Fonality's CEO Chris Lyman said in the official press release, that the infusion of funds, "...gives us the freedom to further accelerate our growth and acquisition strategy."

 

I'm curious to see how this plays out.

 

Fonality, who announced they had joined IP phone maker snom's ecosystem this week, will be presenting their trixbox Open Communication Certification Courses at the upcoming INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO at the Los Angeles Convention Center on September 16-18.

 

Interested developers and resellers can sign up for FtOCC Admin, which prepares people to sell and install trixbox, or FtOCC Technician which focuses on trixbox support and troubleshooting. Both courses are part of the Fonality trixbox Open Communication Certification (FtOCC, pronounced "F-talk") series.

 

 

On Tuesday, I had the chance to attend SpeechTek, and visit with some of the leading companies in the space.

 

Among those companies was Nortel, who previewed their forthcoming Interactive Communications Portal, which will be available later this year (expect more news in the November time frame).

 

The product will leverage Nortel's service oriented architecture (SOA) strategy, as well as the company's service creation environment in an effort to help "take VoiceXML to the next level."

 

A software-only self service solution running native SIP, ICP is designed to simplify the process of getting up and running and it will appear to the network like just another SIP device. The solution will offer support for both multimodal multimedia (with support for video) and will also support conferencing.

 

According to Nortel, six areas were important to them and to their customers when the product was designed and conceptualized:

 

According to Nortel officials, their drive is to make it easier for people to create and use applications as well as support something they call Customer Experience 2.0, whereby customers can expand on traditional methods of customer interaction to ensure that their customers in turn have an easier time getting to the information they need.

 

The solution also offers a "Melding of Web 2.0 with customer contact technology."

 

Following Nortel, we met with executives from IBM and IBM Research to discuss what they were up to in the speech space. We were treated to a bit of a history lesson going back a decade or so to when IBM was focused on dictation (ViaVoice) and serving the consumer space. Well they changed their tack and switched gears to focus on server and embedded-base opportunities with their WebSphere voice server and embedded Via Voice strategies.

 

IBM sees ample opportunities beyond the telecommunications market as evidenced by their success in the automotive market. IBM officials told us that over 10 million cars use their embedded technology, and more news is on the way regarding that market.

 

Officials admitted that telecom has been a bit tougher to break and steal market share away from other firms in the space, but that they continue to innovate and remain relevant, keeping their name in play.

 

Speech will become a natural element of each product IBM will have, but it's unknown when this will come to fruition. It is definitely a long term view.

 

Still, for IBM Research speech is rapidly growing and expanding and emerging in other areas such as Mobile Internet, Collaboration/Unified Messaging, Speech analytics, and Optimization.

 

As part of speech and IBM Research, we try to stick to IBM core values, a key part of which is to ride the continuing trend of globalization.

 

Emerging economies continue to be a major focus of IBM as well. IBM officials told us that many of these emerging economies are jumping over PCs, leapfrogging to smartphone technology, enabling access to the richest sources of information available.

 

However, many of the people in these emerging markets face hurdles relating to limited rates of literacy. Many of these people can't read and write. This has engendered the notion that the GUI Web that we all know and love is inaccessible to many of these folks.

 

At IBM Research, lab efforts are underway to address their needs and create the Spoken Web. The potential to address a market of 1.5 billion people who have low literacy levels or low ability to use GUI-based devices while mobile is certainly a meaningful opportunity.

 

Next up was Avaya, who preannounced their Voice Portal 5, which is scheduled for release in Q109. Officials told us that the upcoming release builds on what they have released over the past three years.

 

The solution will leverage Web services and is designed with Information Technology (IT) folks and line of business owners in mind.

 

It's all software and will enable these constituents to "Webify" their infrastructure and allow them to add a layer of speech and interactivity while enabling them to leverage investments and extend them out to the market to customers.

 

The forthcoming solution gives developers the ability to support SMIL and allows customers to dynamically overlay text inside any variable in XML. This allows them the ability to combine different elements to serve the customer with a rich set of tools. For example, developers can create a variety of applications, including the ability to stream content from other sources, such as news, weather, etc...

 

And of course, the solution is based on SIP.

 

Cisco is another player who made news with their customer voice portal. Video was the big addition to Cisco's offering, and, as officials told us, in self service, one size doesn't always fit all. In some cases, a speech-based interface is ok; in other cases DTMF input is acceptable, but there exists a need for video as well, to offer users true multimodal interaction capability.

