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

April 2008

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Rich Questions Shoretel

April 30, 2008

Rich has had his interest piqued by the hushed voices spreading rumors about Shoretel.   In my opinion these guys were once the truest darlings of the VoIP world. Maybe I was simply a sucker for a great desk set (and they had some nice hardware, I tell you) but in the wake of all the sour news in the VoIP world I have to wonder if the old adage “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” applies.   Shoretel stock (SHOR) was down 10.10 percent on Wednesday, but appeared to be making a huge run in aftermarket trading, bouncing back about 8.5% at 6:50 pm ET.

Rich Questions Shoretel

April 30, 2008

Rich has had his interest piqued by the hushed voices spreading rumors about Shoretel.   In my opinion these guys were once the truest darlings of the VoIP world. Maybe I was simply a sucker for a great desk set (and they had some nice hardware, I tell you) but in the wake of all the sour news in the VoIP world I have to wonder if the old adage “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” applies.   Shoretel stock (SHOR) was down 10.10 percent on Wednesday, but appeared to be making a huge run in aftermarket trading, bouncing back about 8.5% at 6:50 pm ET.

Interop Briefing: Fanfare

April 30, 2008

Like Rich Tehrani, I too find myself in Las Vegas, at the Interop show.   However, unlike Rich’s experience, my experience with lines has been almost nonexistent. No wait for my luggage when I arrived last night. No cab line at the airport. Nobody checking in ahead of me at the hotel.   And today, when I checked in to the show, there was nobody on line in the press room, which made getting my badge a very simple procedure.   And so I’m engaged in a day full of meetings.   First on the list was Fanfare.

Boston... Salesforce... Marathon?

April 21, 2008

What a day.   It started benignly enough, early to the office and then off to the Amtrak station for a train to Boston. You see, I’m in Beantown again this week for a visit with our friends at Salesforce.com and their Tour de Force, which hits New England tomorrow.   However today, something else hit Boston. Unbeknownst to this New Yorker, they apparently run Marathons here on work days, and so as I exited the Back Bay rail station I found myself surrounded by a teeming mass of humanity I did not expect to be a part of.   I guess that’s what happens when the hotel you’re staying at is half a block from the finish line of the Boston Marathon.   For tonight I was invited to a dinner for certain Salesforce customers and prospects, partners, media, and the like.   For anyone who understands what it’s like to be of the Eastern Orthodox faith you’ll cringe when I tell you that 6 days shy of Easter, the dinner was held in a restaurant called Mooo (3 O’s, I think…).   I had a series of wonderful conversations with a variety of prospects and customers, all of whom had nice things to say about our hosts, and none of it seemed feigned.

Rich on Skype

April 21, 2008

  Rich Tehrani spoke with Skype’s Don Albert, VP and GM of Skype North America, and came away with a slightly softened attitude regarding the need for eBay to sell Skype now, saying his "comments may have been premature."   According to Rich’s blog:   Skype earned $126 million in revenue (it’s fifth straight profitable quarter) and added another 33 million new registered users in the quarter (there are now 309 million registered Skype users around the world).   Rich also gets a jump on today’s announcement that Skype is now offering flat-rate international calling for the first time   The three subscriptions now available to consumers in the U.S. and Canada include the following:
  • Unlimited U.S. & Canada: Unlimited calls to landline and cell phones in the U.S. and Canada.

Brave New Google Earth

April 16, 2008

Peter Birch, Product Manager, Google Earth, writes about the launch of the latest version of Google Earth — version 4.3 — on the Official Google blog today.   The latest beta (of course) sets the goal of offering a “realistic, 3D model of the world by giving users a higher quality, more immersive experience.”   Here are some of the new features:
  • New navigation — featuring improved zoom control.
  • 3D 3D 3D — The latest version of Google earth adds loads of new 3D content such as thousands of buildings contributed by people around the world, and photo-textured cities and towns.
  • Street View — You’ve used this and loved it in Google Maps.
  • Sunlight feature — Simulated lighting as the Sun passes overhead. Might be the only way I get to see the Sun set over the Great Wall…
  Google Earth 4.3 features a dozen new languages, including Danish,  UK English, Spanish (Latin American), Finnish, Hebrew, Indonesian, Norwegian, Portuguese (PT), Romanian, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish, so presumably you could stop and ask for directions…    

FCC Answers to Congress

April 15, 2008

The FCC was called on the carpet today to answer a Congressional committee’s questions about the recently completed wireless spectrum auction. A central issue was the Commission’s inability to attract any bidders for the so-called D block portion of the spectrum.   Lawmakers did save a little praise for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and the fact that the auction raised over $19 billion.   The Wall Street Journal has more on the story here.

