Technology

Busy Week Inches to a Close

April 2, 2009

It's been quite a good week. The Dow is steadily rising (let's see what Friday brings: profit taking or Dow 8,000) and in less than 10 hours, it's wheels up for this Galitzine, heading home after a jam-packed week of IP communications at a couple of trade shows in Orlando and Las Vegas. I've posted a few items already, covering some of the companies I met with and I have a few write-ups to go, but the bulk of the content will be coming to you in the form of videos posted to our TMC Newsroom. I can't remember such a busy schedule. I would say I met with well over 80 people this week, each with an interesting story to tell. Truth be told the general feeling I walk away with after all these meetings is that innovation continues unabated, the economic malaise has to some degree spared a telecom sector that may have been prepared courtesy of the previous financial meltdown, and end users (you and me both) are growing ever more hungry for new apps - check that - new bandwidth hungry apps. I'll be mostly out of pocket tomorrow as I'm flying back East across 3 time zones, but I look forward to hitting the ground running in short order.

Posted in IP Communications, Personal, Technology, VoIP

Nuance Mobile Care Enhances User Experience

April 2, 2009

I'm at CTIA in Las Vegas today, where I just had a meeting with Nuance senior product manager David Winarsky, who shared his insights into Nuance's latest offering Nuance Mobile Care. The solution gives end users the ability to self-solve simple problems including customer care and billing directly and instantly on their handset thus eliminating wait times for customer service agents, and allowing customers to help themselves. Winarsky told me that this creates a large opportunity for service providers to reduce costs and provide a superior customer experience. Deploying the Nuance Mobile Care solution has reportedly been shown to reduce calls being directed to live agents by over sixty percent. Winarsky cited a statistic that a miniscule shift of just 1% to automation can save large carriers $1 million per month. He showed me a demo of the solution on a Nokia N-series phone, and walked me through the different options for account management, visual IVR, ease of navigation and the ability to display complex details on the handset. Subscribers can choose which channel (speech, text...) is best for self service and they can always zero out to an operator The application also does some diagnostics, helping users determine if there are problems with the device. One interesting opportunity is that service providers can use this application to send consumers targeted advertisements, and fulfillment takes place right on the device, which is another incredible revenue opportunity for the operators. The solution is currently deployed with T-Mobile in the U.S. (postpaid) and Metro PCS (prepaid); and with Vodafone in the UK (with a contract to expand to 18 other operators in Europe). Looking ahead, Nuance plans to add personalization and by continue to enhance the user experience. And while they are addressing wireless carriers today, Winarsky tells me that there are plans in the works to target the enterprise market down the road.

Posted in Business, IP Communications, Mobility, Service Provider, Technology, Wireless

ShoreTel Upgrades Unified Communications Offer

March 31, 2009

ShoreTel has released the latest version of its Unified Communications software, ShoreTel 9. Among the new features, ShoreTel 9 is targeting mobile and desktop users with enhancements designed to enable them to communicate more effectively-regardless of location-and increase individual productivity. I had the good fortune to meet ShoreTel Vice President of Marketing, Kevin Gavin, who shared some insights regarding the latest offering from his firm as well as the market opportunity in front of ShoreTel.

According to Gavin, "CIOs are still buying but they are considering more vendors and have become more price sensitive." "Communications is a fundamentally strategic purchasing decision, and increasingly, UC brings hard dollar savings and CIOs are willing to spend on technology that gives a good return," he added. The latest version of ShoreTel's flagship solution, offers a series of personalization features, including location-based services and individualized call handling, and enables users create custom call-routing scenarios to ensure priority callers can always reach them. The solution supports integration with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007, and according to the company, when Microsoft OCS 2007 is integrated with ShoreTel 7.5 and higher, customers can use Office Communicator to manage their ShoreTel phone, view other parties' presence, and exchange instant messages with other Microsoft and ShoreTel users. ShoreTel 9 scales up to support larger sized businesses, offer Active Directory integration, and takes the company's renowned distributed architecture to the next level offering N+1 reliability, however it extends N+1 across the entire system, allowing customers to save money while maintaining high levels of reliability. The upgraded solution also offers security enhancements including SRTP/AES encryption, which is designed to help ensure call privacy, as well as display encrypted call status on ShorePhone IP phones and ShoreWare Call Manager displays, so users can see at a glance that the call is secure. As far as mobility is concerned, ShoreTel 9 offers location-based services for GPS-enabled mobile devices, allowing users to automatically custom route calls based on the user's location, ensuring that their most important contacts can always reach them, without having to manually manage their call handling settings. For a full list of enhancements and features view the press release.

Posted in Enterprise, IP Communications, Mobility, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP

ADTRAN Launches Alliance Program; Targets SMB

March 31, 2009

Building on their recent momentum and looking to leverage the best of what the market has to offer, ADTRAN today announced d the ADTRAN Alliance Program, a collaboration between ADTRAN and a number of best-in-breed technology and service providers delivering solutions centered on the NetVanta 7000 converged IP PBX. This first phase of the Alliance Program features both IP telephony (IPT) technology partners and SIP trunking service providers. In order to be considered for the program, vendors and service providers must have completed an interoperability certification program proving that their services or solutions complement ADTRAN's NetVanta 7000. "With a network-wide view of our customers' issues and challenges, we created the ADTRAN Alliance Program to help identify leading technology and service providers that are particularly well equipped to address the key needs of SMBs," said Chris Thompson, senior product manager, ADTRAN. IP Telephony Technology Partners offer innovative solutions that have been strategically chosen to address specific applications in conjunction with the NetVanta 7000 Series. These best-in-breed partners include: CounterPath Incendonet LifeSize Communications Multi-Tech Polycom Resource Software International (RSI) SIP Print, and snom These partners were selected to address specific market needs that growing small and medium businesses are looking to deploy. These markets include: Desktop IP Phones (Polycom) DECT Wireless Phones (snom) SoftPhones (Counterpath) Speech Recognition (Incendonet) Call Accounting (RSI) Call Recording (SIP Print) Unified Messaging (MultiTech) Telepresence/Video Conferencing (Lifesize) SIP Trunking Service Providers who offer IP telephony services that are certified to be fully interoperable with the NetVanta 7000 include: Bandwidth.com BroadVox Covad Communications CommPartners Connect Speakeasy Voxitas

