Canadian IP Thought Leaders Series - Yves Laliberte/Aastra Telecom and IP Telephony

On this week's podcast, I've gone back to the IP telephony market, and featured a company I've long been a fan of - Toronto-based Aastra Telecom.

Not only are they Canadian - and based in Toronto, where it gets pretty lonely for VoIP or IP vendors - but they're public, and they have a strong international presence. I can count on one hand how many companies there are like this in Canada, and I'm not even thinking about Nortel. Aastra actually took some good Nortel business off their hands a while back, and are doing very nicely with it.

Anyhow, these podcasts are about markets and technologies - not the vendors - so that's enough about Aastra from me. My guest was Yves Laliberte, their EVP, and he knows this space quite well. We've been trying to get a podcast done for a while, and the timing is good. Aastra just launched a line of SIP phones, and to step back, there are other vendors with SIP phones in the market, so this isn't just an Aastra story. However, it was a good time to hear from Yves what SIP phones bring to the market, and how enterprises are adopting IP telephony.

We also covered the SMB market and how IP telephony fits into their thinking. Yves also provided some interesting perspectives on how OEMs are working with Open Source, and it's surprising to hear just how much it is taking hold among the vendors.

You can download the podcast here, as well as read more about Yves.

NOTE - no podcast next week, as the Pulvermedia crew will be at Spring VON, which unfortunately, I won't be attending. I'll be back the following week, though, with another podcast.



Technorati tags: Aastra Telecom, Jon Arnold, VoIP podcasts, SIP phones