Today's Top Stories
1. HP's current board survives row over Autonomy purchase
2. Enterprises are adopting WebRTC 'as fast as it is coming out,' says Thrupoint
3. Data traffic explosion drives demand for networking equipment, applications
4. Cisco exec predicts 50 billion connected devices by 2020
5. Blackstone Group mulls counterbid for Dell Editor's Corner: Will WebRTC be delayed by Microsoft? Also Noted: Yorktel
Spotlight On... AT&T adding Microsoft Lync to its enterprise UC offering
Oracle gazes into the cloud; Specialty UC middleware needed and much more...
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Will WebRTC be delayed by Microsoft?
ORLANDO, Fla.-- The topic of WebRTC emerged over and over again at EnterpriseConnect this week. The conference kicked off on Monday with a full day of WebRTC panels, billed as a "conference-within-a-conference." This was the first year that the topic of WebRTC justified having a separate track at the conference, which also had tracks on the usual suspects: unified communications, SIP trunking, cloud, contact center, converged networks, mobility, social apps and, of course, video. WebRTC offers web application developers the ability to write multimedia applications, such as video chat, on the Web using Javascript application programming interfaces. WebRTC enables voice and video calling through browsers without the need to worry about using a proprietary client, codec capability or other bothersome interoperability issues. WebRTC's long-term purpose is to build a real-time communications (RTC) platform that works across multiple Web browsers and platforms. Potential enterprise uses for WebRTC include employee-to-employee communications, such as a unified communications client, and customer service, such as voice and video collaboration in the contact center, explained Val Matula, senior director of multimedia research at Avaya (see related story). The tone on WebRTC discussion was set early on when the Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) representative on a panel entitled "WebRTC and the Enterprise" stressed that the WebRTC standardization issue was a long way from being solved. Albert Kooiman, senior product marketing manager in the Enterprise Product Marketing Group at Microsoft's Skype division, said that until standardization is sorted out, Internet Explorer (IE) would not support WebRTC... Continued  Read more
Read more about: Unified Communications, webrtc
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* General ad info: Click here | Today's Top News 1. HP's current board survives row over Autonomy purchase
After a contentious annual shareholders meeting, HP's (NYSE: HPQ) current board won re-election on Wednesday evening, but some board members barely received a majority vote, according to a report by the New York Times. Meg Whitman, HP's current CEO, received a vote of confidence with 90 percent plus shareholder support. But board members who were involved in the controversial $11 billion acquisition of the big data analytics firm Autonomy in 2011 barely squeaked by. Board members who received less than 60 percent of the shareholder vote were John Hammergren, chairman and CEO of McKesson, G. Kennedy Thompson, the former CEO of Wachovia, and Raymond Lane, the board's chairman. Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley investor who had a significant role in the Autonomy acquisition, received 70 percent of the vote. Two shareholder advisory services--ISS Proxy Advisory Services and Glass Lewis--as well as institutional investors New York City Pension Funds and the Change to Win Investment Group opposed the reelection of long-serving board members Hammergren and Thompson, according to the Wall Street Journal. Their ire was focused on the appointment of the previous CEO, Leo Apotheker, and the acquisition of Autonomy that he oversaw, as well as the $8.8 billion accounting charge that HP took last year as a result. "They are the two directors we think are the most culpable. They are the longest-serving and they have repeatedly failed to serve the interests of shareholders," Mike Garland, an assistant comptroller in New York City in charge of corporate governance issue, told the Journal. In the fourth quarter of its fiscal year 2012, HP reported a $6.9 billion net loss as a result of the $8.8 billion impairment charge related to the Autonomy acquisition. HP blamed the charge on financial irregularities at Autonomy prior to its acquisition by HP, while Autonomy founder Mike Lynch blamed it on mismanagement after the acquisition. The two sides continued their war of words this week prior to the annual meeting. On Wednesday, Lynch sent an open letter to HP's board, demanding that it provide evidence of the financial irregularities allegations and details about the $8.8 billion charge. "We refuse to be a scapegoat for HP's own failings," the Journal quoted the letter as saying. HP responded in a statement: "We have handed over our information of serious misrepresentations in Autonomy's accounting to the proper authorities, namely the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] and the Department of Justice and in the U.K. the Serious Fraud Office. We continue to cooperate and provide requested information to the relevant authorities on an ongoing basis." For now, the HP board led by Whitman has survived, but the board members are on a short shareholder leash. Whitman and her board will need to turn the company around in the near term or start looking for another job. For more:
- see the New York Times report
- read the Wall Street Journal article Related articles:
HP mulls asset sales in aftermath of Autonomy debacle
Big data analytics firm puts HP in big financial hole Read more about: HP
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2. Enterprises are adopting WebRTC 'as fast as it is coming out,' says Thrupoint
ORLANDO, Fla.-- Enterprises are adopting WebRTC "as fast as it is coming out," David Jodoin, chief innovation officer at Thrupoint, told an audience Monday at EnterpriseConnect 2013. Jodoin predicted that WebRTC would be "transformational" for enterprise communications. Thrupoint provides an "on-ramp" for WebRTC for enterprise infrastructure to communicate with vendors such as Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), Avaya and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). "We build WebRTC solutions that allow you to use your existing infrastructure," Jodoin explained. WebRTC has a range of enterprises uses that fall into two broad categories--employee-to-employee communication and customer service--explained Val Matula, senior director of multimedia research at Avaya. One possible use is as a unified communications client, enabling audio and video collaboration either to an enterprise server or a cloud-based server, Matula explained. One-touch video is another enterprise use of WebRTC--"the idea that you can send an email to someone and at the bottom say 'click here and connect with me,'" he said. Yet another enterprise use of WebRTC is videoconferencing. On the customer service side, WebRTC can be used for web assistance, such as voice and video collaboration between the customer service representative and the customers. Matula stressed that the nature of the collaboration will depend on the type of service being discussed. For healthcare issues, video and voice might be needed, while for retail voice might be sufficient. Jim Donovan, vice president of enterprise product management at Acme Packet (Nasdaq: APKT), predicted that WebRTC will "revolutionize" unified communications and collaboration. At the same time, WebRTC "needs to work with the existing investment by enterprises… All of a sudden a new access framework comes along; we are not expecting you to go back and upgrade your SIP infrastructure just so it will work with WebRTC," he stressed. WebRTC provides enterprises a "potential solution for providing unified communications on any device with a WebRTC-compatible browser," Donovan related. "It provides enterprises the ability to run UC applications independent of the UC vendor… It doesn't require any UC client plug-in or download," he added. Cullen Jennings, distinguished engineer with Cisco, told a session earlier in the day that WebRTC enables real-time data between browsers and is interoperable with existing voice and video systems. But Albert Kooiman, senior product marketing manager in the Enterprise Product Marketing Group at Microsoft's Skype division, threw some cold water on the panel's enthusiasm for WebRTC. Kooiman disputed the claim that WebRTC is interoperable with existing systems. He stressed that the standardization issue is a problem that has yet to be solved. For WebRTC in the enterprise, the "key element is that you need to be interoperable with all that is out there. That is the big caveat we have with all of the standardization efforts that are going on around WebRTC. The stuff that is out there is either not documented well or is based on principles that are not working with the existing legacy installed base," warned Kooiman. Related articles:
Enterprise Connect includes WebRTC as major theme for first time
WebRT interoperability built into Chrome, Firefox Read more about: webrtc
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3. Data traffic explosion drives demand for networking equipment, applications
ORLANDO, Fla.-- The explosion in data traffic generated by unified communications and other applications is benefiting firms that supply networking equipment and applications to enterprises. Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO) estimates that by 2016 there will be 6.6 zettabytes of global data traffic. One of the firms benefiting from that traffic is IP communications provider GENBAND, which supplies session border controllers (SBCs) and other products to enterprises. The "jump in data traffic is being driven by multimedia communications traffic. That impacts all of our solutions," explained Sanjay Bhatia, senior director of product marketing at GENBAND. "Our SBCs provide security across network borders, from the network to the access side and into the enterprise, as well as network-to-network security," Bhatia told FierceEnterpriseCommunications. The latest example is an agreement that GENBAND announced this week with Sigue, a global money transfer company, to supply its QUANTiX SBCs for SIP trunking capabilities in Sigue's backup data center. "GENBAND's advanced enterprise SBC solution fortifies our call center by providing us with a cost-effective way to establish redundant, highly available SIP trunking capabilities