Over the last couple of months we have indirectly covered many different facets of Grandstream’s solutions that make them ideal for service providers. Our large portfolio of award-winning IP phones offer the ideal model and price point for every type of user. We have also highlighted the many ways our solutions can be integrated with each other to allow them all to add more value and functionality at no extra cost. For this blog post, we are going to dig a little deeper into the many features, programs and initiatives that Grandstream offers that allow us to partner with service providers across the world and empower them to succeed.

This year Grandstream is celebrating our 15^th anniversary. In 2002 our founders set out to build what ended up being some of the first SIP devices anywhere in the world. They were looking to take advantage of what was at the time a new technology fad known as “Voice over internet protocol.” In 2003, the first official Grandstream products hit the market: the BT100, a simple IP phone, and the HT286, a 1-line Analog Telephone Adapter.

This article was originally published in Comms Business Magazine - the UK's leading magazine for the ICT channel. Click here to view the article on their website.

Every business is always looking for ways to make their company more productive while increasing their bottom line. Most of the changes a business will consider usually come down to increasing resources at the expense of increased costs, or decreasing costs at the expense of lowering resources. There is one, easy and often overlooked change that a business can make to increase resources, productivity and bottom-line revenue while actually lowering costs. Changing your communications platform to a modern, digital communications platform is that change.

We have been talking about integration on our blog quite a bit recently. It has become one of the most popular buzzwords in communications as open-source technology continues its takeover of the industry. Integration is not just something that manufacturers should be talking about but something that end-users should pay close attention to when designing, deploying or expanding their solutions.

Since their launch in June of 2013, the UCM series has become one of the most popular on-premise IP PBXs in the world. It offers small to medium sized businesses an almost unprecedented unified communications manager (hence the UCM acronym) that gives them access to enterprise-grade voice, video, data and mobility features in an easy-to-setup, easy-to-manage fashion with no licensing or recurring fees.

Like any technology, WiFI has its own share of security concerns. The nature of wireless networks allows hackers or anyone with malicious intent to locate themselves close to an access point in order to infiltrate a network. According to Kasperksy, approximately 24.7% of Wi-Fi hotspots in the world do not use any encryption at all, and that does not even include the WiFi networks that are under-secured. More than 80 percent of U.S. companies have been successfully hacked, according to a Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey. Additionally, a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers in early 2017 found that there has been a 38% increase in the instances of phishing scams and other cyber security incidents from 2015 to 2016.

Back in 2002 when Grandstream was founded, we were one of the first companies in the world to manufacture SIP products – and one of the very first products we made were analog telephone adapters (ATAs). We now have over 15 years of expertise building SIP devices, and we have more experience building VoIP gateways and ATAs than almost any one in the world. Thanks to close relationships with service providers and partners, all of our ATAs and Gateways are not only thoroughly tested within Grandstream, but they are stringently tested with the help from some of the largest service providers in the world. Our devices provide a variety of high-end features and functionalities that allow analog phones not only to be integrated with VoIP networks, but provide VoIP functions for analog devices as well. Let’s take a look at some of the features and functionalities of Grandstream’s gateways and ATAs that you may have missed.

Integration has become a popular buzzword within a lot of industries, especially technology. Webster’s dictionary defines the term “integrate” as “to combine one thing with another so that they become a whole,” but I think there is a better definition when it comes to technology. Integration is “to combine one thing with another so that they each become better.” The real benefit of technology integration is giving each piece the ability to do something it could not do before thanks to its ability to work with other products, services, apps, and more. Within the SIP and UC world, we are well-versed in integration. However, while we are often looking for ways to integrate our SIP communication products together, the market has overlooked the fact that SIP communication can be leveraged to offer powerful security and facility access tools. One simple product, a SIP Video Door Station like our GDS3710, allows you to easily accomplish this.

Note: Though this blog post was originally written about the GWN7610, everything in this post applies to all GWN series WiFi Access Points

You may have noticed that much of the discussion around our new GWN7610 WiFi Access Point has been about the way it is installed and managed. One of the biggest innovations is the incredibly quick, easy and intuitive setup and management process we have designed. Where most other AP manufacturers require you to purchase or use a separate piece of equipment or software (known as a “controller”) to setup and manage access points, the GWN7610 includes its own provisioning master built-in to the product’s web-user interface. This controller-less, centralized management is the future of WiFi access point technology and Grandstream is one of the very first manufacturers on the market to design APs this way.

A few weeks ago we announced a major expansion for Grandstream – our entrance into the networking solutions marketplace. Over the coming months we will begin to build out and expand our networking solutions portfolio with a variety of low-end, mid-range and high-end WiFi APs and routers. Our entry into networking market is a major step for Grandstream’s efforts in continuing to offer complete business communication solutions.