ITEXPO Toshiba's Brian Metherell Speaks

Brian Metherell, VP and General Manager of Toshiba America Information Systems’ Toshiba Telecommunications Division spoke Tuesday evening on the subject of VoIP Success: Promise vs. Reality.

 

He began with a story which had three attributes:

 

It was brief.

It was true.

It was relevant.

 

It was at the very beginning of telecom: Alexander Graham Bell was looking to sell the patent for the telephone. So he looked to Western Union for $100,000.They researched it, and got back to Alexander Graham Bell, saying, “this telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered a form of telecommunications. This has no value to us.”

 

True or not, Methrell noted a similarity with that story and some viewpoints in today’s telecom industry, stating that a decade ago, similar sentiment existed in the upper echelon of telecom companies regarding VoIP.

 

Switching gears, he asked the audience for a show of hands… How many have heard about VoIP (all hands raised); how many use VoIP at home (most hands remain raised); how many use VoIP in office (fewer hands remain); and who uses VoIP exclusively (the hands all drop).

 

Metherell cited a dealer survey that Toshiba had done less than a month ago. Which showed essentially that VoIP is playing an increasing part in the dealers’ deployment plans. And yet, we’re still clearly looking at a converged environment at some level.

 

When asked when we will see 100% VoIP Installs, dealers responded as follows:

27 percent think we’ll reach that threshold by 2009- 2010;

30 percent think that date is further out and surprisingly; and

15% think we will never see the all-IP install.

 

The dealers looked at the primary motivators for their customers to adopt VoIP. Among those motivators: 56% said mobility and or the ability to enable remote users. Second was 21% who fear being left behind the technology curve.

 

After install, dealers found that the primary ROI customers felt was from ability to make users mobile and enable remote users

#2 was the ability to improve productivity

 

In closing Metherell spoke to the audience about several fast moving trends:

Today’s market drivers; mobility remote connectivity and productivity.

 

Among the emerging trends we could look forward to seeing, unified communications as well as business process integration

Outlook, CRM, and contact manager apps, ales administration and tracking

call statistics, employee productivity tracking, workforce management