Small Business VoIP

Early reports from a major IT conference this week indicate that virtualization – a technology that researchers say could save the United States’ largest single IT consumer, the federal government, about $13.3 billion – is emerging as an increasingly popular way to deliver flexible, cost-saving communications.

 

Already today, officials at eTelemetry say that so-called “Virtual Infrastructure Discovery” features in their new Locate version 4.2 product will extract real-time information such as MAC and IP addresses and physical locations to bring IT professionals a quick view of all virtual machines on their networks.

 

Now, we hear that North America’s largest telecom equipment vendor that it’s helping companies take advantage of emerging virtualization technologies that offer reliability, high performance and flexibility.

 

Officials at Nortel Networks Corp. describe their so-called “Virtual Services Platform 9000” as a next-generation enterprise solution for mission-critical core networks and data centers.

 

The platform, which is being demonstrated at Interop (News - Alert) in Las Vegas, is designed to enable simplified network virtualization and help companies reduce capital and operating expenses – a near-requirement in this down economy. It also provides a more energy-efficient network solution, and save money, from lower power usage, and is designed to be future-proof, providing an architecture designed for technical longevity.

 

According to Joel Hackney (News - Alert), president of enterprise solutions at Nortel, business continuity, network flexibility and cost reduction rank among enterprises’ most prevalent concerns.

 

“Businesses are taxed with the increased network capacity requirements of today – and more importantly, anticipating tomorrow’s demands – especially as they embrace unified communications,” Hackney said. “Given the current state of diminished IT resources and skyrocketing network demands, the new VSP 9000 can give businesses a competitive advantage from a networking standpoint.”

 

Specifically, the VSP 9000 is designed to ensure uninterrupted business services because it can repair communication paths in milliseconds, a fraction of the time it takes for competitive solutions to recover. Officials at Nortel (News - Alert) say that represents unprecedented failover capabilities that signal an improvement over Nortel’s existing lead that are third-party proven to provide “at least seven times the resiliency (of competitors’) solutions.”

 

The platform supports up to 720 10GE port density per rack, supporting up to 720 10Gbps Ethernet ports per rack and up to 27Tbps switching capacity in a single chassis, or over 100Tbps in a quad Switch Cluster.

 

But that’s technical talk. Businesses that apparently tried the VSP 9000 on a trial basis are returning rave reviews. For example, take Aftenposten – the largest newspaper in Norway and its IT department, which provides network operations for about 30 other companies, including five of the top 15 internet sites in Norway.

 

Aftenposten’s IT manager, Tor Fleime, said that cost, as measured in total cost of ownership, is a critical driver.

 

“As a large company with international operations, our customers depend on us and any network downtime is completely unacceptable. Our assessment of Nortel’s VSP 9000 shows it provides flexibility, simplicity of operation, security and incredible performance,” Fleime said. “The solution promises enhanced scalability and carrier grade reliability to meet our increasing needs and future expectations.”