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November 30, 2021

• Digium What does a supervisor really need to see in a Contact Center Application?

  Given Unified Communications form the essential fabric of the modern business communication system, we’re starting to see contact centers merging more and more with Unified Communications. In fact, we’re seeing UC systems embracing contact center technology. Sangoma is no exception, and we’ve had more customers using our contact center and contact center features that are part of our UC systems.

  That’s great! In practice, it also means that we’re seeing customers and admins that maybe were not using advanced contact centers before being exposed to them now. We’re getting some questions about if I’m managing a contact center or are a supervisor, what features are really important in a contact center solution?

  Let me review a few. First, as a supervisor, you want to see real-time monitoring of what’s going on – how the agents are performing, is there a long call going on, what is the average wait time, what is the average call time, are the call center SLAs being met, how many agents are on breaks and for how long, etc. And if there is that long call going on, can you listen to see what the problem is, or can you whisper to the agent to help them somehow?

  You also want to create different queues, assign/de-assign agents to the proper queues, and see how the other queues are performing. You might need to do some balancing.

  Reports are also going to be important so you can improve performance and efficiency. After all, there will be a lot of data generated, so what are you going to do with it? You need to understand what data is important for your situation and make sure the reports generated can be flexible, working for you.

  Sangoma provides contact center technology that is integrated well with our underlying UC systems.

  The post What does a supervisor really need to see in a Contact Center Application? appeared first on Sangoma.

November 23, 2021

• Digium The Evolved Office & Artificial Intelligence Integration

  As artificial intelligence enters the contact center, the business communication system can start making decisions based on context, past similar decision history, etc. One of the earliest examples of this is keyword spotting and change of tone of the speaker, for something called “sentiment analysis”. Essentially, the computer could determine if you were upset when talking to an agent so you could be handed off to a more experienced person. Given enough data from thousands and thousands of past calls the computer could decide when you’re upset, or about to be upset.

  And from this something called a chatbot has emerged. The chatbot will engage you more, and take you further down the discussion as time goes on. Chances are you have talked to a chatbot and didn’t even know it. Like most contact center innovations, chatbots have been driven by the oxymoronic need to both reduce costs and provide better service. And as speech recognition and text to speech programs and computing power have both improved and come down in cost, the advent of computer driven speech into the contact center occurred. In fact, right now, both Google’s and Microsoft’s speech recognition claim to be 95% accurate, which happens to be as accurate as a human brain.

  Over time, the simple ‘talk to me’ instead of hitting buttons to drive through an IVR menu gave way to more and more computer driven tasks. And it was OK because you as the IVR caller were getting through the menu and you didn’t have to wait. But you always knew it was a computer because it sounded that way (probably on purpose). However, these more simplistic chats have evolved greatly and today, it’s very possible you are having a conversation with a computer and you don’t even know it. And you’re probably happier talking to this computer, because it might sound like a native language speaker and because the “agent” isn’t making any mistakes. Right now, you likely get handed off to a real person when more complex decisions need to be made but over time, the chatbot will take on more and more responsibility.

  Again, with artificial intelligence, the possibilities are endless. The system could predict who you might call based on past history, and how they might want to get connected, who might need to be on a conference call, and the system could ID you based on voice recognition.

  The post The Evolved Office & Artificial Intelligence Integration appeared first on Sangoma.

November 22, 2021

• Digium Enhance Your Communications With Custom UCaaS Packaged Applications

  One of the core benefits of a Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) system is its end-user adaptability. These platforms provide full access to on-demand communications and collaboration services, among them videoconferencing, chats, productivity apps and connectivity options, all via a consolidated cloud service.

  While any UCaaS system offers high levels of customizability, platforms that can support popular packaged applications provide an even deeper level of personalization and performance enhancement. Packaged applications are created based on the most common organizational workflow needs, and can be easily tweaked and applied to one’s own unique environment. Plus, implementing them requires no extensive technical understanding or ability!

  What Do UCaaS Packaged Applications Do?

  Typically, packaged apps offer software with scripts for supporting objects such as databases, images and seed data, as well as pre-installation validations, to offer “ready-to-go” options for extending communications system capabilities with minimal programming. These straightforward enterprise communication and collaboration solutions help customers maximize these areas to improve output. But even this level of detail isn’t required to implement packaged applications when they are provided and supported by your communications solution. Your vendor will have the technical expertise to configure your application for you, so all you need to do is benefit from your enhanced workflows.

  Now let’s take a look at some of the most common packaged applications businesses need today.

  Urgent Notification

  The Urgent Notification packaged app is designed to improve communications by providing options for mass updates on “urgent” matters. Urgent Notifications can be used to issue warnings on weather conditions, system outages, crises and cancelled events, among other emergencies. Plus, the interface allows one to choose from individual contacts or contact lists, potentially covering employees, customers and other important persons by sending blasts via call, text or email.

  The implications for this are enormous. Users can keep subscribers informed on the latest threats and urgent alerts – including security threats, advisories and first emergency response details – in near-real-time.

  Mass Notification

  In a manner similar to Urgent Notification, the Mass Notification packaged application simultaneously sends text and email messages, en masse, to all of one’s contacts or groups. Additionally, the function can track critical responses and handle information flow. The multi-modal notification system specializes in two-way interactions, supporting secondary actions and history reports. Potential applications include closure and delay notices, marketing messages, invoice reminders, event updates, subscription renewals, employee collaboration, and fleet / transportation management.

  Employee Alerts

  Another subset of Mass Notification is Employee Alerts. This packaged app allows an administrator to reach out to employees via text or email, with support for dividing users by department or group. Plus, the software supports tracking for message receipt and elements to promote engagement. The app is also particularly useful in distributing memos, closure and delay information, schedules, health updates and human resources and other notices.

  CRM Integration

  The CRM Integration packaged application offers features to integrate specific CRM package options within your communications platform. By activating the software, one gains access to common features such as click-to-call, inbound “screen pops” and call-detail tracking, in turn reducing need for manual data entry while reinforcing visibility and managing calls and contacts. Whatever CRM you currently use, you can maximize its effectiveness when you integrate it with your UCaaS via this packaged app.

  Single Curbside Service

  The Single Curbside Service packaged app offers a frequently requested service for managing customer-employee interactions and providing “curbside messaging workflows.” The software is specifically designed to support restaurants, specialty and retail environments and other offices, providing support for “streamlined, convenient and safe customer service.” Organizations can maintain operational efficiency by accessing SMS text and web communications in order to support critical areas such as order fulfillment and pickup. Plus, key features include no requirements for customization, automated workflow, team management and tracking and reporting, among other elements.

  The post Enhance Your Communications With Custom UCaaS Packaged Applications appeared first on Sangoma.

• Enable Security Vulnerabilities, honeypots, STIR/SHAKEN, DDoS and more
  Welcome to the second RTCSEC newsletter! Please do reply and tell me what you think - this will help us make future editions better. In this edition, we cover: FreeSWITCH security fixes and the story behind them OpenSIPit'02 and progress in STIR/SHAKEN and RFC8760 support Booking us for pentesting in 2022 and the latest in SIPVicious hair styling Upcoming public work including TAD Summit presentation and SIPit33 Quick summaries of presentations of interest at various online or hybrid events/conferences New security tools of interest: sipcmdbeat and SentryPeer Vulnerabilities in FusionPBX and Yealink phones VoIP provider DDoS news Short news and commentary RTCSec newsletter is a free periodic newsletter bringing you commentary and news around VoIP and WebRTC security.

November 17, 2021

• ng-voice Sprint planning – focus, growth, and efficiency at ng-voice

  At ng-voice, we are constantly looking for ways to improve our products and deliver more value to our customers. And to do so in a fast-paced environment, while the team grows, can be a challenge – it is crucial to keep focus and have clear goals to achieve results. Because of that, our sprint planning process is an essential part of our organization, especially for the feature development and DevOps teams.

  What is a sprint in Agile?

  In Agile product development, a sprint is a set period of time during which a scrum team works to complete defined goals. Using this method, sprint breaks down larger objectives (e.g., objective key results) into smaller blocks of time in which smaller goals are achieved. Working on long and large topics can get tiresome and leave agile team members with a feeling of no visible success or progress. By splitting topics into sprints, we are able to acknowledge individual milestones and achievements as they occur instead of waiting for the project to end. Sprints are at the core of agile methodologies, and planning them properly helps organizations to deliver results faster, with fewer headaches, and more efficiency.

  Sprint cycle in agile

  A sprint cycle consists of a short repeatable phase every time we manage and plan a sprint at ng-voice. The steps of the phases remain the same, however, after each sprint, we use insights we learned to make sure our next sprint is more effective. There are 4 phases in the cycle which are:

   

  • Sprint planning – Kicking off the Sprint and defining the goals. This is the most critical part of the sprint. The sprint planning is done thoroughly and with a lot of attention to detail at ng-voice so we really manage to achieve what we set out to do. 
  • Daily Scrum – Team members meet for a short period daily to share what they have worked on, or if there are any blockers
  • Sprint review – Here we assess on what was delivered and decide what should be worked on in the next sprint
  • Sprint retrospective – A reflection on the process to improve the next sprint and make it more effective. These are not done on every sprint usually, but from time to time. 

  Each sprint has its own timeline, and at ng-voice, our sprints usually last between 2 to 4 weeks.

  Which values does sprint planning bring to ng-voice?

  There are several benefits for using this methodology;

  • Reduced complexity and increased agility – It allows the teams to distribute a complicated project into smaller, easier to achieve tasks, and swiftly adjust changes to the project whenever needed, being more agile.
  • Ownership and team collaboration – By involving stakeholders to work closely on a daily basis as well as allowing the development team to organize its priority list, each person has their own clear goals and autonomy to work on them during the sprint.
  • Faster time to market – The methodology reduces waste by focusing only on necessary tasks within a time frame, increasing the delivery speed.
  • Close alignment with customers’ needs – By continuously reviewing customers’ priorities and using them to plan tasks and deliveries, the methodology also increases customer satisfaction.
  • Increased team morale – It establishes an environment that encourages participation and empowers self-management, giving the teams a having a feeling of achievement.
  • Quick reporting – The sprint management makes it easier to visualize team performance by having transparent progress checks visible to all, which also allows teams to review tasks, progress, and blockers.

  Our company has been working with the sprint planning methodology for several years and it is now a fundamental part of our work culture. According to Stefan Frank, Head of Deployment: “The sprint planning is a great opportunity for all of the team members to give ideas and contribute to the product’s roadmap. It makes it very easy to visualize the direction in which we are going and the results we are delivering, which keeps the team motivated to achieve more”. 

   

  Learn more about our work culture, team values and apply for open positions on our careers webpage. 

   

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  Behnam Hooshiar Kashani

  DevOps Team Lead

  Publisher Bio

  With years working in the telecom industry as a DevOps Engineer, Behnam joined ng-voice and now has the challenge to automate our cloud-native and standard-based solutions on different container orchestration platforms, like Kubernetes.

November 16, 2021

• Digium CPaaS is a Path to Applications-as-a-Service (AppaaS)

  CPaaS (Communications Platform-as-a-Service) is an excellent thing if your organization is a software developer or has developer types in your organization. But in a general sense, if you are a reseller or an end-user of Unified Communications, you likely don’t have these kinds of resources available to you. Or, if you do, and you don’t quite really want to get involved in API programming, you may not even try this route.

  But still, the benefits of CPaaS in the past 18 months are probably visible to you – it’s entirely likely your curbside pickup, your “we’ll text you before you can come inside,” and a message about delivery just happened were delivered via a CPaaS application done by said developer types. And you might have other great ideas on how to continue this kind of new communication, either to enhance the customer experience or enhance your business.

  As such, we’re seeing our customers asking us more and more for more complete “add-on” applications that can enhance their vertical experience. And so that’s what we’re going to do with our CPaaS technology. We will use it ourselves to deliver applications to augment our UC offerings and supplement our partner’s vertical solutions. We’ve already done this with urgent notification, mass notification, curbside pickup, and employee alert applications. Please visit our webpage to learn more.

  The post CPaaS is a Path to Applications-as-a-Service (AppaaS) appeared first on Sangoma.

November 11, 2021

• FreeSWITCH ClueCon 2021 Wrap-up

  Thank you to everyone who attended ClueCon TGI2021, our first hybrid ClueCon! Whether you attended in person or online, we appreciate you joining us for this hybrid event experiment. This new format allowed for those attending online to interact with those in person and vice versa, which was a ClueCon first. If you have any feedback about your experience, you can fill out this quick survey to share it with us so we can make ClueCon even better next year. 

  Though the format was a little different this year, ClueCon followed its traditional lineup of events throughout the week. Monday kicked off with the Coder Games, our annual hack-a-thon that includes several challenges for developers and non-developers alike. Attendees built boats, engineered bridges, and played trivia with virtual attendees to win an exciting array of prizes. 

  

  The presentations started on Tuesday after the release of FreeSWITCH v1.10.7! In FreeSWITCH founder Anthony Minessale’s keynote, he addressed how we made the hybrid event happen by using the video technology built over the years on the back of FreeSWITCH, and how we try to make life easier for developers, including the devotion to open source that fuels ClueCon each year. Videos of all the ClueCon presentations and workshops will be available soon – subscribe to the FreeSWITCH YouTube channel so you don’t miss out! 

  The annual Gigabit Reception took place Tuesday evening as well, but this year, with a spooky twist! After a long day of presentations, attendees put on their Halloween costumes, grabbed their favorite drinks, sang karaoke, and played games. Virtual attendees were able to pop in and hang out with us in the lounge too!

  

  Wednesday included more presentations, a Kamailio workshop led by Daniel-Constantin Mierla, some seriously Dangerous Demos, and a FreeSWITCH roundtable until the evening, when attendees participated in a poker tournament thanks to the sponsorship of Phil Gordon and Prompt.io. The week wrapped up on Thursday with a few more presentations, a HOMER workshop led by Lorenzo Mangani, and our Grand Prize giveaway of a custom engraved MacBook Pro. 

  

  We want to give a warm thank you to all our sponsors and speakers who made ClueCon possible in what was a difficult and uncertain year. With social distancing measures in place, like our bigger venue with spaced out seating, and the option to attend online, we hoped to keep everyone comfortable and safe as we reconnected with the FreeSWITCH community. Overall, this ClueCon was a successful first hybrid event and we had a ton of fun getting back together in person at last. If you miss ClueCon like we do, or you’re suffering from moderate to severe FOMO, consider joining us October 17th-20th in 2022! 

  The post ClueCon 2021 Wrap-up appeared first on FreeSWITCH.

• Digium The Era of Hybrid Work: Common Trends in the Shift to Flexible Offices

  The world as we know it seemingly changes by the day. Today’s businesses – whether due to regulations, logistics, convenience or some combination of the three – are increasingly adopting hybrid work policies for their employees.

  According to recent data published by FindStack, today’s remote workforce has grown by 44 percent, worldwide, over the last five years, with 16 percent of companies running “100 percent remote” and nearly 60 percent of U.S. employees teleworking each day.

  Earlier in 2021, Forbes Magazine highlighted some of the top trends observed among enterprises shifting to remote staff. While this changeover reflects both positive and negative developments over time, it should be noted that companies continue to adapt to fluctuations with new approaches and developments as the global business landscape evolves around them.

  Increased Reliance on Hybrid Work Models

  The natural inclination of many organizations is to stagger in-office reporting with remote work, a concept that has become known as the hybrid work model. By dividing days between various physical locations, the concept is that workers can benefit from commute relief while still gaining the added benefit of office socialization, work-task clarity, and security. At the same time, many companies limit telework to hybrid options to increase their assurance that employees are where they say and completing the assignments upon which they agreed.

  It should also be noted that remote and hybrid work policy also has a drastic effect on overhead cost, with less need for expansive locations and fewer expenses, equipment investment and – in some cases – HR personnel.

  Cloud Services Adoption

  With remote work, far and away the most relied-upon software for communication, collaboration, file management and organization is the cloud. “As-a-service” options include Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS), Desktop as a Service (DaaS), Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), with more to come!

  Organizations tend to prefer these types of software because of the benefits that they offer in terms of capacity (no infrastructure investment), simplicity (fully supported and automatically updated) and functionality (connecting remotely dispersed workers and providing access to secure files).

  Altered Cybersecurity Perspective

  The basic concepts behind some cybersecurity tenets – for example, sound password management and employee “best practices” – have changed little over the years. Despite this fact, many of today’s enterprises grow increasingly concerned with remote employees’ activity. Are they diligently changing and protecting their passwords? Are they aware of the historic rise in malware, ransomware, and other cyberattacks?

  Compounding this issue is the expanded attack surface. With staff more geographically dispersed than ever, the organization’s network – and critical files – become more vulnerable each time a connection is made at each point of entry.

  Gone are the days when a business needed only to worry about securing the single-location network. As A10 Networks noted in a recent report, the corporate network “will only be as secure as the home networks they are on.” Consequently, much of today’s remote-work cybersecurity tends to fall on the service provider.

  Increasingly Asynchronous & Flexible

  With a shift to remote employment, today’s staffer finds it increasingly difficult to strike a home / work life balance. For example, recent estimates by Kentik noted that 51 percent of employees struggle with juggling day-to-day activity and establishing definitive close-of-business hours where the computer gets turned off for the evening.

  In response to this issue, many businesses are turning to asynchronous platforms for collaboration. Whereas earlier in the pandemic, organizations frequently embraced massive videoconferences to replace face-to-face interactions, one shift that was observed in 2021 is that allowing employees to respond in their own time has been more effective and productive, especially for jobs that require much time on the phone or at a computer. As Forbes noted, asynchronous communication is particularly useful for companies that are spread across “multiple time zones” in that it allows staff to “better control their workflow.”

  How Do You Hybrid?

  Has your company shifted to a hybrid workforce? If your current technology infrastructure is holding you back or you’re curious about how you can improve performance, enhance collaboration, and grow your business with solutions built for flexible work, learn more about Connected Workspace and our other business cloud solutions!

  The post The Era of Hybrid Work: Common Trends in the Shift to Flexible Offices appeared first on Sangoma.

November 09, 2021

• Jitsi Power up your Jitsi deployment with JaaS

  The 8×8 Jitsi team is building its next great service and we need your help!

  We are currently working on a service that would let Jitsi users easily connect their self-hosted Jitsi  deployments to 8×8’s PSTN, LiveStreaming, Recording and transcriptions clouds.

