Welcome to the November edition of Endeavoring – the monthly newsletter from Endeavor Telecom! We hope your holiday season is off to a great start. With December upon us, I’m sure we are all looking forward to a bit of relaxation and time for friends and family in the coming weeks.

A month ago at Fall VON, we were pleased to announce our new partnership with Polycom. This relationship calls for Endeavor to provide nationwide implementation, support, testing, and training services through Polycom’s channel program to any service provider partner utilizing Polycom handsets as a part of an IP PBX deployment. If you haven’t had a chance to read this news, you can access it here.

If your organization has a vested interest in the IP PBX marketplace (or really any telephone systems), the importance of this announcement cannot be overstated. Through this partnership, service providers across the U.S. will now have immediate access to a nationwide geography for selling and supporting IP PBX systems, along with a host of other new service offerings. This holds the potential to dramatically change the competitive landscape for telecom systems and services, so we hope our readers are giving this careful consideration. We’ve highlighted a recent article about our Polycom partnership in the Company News section of this edition.

Finally, this month’s Spotlight highlights a few of the changes and upgrades taking place in the TAC (Technical Access Center).

ENDEAVOR TELECOM ADDS PACKET ISLAND'S VOIP NETWORK ASSESSMENT & VOIP MONITORING SOLUTIONS TO ITS PORTFOLIO OF INSTALLATION SERVICES

Turnkey Network Assessment Tools Streamline SMB VoIP Deployments and Generate New Revenue Opportunities for Service Providers

November 21, 2007 - Endeavor, The Telecom Truck Roll Company for carriers, service providers, VARs, and equipment manufacturers, today announced that it has added Packet Island's VoIP network assessment and VoIP monitoring solutions to its portfolio of installation services.

The Packet Island suite of micro-appliances are used to ensure quality VoIP service delivery. Prior to deploying a VoIP solution, Packet Island's VoIPPro Field Service Kit (FSK) can be used to assess a customer's WAN and LAN for VoIP readiness. Then, once a VoIP solution has been deployed, the Packet Island solution can be used to verify whether the installation has been done successfully, thereby ensuring adequate service quality and providing visibility into problems such as LAN issues, WAN congestion, phone malfunctions, and VoIP service issues prior to leaving the customer's site. Using Packet Island's VoIPCare Service, the quality of every VoIP call can be continuously monitored, saving up to 30 days worth of data and enabling SLA reporting with active route and traffic analysis to determine if external problems exist that may be impacting service quality. Packet Island's micro-appliances also provide IT staff with the data they need for capacity planning, trend analysis, and overall network management activities.

Click here to read more.

VoIP Planet: “Snapshots from Fall VON, Part 1”

November 5, 2007

By Ted Stevenson

The Fall VON exposition (as distinct from the conference), which took place Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, was a interesting in many ways, not the least of which was its segmentation into a number of sub-expos—including an Asterisk World area, a video over Web pavilion, a unified communications pavilion, and Vondex, a fledgling event for the telecom reseller channel.

We checked out all of these entities, met with a slew of vendors, and caught wind of many industry announcements. Below, you'll find news from Polycom and Endeavor, iBasis, and infrastructure hardware providers NexTone and ReefPoint.

Endeavor, Polycom in Strategic Deployment Partnership

Atlanta-based Endeavor Telecom, which dubs itself "the Telecom Truck-Roll Company of Choice", is a 'white label' provider of professional installation services across North America. Which is to say that the trucks in question, more often than not, carry the logos of carriers, VARs, and system integrators, rather than Endeavor's.

At the Boston show, IP phone and audio/video conferencing equipment vendor Polycom announced an agreement with Endeavor whereby the latter company's services will be available through Polycom's distribution channel, to service-provider-partners seeking professional implementation services on a nationwide basis

In addition to installing, testing, and supporting Polycom phones, Endeavor's thousands of certified technicians will provide customized installation services—such as inside wiring, network switches, traffic shaping appliances, and gateways—and training.

Click here to read the full article.

Endeavor Continues Enhancements in the TAC

Endeavor’s Technical Access Center (TAC) is the heart of our day-to-day operations. It is staffed 24x7 by two primary support groups; Service Provisioning and Service Delivery. Together, the dedicated professionals in our TAC operations groups handle the myriad details associated with planning for and delivering world-class support services.

As the company has grown, taking on many new and increasingly complex customers and technologies, the TAC has expanded in size, scope and sophistication to keep pace. Throughout 2007, Endeavor has invested in expanding TAC staff and facilities, and we’ve recently completed a significant upgrade in technologies to facilitate even higher levels of communication and service excellence.

For starters, the Service Delivery area has been expanded to support the rapidly growing volume of customer installations (Photo 1). As you can see, the paint job isn’t too bad either.

Throughout the TAC, we’ve installed numerous marker boards and maps to help enhance the groups’ planning and communications. Similarly, we have installed several digital time-zone clocks throughout the area, each reflecting the 7 time zones included in Endeavor’s geographic footprint.

In Service Delivery we installed 2 new projectors and large screens to give the entire team a birds-eye view of the call queue, ESP (Endeavor Service Portal) monitoring, and other monitoring functions. The Service Provisioning department was similarly upgraded with 3 large LCDs to provide up-to-the-minute monitoring and tracking of our core support systems.

In addition to display and media systems, Endeavor also upgraded the TAC security system in order to protect Endeavor’s most valuable asset, the trust of its customers. All employees and visitors are required to carry electronic photo identification badges in order to enter the office as well as swipe-in and swipe-out controlled access to secured areas within the TAC and warehouses. These enhancements ensure that Endeavor maintains the integrity of customer data and equipment held in its care.

The display, media, access control, and security systems were installed by Paragon Systems, Inc. of Atlanta.

These are just a few of the many changes taking place in the TAC and, literally, throughout the company. Our white label service model has clearly struck a chord with our industry, and the TAC is staying one step ahead with the staffing, processes, systems and technologies it will take to ensure that 2008 is another banner year for Endeavor Telecom.

INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO EAST 2008, Miami Beach
Justin McLain, CEO of Endeavor Telecom will be speaking:
January 24, 2008, 2:15-4:00pm
Track: Service Provider, Topic: “Service Provider Industry Round Table”

Channel Partners Conference & Expo
March 10-12, 2008
Rio All Suites Casino, Las Vegas, Booth #1111

Spring VON Conference & Expo
March 17-20, 2008
McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, CA, Booth #637