There’s one reason I’m excited about IT Expo. It’s called Startup Camp. 

Startup Camp is perhaps the most relevant example of what is really happening in the telecom and tech world today at the twice annual confernence.  For the past four StartUpCamp they have had standing room only crowds, and key speakers iincluding startup luminaries and legends Craig Walker (GrandCentral), Bob Metcalf (father of Ethernet, 3COM), Jamie Siminoff (Simulscribe, Unsubscibe) and Jeff Bonforte (Gizmo, Yahoo Voice, Xobni). This year will have Sir Terry Matthews (NewBridge Networks, Mitel) as the keynote offering a neat perspective from years of experience nurturing and building companies.

But the event is more than talk. It’s about the baby companies getting their start. One of the former presenters to graduate via exit was GroupMe, which was bought Skype, and other forward thinking companies like Twillio, OpenTok have all supported the event as sponsors to help make it a success.

This year’s class of participants again includes four companies who will battle it out to impress the judges that include moderator Siminoff, Brooks Robinson (co-founder of cBeyond), Alan Duric (Camino Networks, Goji and Telio) and Gary Pudles (AnswerNet).

StartUp Camp is Thursday, February 2 starting with cocktails at 4 PM.

Cablevision (NYSE: CVC)’s Optimum Lightpath, which sells VoIP and other Ethernet-based communication solutions in the New York metropolitan area businesses, is rolling out conferencing services that it says will deliver enterprise-class audio and web conferencing.

The initiative is aimed at the increasingly UC-savvy mid-market business segment and is part of Optimum Lightpath’s Collaboration Suite.

The Optimum Lightpath Conference Bundle includes support for up to 300 audio only or 125 Web and audio participants, allows an unlimited ability to add audio conference moderators and includes a “Connect Me” feature that will automatically call participants logging into a meeting via the Web.

The offering also gives users a personal digital library for storing and quickly sharing frequently used files, enables real-time administrative controls and a Web portal to manage the service, and one-click conference recording.

The bundle is is available to existing Optimum Lightpath customers and is based on flat-rate pricing for packages of minutes and licenses. Live tech support is available 24/7.

“Cost savings remains a difficult-to-quantify benefit, therefore IT managers are increasingly looking at bundled services that reduce costs while improving user access,” said Irwin Lazar, vice president of Nemertes Research. 

For more:
– see this release

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Technicolor to work with Comcast on telepresence offering
Comcast to offer HD video Skype calls on TV sets to subscribers

UC vendor Kerio Technologies, looking to push deeper into the SMB market, this week rolled out its latest iteration of its IP PBX phone system, Kerio Operator 1.2, which now is based on Asterisk 1.8. Kerio also added support for analog phone lines through a Digium TDM410 card, enabling organizations that have limited SIP connectivity to take advantage of Kerio Operator’s VoIP features.

The San Jose,Calif.-based company said the upgrade is aimed at making the system secure and simple for its partners, the IT department and employees making and receiving calls.

Kerio said the new platform, which uses industry-standard SIP VoIP protocol, allows small and midsized organizations to trim telephony costs and stay connected anywhere.

Kerio Operator 1.2 is available as a software appliance,with its own security-hardened operating system, a VMware virtual appliance allowing for rapid deployment in production or evaluation environments on standard PC hardware and in two hardware appliance configurations available in some markets.

For more:
– see this release

Related article:
Kerio upgrades its Operator IP PBX solution for SMBs

Citing weak demand and an eroding Euro, Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI) today lowered its full-year outlook, saying it would likely earn $60 million on revenue of $2.3 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31.

Reporting financials for the quartet that ended Dec. 31, Logitech said profits were down 15 percent to $55 million in the quarter on sales that eroded 5 percent to $715 million. Analysts had expected the company to report earnings of $61.2 million on sales of $749 million.

One of the lone bright spots for the company was in its videoconferencing business. The company said revenue at LifeSize Communication was up 6 percent for the quarter. Logitech bought LifeSize in 2009 and has steadily been improving its position in the market, rolling out apps for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL)’s iPhone and iPad as it looked to expand its mobile footprint.