FCC Answers to Congress

April 15, 2008

The FCC was called on the carpet today to answer a Congressional committee’s questions about the recently completed wireless spectrum auction. A central issue was the Commission’s inability to attract any bidders for the so-called D block portion of the spectrum.   Lawmakers did save a little praise for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and the fact that the auction raised over $19 billion.   The Wall Street Journal has more on the story here.

iPhone Nets Growing Share of Smartphone Market

April 15, 2008

As the smartphone market dissolves into a race between Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry device, it is becoming abundantly clear that the two manufacturers will have to differentiate themselves by offering a wealth of innovative applications on their respective platforms.   Current U.S. market analysis shows RIM’s Blackberry to be the leader with over 40% market share. Apple, which only has about nine percent market share is not only “up and coming,” it’s iPhone is fast becoming a fan favorite.   Apple’s iPhone may have a leg up when it comes to user satisfaction. The company has traditionally developed a rabid following across many of its product lines.

Dimension Data CTO Offers Perspectives

April 14, 2008

I had the occasion to visit with Dimension Data’s Mark Slaga this morning at that company’s Perspectives event at the Batterymarch Conference Center in Boston.   Slaga, the company’s chief technology officer as well as their chief information officer is certainly someone to chat with if you want to know what’s really going on in the market. You see last week Slaga and his team received a platinum phone from Cisco based on the fact that of the 17 million Cisco IP Phones out there, Dimension Data has deployed 1 million of them worldwide.   Dimension Data is a global IT solutions and systems integration firm, whose 11,000 employees plan, build, support and manage IT infrastructure solutions that help over 6,000 clients achieve their business goals.   According to Slaga, the company grew up on networking and has since moved into converged communications and contact centers, security, and data center technology.   The company maintains a consistent methodology and approach to planning building and supporting their customers IT solutions. The broad experience of thousands of customers has positioned Dimension Data to truly understand how unified communications (UC) is growing and where it’s going.   Slaga explained how VoIP is becoming commoditized, and how Dimension Data views applications such as UC and contact center as differentiators and thus a critically important part of their business.   Slaga’s role as CTO dictates that he spends time with clients and vendors, to listen and to gain an understanding of the market opportunities and challenges they’re facing.   His job as CIO is to take that understanding and make the solutions that he pitches to his customers, work internally at Dimension Data.   Of course, the nature of Dimension Data’s global footprint ensures that they face many of the same challenges that their large customers face.   Among the trends Slaga is seeing, is the continued growth of VoIP. Perhaps more important he sees the opportunity to help confused clients see the light.   As clients adopt applications such as VoIP, UC, instant messaging (IM) they’re starting to see what UC means.

VZW Offers Unlimited Web, E-Mail for Smartphone Users

April 14, 2008

If you own any of these smartphones — the Verizon Wireless SMT5800; the Verizon Wireless XV6800 and the MOTO Q9m — then for just $29.99 per month (with a qualifying voice plan) you can surf and send e-mail to your heart’s content using the Verizon Wireless E-mail and Web for Smartphone solution.   The plan supports up to 10 personal e-mail accounts, including your Yahoo! Mail, AOL, Windows Live and Verizon.net accounts.   For more, check out today’s announcement.

Industry Players Agree on LTE Licenses

April 14, 2008

LTE is that much closer to becoming a reality, as a number of industry players have agreed to commit to a licensing framework, whereby they would license their patents according to “fair and reasonable” terms.   The group is a veritable who’s who of industry leaders, and includes Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, and Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.   Notably absent from the list is Qualcomm, which earlier this year announced plans to develop LTE chipsets.   Essentially the companies agree in principle to establish “predictable and more transparent maximum aggregate costs for licensing intellectual property rights” that relate to the next-gen wireless technology.

Juniper Unveils Mobile Backhaul Solution

April 14, 2008

Mobile operators are striving to improve operational efficiency of their networks and pursue cost control by raising the average revenue per user (ARPU) by offering new data services. This is no secret.   Tremendous growth in data traffic is being driven by increased use of video, music, photo sharing, and the like. This is not a secret.   A recent AT&T survey states that smartphone users double the ARPU. This I did not know.   Regardless of the infrastructure upgrades that occur in the core of the network, mobile carriers will never realize the full benefits of these upgrades so long as bottlenecks occur at various points along the way.

