Chris Talbot

Hosted Microsoft Exchange and Office Communications Server (OCS) provider Intermedia  is now offering a hosted PBX service aimed at small businesses with about 50 employees. Intermedia Hosted PBX is the last big piece of the company’s unified communications puzzle, and customers who subscribe to all three services can get fully-integrated UC features and functionality. Direct […]

Unified Communications Alternatives for Small Business Cisco describes its UC 500 for SMBs as office in a box. With its core routing and switching, wireless, VoIP, security and video technologies, Cisco is an all-in-one unified communications provider. No Title With its own share of hardware (routers and switches, storage, servers, etc.), HP has partnered with […]

Get the operation’s track record A SAS 70 Type 2 audit will show a provider’s track record for data center operations, security and privacy, and asking to review such an audit is important, said Dan Druker, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Intacct. A SAS 70 audit forces a cloud apps provider […]

While open source initiatives have always enjoyed a following despite skepticism and obstacles, the momentum behind this week’s O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) in Portland, Oregon, points to a growing momentum around the movement. A decade ago, there were big question marks around how open source – in particular, Linux – would fit into business […]

Linksys by Cisco Acquired in 2003, Linksys had played in the consumer and small office networking market. Now Cisco has turned Linksys into a consumer provider of wireless routers, media hubs and entertainment routers. Valet Through Linksys, Cisco offers Valet, designed as a simple way to set up a wireless network within the home. Linksys […]

Business Video Conferencing Telepresence for Every Budget LifeSize Passport”Telepresence in the palm of your hand” is how LifeSize describes its portable telepresence product. The system provides an HD video telepresence system in a small, compact form factor about the size of the palm of your hand.Price tag: Starting at $2499 No Title LG Executive Video […]

The debate between public and private clouds isn’t really much of a debate. As more businesses move their data to the cloud, the most likely scenario, particularly for larger businesses, is a hybrid strategy of both public and private clouds. The idea of transferring corporate data and software operations to the cloud is usually accompanied […]

As vendors build out aggressive cloud strategies, two behemoths are going toe-to-toe for marketshare in the office productivity applications space. Although Google  beat Microsoft to the punch in the cloud computing world with the launch of its successful Google Docs portfolio of cloud applications, Microsoft has been playing catch-up lately, announcing a stronger commitment to […]

Thousands of companies have deployed voice on their IP networks, and as the benefits of other unified communications technologies become more obvious, they’re looking to build on their voice deployments and integrate communications together. The fractured market is made up of major vendors such as Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com) acting as one-stop shops, alliances of vendors […]

Tired of Cisco and HP Five Networking Alternatives Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net)Arguably the former number two vendor in networking (duking it out with HP ProCurve prior to HP’s 3Com acquisition), Juniper Networks is a major player that competes directly with the core networking offerings from Cisco and HP. Its value proposition is in high-performance IP networking […]

Creating the page The technical side of creating a page is as simple as pointing your browser to the Facebook "create page" applications (http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php), choosing an industry, entering your business name and clicking "create page." The page will automatically appear, ready to be populated. That is only the first step in building a successful page, […]

Social media marketing may simply be a new technology attached to an old marketing method (word of mouth), but using it effectively can improve relations with existing customers and – over time – generate net new business for VARs. Social media experts offer some tips as to how to do just that. As an extension […]