News Briefs

Posted: 8/2003

News Briefs

* Pennsylvania-based Premier
Management Group Inc. (PMG), a telecom/datacom channel partner, has opened a
new sales and marketing office in Houston. Operations will continue to be
centralized at the corporate office in Lititz, Pa. PMG says the move is a first
step in the execution of a long-term strategic plan, which calls for the
inception of offices across the United States. PMG predicts rapid growth for its
solutions/provider business unit, Skopevo, because of the opening, because the
"Houston market was one of the early adopters of IP telephony and,
therefore, positioned well for the combining of our procurement-brokerage and
solutions model," explains CEO Darryl Heller.

* The Information Technology
Solution Providers Alliance (ITSPA) has hired the Richards Group to develop
a national brand campaign to draw attention to the role technology channel
partners provide in help executives at small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs)
use new technology. The Richards Group’s responsibilities include strategic
planning and creative development. ITSPA, launched in May, is a nonprofit trade
association with a mission to educate SMBs about the advantages of using
partners to source hardware, software, connectivity and managed services.

* NTT/Verio Inc. has launched
its NTT/Verio Virtual Private Server Version 2 (VPS v2). The new offering was
launched under the Small to Medium Enterprise Hosting unit’s family of products,
available via VARs. VPS v2 allows companies to create an array of applications,
including e-commerce, multimedia solutions and database applications. With a
range of managed service available, the VPS v2 is targeted to SMEs who need a
more powerful solution, but may not have the internal resources to manage it
themselves. VPS v2 can support a corporate intranet, custom application
development and hosting, Web-based calendaring, e-mail and data management.
Three product plans are offered: VPS v2 Standard, Pro and Pro Plus, with a
retail price starting at $149.95 and discounts to viaVerio reseller partners.

* US LEC Corp. has introduced
Multi-Link Frame Relay (MFR), a new technology that allows Internet and frame
relay services to exceed T1 speeds up to 12 megabits. The offer, available for
sale by agents, targets businesses looking to easily grow their data network
capabilities. MFR allows businesses to increase their bandwidth as required by
their changing data needs by incrementally adding T1s. MFR also provides faster
data transmission by fragmenting large data files across all available T1s,
rather than forcing data to "wait in line" to be transmitted. If one
T1 fails, the others continue to operate and are unaffected.

* Birch Telecom has signed a
resale agreement with Positive Networks Inc. to sell a co-branded version
of Positive Network’s Internet-based remote access and site-to-site VPN. The
resold offer is available through Birch’s direct and agent sales forces.

The technology allows users to
access company resources through special software or any standard Web browser.
It includes a set of administrative and provisioning tools that offers service
establishment within seconds. It also can be used to network companies with
multiple locations.