NEW ORLEANS — March 19, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today opened a sold-out Microsoft Dynamics Convergence 2013 with a keynote address from Microsoft Business Solutions President Kirill Tatarinov featuring Microsoft Dynamics customers Chobani Inc., Habitat for Humanity International, Revlon Inc., Shock Doctor Inc. and Weight Watchers International Inc.
Speaking to more than 11,000 attendees, the largest in conference history, Tatarinov addressed how business leaders can reimagine the way they engage with customers, build brand relevance and collaborate with employees to stay ahead of the changing roles across all levels in business. Observing the increased influence of marketing and other areas of business over a company’s technology investments and the value of collaboration, Tatarinov reinforced the idea that business functions can work more effectively when they unite with their IT counterparts. Tatarinov noted that Microsoft Dynamics is uniquely positioned to serve as a catalyst for unity, and he announced new advancements in integrated marketing, embedded social capabilities, and new cloud and mobile scenarios enabled through Microsoft Dynamics solutions that will help businesses unite with their customers, unite their organizations, and unite their people and technology.
“To realize the promises and possibilities of a world ahead, organizations must be united” Tatarinov said. “Microsoft Dynamics solutions reimagine what’s possible for businesses, helping them unite to unlock innovation and creativity in people and to enable more meaningful experiences for their customers. When a business is truly united, great things happen.”
Revlon, one of the strongest consumer brand franchises in the world and a Microsoft Dynamics customer, brings the concept of unifying IT and business to life. The company is transforming the way people work and collaborate, starting by replacing 21 disparate business systems and 531 point systems with Microsoft Dynamics AX.
“The speed of beauty and glamour is unforgiving,” said David Giambruno, chief information officer of Revlon. “We are in a hypercompetitive market, and Microsoft Dynamics provides our employees with real-time information to access business-critical information virtually anywhere, anytime on almost any device, helping unite them with each other so they can innovate in a collaborative way across product development, manufacturing, sales and marketing.
Unite With Customers
Strengthening relationships by successfully engaging with customers is vital to business growth. Marketing, sales and customer service are essential to effective customer engagement, and the right business solution can unite these various functions. In addition, integrated marketing management has emerged as a critical strategy for companies that want to reach and engage with new customers while differentiating their brands, driving market excellence and making the most of their investments.
To help businesses achieve true integrated marketing, Microsoft announced a new version of the recently acquired MarketingPilot, which features a simplified user experience, a familiar look and feel, and seamlessly works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Through MarketingPilot, marketers get access to a complete marketing automation solution with rich business intelligence, enabling them to successfully plan, track and optimize customer interactions across digital, social and traditional channels. This capability, when combined with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, fulfills the Holy Grail of marketing: omnichannel marketing that enables top-line revenue growth while managing costs and measuring return on marketing investment. The new version of MarketingPilot will be available to customers in the United States in March 2013. Microsoft plans to make MarketingPilot available to additional international markets later this year. More information is available athttps://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/crmconnection/default.aspx.
“Marketing is changing and evolving rapidly, and we need business solutions that help us grow top-line revenue while managing costs. Our marketing needs require us to engage and interact with our customers, while providing technical solutions to efficiently distribute the appropriate information to our dealers to complement and enhance the sales process,” said John Johnston, director, Digital Marketing at Volvo. “We’ve been using Microsoft Dynamics to better align our marketing and sales processes and are constantly developing our solutions to increase our sales potential and personalize our customer interactions.”
Microsoft’s vision is to deliver social monitoring and analytics features as an integral part of the user experience and provide these capabilities to all roles and functions in an organization. To help businesses analyze and act on market intelligence from social conversations, including measuring sentiment across a wide array of social channels, Microsoft today announced an initiative to seamlessly embed social monitoring capabilities across Microsoft Dynamics CRM offerings. This effort has been accelerated with the acquisition of Netbreeze GmbH, which delivers cutting-edge native language analytics combined with data mining, transactional and text analysis capabilities. More information is available athttps://community.dynamics.com/crm/b/crmconnection/default.aspx.
Chobani, maker of America’s No. 1-selling yogurt brand, uses a wide range of Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft Dynamics AX and CRM to keep pace with its aggressive plans for future global growth. The company uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM to communicate and connect with its consumers around the clock.
“As our company grew, so did the volume of messages from consumers across the world. We receive hundreds of contact messages and phone calls daily,” said Maureen Hurley, vice president of information technology at Chobani. “Microsoft Dynamics solutions have enabled us to make that feedback actionable, better track and understand what our customers want, and continue to provide best-in-class service. This has helped us build deeper, more immediate connections with our fans and continue our growth.”
