4PSA has announced the introduction of a brand new affordable licensing program for the award-winning VoipNow Platform. The new offer is part of the company's Green Commitment and it aims at helping small organizations take advantage of the fully-featured Unified Communications while reducing their carbon footprint.

The First Extensions License program promotes Unified Communications, a greener and more convenient alternative to traditional communication technologies. This new solution saves the day for small companies that haven't switched to Unified Communications due to the costs involved.

Junction Networks announces a new integration that enhances customer relationship management for small businesses. This integration, a Chrome plugin, combines two powerful, web-based tools for small business: OnSIP phone service and Highrise CRM.

As a leading business VoIP provider that’s grounded in Internet services and software, rather than traditional telephony, OnSIP has all the tools to make auto call-tracking in Highrise a reality. (In fact, the tools are also available to the public in their developer API’s). Now, customers take advantage of time-saving features, including: automatic incoming and outgoing call logging within Highrise, real-time notifications when contacts are calling, and the ability to click-to-call phone numbers within web pages.

Voip-Pal.Com announces the posting of its new Android App on its new Cloud Computing Server. Voip-Pal's Android App follows the posting of its iPhone App which is already completed and available to be used on the new Cloud Server. Current quality testing is still in progress for Voip-Pal's Blackberry App which is very close to completion. Voip-Pal is continuing the development of its new Vanguard product called the PointsPhone Platinum Antivirus Package which will bundle an Antivirus Security Program designed specifically for its new Android App. The PointsPhone Platinum Antivirus Package will also be forthcoming for the Blackberry.

Grandstream Networks and Broadvox jointly announce the interoperability and certification of Grandstream’s newest GXP21xx/14xx series enterprise HD IP phones and the GXV3175 next-generation IP Multimedia Phone on Broadvox’s GO!VBX- a hosted IP PBX platform. With this announcement, the organizational and financial investment SMB and Enterprise customers make when migrating to Unified Communications has become easier and more affordable to implement. VARs and integrators can now seize business growth opportunities and the guaranteed financial advantages of installing hosted IP solutions for business customers disinterested in on-site phone system solutions.

Grandstream Networks announces that its SIP-based phones are now interoperable with sipgate, a pioneering VoIP service provider in Europe. Grandstream’s GXP1450 and GXP21xx series of Enterprise HD IP telephones were successfully tested and certified on sipgate One, a full-featured, Internet-based phone service that comes complete with a free telephone number, no set-up costs and no monthly minimums. Resellers, integrators and SMBs/SMEs worldwide seeking a high quality yet affordable, easy-to-setup, easy-to-use phone service that replaces or supplements existing landlines can use sipgate One VoIP service and Grandstream’s SIP HD phones from anywhere in the world.

RHUB Communications announces the addition of Hi-Definition VOIP capabilities to TurboMeeting, the company’s flagship line of web conferencing and remote support appliances.

With TurboMeeting 4.3’s High-Definition VoIP softphone, users can conduct internet-based audio conferences with more than 200 participants from both PC and Mac computers. The softphone doubles the voice sampling rate from 8kHz of traditional phones to 16kHz, resulting in improved sound quality. The softphone’s capabilities include echo-cancellation, firewall traversal, automated audio device detection and auto-reconnection. Users can also record entire web conferences, including audio, screen updates and webcam video. In addition, TurboMeeting 4.3 includes a recording converter, allowing users to convert their recordings to a variety of standard formats, including FLV, WMV, and AVI.

While networks are the backbone for VoIP communications, they are also the Achilles heel, presenting a challenging set of circumstances. The core issue is data versus voice. Data traversing today's networks are forgiving of such things as latency, delay and packet loss. Not so with voice. Voice requires clear, noiseless call quality without interruption or interference, and these same common network conditions can seriously degrade VoIP quality and performance.

Yet, more and more businesses are relying on VoIP based technologies to fuel work group collaboration and drive advanced business processes -- with the expectation of reducing costs, increasing productivity and gaining significant ROI. The promise of VoIP is very attractive -- but quickly erodes if no one can hear you. High availability and near flawless call quality to both internal and external users are requirements of businesses implementing IP telephony, however, these standards can be elusive. Poor call quality negatively impacts both employees and customers -- and is often difficult to overcome.

According to Tone Software the strategy for success is a holistic approach that enables the interdependence of voice and the network to be viewed and managed as a whole. Otherwise, diagnosing VoIP issues can be a moving target. For instance, call servers are often at the top of the suspect list when trying to get to the root of frustrating VoIP quality and service issues, but frequently the perpetrator can be found in the complex underlying network infrastructure. Capacity and network traffic levels occurring at the time of voice degradation are frequently the culprit -- but without the tools to pinpoint these conditions, support teams waste valuable time and resources chasing after the wrong quality issue -- leaving the true cause of the problem undiagnosed and unresolved.