Avaya Plunges Deeper into the Hosted Telephony Business
Carrier IP Telephony
Avaya’s continued push into the hosted market is beneficial to both Avaya and its competitors. The attention it is paying to the hosted market is essentially a validation of the space that is now dominated by BroadSoft, Sylantro, and others.

Avaya Boosts Mid-Range Options
Enterprise Communications - U.S
Avaya has given its portfolio of options for mid-sized businesses a much-needed boost with an integrated-application solution and a new media server, making the company more competitive in a large segment where it was not strong in Europe.

Mirapoint Releases New Centralized Reporting Tool
Information Security
Mirapoint released a new centralized reporting tool, which helps to differentiate its large enterprise e-mail security technology as it faces daunting competition from leading vendors broadening their offerings.

Foundry Blooms the FastIron GS
Enterprise Infrastructure
Foundry’s new FastIron GS series brings upgradeable PoE and redundant power supplies in a full featured switch that regrettably lacks stacking.

ISS Adds Fuel to Partners' Ability to Protect Clients
Internet/Managed Services
ISS brings its new program, “Powered by ISS,” to a global service provider audience. While it will likely find many fans of this enablement program, it will face competition from other MSSPs that private-label their solutions for clients.

SpectraLink Unveils Dual-Mode Plans
Enterprise Communications
SpectraLink unveiled its dual-mode handsets initiative to gain opportunities in an emerging market. Without a shipping product, however, SpectraLink is well behind competitors with more feature-rich alternatives already available.

Siemens Finds Use for Reusable Software
Enterprise Communications
Siemens is slicing and dicing its communications software code for use in business applications. The result will be a less expensive means for enterprises to implement core unified communications capabilities.

SonicWALL Offers E-mail Security Product; Management System Integration Coming in Late 2006
Information Security
SonicWALL releases its first e-mail security product based on its recent acquisition of MailFrontier, along with a compelling roadmap that includes integrating the product with its management and CDP technologies.

Avaya’s Entrance into the Service Sector
Internet/Managed Services
Avaya is bringing its On Demand service directly to end users, a move that could cause consternation among its channel partners, but is more likely to lift interest across the board for its offering, given the value-add that most partners bring.

Avaya Tries Its Hand at Hosted Services
Enterprise Communications
When it comes to hosted communications services, Avaya is taking matters into its own hands. This move opens up interesting new revenue opportunities, as well as interesting new ways to alienate the company from its channel partners.

Force10 Delivers 10 Gig Line Rate Encryption and Inspection Appliance
Carrier Infrastructure
Force10 launches the P-Series appliance to address emerging security needs of 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks. The system provides 10 Gigabit line rate inspection, detection, and fends off stateful attacks and flooding denial of service attacks.

BorderWare Releases Integrated Secure Messaging Platform
Information Security
BorderWare is shaking up the secure messaging point product market with an integrated content security platform that provides unified policy controls across e-mail, the Web, IM, and VoIP.

Cisco Doubles Down on the 7200 Router
Enterprise Infrastructure
Cisco announced the 7200VXR-G2, which doubles the performance of Cisco’s flagship enterprise aggregation router. The G2 based solution offers investment protection for Cisco’s installed base, but doesn’t fully address looming competitive threats.

eIQnetworks Partners with Top Layer, Extends SIM/SEM to New Applications
Information Security
eIQnetworks announced an OEM partnership with IPS provider Top Layer and extended its security information and event management into key business-critical applications, looking to bypass SIM competitors with a simplified, low-cost solution.