Alcatel-Lucent has closed the sale of its customer-service software and contact-center business Genesys, which now needs to regroup and start working on improving areas such as analytics, Gartner analyst Steve Blood said.

Zultys has upgraded the software in its MX family of IP PBXs and added a Mobile Communicator client for Android-based smartphones, the company said on Tuesday.

Despite some hopeful fits and starts, the U.S. economy didn't escape the doldrums in 2011. Unemployment remained stubbornly high, the U.S. debt-ceiling crisis and budget scuffles spurred more economic uncertainty, and Europe's ongoing financial problems threatened global markets. If there's an upside, at least it's familiar territory.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has claimed that Australian consumers are embracing multiple forms of communication technologies, with mobile phones being the “bulk of voice communications.”

Vodafone's Global Enterprise is strengthening its professional services arm by acquiring British consultant Bluefish Communications, which will form the basis of a new unified communication and collaboration practice, the operator said on Thursday.

We're at an awkward stage as the age of network-streamed multimedia matures. Broadband and cell providers have only recently realized the public's enormous appetite for streaming video, VoIP, and the combination of both.

Given the importance of telephone systems, refreshing the technology can be daunting. However, for small and midsized businesses who consider upgrading from a PBX to VoIP, the benefits are clear and, with proper planning, the implementation is not very frightening. Consider these three steps:

Information workers are increasingly demanding to use consumer-friendly Android and iOS devices on the job, so it stands to reason that IT administrators would value such flexibility too.

Intel has been on a buying binge lately. Just two weeks ago the world's largest chip maker agreed to acquire security vendor McAfee for $7.68 billion, and today it announced plans to buy Infineon Technologies' Wireless Solutions (WLS) division for $1.4 billion.

Google's new Gmail calling may be a great way for consumers to make free and low-cost voice calls, but the service isn't quite ready for business customers using Google Apps, the search giant's suite of cloud-based productivity programs.

The steady rise in people using IP telephony to communicate -- for personal and business reasons -- has led to the development of a number of different VoIP "softphones" that can be used on a PC or notebook.

In addition to the well-known Asterisk, there is a vibrant community of open source software PBX systems that can be used for internal and service provider IP telephony. Here are five exciting open source VoIP and UC projects to keep an eye on.