source secret binary protocols that may have back-doors, and without having network control points of any kind that can be exploited or abused by external parties. By doing so as a self organizing meshed calling network, we further eliminate potential service control points such as through explicit routing peers even if networks are isolated in civil emergencies.

That is quite ambitious, but I have faith in the open source community and will be tracking the project’s progress regularly.

Although most of time this blog covers enterprise communications, there were some interesting stuff out of CES 2011 that may be of interest to readers.

One of the biggest and surprising news came from Skype, and CEO Tony Bates was in the Las Vegas Convention Center to deliver it live: the acquisition of Qik. Mobile video, group video calling, and the new SkypeKit SDK were also highlighted by Bates on stage. All part of the company’s ramp-up to an IPO this year.

On the other hand, VOIP provider Ooma chose to focus solely on consumer voice telephony. It has a good-looking and robust product, but there are no plans to target the video business at all.

And how about that sexy tablet called the BlackBerry PlayBook? RIM booked a pavilion at CES to show the world that it’s serious about the tablet — and it’s not an Android.

More CES 2011 coverage is available on gagagadget — don’t forget to check out the YouTube channel and Flickr group!

We all know that Skype is readying a 2011 IPO, and TechCrunch has uncovered what appears to be a hiring frenzy at the VOIP company for cloud and Web engineers:

We spotted these job postings on Skype’s website, indicating that the company is looking to build a team of cloud and web technology engineers. According to the postings, these staff members will “build an infrastructure capable of supporting hundreds of millions of users.” The products, will deliver “voice, video, chat and presence” to the web and “enable radically new Skype applications.”

A source with knowledge of the matter has confirmed that Skype is indeed building a team to work on cloud products and will be launching a number of web-based applications in the near future.

This area is where Google reigns as it was able to roll out Google Voice and later integrate it within Gmail seamlessly. A cloud-based Skype would surely attract more consumers because the Web is so accessible, but it’s also clear that Skype aims to lure enterprise customers with the collective power and scalability of the cloud.

The question is, How many Google and Cisco engineers will Skype be able to poach?

Berlin-based snom technology AG has treaded into IP-PBX territory with the offering of snom ONE in three flavors: free (for 10 extensions or less), yellow (20 extensions), and blue (unlimited extensions with multi-tenancy). The IP-PBX technology came from its acquisition of PBXnSIP, according to No Jitter. More interestingly, the company known for its IP phones will give away the 10-extension snom ONE if you buy the phones — a very attractive offer for a small business operation.

Comparable to giving away the car if you buy the tires? Sign me up.

Press release from snom:

Berlin 4th October 2010
snom technology AG, leading German developer and manufacturer of SIP devices, today announced the addition of IP-PBXs to its product range, with the launch of the new IP PBX snom ONE. snom ONE will provide customers with an IP telephony system which supports all the functionalities of snom IP phones.

snom ONE is the result of thorough field tests and optimisation activities, taken out on the market. It is available in 3 versions: snom ONE free (downloadable free of charge for up to 10 extensions) and the two resale systems snom ONE yellow (for up to 20 extensions) and snom ONE blue (unlimited number of extensions and multi tenant up to 5 companies). All versions offer the same features and only differ on the maximum supported quantity of extensions.

“In the past we’ve experienced problems with customers missing out on some of the key features delivered by our phones, due to the installed IP-PBX systems,” explains Jonathan Greenwood, snom ONE Product Manager and Managing Director of snom UK Ltd. “With snom ONE, our customers can continue to install and run our VoIP phones on every SIP based PBX, whilst having additional access to a series of easy to install telephony systems, perfectly tailored to our phones. This is our response to the many compelling requests by resellers and users in recent years.”

The snom ONE is being showcased at the Convergence Summit South 2010 from the 5-6 October at Sandown Park Esher Surrey. The new IP-PBX systems are available immediately.

About snom
snom technology AG develops and manufactures VoIP telephones and related equipment based on the IETF open standard, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). Recognized for its high quality, customisable and cost-effective business solutions, snom is also differentiated by the company’s history in the VoIP industry, and its dedication to high security standards. All of snom’s software exists in the firmware on the phones – making it easier for users to download updates and new features. snom customers benefit from the interoperability and flexibility that the snom telephones offer, including plug and play integration and universal compatibility with any SIP-based telephony platform. Founded in 1996 and headquartered in Berlin, Germany, snom technology AG also has offices in Italy, France and in the US. The company distributes its fourth generation SIP phones through its network of more than 200 authorized reseller partners in 60 countries worldwide. For more information on snom, please visit www.snom.com.

Company contacts:
snom technology AG
Heike Cantzler
Christian Baier
Charlottenstr. 68-71
D-10117 Berlin
Telefon: +49 (0)30-39833-103/106
E-Mail: heike.cantzler@snom.com
E-Mail: christian.baier@snom.com
Internet: www.snom.com

Press agency:
Aspectus PR
Amy Redhead
33 Cavendish Square
London, W1U 6JQ
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7182 4081
E-mail: amy.redhead@aspectuspr.com
URL: www.aspectuspr.co.uk

Internet speed. That’s how fast some of today’s tech companies operate.

For example, Google. Just yesterday morning (Eastern Time) as I started my daily routine of catching up on news from the hundreds of RSS feeds I subscribe to, the leading tech blogs all echoed the tip about Google testing voice features within Gmail — Google Voice not required, either. Then BOOM! — a few hours later, even before the electrons calmed down on the blogs, Google made it official.

Skype and Microsoft didn’t even have a chance to see what hit ‘em.

Actually, maybe not quite. I’m sure Skype already has drawn a bullseye on Google’s front, and Microsoft’s drawn one on Google’s back. Who can blame them? In a matter of hours the Big G turned its popular Web-based email client into a popular Web-based telephony client. And the Interwebs went wild.

Another step toward UC? Some think so, per Dave Michels of Pin Drop Soup:

UC? Absolutely. Google is taking UC to a fairly comprehensive level with a single number integrated to email, voice mail, chat, presence, voice mail, contacts, mobility, and video – not to mention its collaboration capabilities. Google is keeping it all at a consumer level, but I contend an enterprise version is coming.

Google is putting together a comprehensive strategy unified communications. Consider all the Gmail users, all the Google Voice users (over a million), all the Android users, and it becomes pretty compelling pretty quickly that the competitive landscape in telephony can change pretty quickly.

Over at GigaOM, the thought is that Google should really make Gmail the hub of all communications — including social media:

Google should add the ability to send and receive Twitter direct messages and interoperate with Facebook messaging, so we could have a full-blown communications platform. You can start and end your day in this hub without losing it once. Gmail leverages three of Google’s mainstay strengths: infrastructure, search and simplicity of user experience. If Google were smart, it would take a boatload of money and invest in making Gmail the center of all its forays into social and the enterprise (which would mean making Google Voice work with the Google Apps version of Gmail).

Skype may boast 590 million users, but it lacks good collaboration plugins; and mostly, it lacks cash to go head-to-head with the likes of Google and Microsoft. Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail both surpass Gmail is user base, but they both lack the rich features and simplicity of Gmail.

I can say with certainty that millions of other users startup their browsers with Gmail as the first “go to” site. My next app? Skype. Now I’m wondering if I’ll ever need to click that Skype icon again…