  This would let users run entirely private instances for their most private calls and it would also allow them to easily connect calls that are less sensitive to additional services  such as recording and inbound telephone access. The pricing will be based on what we currently offer for JaaS: https://jaas.8×8.vc/#/pricing

  We greatly appreciate the help and to thank you for it, the first participants selected for the experiment will receive a $200 coupon to use for recordings, streaming, telephony access or any other JaaS service!

  If this is of interest please put your contact info in this form ( https://8×8.wavecell.com/jitsi_testers?hs_preview=yOtxZEMh-57861420107 ) and we will get back to you as soon as we are ready.

  Love,

  Your Personal Jitsi Team

  The post Power up your Jitsi deployment with JaaS appeared first on Jitsi.

• ng-voice Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) in the IMS architecture

  Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a critical building block for service delivery in the Next Generation Networks. It has a prominent role in IMS architecture as the new framework for service delivery and management over fixed and mobile networks.

   

  The adoption of SIP by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a call control protocol was a major milestone for the standardization world as the IMS architecture became the first SIP-based standard commercial system, setting the guideline for following developments. Driven by the demand for multimedia communication services, the industry had to search for an efficient way to deploy those services in the existing and new networks. Wireless telecommunication operators and vendors had to adapt quickly, enabling a rapid introduction of IP and SIP services into their network through the IMS. The standardization effort has been driven by the 3GPP in close work with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to ensure the harmonization of standards.

   

  SIP standards set the baseline for the creation of CSCF and other functional elements in the IMS network, ensuring the interoperability of various network elements (UE, CSCF, etc), defining basic communication rules between the elements, and setting the guidelines for interconnecting with other network architectures. The standard body comprises the standards for data plane, user plane as well as session control in the SIP network.

  Why is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) so important?

  Ensuring standards compliance helps to keep the number of implementation- and vendor-specific workarounds in the core network to a bare minimum, resulting in a more stable and better-performing network. Below is a list of some of the SIP standards which are essential for the stable operation of all network elements.

  
  
  

  RFC 3261 SIP: Session Initiation Protocol

  RFC 3262 Reliability of provisional responses in SIP

  RFC 3263 Locating SIP servers

  RFC 3265 SIP-specific event notification

  RFC 3311 The SIP UPDATE Method

  RFC 3325 Private Extensions to the SIP for asserted identity within trusted networks

  RFC 3326 The Reason Header field for the SIP

  RFC 3329 Security-Client, Security-Server and Security-Verify headers

  RFC 3515 The SIP Refer method

  RFC 3581 The SIP Extension for Symmetric Response Routing

  RFC 3824 Using E.164 numbers with the SIP

  RFC 3891 The SIP Replace header

  RFC 3903 SIP Extension for event state publication

  RFC 4032 Update to the SIP preconditions framework

  RFC 4353 A framework for conferencing with the SIP

  RFC 4579 Call Control – Conferencing for User Agents

  RFC 3680 A SIP event package for registrations

  RFC 3856 A presence event package for the SIP

  RFC 3761 ENUM

  RFC 3310 AKA Authentication ( HTTP Digest Authentication

  Using Authentication and Key Agreement)

  RFC 4169 AKAv2

  RFC 4566 – defines basic SDP protocol.

  RFC 3264 – Offer/Answer model for SDP media negotiation: defines how SDP is used to negotiate media, e.g. call hold/retrieve.

   

  Standards are defining service functions that enable the creation of new services, content and media distribution, and various formats of multimedia services. They are wide-ranging, defining everything from the network interoperability functions, legacy functions such as SMS to particular aspects of IMS function such as QoS reservation or voice call continuity (where 3GPP extensions rely on particular SIP messages and headers for the call handover). Standards also define particular aspects of IMS function that form the end-user experience and fulfill the mission-critical role, such as enabling emergency calling.

  SIP standards as common enablers of new services on IMS networks

  The availability of service enablers ensures service compliance and lowers the cost of implementing the more complex end-user services in terms of both capital expenses (CAPEX) and operational expenses (OPEX). To ensure simple and rapid integration of services, the network must support open standard-based interfaces and apply service-oriented architecture principles. Even though many IMS equipment vendors are capable of creating new services, that is just the first of many steps required to get a given service operational and ensure the best customer experience. Successful integration requires taking service applications from diverse sources and integrating them in an innovative way. SIP provides session establishment capabilities for application, using SDP protocol offer/answer (RFC3264) mechanisms.

  
  ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core is 100% standard-compliant and SIP-based, having been successfully integrated both with legacy structure and innovative open-source applications. To know more about our solution, contact us at info@ng-voice.com . 

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  Andrii Pogrebennyk

  Software engineer and team lead

  Publisher Bio

  After years of experience in VoIP in Ukraine and Austria, Andrii joined ng-voice as a Software Engineer and is using his vast knowledge of telco-specific protocols and Kamailio programming to further develop our fully cloud-native and standard-based IMS core.

• Digium IoT Connectivity in an Office Environment

  IoT connectivity, as it relates to enterprise communications, is really about the convergence of Unified Communications and IoT. You might think that UC and IoT do not have anything to do with each other, but there is natural overlap. With a UC admin dashboard, there are alerts and monitors. And with IoT, there is data to trigger alerts and monitors. It’s a marriage made in heaven, like peanut butter and chocolate.

  With a UC system, there are mobile end points such as phones, tablets, and smart watches. But there could be other end points connected to a UC system, such as cameras. Or a doorbell with video that can also talk – like a Ring doorbell. So, think about all these kinds of sensors, communication devices, things connected to a UC system. Some of these obviously can be connected with either 5G or Wi-Fi. But some can be connected with LPWA as well. The enterprise business communication hub of the future will be able to handle all required signaling types.

  Any of these things that are particularly important to be tied to a UC/PBX system when there is RTC (real time communications) required as determined by the sensor / edge computing calculations can be set up to enable alerts in the form of a real time voice and/or video call to appropriate person.

  For instance, a sensor on the factory floor can make a VoIP telephone call based on predefined criteria that can automatically trigger specific workflows, such as the reordering of components, either because they’re running low or because of defects on a recent batch of products, for example. Or IoT devices that are in the office that are connected to the PBX (temp sensors, alarms, etc.) can accept voice commands over the phone. Or one can view a video feed of an IoT imaging devices by dialing its telephony number (SIP endpoint or mobile).

  There possibilities are enormous. But these RTC examples need to be tied to a UC business communication system to make this particular convergence of IoT and UC happen.

  The post IoT Connectivity in an Office Environment appeared first on Sangoma.

November 03, 2021

• ng-voice True cloud-nativity requires true collaboration: how we’re working with Red Hat to deliver our IMS core on OpenShift

  Across the world, operators are reviewing their systems and solutions to become more agile, flexible, and scalable. The arrival of 5G means operators need to think about new ways of providing existing services while meeting the CAPEX and OPEX pressures of this next generation of wireless technology. This shift is permeating to voice services, which remain an integral aspect of the mobile experience.

   

  Here at ng-voice, we’re bringing voice services into the future with our fully containerized, Kubernetes-based, cloud-agnostic, VoLTE/VoNR IMS core. Our solution is changing how operators think about voice services by optimizing deployment time through our microservices architecture, small container size (less than 25MB—the smallest in the industry), and minimal resource footprint.

   

  But it doesn’t stop there. In addition to optimizing deployment time, we’re always looking at ways to leverage industry partnerships to make it easier for our operator customers to use and maintain our IMS core.

   

  That’s why today, we’re announcing that our IMS core is now a vendor-validated cloud-native network function (CNF) for Red Hat OpenShift and is available in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. Through this collaboration, our operator customers will be able to deploy ng-voice’s IMS core more easily on OpenShift, streamlining the deployment, development, and maintenance of the application.

   

  According to Abdul Basit Alvi, ng-voice’s Chief Technologist Cloud and Virtualization, OpenShift makes the process of deployment and testing the solution easier, which has facilitated product development. “Using Red Hat OpenShift, we were able to more quickly deploy our containerized IMS core, perform tests, scale, and perform automatic health checks. The user interface is very helpful to visualize and effectively manage the resources in each cluster”, he said.

   

  Azhar Sayeed, Senior Director of Global Telco Technical Development at Red Hat, also commented: “We are pleased to collaborate with ng-voice to validate its IMS core on Red Hat OpenShift. Deploying a cloud-native IMS Core with OpenShift can bring the benefits of service agility, flexibility, and cost-efficiency to communications service providers”.

   

  We’re excited to be working with Red Hat to further reinforce our commitment to providing truly cloud-native and containerized solutions. Through this collaboration, we can help operators worldwide deploy mobile networks that are more flexible, cost-efficient, and future-proofed.

   

  To know more, visit ng-voice’s profile in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog by clicking here. And to find out more about ng-voice’s solutions, visit our website.

   

  *Red Hat, the Red Hat logo, and OpenShift are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

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  Barbara Silva

  Marketing Lead

  Publisher Bio

  After 10 years of working for Telefonica as a Business Development and Marketing Manager, along with developing serval projects in Latin America. Barbara’s plans to connect and share her own experience in Branding and growth strategies with the readers. She enjoys talking about any topics, from Netflix series to Politics, making her a versatile and fun person to talk to.

November 02, 2021

• Digium The Evolved Office & Mobility

  Unified Communications (UC) has ushered in the second state of the Evolved Office, where mobility and collaboration take center stage. The mobile client enables more than just access, it enables real-time interaction via presence and messaging, and enhanced collaboration with other network users. This enabling of your “office phone number” on the smartphone, connected laptop, or tablet has been a key driver for the continued growth of UC. It truly enables your office to be borderless.

  Unified Communications is a natural evolution of the PBX as it combines voice/telephony, unified messaging, mobility, presence, desktop sharing, and conferencing/collaboration into a single integrated application. It also supports several modes of communication, including voice, chat, email, fax, and texting (SMS/MMS). It enables a user to switch between these modalities of communication as needed to enhance the exchange of information and ideas.

  All employees can benefit from UC, whether they are in the office, away-from-desk employees, on the road, or working from home. All the tools that are available to office workers, such as video conferencing, presence management, screen sharing, chat, etc. are available from the desktop, laptop, or mobile device. In addition to significantly enhancing team collaboration and productivity, UC can also improve engagement with customers, vendors, and sales prospects because it enables faster answers in a variety of ways.

  The post The Evolved Office & Mobility appeared first on Sangoma.

• WebRTC Hacks How to add virtual background transparency in WebRTC

  There is a cool new feature everyone has been trying to implement – background transparency. Virtual backgrounds have been around for a while. Rather than inserting a new background behind user(s), transparency removes the background altogether, allowing the app to place users over a screen share or together in a shared environment. There doesn’t seem […]

  The post How to add virtual background transparency in WebRTC appeared first on webrtcHacks.

October 29, 2021

• Digium Top UCaaS Trends for Year’s End and Beyond

  Today’s Unified Communications as a Service offerings represent a “fundamental shift in business communications.” This form of pay-per-use service embraces cutting-edge technology to go beyond traditional voice services, incorporating aspects such as video conferencing, faxing, and messaging. These elements come via a consolidated cloud system that is available from virtually any location or for any internet-connected device.

  Of course, UCaaS tech has been around for years, and its implications on the teleworker are well documented. With an overall market presence of $47.64 billion (2021) that is expected to balloon to $210.07 billion within seven years, UCaaS has streamlined remote communications at a time when more users than ever are working and collaborating across many miles!

  What, then, are the top trends in UCaaS as we head to the latter part of the year?

  Need for Improved Cybersecurity Awareness

  Per estimates, 82 percent of IT teams faced some form of cyberattack since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020. These strikes include instances of dangerous phishing and ransomware hits, in many cases due to the unmonitored or ill-informed remote worker using UCaaS tools.

  As employees make their return to a physical office in late 2021 and beyond, some execs believe there is cause for concern. Of note, 56 percent of IT leaders feel staff has learned “bad cybersecurity behaviors”, 54 percent fear inadvertent malware infection, and 69 percent see ransomware as a “greater concern” in a hybrid work environment.

  Recommendations include:

  • Maintaining infrastructure updates and patches
  • Encouraging consults with IT security personnel, also involving them in company decisions
  • Fostering a positive, productive work culture
  • Drafting policy reflective of the organization’s vulnerabilities
  • Establishing “Zero-Trust” architecture with restricted access and changing credentials
  • Promoting resources and training to reinforce employee cyber intelligence

  Need For Innovative Digital Transformation

  In recent years, UCaaS has proven its ability to adapt to changing collaboration and communications demands. Unfortunately, today’s remote staffer is far less flexible. Reluctance to adopt new technology, support cybersecurity practices and change bad habits can plague today’s enterprise and prevent growth. For example, Loopup recently reported that 61 percent of individuals prefer a traditional, dialup conference call to video conferencing.

  In the midst of so many changes, choosing the right technology setup is more crucial than ever to ensure successful adoption, productivity, and security. Businesses need to reevaluate the tools they are currently using, identify areas of difficulty and app overload, and consider new solutions designed to simplify today’s workforce needs. A system that can balance ease of use and flexibility with built-in security is quickly becoming the most popular solution for many companies in need of a technology upgrade.

  Increasing Need for Remote Solutions

  With more employees in telework than ever – and some estimates pointing to an 87 percent increase over pre-COVID numbers – growing reliance on UCaaS packages should likewise grow. With this growth in demand, however, users are reminded again to keep their software updated to ease the impact of remote worker error. Solutions such as mobile softphones, Desktop-as-a-Service, and connected workspaces are helping an increasingly remote workforce to adapt.

  Other UCaaS Trends

  In addition to the aforementioned factors, additional UCaaS market drivers could include:

  • Consolidation, with top companies such as Zoom, Google and Microsoft Teams leading competitive offers
  • AI (artificial intelligence) integration as developments warrant
  • Increasing reliance on interoperability
  • Reductions in guest-account sprawl
  • Developments in presence technology

  Of course, many new UCaaS shifts should emerge this year and beyond. Business success will likely be most impacted by one’s ability to properly plan, adjust, promote tech comprehension and follow all prescribed software updates.

  The post Top UCaaS Trends for Year’s End and Beyond appeared first on Sangoma.

• Enable Security Killing bugs ... one vulnerability report at a time
  Executive summary (TL;DR) We tell the story behind the latest FreeSWITCH advisories and how it all came together one sleepless night in April 2021 so that we ended up with 4 vulnerabilities that needed reporting. And then, one more vulnerability found due to a bug in our own software, SIPVicious PRO. We explain how these flaws were discovered, reported, fixed and what we ultimately learned through this process. What is this about?

October 27, 2021

• ng-voice Voice over New Radio (VoNR)

  With circuit switch (CS) legacy being phased out (sunset of 2G/3G), higher customer demand, and the need to provide faster connections, operators should evaluate the possibility of offering voice services over 4G and 5G networks. The standard for voice over 4G networks is called VoLTE and was introduced in our previous post. For voice on 5G networks, the new standard is called Voice over New Radio (VoNR), and utilizes a standalone architecture to offer significantly better sound quality and lower latency. This article gives an overview of what VoNR is, why it is important, and ng-voice’s VoNR solution.

  What is Voice over New Radio (VoNR)?

  Voice over New Radio (VoNR) is the process of encapsulating voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) by using 5G radio and core network architecture. This enables the transmission of media components over the new radio or 5G network. In simpler terms, it can also be mentioned that Voice over New Radio (VoNR) provides voice services for cloud-native 5G standalone networks. 

   

  Both VoLTE and VoNR make use of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) which integrates packet-based calls into a network infrastructure by using a mobile network as its source. The difference between VoLTE and VoNR is the underlying mobile network and radio architecture. Voice over New Radio (VoNR) establishes telephony connections and converts them into data packets which then are transmitted through 5G and the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). 

  Why is Voice over New Radio (VoNR) so important?

  According to a white paper by Rohde & Schwarz, the increase in 5G deployments will drive major changes for voice service providers. When moving into 5G, it is essential for operators to deploy an easy to maintain and highly scalable IP multimedia communications network through an IMS system. A good starting point for 5G can be provided by IMS/VoLTE based architecture, allowing the future-proofing of new technologies. Since switching effort in the background is reduced, the VoNR becomes much faster due to the connection setup being linear. With the reduction of paths, message transmissions become shorter and when deployed, voice is leveraged through the IMS. 

   

  Deploying VoNR helps operators to meet customer demands as well as providing faster and better voice services. VoNR allows customers to make maximum use of the network and offers several advantages, such as; 

   

  • Significantly lower latency
  • Providing better call experience 
    • Improved sound quality
    • Faster call setup time

   

  The demand for 5G is driven by an increased necessity for higher data speed as well as newer devices. Operators that need to modernize their infrastructure can benefit from moving into a cloud-native mobile infrastructure in 5G, deploying VoNR with a cloud-native IMS core.

  Why is ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native VoLTE/ VoNR solution right for you ?

  We at ng-voice offer a VoLTE/VoNR solution that is truly cloud-native and fully containerized. ng-voice’s cloud-native IMS core is the first 100% containerized and Kubernetes-based fully-fledged IMS solution on the market, allowing deployment on bare metal (private), public, and hybrid cloud environments. Following the best practices in CI/CD and bringing a DevOps approach to telecommunications software, ng-voice’s IMS core has a high level of automation across the whole development, deployment, and operation processes. With a minimal resource footprint, it reduces voice production costs and optimizes the entire life-cycle management of the application.

  Made-in-Germany, ng-voice’s solutions adhere to the highest security and data protection standards. To learn more about our solutions, please contact our team at info@ng-voice.com.

  Share this article via:

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  Johanna Lämmel

  Feature Lead

  Publisher Bio

  After being part of the team developing a 5G Core for a live R&D testbed at the Fraunhofer FOKUS Institute, she brought her expertise in EPC and 5G to ng-voice and is now getting our fully cloud-native IMS Core 5G-ready.

October 26, 2021

• Digium Sangoma is Recognized in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for UCaaS, Worldwide

  Last week you may have noticed that Sangoma was positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications as a Service, Worldwide.

  Sangoma is one of only fourteen other companies to be evaluated and placed in 2021, and one of six companies to appear consecutively for the last seven years. Factors considered in the evaluation process included Sangoma’s value-based pricing, complete UCaaS suite, expansion of Sangoma’s reachable market, and CPaaS created applications that augment partners’ vertical offerings and customer experiences.

  “We are thrilled to be recognized in this year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant,” said Bill Wignall, CEO of Sangoma. “Sangoma has grown rapidly for many years in the industry and is now among the top tier of cloud communications companies, so it’s very gratifying to be recognized in this manner. Our clients appreciate the industry’s most complete set of cloud communications services, cloud-based and on-premise deployment options, and exceptional customer service, so we believe this award will be reassuring to our customers and prospects alike.”

