Greg Galitzine's VoIP Authority Blog

Inter-Tel Stock Hits 52-Week High on New Offer

May 16, 2007

Inter-Tel Inc. shareholders enjoyed watching their stock rise to a 52-week high today, closing up $1.34 at $26.90. According to published reports, Inter-tel said it had received a letter from Vector Capital Corp. expressing an interest in buying the company in a cash offer of $26.50 per share, which puts the value of the offer at about $715.8 million. As was reported earlier by TMCnet, Inter-Tel already has an agreement with Mitel Networks Corp. and Arsenal Acquisition Corp., which agreed to buy it for $25.60 per share in cash. The current reported offer represents a premium of approximately $23 million over the Mitel-led bid. Today, Inter-Tel said its special committee had determined that Vector Capital's bid was reasonably likely to lead to a superior proposal, and that they have notified Mitel of the committee’s decision to engage in talks with Vector Capital.
Rich Tehrani offers his take on the news here.

Nortel's Thomas Speaks to Communication Developers

May 16, 2007

A last-minute replacement for Vish Nandall, Nortel’s Michael Thomas delivered a keynote presentation titled Wireless Service Providers (WiSPs) and Application Service Providers (ASPs) Partnering for Mobile Internet Applications. Thomas asked the audience, “Why should ASPs partner with Wireless ISPs (WiSPs)?” Developers have been faced with a series of challenges when it comes to creating applications for the wireless space. For one thing, wireless networks traditionally featured lower bandwidth relative to fixed Internet. As bandwidth increases, there is an opportunity to create applications to run over wireless broadband networks. Thomas discussed other historical impediments, including:

Unfriendly handset ergonomics;
Difficulty in obtaining and viewing content
A lack of mobile content development guidelines, which hinders usability and deters content development

On the positive side, groups such as the W3C are making moves, addressing the mobile device and development space by providing a series of best practices and mobile device descriptions. A fragmented market limits the market scope for developers, by giving them less to shoot at, and as such, reduces the developer’s incentive to create applications. The increasing amount of broadband is a mitigating factor. Thomas also mentioned that he believes that the walled gardens are crumbling as carriers like Sprint announce more openness. So, there is a huge demand being forecast for enterprise mobile applications coupled with communications. But Thomas warned that best effort VoIP is not good enough for mobile customers, and only a WiSP can deliver consistently “quality” of voice. Some of the other trends that are creating opportunities for developers are

Increased desire for personalization of user services;
Gen “Y” social networking, and Multiplayer Multimedia Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) are all looking to take advantage of the latest innovations;
Seamless service across all devices with content/application adaptation per device/place/time/role, etc…

Thomas reiterated, “Broadband decouples applications from access, and broadband enables the opportunity to create newer richer multimedia applications.” The last trend Thomas touched on was IMS. “This is a whole new opportunity to develop applications,” he said. In the end, WiSPs need ASPs to create innovative applications and in order to compete.

Tagged: ASP, Communications Developer Conference, Nortel : Related Tags: content development, opportunity create, mobile device, creating applications, create applications, applications

Aculab's Colville Addresses Developer Community

May 16, 2007

Ian Colville is product manager at Aculab with responsibility for the company’s SS7 and GroomerII solutions. His key role includes support for the company’s global sales force. Colville addressed the audience on Day 2 of the Communications Developer Conference, with a presentation entitled, Communication Breakdown, the key theme of which was the breakdown of the old order of the communications industry. Accordingly, Colville kicked off his presentation with a clip of the classic Led Zeppelin song of the same title, and promised that he would pepper his presentation with Led Zeppelin references throughout. Addressing the assertion that the network of tomorrow will be a stupid network, Colville had his own take. He agrees that lower-level infrastructure is indeed better off dumb, but he maintained that there still needs to be some intelligence in the network. To support that, Colville spoke about the growing trend where services are increasingly being provided from within the cloud, including desktop business/productivity apps.

Skype Announces Game Developer Program at Communications Developer Show

May 16, 2007

Paul Amery, director of the Skype Developer Program delivered a keynote at today’s Communications Developer Conference, and he used this platform, and this venue to officially announced Skype’s new Game Developer Program and the introduction of a brand-new Skype Game Channel. The Skype Game Developer Program is designed to give third-party game developers access to the nearly 200 million registered Skype users through the just-announced Skype Game Channel. The Game Channel is located within the Skype Extras Manager, which provides a quick and easy way for developers to promote their software to users. EasyBits Software is the creator and operator of the Skype Game Channel, and they will work closely with the Skype Game Developer program team to ensure the best possible user experience and the efficient delivery of games to consumers. Last month, Skype announced that there have been more than 18 million downloads of Skype Extras since the Extras Manager in Skype 3.0 for Windows was launched in late December 2006. Of that number, users have downloaded approximately five million games. Amery went into greater depth about the developer program in a recent interview. Addressing the assembled audience at the Communications Developer Conference, Amery told the crowd, “Skype users are doing more than just placing voice calls, and we are constantly looking for new ways to enhance their overall Internet communications experience.” Amery continued, “The tremendous size of Skype’s user-base makes it an ideal environment for multi-player and community-based games in which people can play against or collaborate with one another.”

