Saturday 6 August 2011

Archive for the ‘Latest Events’ Category

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15th July 2011 – In a continuing effort to innovate and help customers maximize productivity, Siemens Enterprise Communications has introduced AudioPresenceTM HD, which ensures that all OpenStage IP phone users can experience the highest quality audio for voice calls and audio conferences, at no additional cost for the functionality. Unlike other major brands, the OpenStage range provides high-definition voice capabilities across the entire line of OpenStage IP phones, including the newly announced OpenStage 5 entry-level phone. With the introduction of AudioPresence HD, the OpenStage portfolio extends its legacy of reliability and quality acoustic engineering.
“Siemens Enterprise Communications’ efforts to extend HD voice across its entire IP portfolio with AudioPresence increases the overall value of its already high quality proven IP desktop phones, allowing customers to enjoy a natural voice experience with higher voice quality, superior clarity, better intelligibility and a richer sound experience,” said Mohamed Alaa Saayed, Senior Industry Analyst with Frost & Sullivan. “The overall result is higher degrees of customer satisfaction and increased productivity.”
This innovation is particularly applicable to a truly global audience.  Research has shown that interactions among people with diverse native language backgrounds have increased dramatically and will continue to rise. For example, research from the Federal Institute of Research in Zurich, showed that official Globalization Indexes for information flows has increased more than 60% over the past two decades, and a global survey conducted by Associates for International Research, Inc. (AIRINC) showed that 42% of companies reported an increase in their expatriate populations in 2010, while 49% expect an increase in this number in 2011. Additionally, global research firm MZA Ltd. predicts the worldwide conferencing solutions market will grow to near $8 billion at a compound growth rate of over 13% due to the restrictions on business travel – demonstrating an ever increasing and high level of reliance on voice technologies to drive business communications, customer dialog and decision making.
Meanwhile, recent United Nations research indicates the global population of those over age 60 has grown by over 50% in the past two decades, while the number of U.S. workers over age 55 has increased by 53% over the past decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Further, The European Commission expects the employment rate of workers age 55 and older to reach 59% by 2025.  With this aging workforce demographic comes age-related hearing loss, progressively impacting up to 50% of people by age 75. The AudioPresence HD enhanced user experience reduces frustration and helps ensure customer interactions and employee communications are well understood, avoiding errors and misunderstandings.
AudioPresence HD leverages the standards-based G.722 high-definition audio codec, best-in-class speaker, microphone and acoustic components, and advanced noise rejection and echo cancellation in all OpenStage IP phones. Also, with the upcoming release of OpenScape UC Version 6, multi-party audio conferences will support AudioPresence HD as well as an industry unique Automatic Gain Control feature which normalizes the distraction and frustration of loud and soft volume levels from various conference participants.
“While knowledge workers are becoming increasingly reliant on advanced communications tools, voice communication remains the engine of the knowledge economy in many respects,” says Jonathan Spira, president of NYC-based communications analyst firm Basex.  “Missed information can lead to costly errors, muddled responses to questions require time-consuming repetition and clarification, and an unclear articulation results in frustration and stress for call participants as they strain to follow the conversation.”
According to new independent lab testing conducted by HEAD Acoustics, OpenStage IP handsets with AudioPresence consistently delivered strong balanced performance index scores across the entire range of OpenStage IP phones. For example, the entire range of OpenStage handsets tested all scored the maximum possible TMOS score of 4.2 for high definition audio sending, including the new OpenStage 5. This demonstrates that exceptional audio quality can be provided to customers seeking a cost-effective entry-level phone. Overall, the results support OpenStage portfolio’s legacy of superior acoustic engineering and component selection.
“Having deployed an Asterisk IP-PBX, we could have chosen any desk phone on the market. We chose 8,000 OpenStage 60 SIP phones, in a distributed branch office solution.  Being in a customer-focused and service-oriented insurance business it is important for us to have reliable, high quality phones to interact with our customers,” says Alfred Isenbeck of LVM Versicherung.  “We rely on the excellent audio quality of the OpenStage phones to ensure we provide excellent service to our customers.”
“We continue to believe in the importance of providing all of our customers with an excellent quality user experience, and superior audio quality does not have to be an expensive solution that is only available in high-end or ‘executive’ phones,” said Mark Straton, Senior Vice President Global Solutions Marketing at Siemens Enterprise Communications. “With AudioPresence HD available in every OpenStage IP model, it is our way of ensuring that regardless of how much a customer wants to invest in a phone, they are getting the best audio quality available.”
AudioPresence HD is available now on all OpenStage IP phones and can be enabled immediately by contacting your local Siemens Enterprise Communications representative or authorized partner.