  To read the full report, fill out the form on this page.

  The post Sangoma is Recognized in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for UCaaS, Worldwide appeared first on Sangoma.

October 25, 2021

• Enable Security One presentation at ClueCon and five security advisories for FreeSWITCH
  The FreeSWITCH team has just published version v1.10.7 which fixes a number of security issues that we reported. If you use FreeSWITCH, please do upgrade to get these security updates. To learn about the background work that went into getting these security bugs squashed, follow Sandro’s talk called Killing bugs … one vulnerability report at a time. This will be presented at at ClueCon on Thursday, October 28th. Here are the titles of each advisory and a very short summary:

October 23, 2021

• François Marier Setting up a JMP SIP account on Asterisk

  JMP offers VoIP calling via XMPP, but it's also possibly to use the VoIP using SIP.

  The underlying VoIP calling functionality in JMP is provided by Bandwidth, but their old Asterisk instructions didn't quite work for me. Here's how I set it up in my Asterisk server.

  Get your SIP credentials

  After signing up for JMP and setting it up in your favourite XMPP client, send the following message to the cheogram.com gateway contact:

  reset sip account
  

  In response, you will receive a message containing:

  • a numerical username
  • a password (e.g. three lowercase words separated by spaces)

  Add SIP account to your Asterisk config

  First of all, I added the following near the top of my /etc/asterisk/sip.conf:

  [general]
  register => username:three secret words@jmp.cbcbc7.auth.bandwidth.com:5008
  

  The other non-default options I have set in [general] are:

  context=public
  allowoverlap=no
  udpbindaddr=0.0.0.0
  tcpenable=yes
  tcpbindaddr=0.0.0.0
  tlsenable=yes
  transport=udp
  srvlookup=no
  vmexten=voicemail
  relaxdtmf=yes
  useragent=Asterisk PBX
  tlscertfile=/etc/asterisk/asterisk.cert
  tlsprivatekey=/etc/asterisk/asterisk.key
  tlscapath=/etc/ssl/certs/
  externhost=machinename.dyndns.org
  localnet=192.168.0.0/255.255.0.0
  

  Note that you can have more than one register line in your config if you use more than one SIP provider, but you must register with the server whether you want to receive incoming calls or not.

  Then I added a new blurb to the bottom of the same file:

  [jmp]
  type=peer
  host=mp.cbcbc7.auth.bandwidth.com
  port=5008
  secret=three secret words
  defaultuser=username
  context=from-jmp
  disallow=all
  allow=ulaw
  allow=g729
  insecure=port,invite
  canreinvite=no
  dtmfmode=rfc2833
  

  and for reference, here's the blurb for my Snom 300 SIP phone:

  [1001]
  ; Snom 300
  type=friend
  qualify=yes
  secret=password
  encryption=no
  context=full
  host=dynamic
  nat=no
  directmedia=no
  mailbox=1000@internal
  vmexten=707
  dtmfmode=rfc2833
  call-limit=2
  disallow=all
  allow=g722
  allow=ulaw
  

  I checked that the registration was successful by running asterisk -r and then typing:

  sip set debug on
  

  before reloading the configuration using:

  reload
  

  Create Asterisk extensions to send and receive calls

  Once I got registration to work, I hooked this up with my other extensions so that I could send and receive calls using my JMP number.

  In /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf, I added the following:

  [from-jmp]
  include => home
  exten => s,1,Goto(1000,1)
  

  where home is the context which includes my local SIP devices and 1000 is the extension I want to ring.

  Then I added the following to enable calls to any destination within the North American Numbering Plan:

  [pstn-jmp]
  exten => _1NXXNXXXXXX,1,Set(CALLERID(all)=Francois Marier <5551231434>)
  exten => _1NXXNXXXXXX,n,Dial(SIP/jmp/${EXTEN})
  exten => _1NXXNXXXXXX,n,Hangup()
  exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,1,Set(CALLERID(all)=Francois Marier <5551231234>)
  exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,n,Dial(SIP/jmp/1${EXTEN})
  exten => _NXXNXXXXXX,n,Hangup()
  

  Here 5551231234 is my JMP phone number, not my bwsip numerical username.

  For reference, here's the rest of my dialplan in /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf:

  [general]
  static=yes
  writeprotect=no
  clearglobalvars=no
  
  [public]
  exten => _X.,1,Hangup(3)
  
  [sipdefault]
  exten => _X.,1,Hangup(3)
  
  [default]
  exten => _X.,1,Hangup(3)
  
  [internal]
  include => home
  
  [full]
  include => internal
  include => pstn-jmp
  exten => 707,1,VoiceMailMain(1000@internal)
  
  [home]
  ; Internal extensions
  exten => 1000,1,Dial(SIP/1001,20)
  exten => 1000,n,Goto(in1000-${DIALSTATUS},1)
  exten => 1000,n,Hangup
  exten => in1000-BUSY,1,Hangup(17)
  exten => in1000-CONGESTION,1,Hangup(3)
  exten => in1000-CHANUNAVAIL,1,VoiceMail(1000@internal,su)
  exten => in1000-CHANUNAVAIL,n,Hangup(3)
  exten => in1000-NOANSWER,1,VoiceMail(1000@internal,su)
  exten => in1000-NOANSWER,n,Hangup(16)
  exten => _in1000-.,1,Hangup(16)
  

  Firewall

  Finally, I opened a few ports in my firewall by putting the following in /etc/network/iptables.up.rules:

  # SIP and RTP on UDP (jmp.cbcbc7.auth.bandwidth.com)
  -A INPUT -s 67.231.2.13/32 -p udp --dport 5008 -j ACCEPT
  -A INPUT -s 216.82.238.135/32 -p udp --dport 5008 -j ACCEPT
  -A INPUT -s 67.231.2.13/32 -p udp --sport 5004:5005 --dport 10001:20000 -j ACCEPT
  -A INPUT -s 216.82.238.135/32 -p udp --sport 5004:5005 --dport 10001:20000 -j ACCEPT
  

  Outbound calls not working

  While the above setup works for me for inbound calls, it doesn't currently work for outbound calls.

  The hostname currently resolves to one of two IP addresses:

  $ dig +short jmp.cbcbc7.auth.bandwidth.com
  67.231.2.13
  216.82.238.135
  

  If I pin it to the first one by putting the following in my /etc/hosts file:

  67.231.2.13 jmp.cbcbc7.auth.bandwidth.com
  

  then I get a 486 error back from the server when I dial 1-555-456-4567:

  <--- SIP read from UDP:67.231.2.13:5008 --->
  SIP/2.0 486 Busy Here
  Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 127.0.0.1:5060;branch=z9hG4bK03210a30
  From: "Francois Marier" <sip:5551231234@127.0.0.1>
  To: <sip:15554564567@jmp.cbcbc7.auth.bandwidth.com:5008>
  Call-ID: 575f21f36f57951638c1a8062f3a5201@127.0.0.1:5060
  CSeq: 103 INVITE
  Content-Length: 0
  

  On the other hand, if I pin it to 216.82.238.135, then I get a 600 error:

  <--- SIP read from UDP:216.82.238.135:5008 --->
  SIP/2.0 600 Busy Everywhere
  Via: SIP/2.0/UDP 127.0.0.1:5060;branch=z9hG4bK7b7f7ed9
  From: "Francois Marier" <sip:5551231234@127.0.0.1>
  To: <sip:15554564567@jmp.cbcbc7.auth.bandwidth.com:5008>
  Call-ID: 5bebb8d05902c1732c6b9f4776844c66@127.0.0.1:5060
  CSeq: 103 INVITE
  Content-Length: 0
  

  If you have any idea what might be wrong here, or if you got outbound calls to work on Bandwidth.com, please leave a comment!

October 20, 2021

• FreeSWITCH Sharon’s Top 12 Reasons to Come to ClueCon – Part 3

  By Sharon White

  Sharon White has been the main organizer of ClueCon for many years! This is a little behind the scenes look into ClueCon and all her favorite things about the conference.

  Click here to learn more and register for ClueCon TGI2021!

  4. The Gigabit Reception

  Most conferences worth their salt have a reception – a chance for the attendees that make up the community to mingle. The Gigabit Reception is the annual party that happens on Tuesday evening during ClueCon. This is one of my favorite events. After a long day of absorbing the vast knowledge that the speakers will share, partaking in prize drawings (at least 3-4 each day!), stuffing yourself with a delicious Chicago lunch and visiting with our amazing sponsors, it’s always great to relax, listen to music, play video games, and unwind.

  This year will be one of the most amazing receptions of all time. Equal to the Met Gala in grandeur, the who’s who of ClueCon and FreeSWITCH will dazzle you with their presence. With Halloween just around the corner, we even added a costume party to the event. There will be a little bit of something for everybody – board games, drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and more.

  The most exciting parts of the Gigabit Reception are the Mario Kart tournament, karaoke, and Anthony Minessale’s annual guitar jam session. Whether you’re joining us in person or online this year, you can hang out with fellow community members, jam out, wear a costume, and have a blast at this highly-anticipated networking event!

  3. Registration

  The registration desk holds a special place in my heart. I first came to ClueCon to hang out with a friend, knowing nothing about open source telecom, and was asked to help out on the first day of the conference. It was love at first sight. The small area that was made up of a metric ton of cardboard boxes was transformed into the beautiful check-in setup that is the first impression for each attendee upon arrival.

  Working at the registration desk is fast paced and busy those first couple days, but the best thing about it is meeting all of the attendees we will be spending time with that week, and revisiting with all of the attendees who come back year after year. ClueCon attendees are the glue that holds ClueCon together and they are the reason we have a conference every year. Without them there would be no ClueCon!

  When you get off the elevator, you will immediately be surrounded by fellow community members, and have the chance to mingle at the meet and greet at registration. This year we will also have color-coded lanyards you can use to indicate your comfort level for social distancing practices. And of course, there will be plenty of masks and hand sanitizer available to keep everyone safe and healthy.

  2. Meet the Creators of FreeSWITCH and the Founders of Cluecon

  Anthony Minessale, Brian West, and Michael Jerris are the brilliant minds behind the FreeSWITCH open source project. I have grown very fond of these three. They saw a need in the world, and they set out to fill that need – while making it free to everyone. This mission that led to the creation of FreeSWITCH will always be at the heart of ClueCon. 

  The three of them met a few years before the first ClueCon, and it was the first ClueCon that would lead to the founding of FreeSWITCH itself. Unlike today’s videoconferencing-centric world, back then humans were drawn to meeting in person. In 2005, they hosted the very first ClueCon, and instead of a well-organized tech conference, it was more like inviting 50 friends to get together. Located at the Best Western near the airport in Chicago, it was not nearly as lavish as it is today. The traditional nightly activities were the same, although the parties included kegs they could not finish (but hey, bonus beer during the conference the next morning… I don’t know if it was a good idea. But I’m sure it was fun.)

  Come to ClueCon and meet the founders! When you do, ask them about the SWAT team at the first ClueCon. Stories galore!

  

  1. A chance to see my Binders in person… You never even realized this was missing from your life.

  I can go on for hours about all the details that go into planning a ClueCon. From all the logistical organizing with the hotel, to minutiae like labeling the raffle tickets, to drafting schedule after schedule, the almighty binder contains all the information we need to survive the week. Over the years we have learned that not all hotels have the immense capacity for internet that we need; that not all hotels can produce the audio and video levels that we need; that during a global pandemic it is important to have a great virtual platform to use to integrate those who can’t be with us in person. So we have used our own technology and resources to accomplish all of this and more.

  These endless details cannot be kept in any one person’s head, so I have about 20 lovely binders that keep all of ClueCon safe in the hands of all the organizers. These binders are my brain and without them I dont think ClueCon would be as successful as it is. Yes, I said it: the binders are the single most important aspect of running a great conference. They help run the conference like a well-oiled machine. 

  I might have said it before about attendees… but binders are the glue holding ClueCon together.  

  The post Sharon’s Top 12 Reasons to Come to ClueCon – Part 3 appeared first on FreeSWITCH.

• Enable Security VoIP DDoS, the OpenSIPS security audit and more
  Welcome to the first RTCSEC newsletter! Please do reply and tell me what you think - this will help us make future editions better. In this edition, we cover: The OpenSIPS security audit The DDoS attacks on VoIP providers My upcoming talk at ClueCon 2021 Fred Posner’s talk from Kamailio World 2021 Two presentations of interest from OpenSIPS Summit 2021 Short news and commentary RTCSec newsletter is a free periodic newsletter bringing you commentary and news around VoIP and WebRTC security.

October 19, 2021

• Digium The Evolved Office

  As we’ve seen over the nearly two years now, the office has evolved, and not just in a physical way. The way we communicate, using more video and instant messaging, has also been a change. Back only 25 years ago, there was only one way to get to most real-time / voice business communication systems from outside the building. Call into it from the PSTN. The change I described above has been enabled because of a wide variety of rich and powerful networks.

  The incredible capability of modern networks enables us to imagine four states of an Evolved Office. These states don’t necessarily have to happen in chronological order and can also overlap. These states are simply there to help illustrate how enterprise communication needs will vary by company and will change, how they will continue to change, and how the Business Communications System will be playing a central role in these evolutions going forward.

  Borderless Network

  Most offices today are in at least the first state of the Evolved Office, the Borderless Network. The business voice communications system can now be accessed from various networks, no matter where you are. Whether the user is on a Wi-Fi, LTE, or 5G mobile network or from an enterprise ethernet network, access to your business voice communications is possible. The networks are so advanced that access to all your business systems, not just voice systems, is possible. This enables work to occur from anywhere, at any time.

  While more ubiquitous Wi-Fi is coming in the form of more and more hotspots, essentially extending your office to wherever a Wi-Fi hotspot can be found, 5G is the next frontier for enterprise communications. And not just because someone will be calling you at work or into your contact center from a 5G network.

  5G also means faster speeds than any other wireless network, and it means your entire business could ultimately be connected to the outside world via a mobile connection. Think about the concept of mobile SIP trunking, if you will. Your whole business could be connected this way, and you can even have a 5G business network slice or dedicated bandwidth for you.

  All of this means that all different varieties of business communication systems, whether unified or not, do not have to be physically on premise. All of these systems can be driven by cloud architectures. In other words, the borderless network also means everything could be in the cloud if one so chooses.

  Next week I’ll explore further evolutions of the office.

  The post The Evolved Office appeared first on Sangoma.

• ng-voice Strategic alignment, team building, and a lot of fun – ng-voice’s in-person retreat in Flensburg

  Strategic alignment, team building, and a lot of fun - ng-voice’s in-person retreat in Flensburg

  In our previous post, talked about how ng-voice saw the pandemic as an opportunity to embrace a hybrid remote work policy as part of our culture, and have been very successful in implementing it in the last 18 months. While we all appreciate the flexibility and freedom brought by this new work model, we at ng-voice feel that human contact can never be fully replaced by a screen. Therefore, we were all looking forward to the day when the pandemic restrictions would be lifted and we would be able to safely gather the team again in person for strategic alignment and team building. 

   

  And this day finally came! ng-voice hosted its first in-person retreat after the pandemic in the city of Flensburg, on the German-Danish border. The city is known for its beautifully docked harbor and amazing seascapes, making it a perfect place for our colleagues to reconnect. Following the German “3G rule” (vaccinated, recovered, or tested – geimpft, genesen, getestet), we were able to create a safe and healthy environment for all.

  

  Improving communication across teams through activities and workshop

  The first gathering of the team was the perfect opportunity for our CEO, David Bachmann, to share his vision for the company and align the team on the priorities for the next 6-12 months. We also took the opportunity to celebrate the teams’ achievements in the last quarter, sharing our objectives and key results.

  

  As we have been growing fast in past years and with the team working remotely, keeping the communication flowing across different teams has become a must. To address these challenges, we had several group activities and a workshop with an external specialist to identify critical issues, brainstorm solutions and define priorities together. It was also an opportunity for ng-voice’s newcomers to be included and help shape our company’s culture moving forward.

  

  Bonding with our colleagues on a sailing trip in the Baltic sea

  The Flensburg’s experience is not complete without a sailing trip across the Baltic sea, and that is exactly what we did. Our colleagues got the chance to explore the sea on a sailing boat, with beautiful views of Denmark and Germany on both sides. Some of our colleagues volunteered to help the captain with boat duties.

  

  With this retreat, we got an opportunity to get to know each other on a personal level, share experiences, and build a stronger team together. According to Elisa Hermann, our People Lead “ it was important to connect and reconnect our entire team, which grew significantly during times of home office. The main objective of our retreat was team building and spending quality time with each other strengthening our bond”. Sameer Nahar, Senior Software Engineer, shared his experience at the retreat: “It was great to meet face-to-face, shake hands, interact and make friends. I feel refreshed and ready for upcoming challenges knowing that I am working together with a great team”. 

  
  At ng-voice, we believe in bringing your whole being to work. Communicating, bonding, and discussing the future of our company together is critical to our success. We are looking forward to our next retreat to spend more quality time with one another as we continue to grow. And we are constantly looking for talented people to join us! Click here or visit our career page for job opportunities.

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  Quirin Maderspacher

  Chief of Staff

  Publisher Bio

  Joining us from McKinsey & Company where he served as a senior engagement manager, taking on digital topics (digital identity and hyperscaler portfolios) at the intersection of the private and public sectors. Quirin joined ng-voice as Chief of Staff to lead the establishment of standardized and lean processes across the company, drive strategic initiatives and help in the organizational structure.

October 14, 2021

• Digium Your End-to-End UCaaS Guide

  In recent years, organizations have been thrust into remote and hybrid work scenarios. Companies of virtually every size were forced to adopt new delivery models for how its employees communicate and collaborate over daily tasks, even when not commuting to a physical workplace. Today’s companies are always looking for new ways to make operations more productive and profitable in spite of geographic disparity.

  Traditionally, the day-to-day management of remote staff activity has been problematic, with factors such as workplace efficiency and cost-effectiveness limiting just how far the company could go.

  The good news? Even the technologically inexperienced can benefit from – and even thrive in – a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) environment.

  Let Us Be Your UCaaS Guide

  Whether you’re already familiar with UCaaS or just starting to learn about this mission-critical technology, it always helps to have a guide. Start at the beginning with the core purpose of UCaaS, and then see how finding the right platform and provider can make all the difference for your business.

  UCaaS delivery models provide comprehensive access to communications and collaboration services on an on-demand basis. Tools such as chats, video conferences, productivity apps, and IP phone options are presented “as a service” through a consolidated, cloud-based platform that is accessible over virtually any device.

