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

IP Communications

Shoretel, Mitel, All's Well That Ends Well

May 7, 2009

A colleague sent me this item today:     ShoreTel and Mitel Announce Cross-License and Settlement Companies Resolve Lawsuits Filed in 2007   ShoreTel, Inc., a leading provider of Pure IP Unified Communications (UC) solutions, and Mitel, the trusted provider of unified communications, today announced a settlement ending the legal disputes between the two companies.   Under the terms of the settlement, ShoreTel and Mitel agreed to dismiss the lawsuits against each other, and entered into a cross-license of the patents at issue in the litigation. Other terms of the settlement are confidential.   TMC's Tom Keating referenced that legal action in his blog back in June 2007.

Watching the Gear Makers

May 1, 2009

I saw a MarketWatch bulletin with the headline Tellabs, Alcatel-Lucent are top telecoms and it got me thinking about Nortel, who was all over the news this week with reports of its imminent demise, as competitors were ready to tear the company apart and walk away with various parts of the business.   MarketWatch was simply reporting that Tellabs (the subject of a cover story in the next issue of NGN magazine - see here for Rich Tehrani's meeting takeaway)   Tellabs gained more than 7% and Alcatel-Lucent rose 4% to lead telecommunications stocks in trading earlier this week based on Tellabs' results indicated a possible recovery in the networking sector and Alcatel-Lucent's announcement of multiyear contracts worth $1.7 billion to supply equipment in China.

Oh My! We're Doomed!

April 30, 2009

Recommended Reading: How Workarounds Drive Telecom & Networking

April 29, 2009

Fred Goldstien has a way of explaining the esoteric and confusing intricacies of telecom that helps readers make sense of the situation. And along the way he offers his insights to further help people understand.   He does it again in his most recent article, titled How Workarounds Drive Telecom and Networking.   Kicking off with the premise that "Pretty much everything in the Internet sector owes its existence to some foolish rule or another, either directly or indirectly," Goldstein goes on to enlighten us on the some history of the sector and how we got to where we are today.   I urge you to check out this article, and let me know what you think by posting a comment to my blog (see below).

TMCnet Blogger Family Grows

April 27, 2009

Today I'm proud to welcome our latest TMCnet blogger, Chuck Rutledge who will be sharing his insights and opinions via his new "Now Market It" blog.   I've known Chuck for over a decade, and he has always been a fantastic resource for articles I was working on and he was always ready to present compelling content at the ITEXPO conferences. Most recently Chuck served as the VP of Corporate Marketing at NET, a leading provider of VoIP equipment to enterprise, service providers and the government, where he joined via the acquisition of Quintum Technologies. Chuck had been VP of Marketing and Business Development with Quintum since the firm's early start-up days.   Today he is Managing Director at Precise Insights, a high tech marketing consulting company.   Please join me in welcoming Chuck to our family of TMCnet bloggers, a family that continues to grow with each passing week. In fact we are fast approaching the 50-contributor milestone on our blogs page.   If you are interested in reaching a diverse, highly technical, highly knowledgeable audience of up to 2 million people per month, drop me a line to ggalitzine (at) tmcnet.com and we can discuss setting up a blog for you too.

The Web: The Best is Yet to Come

April 23, 2009

If you think the Internet's a crowded place today, guess what? One of the Internets founders (insert Al Gore jokes here) Tim Berners-Lee, keynoting at the 18th Annual World Wide Web conference in Madrid this week, believes that the best of the Internet is yet to come.   "The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past," he said.   The ITU report, Measuring the Information Society, The ICT Development Index, finds that only 23% of the global population currently uses the Internet, as compared to over 60% of the world's population that is currently subscribing to mobile cellular phone services.   An article on Breitbart quotes Internet co-founder Vinton Cerf who says, "We will have more Internet, larger numbers of users, more mobile access, more speed, more things online and more appliances we can control over the Internet."   I for one, think we all can agree that the future of the Web is mobile. As smartphones proliferate and becomes less expensive; as next-generation wireless networks bring Internet access into every far-flung corner of the globe; as more people are able to get access to more information, we will see the truly transformational power of the Internet facilitate a freer exchange of ideas, resulting in new advances in technology, society, etc...   Now if only we can do away with e-Mail spam...

