Sonexis Technology, Inc., a leading provider of on-premise audio and web conferencing platforms, today announced that ConferenceManager 10.0 is compliant with a key Internet Protocol (IP) telephony solution from Avaya, a global provider of business collaboration systems, software and services.

Sonexis ConferenceManager is a feature-rich solution, well-suited to the small to medium enterprise (SME), which provides a high quality collaboration environment to customers wanting to implement a secure, cost-effective solution for audio and web conferencing. Through the use of ConferenceManager, SME customers can benefit from the flexibility and enhanced security features offered by the solution and achieve cost savings over traditional conferencing service providers.

The application now is compliance-tested by Avaya for compatibility with: Avaya IP Office Release 7.0 using PRI, SIP, and H.323 trunk interfaces. Avaya IP Office is the company’s flagship communications solution for small and mid-sized businesses.

“Membership in the Avaya DevConnect program will assist Sonexis in delivering a comprehensive and secure collaboration solution for IP Office customers,” said Dan Watkins, executive vice president with Sonexis.  “The successful testing of ConferenceManager through the DevConnect program provides SME customers with a robust and secure collaboration solution that can be seamlessly deployed within the IP Office ecosystem while preserving existing investments in telephony and data infrastructure. Sonexis is pleased to provide Avaya customers with another option for enhanced audio and web collaboration.”

As a Gold member of the program, Sonexis Technology, Inc. is eligible to submit products for compatibility testing by the Avaya Solution Interoperability and Test Lab. There, a team of Avaya engineers develops a comprehensive test plan for each application to verify whether it is Avaya compliant.  Doing so enables businesses to confidently add best-in-class capabilities to their network without having to replace their existing infrastructure—speeding deployment of new applications and reducing both network complexity and implementation costs.  

     “Sonexis Technology’s collaboration offering for the small-to-medium size enterprise marketplace leverages the built-in audio conferencing capabilities of Avaya IP Office and will provide greater capability and choice for Avaya IP Office customers,” said Eric Rossman, vice president, developer relations, Avaya. “We are pleased to add Sonexis ConferenceManager to our portfolio of DevConnect compliance-tested products as another option available to our IP Office customers for audio and web collaboration.”

Sonexis Customer Care team is among the best in the industry.  From pre-sales technical assistance, installation, training, and technical support, our team strives to provide the best to our ConferenceManager customers.  They field hundreds of questions from ConferenceManager users on a constant basis. 

Did you know there are three ways to get in touch with Customer Care?  You can call them at 866-676-6394, email them at customercare@sonexis.com, or visit our Sonexis Customer Care Portal.

Below are many of the most frequently asked questions for our Customer Care team.  Please feel free to comment below with any additional questions you may have.

Q.           I was forced to changed my PIN on the ConferenceManager, how do I change my PIN in Outlook to match?

A.            Outlook 2003/2007-Tools/Options/Sonexis Options

                Outlook 2010-Sonexis tab, Sonexis Options

Q.           I want music to play when there is only 1 connection in my conferences, where do I set that?

A.          From the My Conferences page, click My Preferences button (lower left), toward the bottom of the preferences page, change the “When there is only one Audio connection” preference from ‘do nothing’ to ‘play music’

Q.           One of my colleagues can record their audio conferences, how can I get setup to do that?

A.            Recording is controlled by Class of Service.  The administrator of the ConferenceManager must move your account into a Class of Service that has recording enabled.

Q.           Sometimes during my conferences there is a lot of background noise, and on occasion participants put their own line on hold and it plays music into the conference.  How can I tell who is causing the noise and silence it?

A.            The Audio Console can be used to determine who is speaking or causing background noise.  From the My Conferences page, select the conference in progress if it’s already started, or select the scheduled conference you want to start, choose “Enter” for a conference in progress or “Start” for a scheduled conference.  This will launch the Audio Console in a web browser.  The ‘active talker’ feature will show a green highlight bar that will move in realtime based on the loudest audio source in the conference.  Use the “mute” button for the offending participants.  Let those participants know they can press *2 to unmute their own lines, or *3 to raise their hand in the Audio Console so you can unmute them.

Q.           How can I force my conference to end when I hang up?

A.            The host can press *81 from the telephone keypad, or ‘end conference’ from the Audio Console which will disconnect all participants and the host, and reclaim all the ports.