  At the basic level, deployments streamline access to those and other features without passing along common headaches such as hardware and software installations, maintenance, staged updates, and migrations that tend to plague even the most experienced users. These technical needs are managed by your UCaaS provider.

  For just a simple subscription, the UCaaS service provider handles all aspects for the organization, allowing it to focus exclusively on work and productivity. Nightmares such as communication lags, cooperative barriers, and document security become a thing of the past!

  UCaaS Features

  Traditionally, UCaaS deployments include these features:

  • Voice Calling: From phones, VoIP softphones, and mobile devices
  • Conferencing: Real-time video, audio, and web-based including in-browser video calls from any device without downloading extra software
  • Messaging: Via email, with voicemail, chat, and SMS-integrated contact centers and customer call management
  • Collaboration: Through shared desktop apps and workspaces integrated into your communications system, plus the option to customize with third-party applications

  UCaaS Benefits

  UCaaS offerings have numerous benefits to organizational operations, including options for:

  • Working from Anywhere: Remote and hybrid employees can interact in real time, regardless of geographic barriers or the device they’re using
  • Business Continuity: Cloud infrastructure is securely housed off-site – and often with geo-redundancy – to promote business continuity and disaster recovery
  • Scalability: App maintenance and updates are organized and pushed automatically via the cloud, while purchased capacity can be expanded by adding to the subscription
  • Productivity: Promoted with increases to speed and efficiency in communications and document sharing
  • Customer Service: Features contact center elements to monitor call data and improve CRM
  • Cost: Eliminates hardware and software requirements, reducing IT spending
  • Data-Driven Analytics: Leverages cloud-based insight to monitor employee work and correspondences

  UCaaS As A Business Advantage

  At a basic level, UCaaS streamlines cloud-native dialogue to bolster efficiency and minimize concern and cost. Elements such as support for voice and VoIP, presence, SMS and MMS, analytics and cross-device alerts promote more effectiveness in both areas.

  In today’s corporate landscape, more and more employers are utilizing the remote and hybrid work experience, not just for the staff member, but for the executive as well. Allowing workers to access communications and collaboration software from their location of choice, rather than within a dedicated physical office or cubicle, is becoming a more commonly accepted norm. It may even be argued that this is the new standard for businesses to follow.

  For that reason, access to top-notch communications and work-share tools is an absolute necessity. With UCaaS, one gains quick and easy access to applications to bolster productivity, free worker availability, secure critical infrastructure, maintain assets, and decrease overhead cost.

  Contact our team today to discuss these and other benefits that UCaaS can offer to you! We will be your UCaaS Guide to choosing the right system for your needs!

  The post Your End-to-End UCaaS Guide appeared first on Sangoma.

• ng-voice ng-voice attends Deutsche Telekom Campus Fair 2021

  ng-voice attended this year’s hybrid Telekom Campus Fair which took place on the 6th of October. Deutsche Telekom‘s event returned both virtually and in-person in Bonn, Germany, bringing together partners and industry specialists to discuss the most relevant topics for the industry, such as cloudification, automation, carbon neutrality, and more. 

   

  ng-voice had the pleasure to participate along with partners from the European Association of Next Generation Telecommunications Innovators (EANGTI) – Amarisoft, Cumucore, and Rapidspace – highlighting the opportunities of creating a strong 5G ecosystem that brings together various players to foster innovation in Europe. 

   

  We exhibited our fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core this year, which enables operators and enterprises of any size to deploy VoLTE/VoNR on their LTE/5G networks thanks to our design principles and a cloud-native IMS solution built from scratch with a modular container-based approach.  

   

  To learn more about our solutions, please contact our team at info@ng-voice.com or request a demo.

  

  

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  Barbara Silva

  Marketing Lead

  Publisher Bio

  After 10 years of working for Telefonica as a Business Development and Marketing Manager, along with developing serval projects in Latin America. Barbara’s plans to connect and share her own experience in Branding and growth strategies with the readers. She enjoys talking about any topics, from Netflix series to Politics, making her a versatile and fun person to talk to.

October 13, 2021

• Enable Security Why volumetric DDoS cripples VoIP providers and what we see during pentesting
  An epiphany Until a few days ago, I was of the opinion that simulating volumetric DDoS attacks is not something we should be doing. If you had asked us for such a test, we would have given you a negative answer. Ironically, we had been unwittingly simulating volumetric DDoS attacks while quietly ignoring our own results. But, it’s time to stop neglecting bandwidth saturation and start giving it the attention that it deserves.
• Enable Security How I learned to stop worrying and love the flood - on DDoS
  An epiphany Until a few days ago, I was of the opinion that simulating volumetric DDoS attacks is not something we should be doing. If you had asked us for such a test, we would have given you a negative answer. Ironically, we had been unwittingly simulating volumetric DDoS attacks while quietly ignoring our own results. But, it’s time to stop neglecting bandwidth saturation and start giving it the attention that it deserves.
• Enable Security How I learned to stop worrying and love the flood
  An epiphany Until a few days ago, I was of the opinion that simulating volumetric DDoS attacks is not something we should be doing. If you had asked us for such a test, we would have given you a negative answer. Ironically, we had been unwittingly simulating volumetric DDoS attacks while quietly ignoring our own results. But, it’s time to stop neglecting bandwidth saturation and start giving it the attention that it deserves.

October 12, 2021

• Digium What kind of companies would use Desktop-as-a-Service?

  What kind of companies might utilize a cloud-based virtual desktop (Desktop-as-a-Service or DaaS for short)? It could be any, but they would generally fall into a couple of categories:

  1. Companies that want to minimize laptop costs
  2. Companies that want to control employee data access have – i.e., no downloading of files to personal computers (financial institutions, government agencies, etc.)
  3. Companies that want to outsource “security of data” as much as possible
  4. Seasonal or project-based businesses where giving laptops to contractors or seasonal employees isn’t practical

  Is this for every company? No. I certainly like my laptop, and I like the applications on it. I do a lot of work when I’m not connected to the Internet.

  But this might make sense for your company, especially as you move forward. How do I get this? The delivery and sales model are very similar to other cloud applications such as UCaaS. The DaaS provider sets up the service, and the business “buys” the service through a monthly subscription licensing model for its employees.

  Sangoma offers DaaS services today. We have customers big and small using our DaaS solution. Many of our customers come to us initially for our UCaaS solution, and then when in discussions with them, they’ve been open to moving everything to the cloud. Our DaaS solution offers them the ability to do this, with the emphasis we can give on UCaaS.

  The post What kind of companies would use Desktop-as-a-Service? appeared first on Sangoma.

October 06, 2021

• Digium Oracle Connector: Habilitando la Comunicación Hotelera con Sangoma PBXact

  El segmento de la hospitalidad es una industria desafiante que siempre busca mejorar la experiencia de sus huéspedes, maximizar la eficiencia del personal y optimizar las comunicaciones internas. Con un Sistema de Gestión de Propiedades como centro de las operaciones comerciales hoteleras, la integración de diferentes tecnologías a la infraestructura existente ya no es un lujo, sino una necesidad que exigen los clientes que viajan.

  Sangoma actualmente ofrece varias opciones para satisfacer las necesidades de hotelería, como su propio módulo de gestión de propiedades integrado en la GUI del PBX para hoteles pequeños y medianos, o la posibilidad de conectarse a través de middleware a las plataformas de gestión de propiedades más populares en todo el mundo.

  Adicionando a nuestra cartera de servicios de hospitalidad, hemos lanzado el Add-on Oracle Connector el cual permite a los hoteles, complejos turísticos, casas de huéspedes, etc. proporcionar un servicio al cliente superior y reducir costos operativos al habilitar la comunicación directa entre un sistema de gestión de propiedades de Oracle, como el Oracle®. Hospitality OPERA (anteriormente Fidelio) y el sistema de UC flexible y de código abierto basado en Asterisk de Sangoma, PBXact.

  El Addon Oracle Connector está certificado por Oracle y proporciona sincronización entre bases de datos, lo que permite la automatización de procesos anteriormente manuales, como la activación y desactivación de los teléfonos de la habitación y el correo de voz al momento del check-in y del check-out, señalizar el estado de limpieza de la habitación, establecer llamadas de despertador y proporcionar llamadas de emergencia.

  Los dispositivos telefónicos de la habitación de los huéspedes también se actualizan automáticamente con la información del huésped, por lo que al entrar a la habitación, su nombre ya está configurado y también se muestra al personal en turno, para que sepan con solo un vistazo quién está solicitando servicio. En general, reducir los tiempos de respuesta ayuda al personal a ser proactivo con las necesidades de los huéspedes, haciendo que estos se sientan valorados y aumentando su probabilidad de regresar y otorgar buenas críticas, atrayendo a más huéspedes potenciales.

  Hoy en día estamos tan acostumbrados a usar nuestros dispositivos móviles personales donde quiera que vayamos para hacer llamadas de larga distancia a través de Internet, que puede parecer sorprendente descubrir que los gastos de comunicación siguen siendo uno de los principales gastos en el negocio de la hostelería. Oracle Connector permite la creación de impuestos y la asignación de tarifas de facturación de forma automática, asegurando una facturación precisa de los cargos de llamadas a la cuenta del huésped correspondiente.

  Con las cifras de viajes de negocios y de placer aumentando nuevamente, ahora es el momento adecuado para automatizar procesos implementando sistemas de comunicación flexibles de Sangoma y optimizando los beneficios al máximo, tanto para el huésped como para el personal del hotel. Eche un vistazo al nuevo manual del Add-on Oracle Connector en nuestra wiki y comience a ofrecer soluciones sólidas para la industria hotelera.

  The post Oracle Connector: Habilitando la Comunicación Hotelera con Sangoma PBXact appeared first on Sangoma.

• Digium Oracle Connector: Enabling the Hospitality / Sangoma PBXact Conversation

  The hospitality segment is a challenging industry that is ever looking for ways to enhance their guest experience, maximize staff efficiency, and improve internal communications. With a Property Management System at the core of hotel business operations, integrating different technologies to existing infrastructure is no longer a luxury, but rather a necessity that traveling customers demand.

  This article is available in Spanish. ¡Lea este artículo en Español!

  Sangoma already offers several options to meet hospitality needs, like its own Property Management Module embedded in the PBX GUI for small to medium hotels, or the possibility of connecting via middleware to the most popular property management platforms worldwide.

  Adding to our hospitality services portfolio, we have now released the Oracle Connector Add-on which enables hotels, resorts, guest houses, etc. to provide superior customer service and reduce operational costs by allowing direct communication between an Oracle Property Management System, such as Oracle® Hospitality OPERA (formerly Fidelio), and Sangoma’s flexible and open-source Asterisk based UC system, PBXact.

  The Oracle-certified Connector Addon provides synchronization between databases, allowing the automation of formerly manual processes such as activating and deactivating guest room phones and voicemail upon check-in and check-out, signaling room cleanliness status, arranging a wake-up call, and providing emergency calling.

  Guest room telephone devices are also automatically updated with guest information so by the time the guest walks into the room, their name is already set up, and it will also be displayed to the service staff, so they know at a glance who is requesting service. Overall, having shortened response times, helps the staff to be proactive to guest needs, making guests feel valued, and increasing their likelihood to come back and give good reviews, attracting further potential guests.

  We are all so used to using our personal mobile devices wherever we go to make long-distance calls via the Internet, that it is somewhat surprising to discover that communication expenses are still one of the top expenses in the hospitality business. In any case, the Oracle Connector allows the creation of taxes and assigning of billing rates automatically, ensuring accurate billing of call charges to the corresponding guest account.

  With business and pleasure travel numbers picking up again, now is the right time to automate processes with Sangoma’s flexible communication systems, and streamline maximum benefits for both the guest and the hotel staff. Take a look at the new Oracle Connector Add-on manual in our wiki, and start delivering robust hospitality solutions.

  The post Oracle Connector: Enabling the Hospitality / Sangoma PBXact Conversation appeared first on Sangoma.

October 05, 2021

• Digium The Benefits of Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)

  Last week we explored what Desktop-as-a-Service is, and this week we’ll get into some of the benefits. As discussed in last week’s blog, security is a benefit because your business won’t have to worry about it. Data is stored in the DaaS provider data center, and the DaaS provider must manage that. Presumably, they’d be able to do a better job than a smaller business with this. But beyond that, data on your laptop wouldn’t exist or wouldn’t be as deep. When I worked for Intel years ago, I remember that we had quite a bit of training regarding how to manage your laptop on business trips to minimize the risk of it being stolen (excellent training, by the way, which I still utilize today).

  From an IT perspective, bringing on a new employee is easier. Decide which employee desktop template is required (i.e., the Product Management one, the Marketing one, the Sales one, etc.) for that employee and tie it to the new employee. Then the new employee logs in from the company device. In other words, someone can log into the virtual desktop anywhere, from any device, and the desktop will look the same.

  IT can also manage “pushes” of applications easier – it’s just done centrally. And updates of security patches or updates of any kind to whatever thin client is used can be managed centrally.

  And there are potential cost savings since thin clients are less expensive than laptops. Or even supports employees who may want to use their own laptop – they just log in to the DaaS system to get to their “employee” mode. I’ve also read some studies where virtual desktops or DaaS can lower energy used by your company.

  Are there any downsides? Like any cloud service, when a centralized server environment is used, there is potential for things to “slow down” since there isn’t enough computing power in the central environment. Graphics intensive applications are examples of this. But there has been much work done by infrastructure providers to resolve these issues, and they are less and less of a problem.

  The post The Benefits of Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) appeared first on Sangoma.

• WebRTC Hacks How does WebRTC End-to-End Encryption work? Matrix.org example (Dave Baker)

  One of WebRTC’s great features is its mandated strong encryption.  Encryption mechanisms are built-in, meaning developers don’t (often) need to deal with the details. However, these easy, built-in encryption mechanisms assume you have: 1) media is communicated peer-to-peer and 2) a secure signaling channel setup. Most group-calling services make use of a media server device, […]

  The post How does WebRTC End-to-End Encryption work? Matrix.org example (Dave Baker) appeared first on webrtcHacks.

• ng-voice The sunset of 2G and 3G networks is approaching rapidly – and why you should rely on cloud-native solutions to get ready

  The sunset of 2G and 3G networks is approaching rapidly. With 4G and 5G being pervasively deployed in many regions, the issue of shutting down legacy networks has become an ardent topic. Several players in the industry have already decommissioned their legacy networks while others have announced their intentions to do the same. Mobile networks are in a midst of radical change, in which operators have to cater for the exponential growth and demand for data traffic. As a consequence, operators are faced with choosing between legacy or cloud-native infrastructure solutions.

  Why act now and prepare for the sunset of 2G and 3G networks?

  There are several reasons why operators are shutting down 2G and 3G networks. Freeing up spectrum, expected cost efficiency, as well as government regulations are some of the major driving forces. 

   

  First, spectrum is physically limited and the most expensive resource of a mobile operator. 4G and 5G networks allow for more efficient use of spectrum. Second, consumer behavior is changing, as customers demand more data and high-speed connectivity, while not wanting to spend as much for the service, which reduces the operator’s overall revenues. To meet this demand, operators need to think about cost-efficiency.  Apart from being faster, the total cost-of-ownership (TCO) is drastically lower for 4G and 5G networks compared to 2G and 3G, while spectrum efficiency is higher. Third, the shutdown is also being incentivized by authorities as many regions have set up regulations and deadlines to decommission 2G/3G networks. 

   

  With this movement being accelerated, operators that do not adapt might be left behind. With their peers moving to 4G/ 5G, operators that still rely on their legacy networks will face challenges with outdated service offerings and an overwhelming cost structure. 

   

  Voice is one of the main services that still rely on legacy networks. For voice services, the use of VoLTE/ VoNR has become the norm in the industry. The migration to 4G/ 5G, in this case, not only allows operators to provide a better service, improving the customer‘s experience, but also drastically reduces voice production costs.

  Moving into a cloud-native 4G/ 5G network infrastructure

  The shutdown of 2G/3G also offers an opportunity for operators to modernize their infrastructure to face growing demand: Deploying a cloud-native mobile infrastructure can bring benefits in terms of cost reduction, flexibility, and scalability, and open up new revenue opportunities. 

   

  Moving into a cloud-native architecture can massively reduce both CAPEX and OPEX expenditures. The software-based approach allows significant levels of automation of the entire development, deployment, and maintenance process and reduces the overall resource footprint, driving down not only the need for CPU and memory, but also the related operational costs such as power consumption, space, and headcounts. 

   

  In addition to lower costs, cloud-native solutions allow increased flexibility. Being standard-compliant and following a CI/CD approach, cloud-native networks are flexible, and easy to deploy and integrate, also reducing the time-to-market of new services and features. They also scale up and down, thus very quickly adapting to increases or decreases in subscribers while offering the same quality of service and reliability as legacy networks solutions. 

   

  Furthermore, with a cloud-native infrastructure, operators are able to innovate on their service offering, creating business cases in areas previously discarded for being financially unattractive (e.g. rural areas), and serving new markets like the private networks/IoT business.

  Deploying voice services on 4G/5G networks with ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core

  ng-voice is the right partner for you in the migration to 4G and 5G, offering a VoLTE/VoRN solution that is truly cloud-native and containerized. 

   

  ng-voice’s cloud-native IMS core is the first 100% containerized and Kubernetes-based fully-fledged IMS solution on the market – the critical component to deploy voice services on 4G/ 5G networks. Its major aspects of innovation are:

   

  • Smallest container sizes: Due to the clever slicing of our services, the image size for our sub-components was reduced to under 25 MB
  • Rapid service delivery: reduces the time of deployment and optimizes the lifecycle management of the application
  • Minimized resources footprint: it consumes only 2.5 vCPU and 3.1 GB of memory for an average enterprise network 
  • Flexible business model: our business model is adapted based on customer needs, reducing our customer’s overall capital expenditures.

  Made-in-Germany, ng-voice’s solutions adhere to the highest security and data protection standards. To learn more about our solutions, please contact our team at info@ng-voice.com.

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  Abdul Basit Alvi

  Chief Technologist Cloud and Virtualization

  Publisher Bio

  With vast experience in virtualizing the mobile core of network operators and developing cloud-native solutions, Basit has implemented Pakistan’s first fully virtualized IMS to launch VoLTE capabilities in tier-1 operators. Abdul Basit is passionate about cloud, automation and Dev-Ops tools and enjoys his time off exploring new cities and towns.

