Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com

I read with tremendous interest about Goldman Sachs and their unusual interest in PetroAlgae, a company in the renewable energy field which is not only small but losing money. Generally a company like Goldman would laugh at such a small IPO. Courtney Comstock of Clusterstock details the pros and cons of the deal and refers to a Reuters article written by Steve Eder. One pro is the idea that Goldman positions itself nicely in the alternative energy field with this deal but one wonders if Goldman really needs this positioning as even with all their recent PR problems they are seen as the best and brightest on Wall Street and most every firm would die to work with them.

One idea not discussed regarding the IPO is the positive PR associated with bringing a company public under adverse conditions which helps the US economy and reduces our dependence on foreign oil. Moreover, this move helps Goldman further ingratiate itself with the Obama administration and they hope that any additional good will generated here will translate into less public interviews where Obama decides to use terms like "fat cat bankers."

I must admit however that the relationship between Wall Street and the Obama administration is complicated and it seems they have worked together on common causes such as the effort to save Chicago community bank Shorebank. According to Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge, this move while not successful enriched Wall Street - including Goldman while costing tax payers - you and me, $368 million.

To learn more, you may be interested in reading a new book by Charlie Gasparino, Bought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street. Gaspiro is the most prickly and sometimes difficult/peculiar personality I may have ever seen on TV. He is an awesome reporter, has fiscally conservative viewpoints and isn't afraid to defend his point of view on-air. BTW, he was interviewed a few hours ago and mentioned that he has plenty of blame for Bush in this book as well.

He used to take part in super-heated ideological conversations on CNBC with some of his liberal coworkers and it felt almost-like a chair-throwing episode from Jerry Springer. Now sadly, Rick Santelli is one of the few commentators at CNBC (he is responsible for starting the Tea Party Movement with a single rant) who aggressively defends free markets and capitalism. Joe Kernen is a free market guy as well but you get the feeling NBC execs have had daily talks with him about not espousing his conservative views. Gasparino disclosed he was aware of talks in fact where GE CEO (parent of NBC/CNBC) Jeff Immelt had such a conversation about not trashing the Obama administration.

I am sure conservative viewers wish Kernen wouldn't visibly bite his tongue on-air so much and keep the conversation going. He and Santelli are quite articulate and listening to them have meaningful debate on economic policy is quite entertaining while being informative and educational.

Gasparino now works for Fox Business where they keep him away from commentators on the left like Alan Colmes and Juan Williams who admittedly is more moderate than Colmes.

I haven't read any of Gasparino's books - I am still inching my way through Atlas Shrugged to be honest but here are his other titles:

• The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System
• Blood on the Street: The Sensational Inside Story of How Wall Street Analysts Duped a Generation of Investors

Having recently purchased a Sony Dash which I still need to take out of the box, I am obviously intrigued by the idea of devices which allow widgets to run on them. Apparently Alcatel-Lucent too is enamored with the concept of widgets and mobile apps as the company just picked up OpenPlug, a company focused on cross-platform application development solutions. This purchase follows on the acquisition of ProgrammableWeb a major resource to the development community involved in mashups and web-based APIs.

What does this tell you? That Alcatel-Lucent understands the future of the carrier business in-part will revolve around cross-platform device development and merging the closed ecosystems of carriers with a suite of rich tools and services currently made available from companies like Google via their maps API and others.

In the past, the telecom industry hoped IMS would provide walled gardens allowing carriers to control and profit from these closed ecosystems. Something interesting happened on the way to this vision as Apple iTunes and the App Store became the walled garden leaving carriers scrambling as they look for ways to compete.

If Google's Android is an example of the new carrier model it is worth noting it involves cross-platform, cross-device deployment of rich applications which rely on a suite of mashed up services. Obviously from these acquisitions, Alcatel-Lucent seems to agree and is positioning itself nicely to supply the next-generation of communications solutions to carriers and developers worldwide.

Disclosure: Alcatel-Lucent has been the sponsor of a community titled Next-Generation Communications living on TMCnet for many years. Oh, and I am the CEO of TMC the company behind TMCnet if you aren't aware.

Disclosure #2: I really hope I get some time to open the Dash up today and take it for a spin.

Update a few hours later: Just took it out for a spin and it was a snap to set up and display photos on. So far it is not slick like an Apple device - the power adapter alone is as thick as 4 iPhone 4s but it seems like a very useful gadget with lots of widget options like news, weather and more.