MONROEVILLE, Pa., May 4, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Sonexis Technology, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise audio and web conferencing platforms, is pleased to announce that they have been selected to conduct a breakout session at IAUG Global 2011 in Las Vegas, NV on May 25th, 2011.  

The breakout session title “Collaboration Services: Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud” will be presented by Frank Segarra, Sales Vice President-Eastern Region.  Mr. Segarra will highlight where best to deploy collaboration services when evaluating cloud-based solutions along with the concerns and benefits of collaboration services in the cloud.

“Due to the shifting nature of cloud computing and the questions about where best to deploy certain applications, Sonexis feels it is very timely to discuss how the cloud affects collaboration,” says Mr. Segarra.  ”The IAUG Global Conference provides Sonexis with a powerful forum to discuss collaboration solutions and the many options when it comes to cloud deployment best practices.”

To learn more about the IAUG Global Conference and the Sonexis breakout session, please visit www.iaug.org.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sonexis-technology-inc-to-conduct-cloud-collaboration-breakout-session-at-iaug-global-2011-121256589.html

Although teleconferencing has been with us for some time now, the use of web and video collaboration is still a relatively new and growing trend.  Due in part to the growth in these areas, the collaborations market for 2010 saw a significant increase and is estimated to be well over $20B worldwide.  Obviously, companies are jumping on the conferencing technology bandwagon, but why?  What does this mean to businesses that are trying to justify the cost of conferencing and collaboration in hopes of becoming more efficient and how does its use translates into a more robust bottom line for companies? 

Sonexis would like to illustrate 5 key ways conferencing and collaboration  improve business efficiency and provide organizations with a robust and cost-effective way for employees to communicate and collaborate.

#1    Reduced Travel Time and Costs

For employees, this means more time to focus on projects and less time spent traveling away from home.  For employers, this means less money is spent on traveling  and more time spent collaborating to complete a project.  And when the cost of travel is reduced and time is spent productively, your projects come in under budget and on time.

#2    Rapid Response in Times of Crisis

Using audio and web conferencing during a time of crisis will allow management and employees to utilize efficient and time-saving technology to come together for a solution to the situation at hand.  Collaboration is the key to solving problems and when a problem is costing your company money, time is of the essence.  By utilizing conferencing technology, your organization can bring the right resources to the table and get the problem resolved quickly and with minimal financial impact.   

#3    Improved Access to Information and the Source

When an organization utilizes online collaboration on a regular basis, access to needed information becomes an expectation.   Web collaboration allows project teams to establish a strategy for developing an “Intelligence Center” for any given project and coordinate information delivery for optimum efficiency.   By allowing employees to become source experts and having that expertise readily available for collaboration establishes a teaming approach to projects and is shown to increase productivity dramatically.

#4    Enhanced Employee Collaboration

Without solid and frequent collaboration among employees, good ideas die and opportunities are missed. The result: valuable workers, frustrated by the operational inefficiencies that result from poor collaboration, may become disheartened and depart for other jobs. And yet, how does an organization develop a collaborative environment when many employees work remotely or on the go? By deploying a feature-rich collaboration solution that is cost-effective, flexible and always available allows your organization to see the benefits of employee collaboration without the cost and hassle of travel or coordinating complicated and busy schedules.  

#5    Reduced Training Time and Costs 

Adequate training of your workforce dramatically increases worker productivity and morale.  There are some obvious downsides to training such as subject expert (trainer) costs and productivity loses while your employees attend training.   However, those downsides can be diminished significantly by using conferencing as your delivery method versus traditional classroom-lead instruction.  You can train your employee cost-effectively and still gain all of the benefits of an educated and happy workforce by utilizing a collaboration solution as your “virtual classroom”.

Over the years, Sonexis has added many features to ConferenceManager  in order to meet the changing needs of our customers.  Many of the features our customers enjoy on our conference bridge today were due to the forward thinking nature of the clients we work with.  Blast Dial, web conference room polling, Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes integration, and many more features have been added to our platform due to requests from our customers. 

Recently, one of our newest customers required our bridge to support Multilanguage Audio Prompts so that its diverse clientele could dial into the bridge and select which language they required to participate in the audio conference.  Our Multilanguage ConferenceManager conference bridge can be configured for English or Spanish or to allow each host and participant to select the language they want to hear when they first dial in.    Each of these options can be configured on a per-dialed number basis.  For example, you could have one number that when dialed will present all of the prompts in English and another number that will present the prompts in Spanish and a third number that would offer the user the choice of language.  When our engineers designed this feature, they kept in mind that other customers might require different languages supported so the core architecture requires very little engineering work to add additional languages. 