October 04, 2021

• FreeSWITCH Sharon’s Top 12 Reasons to Come to ClueCon – Part 2

  By Sharon White

  Sharon White has been the main organizer of ClueCon for many years! This is a little behind the scenes look into ClueCon and all her favorite things about the conference.

  Click here to learn more and register for ClueCon TGI2021!

  8. Raffle Tickets

  Who doesn’t like giveaways? For ClueCon, raffle tickets are the primary way that we give away prizes. Every single attendee receives a certain number of raffle tickets dependent upon when they signed up for ClueCon. Sign up early and you receive 20 raffle tickets per day. Sign up right before ClueCon and you receive one raffle ticket per day. But no matter when you sign up, you still have a chance to win some really cool stuff.

  At most conferences those tiny tickets can represent a parting prize of a dinner for two at a great local restaurant, $500 cash, or a trip to Hawaii. For ClueCon, the annual grand prize is a custom engraved MacBook Pro. Similar to our t-shirts, we put time and effort into giving our attendees something one-of-a-kind and truly special. Based on the year’s theme of ClueCon, the Macbook is intricately engraved with the conference design. This makes it a unique item you can only get at ClueCon.  

  

  Though there is only one MacBook to win, there are many other prizes. In the past we have given out hundreds of SIP phones, wireless chargers, and even a desktop arcade game. There are at least 8 giveaways every day – and dozens of winners.

  Register now you could be one of them!

  7. Hotel Life

  Everyone at one point in their lives has to stay at a hotel. To me, this is really fun and adventurous. Walking in symbolizes the beginning of a week that I have been working towards for the better part of a year. For the next week this hotel is my home away from home. This year, ClueCon is taking place at the InterContinental Hotel on the Magnificent Mile, right in the middle of downtown Chicago.

  Immediately the whirlwind of setting up for ClueCon begins at check-in. I have to work with the whole team to make sure all of our equipment gets to the hotel in one piece, choreograph about 50 people that have poured their lives into setting up ClueCon, organize the conference rooms, and become acquainted with the hotel staff all on the Sunday before the conference. The thrill of ClueCon is in the air right when I first walk in… Then I get to work. By the end of the conference I have an entire family that I will not see again until next year.

  The greatest part of hotel life is surrounding myself with the best people to help me through the week. And for that week, the hotel is home for all of us! Hotel life and city life are one in the same – iconic Chicago restaurants surround the area, and the shops of Michigan Avenue are right around the corner. The InterContinental sits at the intersection of famous landmarks and destinations like Cloud Gate and Navy Pier. This year ClueCon will take over 3 floors of the historic hotel, including the sprawling grand ballroom and the medieval-themed King Arthur’s Court.

  6. Speakers 

  We get many speakers signing up to share their newest innovations or demo their latest projects. And sometimes they might pull something strange to grab your attention… 

  ClueCon is a conference for developers by developers and to that end it is vitally important that we have the right speakers. When ClueCon speakers submit their talks, the FreeSWITCH founders hand-select the best of the best to share their ideas. This year, there will be a combination of speakers in person at the hotel in Chicago and online! Now that we’ve done two online conferences, we know that it’s still going to be awesome, and a crazy unique hybrid experience.

  The presentations are a huge part of what make ClueCon so memorable. There is always a ton to learn about various updates in the world of open source and telecom, and there are so many passionate, knowledgeable leaders who have plenty to teach. These speakers hang around later to answer any questions, chat, and network! You never know what you might learn about, or who will steal the show with a unique demo…

  5. Networking

  I have worked at retail establishments, banks, even a flower shop, completely different jobs that gave me work experience with all kinds of people. I didn’t really get how well a conference allows you to get to know others. Up until ClueCon the only conferences I had been to were Star Trek conventions and ComicCon’s. While meeting new people at those conferences was fun and exciting, networking at ClueCon has inspired major changes in the tech industry that have an impact on the world. In fact, the first ClueCon led to the founding of FreeSWITCH… 

  Not to mention, ClueCon has the coolest networking events, like the annual Gigabit Reception. This reception includes not only great hors d’oeuvres and drinks, but the highly-anticipated jam session, and, as always, ClueCon karaoke.

  

  One of my first ClueCon’s, I was manning the registration desk and I started watching two of our attendees meet and bond in seconds, something that could lead to collaborating to bring new technologies to the forefront by combining their knowledge and intellect. I remember thinking “They meet here, at ClueCon, and maybe a few years down the line we will be introduced to a product that was birthed right here in front of the registration desk.”  Who knows? Maybe that collaboration will help to make the world a better place. Don’t get me wrong, Star Trek conventions are amazing, but who can compete with the innovation that comes from developers getting together at ClueCon?

  To be continued…

  The post Sharon’s Top 12 Reasons to Come to ClueCon – Part 2 appeared first on FreeSWITCH.

September 28, 2021

• Digium What is Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)?

  You may have heard of Desktop-as-a-Service, with its projections of 17% CAGR and $10B market size within a few years, and wondered, “what is this” and “is this for me”?

  Before we get to DaaS, it is essential to understand VDI or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. Virtual desktops are a way to access your company’s applications through your company’s data infrastructure, which might be managed on-prem or via an MSP. Or put another way, think about what applications you might use at your desktop every day at work – Microsoft Office, your CRM of choice, your desktop clients, etc. and these would be in your company’s data infrastructure instead of hosted on your computer. So, you have a virtual desktop because what you see via your endpoint is all virtual and hosted in a typical company data structure environment. Access to these applications occurs only via the endpoint that your company gives you. Your endpoint may be a laptop, or because your endpoint doesn’t need all the processing power it might have before, your endpoint can be more of a thin client.

  DaaS is a virtual desktop but totally within the cloud and outside of your IT infrastructure per se. A cloud service provider would deliver these virtual desktops to employees, customized to each employee’s needs, just like UCaaS does. As with UCaaS (compared to on-prem UC), the DaaS provider takes care of maintenance, updates, storage, and back-ups. Your IT department doesn’t need to do that.

  And your DaaS provider takes care of security as well. Security is a big issue these days. Weekly we read about security breaches and ransomware attacks. If you go a cloud provider route, typically, they will be on the leading edge of security compared to if you had to do it for your own business. In this way, any cloud provider or DaaS provider can be seen as providing a more secure environment. But additional security is also obtained because the endpoints are managed – i.e., various ways into the network are centralized.

  So, in a nutshell, DaaS is a cloud-based virtual desktop. And Sangoma offers it.

  The post What is Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS)? appeared first on Sangoma.

September 27, 2021

• WebRTC Hacks Apple’s not so private relay fails with WebRTC

  Apple released iOS 15 with iCloud Private Relay broken for WebRTC - it still divulges your IP address. This post walks through why and how the WebRTC API's use your IP address information and how you can check what IP addresses are gathered.

  The post Apple’s not so private relay fails with WebRTC appeared first on webrtcHacks.

September 24, 2021

• Digium UCaaS & Its Benefits For The Modern Team Collaboration Tool

  The office landscape is constantly in flux. Whether workers are sitting down at a desk in a physical, in-office location or in the cozy confines of a workspace just feet from the bedroom, the need for enhanced forms of collaboration and communication tools are constantly growing.

  For today’s team-based software, having access to a Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) platform and other modern communications tools – such as cutting-edge team collaboration software – is an absolute necessity.

  Today’s brand of UCaaS solutions provide the vigorous communications system needed to increase productivity and efficiency, share joint work, quickly and accurately help customers, and enhance how the organizations of today operate. As the enterprise struggles to enhance these elements in a world where workers are often separated from across hundreds – or even thousands – of miles, organizations are discovering the many benefits of increasing worker engagement using a UCaaS environment.

  At its core, UCaaS and other pay-per-use services promote almost limitless capabilities. With team-based software, the tech helps make the organization more flexible, and offers unique scalability options with virtually no ceiling as to their expansiveness. Plus, the as-a-service packages offer many of the standard options needed for employees to share information, co-draft documents, communicate with one another and boost operational output, regardless of geographic location.

  Team Collaboration For Every Business

  Today’s modern workforce is in need of a comprehensive team collaboration software set for “hyper” productivity that centralizes their toolkit and drives teamwork and projects.

  Team collaboration tools need to support all communication needs, including, to name a few:

  • Direct messaging and video conferencing with collaborators both inside and outside of the organization
  • Channel, group, and private messaging capabilities
  • Sharing work on files and other content
  • Customizable options to integrate third-party apps
  • Integration with UCaaS for expanded communication and collaboration support

  Other features team collaboration solutions should also support include: browser-based access; guest user account support; channel and personal workspace management; support for telephony services such as third-party call control, fax and other elements; contact and file management; desktop and web-based notifications, and basic searches.

  Essentially, this packaging guarantees that all workers are accessing the same resources, with fewer concerns related to storage and other logistics. This aspect is one of several positive effects that employing team collaboration software with a UCaaS element provides. Additional benefits are outlined below.

  Employee Productivity

  Team collaboration deployments also tend to streamline the employee experience, making them more productive in their daily tasks. By gaining access to on-demand communications platforms and software from the same interface, employees no longer need to navigate between multiple applications, saving considerable time and reducing app overload. A cloud-based phone system integration offers additional benefits as the central hub for all elements: collaborative software, video conferences, and screen-shares.

  Maneuverability

  UCaaS allows the teleworker and in-office employee alike to work under the same conditions, using the same services and accessing the same resources for collaboration and communication. By granting staff with tiered access to the same technology, there are marked reductions in both miscommunication and missed calls! Tech support is also more easily deployed, as all employees are using the same installation.

  Reduced Physical Maintenance & Security

  For the organization specifically, dependence on a cloud-based infrastructure translates to reduced overhead and maintenance cost related to software purchases, as well as physical equipment! Information and physical assets no longer need to be stored and maintained by the company, with those elements all covered by what translates to an automatically updated service rental.

  Similarly, the individual employee is no longer on the hook for necessary tasks such as patch management; all updates are pushed to the software automatically to maintain both optimal and secure systems. Aside from automated security, encryption and other tools, a UCaaS implementation also offers features to promote compliance with federal regulations governing document retention and management.

  Automated Analytics

  UCaaS tools offer numerous administrative features for determining bottlenecks and other issues, providing insight into remediation best practices in a consolidated dashboard that would otherwise not be available for disparate systems.

  The post UCaaS & Its Benefits For The Modern Team Collaboration Tool appeared first on Sangoma.

• Enable Security Massive DDoS attacks on VoIP Providers and simulated DDoS testing
  VoIP.ms and other VoIP providers under DDoS attack At the time of writing, a major VoIP provider called VoIP.ms is under a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack since over a week. As a result, they are unable to serve their customers with everyone and their dog complaining that they cannot connect to VoIP.ms’s SIP servers as well as other resources. At the same time, someone claiming to be part of the REvil ransomware group is blackmailing the provider.

September 21, 2021

• Digium Hybrid Work & Increased Productivity with UCaaS

  Last week, I wrote a blog about the benefits of UCaaS, and I wrote about the following benefits: mobility afforded to employees, the financial aspects to the business of an OPEX model, ability to scale easier, and uptime from a cloud architecture.

  I received a few comments regarding the fact that I did not write about the productivity enhancements of UC. Correct, I did not write about it this time. It does not mean I do not believe that – I have written about that in the past on more than one occasion. I just didn’t this particular time.

  It’s an excellent, timely comment, though. As more employers require employees to come back to work, at least for part of the workweek, it does not mean that there is necessarily reduced productivity from the remote work environment.

  I am just finishing up a trip to one of our offices, and it was great interacting with everyone. While the 1:1’s I did were essentially the same in person versus over a video call, the other interactions of asking someone a question who is down the hall, people popping in to ask me something, running into engineering at lunch, etc. don’t happen when you are remote. And that’s why employers are asking people to come back to work. To get that back because it does make a difference.

  Because of the productivity afforded by UC, increased productivity due to chat functions, ease of calling someone on different devices, video calling, and collaboration, perhaps there might be hybrid go-to work/work from home environments in the future.

  Or even if you need to go back full time, there will still be measurable productivity from using a UC system at work.

  The post Hybrid Work & Increased Productivity with UCaaS appeared first on Sangoma.

September 14, 2021

• Digium Revisiting & Remembering the Benefits of UCaaS

  In the past 18 months, many of us have lived one of the prime benefits of UCaaS – the mobility aspect, which is the ability to work anywhere anytime because your business phone number rings to your mobile phone or your desktop via the UC client. Additionally, we all now fully understand the productivity increase from using UC collaboration and video applications.

  However, there are other benefits to UCaaS that you as an employee using UCaaS may not see. For instance, the move from CAPEX and an OPEX model is important for many companies because they don’t have to lay out the UC costs all upfront. This “pay as you go” model is attractive for many companies.

  And when the system is not having to be managed by the company, there are typically lower costs because the system updates are handled by the provider and not a dedicated company employee – meaning bug fixes and security updates do not have to be managed by the company. Plus, they get done automagically!

  Cloud systems should also have higher uptime because of the nature of a cloud architecture. Superior cloud-based UC providers offer built-in redundancies, auto-failover features, and more reliable networks, as well as the ability to access critical communications like email and voicemail in an emergency.

  Finally, a major benefit of having cloud UC is the ability to add or remove users when they are needed and grow in near real-time. There is no limit to growth potential in the cloud; plus, it’s the most cost-efficient platform for enterprise communications needs.

  ---

  Download the ultimate guide to UCaaS and cloud services here.

  The post Revisiting & Remembering the Benefits of UCaaS appeared first on Sangoma.

September 13, 2021

• ng-voice What is Voice over LTE (VoLTE)?

  In this blog post, we are going to take a look at what Voice over LTE is and why it has become the new standard to deploy voice services on mobile networks. This blog will contain an example of ng-voice’s IMS/VoLTE solution to further elaborate on its importance and benefits.

  What is Voice over LTE (VoLTE)?

  Voice over LTE or VoLTE is an acronym for Voice over Long Term Evolution. VoLTE is the mechanism that provides voice over LTE. With the use of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), The IMS/VoLTE solution can enable voice services on any 4G, 5G, WiFi or other data networks.

  Why VoLTE and virtualized networks?

  To answer why VoLTE and virtualized networks are critical, we should look at the two main challenges that the telecom industry is facing.

   

  1- High-data usage and increasing cost pressure. 

  While mobile network operators are faced with a tremendous increase of data usage in the past years (estimated that 60-70% of it is driven by video content), the willingness of consumers to pay for voice (telephony) is decreasing. New over-the-top applications such as WhatsApp, Skype and Facetime have started to absorb the revenues of operators for voice services and text messaging. With declining voice revenues and a remaining high capital intensity (e.g. expected investment into 5G infrastructure and coverage expansion) mobile network operators face increasing cost pressure and need to innovate on their offer.

   

  2- Deploying VoLTE and virtualizing networks is the only option for operators to react. 

  Despite low voice prices and consumers’ decreasing willingness to pay, operators are and will be required to continue offering voice services. 3G-networks can process data and voice at the same time, but 4G and 5G networks are data-only and require additional software to enable a consumer to make voice calls on these networks. Deploying Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) and Voice-over-WiFi (VoWiFi) is the only solution to offering voice services on 4G and 5G networks as well as to free up spectrum (the most limited resource of network operators) for 3G networks and reduce costs all at once. Given the complex and costly infrastructure of legacy hardware-based networks, VoLTE and VoWiFi are an important step for operators to become more software-centric and virtualize their core networks (e.g: IMS). It also allows operators to start decommissioning their legacy 3G network.

  ng-voice’s VoLTE solution

  Here is an overview of some of the features that ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core has to offer:

   

  •       Native VoLTE calling (voice-over-LTE)
  •       Native ViLTE calling (video-over-LTE)
  •       Native VoWiFi calling (voice-over-WiFi)
  •       Quality of Service support (QoS) for calling on 4G/5G (PCRF integration)
  •       Sending and receiving of SMS (Short-Message-Service, SMS over IMS)
  • Handover from 2G/3G towards 4G/5G; Single-Radio Voice-Call-Continuity (SR-VCC), mid-call or in early stage

   

  Apart from being feature-rich, our IMS core is based on Kubernetes architecture, with the smallest container sizes, high level of automation, and efficient use of resources, which makes it scalable, flexible, and easy to deploy and manage.

   

  Born in a cloud-native era where software is at the center of the business, ng-voice is creating innovative mobile infrastructure solutions and making them accessible for operators and enterprises of any size that want to deploy future-proof networks. ng-voice is the ideal partner for innovative mobile (virtual) network operators and private networks. To learn more about our fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core, you can visit our solutions page or contact our team at info@ng-voice.com.

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  Carsten Bock

  Founder and CTO

  Publisher Bio

  With 20 years+ experience in VoIP and IMS, Carsten led the development and implementation of the first IMS/ VoLTE platform at Telefonica in Germany and was a senior member of the Kamailio management team, developing the IMS extensions in Kamailio. He founded ng-voice in 2011 because he wanted to develop a flexible alternative to existing IMS solutions in the market.

• ng-voice What is an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS core)

  In this blog article, we are going to discuss what is an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), giving an overview of the IMS architecture and its different layers. We are also going to take a look at ng-voice’s cloud-native IMS core and what makes it unique and different from others.

  What is an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)? A look into ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core.

  The Internet Protocol Multimedia Subsystem, or more commonly known as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), is an architectural framework that was developed by an industry association called 3G.IP in 1999, which later on, was proposed to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The IMS initially was not about telephony, but more about multimedia applications during the age of 3G. When IMS was introduced, it was not planned as a telephony replacement, but more like a “service extension”. Today, the architectural framework has become standardized across the industry for next-generation mobile networks.

  IMS Architectural breakdown

  The IMS architectural framework consists of 3 different layers (service/application, control and transport layer). These 3 separated layers provide functions to manage signals and traffic for multimedia applications.

   

  Service Layer/Application layer – The application layer is where it hosts and executes services provided to users (e.g. 4G/5G mobile networks, Wifi or any other network infrastructure). 

  Control Layer – This layer is responsible for session controlling and management. The control layer regulates the traffic between the transport layer and the service/Application layer by authenticating and distributing traffic (eg. the Proxy-/I-/S-CSCF).

  Transport layer – This layer is responsible for supporting the architecture’s core network by acting as a gateway linking access layers and IP networks (ranging from Application servers for supplementary and other services, from SMS, Call-Forwarding or even more sophisticated services such as IP-TV).

  The image below shows ng-voice’s IMS architectural framework. 

  

  The IMS core or the control layer is responsible for providing session control and governing communications based on subscription information and network policies. Below we have stated the roles of each element in the IMS core. 

