Alteva - Hosted VoIP and Microsoft is a Strong Combination

Continuing on today's back-to-blogging theme, I have another new writeup running, this time on UC Strategies. Alteva is a hosted provider I've known for a while, and they've done a good job staying ahead of the pack with advanced applications. Their most recent focus has been integrating VoIP more deeply with Microsoft to give it a stronger unified communications foundation. This is good news for SMBs, as most hosted providers don't take VoIP this far, preferring instead to offer it as a standalone service.

Alteva understands where the clould is going - not just for their business, but what it means for their customers. SMBs constantly need to reduce costs and get the most out of IT, despite having little or no in-house technical expertise. That's where I think Alteva has a good read on what the market needs, and if you want know why, you can read my take here - it's running now on the UC Strategies portal.

Back to Blogging - Ringio and the Cloud

Where does the time go? Sometimes you get heads-down busy with business development, fulfilling projects and a bit of travel. Then you realize things like blogging have gone quiet - well, that's the cycle I've been caught in lately. Have just come through an intense two week stretch like that, and am heads-up now to blog a bit.

First up will be a review I just wrote about Ringio, a pretty interesting company I briefed with the other day. I've been coming across a lot of cloud-based communications services recently, and this one is a great example of bringing a valuable application to SMBs that they really cannot get otherwise. Ringio's application is best thought of as intelligent Caller ID and CRM with some desktop collaboration.

These things are always best understood with a demo, but at least my writeup will serve as a starting point for you to learn more. It's running now on Focus.com, and you can read it here.

Is Skype for Business Enterprise-Ready?

Now, there's an intriguing question for Skype followers. I'm one of them, and have been following them closely since the beginning. The most recent iteration of Skype for Business is targeting the enterprise market, and I think there's a good story here.

That's the focus of my latest Service Provider Views column on TMCnet, and it's running now. You can read it here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Mobile VoIP Webinar Archive Posted

Just a quick note to say that the replay for last week's mobile VoIP webinar is posted now on the USTA website. In case you missed it, the webinar was focused on new ARPU opportunities for mobile operators using VoIP and HD.

I shared the presentation with Media5, and GIPS was cited as the lead sponsor. They were supposed to present as well, but with last week's acquisition news, things changed, and they had to take a lower profile.

Launch News Item #2 - Focus.com

Switching hats, I was involved in a second launch today! This one is for Focus.com, where I'm an Adviser, and I've been posting about them here off and on. There's also a lot of Twitter activity supporting the portal, so it's not hard to pick up on what we're doing there. It's a pretty exciting opportunity, and I'm very happy to be part of it.

Anyhow, the main details about the launch are in the press release. The fun part is their launch party tonight, but San Fran is kinda far from Toronto, so I'll miss it - dang. Next best thing is to follow the Twitter feed, which is pretty steady right now - you can pick it up using the hashtag "#FocusLaunch".

Launch News Item #1 - Smart Grid Summit

Things are moving quickly today, so this post will be short. This afternoon, the program and first round of confirmed speakers was announced for the Smart Grid Summit. Not many speaking spots left already, and I know we're going to have a first-rate program. You can read more about it here, along with a full outline of the agenda on our website. Gotta go...

Interactive Intelligence Extends Their CaaS Platform

I've followed and written about Interactive Intelligence for some time - both here and for the UC Strategies portal. They're a very interesting company, and it's great to see them doing so well in this weak economy. Today they announced some enhancements to their CaaS platform - Communications as a Service - and while most of this is focused on the contact center, I see them as a great example of how cloud communications is evolving - and that's a good thing.

There's a lot to consider here, and I explored this a bit further in an article that was posted this morning on the UC Strategies portal. If this space is of interest, I'd love it if you gave this a read and then to share your thoughts.