In the future, we are looking forward to adding more features that will help our customers continue to utilize audio and web conferencing as a way to reduce costs, increase productivity, and allow their workforce to become more efficient.

Today, most organizations rely on third-party conferencing services that charge a fixed per-minute fee for conferencing—the more you use, the more you pay.  As your organization’s need for collaboration increases, so do your costs.  However in today’s increasingly distributed world, that equation isn’t feasible, so you must identify alternatives to keep your organization competitive.

If most of your conferencing traffic is off-net, a Managed Services Offering can help you avoid incremental infrastructure costs (like additional T1s or PBX expansion) by hosting your conferencing platform at an off-site facility. In most cases, the hosting facility will do a larger volume of calls and they might have more aggressive T1 and long-distance rates than you are currently seeing today from your carrier. You simply purchase a conferencing platform, lease the T1’s from the facility and the hosting company takes care of the ongoing backup, maintenance and support of the bridge. 

Since conferencing costs can be broken down into three fundamental elements—bridging, transport, and administration—multiple solutions might be possible.  Invariably, owning a conferencing bridge is the most effective way to address the bridging component.  After a three year depreciation period, owning the application will reduce your organization’s collaboration costs in spite of your usage patterns and volume or whether you house the equipment on-premise or with a Managed Services Offering.  However, if your organization is seeing an increase in costs in transport and administration due to hosting your application internally, utilizing a MSO could significantly reduce your conferencing costs while still encouraging users to collaborate efficiently. 

If most of your conferencing traffic is off-net, Sonexis can help you avoid incremental infrastructure costs by hosting your application at our facilities.  Most likely, you will also enjoy substantial savings in transport costs since are service volumes provide us with access to some of the most aggressive T1 and long-distance rates available.  Best of all, you can leave the administration to us.  In the end, most small- to medium-sized organizations find this hybrid solution—you own the equipment, we provide the provisioning and administration—to be the optimal way to maximize savings.

There are so many variables when it comes to conducting an audio and web conference.  How many attendees are anticipated?  Will this be a lecture or can everyone come into the conference with the ability to speak?  Will it be too distracting to have everyone announce arrival? 

Sonexis has put together the top 5 tips for having an effective and productive collaboration experience.

Tip # 1 Know your Audience

Planning your conference according to the technical and operational requirements of those attending is key to a successful session.  If you are planning on having a session that requires desktop sharing and interaction by those attending your presentation, make sure that everyone understands the technical requirements prior to your conference.  When scheduling a conference with ConferenceManager using the web interface, Outlook plug-in or Lotus Notes plug-in, all participants will receive a test link in the invitation so they can test their system prior to the session.  This test is especially important for first time attendees. 

Tip #2 Know your Content

If your presentation is to be a one way push of information, configure your conference to be in “Lecture Mode” so everyone comes into the call muted.  This allows the presentation to begin with the host having the only line unmuted.  After the presentation, the host can unmute all participants by using the Host Audio Console for a question and answer session or keep the conference in Lecture Mode and require all participants to raise their hand using DTMF codes on their phone.  The hands raised will be in order and the host can unmute accordingly.

Tip #3  Plan for Size

If your conference is going to be largely attended, it might be necessary to have an operator assist you in your call.  This provides a value to your conference as there will be a professional moderator that will control the various aspects of your session with little to no intervention by the host.  Through our sister company, Chorus Call, Sonexis can assist you in providing your session with this valuable operator-assisted service. 

However, if you are planning a conference that is within the range that you can accommodate comfortably, you will need to decide how you would like attendees to be announced into the conference.  At some point we have all attended a conference that had stragglers that came in later and their announcement interrupted the flow of the call.  Although this video shows you how funny it can be after the fact, when you are the host of a call you know it is not entertaining.  If your session does not require attendee announcement upon arrival, configure your conference to have attendees announce by tone only or no announcement at all.

Tip #4 The Host Should Use the Higest Quality Endpoint Available

As a general rule, speaker phones, cell phones, and low quality headsets should be avoided when conducting a conference call so as to give your participants the best audio experience possible.  Due the nature of these calls, many times your attendees are on cell phones or headsets themselves so it is best for you to have the highest quality phone available for your presentation.