Facebook is experiencing a major rolling outage and repeated attempts by me on multiple devices on multiple networks from multiple IP addresses has shown the systems are in major flux with the most usual result being a timeout error. Users have been reporting the problem started somewhere between 12:00 AM EST and 4:00 AM EST

Tech once again has been an amazingly vibrant market in the last week of August when news is generally slow. A recent trend has to do withtechnology companies playing nice with global governments to make sure they aren't rejected or find themselves out of favor like Google happens to be in China.

Nokia Spices up its Servers

Nokia for its part has decided to put servers in India to comply with local laws allowing government officials access to once impenetrable communications systems. You may recall India recently had some issues with not being able to monitor messages sent on Blackberrys.

Skype - an M&A Target

Skype made double news as late last night it was reported to be the object of an acquisition from not only Google but Cisco. These days it is becoming important to pick up networks with massive user numbers and with Facebook at a valuation of $34B, Skype at about $5B seems like a bargain to large tech firms with loads of cash and huge ambitions.

The world's leading Internet telephony company has further been busy rebranding its Skype for SIP service as Skype Connect - As veteran tech and gadget blogger Tom Keating points out the move makes sense as SIP is a techie term and I am sure the investment bankers involved in the company's IPO prompted this move as they scratched their heads when Skype execs explained the previous name of the service to them. The conversation likely went like this - "Ohh, it just connects Skype to corporate phone systems... Then why not just call it Skype Connect?" The rest as they say is history.

TMC Still Hiring

On the TMC front, we had a busy day hiring two new people in sales who started today and two new editors accepted job offers. We are still in hiring mode so if you know of awesome candidates in sales and/or editorial please direct them to us.

I failed to give you an update on ITEXPO last Friday and that is more because I didn't get a chance to get to my laptop - today's update will include news from today and Friday.

Second ITEXPO Show Hotel Block Sells Out

The Westin Bonaventure, and Omni Hotels in Los Angeles have sold out the room blocks we reserved and we now have a third room block we just signed for in the same Omni Hotel. This new block is very limited and the show is 34 days away. It will likely sell out (so will the hotel) by the end of this week. Details.

New Exhibitors

The booths keep streaming in and there are many more companies looking to sign contracts in the very near future. It seems like anyone and everyone you need to see will be at ITEXPO and related events.

• Level Platforms added as an MSPworld Exhibitor
• Palisade Systems added as an MSPworld Exhibitor
• PhoenixSoft added as a CVx Exhibitor
• Dualcomm Technology was added as an ITEXPO Exhibitor

There is also a compelling document which was sent out last week from channel market expert, Berge Kaprelian who explains why exhibiting at CVx (ChannelVision Expo) show helps companies meet face to face with the booming channel market and helps them stay in the decision-making process from the start.

Here is an update on New Speakers - We are thrilled to have the USTA and others as part of our conferences.

I also had a chance to interview James Awad, product manager for Octasic and as a speaker at ITEXPO West 2010 in Los Angeles, Awad provided insight into the expanding video technology industry in terms of where it's going, and how it is getting there. Get a sneak peek at what Awad will be discussing in the fall and moreover learn about video quality from the same company that pretty much revolutionized echo-cancellation in the telecom space.

Here is an excerpt:

On the flipside, the telecommunications industry is still learning to cope with this deluge of information. A new set of standards such as H.264, WebM (VP8), and HTML5 are being adopted by web browsers on both the desktop and in mobile devices. Video is becoming a seamless part of any on-line experience, whether it's a news report, Wikipedia page or corporate marketing. In order to support this video traffic, the routers and gateways that move all this content around are being scaled upwards to cope with this exponential demand.

One emerging requirement is that of video transcoding, brought on by the wide range of endpoints that are encoding and decoding this media. Octasic is a leader in silicon and software solutions that solve this processing bottleneck when it comes to video processing, which includes transcoding.

As the global economy sputters, tech continues to be the bright spot which allows companies to save money and explore new opportunities. There are untold hundreds of billions of dollars to still be made in the video space, wireless, smart grid, M2M, cloud computing, SIP trunking, videoconferencing and collaboration markets. While so many industries seem to have a gray cloud cast over their future, we are all very fortunate that tech innovation is coinciding with the global realization that tech and communications technology have the power to boost sales, service levels, employment and global economies.

