The lowdown on enterprise telephony is more of a low-up, with pure IP PBX systems sales growth of 3 percent in the first quarter of 2007, up 76 percent from last quarter, according to Infonetics Research. In the meantime, traditional TDM PBX system sales feebly lifted its head, after five quarters running of losses, showing a flash of life in a declining picture, marked by a sorry medical chart at the foot of its bed — negative 45 percent over the last five years.

You can see which way the wind is blowing, but where exactly is the take-off for IP PBX? The launch of Microsoft’s unified communications product — Office Communicator 2007 — a spate of vendor consolidation with Inter-Tel and Mitel and Avaya as the players, and ShoreTel’s imminent IPO are the focus of current interest in the industry’s upswing.

I asked Infonetics Research Analyst Mathias Machowinski to expand on the report’s findings.

Voxilla.com: Why aren’t buyers abandoning their PBX’s for a pure unified system?

Machowinski: Just inertia. Change takes time. I think if companies will adopt OCS, they’ll keep their PBX system in place and layer OCS on top of that. It’s not like they are perfect matches for each other’s features. If a company needs some of the nice features OCS offers like presence, messaging, collaboration tools, then they’ll go there.

Voxilla.com: What kind of impact will vendor consolidation and the Avaya acquisition have?

Machowinski: Well, first with consolidation, like with Mitel and Inter-Tel, there will be fewer competitors in a very crowded market. Then, the acquisition of a public company like Avaya by a couple of private equity firms changes the landscape. Too much cutthroat competition isn’t good, because the market is at the end of the competition picture where having so many companies isn’t good for the customers and isn’t too great for the companies either. In this crowded a field, mergers like this will produce stronger more efficient companies. We’re far far from the point where you have to worry about companies becoming monopolistic behemoths.

Voxilla.com: What does ShoreTel’s IPO mean in terms of IP PBX sales?

Machowinski: This is the reverse dynamic, where ShoreTel, a private company, will be going public. Being private in its early days let Shoretel focus on developing its product without a lot of interference, and develop a strong product which was good for them. But now they’re ready to go public. The access to capital will let them expand more. So far, they’ve focused on the North American market, but this move will let them grow their distribution overseas.

Voxilla.com: In the mass of information your report gives, what most interests or surprises you?

Machowinski: That the TDM market grew at all. And that the IP phone market is growing so slowly, especially on the softphone side. I expected that to sell more strongly, especially because manufacturers can sell additional phones, almost double, for every desk phone. Not all employees need that softphone, but still many could use it. That’s where I expected more action.

Highlights from Infonetics PBX Report:

• Overall enterprise telephony revenue is on track for another year of double-digit growth.
• In 1Q07, worldwide total PBX/KTS system sales inched up 1% sequentially, and are up 8% from a year ago in 1Q06.
• The overall market will total $11.9 billion in 2010.
• Hybrid PBX systems represent 63% of all PBX/KTS system line shipments worldwide in 1Q07, and will increase to 72% by 2010.
• The enterprise telephony market was flat in North America in 1Q07, weak in Europe, and strong in Asia Pacific.
• Avaya is the market share leader for worldwide IP PBX revenue in 1Q07, followed closely by Cisco and Siemens.
• Cisco maintains a strong lead in IP deskphone and IP softphone sales, accounting for almost half the units shipped worldwide in 1Q07.

Find more data and a .jpg chart at the Infonetics Research press portal in the Enterprise Voice & Data section at http://www.info.infonetics.com.

Unified communications just got more interesting today. Mill Valley, CA-based CommuniGate today launched the Pronto! client interface, based on Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex 2. Targeting both businesses and service providers, Pronto! unifies all Internet communications — from e-mail and IM, to chat, rich media, and groupware — in a single client interface. Later today I’m going to get a demo. More to follow.

VoIP pioneer Packet8 is also getting on the unified communications train, integrating Microsoft Outlook into its Virtual Office hosted PBX.

Shoretel is making it easier for customers to buy with its no-down, 100 percent financing Managed Services Program. Costs stay fixed for 10 years.

No download, no software, no computer. That’s the promise of Rebtel’s new mobile phone VoIP calling service. Try the beta here.