Tip #5 For Web Conferences, Less is More

When sharing a PowerPoint presentation with your audience, it is best to keep the use of animations and complex screen builds at a minimum.  Due to the variable nature of endpoints and bandwidth, it is best to make sure that your point gets across to your attendees in a timely manner.  Animations and complex screen builds can take valuable time to load on slower network connects and with attendees that may have multiple processes running in the background.  Keep your presentation simple and to the point.

Finally, understand that if you are sharing your entire desktop with your audience, they will see all applications that may be running.  It is best to close Instant Messaging platforms, email notifications, or clean up any icons on your desktop that you may not what you audience to see.  It can be very distracting for your attendees and presenters to see pop-ups and instant messages that you may be receiving. 

If you have any suggestions for other tips that have worked for you, please feel free to leave comments!

Below you will find a quick summary of the state of our industry for 2010 and predictions for 2011.  Happy New Year from all of us here at Sonexis!

Sonexis State of Conferencing 2010

A growing trend in collaboration services has had many asking the question as to where conferencing and web collaboration is best deployed:  in the Public Cloud or within your companies Private Cloud?  The reason this question has come up is in regards to the issues concerning security, service adoption and the leveraging of an already existing infrastructure to reduce the total cost of ownership. 

In the past, many companies optioned for public cloud deployments of collaboration services because it was widely believed that the cost and overhead needed to accommodate these services in-house far outweighed the need for tighter security and control.  Today that is no longer the case.  Because collaboration is becoming such an integral part of the way organizations do business, it is no longer acceptable to have lapses in service availability or security failures.    

Currently, the Public Cloud is the incumbent when it comes to collaboration services.  This is due in part because most companies are still wrestling with the idea that most applications are best suiting using the Software as a Services (Saas) model as a solution to the overhead usually associated with administering these types of applications in-house.  However, this trend is changing rapidly as it pertains to audio and web conferencing.  In a recent study published by Enterprise Management Associates of 850 CIO’s the concluded the following in regards cloud adaptation:

• 52% wanted cloud to “reduce IT operational costs”.
• Out of 850 respondents, 52% said they planned to deploy cloud services both internally and externally, but only 11% planned for exclusively external use.
• 67% of cloud users said they have used Software as a Service, 43% said Infrastructure as a Service and 42% have used Platform as a Service.
• 75% of all the organizations who planned for cloud computing said they wanted private clouds first and public clouds later, or not at all.

Why are organizations embracing Private Cloud deployments of collaboration services?

The conferencing and collaboration markets continue to grow; especially with the inclusion of new technologies, enhanced security, and attractive price points. However, the trend for the largest increase is for the Private Cloud market. This is due in part because of privacy concerns and security, cost control, and the drastically reduced total cost of ownership that can be attained only by owning your collaboration solution.

Many companies are jeopardizing their future because they have little to no telecom disaster recovery planning measures in place.  It is too expensive for many small firms to invest in offsite facilities to ensure business continuity and larger organizations are faced with a diverse infrastructure that cannot be handled efficiently by one solution. 

To add appeal to the already compelling Sonexis story, we offer a unique disaster recovery solution for ConferenceManager owners.  With a predetermined frequency, we will mirror our customers’ ConferenceManager data on a bridge in our co-location facility.  In the event you experience a network outage or major disaster, you can seamlessly redirect your traffic to our facility and maintain your full conferencing capability without disruption.  Imagine the peace you’ll enjoy knowing that critical communications infrastructure will always be available.

With your conferencing capabilities intact, your organization can begin the process of executing your Disaster Recovery Plan which should include the following action items: 

1. Have an up-to-date list of key personnel

2. Work off of a detailed script during a disaster

3. Test and re-test the detailed disaster recovery plan regularly

4. Each member of the team should be familiar with their defined role

5. Have a list of 24-hour supply delivery resources at the recovery site

6. Include an application list in the DR plan

7. Maintain a current network diagram of the entire network and recovery site in the DR plan

8. The DR plan should contain an easy-to-follow map and directions of how to reach the recovery site

9. Provide a current list of vendor contacts and insurance documentation such as policy numbers

10. Use Sonexis ConferenceManager to keep communications flowing during the crisis