I look forward to hosting you at ITEXPO and the dozen collocated and relevant events as we continue to discover new opportunities for us as an industry and as individuals looking to grow in our careers.

Dotcoms are what people recognize most online with .BIZ and others taking a distant back seat. Yet when I heard the .CO domain names were coming I immediately saw how they would be similar enough to .COMs that perhaps they could become the second most-popular domain name suffix.

The new top level domains come courtesy of the country of Columbia who will be one of the beneficiaries of related domain name sales.

Depending on market reaction it is possible that .CO domain names could increase wildly in value like .COMs and further they may even erode the value of a .COM address. It is a bit soon to know where the market is headed but I wanted to dig a bit deeper to learn more and share the information as it could become quite important to companies looking to protect themselves online from competitive threats.

To learn more I went to 1&1 Internet, one of the 11 exclusive domain registrars permitted to offer .CO as a domain extension to the public and conducted an email interview with the company CEO, Oliver Mauss.

Here is what he had to say:

What do people think a .CO means based on your research?

Really and truly, .CO has been attributed to mean a long list of things. Its origins stem from Columbia; however it has transcended this definition and taken on several new meanings. I think it is safe to say that company, community and collaboration are common concepts attached to .CO, but they are by far not the only associations made by the public.

How can companies benefit from acquiring these names?

This is something actually that can be said for all domains, not just .CO. Registering a primary domain and variations of the same web address can help increase traffic to a website and provide an added layer of protection to a brand or name, especially for  businesses.  In other words, an important goal for any business with a website is to use it as leverage for broadening their customer base and increasing brand awareness. By acquiring different alternatives of the same domain, those searching for a specific site will most likely be redirected to the correct web address.  As a result, owners of the original domain can be sure that only legitimate information, services or products are attributed to their name online.

For a business whose first choice domain is taken as a .COM, they now have the opportunity to register their desired domain as a .CO. With the success of .COM, this is a great chance for start-ups and entrepreneurs to get online and establish their business.

Will companies need to purchase a .CO if they have a .COM?

It is not so much a matter of need as it is a matter of providing your company with added security online.  .CO is a great way for any business to protect their reputation and brand on the Web.  Registering a .CO domain can help business owners ensure that others cannot use their company name maliciously while also driving more potential traffic to their site.

Do you expect there to be confusion between .CO and .COM?

I think at first, people weren't quite sure what the significance was of .CO.  There are a lot of "definitions" for it floating around on the Web so some questions did arise about what it stood for, who it's intended to benefit, and where it initially stemmed from.  The wonderful thing about .CO is that it can be molded to be beneficial for a very broad list of organizations and even individuals.

How expensive is this new domain name option?

1&1 is initially offering .CO domains for $29.99/year - competitively priced in lieu of the high demand.  It will be interesting to see how the rise of .CO may affect other Top-Level Domains in the short-term.

Since the launch of this domain name what activity have you seen in the market?

For 1&1, we have seen quite a positive impact on domains.  It received a very positive response and seems to have taken off, initially, as we hoped.  From what we can tell, the market overall has seen a good reaction after the official .CO launch.  Consumers and businesses alike are registering .CO domain names, but with the broad interpretation of it, I'm not surprised!  I think .CO has taken its place in the market as expected - as the next truly global domain.

How can readers learn more about purchasing one of these domain names for themselves?

Those interested in registering a .CO with 1&1 can visit our website, www.1and1.com, or call us for information.  The website www.cointernet.co however is a site developed to specifically provide general information about .CO domains.

In my opinion services like Satellite radio and personalized services like Pandora and Slacker are what I would consider Radio 2.0 so I read with interest a piece on Seeking Alpha which discusses Satellite Radio 2.0 which will blend the best of a service like Pandora with satellite technology. Patent #20090320075 filed by XM has a number of really consumer-friendly nuggets in it. Specifically it specifies what I have long considered a dream device - it will listen to multiple streams of satellite, HD and other radio and record content into playlists which it believes will be of interest to me based upon my likes and dislikes.

Basically, a merger of Pandora and TiVo on steroids - tapping into the vast archive of content on satellite, WiFi and elsewhere which could include news and sports.

At this point the realization of these features is speculation as patents don't always foreshadow real product developments. But when you couple the above with recent comments from Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius XM Radio - the pieces fall into place nicely.