But the surge in tablet sales in the fourth quarter hit Logitech hard, cutting into its traditionally strong market for mice and webcams.

“The euro has weakened considerably during the last three months,” said chairman and interim chief executive Guerrino DeLuca. “In addition, webcams and remotes continue to be impacted more than expected by product portfolio and market weakness.”

The downward revision for the year was the third for the company in recent months, and it prompted its biggest share price tumble in nine months, about 14 percent. Most recently, Logitech in September said it expected earnings of $90 million on sales of $2.4 billion for the year.

“The biggest disappointment is the guidance revision,” Michael Foeth, an analyst at Vontobel Holding AG, said in a note today. “With that we fear confidence in management is eroding further.”

Last quarter, DeLuca crowed about the company’s solid performance, saying: “People are happy to see we’re back on track. We’re showing that we can do what we said we would do, and we’ve somewhat re-established confidence in the company.” 

Logitech stock has fallen 64 percent in the past 12 months.

For more:
– see this Bloomberg article

Special Report: Enterprise Communications earnings in the fourth quarter 2011

Related articles:
Videoconferencing firm LifeSize names Buechler CEO
Logitech rolls out webcam for 1080p video calling
Logitech shares surge on Q2 earnings
Logitech announces LifeSize ClearSea video conferencing will support iOS 5, iPhone 4S
LifeSize brings its videoconferencing technology to the cloud

Dear Partners,
Speedflow Communications, a developer of high quality VoIP Softswitch solutions, is pleased to announce a new release of the CallMax, proprietary Linux-based Class 5 Softswitch. Our team of developers worked hard to extend Softswitch functionality and optimize its work.

Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM), coming off strong earnings for the fourth quarter, is reshuffling its executive ranks, adding five North America based sales execs to help it push its video collaboration solutions to an increasingly competitive– and crowded– market.

Four of the five will be designated area vice presidents, including Greg Prindle, AVP of the Enterprise East region; Peter Elmgren, AVP of Enterprise West; Joe Vranicar, AVP of Enterprise Central; and Dean Ash, AVP of Enterprise South. They’ll work to develop go-to-market plans and work with Polycom’s alliance, service provider, and VAR partners, focusing on growing Polycom’s enterprise presence.

The fifth exec, Ashan Willy, was named VP of Worldwide Systems Engineering. Willy will lead the System Engineering team globally and will report to Tracey Newell, Polycom’s executive vice president of Global Sales.

“With today’s appointments, we are refining the alignment of our organization, expertise, and sales motion around the needs of enterprises, to capture more opportunities and drive the network effect of video through traditional on-premises delivery, as well as new delivery platforms such as mobile and social,” said Newell.

Prindle comes to Polycom from Cisco (Nasdaq: CSCO), where he headed the TRI-State Commercial Operation. He joined Cisco as an account manager in 1998.

Elmgren joined Polycom late in 2011 after spending the previous five years with Intel, where he held several executive sales and general management positions, most recently as the managing director of worldwide sales and operations within Intel’s Software and Services Group. He’s also been at AT&T (NYSE: T), Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya.

Vranicar last was at Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) , where he was director of Sales for HP Networking in the central region. He’s also been at Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR) and EMC, along with seven years at Cisco.

Ash also is a Cisco alum, and he also has been at Amdahl and IBM. Ash most recently was director of Sales in Cisco’s Service Provider segment.

Willy was vice president of Systems Engineering for the worldwide commercial business at Juniper, where he was responsible for building the commercial market for Juniper worldwide, including go-to-market enterprise strategies. Prior to Juniper, he was at Cisco, Bell Sygma and ACC.

For more:
– see this release

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Polycom teams with Lenovo to extend RealPresence video collaboration
Polycom rolls out wholesale, carrier-ready video-as-a-service
Polycom integrates RealPresence into IBM’s Sametime, Connections
Polycom takes another step to drive video-conferencing interoperability
Polycom acquires ViVu, looks to expand into broader video-conferencing market