   

  1- P-CSCF – Proxy Call/Session Control Function

  The P-CSCF provides the central entry point into the operator network. All requests need to go through the P-CSCF and that entity should be located close to the connecting endpoint. This is to increase network efficiency by avoiding useless traffic transport and reducing latency.

  2- I-CSCF – Interrogating-Call/ Session Control Function

  The Interrogating-CSCF (I-CSCF) queries the Home Subscriber Server (HSS) and based on its response routes the message to the correct S-CSCF. If no S-CSCF is indicated by the HSS, the I-CSCF will select S-CSCF.

  3- S-CSCF – the Serving Call/Session Control Function

  The Serving-CSCF is the worker in the IMS world. It communicates with the HSS using Diameter (Cx-interface) to retrieve information about authentication and in order to retrieve user profiles for triggering different application servers. 

  4 – Emergency Services Implementation (incl. E-CSCF)

  The P/I/S-CSCF implementations have been extended to identify emergency registrations. In case of such a registration, the I-CSCF will add an emergency flag in the Diameter User-Auth-Request so that the HSS will ignore roaming restrictions. 

  The signaling protocol that is commonly used to communicate is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). SIP is used for managing, maintaining, routing as well as authorizing and terminating real-time sessions. To put it in simple terms, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) signals and controls the multimedia communication sessions

  What makes ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core unique?

  ng-voice’s fully virtualized turnkey IMS/ VoLTE solution enables voice services on any 4G, 5G, WiFi, or any other data network. It is a fully-fledged VoLTE solution, including a lightweight HSS and PCRF, OCS, and a broad range of application servers (e.g. MMTel/ TAS, IP-SM-GW, Legal Intercept) and is based on 3GPP standard architecture. ng-voice’s solution is cloud-native, easy to deploy, scales for any network size, and integrates with any infrastructure: 

   

  Smallest container sizes: Based on microservices and fully containerized using Kubernetes, our container size of less than 25 MB allows for rapid service delivery, extending the capacity of your platform. 

  100% cloud-native and platform-agnostic: Born in the cloud, our IMS runs on any public, private (bare metal) or hybrid cloud environments, and off-the-shelf hardware.

  Minimal resource footprint: The most efficient use of hardware resources thanks to cloud-native architecture, very small container size and modular approach.

  Flexible Business model: Our business model based on the number of subscribers requires a low upfront commitment, reducing our customer’s overall capital expenditure.

   

   

  ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core brings a completely new approach to mobile infrastructure software. Based on Kubernetes architecture, with the smallest container sizes, high level of automation, and efficient use of resources, our IMS core is scalable, flexible, and easy to deploy and manage, offering operators and enterprises of any size innovative voice services on LTE/5G networks. To learn more about it, please contact our team at info@ng-voice.com or request a demo.

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  Carsten Bock

  Founder and CTO

  Publisher Bio

  With 20 years+ experience in VoIP and IMS, Carsten led the development and implementation of the first IMS/ VoLTE platform at Telefonica in Germany and was a senior member of the Kamailio management team, developing the IMS extensions in Kamailio. He founded ng-voice in 2011 because he wanted to develop a flexible alternative to existing IMS solutions in the market.

September 09, 2021

• ng-voice The sunset of 2G and 3G networks – If you have not done it yet, you need to act NOW

  The sunset for 2G and 3G networks is already a reality. With 4G and 5G being pervasively deployed in many regions, the issue of shutting down legacy networks has become an ardent topic. Several players in the industry have already decommissioned their legacy while others have announced their intentions to follow the same path. Mobile networks are in a midst of metamorphosis, in which to cater for the exponential growth and demand for data traffic, operators are forced to evolve, guaranteeing the best experience for their customers.

  The reasons for the sunset of 2G and 3G networks

  The decision to sunset 2G and 3G networks is based on a variety of factors. Freeing up spectrum, cost efficiency, and government regulations can be considered to be the driving force behind this movement. 

   

  Spectrum is physically limited and the most expensive resource of a mobile operator, therefore its efficient use is crucial. Consumer behavior is changing, as customers demand more data and high-speed connectivity, while not being keen on spending as much for the service, which reduces the operator’s overall revenues. In order to meet this demand, operators need to think about cost-efficiency.  Apart from being faster, the total cost-of-ownership (TCO) is drastically lower for 4G and 5G networks compared to 2G and 3G, while spectrum efficiency is higher. 

   

  The shutdown is also being incentivized by authorities as many regions have set up regulations and deadlines to decommission 2G/3G networks.

  Why act now and prepare for the sunset of 2G and 3G networks?

  With this movement being accelerated, operators that do not adapt might be left behind. With their peers moving to 4G/ 5G, operators that still rely on their legacy networks will face challenges with outdated service offers and an overwhelming cost structure. 

   

  Voice is one of the main services that still rely on legacy networks. For voice services, the use of VoLTE/ VoNR has become the norm in the industry. The migration to 4G/ 5G, in this case, not only allows operators to provide a better service, improving the customer‘s experience, but also drastically reduces voice production costs. 

   

  Furthermore, the shutdown of 2G/3G might be the perfect opportunity for operators to modernize their infrastructure to face the growing demand. Deploying a cloud-native mobile infrastructure can bring additional benefits in terms of cost reduction, flexibility, and scalability. It allows automation of the whole development, deployment, and maintenance process, decreasing the time-to-market of new services and features.

   

  For all of the reasons above, it is right to assume that operators should not delay the decision to shut down their legacy networks. There are servals benefits (listed below) to start the migration today:

   

  • Optimization of the spectrum use to provide faster connectivity
  • Overall operational cost reduction.
  • Meeting increased customer demand for mobile and data usage.
  • Meeting government regulations.
  • Voice production costs reduction
  • Improvement of customer experience for consumers and enterprise users 
  • Opportunity to move into a cloud-native network infrastructure

  Deploying voice services on 4G/5G networks with ng-voice’s fully containerized and cloud-native IMS core

  ng-voice is the right partner for you in the migration to 4G and 5G, offering a VoLTE/VoRN solution that is truly cloud-native, containerized, and cost-efficient.

   

  ng-voice’s IMS core is the first 100% containerized and Kubernetes-based fully-fledged IMS solution – the critical component to deploy voice services on 4G/ 5G networks. It has a high level of automation and a minimal resource footprint, reducing voice production costs and optimizing the entire life-cycle management of the application. Its major aspects of innovation are:

   

  • Smallest container sizes: Due to the clever slicing of our services, the image size for our sub-components was reduced to under 25 MB
  • Rapid service delivery: reduces the time of deployment and optimizes the lifecycle management of the application
  • Minimized resources footprint: it consumes only 2.5 vCPU and 3.1 GB of memory for an average enterprise network 
  • Flexible business model: our business model is adapted after the customers’ needs, reducing our customer’s overall capital expenditures.

  Made-in-Germany, ng-voice’s solutions adhere to the highest security and data protection standards. To learn more about our solutions, please contact our team at info@ng-voice.com.

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  Carsten Bock

  Founder and CTO

  Publisher Bio

  With over 20 years of experience, Carsten Bock is one of the VoIP industry veterans. He believed in IMS becoming the new telephony standard when it was still a niche technology and took the opportunity to build an IMS based Kamailio while working at Telefonica. Nine years ago he founded the company to begin developing ng-voice’s own virtualized, cloud-native IMS. Today he continues to lead our tech team to take ng-voice to the next level.

September 07, 2021

• Digium VI Communication Service’s Voice for MS Teams

  Collaboration has always allowed teams to be greater than the sum of their parts. With more and more people working from home, instead of just grabbing people and pulling them into a room to discuss problems, options, and strategies, you must hunt people down and herd them like cats to get what you need. Distractions around the home, screaming babies (and spouses sometimes), and difficulty getting into the “working mindset” without the work environment you are used to have caused us to lose that extra value from collaborating.

  There are plenty of tools out there to help you get that value back, though. Video Meetings as a Service (VMaaS) applications are a lifesaver. Our offering, Sangoma Meet, allows anyone to set up multi-party video conferences with screen share instantly and enable you to record it to come back to it later.

  Microsoft Teams has also become a great tool to help in today’s work environment. MS Teams offers an online, shared document version of Office programs (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc.) that allows you to work out of the same document, bringing some of that extra value back into your workplace. On top of the text communication and available applications, MS Teams has also recently opened up “Direct Routing” for voice calls to and from the platform, which has drastically improved the program’s value.

  MS Teams, in addition to everything else it does, has simple phone system features inside of it if you have the proper licensing (Phone System license is included in A5/E5 and is a hefty fee for other license types). “Direct Routing” allows you to bring a voice service provider and connect it to Microsoft Teams, allowing you to buy phone numbers and inbound/outbound service inexpensively through the service provider instead of expensively through Microsoft itself.

  While Microsoft Teams has the possibility of replacing an existing PBX, it lacks most of the robust features and reporting that traditional UC systems have offered for years. Chances are, if phone calls are a large part of your business that you’ll want to stick with your existing PBX and possibly look into options to integrate that PBX with Microsoft teams to get the best of both worlds.

  Microsoft also has “Calling Plans” that offer an industry-standard ‘unlimited’ number of minutes (fine print: 3,000 minutes per calling plan). Based on their pricing, though, you would need to be on the phone a lot to get your money out of them with these calling plans. Most office workers are looking at an average of 200-400 minutes per month of external-calling phone time (around 3 to 6.5 hours), coming in well below the 50 hours/month that Microsoft requires you to paying for. Bringing in your provider instead of purchasing a Microsoft Calling Plan is an opportunity to save people a lot of money by paying for what they are using instead of buying 3,000 minutes for an employee that makes a 30-minute call twice a week. In addition to that, with Mircorosoft’sMicrosoft’s Calling Plans, making any calls outside of your country requires an even more expensive plan, even if you need to make a call once.

  At Sangoma, we saw a need for a service plan that makes more sense to all companies using MS Teams. VI Communication Service’s Voice for MS Teams is all about customizability and paying for what you use. We are not trying to sell you ten times as many minutes as you’re going to use while trying to pass it as a “deal.”

  In addition to saving money, you also gain a lot of value. VI Carrier Services gives you access to other services not offered by Microsoft’s Calling Plans (like SMS, Fax to Email/Email to Fax, Robocall mitigation, and more), services that are required for any business.

  Protection is an essential aspect of our Voice for MS Teams also. In addition to the Robocall Mitigation product, which helps tag inbound “spam” or fraudulent calls for your users, we also offer a fraud protection system for International Termination. You can set up daily spend limits and per minute limits for calls outside of US/Canada. This helps to protect you from bad actors using your service to make those calls and protect you from “Larry” in shipping and receiving spending hours on the phone with somebody in Elbonia, racking up a huge phone bill.

  There is also a lot of value in working with a company that focuses on the service that you are buying through them and has been focused on that service for many years. We also value YOU as a customer, a partner – offering a Customer Success department whose purpose is to make sure that we help you with everything you need.

  Overall, Sangoma specializes in Communication Services and offers an experience tailored for what you need with a specialized team available to help at any time. VI Communications Services’ Voice for MS Teams is the way to go if MS Teams is integral to your business. Our team is ready to help you with any questions you might have and will give you a demo of our account management portal and help you determine how little you’ll be spending with us!

  To learn more, visit us at carrierservices.sangoma.com/voice-for-ms-teams/

  The post VI Communication Service’s Voice for MS Teams appeared first on Sangoma.

• Digium Will 5G Fixed Wireless be viable to handle real-time UC?

  Alright, I’m back to traveling pretty regularly, at least within the United States. And with that comes airport delays. Yep, I almost forgot about them. I was in a massive delay a few weeks ago, and I ended up working from the airport. The Wi-Fi wasn’t great there, and I ended up using my hotspot the whole time. And if there weren’t video involved so people could see a different background, no one would even have known.

  It wasn’t quite as good as working from home, but everything worked OK, even the video calls that I did. But I started thinking about what would happen if I didn’t have great Internet at home and it went out a lot, and I needed to rely on mobile for my Internet, like a permanent hotspot. That’s 5G Fixed Wireless.

  My 5G hotspot when I was doing that work gave me 30Mbps download and 16Mbps upload. As I write this at home, I’m getting 123Mbps download and 120Mbps upload. And that works great.

  At $60/month for 5G fixed wireless, it could be problematic if I can only get 10Mbps. I might have to turn off the video. 25Mbps would much better. So, at 25Mbps it could probably work but at 10Mbps, it would only be a good backup if I had spotty landline service. Or if that was the only option to get Internet service.

  Anyway, since I hot-spotted fine, I feel like a fixed-wireless option will work (but check the speeds).

  The post Will 5G Fixed Wireless be viable to handle real-time UC? appeared first on Sangoma.

September 02, 2021

• Digium Save Money, Cut Your IT Costs & Reduce Complexity with Desktop-as-a-Service

  Businesses are turning to Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) in order to adapt to today’s modern, flexible, and remote workforce. It is the most secure method for staff to access their tools and applications from any location to do their work, when compared to traditional PC deployments. DaaS delivers simplified IT that administrators are always looking for and cuts down on the CAPex of deploying PCs, since DaaS allows users to access their cloud-hosted desktops from any device.

  While the benefits of DaaS are enticing, some businesses shy away as soon as they realize the price tag, which ranges from $20-$140 a seat depending on the provider. To see the full picture, however, it’s important to understand the return on investment (ROI) of DaaS, which can be more cost effective than existing deployed solutions. See how DaaS allows businesses to scale up on their remote capability demands and future-proof their digital operations without inflating IT budgets.

  What Are You Spending On IT Today?

  When evaluating a solution to support a distributed workforce, businesses should focus not on specific costs, such as hardware or licensing, but the total cost of ownership (TCO). It’s important to factor in the cost of designing, building, and most importantly maintaining the infrastructure.

  Start by establishing a baseline for existing infrastructure costs and the state of end-user devices. This can help in understanding potential implementation and management costs, compared with an existing set up.

  Businesses should be asking themselves questions like:

  • What are the costs around human capital?
  • What are the average lifespans of endpoints?
  • Will ongoing needs be met with my current licensing purchases?

  With a basic understanding of existing IT costs, businesses can then investigate how DaaS can alleviate or eliminate overhead expenses, with careful consideration to ongoing hardware management and support costs.

  To fully appreciate the TCO of DaaS we also need to understand where the demand for it came from.

  Don’t Get Left Behind With Old Technology!

  Physical desktop computer infrastructures no longer make sense in today’s corporate world. It’s difficult to secure, maintenance heavy, and inflexible in supporting today’s constantly changing IT landscape.

  Desktop computing has become a major cost issue for IT departments. Workstations are eventually replaced once they reach their lifespan, or even sooner when new software requires newer hardware. While it is essential for delivering “must-have” applications and services to end-users, IT managers are increasingly concerned about the tremendous amount of time, complexity, and cost inherent in managing and securing physical PCs.

  What You Need to Know About Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

  With VDI, businesses install virtual machine software onto in-house servers to deploy virtual desktops to all their users. Each user’s PC effectively lives on these servers and is accessed from any workstation, on-demand, even from outside the corporate network. This not only eliminates the need for dedicated workstations, it also makes it easier to patch, configure, and monitor the system as a whole since it has become centralized.

  Businesses can also deploy “thin clients”, which are low-powered end-points since all the computing is delivered from the virtual desktop over an internet connection. Thin clients are an attractive alternative to physical PCs as they have a significantly smaller power footprint, a longer life cycle, and are easier to manage as a near stateless device. Depending on the scenario, this can cut the workstation cost in half, per user.

  We can already start to see the benefits of a VDI environment over traditional PC infrastructures when comparing their capabilities:

  

  An example of the financial benefits of VDI come from a Forrester study of a school district saving $3.3 Million over a span of 3 years by investing in thin clients for their labs vs traditional PC workstations. The end result was 40% IT efficiency gains and $52,000 in savings on software licensing costs by deploying VDI over traditional desktops.

  Cut Down On IT Costs

  IT labor is a large portion of the expense for standard desktops, and an area where virtual desktops deliver significant savings as the desktops are now a centralized and controlled resource. Areas of cost savings include:

  • Helpdesks where support personnel can resolve issues remotely instead of being tied to the physical device
  • Desktop maintenance for support and maintenance of end user devices, since they are either BYOD or thin clients
  • General labor involving OS patching, desktop infrastructure maintenance, finance, and application delivery

  Should You Invest In Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)?

  Deploying VDI does come with its challenges, requiring in-house IT to manage desktop infrastructure, servers, storage and hypervisors, as well as the virtual desktop images and applications. This is also true for MSPs who offer, or want to offer, VDI services to clients from within their data centers.

  A key factor impeding the adoption of VDI is the upfront data center hardware costs needed to run the infrastructure for VDI, specifically servers and storage. A calculation of virtual CPUs and RAM are required, from a server perspective, and input/output performance and gigabytes for disk space, from a storage perspective, per user. From a footprint perspective, a business would assign 25-50 GB solely to run the Windows OS. Given the performance requirements of a virtual desktop, the internal storage of these servers is not recommended, requiring SAN or NAS storage, which adds to the TCO.

  Overall, the datacenter costs are centered around:

  • Floor, cooling, and rack space, on a recurring cost schedule
  • Server hardware, along with support, and power consumption
  • Cost for NAS solution, including power and racking, along with cost per GB per year
  • Cost per GB per desktop image, per year

  If you are an MSP hosting VDI services, then these costs balloon considering the size of your datacenter infrastructure in order to support your customers.

  Aside from hardware specifics, VDI also includes management and software overhead:

  • Management overhead: Management servers and storage running Windows Servers and associated data. Typically a pair of them is needed to create a high availability setup in case one fails for any reason.
  • Software overhead: Windows licensing for desktops, including licenses for virtual desktop access and other related licensing costs.

  The visual representation below shows more clearly how data center costs can pose a significant challenge and may not be suitable for some businesses.

  Hardware

  

  Software

  

  Don’t Throw Your Money Away On Bloated Data Center Hardware Costs

  It’s a well known fact that businesses are over provisioning and underutilizing their VDI hardware infrastructure. A report by ControlUp indicates almost half of VDI servers in datacenters were deployed with too much RAM and 80% of general purpose machines over-provisioned. This appears to be the case because IT admins simply avoid right-sizing their hardware as it’s a complicated process and it’s simply easier to accept the architecture design of the vendor and pay the cost.