Here is an excerpt from the above article:

During the second quarter 2010 Sirius XM conference call, Mel Karmazin introduced the Satellite Radio 2.0 concept and since then it has become the buzz word around the Sirius XM community. When introducing the Satellite Radio 2.0 concept, Mel Karmazin stated:

Our next generation of satellite radios are expected to offer significantly more choices for the consumer and contain functionality that does not exist today in our radios.

The only remaining question is when can I get one (in time for the holidays?) and will the Sirius iPhone app have access to all these features as well? Also, doesn't the next logical step need to be integration with video? The future definitely looks bright for consumers who love their audio content.

SkyFire Comes to iPhone

I was a huge fan of SkyFire on Windows Mobile as it approximated the iPhone Safari browser on a Windows Mobile device while also supporting Flash. Now it seems this browser is coming to the iPhone and I wonder if Apple will force the company to disable the Flash support to ensure it abides by the company's rules of not allowing other "programming languages" to run on it.

TMC Communities Continue Growth

Over a decade ago I had the idea that every Web site in the world would need content in the form of articles, audio and video and in order to help customers meet these needs I launched a company called infofill.com which I eventually decided would make more sense as a series of content-based communities living under TMCnet.

Over the years, I realized this product was the future of media and for a decade TMC has focused on building technology - specifically a proprietary content-targeting-engine which optimizes news and opinion pieces as well as videos for readers who in turn consume the content and help these micro-communities rank high on search engines and social networks.

I just received word that TMC has currently sold 199 of these news-generated communities and we are hiring to accommodate our growth as these custom communities are built and populated. I am fairly certain this is the largest collection of monthly sponsored news-generated communities on the planet. I'd love to hear from you if you believe this isn't the case.

Once again a major thank you to my readers and of course sponsors  - without you, TMC would be like a tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it and we are always looking to do whatever it takes to improve our products so you can rely on them when making purchasing decisions. We will likely put out a press release when we hit 200 and you know I like to keep my readers updated ahead of the rest of the world.

In terms of ITEXPO and related events it has been another solid day.

I can't recall if I mentioned lately that we are still giving away a car at this show - this year a Mustang Convertible. You have to be present to win Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 4:45 PM. TMC has been giving away a few cars a year at our trade shows year fairly consistently for about 15 years. Here are the details.
 

I am not precisely sure the Mustang you win will have the exact options seen in this photo or will be this color. Oh and I am pretty sure the cowboy costs extra

Our new speakers from today are as follows:

We released updates on the following events at the show today:

• SIP Tutorial: Carl Ford sent me a reminder about all the benefits of this session which include learning about SIP messaging, SIP Server types, SIP trunking, UC, security, firewall, NAT issues and more.
• MPLS University: I just learned there will be giveaways of Amazon gift certificates and Starbucks coffee cards - in addition to well-regarded education on a red-hot subject area.
• MSP World/ITEXPO - a general information update on these two events.
• SIP Trunk-UC Summit: A great event with A+ sponsors including Dialogic, Broadvox, Iwatsu, Mitel, ShoreTel, Intertex and the SIP School.
• Smart Products - Learn all you need to know about mobile health, smart health products, smart autos and smart homes from industry leading companies:
• Ed Daniels (Moderator)Consultant -Point of Care Partners
• Wayne Guerra, MD, MBA Chief Medical Officer -Healthagen, LLC
• Carol Glennon CEO -Renu Mobile
• Ronald J. Pion MD Clinical Professor -UCLA School of Medicine
• Robin Wright (Moderator) Partner -MedHealth World
• Dr. Philip Low Chairman, and CEO -NeuroVigil
• David O'Reilly Senior VP, Corporate Development -Proteus Biomedical
• Adam Kaufman Co-founder, COO -DPSHealth
• Sanjeev Gupta General Manager -Avaya Healthcare Solutions
• Ralf Hug (Moderator) Consultant
• Sascha Simon Advanced Product Planning -Mercedes-Benz USA
• Henry Bzeih Manager, Connectd Car -Kia Motors America
• Andrew Poliak Co-founder, COO -DPSHealth
• Sanjeev Gupta Director, Automotive Business Development -QNX Software Systems
• Jason Rodriguez (Moderator) Director of Research -Zpryme Research
• Seth Frader-Thompson CEO -EnergyHub
• Doug Smith Chief Administrative Officer -City of Annapolis
• Fred Taylor Senior Marketing Manager -Broadcom

We also added two new ITEXPO Exhibitors today:

• Sansay
• Strategic Products and Services

Here are two interviews I conducted today with ITEXPO participants:

Wow - what a day and you wonder why I didn't have time to deal with my new Sony Dash? I thought I would get to it tomorrow but turns out I have a meeting in New York with Cisco so expect more soon and be sure to make plans for ITEXPO West 2010, Oct 4-6, 2010 in Los Angeles ASAP and we'll see you there.

