Earlier today BT Spainand Nortel CVAS hosted an event for BT enterprise and SMB customers at the BT Spain Customer Innovation Center in Madrid. At the event BT presented some of the latest enhancements to BT's iComms Unified Communication service which is powered by Nortel CVAS' Hosted IP Communication solution.

BT Spain's new service will help enable businesses to communicate and collaborate with greater flexibility and efficiency by making information easier to share while also reducing travel and expenses through advanced VoIP and teleworking capabilities. For example, business subscribers will be able to launch voice conference anytime on their own personal conference bridge or run web meetings on their personal web collaboration tool, sharing their desktop, whiteboarding, or running a presentation with colleagues or customer around the globe.

Key features of BT's iComms service include unified communications and Nortel's Personal Communicator PC Client; a customized web portal that businesses can use to create and manage communication services via a personalized Web applicaton; as well as a new multimedia office client that allows businesses to integrate real-time multimedia communications within Microsoft Outlook.

Check out some photos taken during the presentation below. In the first shot, Sergio Merino, BT executive, demonstrates Nortel's PC Client; in the second photo, Carlos Aragon, Nortel CVAS marketing expert presents the ROI of UC and carrier-hosted communications; the last picture is the Nortel-BT hosted solutions demo kit.

Nortel CVAS' booth at last week's 2010 NCTA Cable Show was busy!

We had many customers and partners stop-by to learn more about ways Nortel CVAS can equip MSOs to deliver advanced VoIP, business communications, mobility and entertainment services to end users -- both residential and business subscribers.

Some of the hot topics discussed in the Nortel CVAS booth were:

• How MSOs can grow their subscriber numbers and use IP to tap into the SMB and enterprise space by providing unified communications and other advanced business services.

• How MSOs can provide a more converged communications and entertainment experience to subscribers which can help MSOs to better compete against over-the-top video and Internet service providers.

• How MSOs benefit from the plethora of communication platforms and devices which will fuel the delivery of anywhere, anytime voice and video content across a variety of fixed and mobile networks.

These are not necessarily new hot topics, however it is clear that MSOs are ready to provide anywhere, anytime communications, content and video that people desire. This is due in large part to advances in wireless data bandwidth and MSOs migration to IP as well as the gains in cable broadband bandwidth through the ongoing deployment of fiber backbone infrastructure. And, of course, the latest computing and mobile devices are so powerful and feature-rich, which helps allow people to enjoy a TV in their pocket experience.

Also at the show, we conducted a survey to better understand what types of services and communication preferences people desire. More than 400 people took the survey and below are some of the results:

• When asked what type of service people would like to see in voice over cable, the top service was High-Definition Voice (at 24%) followed by fixed-mobile convergence and social media apps.

• Survey respondents felt that having a single number for both mobile and home phones that rings at the same time has strong market potential.

• And, when asked what they would do if their home TV stopped working for some reason, the majority of respondents said they would surf the web via their mobile device or enjoy a quiet evening at home.

Drop me a note if you want to hear more about Nortel CVAS' industry-leading softswitch and gateway portfolio that has supported more than 35 leading Cable MSOs and approximately 8 million cable subscribers across the globe.

Here are some pictures taken from the show. I hope to see you there next year!

This week the Nortel CVAS team will be at the NCTA Cable Show in Los Angeles.

Hosted by the National Cable & Telecommunication Association (NCTA), the event brings together creative visionaries and technology leaders to showcase the latest advances in content delivery, programming and a new world of personal, portable content.

At our booth (#711) we will showcase a variety of innovations that help cable operators to compete and deliver advanced VoIP, multimedia and mobility services to residential and business subscribers. For a complete list of demos, see our press release from last week here.

I'll be joining the team (pictured from L-R: Jim McLaughlin, Jason Davidson, Ruth Young, Mitch Simcoe, Rich Krizan, Cris Constantinof and Greg Thor) at our booth tomorrow.