 

Some of the examples cited were kiosks in specific verticals such as big box retail as well as financial (bank branches) and healthcare.

 

Cisco is also watching the developing trend of the increasing proliferation of 3G Mobile and the uptake of video enabled mobile devices in the Asia/Pacific and Gulf regions.

 

Cisco officials cited interesting use cases for video, and mentioned the benefits of presenting information visually at a glance when appropriate, and then giving way to DTMF or speech enabled input as needed.

 

We also got some scoop about an upcoming solution that Cisco plans to unveil in early September, which would allow presence enabled knowledge workers to be easily brought in to help with a customer call if the customer requires specific expertise.

 

The solution will essentially leverage a worker's presence status combined with routing rules to identify an expert and check their availability. When deployed with a traditional contact center or even in standalone fashion, this solution would enable agents to find the most qualified assistance to a particular question automatically, allowing the agent to focus on the task at hand, thus keeping the customer happier and the agent more productive.

 

For more on the companies we met with at SpeechTek, as well as an update into what went down in Huntsville, Alabama, check back later.

 

 

Fitting end (almost) to a busy week, replete with travel.

 

Monday was Boston and the Channel Partners Conference.

 

Tuesday was Manhattan and SpeechTek.

 

Wednesday was an opportunity to catch up back in the office in Norwalk, CT.

 

And today was a travel/meeting/dinner day in Huntsville, Alabama.

 

...via Nashville.

 

Let's see if my memory is up to the task this evening...

 

On Monday we met with Michael Storella, Director of U.S. Business Development for IP phone maker snom. Among the things we discussed were the company's new initiatives, including an OCS related solution, which according to Storella should help snom open up some opportunities in the large enterprise market. As he said, the initiative "...opens up conversations with Fortune 500-types, where we generally hadn't had these contacts before. They're trying us out." Storella maintains a positive outlook regarding this particular opportunity.

 

That same evening we sat down for a chat with Steven Kokinos, CEO of Thinking Phone Networks.

 

Thinking Phone is a provider of hosted PBX services, and they are huge believers in the open systems approach. As Kokinos explained, open systems provide benefits to businesses, and (leveraging those systems) Thinking Phone is able to provide rich business intelligence and management reporting tools (dashboards) to their customers.

 

Thinking Phone believes reporting is one of the key differentiators that places their solution above the competition. Their solution provides reports addressing the underlying things management wants to see -- sales and support -- and offers the ability to quantify the amount of effort being expended and how effective those interactions are.

 

In fact, Kokinos believes that his company is among only a few hosted providers that can fulfill the requirement of offering businesses high levels of visibility into their operations.

 

Visibility into business is a core element that people are looking to do a better job at; and things like activity logging, tracking, etc..., are a key focus for Thinking Phone.

 

Tomorrow, I'll catch you up on what I saw and who I spoke with at SpeechTek, as well as give you some insight into what I was doing in Huntsville.

 

 

 

It's a very entertaining concept that offers a fun look inside the contact center industry by allowing agents to share their most memorable customer interactions.

 

"Everyone hears about the consumer side of an interaction gone bad," says Joe Staples, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Interactive Intelligence and the creative brain behind the contest. "We thought it would be appropriate to turn the tables and take a look at what experiences the contact center agents have had. And after seeing some of the entries, the word outrageous is a good descriptor."

 

The contest has been promoted for some time now. In fact, in his Ask the Expert column in Customer Interaction Solutions' July issue, Tim Passios, Interactive Intelligence's Director of Solutions Marketing, offered this example of a unique and memorable agent experience:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can't wait to see the best entries!

 

But the deadline is fast approaching.

 

Visit www.OutrageousInteractions.com by August 31st to submit an entry. Or visit the site between September 8th and September 16th to read the short list of finalists and vote for your favorite.

 

My colleagues and I were treated to a wonderful tour of the NEC Executive Briefing Center, which features many of NEC's offerings that are available to enterprises today.

 

There were several new and unexpected items on the tour; these products will be announced in the coming weeks. But of course the tour showcased much of NEC's product line including their latest endpoints, a small form factor, thin-client PC, their new storage solution, and the various productivity enhancing applications that the company is well known for.

 

The tour also brought us 'round to two demonstration areas focusing on NEC solutions as applied to a pair of specific vertical markets: Hospitality and Healthcare. As expected these demo rooms were outfitted with the latest devices and applications designed to improve the experience for patients and medical staff in the case of the healthcare demo, and hotel guests and the staff that services them in the hospitality demo.