Chobani also recently opened a new domestic manufacturing facility in Twin Falls, Idaho — considered the world’s largest of its kind — and was able to bring it online with Microsoft Dynamics AX in just 27 days.
Unite With Technology
Microsoft today announced a set of new applications for phones and tablets, which will be available with the next update to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Designed to be personal, social and immersive, these mobile applications will provide a more relevant experience based on people’s roles and devices, help them connect with their social networks, and provide an engaging and actionable experience. In addition to the Business Analyzer application, which is currently available in the Windows Marketplace, the company unveiled a new set of application capabilities for mobile usage, targeting the following:
• Expense management. Helps workers both capture and reconcile expenses while traveling, cutting down time and effort — meaning getting money back more quickly; helps organizations implement expense policies more seamlessly
• Time. Captures time on projects “on the go,” simplifying this administrative burden while providing businesses with the opportunity to improve working capital through decreased billing cycle times
• Approvals. Enables managers to approve business requests such as budget requests, time sheets, submitted expense reports and purchase requisition to cut down on administrative task and time spend
These applications will be available for Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets, Windows Phone 8, Android phones, and iOS phone devices.To ensure extensibility and encourage innovation, Microsoft is also releasing documentation for its mobile APIs to help customers and partners build their own mobile applications. Learn more about these new applications athttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/dax.
In addition, Microsoft will deliver a mobile CRM sales application with the next Microsoft Dynamics CRM release in the second half of 2013. Optimized for tablets, this application will help people manage an opportunity from lead to close and easily connect with customers and colleagues, regardless of location. The application brings guided selling to Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets as well as the iPad. Businesses can configure this application, enabling them to tailor the experience to fit their sales processes and approaches.
Microsoft today announced the availability of the Community Technical Preview of the new Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services helping IT professionals simplify the application lifecycle experience. These services help organizations improve predictability of Microsoft Dynamics AX implementations by simplifying and standardizing implementation processes. They also allow them to proactively manage the application and reduce downtime. As an online service, Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services helps minimize an organization’s IT burden. Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 were released in Q4 2012 and were received positively by customers and partners. Enabled for the cloud, these solutions offer customers a complete choice of deployment both in the cloud and on-premises. In addition, these products will be available through partners to customers hosted on Windows Azure in June 2013.
Reaffirming the road map for Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft expects to release updates to Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 in the second half of 2013. In addition to new mobile scenarios for phone and tablet devices, this release will also include capabilities such as warehouse management and transportation management, giving customers a real-time global view of supply chain operations. The company also reaffirmed availability of the next major release of Microsoft Dynamics AX in the cloud on Windows Azure and on-premises with early adoption programs commencing in 2014.
Microsoft Dynamics Momentum
Microsoft announced the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM adoption numbers, with more than 3 million users and more than 39,000 customers. Microsoft Dynamics AX continues on a strong growth path with more than 18,000 customers and an increase of more than 50 percent license growth in North America in the last Microsoft fiscal quarter. Microsoft Dynamics also announced a number of global independent software vendor (ISV) partners supporting Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including Acorn Systems Inc., Bull, Flintfox International Ltd., Dominion, Hitachi Solutions Ltd., Hubwoo and XAPT Corp. These partners join Microsoft’s broad portfolio of other leading global ISVs, which view Microsoft Dynamics as a critical component in helping propel customers become Dynamic Businesses.
More Information
More information about Microsoft’s Dynamic Business vision can be found athttp://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/about.aspx. More information and news from Convergence 2013 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/dynamics. The opening keynote presentation and general session keynote speeches are available on the new virtual event platform for Convergence 2013 at http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/convergence. Those who want to follow and engage with the Microsoft Dynamics Twitter community can do so at @MSFTDynamics and @MSFTConvergence using #CONV13.
About Microsoft Dynamics
At the heart of every successful business are the people who make things happen. Microsoft Dynamics designs modern business solutions that empower individuals with intuitive tools that allow them to do their best work. Our proactive, easy-to-use business applications adapt to the way people and systems work, enabling businesses to rapidly deploy and be forward-looking in an ever-changing world.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.
Software Advancements Enable Customers to Reach up to 70 Percent Greater Efficiencies From Their Existing Collaboration Infrastructure
SAN JOSE, CA--(Mar 19, 2013) - Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced innovations that combine the power of software with the intelligence of the network to drive video collaboration in the enterprise. The software innovations give customers new ways to manage and cost-effectively scale video and increase business-to-business (B2B) communications.
ANNOUNCEMENT HIGHLIGHTS
- Breakthrough software advancements help make collaboration more cost-effective: Cisco is introducing software that recognizes the type and amount of resources (i.e., ports, bandwidth, infrastructure) needed to support a meeting based on the endpoints used, and adjusts automatically. This can help customers get up to 70 percent greater usage of their existing collaboration infrastructure and help scale video in a more cost-effective manner, without impacting the user experience.
- Cisco TelePresence® and Cisco WebEx® developments advance B2B collaboration for millions: Cisco is using software to integrate two market-leading platforms in a way that was previously not possible, providing many users with immediate differences in how they can collaborate. On-premises customers can now extend a meeting invitation to any user outside their organization, to participate in TelePresence and WebEx® meetings via their browser. This new capability extends the reach of TelePresence meetings to external users through a single WebEx link, providing new options for B2B communications in the enterprise. Additionally, through a single interface users can now schedule a combined TelePresence and WebEx meeting and share video and content to any device, including third party video endpoints, mobile phones and tablets.
- Transparency into all video traffic on the network: Cisco is now giving IT managers exceptional transparency into video traffic on the network through new medianet advancements. Cisco TelePresence endpoints and Cisco Jabber™ clients(i) are now shipping with medianet software embedded. As part of the Cisco® medianet architecture, this software automatically synchs endpoints with the network. Additionally, new medianet features enable the network to monitor video traffic from all endpoints, find potential bandwidth or quality issues, and make adjustments to ensure critical video meetings go off without a hitch.
- Expanding cloud video-as-a-service options for partners: Many of Cisco's infrastructure advancements can be utilized by cloud collaboration partners to enhance service offerings. For instance, these partners can now deliver different consumption models that enable users to hold highly secure high quality video meetings without reservations by simply dialing a number and entering an access code. Users can join from a variety of networks and endpoints, from Jabber desktop video clients to standalone telepresence endpoints and immersive room systems.
This announcement comes as IT managers and network operators are looking for the most efficient ways to deploy video on their networks. In fact, according to Cisco's most recent Visual Networking Index, enterprise desktop videoconferencing globally is expected to grow from 36.4 million users in 2011 to 218.9 million users by 2016. These new software innovations from Cisco give organizations the tools needed to easily and cost-effectively scale video across their networks, while delivering a unified collaboration experience for users from any device and any collaboration application, from Jabber® to WebEx to TelePresence.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS
Breakthrough software advancements help make collaboration more cost-effective:
- Increasing network intelligence for optimal collaboration: New software, embedded into Cisco's collaboration infrastructure, including Cisco TelePresence Server and TelePresence Conductor, allows the network to customize how it delivers valuable conferencing resources such as network bandwidth, infrastructure, and video and audio ports for each meeting.
- The network can set aside the precise amount of resources to support both high-definition video to an immersive TelePresence endpoint and standard-definition video to a fixed or mobile endpoint.
- These new capabilities can be extended not only to Cisco's endpoints but also to any standards-compliant video endpoint, from hardware endpoints to software clients, to provide interoperability and increase the value of current and future video investments.
- These software advancements, which are globally available today, enable customers to use their existing collaboration infrastructure more efficiently, without impacting the user experience.
TelePresence and WebEx developments advance B2B collaboration for millions:
- New software innovations are creating a new unified conferencing experience between TelePresence and WebEx that gives users more capabilities and control.
- Video Sharing: In a combined WebEx and TelePresence conference, users will now be able to see video from everyone in the meeting, whether they are joining from a TelePresence endpoint or another standards-based video endpoint, or a WebEx client on a PC or mobile device.
- Content Sharing: Sharing content is a snap. Any user can easily share content from a PC or TelePresence endpoint. The software automatically delivers that data to all meeting participants, whether they are on TelePresence or WebEx on laptops or other mobile clients.
- Scheduling: New features enable users to easily schedule a combined meeting through calendaring tools such as Microsoft Outlook or a browser-based application. The organizer creates one calendar invitation for all conferencing endpoints (i.e., TelePresence, WebEx, Jabber, or personal video endpoints). The network then automatically reserves the needed conferencing resources for the meeting.
- These new features also enable customers to further B2B collaboration by extending conferencing capabilities outside their organization, to third parties including partners, suppliers and customers at no additional cost. The new integrated scheduler enables customers to invite any external user to a combined TelePresence and WebEx meeting simply by sending them a URL to join directly from their browser. These new capabilities are targeted for global availability in 1H CY13.
Transparency into all video traffic on the network:
- Support for new endpoints: Cisco is introducing support for more Cisco collaboration endpoints and infrastructure as part of its medianet architecture. In addition to Cisco WebEx Meetings and Cisco WebEx Meeting Center offerings, TelePresence and Jabber endpoints clients on Windows PCs are now also medianet-enabled.
- Prioritizing and managing video: New medianet features allow the network to automatically identify and prioritize video across the network, by gathering detailed information about each meeting's end users, the type of endpoint they are using and the type of content they are sharing.
- Now, IT managers can configure the network to consistently deliver video to top executives or power users at the highest network priority.
- In addition, these network features allow customers to increase their overall amount of useable bandwidth by improving delivery of video over any available network links.
- These new media monitoring and metadata capabilities, scheduled for global availability March 2013, will help ensure the smoothest possible meeting experience, by adapting to urgent network issues such as bandwidth congestion or interruptions in video traffic.
- Making the core network smarter: Cisco medianet features will also be enabled on the Cisco Catalyst® 6500 Supervisor Engine 2T and the ASR 9000 series, with global availability targeted for March 2013. This advancement will make the core network smarter and able to recognize all types of collaboration traffic down to the details of audio, data and video streams.
Supporting Quotes
Rowan Trollope, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Collaboration
"Our customers are demanding technology that enables employees to work their way, connecting with video inside and outside of their organization. Building on our market-leading hardware and software collaboration solutions, today we're introducing software innovations to help our users scale their hardware endpoints and bring video to more users. We're also driving better B2B collaboration by providing a single integrated experience for users to visually connect with anyone, on any device, inside or outside of their organization."
Gabriele Chiesa, manager, Telecommunication Architecture & Development, eni
"As the largest industrial company in Italy, eni leads oil and gas operations in over 70 countries. Video is critical to helping our employees collaborate and manage these mining and distribution practices globally. We believe the simplified TelePresence and WebEx experience will help us easily extend important meetings outside of our organization to our large community of partners and suppliers. We can improve our B2B communications by scaling our meetings to any user, to participate from their endpoint of choice including a video endpoint, PC, mobile phone or tablet."
Gary Reynolds, network manager, DLA Piper LLP
"As a global law firm, DLA Piper uses video across all offices to help our attorneys better serve their clients. A flawless video experience is a critical part of these meetings. We use Cisco's medianet features to enable the network to automatically monitor DLA Piper's large install base of Telepresence, video and collaboration endpoints. Medianet allows us to easily manage traffic on the network by helping identify and troubleshoot potential network issues that may be impacting users and optimize network capabilities such as QoS."
Will Bordeau, IT administrator, Boxwood Technology, Inc.
"As an online career services company, ensuring our employees have access to reliable phone service cannot be overstated enough. After hosting our IP-PBX in a data center, we needed a way to closely monitor network performance to provide the best possible user experience for collaboration with our customers. Cisco's medianet capabilities, along with the LiveAction network management solution by ActionPacked! Networks, gave us tools to immediately detect bandwidth congestion, isolate the source of potential issues, and resolve issues within minutes. For the first time, we were able to see an exhaustive, end-to-end view of our network."
Andy Dignan, director, Collaboration Solutions, CDW
"CDW uses video every day to collaborate with our customers and provide crucial technical support. Cisco's new software allows us to easily and economically scale video to more users -- simply put, we're able to do more with our current network. By using our existing IT investment more efficiently, we can support more meetings from mobile clients, to immersive TelePresence. Today's announcements from Cisco further enable us to help our customers deploy collaboration and video to their end users. This software-based approach extends B2B collaboration opportunities for our customers, allowing them to quickly connect to users outside of their organization in a single meeting."
Additional Resources:
- Join Cisco Collaboration leaders online as they share a strategy update and demonstrations of these new solutions in the Cisco Collaboration Announcements Webcast on March 19 from 12 to 12:30 p.m. ET (replay available at 4 pm ET). https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/collaboration/collaboration_virtual_experience_2012?event=mar19_2013&CAMPAIGN=Mar19+2013+Collab+Announcementt&COUNTRY_SITE=us&POSITION=PR&REFERRING_SITE=press+promotions&CREATIVE=Mar19+2013+Collab+Announcement+Webcast&KEYCODE=000130546
- Read perspectives on these announcements through blogs by Cisco leaders on the Cisco Collaboration Blog http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/cisco-announces-pervasive-conferencing-solutions/ and The Platform Blog.
Find more information:
- Cisco Pervasive Conferencing http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1229/index.html
- Cisco medianet http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/trends/medianet/index.html
- Hear the latest news and engage with Cisco and your peers daily through the Cisco Collaboration Community https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/collaboration, @CiscoCollab https://twitter.com/ciscocollab on Twitter, and Cisco Collaboration on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/CiscoCollab
Technorati Tags: Cisco, collaboration, medianet, TelePresence, WebEx, Jabber, mobility, video, conferencing, HCS, cloud, AT&T, cloud collaboration, infrastructure
About Cisco Collaboration
From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together network-based, integrated collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions offered across on-premise, cloud-based or virtualized platforms, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation and productivity. They are also designed to help accelerate team performance, protect investments, and simplify the process of finding the right people and information.
About Cisco
Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Cisco Canada Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco, has offices across Canada dedicated to customer support, sales and service. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/canada/.
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Cisco, the Cisco logo and Cisco Systems are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information.
Availability Disclaimer: Many of the products and features described herein remain in varying stages of development and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. This products and features are subject to change at the sole discretion of Cisco, and Cisco will have no liability for delay in the delivery or failure to deliver any of the products or features set forth in this document.
(i) Cisco Jabber for Windows
RSS Feed for Cisco: http://newsroom.cisco.com/rss-feeds
Contact Information
Andrea Berry
StrategicAmpersand Inc. (for Cisco)
416-961-5595, Ext. 428
andberry@cisco.com
Karin Scott
Cisco
416-306-7164
kariscot@cisco.com
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ThinkPad’s T431s ultrabook PC sports new design features, renowned keyboard gets even better
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – March 18, 2013: Lenovo(HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) today announced its new ThinkPad, with design enhancements inspired by the results of an extensive global research project. The ThinkPad T431s is the thinnest T series ever featuring a sleek, innovative trackpad, enhanced keyboard and refined aesthetics.
| PMC Disrupts 100G Economics with Industry’s First OTN Processor Enabling Virtualization of Optical Network Bandwidth for Big Data |
| DIGI 120G Accelerates Deployment of Efficient and Dynamic OTN Networks SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar. 18, 2013-- PMC® (Nasdaq:PMCS), the semiconductor innovator transforming networks that connect, move and store big data, announced today the introduction of PM5440 DIGI120G, the industry’s only single-chip OTN processor supporting 10G, 40G and 100G speeds for OTN transport, aggregation and switched deployments. DIGI 120G allows for the efficient sharing and dynamic assignment of network resources, enabling OTN networks to effectively virtualize optical network bandwidth to meet the elastic traffic demands of Big Data. This unprecedented level of silicon integration facilitates the most cost effective designs, engineering efficiency, and lowest power approach to OTN system solutions. Optical transport networks play a critical role in providing the interconnect infrastructure required to efficiently and reliably deliver cloud-based services. Continued growth in mobile data traffic and the projected 3X growth in datacenter driven WAN traffic1 are the catalysts behind industry’s need for 100G connectivity to aggregate the increasing deployment of 10G ports from the metro edge. To unlock the full value of 100G networks, service providers are architecting their transport infrastructure to enable dynamic bandwidth allocation with granularity from 100Gbps down to 1Gbps, without interruption to network traffic, in order to ‘virtualize’ the optical network bandwidth. OTN allows for flexible aggregation and switching from 1G to 100G With today’s networks dominated by 1G & 10G services, traditional point-to-point OTN transponders do not efficiently map these service rates to 100G due to a lack of OTN multiplexing granularity to 1Gbps. PMC’s new DIGI120G supports OTN Transport, OTN aggregation and OTN switching. Multiservice OTN muxponders and OTN switching cards using DIGI 120G will enable efficient aggregation and grooming of lower speed services into 100G. As the industry’s first OTN processor to support on-demand re-sizing of ODUflex from 1G to 100G, as well as 10G, 40G and 100G speeds, DIGI 120G allows OEMs to deliver a full suite of multiservice OTN switched cards for Packet Optical Transport Platforms (P-OTP) and muxponders for ROADMs. Numerous configurations are supported, including 12 ports at 10Gbps, 3 ports at 40Gbps