Stock Blog Compares AT&T, Verizon

April 22, 2009

This morning, over at Seeking Alpha, there's a nice article from ValueExpectations (a stock blog and investment newsletter that provides institutional quality equity research) on the difference between AT&T and Verizon. ValueExpectations.com is run by the founders of The Applied Finance Group and Toreador Research and Trading.   To start, the article separates AT&T and Verizon from the third place U.S. wireless provider, Sprint.   Then, it compares the relative value proposition of both top wireless operators.   AT&T's market cap is $150 billion to Verizon's $90 billion.   AT&T is considered to have the better 3G network and a partnership with Apple to offer what is considered the hottest smartphone on the market, the iPhone. Verizon however has a "decent" 3G network, according to the article, and through its partnership with and support for several Blackberry models, is riding a positive trend.   Verizon's FiOS is considered the wave of the future, delivering "lightning-fast fiber optics" while AT&T's FTTN (fiber to the node) strategy is somewhat wanting.

Dialogic Announces Innovator Award Contest, Social Networking Site

April 21, 2009

Dialogic Corporation is inviting application developers worldwide to compete for the first-ever Dialogic Innovator Award by submitting their new, innovative applications built on Dialogiccomponents.   TMC's Rich Tehrani is among the judges who will decide who wins the inaugural Dialogic Innovator award.   Hand in hand with the new award program, Dialogic is also announcing the Dialogic Exchange Network (DEN), the company's new online social networking community.   Below is the official press release that hit the wires today. The release contains links to the application entry form as well as official terms and conditions.       Dialogic Corporation Launches Global Social Networking Community and Invites Application Developers to Compete for the Dialogic Innovator Award   Parsippany, NJ, April 21, 2009 - Dialogic Corporation ("Dialogic"), a global provider of world-class products and technologies for media and signal processing, is inviting application developers worldwide to compete for the first ever Dialogic Innovator Award by submitting their new, innovative applications built on Dialogic® components. In conjunction with this contest, Dialogic is also announcing the Dialogic Exchange Network (DEN), the company's new online social networking community. This global community has been created for customers, developers, employees and others who create communications solutions to be able to connect, share ideas, learn about industry trends and participate in forums covering a wide range of topics.

eBay Looks to Spin Off Skype

April 15, 2009

eBay has let it be known that they are looking to spin off Skype, the Internet phone company by way of public offering.   Nearly 4 years after it acquired Skype for $2.6 billion, eBay has come to terms with the fact that it might not have made the right call with the purchase.   I never did get the marriage of the two companies, but I guess at the time, a $3 billion risk was nothing to worry about.   I came across the following prediction (based on a JP Morgan analyst's note) on the Business Insider:   JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan estimates that Skype's 2010 net revenue could reach $740 million, with EBITDA of roughly $156 million. At a 10-20X EBITDA multiple, that suggests Skype could be worth $1.6 billion to $3.1 billion as a standalone company, Khan says.   $3.1 billion? I have to wonder if they'll ever get that much for Skype.   Still, the company does have a lot to offer. With over 400 million users, Skype is the world's leading Internet phone service, and they did just release a version of Skype for the iPhone and for Blackberry too.   They've picked Goldman Sachs to manage the IPO.   Rich offers his thoughts about the potential IPO of Skype.   I agree with Rich -- this should be an interesting IPO to watch.

Manhattan School of Music Teaches the World

April 14, 2009

Back in a previous life (GG:BTMC) I worked on Manhattan's Upper West Side managing a stationery store that was an outgrowth of a successful private bookstore serving the needs of the students at Columbia University, Barnard College, and Manhattan School of Music (MSM).   It was a fun period of my life and I was treated to a pleasant reminder of that time by a news item that came across my desk today, namely that MSM was leveraging distance learning powered by Polycom's HD Telepresence solutions to extend their classrooms to the world. 
  MSM has reportedly been using distance learning since 1996, allowing approximately 1,700 students around the world to participate in classes, workshops, and clinics to help them master their craft. Currently they are using the Polycom HDX 8000 and HDX 9000 series room telepresence and VSX 8000 series video conferencing systems to reach their audience.   As the technology evolved so too did the opportunity to reach more students, more effectively.   According to composer/conductor Robert Sirota, president of MSM, "Our use of visual communication has changed the way we do music instruction at this school in a very profound way."

"It's effective because it quickly becomes invisible," added Sirota. "After 10 or 15 minutes of using the system, you're less and less aware that you're engaged in a high-tech video call. You're simply working.


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