Catching up on VoIP News
Well it’s been a crazy couple of weeks since I returned home from my vacation, and the entire Chromis team has been incredibly busy with customers, including me. So I haven’t had much time to express myself by way of blogging. I’ve tried to keep up with my twitter feed but that’s not as easy as I thought it would be. So I’m going to fit everything that’s been on my mind into one long post…. (Sorry!)
During the month of March Chromis Technology was awarded “Select” reseller status by Digium. It feels great to be acknowledged by their team for all the hard work we’ve put into providing our customers with rock solid Asterisk based telephony solutions. Stay tuned for more details on that news. Speaking of Digium, we are beta testing the Switchvox SMB 4.0 release on our AA60 demo server and all I can say is wow! This is going to be hit with customers. The beta test is going well, I can’t get into specifics yet, but we did find a few minor things that the Switchvox development team was able to quickly fix in time for the scheduled 03/31/09 release. We’re bringing it to a customer’s site for some after hours T1 testing this evening. So a huge thank you to Digium for allowing us to be a part of the beta process.
While I’m on the subject of the beta test of SMB 4.0, G722 (otherwise known as HD Voice) calls with our HD enabled Polycom phones are unbelievable! Click here for audio samples from Polycom of a Standard Voice Call and compare and contrast with that of an HD Voice Call.
In Skype news, the company announced that they intend on entering the SIP trunking game. I can’t say anything that hasn’t been said already: Dan York @ disruptive telephony has a detailed analysis here. Garrett Smith @ VoIP Supply has an interesting take here. Jason Goecke asks the question of what will happen to Skype for Asterisk? But here’s the way I see it… Skype has a very large international footprint. I don’t know a SIP provider out there who could come close to providing the service that Skype can deliver in terms of an connectivity to the world. I don’t think people quite understand the global impact this could have on the industry.
Polycom’s VVX 1500 (Click here for the datasheet) was announced earlier this month. It’s being touted as “The first business media phone combining advanced IP telephony, one-touch video, and business applications into a seamless, life-like experience.” The new unit includes an integrated camera and delivers business-grade video calling with a simple touch of the screen. The phone has multiple adjustable elements including camera tilt, base height and screen angle to suit the environment and a user’s preferences for personalized eye-to-eye visual communications. I can’t wait to get my hands on a couple to test the video quality. Scheduled ship dates look to be around the end of March/Early April with an MSRP of $1,099.00. Hopefully we’ll have a Chromis Review for you shortly.
It looks like I might be able to make it to VoiceCon in Orlando next week. I’m still finalizing my plans but things are looking good at this point. I’ve always thought of the show as too much of an enterprise gathering (which there is no doubt that it is) but with the list of exhibiting companies it made sense to go and network with my “normal” crowd of AdTran, Digium, Jabra, Polycom, and maybe meet some new ones as well. I’m particularly interested to see how the solutions of Shoretel and also Fonality’s PBXtra stack up next to Switchvox’s SMB 4.0.
So that’s all for now. I apologize for the long winded post. Until next time – ChromisZach