3D World Drives Minute Plans, Mobile Purchases

April 14, 2008

I recently met with Gemini Mobile Technologies at CTIA. Gemini Mobile recently made headlines with the release of its HyperScale Software Development Kit, which is designed to enable system integrators and partners worldwide to harness the power of Gemini’s powerful HyperScale technology to create products for a variety of industries.   Gemini’s HyperScale is the core technology behind its two products: a software messaging platform, HyperScale Messaging Center, and a community platform, eXplo.   While at CTIA, I got a thorough demo of S! Town, a 3D mobile community powered by eXplo. Based on Gemini’s HyperScale technology, eXplo unifies media, content and communication into a single platform offering end users a unique 3D mobile experience.

The service went live in Japan two years ago, with Softbank Mobile, and as of November it had 250,000 subscribers.   My first thought was, ok, so this is like Webkinz for mobile phones. Do a quarter of a million Japanese children really have their own mobile phones, with unlimited data plans?   Turns out the target demographic is not kids at all, but rather women from 20–29 years of age, a group that makes up 41% of the user base.

Microsoft Updates Robotics Development Tools

April 10, 2008

Microsoft has unveiled the first community technology preview of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008, the latest version of its Windows-based robotics programming platform environment designed for use by academic, hobbyist and commercial developers for the creation of robotic programs and testing scenarios.   The new offering improves upon runtime performance, distributed computational capabilities and tools.   While the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio will only be released later this year, the first preview is available now for evaluation and testing by developers, customers, and partners.   According to the release, here’s what’s new:  
  • Increased runtime performance. Performance improvements of 150 percent to 300 percent in message throughput between services within a node and between DSS nodes. Services now load 200 percent faster.
  • Improved distributed computational capabilities. Support for distributed language integrated queries (LINQ), which reduces network utilization and simplifies service authoring.

A Night at the Opera With Android

April 10, 2008

Opera Software announced that its Opera Mini browser for mobile phones and devices is now available for the Android platform. Android is the open mobile platform being developed by the Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, led by Google. The technical preview release of Opera Mini for Android is available at labs.opera.com, inviting the Android development community to test the fresh build and share feedback with Opera for the forthcoming beta.  




Once launched, Opera Mini for Android will be available to any handset built on Android.

Robotics Evolution

April 9, 2008

In our quest to give our readers more choice and an ever increasing variety of content — by going deeper into the technologies we currently cover as well as expanding the base of technologies we cover — I found myself in Pittsburgh today, attending the RoboBusiness Conference & Expo.   One of the first companies I came across in the exhibit hall, was Evolution Robotics.   Evolution Robotics develops enabling technologies for the robotics market, and partners with OEMs to integrate those technologies into new and more intelligent products such as autonomous robots for commercial or consumer use.   Evolution’s NorthStar technology is an indoor localization solution that combines a sensor, a processor and an infrared projector to provide accurate location information in real-time.   According to the company literature:   With NorthStar, consumer products can:
  • Reliably and directly return to a docking station from anywhere in the environment
  • Automatically perform or not perform particular functions based on location
  • Systematically patrol an environment.
NorthStar is perhaps most famously deployed in WowWee's telepresence robot, Rovio, which made its debut at this past January’s CES event.   So let me get this straight. Telepresence meets robotics?   I’m definitely interested.   But first, back to Evolution.   The company’s NorthStar technology enables developers, like WowWee to create consumer oriented products like Rovio.

Airport Chaos (Narrowly Averted)

April 9, 2008

I’m sitting here at Terminal D at LaGuardia, thankful for once that I’m flying on a smaller, Regional Jet. The airport roadways are stacked with news vans from every imaginable local news channel and network. ABC, NBC, CNBC, Univision, News 12, etc… with their satellite dishes extended, ready to broadcast. 

Apparently they’re here to cover the expected airport chaos associated with the inspection of all American Airlines MD-80 planes. Well, not so much the inspections, but the flight cancelations and the delays that will strand or simply inconvenience 100’s to 1,000’s of passengers here today.

Robots To Replace Graying Japanese Workers?

