Tags: collaboration

Enterprise Communications in Virtualized Environments

Posted by Mark Pendleton on Posted in Unified Communications Tagged , , , ,

phones_cloudWith all the talk of cloud computing and software as a service of late, many IT organizations are wondering how communications can be deployed realistically in these models.  This discussion inevitably leads to the topic of virtualization.

Among the highest-impact issues in IT today, virtualization allows multiple applications to run on virtual machines within one or more physical host servers. A hypervisor – from vendors such as VMware, Microsoft or others – allocates server resources for all virtual machines running on it. Virtualization has long been used in data centers to consolidate the number of physical servers, better utilize existing hardware, and improve application availability.

 

Centralizing applications in data centers and leveraging virtualization technology to minimize associated costs and complexities has for several years been a trend among IT departments of both enterprises and mid-sized organizations. Adding communications to virtualized environments brings complexity and special requirements that not every enterprise communications provider can deliver today.

NEC has verified that UNIVERGE Sphericall, the pure software-based communications platform, runs in both VMware® ESXi and Microsoft® Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 virtualized environments to deliver voice and unified communications services in various cloud and hosted scenarios.

Some potential use cases for software-based communications in virtualization include:

  • Customers with virtualization initiatives to reduce data center costs and server “sprawl”
  • Disaster recovery scenarios running virtualized instances in carrier hosted environment, or private cloud infrastructure.
  • Implementing additional media service resources such as voicemail, auto attendant, music-on-hold and/or call recording using Sphericall virtualization
  • Hosted provider scaling a single, large server with multiple instances of Sphericall where each instance is tied to a particular customer site
  • Small or remote offices desiring to hosted multiple applications on a single machine

Stay Con-NEC-ted with the Unified Campus

Posted by Mark Pendleton on Posted in Unified Communications Tagged , ,

unified-campus-resized-600Educational campuses increasingly face new challenges every year as they open their doors to a new group of students that expect more in the way of a technologically advanced institution.  The complexity of the infrastructure to support these demands requires scalability, reliability, and security that are beyond reproach.  NEC, a leading provider and integrator of advanced IT and communication solutions, is poised to provide just what your campus needs to deliver on the ever growing demands faced in the educational environment.

NEC’s Unified Campus Demo provides a look into the simplicity, performance, and reliability of NEC ‘s solutions that are capable of delivering the availability and quality of service that educational institutions require.

Key benefits of building a Unified Campus are:

  • Communication and collaboration among students, faculty and staff via unified communications
  • Creating a safer learning environment through effective emergency communications
  • Achieve pervasive, secure access to university information through the use of efficient, virtualized data center solutions, as well as OpenFlow-based virtual data networks
  • Leveraging campus information to create new fundraising and revenue streams with business intelligence solutions

Learn more about the NEC Unified Campus and what it can do for your organization.

A Bold New Direction for NEC at Enterprise Connect

Posted by Bryan Williams on Posted in Straight Talk Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Enterprise communications is evolving at an incredible pace.  It seems only a few years ago we were all touting the benefits of voice over IP.  Today, our industry is about much  more than voice and data over the same network.  Of course, unified communications is that “much more,” giving us voice, status and presence information, messages in a single inbox, video and Web collaboration tools, social networking capability, and ideally the ability to go mobile with all of these features.

This week our industry’s largest event, Enterprise Connect, kicks off in Orlando with a new name and  vision, “Communications Transforming Business.”  It’s a fitting tagline  for a show that evolved out of voice-centric roots into a much broader array of topics, as UniCom Consulting’s Marty Parker points out this week on NoJitter.com, and one that also aligns with the direction NEC is demonstrating at booth 609.

UCC_AgentToday, NEC Corporation unveiled a new Unified Communications & Collaboration architecture, which is being demonstrated in booth 609 at Enterprise Connect.  Using Rich Internet Applications (RIA) technology, UC&C fits into today’s secure Web architectures and can be deployed either on-premise, in the cloud or a combination of both.  It gives users a unified client across any device – smartphone, tablet, laptop or PC.  The client itself is designed to be simple, elegant and intuitive based on the user’s role.  It’s definitely worth a look if you are at Enterprise Connect this week.

Also worth a look are our speakers – we have five of them this year in the Enterprise Connect program.

“IP Telephony RFP: Who Delivers the Goods?”

  • Monday, February 28, 2:00 – 5:00 PM (Wade Irwin) in Osceola A

“Comparing UC Options: Who’s Offering What?”

  • Tuesday, March 1, 2:30 – 5:30 PM (Gary Gordon) in Osceola A

“The Role of Tablets in Enterprise UC”

  • Tuesday, March 1, 2:30 – 3:30 PM (Gary Gordon) in Osceola B

“Unified Communications Interoperability: What’s Needed?”

  • Wednesday, March 2, 8:00 – 8:45 AM (Todd Landry) in Sun B

“Integrating Mobility and UC RFP”

  • Wednesday, March 2, 2:30 – 5:30 PM (Sheryl Teague) in Sun B