I think this news got missed somehow (that'll teach me to go on vacation): Siemens AG has sold a majority share of its long-troubled enterprise telecom group to private equity firm The Gores Group LLC. Gores bought 51 percent of the business, and its partners say they'll invest 350 million euros in the joint venture — not including R&D or normal business expenses. Siemens has been trying to sell its enterprise telecom business for years without success. Gores already controls telecom company Enterasys Networks Inc. (once known as Cabletron) and call-center company SER Solutions Inc. (founded as EIS International). Get the low-down on the deal here.

Acme Down, XO Up

True to its recently issued warning, SBC player Acme Packet announced low earnings this week, posting $25.7 million in revenues — down $1.3 million from the same quarter last year. Net income was $800,000, down from $5.7 million. Still, Acme's strong first quarter means that its year-to-date revenues are still 10 percent ahead of 2007's. Acme is cutting its full-year revenue target by 20 percent, and is expanding a stock buy-back program. Check out this FierceVoIP story to learn more about Acme's financial woes.

Secure VoIP Gains

As more people get concerned about security and VoIP, more vendors are responding. Foundry Networks Inc. said its latest routers and switches have passed the U.S. Department of Defense JITC (Joint Interoperability Test Command) ASVALAN (Assured Services Voice Application Local Area Networking) interoperability testing. And General Dynamics C4 Systems got the go-ahead from the NSA (National Security Agency) for its vIPer VoIP endpoint. Learn more about recent VoIP-security developments here.

GIPS for the iPhone

No, we apparently can't go a week without talking about the iPhone; thanks for asking. It turns out that GIPS (Global IP Solutions) — the folks that make sound-enhancing software that's embedded in pretty much every VoIP device — has released an SDK (software development kit) for the iPhone. That will make the development of VoIP software (and the embedding of VoIP functionality) vastly easier for iPhone app developers. Maybe now we'll see the long-expected shower of iPhone VoIP. Read more about it here.

Will PhoneFusion Supplant GrandCentral?

After Google scooped up one-number-reaches-all service GrandCentral Communications, product enhancements seemed to stop. Although there may be a ton of stuff happening behind the curtain, it's been a long while since there's been any visible motion from GrandCentral. But nothing stays still forever in this business, and the player PhoneFusion Inc. is starting to get some attention. It provides the same basic service as GrandCentral but is far more flexible and configurable. It also costs actual money — which is a drag for users but means that someone is trying to make an actual business out of this. Read this WebWorkerDaily post for more details.