verizon business

Verizon Business exports key VoIP services around the globe

Pete Wylie — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:27:40 -0500

Verizon Business announced today the international availability of its VoIP Interoperability Lab and its automatic call rerouting for VoIP customers. Previously, the Interoperability Lab was only available in Europe and the automatic call rerouting feature was only available in the U.S.

Karen Gergelyi, Verizon Business global VoIP trunking services product manager, said the increased availability of the features was part of a push to refine its value proposition for VoIP trunking.

"The interoperability functions give a huge amount of flexibility, because we can sell to any customer because of the ability for them to self-test their existing systems," Gergelyi said. "And the inbound failover feature now available in Europe is a critical capability for the package to have."

Gergelyi said she had seen particularly strong demand and positive feedback about inbound failover from retail, financial and insurance companies, or any business with many distributed locations. She also noted that the interoperability lab would be an added feature for customers to test their existing systems with Verizon's solution. As part of the announcement, Verizon Business also certified an additional Nortel IP PBX for its IP Trunking offering.

For more:
- see the Verizon Business release here

FierceVoIP Leaders: Roberta Mackintosh, Executive Director of Advanced Voice and UC, Verizon Business

Pete Wylie — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 09:32:34 -0500

FierceVoIP sat down with Roberta Mackintosh, Executive Director of Advanced Voice and UC&C for Verizon Business, to discuss the VoIP industry and Verizon Business's plans for unified communications.

Fierce VoIP: What are some key trends you see emerging in the VoIP space right now?

Mackintosh: If we take a macro view, you have to recognize the explosion of unified communications and advanced voice products. It's gone from 18 months ago, when we were just having conversations with some large, lead clients about unified communications, to now when it's at the forefront of their communications strategy. We're seeing a lot of interest in people wanting to make decisions in voice telephony that will help them evolve to the UC solution that fits their company the best.

FierceVoIP: What are some of the ways you tailor solutions to individual companies?

Mackintosh: We want to give our clients a clear understanding of our approach to unified communications solutions and the capabilities of our systems, so that we can match them to their expectations for their products. We need to understand what they're trying achieve with unified communications to assist them in meeting their objectives.

Since Verizon Business is an IP communications specialist and has capabilities across the board, we can provide VoIP-based inbound and outbound calling, automated calling, unified communications or a hybrid solution depending on the customer and its situation. We work with several different vendors and have significant inventory to find the best match of products and services for the individual client.

FierceVoIP: What do you think will be the driver(s) for growth in the space as we enter 2009?

Mackintosh: I think people are seeing two key benefits in IP communications, and especially unified communications. The first one is the personnel benefit. Efficiency increases with unified communications because there is more control gained over work flow and time management. The second benefit is business applications, and this is not fully recognized yet. As the applications begin to really demonstrate good ROI, I think they are going to really drive growth.

FierceVoIP: Can you think of specific verticals that stand to gain from integrating business applications and unified communications deployments?

Mackintosh: Shipping companies, for instance, can identify problems more easily and stop shipments before they go out with something that's just going to have to be recalled. Keeping one shipment back so that the problem can be identified and remedied would have significant benefit logistically and financially for that company. It's also a mystery to see how much benefit could come from UC deployments to the government sector, especially at the state and local level. The higher education space is also one to watch closely. The challenges we have in both markets is really finding and testing the applications that will make a difference for their employees.

FierceVoIP: What are some roadblocks you have seen to unified communications adoption?

Mackintosh: If the CIO's of the organizations are not intimately aware of the business processes of the rest of the employees, that can cause them not to implement the business applications to full potential. We also want to shift the functionality from a manual process to an automatic one, so that the solution is as easy to use as possible. That really helps bring UC into a business. I think it will be awhile before you see really widespread UC adoption, because it has some stepping stones to get over, such as making all applications IP-based and platform agnostic.

FierceVoIP: Who do you see as Verizon Business's biggest competitor in the space?

Mackintosh: Most of our traditional competitors have an offering they are pitching as a unified communications solution, but when you look at the services, it's really not a full UC product. AT&T, for instance, bought a conferencing company and basically renamed that division as unified communications. BT operates more on a big deal basis, and doesn't integrate as well because Verizon Business has a unique perspective and gives honest advice about which product will work best for the individual customer, since we're not tied to a specific vendor. We are seeing some aggressive expansions by Microsoft, Cisco and Nortel that we're watching closely.

