Today’s presentation is an introduction to Hosted Unified Communications, and to why it’s the right choice for businesses that need an extra competitive edge as they plan for growth and greater prosperity.

In a recent auction, Carter Allen were proud to offer their support to Help for Hero’s by donating over 20% of the total funds raised in a secret auction. Carter Allen support many charities throughout the year, both publicly, privately and through our dedicated technology program, Technology for Good.

Help for Heroes was founded by Bryn and Emma Parry in October 2007 out of a desire to help the wounded Servicemen and women returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. The message of the charity is simple: They are strictly non political and non critical; they simply want to help. They believe that anyone who volunteers to serve in time of war, knowing that they may risk all, is a hero. You can find Help the Hero’s here.

With launch of the iPad in the US and last week’s launch in the UK , not forgetting OS4 for the iPhone, you do not need to be an expert in communications to realise that the game is changing and the advent of a fully unified communications world is closer than ever.

This recent flurry of gizmos is a purposeful move by Apple. From a UC standpoint, the iPhone OS 4.0 is the lesser in importance, but by no means meaningless. The new features, which are described by the company and at many other places on the Internet, clearly will improve the iPhone’s UC functionality. Features such as third-party multitasking and improved e-mail contribute to an improved UC environment.

The iPad, however, is much the bigger news for UC advocates. Essentially, Apple could have named the iPad the iUC. The device, especially with VoIP functionality, is a powerful mobile unified communications platform.
Apple has also announced major strategic partnerships with Unified Communications (UC) vendors, including Alcatel-Lucent, Aspect, Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC, Siemens, and others, to offer a unified platform for UC products and SIP interoperability. Soon not only will a user read books and play games on iPad, but also operate it as an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, Public Branch Exchange (PBX), Session Border Controller (SBC), and more. More importantly, the are saying that the iPad will become the UC industry standard platform, eliminating the fragmentation and lack of interoperability among these vendors’ products.

What these vendors have agreed on is to develop their products — PBXs, IVRs, UC servers, SIP phones, SBCs, etc. — to run on the iPad exclusively. I has been mentioned that Avaya, Cisco, and Microsoft engineers, with the help of Apple, have already developed a few proof-of-concepts in Apple’s labs.

Think about it, the iPad multi-touch interface should prove to be a hit… Imagine performing MAC (that’s “moves/adds/changes”) on the PBX by tapping and dragging extensions. Or enabling presence using the built-in geolocation service (either Wi-Fi or 3G). Or dialing using the on-screen soft buttons on an iPad SIP phone. Or configuring the SBC with gestures to establish trunks. And of course, all of these tasks could be performed in either portrait or landscape mode! The possibilities are endless — only limited by the developer’s creativity

Initially there were concerns about the iPad’s ability and drive — can it really handle SIP and VoIP without sacrificing usability and stability? Apple assured the vendors that there won’t be a problem, It has also been rumoured that they can be run in a cluster architecture commonly seen in database design.

Will you have to wait long? No, Apple expects most of these UC and SIP iPad applications to be ready by third quarter of 2010.

Carter Allen have been working very closely with SIPCOM to look into the SIPpad and SIPphone products and will be running demos late on this year. What’s certain is that these devices are here to stay and their ability to improve the way you work will be limitless.

Today, Dell released plans for Streak, a 5-inch Android™-based Tablet designed to provide people the best “on-the-go” entertainment, social connection, and navigation experience.

The Dell Streak is a compact and powerful companion for people who want to expand their ability to access their digital lives on the go, and realize tomorrow’s technology today. The spacious 5-inch screen is ideal for experiencing thousands of Android Market™ widgets, games and applications, all without squinting or compromising portability. B uilt-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and available 3G connectivity brings easy access for downloading and listening to music, updating social networking status in real-time, and staying connected to friends and family through e-mail, text, IM, and voice calls.

On-the-go students, mobile professionals, and active families will find Streak’s web-browsing capabilities as natural as a laptop. The 5-inch screen is large enough to present Web pages in their natural form, create a comfortable viewing experience, and make turn-by-turn navigation simple and safe. The Dell Streak leverages Qualcomm’s Snapdragon™ solution with integrated 1GHz processor to combine basic functionality, performance, and benefits of a laptop in a pocket friendly size.

As you can see this is a very impressive list of feature. For a long time now, we have been talking to people regarding the future of communications really transferring to the hand held and smart markets. The real question for us is the use of these devices in the world of unified communications

Smartphones are making strides in its reputation as an inexpensive solution for a communications platform both from the consumer position and the comercial one. In addition to a smartphone’s telephone functions, standard features usually include e-mail, text messaging, e-mail and Web browsing. Smartphones also boast an address book, which doesn’t sound impressive — maybe it conjures imagery of a grubby little pad of paper forever lost in the kitchen junk drawer. But smartphones are a key platform for social networking features, and the more we use them, the more useful the address book becomes. Contact information from a lot of social applications, such as Facebook, can be synced on the go.

Smartphones are loaded up with social networking programs, features that blur the line between business and personal interest, such as Google Apps, and intellectual property saved as data. Communications providers realize that their target market is already accustomed to (or dependent on) using smartphones and are making the most of the opportunity. In some cases, existing users don’t even need to invest in new hardware. SIPCOM provides UC solutions that allow companies to access all of their business functions from any smartphone that meets current technological standards, without extensive modifications.

So, once you’ve got your pocket-sized device filled with confidential business secrets and sensitive contact information, how can you possibly carry it around? Well, some mobile phone manufacturers are aggressively pursuing business customers with high-tech security features to protect all that valuable data. The Nokia E71, for example, features data encryption for the phone’s internal memory and removable memory cards. The Apple iPhone can be locked or erased remotely if it’s lost or stolen. LG’s eXpo has fingerprint-based security. As the smartphone’s ability increases to perform most of the communications tasks of a desktop computer, don’t overlook its potential as an integral part of business communications.

Professional dependence on UC is pushing the technology to new and interesting places.[source:HowStuffWorks]