April 8, 2008

  As the population of Japan ages, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation (MIMF) believes that robots can be called upon to fill in gaps in the labor force.   According to a Reuters story, Japan faces a 16 percent slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom.   Tops among the opportunities for robots? Health and nursing care.

  In its report, the MIMF said that Japan could save over $20 billion in insurance payments in 2025 by “…using robots that monitor the health of older people, so they don’t have to rely on human nursing care.”   Caregivers would save more than an hour a day if robots helped look after children, older people and did some housework, it added.

Samsung's iPhone Challenger

April 8, 2008

Samsung Mobile announced the Samsung Instinct at CTIA last week. Hailed by many as the “iPhone killer” (or at least a worthy alternative) the device offers full touch screen functionality and promises to accelerate the user experience by enabling access to commonly used applications and contacts with a single finger tap.

  The device, available exclusively from Sprint, will run on the carrier’s EV-DO Rev A network, enabling users to browse the Web, access business or personal e-mail, share pictures, listen to commercial-free radio and more at broadband speeds.   The crew at Gizmodo seems to like the Samsung offering.   The device will come with a 2GB microSD card which is good for 2,000 songs or so from Sprint’s Music Store, two batteries offering up to 5.75 hours of continuous talk time each, battery charging sleeve, travel charger, USB cable, 3.5mm headphones with built-in microphone, and leather case with stylus.   Pricing has yet to be determined.   Oh… and the Instinct was awarded best of show at CTIA too.

Enterprise IM Survey Results

April 8, 2008

The most recent survey results are up. In our ongoing partnership with Intellicom Analytics, we have been exploring a number of enterprise communications related topics.   This week’s survey addresses the value businesses derive from Instant Messaging (IM).   With more than 700 responses coming in from all Global Regions, the findings show that 68% of North American businesses, are utilizing IM. In other global regions the number rises to 77% of enterprises reporting use of IM for business purposes.   Of the respondents that are utilizing Instant Messaging, use of Enterprise-grade IM heavily outstrips use of Public IM services by a 3-to-1 margin.   Make sure to check out the full analysis here.  

D2 Cues Up For Google Android

April 4, 2008

At CTIA this week, D2 Technologies announced that its mCUE converged communications client for mobile devices and handsets now supports Google’s Android.   The combination is designed to enable OEMs to rapidly develop handsets powered by Android that offer a premium, graphic- and media-rich user experience.   Doug Makishima, vice president of marketing and sales at D2 Technologies said, “This offering will give developers a complete turnkey solution for developing multi-mode mobile communication devices based on Android. There is considerable market anticipation around Google’s Android platform, and our goal is to make it as fast, easy and affordable as possible for OEMs to deliver converged, unified communications devices to meet that demand.”

Level 3's DeLong Discusses Backhaul

April 1, 2008

  Level 3 is always doing something interesting. And tomorrow, during a panel discussion on backhaul, Level 3 vice president of offer management Edgar DeLong will be promoting the carrier’s strategy of hybrid fiber wireless as a solution to help wireless providers adopt backhaul solutions at a greater clip.   DeLong told me this morning that fiber offers the scale and reliability that providers seek, but that the challenge with an all-terrestrial solution is the cost.   DeLong said that Level 3 has conducted a series of surveys and determined that only approximately 10–20% of carriers’ cell sites fall within a 500-foot radius of Level 3’s fiber footprint. That 500-foot radius determines an area where it is cost effective to connect via fiber.   Beyond that it makes sense to utilize an OC-3 microwave fixed wireless solution to accommodate more carrier cell sites and keep the cost of the solution low.   DeLong will be discussing this ecosystem approach, combining hybrid fiber and wireless in a panel discussion entitled Cell Site Backhaul: Addressing a Top Cost and Reliability Concern, at 2:30pm on Wednesday, in the Las Vegas Convention Center Room North 113.

CTIA Day 1 - Preview

April 1, 2008

  If it’s April, it must be Vegas.   Arrived after a bumpy flight last night. Not fun.   I’m looking forward to heading over to the CTIA show later this morning, and I’m excited by by the fact that I’ll be meeting with a slew of leading companies in the space. (I have over a dozen briefings set up for today alone!)   Be sure to check my blog later for updates on my what I find at the event. I’m always curious to see new products and learn about emerging strategies and trends.   But rather than wait for me to finish my meetings, check out TMCnet’s CTIA news page to stay up to date with all the new developments streaming out from the event.        
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