What I really love about ITEXPO events is the networking opportunities and how much I can learn in a few minutes of relaxed conversations with colleagues. I had a chance to hang out with close friends and new ones in the industry last night. I got to see Mark Lyons from Vonage for example and noted he is one of the most passionate people in VoIP. He is the VP of Sales -- VAR Channel and was sharing stories of meetings he has had in
When you get a group of passionate people from the industry together and start drinking some wine you learn a great deal about everyone's view of the market. Mark Spencer of Digium was there as was Christian Stredicke of SNOM.
It is interesting to put people from the open source community together with those in more traditional commercial businesses. You get heated and passionate discussions as the business models are so vastly different.
If there is one thing I learned it is that you don't want to debate Mark Spencer or play him in pool for that matter. He is eloquent, to the point, very knowledgeable and almost cleaned the table on a single turn last night. (Thankfully he was on my team as I think I sank one ball in two games!)
I am actually debating Mark myself today on-stage at 10:15. We'll be discussing open-source Vs. closed systems and we know who is taking which side already. Mark can distill complex technology into English rapidly and is very likable so this will be the toughest debate I have ever had.
I figure the best way to do this debate is a "Hardball" style format where we debate each point. I may open it up to the audience to see if they have some questions to ask as well. It will be a highly educational day today. We have the best speakers we have ever had at ITEXPO and many people told me last night how happy they are with the conferences. Keynotes start at 9:00 AM and I am looking forward to seeing you all there.
February 2005 Archives
The exhibit hall was a mob scene tonight. Exhibitors told me this is the busiest show they have ever seen, beating the Internet World events of '99. Thanks to all of you that have made this show such a success and for those of you that told us you learned a great deal at the event.
These shows are all about you, the implementer of VoIP. This I the exact reason why all of my sessions took so many audience questions as your questions are always the best ones.
The Future of IP telephony session tonight was my favorite panel of the show because I got to learn where the industry's going and there was such a great exchange between the audience and the panel.
The audience interaction tonight has convinced me that this session is worth doing again and again. Thanks to those of you that participated!
Overwhelmed! That is the best word to describe my feeling as I walked through the conference sessions today. Virtually all conferences were standing room only. For example, Toshiba's David Fridley spoke in an IP PBX session that had over 150 people and at the same time there were 500 -- Yes, 500 resellers in the keynote room listening to a panel session I moderated on how to make money in VoIP.
I don't have final numbers but it seems like around 800 people in the conferences this first day so far. Amazingly many of the conferees from the 70 registered countries were everywhere. Speakers couldn't believe how international this show has become. The exhibit hall is open today at 6:00 PM and then on Thursday and Friday. Please see www.itexpo.com for specifics. I am looking forward to seeing the hall as I haven't been down there in a few hours. Instead, I came to my room and blogged the great news with all of you.
One last point, we had a session border controller shoot-out running simultaneously with a UNE-P to VoIP Summit and both were standing room only when I checked the rooms. This event has become a strong service provider show. Many speakers pointed out how our service provider audience is growing very quickly.
Last night I called MIS frantically due to a Blackberry failure in the middle of ITEXPO. A few hours later the problem was solved. Credit it seems goes to RIM itself since every Blackberry everywhere didn't' work last night. If you're about to scream at MIS, hold off... It wasn't their fault.
I am getting ready for my keynote in about an hour. VoIP 2.0 is here!
You want to know when attendees come to your event? You don't need to see them. Just come to your hotel room and try to work the morning of conferences and watch your Internet speed die. The Hyatt's Internet service last year was "Not Exactly," but now they have upgraded by outsourcing the service to T-Mobile who has Hot-Spotized (is that even English) the hotel.
At least T-Mobile knows what they are doing. They charge you a lot but on the back-end you get rock-solid and reliable service. That is until the attendees showing up.
I just checked the database of registrations and what an active database it is. People are registering faster than one per minute... They are pouring in. What is more interesting to me is the fact that these registrations are not only
Amazingly we have just under 5,000 people registered for the show. I have no idea how many people will register onsite but we are braced for record registrations. To save yourself time please register online at www.itexpo.com.