to CenturyLink. Additionally, GENBAND's technical support staff, leveraging its deep carrier expertise and working in close collaboration with our partner Intelli-Flex, completed the installation in a very short timeframe,"said Ignacio Ramirez, director of technology services for Sigue. Intelli-Flex manages enterprise implementation from the Sigue call center to CenturyLink (Nasdaq: CMCSA). Sigue is "taking our solution to market across a number of different enterprises that they serve today. That is a big win for our SMART EDGE solutions and our QUANTiX product line with the SIP trunking solution set," said Bhatia. QUANTiX is part of GENBAND's SMART EDGE products that enable interconnection, roaming and improved performance across real-time, interactive data communications. "We are able to provide end-to-end security for UC or hosted solutions. For SIP trunking we can provide SBCs for different scales not only to address different locations within the enterprise, such as branch offices, and be able to link those branch offices with the headquarters, but also to link those back to the edge of the service provider's network," Bhatia said. In addition, GENBAND announced that Arrow Electronics has become the first value-added reseller to take its white label cloud-based UC NUViA product to market. "The Arrow agreement is a validation of our white label branded cloud strategy," said Joe McGarvey, director of analyst relations with GENBAND. "Arrow is making NUViA its flagship cloud UC offering to mid-market businesses" under the SynapS3 ucCLOUD brand, he told FierceEnterpriseCommunications. "Arrow is addressing multiple market segments: the traditional PBX, the UC market, and vertical solutions," added Bhatia. For more:
- see GENBAND's Sigue and Arrow Electronics releases Related articles:
Spotlight: GENBAND launches first cloud-based UC product
Avaya's large enterprise customers get roadmap to advanced UC migration Read more about: sip trunking, cloud-based UC
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4. Cisco exec predicts 50 billion connected devices by 2020
ORLANDO, Fla.-- There will be 50 billion connected devices by 2020, generating $14.4 trillion in value, said Robert Lloyd, president of development and sales at Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), here at Enterprise Connect Orlando 2013. Lloyd broke down the $14.4 trillion figure as follows: $2.5 trillion in improved asset utilization, $2.5 trillion in employee productivity enhancement, $2.7 trillion in supply chain savings, $3.7 trillion in customer experience value and $3 trillion in innovation. Lloyd also announced the introduction of new enterprise collaboration tools that combine software and network intelligence to improve videoconferencing. During a demo of one of the new products, WebEx-enabled TelePresence, the connection with the other participants failed, highlighting the difficulty enterprises encounter when trying to deploy new video collaboration technology. With WebEx-enabled TelePresence, on-premise customers can theoretically extend a meeting invitation to outside users to participate in TelePresence and WebEx meetings using their browser and a WebEx link. In addition, Cisco launched new software that enables enterprises to monitor the type and amount of resources, such as ports, bandwidth and infrastructure, that are needed to support a videoconference and adjusts resources automatically. "We allow enterprise customers to use their existing video collaboration hardware and infrastructure… to add new systems, such as video-enabled IP phones and mobile client tablets, in a seamless and cost effective way. We are also using network intelligence to be more prescriptive in how we allocate resources across different devices," explained Thomas Wyatt, vice president and general manager of Cisco's collaboration infrastructure business unit. "By enabling TelePresence as part of the WebEx software, we can extend the video experience to anybody with any type of video endpoint, whether it is mobile device, telepresence room or IP phone. Anyone with a browser can now have two-way video capability," Wyatt told FierceEnterpriseCommunications. In addition, Cisco is expanding its medianet architecture to TelePresence endpoints and Jabber clients. Medianet provides IT managers with visibility into video traffic on the network and automatically syncs endpoints with the network. "The IT administrators who run these networks are focused on how they get more precision in their hands to be able to manage and control the video flow through the network. Our medianet architecture is about enabling applications to interact with the underlying network infrastructure and optimizing the network for video delivery," Wyatt explained. Finally, Cisco is expanding its cloud video-as-a-service products for its partners. For example, partners can deliver different consumption models that enable users to hold secure video meetings without reservations by 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. "We are launching a virtual meeting room concept that allows these partners to run an impromptu meeting in the cloud," Wyatt explained. "People are moving away from scheduled meetings and want the ability to rendezvous at any point in time and have a quick call." For more:
- see Cisco's release Related articles:
Cisco CMO dumps $2.7 million in company stock this year
Cisco's stock gets bump due to Wall Street optimism Read more about: Cisco
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5. Blackstone Group mulls counterbid for Dell
Blackstone Group is considering a counterbid to Michael Dell's $24.4 billion offer to acquire the struggling computer maker he founded, according to a report by Bloomberg. The "go-shop" period for alternative bids to be submitted to a special committee set up by Dell's board of directors ends on Friday. Blackstone, a significant shareholder in Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), may bid with other investors, sources familiar with the situation told Bloomberg. Blackstone is joining other skeptics of the bid by Michael Dell, Silver Lake and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) to pay $13.65 per share for the computer maker. Buyout skeptics Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management, which holds an 8.4 percent stake in Dell, as well as investors HP (NYSE: HPQ) and Lenovo, have all signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with Dell in exchange for access to the firm's books. Before signing the NDA, Icahn, who recently acquired up to a 6 percent stake in Dell, said Michael Dell's offer significantly undervalued the company and made a counterproposal in which the company would issue a special dividend of $9 per share. This would give shareholders a total value of $22.81 per share in a transaction known as a leveraged recapitalization. Angelo Zino, an analyst with Standard & Poor's, told Bloomberg that Michael Dell's investor group will have to "revisit" their $13.65 per share offer and bump that up to as high as $15 per share. Based on a survey of at least five analysts, Bloomberg predicted that the bid would go as high as $15 per share. At that price, Dell would be going private at 5.4 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, the lowest multiple for a tech buyout larger than $1 billion, according to Bloomberg data. Independent financial trader Dan McMurtrie said in a Seeking Alpha blog post that he believes Michael Dell's group will have to go even higher, perhaps up to $17 or $18 per share. As of Monday night, no one had submitted a formal counteroffer to Michael Dell's offer, according to sources consulted by Bloomberg. For more:
- see the Bloomberg report
- check out the Seeking Alpha article Related articles:
Southeastern Asset Management to examine Dell's books
Spotlight: Icahn threatens 'years of litigation' if Dell follows through on going private
Report: Icahn takes 6% stake in Dell Read more about: Dell, mergers and acquisitions
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Also Noted | This week's sponsor is Yorktel. |  | Webinar: Videoconferencing security
April 11, 2 pm ET/ 11 am PT
Videoconferencing presents security challenges that differ from traditional communications and data security methods that rely on firewalls and user authentication. These challenges can expose sensitive confidential data and communications to multiple vulnerabilities. The webcast will discuss videoconferencing security risks as well as solutions. Register Today. |
SPOTLIGHT ON... AT&T adding Microsoft Lync to its enterprise UC offering AT&T (NYSE: T) is adding Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Lync to its enterprise unified communications (UC) portfolio, AT&T announced Tuesday. The carrier is combining Lync with its global IP network to provide enterprise customers with UC capabilities such as instant messaging, VoIP, video calling and online meetings. The UC offering will include mobile access through Windows, iOS and Android tablets and smartphones. AT&T is also opening up its application programming interface to Lync users to enable developers to create custom enterprise apps. Read more > Oracle looks deeper into the cloud. Article (UCStrategies) > Unified communications needs specialty middleware more than ever. Article (Network World) > Viber with VoIP capabilities arriving on Windows Phone 8 in March/April. Article (Ubergizmo) > Patton releases fibre-optic SmartNode VoIP gateway router. Article (telecompaper) And finally… Anonymous activist faces decades in jail. Article (The Guardian) > Harnessing the Mobile Workforce - Thursday, March 28th, 2 pm ET/ 11 am PT Join a panel of experts as we examine how mobile devices, applications and services are dramatically reshaping enterprise revenue models, business strategies and collaboration. Register Today! > Videoconferencing security - April 11, 2 pm ET/ 11 am PT Videoconferencing presents security challenges that differ from traditional communications and data security methods that rely on firewalls and user authentication. The webcast will discuss videoconferencing security risks as well as solutions. Register Today. > CorporateTube - The Next Step for Enterprise Success- Thursday, April 18th, 2pm ET/ 11am PT Learn from an elaborate case study and see how leading companies implemented this cutting edge solution to reap the benefits of video in the enterprise. Experts from Oracle, Akamai, and Kaltura will explain the many possibilities of deploying a CorporateTube for your organization. Register Today!
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