Marketing mudding VoIP and UC; getting creative

VoIP marketing-speak gets slammed in an xchange piece reporting from Interop Las Vegas 2008.  It is a "wealth conflicting lingo," forcing companies trying to get more creative in selling VoIP to the unbuying SMB masses.  

On the creative front, ADTRAN is opening up more tiers in its channel program, in addition to launching an IP PBX and adding IP phones to its lineup.  Smaller partners targeting 50-and-under users will be allowed to sell IP telephony solutions. Turns out the smaller VARs selling low-volume of ADTRAN gear already have an impressive foothold in the SMB market.

Avaya has added speech recognition for basic commands, as well as speech recognition technologies, with the know-how coming from Nuance.  The "Freedom of Speech" capabilities include access to everything within Avaya's UC software through voice, and also adds speech access for IBM Lotus Domino 7.0.  There's also Avaya HealthCheck, a proactive test to get a comprehensive view of what is going on within the communications network.

For more:
- xchange's view of the VoIP Scene at Interop
- Avaya's announcements for UC Freedom of Speech and HealthCheck

Related article:
ADTRAN intros new IP PBX all-in-one, IP PBX phones