ShoreTel Names Peter Blackmore President and CEO: ShoreTel, the leading provider of brilliantly simple IP phone systems with fully integrated unified communications (UC), today announced that its board of directors has named Peter Blackmore to serve as the company’s president and chief executive officer, effective today. Don Girskis, who served as interim CEO, will resume his position as senior vice president of worldwide sales.
Avaya Invests $165M, Receives $5M Grant from Government of Ontario for Canadian Research and Development: Avaya, a global leader in enterprise communications systems, software and services, today announced significant investments for research and development (R&D) activities at locations in Ontario, Canada. Over the next three years, Avaya will invest $165 million in its global R&D facilities in Ottawa and Belleville, Ontario to develop key components of Avaya’s solutions for the enterprise and small to medium business markets. The Ontario government will contribute $5 million towards the initiative, which supports 350 skilled R&D positions working on next-generation UC and collaboration technologies.
Virtacore Offers Google Apps for Business Along with Hybrid Cloud Services: Virtacore Systems, Inc., a leading provider of hybrid cloud computing solutions designed to meet the dynamic needs of middle market and emerging businesses, announced today it will offer Google Apps for Business and ISPs as part of its growing cloud services, becoming one of the first providers to deliver both hybrid clouds and Google Apps for Business.
Peters & Associates Joins AltiGen’s Growing Reseller Community: AltiGen Communications, Inc., the leading provider of integrated Microsoft-based UC solutions, is pleased to announce 
the addition of Peters & Associates to its partner network. Peters & Associates is a Microsoft Gold Partner focused on delivering technology solutions for infrastructure and collaboration on the Microsoft platform. Peters & Associates was founded in 1981 as a family-owned business and is currently located in Oakbrook Terrace, IL. Peters & Associates has been honored with numerous industry awards including Microsoft National VAR Partner of the Year.
Tiverity Achieves Advanced Unified Communications Specialization from Cisco USA: Tiverity announced today that it has achieved the Advanced Unified Communications Specialization from Cisco. This specialization recognizes Tiverity as having fulfilled the training requirements and program prerequisites to sell, deploy and support comprehensive Cisco Unified Communications solutions.
Glowpoint Announces the Opening of Global Operations and R&D Showcase Headquarters: Glowpoint, Inc., a provider of cloud-based managed services for telepresence, videoconferencing and collaboration, today announced the opening of a new operations and R&D showcase facility, which will serve as the company’s new corporate headquarters and executive briefing center. The state-of-the-art facility will include multiple, fully equipped telepresence suites and briefing demonstration rooms accessible for global briefings with partners and clients.
VBrick Unveils H.264-Based IP Video Platform: IP video technology provider VBrick Systems announced the launch of its complete H.264 video solution for broad enterprise video deployment.
Telcentris Announces Turnkey White Label Offering Designed for Enabling Rapid Entry Into VoIP Market: Telcentris Inc., a leader in cloud communications, today announced the immediate availability of its white label solution — an end–to–end managed wholesale VoIP enablement platform that offers customers a complete suite of services and robust back-end infrastructure. The white label solution is designed to provide interconnects, ILECs, CLECs, ITSPs and entrepreneurs a plug-and-play environment that enables them to set up a VoIP company in a matter of weeks with little upfront investment. In addition to offering the platform directly for private labeling, Telcentris is one of few companies to provide this type of turnkey white label VoIP solution to indirect sales channels through its Channel Partner Program.
Plantronics Simplifies Conference Calls with New InstantMeeting App for BlackBerry and Android Phones: Plantronics today announced the availability of InstantMeeting, a conference calling app for Android and BlackBerry smartphones that enables mobile professionals to access conference calls from their devices with the push of a button.
Polycom Telepresence Infrastructure Components Receive UC APL Certification from U.S. Federal Government: Polycom, Inc., a global leader in UC, today announced it received Unified Capabilities Approved Product List (UC APL) certification from the U.S. Department of Defense for several components of its UC Intelligent Core infrastructure platform — the Polycom RMX 2000 and RMX 4000 scalable multipoint conferencing platforms and the Polycom RMX Serial Gateway for connecting Polycom and standards-based telepresence and videoconferencing systems to serial (V.35/RS-449/RS-530) networks.