Keynote Room Filling Up

May 16, 2007

Avaya's Byrd Speaks to Developers

May 16, 2007

Avaya’s Lawrence Byrd, a frequent speaker at TMC events, has a new title. He is Director of Communications Enabled Business Processes at Avaya, and he is helping drive the definition and communication of Avaya’s solution strategy. A co-founder of Quintus Corporation, which was acquired by Avaya in 2001 Lawrence has over twelve years of telephony, CRM and contact center experience and over twenty-five years of advanced software and Internet experience. Byrd recalled a previous talk he made to developers where he suggested two ways to fame and fortune.

Tagged: Avaya, developers, SIP, TMC : Related Tags: business processes, contact center, communications enabled, enabled business, people fortunate, business

AudioCodes' Ben-Levi Speaks to Developers

May 16, 2007

Day 1 of Communications Developer concluded with keynotes from two industry heavyweights, AudioCodes and Avaya. Sharone Ben-Levi spoke first. Ben-Levi is vice president of marketing enterprise, enhanced services at AudioCodes Inc. He is responsible for setting strategic direction and marketing execution for enabling technology solutions. He began his speech by saying he thinks that the attendees at the event were here because they want to win, and they want to win by developing the best solutions in the market. Ben-Levi titled his speech Survival Of The Fittest, and he delved into his discussion about application architectures for the future of IP-based application development. Developers today must adapt to the maxim, ‘Adapt or Perish’ and that those who know how to design for change will win the game in the long run. Ben-Levi pointed out the development opportunities that are driven by the industry-wide adoption of IP, citing three key factors:

IP drives acceleration of app development;
IP opens the door for new creative solutions to meet customer need; and
IP allows renewed differentiation by offering new and specific capabilities to target markets.

Legacy architecture is lousy with proprietary elements and APIs, Ben-Levi explained, and added that “Even with the move to SIP, the proprietary architecture is still closed, and that means limitations.” He listed a number of limitations, including:

The slow pace of change;
Every change you make to OS, you’re still beholden to your hardware manufacturer
Multisite = multiple systems;
Scalability means adding systems;
Updating and maintenance often means forklift changes or the need to deploy an engineer onsite.

He told the assembled developers, “It’s time to break free from the limitations.” Ben-Levi spoke of the future as being characterized by a distributed architecture of IP software-based applications in standard servers controlling hardware through SIP. And, he outlined the benefits to the developers:

Speeds development time – easier to develop when using standards no need to reinvent the wheel;
Improvement to the application are less tightly coupled to the hardware;
Can change the server if the new features demand it;
Choose servers based on performance, not ports.

Ben-Levi’s speech resonated with the audience, as evidenced by the fact that a number of questions were asked of the keynoter before he could leave the stage.

Communications Developer Update: Day 1

May 15, 2007

Survey Results Are In

May 14, 2007

Avaya Developer Day Kicks Off

May 14, 2007

This afternoon, Avaya’s vice president of developer relations and technology alliances, Eric Rossman welcomed a packed room to Avaya Developer day at this year’s Communications Developer Conference. Rossman previewed a packed agenda that included a keynote presentation from renowned author and analyst Nick Lippis, and laid out the roadmap for the rest of the day’s sessions including an overview of the Avaya DevConnect Program as well as platform specific observations on the following topics:

Avaya APIs and Web Services
Avaya & Ubiquity – SIP Development Opportunities
Developing Speech Enabled Self Service Applications
Developing IP Phone Applications

Rossman finished his introduction and left the developer with this thought: “Real estate in San Jose and Basking Ridge is expensive. But ask yourselves this: “How expensive is the real estate on the CIO or CEOs desk?” That’s the development opportunity. With that Rossman introduced Nick Lippis, who launched into his presentation titled “Communications Enabled Business Processes — A Status Report” “The Communications space couldn’t be any more exciting than it is right now,” he began. Lippis laid out his agenda, which included new opportunities for developers and his key theme, Communications Enabled Business Opportunities or CEBP for short. The three main takeaways of his speech were:

The maturing of IP telephony;
Current application integration difficulties; and
The new world of Unified Communications (UC) and CEBP

We’re in the midst of a transition from TDM to IP telephony,” Lippis said. He cited three distinct phases of IP telephony and he believes we find ourselves in the latter stages of Phase 2. Phase 1: Experimentation Lippis referred the audience back to the 1995-96 timeframe and noted the strategic acquisitions by Cisco and others of early VoIP visionaries. This early phase was characterized by using VoIP for transport; proprietary signaling; and a very small scale product/solution set. Phase 2: Replacement phase: Lippis believes this is where we as an industry find ourselves today, in a market displaying the following characteristics:

Performance
Reliability
Availability
Security
Mobility
Linux Based,
Open Protocols (SIP)

He said that economics are starting to play a major role here as well, as customers are focused on things like acquisition cost, lower TCO (total cost of ownership) and other such questions.
Phase 3: And lastly, Lippis believe we are headed towards a ‘Strategic Value’ phase, where communications will increasingly be linked into a company’s business processes.

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