  A VDI solution already saves money for businesses when compared to traditional PC infrastructure, whether it be an SMB, enterprise, or an MSP delivering VDI services to them from their data center, but there is still a lot of room to save even more cost, especially when it comes to RAM. To throw some numbers around, in the ControlUp study, about 26 GB of RAM was allocated for over 70,000 servers running an OS at a price tag of $69.3 million. Of that, ControlUp estimates over 75% of the servers were over-provisioned, leading to nearly $31 million overspent on RAM.

  Aside from analysing total cost of ownership from a pure hardware perspective, the operating system has an impact as well. Up to date operating systems run more efficiently, which can help save on hardware costs. However, as you run out of capacity, hardware vendors are more likely to sell more hardware resources than make software efficiency updates, so it’s up to the SMB, enterprise, or the MSP to make sure their systems are up to date, further adding to the total cost of ownership.

  How Connected Workspace Can Transform Your Business

  It’s important for businesses to find a solution that meets their total cost of ownership needs in an agile and dynamic, scalable way. And this is where our Connected Workspace can help. It’s a Desktop-as-a-Service solution that meets your compliance needs, mitigates risk, and reduces your total cost of ownership. Connected Workspace’s total cost of ownership is delivered at a fraction of the cost of VDI as there are no servers for you to set up in a datacenter running virtualized software and virtual desktop management infrastructure. Tying in with the aforementioned datacenter hardware and software costs of VDI, Connected Workspace cuts those down considerably:

  

  A recent case study shows how Connected Workspace saved a business up to 75% on costs from using their previous infrastructure.

  As a cloud-hosted VDI solution with enhancements, Connected Workspace is delivered on-demand and within minutes from a web portal. The enhanced provisioning process right-sizes the solution for you so that you pay for exactly what resources and tools you need, and can be scaled at any time, saving you money. We can see in the table below how Connected Workspace continued to deliver greater benefits than VDI or PC solutions:

  

  Connected Workspace does not require any expertise in VDI or IT technology. Simply configure employees, or client user workspaces, from a dedicated online portal, along with the tailored tools and virtual desktops needed, and the Connected Workspace infrastructure is ready for users to access and stream their cloud-based office space within minutes, from any device.

  Connected Workspace is very easy to manage, and allows a single administrator to manage all their distributed offices and staff workspaces or thousands of clients. There are no sunk costs, no separate licensing, no physical hardware or software updates to keep in mind, and it creates a significant reduction of IT management workload to manage user tools and applications. Plus it’s enhanced security measures, such as built-in ransomware protection and multi factor authentication, make sure your business and customers are safe at all times.

  ---

   
  Want to see Connected Workspace in action? Schedule a free demo to learn more!

  The post Save Money, Cut Your IT Costs & Reduce Complexity with Desktop-as-a-Service appeared first on Sangoma.

August 31, 2021

• Digium How SD-WAN Can Help Your Business

  As cloud-based communications become more of the natural fabric of business communications infrastructure, SD-WAN is becoming more important for the enterprise. And this is precisely the reason we chose an SD-WAN company (BigLeaf) to present the keynote at Virtual AstriCon, November 3-4, 2021. It is an essential subject to customers who may want to use it or partners who likely will need to offer this as one of their solutions to help their customers.

  What is SD-WAN (Software-defined Wide Area Network)? First, let’s review how connectivity occurred before SD-WAN. A WAN for a company would be how a company connects different locations and sends data back and forth in a private manner (i.e., not using the open internet). Obviously, this has been happening for a long time via routers using MPLS. One could encrypt traffic over the MPLS network. All traffic back and forth between locations would use MPLS on this private network.

  However, public clouds such as AWS and Azure are being used now with enterprises. Interaction with these public clouds is occurring within the enterprise. With SD-WAN, one can intelligently route traffic – send the traffic either over private WAN links or the internet depending on policies set up. Since some traffic doesn’t need to be on the private WAN, or some traffic will be on public clouds anyway, SD-WAN can manage this. You can scale easier and faster, can drive traffic flows, etc.

  Firewalls also have to be set up when interaction with the internet occurs, and these are known as (believe it or not) NGFWs (Next-Generation Firewalls!). Some NGFWs have SD-WAN capability. And some do not, by design. And some SD-WANs have some NGFW capability, and some do not, also by design.

  To learn more about SD-WANs, go here. And as a reminder, the AstriCon keynoter is Jeff Burchett, co-founder and chief revenue officer at Bigleaf Networks, who will discuss demystifying SD-WAN.

  The post How SD-WAN Can Help Your Business appeared first on Sangoma.

August 26, 2021

• Digium CCaaS & Its Role In The Contact Center’s Future

  The CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) movement continues to grow as contact center capabilities become increasingly outsourced. This popular model of app deployment allows organizations to buy tech capacity as needed to keep operations running smoothly.

  What Is CCaaS?

  Contact Center as a Service products offer cloud-based capacity on demand; the enterprise pays for access to contact center capabilities as part of a subscription. This model has implications on helping cut costs related to IT spending, maintenance, and support, while expanding integration. CCaaS also supports new features rollout, as updates are pushed automatically by the provider.

  With CCaaS, companies incur no investment, other than subscription costs, in infrastructure, maintenance, or physical overhead. Similarly, logistical headaches are also passed off to the service provider.

  Differences Between CCaaS & UCaaS

  Despite some functional overlap, CCaaS differs from the more common UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) due to varying applications. Contact Center as a Service supports customer communications, while the UC variant promotes inter-organizational collaboration.

  On-demand contact center software includes call center features to assist sales and support staff, as well as the customer, whereas UCaaS options include functions such as video conferencing, messaging, email, and voice calling to streamline employee workflow and collaboration.

  What are CCaaS Capabilities?

  Outsourced contact center solutions are defined by several features.

  Automated Contact Distributor (ACD)

  The ACD routing engine intelligently queues self-service, AI chatbot CCaaS exchanges. The capability supports the omni-channel desktop, with features for handling context and designing contact flows. Managers can also pre-assign coverage areas to specific agents for intelligent customer call routing. For the service provider, this element provides critical coverage for handling customer inquiries and addressing concerns, streamlining customer relationship management (CRM) and experience management (XM).

  Interactive Voice Response (IVR)

  The Contact Center as a Service function includes a customizable, interactive menu that allows callers to either speak a command or dial a number to enter a selection. IVR also integrates with ACD to support data sharing. From customers’ perspective, automated lines can be frustrating and repetitive. IVR technology streamlines the query process, helping to properly convey thoughts and questions to appropriate channels, extending customer satisfaction.

  Outbound Software / Predictive Dialer

  CCaaS outbound software – or “predictive dialer” – includes features to support outbound calling. This function supports proactive outreach, as well as features to help sales and customer service agents improve connection rates and function as if situated in a physical call center. For the remote contact center, the implications are numerous, as its features serve to drive sales, support connection rates, and eliminate lag time.

  Benefits of Using CCaaS

  Competitive CCaaS installation advantages generally focus on its ability to streamline and simplify operations management. Top benefits include:

  • Scalability – CCaaS environments can be scaled up or down, according to organizational need. Infrastructure-related investments are tossed aside, as capacity and capabilities can be added / removed.
  • Reduced Cost – Expenses associated with installing, testing, maintaining and using physical contact center solutions are eliminated using Contact Center as a Service. Organizations can restrict spending strictly to items deemed necessary for operational growth, and offset costs related to administering such infrastructure to the provider.
  • Less Overhead – CCaaS deployments support reduced overhead spending, including personnel and technology investments. Physical infrastructure – and its often-costly maintenance – are reduced to practically nothing.
  • Reinforced Customer Experience – CCaaS reinforces CX, with elements to streamline access to dedicated personnel, automate selections and obtain information without disruption.
  • Business Continuity and Disaster Preparedness – Data, as its maintenance no longer falls on the organization itself, becomes accessible on a 24×7 basis, and is backed up and secured against natural and man-made disaster. Additionally, data replication technology – whereby data is stored in multiple, geographically dispersed data centers – promotes accessibility even in the event of provider failure.

  Check out the contact center features available with Switchvox from Sangoma.

  The post CCaaS & Its Role In The Contact Center’s Future appeared first on Sangoma.

August 24, 2021

• FreeSWITCH Connecting the Internet to Everyone

  One thing the pandemic has demonstrated – if we didn’t already believe it – is that internet access is essential to modern life. Work, school, healthcare, connecting to other people in general – how we’ve gotten through lockdowns and quarantines would have been completely impossible without sufficient internet being widely available today. But we’re still working on making the internet more accessible to all.  

  When it comes to living modern life, access to the internet has become as essential as access to electricity and running water. Maybe once considered a luxury, we all need good internet access to do almost anything required of us during the global pandemic. In the U.S., the question has been asked over the last few years: is the internet a right or a privilege? In early 2020, the estimated number of Americans without internet access was 25 million, and somewhere around 90 million people didn’t have access to sufficient high speed internet, a significant roadblock with the coronavirus pandemic forcing us to change how we live our daily lives. 

  Being hit with COVID forced many people to look at this problem more seriously and reconsider the internet as a utility. Earlier in 2021, the Biden administration had promised to make broadband affordable and available to all, with a proposed $100 billion effort to connect every rural and low-income home to high-speed internet service. And just this month, a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill was finally passed by the U.S. Senate, which the federal government had been squabbling over for months. Of this, $65 billion will be devoted to funding broadband. Though not quite as much as the original proposed $100 billion, this move has still been widely praised across the telecommunications industry, though certain big providers are convinced they’ll take a hit from the effort to tackle digital redlining.  

  Broadband redlining is a huge issue in the U.S. today. The areas that can’t get high-speed internet access in U.S. cities are those same neighborhoods that couldn’t get mortgage loans in the 1940’s. For context, 1930’s American banks drew up maps to withhold loans from “high risk, undesirable inhabitants.” This, over the decades, also affected decisions to build essential businesses like supermarkets in these areas, and access to insurance services and healthcare was limited. Redlining was made illegal in 1968, but the damage had been done. Today, when it comes to broadband, the echoes of redlining still live on. Poorer communities often have no internet, or internet that is so slow it’s almost useless for the activities required by the pandemic, while still costing residents as much as it does for those who live in wealthier areas.  

  The 2021 infrastructure bill acknowledges and aims at tackling the problem of digital redlining. It’s a step in the right direction, though it comes over a year late into the global pandemic. Priority will be given to projects focused on connecting underserved areas and high-poverty areas to the internet. 

  A 2019 Pew Research Center study found that half of the people who did not have broadband connection could not afford it, while only 7 percent claimed lack of access as the reason. So achieving universal internet access will require a permanent subsidy service available to low-income families, which wasn’t something that polled well among Americans in the past. Just a few months ago, however, an emergency discount was finally offered to low-income households for high-speed internet services and devices to get online: the emergency broadband benefit program. But as this effort was a one-time emergency fund, the passage of the infrastructure bill will hopefully be able to make lasting and meaningful change in getting people online.

  The $65 billion will include a few big programs and grants. $42 billion will be invested in a Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, to provide grants to bridge the digital divide by getting broadband to underserved areas. Each of the 50 states and other U.S. territories will be receiving at least $100 million for this goal. A $1 billion grant will be invested in Middle Mile Infrastructure for broadband infrastructure which “does not connect directly to an end-user location.”  And $14 billion will be allocated to an Affordable Connectivity subsidy program, which is an extension of the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program. $167 million in grants will fuel rural broadband projects across a dozen states.

  The passage of this historic bill is a big deal: it’s a once-in-a-generation, bipartisan infrastructure bill unlike anything that’s been passed in recent years. In addition to expanding high-speed internet, the spending for roads, public transit, clean drinking water, and climate change measures is aimed to to improve the lives of current and future generations of Americans. It will be the largest federal investment in public transit, clean drinking water, and clean energy ever, and contains the explicitly stated goal of ensuring every American has access to reliable high-speed internet. This echoes a similar goal from about 100 years ago, when the federal government made the historic effort to provide every American with electricity.   

  As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack puts it, “Generations ago, the federal government recognized that without affordable access to electricity, Americans couldn’t fully participate in modern society and the modern economy. Broadband internet is the new electricity. It is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, to participate equally in school learning and health care, and to stay connected.”

  Though this is what the U.S. is up to this year, the issue of internet connectivity extends worldwide. Around 3.5 billion people don’t have reliable access to the internet. The digital divide creates a problem for nearly every country in the world – and it’s going to take a lot of effort, and a lot of funding, to fix it.

  The post Connecting the Internet to Everyone appeared first on FreeSWITCH.

• Digium Future of the Deskphone for Knowledge Workers

  With all the remote working going on, we’ve all started using different kind of endpoints. Maybe it’s a headset now connected to your computer, using your UC system’s desktop client. Or a speakerphone connected as well. Or just your mobile phone connected to your UC system’s mobile client. Either way, if you have been working remote or from home, you’ve probably been using your deskphone less than you have been.

  But does that mean that deskphones are going the way of the horse and buggy? Not necessarily.

  The deskphone industry is still a multi-billion dollar USD industry and depending on what reports you read it’s either stagnant, growing a little, or declining a little. The message here is that the market is big and will stay big for a long while. Why?

  Well, first of all, if you are a SMB, it’s hard to work from home. Your business needs to be open. And your employees will have phones at their desk.

  Additionally, even for someone like me, who has a home office but also has a deskphone in my home office (connected to a Sangoma Cloud UC solution of course!) and while I have utilized different endpoints as per the first paragraph, I still use the phone for various reasons (4 digit dialing to others in Sangoma is easy, calls to/from customers, partners, etc.).

  For those that might work from home some of the time, they will still have an office. So, phones will be required for them.

  And even though phone usage per se may be less, as business grows and expands, companies grow and expand, and employees will still need phones. Because you still need to make and receive phone calls.

  The post Future of the Deskphone for Knowledge Workers appeared first on Sangoma.

• ng-voice Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at ng-voice

  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at ng-voice

  Why do we rarely consider ourselves as ‘able-bodied’ when we think of our self-identity?

  What microaggressions have we experienced and how can we deal with them? 

  Do you recognize our own privilege?

   

  These were the questions we covered during the eight hours we spent together with Ellen and Hewan at Cross Cultural Bridges. With the increasing representation of colleagues from various backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences along with the company’s rapid growth, we organized the first diversity, equity, and inclusion workshops. As a professional coach, Ellen shared her own stories as black homosexual woman living in a foreign country to create a safe space to open participants’ minds. These sessions aimed to set the common language around diversity, to be aware of blind spots on our own bias, and ultimately to foster diversity-conscious culture.

   

  One of the potluck party analogies is to leave a lasting impression to understand the concepts of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. A potluck party would be boring if everyone brings similar dishes. The success of a potluck party depends on the diversity of dishes to celebrate different tastes. In this context, diversity means when you organize a potluck party and ask participants to bring their own foods that are different. Inclusion means when all the participants try each other’s dishes, familiar or new, with a sense of curiosity and respect. Belonging means that the participants take turns to be organizers to invite people and plan together.  

  

  
  Equality? Equity!

  When you read the wordings on the sticky notes, it might not sink in immediately. We often use the terms equity and equality interchangeably without knowing the difference. Equality means treating everyone equally regardless of whether one’s socioeconomic status is high or low, if one has a migration background, if one has a differently-abled body. Equity, on the other hand, considers everyone’s different contexts and circumstances. That’s why we called it Diversity, “Equity”, and Inclusion workshops. 

  No Assumption, More Question

  Another aha-moment takeaway was “Don’t assume anything and always ask what the other wants.” We should make conscious efforts to avoid assumptions but ask questions. This may sound easy but unfortunately it often proves to be challenging because people have implicit or cognitive biases. Biases are systematic errors in thinking to save our energy in decision making and judgments. What we often forget is that we make a lot of assumptions about ourselves and others on a subconscious level.

  

  Because we are different, the only thing we can safely assume is that everyone sees and understands the world differently. Let your assumptions be flexible and light, and don’t let them get entrenched in your unconscious self.

  Privileges and Solidarity

  We also reflected on different forms of discrimination like racism, lookism, and ageism before discussing how to address microaggressions from our own experiences. We addressed different privileges as white, christian, heterosexual, or cisgender (A person that identifies with the gender that they were assigned with at birth) in groups and updated our profiles with pronouns as an expression of solidarity and support for LGBTQIA community. 

   

  Two sessions were not enough to go deep into each important topic or share each of our personal experiences and views. Instead, this was a great introduction to the new world where people can more easily talk about uncomfortable issues. We have so much to unlearn and learn about diversity for sure. As a first step, why don’t we reveal ourselves, our authentic experiences, our core fears, desires, dreams, and hopes to others?

   

  At ng-voice, We are on a mission to create an inclusive, equal environment and raise the bar in the telco industry. Feel free to explore our website and learn more about our work culture.

  
  
  

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  Seon Y. Lee

  Finance and Impact Manager

  Publisher Bio

  With over 6 years of experience in finance operations and project management in Seoul and Berlin, Seon has a track record in ecosystem building and business development. She’s known for her reliability, attention to detail, and for initiating new ideas proactively. She’s an avid supporter of women’s empowerment, veganism, and the K-pop boyband, BTS.

August 17, 2021

• Digium AstriCon 2021 Is Now Virtual

  Sangoma has decided to cancel the in person AstriCon 2021 event in Orlando, Florida the last week in September and move it to be a virtual event in it’s more traditional time slot during mid-October (exact dates to be determined).

  While we had a great virtual event last year (what we called AstriCon Plan 9), we were very much looking forward to hosting the community at a face-to-face event this year.

  However, due to the rise of Covid cases recently throughout parts of the US, including Florida, we decided it was in the best interests of the community, our partners and our employees to cancel it again.

  For those of you who have already registered and paid, we will refund your ticket.

  Please bookmark this space as we will update it soon regarding Virtual AstriCon 2021.

  The post AstriCon 2021 Is Now Virtual appeared first on Sangoma.

August 12, 2021

• Digium Top 6 Reasons Your Business Needs Collaborative Workspaces

  Connected Workspace is a virtual desktop, Software as a Service (SaaS), and communications solution, securely streaming your Windows PC, along with all your apps, data and communication tools from the cloud, and to any device. Whether you’re working remotely, at the airport, on the road, or anywhere with an internet connection, you have your office workspace with you.

  Why Should SMBs Adopt Connected Workspace?

  Let’s explore the ways Connected Workspace benefits SMB organizations.

