Daily News 2004/12/03

VoIP equipment at the operation level is promising, with an annual increase rate of 39%

　　According to the latest report by Infonetics, the market size of VoIP equipment at the operation level in 2004 has increased by 69% than that of the last year. It is anticipated that the corresponding market value will increase from the 1.3 billion USD in 2003 to 4.8 billion USD in 2007. Sales volume in the 3rd quarter of this year was 452 million USD, an increase of 13% than that in the 2^nd quarter.

　　According to the statistics made by Infonetics, in terms of the next generation of voice products, Nortel Networks ranks the first on the Class 5 soft-switch market, accounting for almost half of the total income of the world in this field. SIEMENS ranks the second place. Cisco ranks the first and Sonus ranks the second in term of the income on the media gateway market. However, most of the products sold by Cisco are RAS (universal port RAS).

Alcatel will acquire Right Vision to consolidate the SMB market

　　Alcatel announced recently that it had the intention of acquiring Right Vision, a private-owned leading provider in Europe which is engaged in providing software-based Internet equipment for the access to Internet, e-mail service and web applications. Through the acquisition, Alcatel can find a solution to ICT. These solutions, integrating IT and Telecom functions (voice, date and Internet) into an all-in-one package, are mainly designed for small and middle-sized business (SMB).

　　Alcatel plans to market the first batch of SMB-oriented products, including Right Vision components, in the first quarter of 2005,and make a further step in integrating Right Vision products and OmniPCX Office series of products after 2005.

Microsoft CRM gaining both favor and income

　　As it was said by Batt, general manager Microsoft CRM, on Nov. 17, that the annual growth rate of CRM products on the world market was between 10% and 15%, while that of o Microsoft's CRM products in the first 3 years had been over 80%. Microsoft CRM now has about 3500 customers, and 62% of these customers are willing to be the "reference customer". According to Batt, the success of the company is due to the close attention it has paid to small and middle-sized enterprises and an indirect sales team. He says that on the CRM market there are competitors such as Salesforce, SAP, Siebel and PeopleSoft, but all these companies go for high-end market.