I am blown away at how much show news there is already and we haven't even opened the exhibits... They open tomorrow evening (Wednesday, 2/23) at 6:15 PM. Make sure to check out the ITEXPO show buzz page and TMCnet regularly so you know what is going on.
I am looking forward to seeing you all soon. I am getting ready to moderate a panel in less than two hours titled SIP's Role in Open-Source. It is part of the Open-Source Telephony workshop. My panelists are Al Brisard from Pingtel, Alan Percy from AudioCodes, Christian Stredicke from SNOM and Daniel Petrie from the SIP Foundry.
Popular Telephony will be working with Commoca and TI to introduce a color, touch-screen phone with Popular Telephony's p2p technology embedded inside the device. I am looking forward to the seeing the Popular Telphony products in action at this week's Internet Telephony show in Miami. I have had many people asking me about Popular Telephony's Peerio technology and if I have seen it. I am looking forward to answering them once I get a demo this week at the show.
POPULAR TELEPHONY AND COMMOCA PARTNER
TO PROVIDE THE PEERIO-ENABLED TERMINAL
Peerio to be incorporated into Commoca’s Open Touch
Color touch-screen IP terminal based on Texas Instruments chipsets
Miami, FL and Sophia Antipolis, France, February 22, 2005 - Popular Telephony, the pioneer of serverless communications and inventor of Peerio, today announced at the Internet Telephony Conference, a strategic partnership with Commoca, the leading US designer of advanced IP embedded solutions.
The agreement enables the integration of the Peerio embedded middleware into Commoca’s high-end touch-screen IP phone. Commoca is partnering with Texas Instruments for their VoIP technology.
Based on TI’s advanced TNETV1050 IP phone platform and with Peerio integrated into the core, the touch screen IP phone will become a highly intelligent, self-managing and self-healing, telephony device for serverless, peer-to-peer enterprise and broadband communications. Commoca will offer their IP phone to a range of customers ranging from large enterprises, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to home users.
“Our relationship with Texas Instruments has allowed us to work with Commoca to add a very significant and powerful platform to the growing portfolio of Peerio enabled devices currently available. Popular Telephony has now licensed its telephony application suite to more partners than almost any other IP-PBX or traditional PBX manufacturer in recent history.” says Gavin McFadyen, marketing director with Popular Telephony. “The Commoca IP terminal allows us to develop and deliver customized applications for hospitality, call center and financial markets to name just a few of the actual projects already under way. “
Peerio is a groundbreaking middleware for embedded communication devices. Peerio-enabled devices and soft-clients, collectively, form a bespoke server-free telephony system - feature-rich, redundant and massively scaleable, replacing the IP-PBX and other old-fashioned systems dependant upon a centralized architecture. The new serverless IP telephony system design offers enterprises a great deal of flexibility along with substantial financial savings of up to 80% on the system cost and 90% on the maintenance. A protocol-agnostic solution, Peerio operates with all industry-standards based terminals including SIP and H.323.
Commoca’s IP phone is a high-end sophisticated terminal with quality touch-screen display supporting hundreds of advanced enterprise and residential applications, including different types of productivity tools and value-added services. The device uses other TI partners’ software products and has undergone advanced tuning to deliver superior sound quality compared to other IP and digital telephones.
“Commoca is pleased to deliver compelling IP phone products incorporating the leading serverless solutions from Popular Telephony and the most advanced integrated chip technologies from Texas Instruments,” said Matt Harrison, Chief Operating Officer of Commoca. “Our customers benefit from cost effective, highly reliable solutions that are easy to deploy and use.”
“We’re excited at the advancements in IP telephony being announced today by Popular Telephony and Commoca,” said Angela Raucher, IP phone business manager, TI’s VoIP business unit. “This certainly opens up more opportunities for VoIP technology in the burgeoning peer-to-peer enterprise and broadband communications industry.”
About Popular Telephony
Popular Telephony Inc., recently named to the Pulver 100, is a privately held VoIP telecommunications middleware company, focused on bringing true serverless communications technology to market. Popular Telephony is the inventor of Peerio serverless communications middleware to enable the creation of various types of serverless applications With a strong patent portfolio, and a leadership team led by Internet Telephony industry veterans, the company aims to be the leader in the peer-to-peer telephony technology sector.