Brightbridge Wealth Management Headlines: Opinion: What costs trillions and kills the economy?


Nobel Laureate in Economics, F. A. Hayek, fought totalitarianism and communism, and from beyond the grave he is taking on a new foe – political bureaucracies.
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Hayek – an economist whose theories inspired George Orwell to write his epic book 1984 and whom many credit for helping to bring down the Iron Curtain through his work as an economist — is now delivering a message from beyond the grave about the demise of the U.S. economy. In an interview that took place before Hayek’s death in 1992, he warns against how big government and the growth of the civil service have the potential to doom the American economy.

Kenneth J. Gerbino, CEO of an investment management company and founder and chairman of the 1980 reform advocacy group the American Economic Council, uncovered the interview that is the centerpiece of the new documentary film The Hayek Prophecies (www.thehayekprophecies.com). In it, Hayek decries the growth of the civil service as the poison pill that could put the country in a stagnant or slow growth mode with inefficiencies and waste.

“Hayek believed that the swelling of the civil service would grow government to such an unwieldy size that it would become an unsustainable beast, dragging down the government and the economy because of its endless hunger,” said Gerbino, also producer of the film.

There are currently 2,392 bills working their way through the House and 1,291 bills in the Senate. Besides the $20-30 billion in pork in these bills there will be more government agencies, bureaus and departments created to administer and regulate any new laws that are passed. They will then further complicate and slow down the real economy. More regulations and regulators are being added to the budget every year.

The government should be dismantling agencies and downsizing and allowing the people of this country to flourish by allowing them, not the government, to spend their money.

“Tax money going toward social security should not go toward hiring more people to inhabit more government jobs,” he said. “Taxes should be reduced giving elderly people money to buy food and pay rent. Because of the thousands of new regulations to various laws passed every year, the bureaucracy to administer these regulations and guidelines waste hundreds of billions per year.”

The Heritage Foundation reported the Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that current reports of wasteful duplication include 342 economic development programs; 130 programs serving the disabled; 130 programs serving at-risk youth; 90 early childhood development programs; 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities; and 72 safe water programs. Gerbino states that most of these agencies probably could be consolidated into three or four agencies eliminating overlapping work and reducing employed civil servants by 30-40%. Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties all for the civil servants.

The civil service has created its own perpetual motion and continues to expand, costing taxpayers more money but in many ways costing private enterprise untold legal and accounting costs to comply with regulations many of which are not needed. These costs are then passed on to consumers. The civil service expansion defeats the purpose of actually shrinking government, which makes the political call for smaller government nothing more than a punch line to a bad joke. “If our leaders really want to reduce the size of government, they should listen to Hayek and start with the civil service.”

About Kenneth Gerbino
Kenneth Gerbino is head of Kenneth J. Gerbino & Company, an investment management firm now in its 37th year. The company manages private equity accounts and the Gerbino Gold Group, LLC, a private hedge fund that invests in precious metal mining stocks. Ken is advisor to the publicly traded Precious Capital Global Metals & Mining Fund traded on the Zurich Stock Exchange. Ken was the founder and Chairman of the American Economic Council (AEC), a nationwide economic reform group that was credited with the passage of the United States Gold Coin Act of 1984, which established the United States Gold Eagle coin. AEC seminars included participation by Alan Greenspan, Noble Laureate F. A. Hayek and Robert Bleiberg, ex-Editor-in-Chief of Barron’s.

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