And, for this even, we decided to do something different this year and run a survey at the event to uncover some of the trends and communication preferences in the industry. I'll be posting updates from the show on this blog and via Twitter. You can follow me to get the latest @JamieMoody

Also if you're interested in seeing some of the sessions first-hand, all three Cable Show General Sessions will be available via live streaming video. You can link to the live feed at the following link: www.thecableshow.com/cablelive and video archives will also be available at www.thecableshow.com.

New research from In-Stat reveals that the government vertical is among the strongest industry verticals for VoIP adoption. Based on In-Stats survey, 48% of respondents in government institutions report that VoIP is deployed in at least one location. The report also found that Hosted IP Communications is something the government and healthcare verticals are interested in deploying or have already deployed.

This is great news for Nortel CVAS because many government networks are hosted using Nortel CVAS TDM Centrex switches. And, these enterprises will be happy to know that our solution offers a gradual migration path to IP by delivering a network that supports a mix of TDM and IP lines in the same business group. This enables the enterprise to migrate to IP in a phased approach rather than having to completely rip and replace all of their equipment. We can also leverage the existing telephony and TDM equipment that the business has installed to deliver unified communication, which means the business is getting more out of what they've already paid for and installed.

British Telecom has selected Nortel CVAS to provide a hosted business VoIP service that enables the migration of all legacy telephony services to IP in a large UK Government department. In this particular deployment, Nortel CVAS gear has demonstrated its scalability by supporting over 150,000 IP telephony lines in 1,100 customer sites, with a call handling capability of 3 million calls per day while supporting 20,000 call center agents.

This is just one example of Nortel CVAS' Hosted IP Communications solution that is powered by the CS 2000 softswitch and Adaptive Application Server SIP software engine.

Nortel CVAS experts will be at the upcoming ITPX event May 3-6, 2010 at the Flamingo Resort Hotel, Las Vegas, NV (booth 209) to showcase our Hosted IP Communication solutions for Large Enterprise. We will feature an interactive business case tool that will allow Enterprise IT professionals to compare the value and lower cost of ownership of Hosted IP Communications versus premise based IP telephony solutions.

Nortel CVAS' Rob Scheible will present the event Plenary Session on "How Centrex Customers can migrate to IP without dropping their TDM phone" on Wednesday May 5 from 8:30-9:30 a.m.

Earlier today we issued a couple of announcements touting our industry-leadership in the Carrier VoIP space. One announcement points to recent data from Infonetics Research and Dell'Oro Group that name Nortel CVAS as the #1 global Carrier VoIP and Softswitch market leader for the fourth quarter of 2009. Infonetics also found that Nortel CVAS grew share in every sector of the VoIP market in 2009.

We also announced that Unified Communications magazine (a TMCNet publication) recently named Nortel CVAS' Adaptive UC solution as a recipient of its 2009 Product of the Year Award.

Are we patting ourselves on the back? Sure! These accomplishments were met during one of the most tumultuous times in the industry and our company's history. You can't deny the fact that Nortel's road has been... shall we say... bumpy since we filed Chapter 11. We've had to say good-bye to colleagues, products and businesses. We've been sold-off in bits and pieces to companies we once thought of as competitors. And, yet, through all this, the CVAS team has kept its focus and been able to keep that #1 leadership position.

Nortel has been ranked as the #1 Global Carrier VoIP and Softswitch leader since 2002. In the last year, we've added more than 40 new Carrier VoIP customers, 10 of which are Tier 1 operators. You can find Nortel CVAS gear on every continent and at work in 80 percent of IDC's worldwide listing of top 20 carriers (by revenue).

These accomplishments are a testament to the dedication and expertise of our employees, as well as our strong and loyal customer base of leading carriers across the globe.

According to Diane Myers, directing analyst, service provider VoIP and IMS for Infonetics Research:

Nortel CVAS has been a consistent leader in the Carrier VoIP market due to the company's foundation of voice expertise and commitment to next-generation VoIP solutions."

So, while Nortel CVAS is in the midst of a transition, we're moving forward, meeting our customer needs and we keep on pushing on, which is something that I am personally proud to be a part of.