  Benefit #1 – Keeping IT Staff Forward Thinking

  Small-to-Medium businesses will have 1 to 2 IT administrators, based on their staff size, and are typically focused on fixing problems with infrastructure and employee requests. Connected Workspace can increase the return on investment (ROI) for the business by offloading these tasks, enabling IT to focus on strategic investment and simplified management. Star2Star’s Connected Workspace platform engineers handle all the costs, from managing Active Directory and file servers to optimizing app licensing, on behalf of the business. And in the case of businesses relying on a managed service provider (MSP) for IT, then the MSP can benefit in a similar way as well.

  Benefit #2 – Remote Employee

  Businesses with remote employees want to standardize how employees are interacting with the corporate infrastructure, how they access resources, what software they use, and have complete control over all of it. Connected Workspace allows businesses to easily configure the employee’s virtual desktop experience by selecting the features and type of access they can have, via a simple online portal. They can then have access almost immediately by simply signing into their account from the device they have with them, over a simple internet connection. Hiring staff also becomes much easier as businesses can hire based on talent rather than location.

  Benefit #3 – Acquisitions

  Connected Workspace helps businesses standardize IT infrastructure, making it easier for a company to be acquired as well as for the company who is acquiring the other. A business using Connected Workspace has a predictable cost per user, from an IT perspective, making it easy for companies to evaluate the cost of acquiring the company. Also, if both companies have very separate systems in place, it takes more time to integrate them, whereas Connected Workspace makes the integration more seamless and much quicker. This provides a single source that can be adopted across departments allowing strategic system decisions to smoothly transition in and out of the overall application systems, minimizing user impact and keeping productivity as high as possible.

  Benefit #4 – BYOD

  Aside from the benefits of hiring remote employees, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) enables today’s workforce to use their own existing devices that they use on a daily basis, that work for them in terms of comfort and productivity, and bring them to work in a seamless manner. Connected Workspace allows users to access the corporate infrastructure, while keeping the corporate data and security intact. It also allows users to be more productive, because they can access what they need from any device, at any time, so they don’t need to be chained down to a particular workstation. Their desktop exists in the cloud and is accessible through any device, removing the IT spend and simplifying the management of the local computer in depth.

  Benefit #5 – Seasonable Business

  Seasonal businesses will scale up and down based on customer demand. At their busiest time, they’ll have the highest staffing levels and at their least busy, the lowest. The advantages of Connected Workspace for this type of fluctuation are:

  • The ability to scale users very quickly, whenever needed, all from a web-based portal
  • Predictability of costs during the peaks and valleys of user count

  Benefit #6 – Multi-Location Business

  Being able to standardize IT across every location of a business is ideal. Whether an employee is part of headquarters or a remote office, they all work in the same way, accessing the same applications and tools, under the same secured environment. And if there are any IT policy changes or software updates required, the changes are done quickly, from a central location, for all the locations at one time.

  Connected Workspace offers SMBs with the ‘any device, anywhere access’ type of workflow that increases the productivity of the business; the integration of Star2Star’s voice, messaging, and video applications further improves worker collaboration. For businesses that are compliance driven, such as financial, legal, healthcare, and hospitality, Connected Workspace is definitely a benefit. And with no seat minimums, businesses can adopt the technology right away when they hit the ground running.

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  Want to see Connected Workspace in action? Schedule a free demo to learn more!

  The post Top 6 Reasons Your Business Needs Collaborative Workspaces appeared first on Sangoma.

August 11, 2021

• WebRTC Hacks Dealing with HTMLMediaElements and srcObjects in WebRTC applications

  Philipp Hancke discusses a how to properly release Media Element resources with WebRTC and a recent Chrome issue that apps to stop handling larger numbers of participants.

  The post Dealing with HTMLMediaElements and srcObjects in WebRTC applications appeared first on webrtcHacks.

August 10, 2021

• Digium What is Unified Communications?

  What is Unified Communications? It may seem like a simple question, but the answer is not so simple. On the surface it just means unifying different types of communications together. Sending a voicemail to your email inbox for example is a form of Unified Communications. And 20 years ago, that was pretty much the only unifying of communications you could do. But that’s a long time ago and as the years have gone by, integrating other communication mediums, as seen in this graphic, has expanded the meaning of Unified Communications.

  But why am I writing this blog in the first place? Someone can search for “Unified Communications” and get a definition. But this seemingly simple question has been coming up a bit more to me. Why? Because given the explosion of video over the past year and a half, some people these days are saying Unified Communications is just video, screen sharing (collaboration), mobility and presence/instant messaging. And they are saying that because it suits them to say that.

  Take a look at the graphic again. It’s no accident Sangoma puts voice at the top. Because no matter how many video calls you do, or how many chats you do, voice is still the predominant business communication medium. Your customers call you!! And you need to be able to route the calls to the right place, and answer the calls on your deskphone, your mobile phone or your desktop. Your business cannot ignore this. And so implicit in the “phone call” is not just the phone call, but contact center functionality such as call routing, call analytics, etc. The definition of Unified Communications will always continue to expand.

  The post What is Unified Communications? appeared first on Sangoma.

• FreeSWITCH Sharon’s Top 12 Reasons to Come to ClueCon – Part 1

  By Sharon White

  Sharon White has been the main organizer of ClueCon for many years! This is a little behind the scenes look into ClueCon and all her favorite things about the conference.

  Click here to learn more and register for ClueCon TGI2021!

  I first came to ClueCon years ago to hang out with my best friend for a week. I started helping to clean up the registration desk, then before I knew it I had taken over all of registration, and by the next year I had taken over all of ClueCon. It’s been a crazy ride, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite things that you can look forward to at ClueCon this year!

  12. The Most Dangerous of Demos

  The first time I saw a Dangerous Demo I thought “this is weird, they want to fail?” But as it turns out, that’s what makes it so fun. Dangerous Demos was started 12 years ago by industry veteran James Body for developers to prove their experience and abilities by pushing the envelope of new ideas in a competitive environment. I have seen the craziest demos over the years. One year a cell phone encased in bubble wrap was volleyed all over the giant conference hall and it still worked. Another time, the MC’s hotel room was broken into by the demo contestants who used a raspberry PI to hack into his keycard and project a video of it onto the huge screens for everyone to witness. And my least favorite, a demo where after calling a phone number you must choose a number. Choose the wrong one and it plays the “Baby Shark” song… over and over and over. It’s maddening!

  Several awards are given out, including the Crash and Burn prize for the demo that fails the most spectacularly.  But not all the demos fail! Check out this demo from our virtual ClueCon in 2020, one of my favorites, by SignalWire CTO Evan McGee. My face in the video tells you all you need to know.

  11. Boats and the Night Sky

  Some of the greatest moments at ClueCon happen during our all inclusive evening events. One of my favorites is the Sunset Boat Tour we host Thursday night on the last day of the conference after all the great speakers finish presenting for the week. Everyone at the conference walks the two blocks to the pier, often stopping for some ice cream from a street vendor close to the dock, to board the boat and set out onto Lake Michigan to witness the Chicago skyline at sunset. 

  My first year of the boat tour I was so naive, staying on the top deck of the boat. That was before I realized the lower deck is where the cool kids go. The fully stocked bar (not only alcohol) is the first place you should hit. Then take your drink to the front of the boat to chat with other developers and the ClueCon team. By the time the sun begins to set over Chicago the boat is positioned out on the lake and the view is astounding. 

  Usually, ClueCon is in August, when the weather is warm and the sun sets quite late in the day. This year it will be in late October, and the Midwestern chill of autumn will start to settle over Chicago. But don’t worry! The boat is heated.

  10. It’s all fun and games: The Coder Games

  ClueCon’s hack-a-thon is a day filled with games and fun for every attendee, whether you like to code your way to the prize or you’re a builder at heart. You can work as a team or go solo as you utilize the provided materials to build your creation and win prizes! The day is planned for months in advance to be fun, challenging for most, and inclusive for all.  We now have 3-4 standard games you can play each year.  The Maker Challenge is meant to test your coding knowledge, while games like the FreeCYCLED Challenge are meant for all ages and all skill levels, where there is a simple goal such as making a ping pong ball travel 2 feet using everyday random items like straws, toilet paper rolls and poster board. 

  Abbi Minessale, daughter of FreeSWITCH founder Anthony Minessale, is the Coder Games Queen, and has hosted the hack-a-thon for several years. Abbi works for the better part of a year with the help of some developers to come up with the challenges, and she also designs the Coder Games t-shirt and other activities. One of the best is our classic “Cards Against Technology” game that was given to each attendee as a gift at the last in-person ClueCon.  

  The first time I attended the Coder Games I didn’t have any idea what could actually be made during the games. One of our sponsors brought in a 3D printer that year. During the Maker Challenge, one of the contestants used it to print an old vintage telephone, hooked it up to the internet, and actually made a phone call! It was very impressive. One of my other favorites was the year we had contestants build a little remote controlled car using the Cards Against Technology game as a track for a race at the end of the day. It’s always the most creative day of ClueCon!

  

  

  9. The Softest T-Shirts in the World

  This may come as a surprise, but every single person I know, no matter the age, owns a t-shirt.  At conferences they are a staple. If you attend a conference and don’t come out of it with 2+ t-shirts… you chose not to take them. And ClueCon has the BEST t-shirts. 

  The ClueCon Team takes t-shirts very seriously. The design alone takes months to plan. The shirts are always styled after the conference theme, and that design is followed in the show guide and other printed materials. You also never know what kind of easter eggs you might find in the t-shirt design. One of my favorites was when we had two different designs of the same theme that signified emerging AI technology and the human brain.

  At the dawn of the universe, there was nothing, then boom. The big bang sent six elemental t-shirts hurtling across the virgin universe. These infinity shirts each control an essential aspect of existence: Space, Reality, Power, Soul, Mind… and ClueCon. After sending monks, sheikhs, gurus, and a shaman to the vast reaches of Mount Everest on an epic quest to retrieve the most sought after ClueCon Infinity Shirt, the shirt is taken to an underground lab in Atlantis that creates the softest and most durable synthetic material known to man. You will not want to miss out on the best t-shirt ever created!

  To be continued….

  The post Sharon’s Top 12 Reasons to Come to ClueCon – Part 1 appeared first on FreeSWITCH.

August 05, 2021

• Digium Let’s Talk Virtual Desktop Security

  You’ve heard the term DaaS or Desktop-as-a-Service before but didn’t really buy into it. But since the release of Microsoft’s Virtualized Desktop service, it seems to have grown into an actual discussion for many businesses now. You may be starting to understand the benefits businesses can achieve by virtualizing their desktop machines and moving them to the cloud, creating a central management point, with a significant reduction in IT hardware costs on workstations, and delivering high performing desktops to users from any device. Also how it eases IT management burdens and a total cost of ownership (TCO) from servers, storage, and network connectivity to desktop applications.

  However, one of the major topics of concern regarding DaaS is security. Since customers’ corporate infrastructure is moved from on-premise into the cloud, there is a tendency to worry about losing control of private data. Let’s demystify these security concerns so that you can rest assured your customers are safe and protected.

  In-House IT vs. DaaS Service Provider IT

  While a business may have trusted and reliable in-house IT staff for their local infrastructure, it doesn’t compare to the far greater security resources of a cloud service provider. With a DaaS service provider, businesses can leverage their expertise to improve their security policies and compliance. Security is not a one time ‘set it and forget it’ process and requires constant attention with frequent software updates at all entry points to the network. All it takes is one exposed area, such as a security patch not installed on a device, to allow hackers in. Businesses tend to forget all this when things are going well, so making sure there are resources always dedicated to these types of things is a must. And, allowing the DaaS provider to take over enables in-house IT to focus on company strategy and forward thinking.

  Remote Working

  With the onset of the pandemic, remote working has risen and become of significant importance for IT departments to secure and manage. Users need to be able to access corporate and confidential information while outside the corporate network, from any remote location, which can be complex. Local routers, firewalls, or environmental factors can restrict a remote user’s PC from connecting with services at headquarters. It becomes a balance of flexibility vs. security; the easier you allow users to connect to the corporate network, the more businesses put themselves at risk of threats.

  A virtual private network (VPN) connection has been a typical way to address this need, however, it is not the best answer! While connected to VPN, any threats that are exposed to the user’s PC can travel through the connection and infect the entire corporate network, spreading viruses, malware, ransomware, and so on. If a user checks their personal email, for example, and downloads a file, which is unknowingly ransomware, it will now travel to headquarters. Malware and anti-virus protection on each user’s PC can help, but is not perfect and ends up being a burden for IT to manage. Furthermore, the requirement to maintain VPN servers, software updates, and the huge cost associated with intrusion detection and protection (IDS/IPS) services becomes problematic because the cost may go overlooked and creates another hole in the security protocols of the business.

  DaaS platforms take care of all this without requiring VPNs or worrying about user PC malware protection and allow users the flexibility to connect to the corporate network over any internet connection, from anywhere.

  User Credential Protection

  While it is true that businesses are more exposed to hackers being out in the cloud, they are at less risk of credential-based attacks when using a decent DaaS platform, than with in-house infrastructure. DaaS services will typically have one secured entry point for access to all of a business’ tools and applications, with single single on (SSO) from a web portal, whereas on-premise infrastructures have many. So hackers can attempt to steal user credentials for possibly many unsecured areas in a network. A DaaS platform should have at least two-factor authentication, but one with multi-factor authentication (MFA) is best as it makes it impossible for hackers to steal credentials.

  BYOD

  DaaS enables users to access all their tools and apps from any device, anywhere, using any internet connection, which is one of its major benefits. The security aspect is handled between the users’ connection to their DaaS account, not the hardware they are using. This isolation also prevents users from copy and pasting, downloading, or drag and dropping from, and to, their virtual desktop to the local machine. In other words, what happens in the cloud stays in the cloud. And if a user loses their device, there is no risk since no data is stored on the device and the user’s account can be remotely disabled, immediately.

  Malware, Ransomware & Viruses

  We hear about these threats happening every day, and growing in scale too. In fact, check out this report of the world’s largest ransomware attack, which includes businesses in the USA. Hackers are taking advantage of infrastructure not properly protected and with out-of-date security policies and procedures. They are skilled in getting into networks via exposed servers with weak credentials and via end user activity.

  All it takes is a user to open an email and download an unsuspecting malicious file for a hacker to begin developing a ransomware attack. This can also happen in a DaaS environment that isn’t properly secured. In fact, in a recent event, one particular title company in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which will remain nameless for confidential reasons, was one of many in the area hit with ransomware, being locked out of all their DaaS user accounts, crippling them for days. On a positive note, Star2Star ended up saving this business by migrating them over to our Connected Workspace DaaS platform. This is why checking the built-in protocols for mitigating risk is critical when choosing a DaaS platform; you need to know the work-arounds and restoration procedures in the unfortunate event of a successful attack.

  ---

  Connected Workspace by Star2Star, A Sangoma Company

  Connected Workspace is a DaaS service by Star2Star, A Sangoma Company. The service is bundled with voice and video collaboration tools, enabling businesses with the complete ‘office’ experience, wherever they are, from any device.

  Security protection is a key aspect of Connected Workspace, from multi-factor authentication (MFA) for our SSO web portal, to our fully dedicated platform engineers taking care of migration, monitoring, and maintaining of your customer’s service.

  To help mitigate the risk of malware, such as ransomware and viruses, all files opened on each users’ virtual desktops are scanned and virus definitions are updated and automatically applied if necessary every two hours. Email threat protection is also applied to all Star2Star Managed Office 365 accounts. We have proprietary policies, procedures, and processes in place that alert us upon user access attempts to unauthorized files. Additionally, we do not allow access to the platform outside of the Citrix Workspace connection (part of the Connected Workspace infrastructure) for any third party, as well as no tunnelling, direct connection, etc. allowed to our multi-tenant environment. All of these solutions are in place to ensure that all connections route through a single fabric ensuring that the platform is monitored for any potential anomalies that represent a threat allowing us to respond in kind to mitigate said threat.

  In the unfortunate event of a data breach or a ransomware attack, all files in your customer’s Connected Workspace storage, should they become compromised, are isolated in order to remove the threat of further corruption. A restoration to known safe media is performed in an isolated environment. All virtual delivery agents (VDAs) are shut down and forced to restart from Gold Image. The isolation environment is then migrated back, only after file remediation is completed in the isolation environment. We work diligently at all this and can get customers back online quickly, thanks to our dedicated platform engineers. For instance, based on standard data size of 1 terabyte, the mean time to recover is estimated at 4 hours. This is something to consider when customers choose a DaaS provider: is there support available when it’s needed the most? This is one such reason why the previously mentioned title company moved away from their previous DaaS provider to Star2Star’s Connected Workspace.

  Can I bundle my security services with Connected Workspace?

  You sure can! As a channel partner, you can implement a third party email security solution and for our private cloud offering (single-tenant service for customers looking for a more isolated set up) you can offer your existing ransomware, malware, and/or endpoint monitoring additions.

  Now that we’ve secured your understanding, connect with us to learn more about Connected Workspace and how it can help you communicate securely in the cloud!

  The post Let’s Talk Virtual Desktop Security appeared first on Sangoma.

August 03, 2021

• Digium Why a Video-centric Business Communication System is Problematic

  Let’s examine a bit more why starting with a video-centric UC platform could be problematic for your business.

  First of all, most video calls are handled on the internet. High bandwidth enables 1:1 and large group video calls. And most of us have been on them – with a large group of friends, team meetings at work, etc. It’s a great tool to use at work. And since many people are using it at work, they’re thinking, “why don’t I just use this all the time to do the calls I need to make?” Well, precisely because it’s pretty much fully internet-focused, it’s “heavy lifting” for this class of communication type to be the PBX or UC platform for the business.

  For example, you need to set up phone numbers; you need to set up SIP trunking; there is network interoperability and least cost routing to be put in place. Your “phone” vendor has been dealing with this for years and knows how to do this. Your phone vendor also knows how to fax and send and receive text messages integrated into your UC clients.

  One of the hardest parts about telephony is when the company receives a call. Call routing rules need to be put in place, IVRs set up, etc. Telephony-centric vendors have been doing this as their business for years and years. They understand this ‘hard stuff.’ It is not easy to replicate. And as indicated above, the majority of customers are still calling you. You want to answer them with a telephony-centric, integrated system. Not a video-centric, non-call control centric system with add-ons galore.

  And what about physical phones? Many businesses, while using UC mobile and desktop clients, are also still primarily using physical phones. And many of those call control type functions described above, such as IVR, UC clients, and call routing, are deeply integrated with the physical phones.

  So, if you have a business to run, start with a UC system (such as provided by Sangoma) because you need to talk to customers, and then add on a video meeting service (such as also offered by Sangoma ).

  The post Why a Video-centric Business Communication System is Problematic appeared first on Sangoma.