Greg Galitzine : Greg Galitzine's VoIP Authority Blog
Greg Galitzine

WSJ: 3Com to Announce Sale to Huawei, Bain Capital

September 28, 2007

Digium Nabs Switchvox

September 27, 2007

Tom Keating reports on Digium’s acquisition of Switchvox and highlights Mark Spencer’s comments that Digium plans to take some of the proprietary SwitchVox code and offer it back out to the community.   I was on the call with Tom when Spencer and Bill Miller shared the news. I see this news as underscoring Digium’s stated mission to make Asterisk easy to use and expand the company’s reach to new customers across the globe through a growing channel.   SwitchVox brings to Digium over 1,400 existing customers. These customers absolutely love the Switchvox GUI and the ability it gives them to manage their own phone systems. Switchvox, which was founded in 2003, offers a rich feature set for the SMB market or for enterprises with distributed offices.   Said Miller, “Open source is taking over the SMB world.”   Certainly with this announcement, Digium is doing their part to bring simple, functional open source telephony solutions to that market.   Financial terms were not disclosed.    

Managed Services Survey Results

September 25, 2007

Former Jasomi CEO to Lead Ditech

September 25, 2007

Is Facebook Worth $10 Billion?

September 24, 2007

For anyone who has ever been “super poked” or had a sheep thrown at them, or wished they didn’t write on their ex-boyfriend’s wall while in the midst of a Chablis induced bad night, odds are you never wondered what Facebook is really worth.   I mean everything has a value, but sheep-throwing super pokers might not ascribe a value of $10 billion to the platform that allows them to stay in touch with their online friends.   Now if you’re Microsoft or Google, you pay more attention to thee financial matters, and virtual hugs and drinks and yes – flying poultry – might actually add up to a two-digit number followed by nine zeros.   Rich Tehrani sent me a link to the latest Wall Street Journal article discussing the potential of Microsoft buying a stake in Facebook. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is possibly mulling an investment (reportedly up to 5%) in Facebook. What’s 5% worth? According to the article, it might be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $300–$500 million.   Just to make things interesting Google too has reportedly expressed an interest in the social networking site.   Alas, it’s too soon to tell which potential suitor’s wall Mark Zuckerberg will post a message on.   To quote the Journal article:   The people familiar with the matter said that the discussions are still preliminary and Facebook could wind up not taking an investment from either Microsoft or Google.   Last year I wrote about Yahoo’s interest in purchasing Facebook for a cool billion.   If only the real estate market appreciated as much as the potential valuation of Facebook did this year.   Watch this space…    

ITEXPO Recap Part 1

September 14, 2007

I’m back in the office today after a long week prepping for and subsequently attending Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO and Green Technology World Conference.   The advance team hit the ground running last Saturday, and it seems we didn’t stop ‘til we got back to JFK Thursday afternoon, and even then a quick scan of the accumulated e-mail showed there was more to do. As concerns e-mail, there’s ALWAYS more to do.   My overall impressions of the event (I’m sorry I don’t do impressions… ) are as follows:   Exhibit Hall: The exhibit hall was abuzz from beginning to end. There was a constant flow of attendees, and my informal polling of exhibitors showed that they were happy  with the number as well as the quality of leads they were receiving.   Anecdotal evidence suggests the hall was full of service provider attendees, but I heard exhibitors talking up the end user community as well as resellers who were in attendance. As expected, there was a bit of something for everyone who attended and for those who came to showcase their wares.   Conferences: The quality of the sessions was high.

The Greening of the Datacenter

September 12, 2007

I moderated a panel yesterday afternoon called “The Greening of the Data Center,” at the Green Technology World Conference. The panelists were all excellent, with a thorough knowledge of the challenges and opportunities facing data center administrators as well as the market conditions in general.   The speakers were Jim Smith, vice president of engineering at Digital Realty Trust, Bill Ryan, product marketing manager, high-end and service provider systems business unit at Foundry Networks, Bob Wooley, director of technical quality management at Lee Technologies, an APC partner, and Lawrence Vertal, senior strategist at AMD.   The conversation ranged from what administrators and managers of data centers need to know in order to be more efficient to government regulation to the hottest products to the future of the industry.   In the end the panel agreed that the trend towards greening the datacenter is unstoppable. The financial benefits are too compelling to be ignored and the benefits to the environment are huge.   TMC has taken up a leadership role online and launched a Web site dedicated to covering next-generation, environmentally friendly technology in telecom and beyond. Bookmark Green Technology World and keep an eye out for much more on the subject of the trend towards green technology.

ABP at ITEXPO

September 12, 2007

ABP Technologies is a distributor of IP Communications products and services. I stopped by the ABP booth at ITEXPO to speak with Robert Messer, president of the company, about the products and companies that were on display on the exhibit hall floor in Los Angeles this week.   Messer was very excited by the recent addition of the Mobotix SIP-based surveillance camera to the ABP stable. He described the IP endpoint as having “state-of-the-art monitoring software that interfaces with the new Asterisk-based appliance from Digium. The camera has audio capabilities, and can pick up audio signals, and can even use event-based triggers to start recording.

The Future is Video

September 12, 2007

I attended the session entitled Future Trends at ITEXPO. Seeing as it was the dreaded “early session” I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of audience numbers, but I was happy to find a session room with lotsof eager attendees filling the room. The session was moderated by Matt Clark of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services and featured Richard Birckbichler of Solacom, Aron Rosenberg of SightSpeed, and Jim McLoughlin of Worldgate, makers of the Ojo video phone.   The general feeling among all the panelists was that video was the key application that will dominate the future landscape of communications.   Before jumping in to talk about video, Solacom’s Birckbichler spoke at length about the evolution of the communications lifestyle and his belief in the future of voice over instant messenger (VoIM).   “Voice over IM should be considered a major element going forward,” he said.   He noted that there are up to 11 million VoIP users and somewhere from 850 million to 1 billion IM users today.

Trends in Dual Mode

September 11, 2007

I moderated the session entitled Trends in Dual Mode, but for all the preparation, I can only lay claim to managing the time. The speakers were all so well prepared and so thoroughly professional; I had only to help field and direct questions from the audience.   The speakers were Alan Johnson, vice president of business development at HelloSoft; Shahadat Khan, CTO of Eyeball Networks; and Peter Thornycroft, VoWLAN Product Director, at Aruba Networks.   Alan Johnson began by listing his David Letterman-style Top 5 list of trends in dual mode.   Number 5: “Retiring the Holster” — this trend is all about the shrinking of the handset and the changing ergonomics of handheld devices. Number 4: FMC Deployment — major operators are increasingly offering dual mode services. Handset choices have increased, just look to new offerings from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG, HTC, and others. There’s a long list of major trials completed. Number 4B: Enterprise is the first deployment arena.
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