Clearly, a significant number of enterprises want to move videoconferencing from the silo where it resides in many enterprises, and bring it fully under the control of the communications system.

What are the questions enterprise customers should be asking themselves, what are the suggested ways to get started, and some things they should be doing to ensure success.

Pricing elements and rates vary by type of provider--legacy providers vs. newer competitors.

Some application examples of ICT that would produce the benefits...

Energy and environmentalism are going to influence more and more decisions about how technology is deployed and used.

IPT manufacturers are snoozing at the switch.

Given the challenging economic times, an attractive alternate source of funds besides revenue (taxes, fees, donations…) is from grants.

Charting the correct course will be a key development and implementation challenge.

Avaya plans for a future dominated by "Voice 2.0." So what exactly does that mean? In a preview of next week's opening keynote, we spoke with one of the top Avaya execs driving that vision.

In the end, what is most interesting is whether the vendors are treating mobility as a core capability or simply "window dressing."

The choice is shaped by factors including legacy infrastructure, size and skills of IT staff, relationships with vendors, and the likelihood that a company will grow (or shrink) in the next few years.

I want the attendees to know the risks, liabilities, costs, and staffing obstacles that they will encounter.

Combining the desk set and the mobile docking station.

It will be up to Avaya/Nortel to convince customers that traditional telephony requirements should not be comprised and must be evaluated on its own as a best in class basis, not as a single element of many.

As to moving past UC, I think we should focus on moving "into UC" to harvest the value, before moving on.

If your business runs a contact center, and chances are very high that if you're coming to VoiceCon it does, plan to leave the bar a little early Wednesday night and join the discussion.

More virtualization announcements from enterprise communications system suppliers are on the horizon.

Whether or not the King Midas touch from Apple will ever reach the voice industry outside of iPhones remains a wait, see and guess venture.

The highlights reinforce our emphasis on the compelling need to create a Unified Communications strategy for your enterprise now.

UC is selling today in bits and pieces, not the whole enchilada.

In the next few years, we will be able to see if video conferencing adds value over voice or if it is useless to most. I believe it adds value.

Risk-based justification is the only cloud computing value proposition that drives the enterprise into large-scale IT outsourcing eventually.

The industry needs a new device that is a central resource for bandwidth management within classes of traffic on the network.

Will Apple and its iPhone, for the first time, need to play defense in the smartphone category?

Virtualization, which has been around for a long time in the data world, is now coming to a telephony application near you, but there are tradeoffs.

Widespread deployment of video at the desktop is still a few years away, but the seeds are being sown thanks to the unified communications market.

Old problems, new approaches, new products.

Making one's own power is not only green but it's a smart move that will keep businesses running.

It's a rare organization that completely cuts over to SIP trunks for 100% of their telephony services.

Rules keep changing; your work is never done.

The question at this point is when will Cisco and Microsoft jump on the virtualization bandwagon as well.

Zultys has earned some respect and they've appropriately taglined their company effort "Smarter Communications."

What if Cisco changed course and pursued Polycom?

Am I outdated now?

For now, IT managers ought to be cautious in adopting Skype-based trunking services.

Ascribing growth to Asterisk's maturity, lower cost, and enterprises' more favorable views of open source generally.

It's a great move for Cisco in that it makes them more competitive with many of its foes and keeps another one at bay.

While UC continues to evolve, many of UC's elements--IM, presence, all manner of conferencing and video--are no longer "new" or "innovative" or "exotic" capabilities.

Enterprises have been waiting for Cisco to make some significant announcement in the wireless area, and we’re still waiting.

The $2.9 billion deal is a signal that Cisco believes that smart phones will play an increasing role in the delivery of data and information to mobile consumers and workers, especially in the form of video.

SIP trunking, VoIP, and trunking centralization can reduce traditional enterprise telecom bills by 75%.

How does it make sense to buy computing on a utility basis?

I don't see how virtualization doesn't become a major component of any enterprise's UC strategy.

The problem is the huge difference between access technologies to the Internet.

How's this for a UC app?

The new Avaya mid-size market solution requires far fewer hardware servers than most competitive offerings.

Genuine issue, media battle, or both?

If they continue to enjoy revenue and profit growth they may not be able to fly under the radar of their larger competitors much longer.

The surprise was the timing, the decision was inevitable.

Now is the time NEC must boost its presence among enterprise-level customers.

The business value of replacing the actual hard phone is limited. Most of the enhanced UC features that add business value come through the computer desktop or the mobile smart phone.

The value that Cisco placed on Tandberg's business is a clear call to action.

If you have not tried out your own HD voice within your IP PBX island, do so. Listen to the difference.

One of the messages is that Unified Communications has become a primary consideration in the IP-PBX market.

We've posted two previews of VoiceCon sessions. They're SlideShare "slidecasts," where the slides advance automatically along with speaker narration.

It seems likely that virtual server support will become a checklist item for all business communications software.

Telephony is a service, not just an application. Misapplying the wrong technology doesn't win and retain customers.

A health care campus looks to a hosted service.

Will these feature enhancements be significant enough to finally move dual mode (or any of the IP PBX vendors' mobility solutions) into the mainstream?

I've talked to handful of companies that are considering cutting the wired ports back by 25% or even more in some cases and using WLAN as the primary and wired as the augmentation.

VoiceCon is presenting a webinar, "Taking Advantage of SIP Trunking," on Wednesday, October 14, 2 p.m. Eastern/11 a.m. Pacific. Featured speaker is Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group; sponsor is Acme Packet. Register here.

Polycom is now the videoconferencing vendor of choice for all other unified communications players.

Positive responses to the acquisition outnumbered negative responses by several percentage points, but trailed neutral responses.

"This acquisition validates Cisco's vision. It also is acknowlegement that their strategy of the past two years was a failure."

Make no mistake, this is a very strategic and acquisition for Cisco but it will add fuel to the rapidly evolving competitive landscape.

Dollar savings have a way of blinding folks and seducing them by promising savings without regard to performance and the impact of failure in meeting the requirements.

My guess is that Cisco will be supporting standards, but not the standards we are using today.

This is good news for both Tandberg and Cisco customers.

The Tandberg acquisition perfectly positions Cisco at the desktop and relatively inexpensive room solutions, with Polycom as its primary competition.