 

Regarding what's coming down the pike, all I can say right now is that NEC is partnering with a well known networking company to provide a product that will help enable remote workers to be more productive.

 

Their channel will have the product in hand by mid-August and will start reselling the solution, so we have to wait a bit longer for official word of the new solution.

 

NEC also showed us a prototype of the next version of an enterprise communications server that's still in customer trials and should be announced by the mid-to-end of August. The solution is designed as a pure IP play, supporting all existing applications such as voice, mobility, and unified communications.

 

The product will offer a smooth migration path for existing customers who wish to move to an all-IP infrastructure.

 

Lastly, NEC officials told us to watch out for several new solutions spanning the following areas: speech, video voice mail, and some new things from the Sphere acquisition of one year ago.

 

The NEC folks told me that, in terms of trends, they're seeing healthy activity in the hospitality and healthcare markets. Also they say that unified communications is generating lots of traction in the SMB market as well.

 

I'm here as well visiting clients and dropping in to see what's going on at IP Sizzles.

 

So far today, I've had some interesting meetings with NEC and Fujitsu. More to come later, but suffice it to say there is a lot of interesting stuff going on here in Texas.

 

NEC is working on new platforms and new terminals (phones) and new applications to address their bread and butter Enterprise market, including some interesting applications targeting verticals such as healthcare, hospitality and higher education.

 

Fujitsu continues to build on their success in the optical market. The highlight of the visit today was a tour of their manufacturing facility in Richardson, TX. As I said, I'll cover this more in depth later on, but I just wanted to thank Traci King and Danna Melcher for their time and for arranging such an interesting tour of the facility.

 

Now it's off to IP Sizzles... and yes, FYI, it's sizzling in Dallas, with the mercury hitting 102 today.

 

Earlier today I blogged about the Top Muffin iPhone 3G Availability Tracker, and how it was helping people find the iPhone 3G's they had been waiting for. Well guess what? It's gone. Over!

 

Here's what Top Muffin has to say:

 

 

 

Looks like people will have to go to the store themselves now. It's a wonderful strategy on the part of Apple. Maybe once we get the folks who want an iPhone into our stores, they'll impulsively purchase some iPods and a 30-inch Cinema Display...

Grrr....

 

But according to Top Muffin's iPhone 3G Availability Tracker -- which tracks which stores have inventory based on Apple's own information -- as of 12:45pm today, July 24th there were quite a few units available for purchase at Apple stores throughout the United States.

 
In fact if Rich really wants a black 16GB model, I might be able to hook him up.
 

For more on the availability of the iPhone 3G, check out this article.

 

The acquisition will help Cisco to grow its solution set as the home networking market continues to grow more complex as home users continue to add new devices and services that connect to computers and to each other.

 

Pure Networks' home networking-management solution is designed to enable users to easily set up and manage their home network and connect a range of devices, applications and services.

 

Their flagship offering, Network Magic is billed as being the solution that helps stop users from wasting hours wading through manuals and confusing instructions or waiting on hold for technical support. The solution also promises to make it easy to:

 

 

As Kurt Scherf, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Parks Associates, points out in the company's Analyst Blog,

 

 

Cisco will pay $120 million for Pure Networks, and they expect the acquisition to be completed in Cisco's first quarter of fiscal year 2009.

 

 

The move is receiving generally positive reviews as a move that will not only strengthen Brocade's product offering but will also allow it to more effectively compete with Cisco Systems.

 

The combination of Brocade's storage switches and Foundry's data networking switches could have a significant impact on the combined company's ability to offer a complete solution through an enhanced channel strategy.

 

Brocade, agreed to pay $18.50 in cash plus 0.0907 Brocade share for each Foundry share, valuing the company at $19.25 per share.

 

Back in May Foundry announced a pair of modules that reportedly allow their BigIron RX Series switches and the NetIron MLX Series routers to deliver the industry's highest 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) and gigabit Ethernet (GbE) density of up to 512 ports of 10GbE and 1,536 ports of GbE in a single system.

 

For example, in Butte County, CA,. a series of fires started by lightning strikes are reportedly 90% contained. The upshot is that the fire department is well on its way toa successful resolution of the situation.

 

NBC Sports sales issued a release saying that ad sales for NBC's family of networks are 90 percent sold out of their Summer Olympics inventory. Apparently there was great concern that they would fall short of their goals, but now it appears they are well on their way to 100%.
 