Popular Telephony is a U.S registered corporation with offices in
For more information about Popular Telephony, visit the company’s web site at: www.populartelephony.com
About Commoca
Commoca, Inc. is the leader in providing beyond voice revenue generating products and services to VoIP-based providers and Original Equipment Manufacturers. Commoca’s core technologies enable customers to differentiate their products and services to realize new revenue streams via patent pending telephony products, applications, search, contextual based advertising, and mobile user experience portability.
http://www.commoca.com
VoIP peering will be much bigger than I thought. There are some very big announcements brewing in this space… One will happen probably tomorrow and the other in the next week or so. I am sworn to secrecy so I will have to keep the details in confidence.
Simply stated, service providers are beginning to take notice of his market and are starting to consider interconnecting with companies that run VoIP peering networks. Service providers (read: large CLECS) are also looking at connecting to centralized ENUM repositories so they can transmit calls at no cost between members.
I can’t tell you who is making the announcement but I can tell you that I am hearing about more and more companies looking at VoIP peering as a way to take their phone costs and slash them so low they become inconsequential.
One of the comments at a dinner I was at tonight was that if Verizon can wait another few months to make its bid, MCI will be worth a few billion less! All due to peering!
While I think the above statement is aggressive, the reality is that companies can connect to peering networks with simple devices that cost around $60 per user. They don’t have to change any equipment in the office. No new PBX. This simple gateway device is ENUM and SIP enabled meaning calls will be checked against a central ENUM database when they are made and can go over the network at no (or little cost). Even if the number isn’t in the ENUM database it will be cheap as it becomes a VoIP call.
I can’t wait to hear about all of this at the VoIP Peering Summit today (Tuesday 2/22/05) at noon!
Here is another ITEXPO release. UNE-P has been getting lots of press lately. I am looking forward to hearing Shawn Lewis speak on how service providers should migrate to VoIP.
Volo Founder/CEO Shawn Lewis Featured Speaker
At Upcoming Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO in
Lewis Presents Two Topics from Internet Telephony Magazine's 'Survival Guide to a Successful VoIP Migration' Educational Series for Service Providers
Widely recognized as the largest Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) marketplace in the world, the Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO is a targeted and innovative four-day, bi-annual event. The 11th Conference & Expo takes place February 22 - February 25 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in
"We feel it is important to bring industry leaders who understand the technology behind VoIP to help educate CLECs and service providers about the issues surrounding how to begin offering these services. Shawn Lewis, who wrote the patents for the first softswitch and the first SS7 Media Gateway, and is Founder and CEO of Volo Communications - a successful wholesale broadband services company - is the perfect person to present these topics at our conference," said Internet Telephony Magazine Publisher
At the event on Feb. 23, Lewis will serve as subject matter expert on topics from Internet Telephony magazine's featured educational series, "Service Providers' Survival Guide to a Successful VoIP Migration," which is being published from February through June. Lewis will present the first two topics from the February and March issues which are:
Is There Life After UNE-P?
Wednesday - 02/23/05, 10:15-11:00am in Room Hibiscus B
CLECs know their UNE-P days are numbered due to recent regulatory rulings, and their business plans are in jeopardy without IP-based technology. As such, they are turning to VoIP in order to grow their business, and protect against a large loss of revenue tied to their UNE-P business model. There is talk that several of the largest UNE-P providers are planning their transition by geographically concentrating their marketing activities around central office concentration, and then installing soft switching and broadband access gear in each central office to provide next-generation services. Is this a viable, long-term business model that will work? This session will outline a low-cost, high-quality VoIP strategy that speeds time-to-market, assures carrier-grade quality, and enables early entry without the CAPEX requirements associated with building a new network.
What to Look For In a Wholesale VoIP Partner
Wednesday - 02/23/05, 2:00-2:45pm in Room Hibiscus B
Industry analysts believe the wholesale market opportunity creates a large business opportunity for new, next generation wholesale carriers. The market for wholesale broadband voice services in the
Additional Survival Guide topics that will be published in the April through June issues of Internet Telephony magazine are:
Next Generation Networks: Should You Build or Buy?