This morning my new Sony Dash arrived in my office and I have been meaning to set it up all day but failed. This gadget is essentially an iPad which is more chunky, cheaper and needs a plug to operate. Still, everyone I meet with these days asks if I have one and it seems like a tech rite of passage to have one of these in your office.

Phew - what a day. Crazy busy with meetings and deadlines. I have to leave soon and once I get this gadget hooked up and running I will have more to report. BTW, two items worth pointing out are the review of AT&T femtocell made by Cisco which Walt Mossberg says works best if the signal in your house is terrible or nonexistent.

In addition, the Dell and H-P war over 3PAR has turned into a battle which I believe has moved beyond a fight based on the merits of the acquisition and it has become an important symbol for both computer makers that they are on the right track. For H-P failure means the press will write stories about how weak they have become as a result the recent board and CEO issues.

For Dell, this deal symbolizes their strategy of taking H-P on in the M&A arena as they battle to become tech mega-supermarkets. It seems failure for either is unacceptable.

Fore more, check out coverage on TMC's latest site TechZone360

As I sat to write this month's column for Customer Interaction Solutions Magazine I came across interesting news from Google that the company has decided to launch a new service called Google Realtime which was a feature of Google's search prior to this move. By launching a separate site the company has taken on the search features of companies like Twitter but more importantly this new page could eventually become the official Google results.
 

There is another possibility. By unveiling this new search page, increased attention will be focused on the capability to use Google in a new way and as a result more people will use this page instead of the standard Google home page. If enough people do, Google is in a position to better determine which results are pertinent and this means these results will likely receive far greater attention in traditional Google search results.

Once again I remind my readers that if a single customer has a bad experience with your brand and they tweet about the experience and it subsequently gets retweeted, the potential exists for this result to be shown to your potential new customers as they search for your brand.
 

The threat of having search engine results pertaining to your company or products filled with results you don't control is more real than ever and sadly, customers tend to be less tweet happy when they are satisfied with a purchase.

As part of this new search service, users can refine a search based on town, state and country and they can further see a timeline of what people have said about a company or anything else. Moreover Google has now put together conversations so a searcher can see a customer complaint as well as responses from others who chimed in on the matter.

If this wasn't enough, you can set up realtime alerts to your inbox on any topic you are interested in. So if I am about to buy a Toyota and I set this feature up on the keyword Camry and Toyota and the company has a recall, I can be immediately kept in the loop on the happenings and obviously this can kill a deal as I am at the dealership and receive an alert on my phone.

From a social CRM perspective, companies who have put in place a solid strategy to deal with customer complaints and questions via social networks are at a huge advantage. McDonalds is an example of a company who has done a good job in this regards - I recently tweeted them about their Happy Meal gifts which they plan on giving in the future and they rapidly answered. By the way, the Happy Meal wasn't for me - it was for a friend.

Seriously though, the trend is very clear, social networking and Twitter in particular are allowing realtime conversations to take place and persist about your products and brand. They can break your company if you do not engage customers who are unhappy and get involved in the conversation.

I have spoken with company leaders who tell me they don't want to appear creepy and subsequently don't think engaging customers on Twitter is a smart move. I vehemently disagree as Twitter is a public forum and a basic tenant of providing proper service levels is to solve all customer problems you become aware of. Moreover, if you are CEO of a company that is in charge during a time when hundreds or thousands of negative comments are being made about you online and you do nothing about it, you will likely be considered incompetent in the future. I am of course assuming your company has something useful to add to the discussion like - we are sorry our eggs have salmonella, we take quality very seriously and this problem will never happen again.

This October 4-6, 2010 in Los Angeles the world will see the very first Social CRM Expo which is sponsored by my company TMC and if you care about how social media is impacting your sales, service levels and profitability, you must be there.

