Once again, news in the Next Generation Communications community was dominated by things wireless. However, please be sure to take a good read of the features section where there are some extremely insightful items on things relating to data centers, responsibilities when the cloud goes down and on campus security.
Before going into other news items, I particularly wanted to draw attention to the piece done by TMCnet contributor Madhubanti Rudra on the recent announcement by community sponsor Alcatel-Lucent (News 
- Alert) on it new consulting and professional services capabilities in the critical area of helping service providers manage and leverage APIs.
News
In other industry news:
- ZTE (News - Alert) Corporation announced it will sell its first 4G LTE handset through China Mobile Ltd. (941)'s Hong Kong unit, after unveiling its new LTE products.
- A recent iGR study discussed the market potential for VoLTE, and indeed a study by research firm Fell’Oro Group found that VoLTE spending on Telephony Applications Servers and IP Multimedia Subsystem (News - Alert) (IMS) is on the rise.
- LTE was also the subject of an Alcatel-Lucent video on how the technology is helping first responders improve their capabilities.
- Intelligo Software, a provider of human resource and payroll software across the U.K. and Ireland, deployed Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Office Rich Communication Edition (RCE) and Contact Centre solutions.
Features
Feature focus this week was on the following:
- Service Providers: Who should be responsible and accountable when the cloud goes down? That is a question that is becoming paramount and we provide some helpful hints on what needs to be considered in assuring everyone knows what to do, where, when and why.
- Enterprise: With data centers becoming ever more critical to enterprises, assuring connectivity for business continuity and disaster recovery has emerged as a key part of the calculus of architecting networks for the future. Mae Kowalke provides insights into the factors that need to be taken into consideration when evaluating a data center connect solution. Ms. Kowalke also took a look at recommendations from Alcatel-Lucent as to why enterprises need to be looking at making their networks applications fluent in order to improve the customer experience for employees as well as external audiences.
- Industries: As we all know, college and university campus, particularly large ones,pose significant safety challenges including the need to contact the entire community in case of an emergency. Alcatel-Lucent’s OpenTouch SIP-based suite of solutions is optimized to enable campus IT managers to provide their stakeholders with the communications they require to help improve security.
Weekend reading
Additional weekend reading you should consider includes:
Plus, check out the Resource Center for access to whitepapers, videos and case studies. And, the recent webinar, Prepare Your Network for the Multi-media & BYOD Revolution, continues to be extremely popular with those who could not join us live.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.