 

Likewise, Rich Tehrani blogged today that ITEXPO has sold out 90% of its Exhibit Hall capacity, and there are still two months to go before the event.

 

Looks like ITEXPO is well on its way to becoming another successful show!

 

 

 

Well, I might finally get up the courage to unwrap that copy of Vista that I got when I purchased my home office desktop last year.

 

I wonder how much flack it took for the decision makers in the Redmond customer service department before they threw their hands in the air and said, "Fine! Enough already! Free support until March 18, 2009!"

 

Now... what did I do with that list of all my peripherals that I jotted down noting whether or not Vista drivers existed?

 

Support is only being offered on Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).

 

For more details, check out Microsoft's Help & Support page.

 

He's also our newest columnist.

 

Kevin's first column touches on a very important subject: the threat of cyber attacks.

 

Spurred by a Barack Obama speech, in which the Democratic candidate placed the threat of cyber attacks in the same category as nuclear and biological weapons, Coleman tackles the issue head-on and urges the powers that be to "act decisively now!"

 

As Coleman says, "The clock is ticking and there is no time for politics."

 

To read Kevin Coleman's first column in its entirety, click here.

 

The numbers come from a report prepared for the Broadband Forum by industry analysts Point Topic.

 

The report also found a doubling of IPTV subscribers year on year with nearly 15.5 million people now subscribed to an IPTV service.

 

Europe lays claim to the most IPTV subscribers with over 8.4 million subscribers, making it the strongest market in terms of growth and total subscriber numbers.

 

Regionally speaking, Asia Pacific is next with 2.6 million subscribers, followed by North America at 2.2 million and South and East Asia at 2 million.

 

 

One way to overcome those objections is to partner with a player that has experience serving large enterprises and service providers, and one with a reputation for building high-quality, reliable gear.
 

 

Enter the team of Digium -- the Asterisk company -- and AudioCodes.

 

The two companies will be hosting a webinar tomorrow, Thursday, July 17, 2008, at 2:00pm ET (11:00am PT) entitled Asterisk: Reliable and scalable solutions with AudioCodes

 

Attendees will learn how the combination of Asterisk and AudioCodes Media Gateways can work together to deliver highly reliable and scalable solutions.

 

After the presentation, the Webinar will be open for a live Q&A. Be sure to have your questions ready!

 

 

Presenters will include Alan Percy, Director of Business Development, AudioCodes and Steve Sokol, Software Product Manager, Digium - The Asterisk Company

 

The event will be moderated by TMC's Erik Linask.

 

Yesterday, Leuven, Belgium-based InBev picked up Anheuser Busch for the thirst-quenching little sum of $52 billion.

 

And last week word came down that the Abu Dhabi Investment Council had purchased one of New York's landmark skyscrapers, the Chrysler Building, for $800 million or so.

 

Now quick... Who owns Rockefeller Center?

 

According to Pink Tentacle, tmsuk has developed a remote controlled shopping robot that allows the infirm or just plain lazy to shop from home via various cellphone links.

 

The current state of the technology was demonstrated at the Izutsuya department store in the city of Kitakyushu, Japan.

 

According to Pink Tentacle:

 

 

This Sunday, the Washington Nationals and MLB.com will debut the use of "mobile giving" to benefit the creation of a Diabetes Care Complex for Children's National Medical Center.

 

 

Here's how it works: Fans can text the word "NATS" to 90999 to give $5 to support the work of Children's National Medical Center to fight pediatric diabetes, a growing concern in the Washington area and nationwide.

 

While the July 13 game against the Houston Astros is the public launch of this initiative, people can donate between July 10th and July 31st.

 

MLB.com, the Nationals, and Children's National Medical Center are partnering with the Mobile Giving Foundation, which enables nonprofits to accept donations from almost any phone and major cellular providers.

For further information about the Mobile Giving Foundation, visit their Web site.

 

For further information about the Children's National Medical Center, located in Washington, DC, visit their Web site.

 

 

 

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Thursday that he will recommend that Comcast -- the nation's largest cable company -- be penalized for violating the FCC's principles that are designed to guarantee access to the Internet. This would be the first such penalty levied in defense of the agency's open access rules.

 

It's expected that the two democratic appointees to the Commission will side with Martin.

 

 

The Washington Post is reporting the following corrective measures will be recommended: