VoiceCon Reflects Industry Shift as IP Telephony Moves into the Mainstream; Looks Ahead to August Event in San Francisco

Leading Industry Vendors Use VoiceCon Spring as Platform for Announcing Market-changing Products and Services

PRNewswire
SAN FRANCISCO
May 16, 2007

Having recently concluded the largest event in its 17-year history, VoiceCon, produced by CMP Technology, now turns to its annual fall event, renamed VoiceCon San Francisco, where the industry will once again focus on VoiceCon for insight into the future of business IP communications. VoiceCon San Francisco 2007 will be returning to the Moscone West Convention Center, August 20-23, and registration is now open at www.voicecon.com.

"At VoiceCon Spring 2007, the enterprise communications industry took a giant step forward, and began migrating from a hardware-centric to a software/services-centric model. This market evolution will be a major focus at VoiceCon San Francisco 2007," said Fred Knight, VoiceCon General Manager. "This trend is already visible as enterprises are leveraging IP Telephony for Unified Communications and improvements in business processes in new ways."

VoiceCon presents the most comprehensive exhibition in enterprise communications, and is the only place where all the enterprise equipment, service and software suppliers are gathered under one roof. Among the vendors that will exhibit at VoiceCon San Francisco are VoiceCon Diamond Sponsor Avaya, along with Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, Blackberry, Ericsson, Extreme Networks, Foundry Networks, Motorola, Nokia, ShoreTel, Siemens, Toshiba and Verizon Business. The VoiceCon Exhibition provides attendees with an unmatched opportunity to address their needs in enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and Unified Communications.

"The enterprise VoIP industry is rapidly evolving from voice to one that includes messaging, applications, mobility and soon, many emerging consumer technologies," said Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President, Yankee Group. "VoiceCon is reflecting this radical change, appealing to not only telecom and network managers, but expanding to a broader following that has appeal all the way up the IT stack to C-level relevancy."

At VoiceCon Spring 2007, major industry vendors outlined their Unified Communications and VoIP initiatives with product announcements, revealing several market-changing developments in IP Telephony, Converged Networks and Unified Communications, including:

  -- Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft Business Division predicted onstage
     that by 2010 more than 100 million people will be able to make phone
     calls from Microsoft Office system applications. In the same timeframe,
     a VoIP network will cost half of what it does today. Microsoft also
     launched the public beta of its new VoIP system.
  -- Avaya launched its Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP),
     allowing communication-centric Web services to be triggered
     automatically.
  -- Cisco Systems and IBM announced a partnership to further the cause of
     richer collaboration with the launch of the UC2 platform for
     third-party developers, built on top of its Lotus Sametime and Notes
     products.
  -- Extreme Networks released the Handset Provisioning Module and Universal
     Port software that allow the network to automatically discover and
     configure phones and provision customer network resources as devices
     come onto the network.
  -- Nortel introduced new Ethernet routing switches for enterprises
     migrating to VoIP and advanced Unified Communications, allowing
     enterprise local area networks to prioritize real-time video and
     multimedia services.
  -- Clarus Systems announced Clarus Certification Services, new consulting
     services to help customers ensure top performance and ROI from their IP
     Telephony systems.
  -- Tandberg announced Entrypoint, a system that allows any videoconference
     user to connect to a conference via one main number and URL and access
     information over a video menu system, which lists available resources.
  -- Adomo Inc. announced the latest generation of its advanced messaging
     solution, Adomo 6.0, which builds on the vendor's enterprise messaging
     solution to give users Unified Communications capabilities and offer IT
     an easy migration approach for integrating with their existing
     infrastructure.
  -- NEC announced the new UNIVERGE Mobile Client, which provides
     capabilities such as IM, presence management, click to call, call
     screening, access to corporate directories, etc. from mobile devices
     and smartphones.
  -- Citel released the Portico Telephone VoIP Adapter (TVA), which lets
     enterprises convert existing PBX phones into IP phones over existing
     wiring infrastructure, eliminating the need to rip and replace.
  -- LiteScape Technologies Inc. made available the OnCast Communications
     Client, an open source desktop client that unifies access to different
     business applications and data sources with IP-based communications
     systems.
  -- Ericsson announced its Enterprise Mobility Gateway that enables mobile
     devices to fully integrate with the corporate communications network,
     on 2G/3G mobile devices as well as dual-mode mobile/Wi-Fi devices.
  -- Adtran announced that Verizon Business is adding Adtran's NetVanta
     Ethernet switches and Total Access 900 Multiservice Access Gateways
     (MSAG) to its list of certified VoIP customer premises equipment (CPE)
     for its VoIP services.

VoiceCon San Francisco 2007 continues the VoiceCon heritage of delivering in-depth technical sessions, prominent speakers and strategy discussions, attracting high-level enterprise decision makers to review the latest products, and to meet and network with potential partners, consultants and analysts. For 17 years, VoiceCon has delivered practical, forward-thinking, objective information and education focused on products, services, management and market trends focused on enterprise voice, IP Telephony and Converged Networks.

About VoiceCon®

VoiceCon® is the leading conference and exhibition for enterprise IP Telephony, convergence and Unified Communications in North America. VoiceCon® brings enterprise decision makers together with the industry's vendors, analysts and consultants to focus on the issues central to enterprise networks and communications. As the momentum toward IP telephony and convergence has grown, VoiceCon has expanded to include two yearly shows: VoiceCon San Francisco 2007, returning to the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco, August 20-23, and VoiceCon Orlando 2008, set for March 17-20 at the Gaylord Palms Hotel. The VoiceCon portfolio also includes the VoiceCon Implementation Tour, which will take place in Fall 2007 in New York, Anaheim, Toronto, San Francisco and Chicago. VoiceCon also serves the community with a weekly email newsletter that is circulated to approximately 28,000 subscribers -- VoiceCon eNews (www.voicecon.com/enews); VoIP Loop (www.voiploop.com ), a news, information and opinion site that features thought leaders in VoIP and enterprise IP Telephony and convergence; and the VoiceCon Webinar Series. For more information, visit www.voicecon.com.

About CMP Technology

CMP Technology (http://www.cmp.com/) is a marketing solutions company serving the technology industry. Through its market-leading portfolio of trusted information brands, CMP has earned the confidence of more technology professionals than any other media company. As a result, CMP is the premier provider of access, insight and actionable programs designed to connect sellers and buyers in ways that yield superior return on investment. CMP Technology is a subsidiary of United Business Media (http://www.unitedbusinessmedia.com/), a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion.

FCMN Contact: LArancibia@cmp.com

SOURCE: CMP Technology

CONTACT: Ben Stricker of Stricker Communications, +1-510-435-6259, or
ben.stricker@gmail.com, for CMP Technology

Web site: http://www.cmp.com/
http://www.voicecon.com/