ClearOne (News - Alert) Communications—a company that specializes in conference phones, conferencing systems, and related products for audio, video, and Web applications—recently received multiple industry kudos for its products and market achievements. This winter the company was bestowed awards by INTERNET TELEPHONY Magazine and Frost & Sullivan.

Polycom (News - Alert), a company the manufacturers conference phones and other collaborative communications solutions, recently announced availability of its new real-time media conferencing platform, Polycom RMX 2000. The platform is designed to simplify delivery and management multipoint video and unified conferencing, both within enterprises and through service provider IP networks.

Market research firm and consultancy Gartner Group recently published its “Framework for Unified Communications” research note, detailing a framework for the broad set of technologies that make up unified communications (UC) as well as providing guidance for companies looking to invest in UC products and applications. Gartner defined UC as products (equipment, software, services) as “those that enhance individual, workgroup and organizational productivity by enabling and facilitating the control, management, integration and use of multiple enterprise communication methods.”

Conference phones manufacturer ClearOne (News - Alert) has been in the news several times in the past few weeks. The company announced April 16 that its Chat 150 line of speaker phone peripherals is now available for use with Cisco enterprise telephones. Only a couple weeks later, on April 30, ClearOne landed a Communications Solutions 2006 Product of the Year Award from Technology Marketing Corporation.

Conference phones manufacturer ClearOne (News - Alert) has been riding quite a wave of success recently. In March, the company received an Excellence Award from INTERNET TELEPHONY Magazine, and a CEO of the Year Award from Frost & Sullivan. Earlier this month, ClearOne announced expansion of its Chat 150 conference phone peripherals to include Cisco phone integration—and promptly won a Communications Solutions 2006 Product of the Year Award from TMC for that product line.

Conference phones manufacturer Konftel recently announced that it received a Product Differentiation Innovation Award from Frost & Sullivan. The company was recognized for its achievement in creating an innovative product (the Konftel 50 conference unit) that differ from competitors in terms of functionality

ClearOne has announced that its MAX IP and MAXAttach IP series of SIP-based VoIP conference phones are now interoperable with Cisco's SIP-based CallManager 5 IP telephony platform, as well as Nortel's (News - Alert) MCS 5100 multimedia communication server. ClearOne recently released a major firmware upgrade for its MAX IP products, which enabled these SIP interoperability milestones.

Conference phones manufacturer Polycom recently announced upcoming availability of four new high-definition phones for use with Microsoft (News - Alert) Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007. The company, a Gold Level member of Microsoft’s partner program, is developing the products as a way to expand its support for OCS. Polycom’s (News - Alert) product family now includes CX100 (a portable speakerphone peripheral), CX200 (speakerphone and handset), CX400 (cordless desktop handset) and CX700 (executive IP telephone).

Polycom (News - Alert), a manufacturer of conference phones, announced Tuesday a new product family, SoundStructure, consisting of what it claims are the industry’s first installed audio solutions for voice and video conferencing that deliver truly immersive sound quality. The new solutions utilize Polycom’s audio technology to deliver scalable, flexible and comprehensive systems with state-of-the-art performance and audio processing capabilities. Voice quality is a major focus with this new product family.

LifeSize, a manufacturer of conference phones and videoconferencing solutions, announced Thursday that its technology was chosen by the ISIME center at University of Denver to facilitate a peace summit between Israeli and Iraqi students. The summit was conducted at the University of Denver’s campus August 9, in partnership with RJ Macklin Associates. The audio and video conferencing technology used to enable conversations between the students was manufactured by LifeSize and Codian (News - Alert), another provider of high-def video communication equipment.