or 1 port at 100Gbps. DIGI 120G’s unique single-chip architecture allows OEMs to leverage a common hardware and software investment to rapidly build-out a portfolio of line cards, translating into the lowest bill of material, lowest power, and fastest time-to-market. “Explosive packet traffic growth projected from cloud services, residential broadband, and mobile backhaul is driving China Mobile to invest in scaling up our optical transport network to support 100G,” said Bill Huang, General Manager of China Mobile Research Institute. “To maximize our 100G investment, we need OTN solutions from the 100G ecosystem that allow us to manage the optical bandwidth efficiently so we can economically deploy 100G and OTN switching on a wide scale.” DIGI 120G Delivers Industry-Leading Innovations Reducing line card power and bill-of-material by more than fifty percent, DIGI 120G stands uniquely differentiated as:
“The optical transport network infrastructure needed to support Big Data requires efficient sharing and dynamic allocation of the optical network bandwidth,” said Babak Samimi, vice president of marketing and applications for PMC's Communications Business Unit. “Our DIGI 120G brings innovations that disrupt the economics of 100G by responding to the industry’s need to move towards dynamically configurable optical transport networks for delivering cloud services.” Availability The PM5440 DIGI 120G along with the lower port density PM5441 DIGI 60G are available now. For more information, visit http://pmcs.com/products/optical_network/otn or contact PMC sales at http://pmcs.com/contact. About PMC PMC (Nasdaq: PMCS) is the semiconductor innovator transforming networks that connect, move and store big data. Building on a track record of technology leadership, the company is driving innovation across storage, optical and mobile networks. PMC’s highly integrated solutions increase performance and enable next-generation services to accelerate the network transformation. For more information visit www.pmcs.com. Follow PMC onFacebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and RSS. © Copyright PMC-Sierra, Inc. 2013. All rights reserved. PMC and PMC-SIERRA are registered trademarks of PMC-Sierra, Inc. in the United States and other countries, PMCS is a trademark of PMC-Sierra, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners. PMC is the corporate brand ofPMC-Sierra, Inc. 1 Cisco Cloud Index 2012 Source: PMC-Sierra, Inc. PMC |
· New Cloud Service Provider offers make it easy to deploy Unified Communications, Contact Center and Video as a Service to their customers
· Unique Unified Communications and Contact Center as a Service (UCaaS, CCaaS) utility-based pricing allows CSPs to pay only for what customers are using
· New Private Cloud offer for contact centers up to 500 agents can be hosted and branded by CSPs or Avaya
Santa Clara, CA – Monday, March 18, 2013 – Avaya today announced additions to the Avaya Collaborative Cloud with new offers specifically designed for cloud service providers (CSPs) that allow them to brand and deliver Avaya’s market-leading unified communications, contact center and video solutions. These comprehensive offers for CSPs feature flexible choices and pricing models, enabling them to build new revenue streams by delivering open, mobile collaboration and multichannel customer service to their enterprise customers.
The new offers add to Avaya’s rich cloud-enabling capabilities, allowing CSPs to address the requirements of enterprises worldwide looking for an operational expense (opex) approach to communications and collaboration application and solution enablement. By offering Avaya Collaborative Cloud solutions, CSPs help organizations improve business agility, and optimize budgets and resources. Enterprises can off-load the challenges of managing BYOD environments, widely dispersed workforces and the shifting demands of end-customers. The new offers enable CSPs to evolve and augment enterprise communications with cloud-based solutions as well as provide greater interoperability across vendors, domains and protocols.
The new and expanded offers for CSPs:
· Avaya Cloud Enablement for Unified Communications and Customer Experience Management is uniquely highlighted by the flexible, utility-based, opex pricing for CSPs that allows them to pay only for customer usage, enabling them to better accommodate the dynamic needs of their customers. Avaya Control Manager enables multi-tenancy with an easy to use centralized management and administrative segmentation tool. Avaya Cloud Enablement for Unified Communications and Customer Experience Management is delivered on a single, open scalable architecture based on Avaya Aura® to lower cost and simplify service provider environments.
· Avaya Cloud Enablement for Video provides CSPs with a highly scalable open platform that delivers interoperable multi-vendor video collaboration. Recent enhancements to the Elite Series MCUs, Scopia Mobile and Scopia Desktop bring new value to this VaaS solution by increasing scalability and extending BYOD videoconferencing across nearly any endpoint. With fast, easy deployment, Cloud Enablement for Video delivers out of the box multi-tenancy capabilities and customization of the Scopia mobile application by tenant/organization.