Posted in Business, Enterprise, IP Communications, Technology, VoIP

Mitel Meeting Notes

March 30, 2009

I visited with Mitel today, and they showed me several solutions designed to drive productivity, enhance customer service, and simplify network management. Thanks go to Stephen Beamish, vice president of business development and strategic alliances and Danielle McNeil, public relations manager for spending the time with me to discuss the new solutions. First we discussed the Mitel Business Dashboard, a management portal designed to allow enterprise and contact center management to monitor call activity and collect trend data on call volumes and times.

The intelligent call tracking solution is available on the Mitel 500 Communication Platform. In addition to the Business Dashboard, I also received a firsthand look at Mitel's latest desktop IP Phone, the 5360. The 5360 color phone with Web capabilities designed to deliver a whole series of HTML-based applications. The phone boasts a 7-inch touch-screen display, which grants access to the applications. The device also features wideband audio, embedded gigabit Ethernet, and a built-in HTML toolkit for application development. And lastly, while not exactly telling me what the surprise would be, Beamish told me of an upcoming Mitel promotion scheduled for April 16th.

Posted in Business, Contact Center, Enterprise, IP Communications, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP

DIRECTV Tops for Would-Be TV Service Switchers... Really?

March 26, 2009

Seeking Alpha has an article titled, Who's Winning the Cable Service Provider Wars? that discusses a recent ChangeWave survey. While some of the results make perfect sense, other results may surprise you as they did me. ChangeWave surveyed 2,830 respondents and found that price is now the key issue when consumers decide to switch TV service providers. Given the state of the economy, that's not too surprising. Apparently 48% of respondents who plan to switch their cable, satellite or fiber-optic TV provider in the next six months say price is the primary reason. Slightly more surprising, but perhaps understandable is the fact that when asked how satisfied they were with their current TV service provider, respondents overwhelmingly gave fiber-optic TV services high marks. According to the research, Verizon's FiOS service tops the list in terms of having the highest percentage of customers who say they are Very or Somewhat Satisfied with their provider. AT&T's U-Verse service is second.

Posted in Personal, Research, Service Provider, Technology, Video

XConnect Certifies Covergence Session Manager

March 23, 2009

XConnect continues to certify products as XConnect-Ready. The latest product to earn the distinction is Covergence's Session Manager. The Covergence Session Manager (CSM) is described by the company as "a comprehensive package of security, Web-enabling and session management solutions for SIP applications and services marketed to service providers and enterprises." The formal release, which hits the wires tomorrow, states: Certification through the XConnect Ready Partners Program establishes that service providers deploying CSM can query XConnect's ENUM registry for session-routing information. The designation also means the CSM's routing and peering functions work securely and seamlessly for members of XConnect federations. This ensures, in turn, that calls from a CSM-equipped service provider's network can be routed over IP through any XConnect federation member, reaching end points all over the world while bypassing the PSTN. The CSM is the latest device to complete interoperability testing and earn the XConnect certification.

Posted in IP Communications, Service Provider, Technology, VoIP

Alcatel-Lucent CFO Sees Profitability Ahead

March 13, 2009

A French newspaper is quoting Alcatel-Lucent's CFO as saying he expects a return to profitability by the latter part of next year. Paul Tufano, the company's chief financial officer, was quoted in Les Echos, as saying, "Regarding net income, we expect to return to profits during 2010, most likely in the second-half of the year." Back in December company CEO Ben Verwaayen unveiled Alcatel-Lucent's strategic plan, which called for working closely with Alcatel-Lucent's service provider, enterprise and application partners to -- as Verwaayen said -- "innovate, collaborate and partner... to stimulate a sustainable business model for the industry that will fuel innovation and the capital investment required to expand the overall web experience to more people and businesses." At the time, company officials offered a break-even forecast in terms of operating profit in 2009. As I wrote in the December piece: In 2010, Alcatel-Lucent is targeting to achieve a gross margin in the mid thirties range and an operating margin in the mid single-digit range, and looking ahead to 2011, the goal of the company is to achieve a gross margin in the mid to high thirties range and an operating margin in the mid to high single-digit range.

Posted in Business, IP Communications, Technology

Google Launches Voicemail to Text

March 12, 2009

Google is introducing Google Voice, which is based on the technology of Grand Central Communications, a company they acquired in July 2007. The new service marries innovative new phone features with Google's e-mail service (Gmail) allowing users to receive transcribed voicemail messages in their e-mail inbox. According to Craig Walker, posting on the Official Google Blog: The new application improves the way you use your phone. You can get transcripts of your voicemail and archive and search all of the SMS text messages you send and receive. You can also use the service to make low-priced international calls and easily access Goog-411 directory assistance. While not entirely a new application (see Spinvox and PhoneTag... Vonage offers a service like this...

Posted in Google, IP Communications, Technology

XConnect to Certify NetNumber; Liverpool Wins

March 10, 2009

Posted in IP Communications, Service Provider, Technology

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