Verizon Business adds managed Cisco UC solution

Doug Mohney — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:22:10 -0400

Verizon Business has unveiled a managed (i.e. hosted) UC & collaboration solution around Cisco's Unified Communications Manager 6.1 platform.

Verizon is the first major U.S.-based service provider to offer Cisco's UCM 6.1 platform to customers around the world. U.S. and many European customers get immediate availability for the offering and an Asia-Pacific launch is scheduled for early next year.

The new platform includes the standard functionality to integrate voice mail, email and IM, as well as unified message (voice and email via one source access), single number access and unified presence to deliver visibility into a user's availability for a phone or IM chat.

Del Monte Foods is the launch/showcase customer for Verizon's UC announcement and has deployed the service across the enterprise with plans to leverage the platform to support the company's internal contact center needs.

For more:
- Read Verizon's release discussing its Cisco hosted UC offering

Verizon Business adds new features to wholesale VoIP

Pete Wylie — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:16:03 -0400

Verizon Business has adding the SIP Gateway Outbound Service to its VoIP wholesale product list. The new addition uses virtual rather than physical trunking to achieve higher transfer and processing speeds, which in turn delivers more calling options, faster service initiation and faster long-distance call processing, says Verizon.

Gary Elliott, senior project manager for the SIP product, said it completed beta testing around a month ago, and customers have already started using the new system.

"SIP Gateway Outbound Service provides scalable and cost-effective solutions to customers moving to SIP or VoIP offerings from TDM services," Elliott said. "The flexibility for the customer in routing traffic with Gateway Outbound is a big positive that makes it competitive in the market."

SIP Gateway Outbound Service allows calls to originate from URI and URL Internet formats, as well as the traditional numbering format. It also offers compatibility with Remote Party ID signaling configuration, in addition to the P-asserted ID signaling configuration, which previous iterations of the SIP client have supported.

Elliott said other companies charge their customers extra to have both configurations accepted, or only support one.

"It's just an example of how we try to do everything to make it easier for customers to get the best possible service for the lowest price," Elliott said. "I think Verizon's offerings just have more bang for your buck than other competitors in the space, and the SIP Gateway Outbound Service is another step in making our product line even more robust."

For more:
- see the Verizon press release about its outbound SIP gateway

Related Articles
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Verizon Business VoIP, UC Expand Across Europe

Verizon Announces VoIP Public Safety Solution

Pete Wylie — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:21:40 -0400

Verizon Business announced it is launching an IP-based platform that links radio, voice, data and wireless networks, enabling them to operate on a single network. The Verizon Communications Interoperability Solution, is designed to resolve the deep-seeded impasse in emergency communications between public safety organizations operating on incompatible networks.

The service will employ Cisco devices and applications to complete the interoperable networks.

While other companies--such as Raytheon--already offer interoperable devices that similarly link diverse communications, Verizon is the first major carrier to implement service and support for such systems. Public safety management is rarely trained to initiate and maintain interoperable networks, so Verizon's considerable national presence will be an attractive element of its pitch to interested public safety organizations.

Verizon will demonstrate the solution this week at the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials' annual conference in Kansas City.

For more:
- Verizon Business announces IP-based public safety interoperabilty solution

Related articles:
Public safety operators test interoperability concerns
Verizon began planning ventures into the public safety market in September 2006

Verizon Business VoIP, UC Expand Across Europe

Doug Mohney — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:52:48 -0400

NXTcomm08, Las Vegas--Verizon Business has announced the expansion of their VoIP and UC offerings across Europe.

The Verizon VoIP portfolio has been extended to Span, Italy, Ireland and Sweden; Verizon now covers 10 countries across Europe. The VoIP expansion allows Verizon to extend its Integrated Communications Package (ICP) to all 10 of those countries and the new offering will include local language support and integration with Verizon Conferencing.

ICP enables corporate employees to more efficiently manage their voice and data communications and includes a single user interface to control incoming and outgoing calls, unified voice mail, IM, contact and calendar syncing, and softphone functionality. Users will also get the ability to manage conference call scheduling and manage presence to initiate Instant Meeting and Net Conference calls by seeing who is available to invite and participate; they can also import conference meeting subscriptions and drag-and-drop conference participants into a meeting schedule.

New web-based audio conferencing tools have replaced the need to download software or plug-ins. Enhancements are available to customers around the world, with versions in French, German and Japanese becoming available later this summer.

For more:
- Verizon Business announces UC expansion across Europe

Related articles:
Verizon unifies biz VoIP
Verizon and Nortel offer hosted VoIP