· Avaya Communications Outsourcing Solutions (COS) Express is a standardized private cloud offer that can be hosted by Avaya, a CSP or channel partner for the end customer. Service providers and channel partners can elect to sell the solution as an Avaya- or co-branded offer. The first edition of COS Express focuses on contact center deployments for businesses with up to 500 concurrent agents.
Avaya Collaborative Cloud includes a variety of solutions that enable customers and partners to build, manage, enable and deliver Avaya solutions through cloud-based delivery models. Avaya Collaborative Cloud solutions also include: Avaya Collaboration Pods, a portfolio of cloud-ready, turnkey solutions that simplify installation and operations of real-time applications; and the AvayaLive® suite of unique, public cloud-based communications and collaboration services.
Quotes:
“Verizon and Avaya continue to collaborate to develop communications and collaboration solutions to help federal agencies keep pace with technology advancements, reduce complexity and boost employee productivity. By leveraging our complementary strengths to enable federal agencies to adopt flexible IT consumption models, Verizon and Avaya will deliver advanced solutions that meet the functionality and cost efficiency requirements of our federal clients”
-- Steve Lefrancois, chief technology officer – public sector markets, Verizon Enterprise Solutions
“We are excited to release the next version of Cirque Business One®, our UC-as-a-Service offer delivering what we call ‘collaboration made effortless.’ Built on Avaya technology, Business One provides all the tools and services packaged into one integrated solution where our users get rich cloud-based communications anytime, anywhere, on any device. By working with Avaya, we can deliver reliable and market-leading unified communications for the Danish and French market.”
--Mads Fosselius, COO, Cirque
“With Avaya Collaborative Cloud, cloud service providers can offer a differentiated UC, contact center or video solution to enterprises. Avaya’s highly flexible pricing and options for hosting and branding, along with the known quality of Avaya solutions present a compelling, revenue-generating opportunity for CSPs to adopt and extend Avaya Collaborative Cloud offers to their business customers.”
--Joel Hackney, SVP and general manager, Cloud Solutions, Avaya
Additional Resources
Chunghwa Telecom Adopts Radvision Scopia to Provide Video as a Service to Taiwan Enterprises
Tags: Avaya, unified communications, contact center, collaboration, cloud, video, service providers, UCaaS, CCaaS, managed services, hosted services, Avaya Aura, Scopia
About Avaya
Avaya is a global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions, providing unified communications, contact centers, networking and related services to companies of all sizes around the world. For more information please visit www.avaya.com.
STAMFORD, Conn., March 18, 2013
As BlackBerry’s BlackBerry 10 (BB10) device becomes available in the U.S. this week, Gartner analysts said enterprises must determine user demand, address bring your own device (BYOD) support, forecast the health of the BlackBerry business and decide whether to upgrade the BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES).
Van Baker, Gartner research vice president, has examined some of the issues BlackBerry will face in the enterprise market in the report, “BlackBerry's BB10 Creates Mobile Adoption Decisions for the Enterprise”. Below is his commentary in today’s analyst blog post:
Although BB10 presents a modernized new platform based on touch technology, market conditions will make it extremely difficult for BlackBerry to rise above iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 platforms. In fact, Gartner predicts that through 2016, BlackBerry will achieve less than 5 percent worldwide smartphone market share.
Gartner has identified three key impacts and recommendations for organizations to consider:
BlackBerry's BB10 device presents a modernized new platform based on touch technology not only to its dedicated development community but to lure new application developers.
The question is whether the new platform is sufficient to motivate the buyer to choose BlackBerry over the platforms they know. It comes down to how effective BlackBerry's marketing will be, and how much money they can spend to excite the user in favor of a BB10 device. That challenge will be daunting, but at least BlackBerry has made a reasonable attempt with a competitive platform, and it will get its chance to prove to both end users and developers that it has an attractive platform. Gartner recommends that enterprises trial BB10 products and familiarize themselves with the offering whether or not they intend to deploy or support.
Market conditions will make it extremely difficult for BlackBerry to rise above iOS, Android and Windows 8 platforms. Success in the consumer market is necessary to ensure long-term viability in business markets.
BlackBerry's major market is the consumer buyer, so while BlackBerry possesses a strong enterprise brand, a resurgence within that market will not rectify BlackBerry's financial position. Gartner recommends that organizations considering BES10 for a mobile device management (MDM) solution to support multiple devices should wait six months until it is clear that BB10 has proven successful in the consumer market. It is important to wait to make any moves toward full support of BB10 devices until the market makes a clear statement on BB10's success (or lack thereof).