VoIP Applications: To Host or Not To Host? - That is the question
VoIP Product Packaging: It's Not Just About Price Anymore
About Volo Communications, Inc.
A certified CLEC and IXC, Volo Communications is revolutionizing the communications industry with its advanced VoiceOne next generation network. Volo is a carrier's carrier that offers wholesale broadband voice, advanced hosted application services, including origination and termination services that enable carriers, CLECs, IXCs, cable operators, ISPs, and resellers to provide carrier-quality voice and data services to businesses and consumers. The VoiceOne MPLS network is protocol agnostic, supporting virtually any protocol including SS7, PRI, H.323, SIP, MGCP, AAL/1, etc. and utilizes both TDM and Packet switched technology.
Volo is wholly owned by Caerus, Inc., the parent company of Caerus Networks, Inc., and Caerus Billing, Inc. The three companies together provide a customized end-to-end solution that is unmatched in the industry. Caerus, Inc.'s founder wrote the patents for the first softswitch and the first SS7 Media Gateway.
Caerus Networks, Inc. is the technology development arm of the company, and Caerus Billing is a billing and mediation software company. Both companies provide in-house services for third party service providers and carriers.
Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC).
TMC publishes two print magazines: Customer Interaction Solutions, and Internet Telephony; five digital publications, SIP Magazine, Speech-World, WiFI Telephony Magazine, VoIP Developer, WiMAX Magazine; and the online publications TMCnet.com, Planet PDA Magazine, WiFI Revolution, Alternative Power and BiometriTech. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. TMC also produces The VoIP Developer Conference, Speech-World Conference, IP Contact Center Summit and The Global Call Center Outsourcing Summit. TMCnet.com publishes more than 25 topical online newsletters. For more information about TMC, visit its Web site at www.tmcnet.com.
A T-Mobile database break-in allowed hackers to steal many customer records and notably Paris Hilton, one of the highest profile T-Mobile customers was hacked. All her personal records were also posted on the internet.
Perhaps
Paris Hilton Hacked
Speaking of publicity,
Lest you think my blog has turned into an electronic supermarket tabloid, I promise you I have a hook to technology. You see VoIP security is a crucial topic these days as it allows phone calls to travel over pure IP networks. Imagine if
I am looking forward to greeting you in person.
Industry pundits say no one is making money in VoIP. People who make predictions like this are so out of touch with reality they are probably on their way to Neverland with the kids for vacation. I keynoted at an ABP user conference and had a "distinguished" speaker from MCI say in front of an audience of resellers that no one is making money in VoIP except for conference organizers! (Here is a hint, his initials are Dr. H.S.) While I can tell you first-hand that the VoIP conference business is doing great, I wasn't prepared for the number of resellers who came up to me at lunch to say they are making a killing selling VoIP products and services. Yes the opportunity is very real and we were on-track to attract over 1,000 resellers to this ITEXPO! This is a record not seen since the 2000 time-frame.
Why are resellers coming in droves? Because people are buying VoIP products in record numbers.
Recently we decided to survey some of our web visitors, including the Internet Telephony Magazine online readers and it is amazing to see how much purchasing is going on among the TMC community. Here are the stats:
87% of the visitors are personally involved in the purchase of VoIP products
83% plan on purchasing products and services in the next 12 months.
These are the actual products and services that will be purchased:
Product | Percentage of Purchases Among Audience |
IP Phones | 70% |
VoIP Gateways | 61% |
WiFi Telephony Products | 53% |
IP PBXs | 45% |
IP Video | 43% |
SIP Phones | 41% |
Network Management Tools | 34% |
So there you have it. People are buying VoIP products like never before. Logic tells us that resellers are needed for many of these installs. With growth numbers like this, who isn't making money in VoIP and more importantly who has their head in the sand (and that's putting it nicely)?