And speaking of mobile VoIP, Mark Ismach recently filed a patent for a method of allowing any mobile phone to place VOIP calls directly. Back in the 1990s, Ismach registered the trademark BIOS (basic input/output system). At the time, manufacturer Phoenix Technologies’ BIOS systems were used in just about every computer made and Phoenix was forced to remove the word “BIOS” from its products. The effect of Ismach’s latest move could be chilling for the mobile VoIP market.

From the lemonade-from-lemons department: Milford, CT telecom equipment company AbleComm has been sitting on a warehouse full of old rotary phones for the past 30 years. Now retro is in and the company is doing a land office business in “New Old Stock” phones, refurbished phones, and reproductions of Western Electric phones from the 1930s through the 1960s. I’m getting a red rotary dial model for my kitchen — the same one my in-laws got in 1955.

Samsung is making a push into the U.S. enterprise networking market with its Ubigate iBG 2016 and iBG 3026 converged networking platforms. Introduced in Europe and Asia last year, the alone-in-one devices are aimed at small and mid-size companies and branch offices of large ones. The Ubigate looks like a competitor to the Cisco 1800 series.

Nokia debuted the Intellisync Call Connect for Cisco, a dual-mode device designed for the reality that most of us aren’t at our desks 40 percent of the time.

If you want to start watching Internet video on your living room TV, Earthlink’s Dinos Lambropoulos a good overview of the subject. One warning: it’s not for the tech-faint of heart.

SMBs give Packet8’s Virtual Office hosted PBX #1 rating, according to telecom research firm AMI Partners. More.

Does Microsoft’s partner-friendly unified communications mean the leopard has changed his spots? Not so says TelecomTV’s Andrew Beutmueller. Here.

We’ve been hearing about broadband over powerline. How about power over broadband? Power over Ethernet would solve the problem of finding enough outlets for all those Internet-connected gizmos. Here.

When Gaboogie founders Dan Gibbons and Erik Lagerway pinged me a while back about their new conference call service, my first question was, “Why?” Googling “conference call service” returned 98,900,000 hits. Does the world really need another conference call service?

Turns out that it does.

Conference calling is a $2 billion business in North America alone. But it’s not perceived to be a sexy space, acknowledges Gibbons. “It’s an industry dominated by large old school telecom providers. Attending and booking conference calls is a painfully archaic process. A lot of people have focused on Web conferencing rather than audio conferencing. WebEx has a conference call component, but hasn’t focused on audio.”

Which is why Gaboogie, which launched this week, aims to bring some next generation smarts to conference calls.

“One of the most frustrating things is dialing into a conference bridge with a password,” Gibbons says. “Thirty percent of conference calls include someone calling from cell phones. They don’t have access to the dial-in number or the password. So you end up waiting 10 or 15 minutes for the call to begin.”

Gaboogie starts with a beautifully simple “why didn’t I think of that” solution to this problem: the service calls you. No password is needed because if you’re not supposed to be there, you don’t get called.

Participants simply press ‘1′ to join, ‘2′ to decline, and ‘3′ for ‘later.’ The service makes the adjustments for time zones, too. And if you get disconnected, the number is on your caller ID to redial.

Gaboogie’s Web deployment opens up a boatload of new possibilities for conference calling. And there’s no client to download, keeping it simple for everyone.

Calls are setup through the website and it’s easy to check the schedule online. Moderators have a dashboard to monitor calls in progress. You can set participation in a call to “lecture” which lets you simply listen. Calls can be recorded and shared as RSS feeds or MP3 files, all with a single click. Attendees can be added on the fly by simply dragging them from the phonebook.

As valuable as Gaboogie’s service is, Gibbons and Lagerway aren’t stopping there. A software developers’ kit is in the works to help other applications incorporate conference calling. “It’s a really important piece of the puzzle,” says Gibbons. “Gaboogie is built to be an extensible platform and make it easy to integrate with applications like calendaring and scheduling down the road.”

And of course, Web conferencing. “There’s a huge opportunity to build a standards-based Web conferencing tool,” Gibbons says, noting that integration with a Web conferencing application like Munich-based teamslide would be a “logical next step.”

What Gaboogie is not is a free conferencing calling service, although every new account includes 100 free minutes so effectively you can try it for free. Calls are pre-paid and the company offers plans that start at $30 for 250 minutes and have toll-free dial-in. The service currently supports calling in 75 countries.

“A lot of [conference call] marketing is focused on cheap minutes,” says Gibbons. “Our focus is on people who want a better calling experience.”