BlackBerry has not opened management API support to popular MDM tools. This will limit the appeal of BB10 devices for those enterprises that manage smartphones through cross-platform MDM tools.
Many enterprises are enhancing their MDM tools as they deepen the applications deployed on mobile devices and want stronger security. When additional policies, containers or enterprise application stores are required, an enterprise must select an MDM tool. Today, the only strong MDM solution for BB10 devices is BES10. While BES10 supports iOS and Android devices, it does so using policy manager features and not the container strategy it offers for BB10 devices, nor does BlackBerry offer the same policies on BB10 devices. We recommend that BlackBerry work to support alternative MDM tools by opening up additional MDM APIs. That would provide both Microsoft's Exchange Active Sync and the MDM camps with an easier path to support BB10 devices even if it is only through a BYOD program.
Additional analysis can be found in the Gartner report “BlackBerry's BB10 Creates Mobile Adoption Decisions for the Enterprise” on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2351820.
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Teri Whitaker | Danielle Tarp
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New Samsung GALAXY S 4 Can Easily Print Documents, Photos and Web Pages Directly to HP Printers
PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwire - Mar 14, 2013) - HP (NYSE: HPQ) today unveiled a new print offering built within select Samsung devices to provide users an easy way to print directly to more than 180 HP network printer models across the HP inkjet and HP LaserJet portfolios.
The collaboration demonstrates HP's continued investment and leadership in the mobile printing space by satisfying a common need for today's mobile user -- on-demand, customized printing from virtually anywhere.
Different from current mobile printing apps on the market, the new embedded solution from HP and Samsung requires no setup, tools, drivers or network configurations to adjust on the phone, making mobile printing effortless and convenient. In addition, the print offering is one of the only solutions to offer sophisticated printer settings and options that include duplex printing, color, orientation and paper type. By offering these capabilities and much more, this new mobile print enablement will make printing on the go easier, saving time for the mobile worker and beyond.
Print functionality will be supported with the upcoming release of the Samsung GALAXY S 4 and will be available later this year as a firmware upgrade to the Samsung GALAXY S III and Note II, enabling built-in, wireless printing compatibility.
Users can print in two ways: by automatically connecting their Samsung mobile device and HP printer on the same local network via Wi-Fi, or by using HP technology via wireless direct print.(1)
"Customers continue to look for ways to print from their smartphones and tablets," said Stephen Nigro, senior vice president, Inkjet and Printing Solutions and Graphics Solutions Business, Printing and Personal Systems Group, HP. "This partnership with Samsung is the latest example of how HP is making it easy to print what you want from wherever you are."
The Samsung print solution is HP's latest feature for its mobile print portfolio that also includes HP ePrint.
The built-in print solution works in three simple steps: choose a document, photo or web page(2); select a printer (either on Wi-Fi or directly); and hit print. The embedded solution also offers additional, convenient print options for the user, including number of copies, paper size, orientation, paper type, color mode, double-sided printing and job completion status.
Availability and support
The print solution is compatible with nearly 200 HP printer models across the HP inkjet and HP LaserJet printer portfolios.(3)
The built-in print button will be available on many applications of the Samsung mobile devices, including: Email Client, Android Browser, Photo Gallery, Contacts, S Note and Polaris Office.
About HP
HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world's largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP is available at http://www.hp.com.
(1) Available on select models.
(2) Printable file formats include JPG, PNG, HTML, PDF and MS Office.
(3) Includes HP Deskjet, HP ENVY, HP Photosmart, HP Officejet, HP Officejet Pro, HP LaserJet Pro, HP Color LaserJet Pro, HP LaserJet Enterprise and HP Color LaserJet Enterprise.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance, market share or competitive performance relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the competitive pressures faced by HP's businesses; the development and transition of new products and services and the enhancement of existing products and services to meet customer needs and respond to emerging technological trends; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its customers, suppliers and partners; the protection of HP's intellectual property assets, including intellectual property licensed from third parties; integration and other risks associated with business combination and investment transactions; the hiring and retention of key employees; assumptions related to pension and other post-retirement costs and retirement programs; the execution, timing and results of restructuring plans, including estimates and assumptions related to the cost and the anticipated benefits of implementing those plans; the resolution of pending investigations, claims and disputes; and other risks that are described in HP's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including HP's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2012. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.
© 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.