CIPTUG 2007 exhibition floor and other notes

From the show floor:

• VoIP system and network monitoring tools and suites vendors: Prognosis, NetIQ, NetQoS. NetQoS seemed to have the most thorough and least-intrusive (no probes in the network or services installed on CallManagers) monitoring suite. The size of Penn State's network necessitates the use of a better toolset than just what is provided with Call Manager and the other applications. Tools from any of these providers as well as from Cisco (Operations Manager) could do the job; the biggest likely issues are usability and licensing costs.


• Applications: Polycom demonstrated their application that allows the Cisco IP phone to control Polycom video endpoints. Very cool and an alternative to using Cisco's video gear. Berbee and Syn-Apps had a lot to say and demonstrate about emergency response; they're responding to post-VT requirements being laid out by organizations with large campuses. Citrix demoed their click-to-call application, which did not impress.


• Swag/prizes: As for swag, APC gave out 256MB USB drives, Tripplite gave out some power testers and everyone gave out toys, goofy pens and t-shirts. Best prizes were from Zoom, who gave out three radio controlled helicopters, and GlobalKnowledge, who gave out three $500 Best Buy gift cards. INX is giving away an Xbox with Guitar Hero 3 tonight.

Some brief notes from seminars I attended:

• From a seminar on management of Cisco Unified Communications, I really liked what I saw of the current version of Provisioning Manager. We evaluated a previous version of this but the current version (1.1) may be the time to review it again. Most important features are fast provisioning of phones, voicemail and services in one applications, delegation of privileges, and audit trail of changes. If you buy it as part of the suite of their other Unified Communications Management products, there's some discount.


• Cisco Unified Applications Environment is incredibly cool. It's not just about IP phone services; it's about applications that use all aspects of the UC environment. You can build a voice app, a web app, a hybrid, whatever. More information on Cisco's site; SDK available on Sourceforge. (You can develop and test using the provided small number of licenses for free.)