BTW, Wednesday, February 23 is VoIP Reseller day at the show and we are offering this session free to all resellers. Why are we doing this? One simple reason, without a very healthy reseller market, the VoIP industry cannot flourish. To be honest, many engineers who develop today's VoIP products have the marketing skills of a corpse and distribution skills worse than their marketing skills.
Over the years I have seen countless VoIP companies with amazing products fail miserable because they have no marketing or distribution strategy. Trillions of dollars of investment (in technology in general going back a few decades) have been blown by technical and financial people who head up companies and think customers will find them without sales and distribution!
In every case, they are 100% wrong and will stay wrong forever. Even Apple with the lion's share of the portable music player business market like they are laggards in the industry. As a distribution strategy, they opened their own stores! In addition, every company is dying to resell a product with such a huge marketing budget.
The most successful companies have people at the top that understand sales or marketing. If they understand both then that company has an even better chance of succeeding.
Enough ranting. My goal is simple. Educate resellers. Make them rich. Have them grow and take on more and more VoIP products to resell. As this happens, customers get better pricing and more choice and the VoIP market flourishes. VoIP resellers... Welcome to the TMC family.
If you are a reseller that wants free press please send me the details of your successful deployments. I will make sure we highlight your achievements for the world to see.
Are there really VoIP killer apps out there? While there are heated debates about this issue in Internet Telephony Magazine, I believe there are killer apps and that the killer app of VoIP will be a laundry-list of features as opposed to a single application. Time will tell whether I am correct but in the mean-time I will continue to present you year after year with some of the industry's best and brightest applications for you to evaluate Come see the show and you can judge for your self if killer-apps in VoIP are hype or reality.
Join us in Orchid C at 1:00 PM on Thursday, February 24, 2005 to see it in action.
Here is the schedule:
1:00-1:45 | Aculab |
2:00-2:45 | Interstar |
3:00-3:45 | Nimcat Networks |
4:00-4:45 | Vonexus |
Everyone is eligible to attend this session.
VoIP 2.0 may be the theme of this event and I sincerely believe this is the future of communications. Don't take my word for the future of your communications. Sure I work with all the industry leaders and visionaries in VoIP all day long but to really get a feel for what's next I urge you to come the Future of IP telephony panel at 5:15 PM in the Flagler/Monroe Ballroom. These are the companies represented on stage with me:
Lucent | Aculab |
Motorola | Quintum |
Net.com | SNOM |
Altigen | Qovia |
Everyone is eligible to attend this session.
At last year's Miami IEXPO I toured Terremark's NAP and was blown away at how high-tech this facility was. If you want to see a true state-of-the-art carrier neutral facility, you won't want to miss the tour that takes place Tuesday at 6:15 PM, February 22nd 2005. You need to preregister for the event and please do so quickly as I am afraid the tour will be filled to capacity soon. Please e-mail voip@terremark.com or call 305-860-7830 for details and to register.
Everyone is eligible to be part of the tour. Terremark will make the final decision on admittance to their facility.
Please check my blog often this week as I will detail the "Can't Miss" sessions from the show. In addition I will be detailing what you need to know at the show and how to best benefit from the intense and in-depth educational experience. What amazes me about Internet Telephony Conference & Expo is how the conference and general sessions at this event truly capture the essence of what is important in our industry. We really haven't missed any important trend. I think we really pegged the future of this industry with this event.
For example, the VoIP Peering Summit gives service providers and enterprises a unique perspective on how peering voice over IP calls will help us establish tomorrow's "Voice Internet." We have as much in-depth and focused content on peering as you will find anywhere and in my opinion our presenters are second to none... Two of the world's top VoIP peering evangelists, Hunter Newby from Telx and Shrihari Pandit of Stealth Communications.
A look at the list of speakers in fact shows we have every other VoIP peering visionary presenting at this event as well while other crucial players will be in attendance according to a scan of the registration database.
One other presenter worth mentioning is Mark Spencer of Digium/Asterisk/Dundi fame who will be discussing enterprise peering. This is in addition to our open source telephony debate which should be great fun. I just hope I don't get beat up too badly. Mark has been on numerous panels at TMC events and has proven himself to be a great presenter/debater.
You must be a paid conferee to participate in this summit.
