Stories about: EndPoints

An update to the open-source Asterisk IP telephony platform was released this week, offering better legacy telephony integration as well as improved call-server clustering and voicemail support, the producers of the technology say.

Remember a year or so ago when you could probably name most of the open-source companies in the market? Try doing that now when the number of startups has skyrocketed to several hundred. While this massive growth appears reminiscent of the dot-com boom before the bubble burst, experts in the field stress that the second wave of the open-source revolution, Open Source 2.0 if you like, is unlikely to play out in quite the same way. However, that's not to say there won't be some upsets along the way.

3Com is readying a Linux-based appliance version of its VCX 7700 enterprise IP PBX in hopes that an open source version of the product will be easier to sell through its channel partners.

If there's one thing IT managers of small businesses or branch offices need, it's solid, uncomplicated technology. Net Integration Technologies thinks it has the answer. The company's Nitix server is essentially a custom Linux distribution focused on the small office. Driven entirely from a Web interface, the solution boasts an impressive array of features, using the most common Linux services such as Samba and Apache.

Several vendors including Sun Microsystems and Oracle on Monday announced support for the WS-MessageDelivery specification recently submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium.

Deployment of voice-over-IP endpoints, such as Session Initiation Protocol phones and H.323 IP PBXs, within corporations has presented IT with new interoperability challenges. A new breed of network equipment called session controllers offer H.323/SIP interworking to solve the complexities of connecting a diverse set of VoIP and other collaborative applications.

A new standard adopted by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is designed to centralize and integrate voice over IP and video endpoint directories, making it easier for users to find and connect to each other.

Everybody probably wishes they looked as good at 30 as Ethernet.

With the end of 2002 in sight, many in IT will be heading into 2003 happy to put this palindromic year in the rearview mirror. Still, this year offered up some important tech advances: wireless and pervasive computing exploded; edge computing and edge applications often took center stage; and XML and Web services wove themselves further into the enterprise, impacting everything from IT integration plans to EAI vendors' strategies.

IT professionals on an exploratory mission at last week's XML Web Services One conference here expressed keen interest in testing out new technologies to address some of their most painful application integration headaches.

Microsoft plans to use its 10th annual TechEd developer conference this week in New Orleans to advance its cause in the battle pitting the software behemoth against Sun Microsystems and its partners over Web services.