Companies at the event so far include Avaya, SugarCRM, LiveOps, Angel.com, Interactive Intelligence, Aspect, Genesys, Convergys, B-Lynk, Five9, Dialogic, KnoahSoft, Plantronics, Parature and Mzinga.

We look forward to seeing you there - just go to the ITEXPO site to learn more.

I've opined that Google is far more feared than Microsoft ever was as it can use your own content to compete with you and there is little if anything you can do about it. As an example I mentioned Yelp reviews were being scraped by Google to include in their Faces service. Moreover, I pointed out a staggeringly high 57% of Yelp's traffic comes from Google so altering their site so Google can't crawl it would be search engine suicide.

The solution seems to be a truce of sorts where Yelp reviews show up on Google search results but not on Places pages. Expect Google to make a massive push to beef up its user-generated content. And in case you were wondering, according to Alexa, traffic to Yelp from Google is the exact same 56.62% but it's worth watching to see if this compromise hurts Yelp's traffic over time.

One further wonders if the stage is now set for dictionary and weather service companies to reach out to Google in order to have their content no longer used in a disintermediary fashion which keeps traffic once-destined to these sites from getting there.

It's been a busy day in the world of tech news as Google who already has a telecom service in Google Voice has expanded it into Gmail with a two-pronged goal of making it easier to call via Google's network and making the Skype IPO less lucrative. In addition, cloud computing has heated up with Nimbula receiving $15 million dollars so the ex-Amazon founders can purse providing private cloud services.

On the TMC front, we officially released TechZone360, our new site dedicated to all things tech and sporting a new and cool interface we hope you love. My readers got an unauthorized sneak peak last week (thanks for not squealing on me) and you can see it has evolved quite a bit these past days.

On the ITEXPO front there has been lots of progress...

Storagecraft and Trend Micro signed up as MSPWorld exhibitors today making this show one which continues to show tremendous interest from exhibitors and attendees.

In addition, the following new speakers were added today:

SG-27    SPECIAL SESSION - Smart Grid Crystal Ball Outlook

Jamie Clark

General Counsel

OASIS

Smart Wireless Workshop speakers

The CDMA Development Group (CDG www.cdg.org) and the CDG Smart Wireless Special Interest Group (M2M SIG) are pleased to announce the Smart Wireless Workshop, which will be held on the afternoon of Monday, October 4, during the TMC 4G Wireless Evolution (4GWE) and M2M Evolution Conference, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA.

---

James Person

COO

CDG

Mitch Tseng

Consultant

Huawei Technologies

Bhushan Sethi

Smart Metering

Tata Teleservices Ltd

Venkat Eswara

Director Marketing

Motorola

Pat Verrington

Director, CDMA Service Portfolio

KORE Telematics

Joe Jumayao

Director, Bus Dev

nPhase

Weijun Lee

VP, Network Architecture

ZTE USA

Mike Ueland

VP & GM

Telit Wireless Services

Leonhard Korowajczuk

CEO/CTO

CelPlan Technologies

Peter Lancia

Sr. Director Marketing

Qualcomm

Nakul Duggal

VP, Technology

Qualcomm

----

Here are the latest interviews I conducted with speakers and exhibitors from the various events taking place with ITEXPO:

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One of the hottest segments of the tech space has to be the 4G wireless and this would explain the intense interest the industry has had regarding the 4GWE event which takes place with ITEXPO this October 4-6, 2010 in Los Angeles. Some big news from the show is the fact that a new keynote speaker was just added - Verizon Wireless' Executive Director of Network Planning, Chris Neisinger. It is tough to envision a more appropriate person to speak as Verizon Wireless is on a tear in terms of building its next generation wireless network and Neisinger leads a team responsible for planning Verizon Wireless' nationwide CDMA/EvDO and LTE architecture, including; base-station configurations, backhaul, switching, data network architecture, signaling systems, transport, and IMS. I cannot wait to be there to hear his thoughts.

Also, here is an important new announcement regarding 4GWE speakers and an excerpt:

• Monday 10/4, 11:45 AM, Keynote Lunch - "So Much Demand, so Little Time" by Jeff Thompson, President, CEO and Director, Towerstream will share his vision for the new age of devices, applications and carrier services.
• Monday 10/4, 3:15 PM, "WiFi - The Real 4G" by Brough Turner, Founder of BigBroadband.Net, will look at current WiFi deployments and illustrate why we are the tipping point of Broadband Wireless.
• Monday 10/4, 4:00 PM, "The Paths to LTE Deployment" by Jean-Pierre Lartigue, CTO and VP of Strategy for Alcatel-Lucent's Wireless Division, will discuss deployment possibilities and share his insights regarding the trends in spectrum utilization.
• Tuesday, 10/5, 8:30 AM, "Keynote: Enabling 4G Backhaul without Breaking the Bank", by JoeSchraml, VP of Marketing, Bridgewave Communications, will discuss how mobile operators can cost-effectively expand their networks backhaul capacity while enhancing their coverage.
• Tuesday, 10/5, 9:00 AM, Alvarion Keynote featuring Dr. Mohammad Shakouri, Corporate Vice President Alvarion and Vice President WiMAX Forum, an industry visionary and well-known expert in the field, Mr. Shakouri will share his 4G broadband vision with the 4GWE audience.
• Tuesday, 10/5, 10:30 AM, "Changing Tires on the Go: Bringing LTE to the Network and Building for Mobility" by Chris Neisinger, Executive Director of Network Planning for Verizon (News - Alert)Wireless, will discuss Verizon's build-out strategy and plans to support customer requirements.
• Tuesday, 10/5, 11:30 AM, "Providing Value as a Carrier's Carrier" by Qwest VP of Wholesale Services, Beth Halvorson, will discuss the future of Backhaul backbone Networks and the requirements of an expanding market.
• Tuesday, 10/5, 12:15 PM, "Supporting the Next Generation of Backhaul" by Peter Allen (News - Alert)President and CEO of DragonWave, will present ideas for providing the reach and scale needed to make wireless broadband a reality everywhere.

As you can see, this event is not like ITEXPOs of day's past - this is a mega-event with large-scale participation from every sector of communications and tech from optical to wireless to cloud to open-source and everything in-between. As always, I look forward to welcoming you to the show personally - this is the one event you need to be at this fall.

In the mid-nineties as the CTI market stormed onto the scene a slew of new unified messaging companies came onto the scene looking to sell systems which integrated voicemail into corporate email repositories and later IP-based phone systems. The biggest challenge of the day was the traditional interconnect or telephone system reseller didn't understand data and the data guys didn't get voice.

A new breed of reseller was born and the data and voice VARs who couldn't adapt were at a huge disadvantage which forced many of them to close up shop.

The agent market too is evolving as core products are being sold today through call centers and the Internet and if you are still doing business the way you did a decade ago, you are in deep trouble. One of TMC's writers most well-versed in the agent and channel space is Peter Radizeski and in a recent post titled 3 Reasons I Get a Rash from my Industry he expresses his dissatisfaction with the pace of change in the agent community.

He argues that ISPs who didn't evolve died and he is right:

At one time, there were over 7000 independent ISP's in this country offering Internet Access to a majority of America. The Independent ISP's were the ones who introduced dial-up to every corner of the nation and then foisted DSL on to the marketplace. Once the ILEC's got in the game, it started changing. But no one was really paying attention. Business models didn't change. New skills weren't added. Strategic partnerships weren't made. Instead, many sold out. The remaining ones today just got a swift kick in the groin by the ILEC's, but instead of getting mad and changing course, have simply said, "Thank you sir. May I have another next year?"

And this is exactly why his final words should be resonating with agents and resellers:

I fear Agents will be doing the same thing, since carriers don't need you to sell stuff that they can sell via a website or a call center.

I have made a living in-part bringing new ideas and business opportunities to resellers worldwide. CTI, IP communications and contact centers are a few areas I have focused on in my career and resellers who followed what I wrote and came to conferences sponsored by my company TMC were able to get a solid jump on the market and lock up exclusive territories with a slew of hot companies which became the must-have products of their time.

I'd like to say I can predict which companies will be the next surefire success but sadly I can't. What I can do is have my team of writers focus on the hottest prospects and that is what we do day on TMCnet and our various magazines day in and out.

In just over a month we are bringing together the largest collection of communications and technology thought leaders and companies together under a single roof at ITEXPO a show which had its humble roots serving the IP communications market. At this show you will find the latest communications products such as SIP trunking which are selling like wildfire (bad pun for those of you with a bit of telecom history).

In addition, you can come and find the latest in IP fax and also IP video and collaboration. Moreover, we have numerous collocated events the same week designed to help agents and the channel stay AHEAD of the curve. The value of finding out about the next new thing after the resellers are in place is fairly low - ITEXPO is the only in-person place there is in the world to see the hand-picked companies my team has put in place to help make you rich.
 

The first event is CVx or ChannelVision Expo - a partnership with TMC and experts in the channel space Beka Publishing. This is the newest channel show in the world and already has a solid following from the industry and we expect it to be a can't miss opportunity for the channel to come together and learn everything they need to know to stay ahead of the game.

In addition there is the MSPWorld event which is a partnership between TMC and experts in the managed services space the MSPAlliance.

Other can't miss opportunities for resellers include FtOCC Trixbox training, MPLS University, Cloud Communications Summit, SIP Tutorial, and the very popular SIP Trunking Summit which is now the Ingate SIP Trunk-Unified Communications Summit.

In short, as a reseller of any kind of service you need to evolve... Markets are changing and margins are being squeezed in traditional areas. All the while the opportunity to generate large amounts of a revenue reselling products and services from new entrants has not slowed down. Cloud computing is just one of the reasons for the new opportunity - how do you think hundreds of new cloud vendors will reach their markets? Through resellers of course! You must be at ITEXPO October 4-6 in Los Angeles, CA to learn more about the enormous opportunities which ahead. Register now and add to your calendar.

Apparently there is something called a tech addiction - at least that is what I heard as I was browsing the web from my iPad last night in bed while watching TV. I don't consider myself a tech addict as I only use technology when I am awake and only have 3 monitors and one TV in my office. Then again, I do have an electronic picture frame in here which is on its last transistors and a Sony Dash which should arrive any moment.

So I was very surprised when I heard a man in Queens, NY moved into his bathroom to cure his tech addiction. Now to me this makes little sense - because most bathrooms have WiFi and solid 3G signals (based on what I hear - I've never checked email or surfed myself from in there).

When it comes to real tech addition we should perhaps focus on our youth as they are spending an inordinate amount of time online and often posting things they shouldn't on Facebook or other social networking sites. This is why Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google suggested kids can change their names to avoid all the baggage which comes with their past online misbehavior.

Recently I voiced my concern for the abdication of personal responsibility in society (see my article on Business Insider) and I continue to think it is important that everyone is taught to be responsible at an early age. After all, we have a society which is instilled with large amounts of responsibility; we are less likely to produce the next CEO of Enron, Lehman Brothers and Bernie Madoff. Teaching people that they are responsible for their actions is a crucial part of them becoming self-sufficient adults.

BTW, this does not in any way imply I am perfect - I am glad there were no camera phones when I was at college parties. Still, tomorrow's potential employee will be judged amongst their peers and if everyone has a photo on Facebook of them being passed out drunk in a dorm room, it will be tough for an employer to hold it against you.
 

For more on these ideas, check out this tech-laden video above from Stephen Colbert who discussed the issue in-depth.

Check it out - iPADock is really flexible and something that will fit in nicely in any office it seems. More
 

I have lots of exciting news to report about ITEXPO West 2010 Oct 4-6 in Los Angeles - there will be a total of 12 collocated events at the show. Some of these include, 4GWE, Smart Grid, M2M, CVx, SPEC, Cloud Communications, MSPWorld, SIP Tutorial, VI Peering, App-Time and Lightwave ONE. There is also a Social CRM Expo, MSP World and much more.

I am trying to keep my readers up to date on what is happening in what is probably the most exciting tech week of the year. Here are some recent developments:

Here are brand new speakers:

Bill  Verthien

Microsoft

UC-05    Integration Strategies for Multi-vendor UC Solutions

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Rich Mavrogeanes

Founder & CTO

VBrick Systems

CC-02    How Video Changes the Way We Communicate

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Omar Onsi

Founder

Nymgo

B-12       Helping SMBs Achieve Maximum Global Connectivity

In addition, we have just added the following exhibitors to the various events:

• AliXinA
• GTRI (MSP World)
• Astaro

Finally, here are interviews with some of the ITEXPO participants who have responded so far:

This show will be the cant miss event of the fall and I personally look forward to seeing you there. Be sure to register now and book travel ASAP to get the best rates possible (the primary show hotel has been sold out for weeks).