So I’m watching TV this morning and listening to the reporter talk about vintage computers and how they are going for at auction. Being the geek that I am I had to listen further. A few minutes into the BusinessWeek program they introduce none other than Evan Koblentz, the editor of a weekly newsletter on vintage computers.
Evan was the first ever TMC Labs Engineer
Nice going Evan, it is good to see a TMC alum do so well.
If you want to see what Evan is up to these days please visit:
Please be careful when doing business with any company claiming to be the Yellow Pages. There seem to be dozens of these companies masquerading around as the actual Yellow Pages that we all grew up with. I have Seen yellow pages Inc., True Yellow pages and countless others.
Apparently there is no law stopping people from starting companies with the name Yellow Pages, designing a logo that looks like the traditional Yellow pages and sending out invoices and other direct mail to try to get money from people that will confuse the two.
Case in point, I know someone who recently received a check from the Yellow Pages and cashed it. What they didn’t realize was the fine print on the back of the check that said they now owe almost $200 for a useless Internet listing.
Don’t fall for this scam.
I’ve known Citel’s Mike Robinson for a while and he has never been so enthused as the most recent chat I had with him about Citel’s future after the MCK acquisition. MCK was a very strong company in the 1999-2000 era. They sold remote access solutions and were well-respected in the industry. During the “crash,” they fell off the face of the earth it seemed. I didn’t hear from them so I assumed the worst. One of the key benefits to Citel in acquiring MCK is the breadth of legacy protocol experience both companies have together -- One on the remote access side and the other in the handset gateway arena.
In our conversation, Mike was especially happy to tell me about the VoIP opportunities for resellers... When coupled with a hosted solution, you can use Citel’s handset gateways to go into a customer site and tell them they will get more features, better service and a lower phone bill when they switch to VoIP. They’ll get features like simultaneous ring, CTI, web-based administration, find-me, follow-me, etc.
In his opinion, IP PBX sales are predicated on PBXs breaking whereas this sale is predicated on nothing. You go in and tell customers they will save money and get more. They can’t say no.
For reasons such as the above, we are seeing a massive surge in reseller attendance at our upcoming Internet Telephony Conference & Expo next week. Resellers are a smart bunch and follow the money. I’m actually involved in a panel on How to Make Money Selling VoIP. I asked Mike Robinson to present in this session as well. Hope to see you there.
A new company to the VoIP space, Apparent Networks recently released AppareNet, a product that measures MOS, latency, and bandwidth in an effort to determine if your network is VoIP ready. They use microburst technology to look for the signs of VoIP trouble without needing to install anything in your network.
I spoke with Apparent networks representative, matt Dion and learned a lot about the company. They can pinpoint the exact cause and location of jitter, latency and dropped packets, traffic overload and misconfigured networks.
As I’ve mentioned before this is an area of tremendous growth potential as voice over IP quality is something that can’t be taken for granted… It needs to be checked and measured continuously.
Recently I witnessed how a service provider can work with an equipment manufacturer to differentiate themselves and their offering to do things that other companies without the same types of ties can’t easily do. Sprint is working closely with Tadiran selling IP based telecom systems. With a new SIP server coming later this year the two will be able to enable remote video monitoring via the PBX as well.
I saw a sleek ZyXel WiFi telephony phone and a proprietary wireless phone working with the Tadiran PBX. All of these solutions by the way are sold under the Sprint IPX brand of products and can be sold only by Sprint authorized dealers. In order to receive the above certification, dealers need to receive brand and technical training.
A recent win for Sprint was the
Another area where Sprint has an advantage over other service providers is tight coupling with their wireless offering. OpenOffice for example allows cellular phones to act as extensions off the corporate PBX with every feature available in the office! Here is a great thing that this integration allows. Most cell phones can’t make international calls for security and fraud related reasons. Your workforce can continue to use cell phones that can’t call internationally but when they need to make international calls, they can just dial 4 digit extensions to make international calls to coworkers.
Tight integration is a tough thing to compete with. Tadiran and Sprint seem to be using their mutual relationship to sell more than either would sell on their own.
I recently rented a car from Hertz and can’t believe how much they charge these days. This latest rental was botched pretty bad due to Hertz mistakes and I probably wasn’t the most pleasant customer to deal with as I was late and about to miss a meeting. The agent behind the desk upgraded me to an Audi A6. I didn’t like it at first but it grew on me quickly and I loved the car after a few days. It has power and corners like a dream and has neutral steering. I highly recommend it to others. The only issue is the difficult to use computer/audio/HVAC system and a multitude of switches and buttons that could take a year to figure out.
So I saw Sideways last night. I don’t know what it was about before I saw it and am not sure I know more now. The movie might have been an insightful look inside the human soul or the comparison of vastly different personalities thrown together in the giant salad bowl of life.
Or perhaps it was just a stupid movie that I tried endlessly to understand. I am not sure if I was bored during the movie or perhaps trying to figure out why it was made. The critics seemed to love it and out of the 100 or so people in the audience, one of them clapped at the end.
I can’t recommend the movie to anyone but I’m no critic so take this amateur review with a grain of salt or two.
I recently met with Netcordia and learned about their VoIP Analysis Module that works with their NetMRI product. The product does active testing, QOS analysis and can make a path diagnostic chart showing you where the problem areas are. It can tell you if QoS policies are not enabled for example.
It can tell you about jitter, packet loss and other variables you need to know when managing VoIP in your network. The program uses SNMP to capture MIB data from devices across call paths.
The cost for the product is $25k for 200 routers and switches and 5,000 interfaces
QoS and monitoring ar hot areas in VoIP now. I don't see this area slowing down as voice quality will be a concern for quite a while.
I can't share the details but can tell you Inter-Tel has a very cool new product on the way that will make its customers much more efficient and productive. Keep your eyes on this blog at for details.
I recently met with NEC’s Jay Krauser and Bruce Grant to discuss their IP telephony strategy. NEC’s telecom division has always been a strong engineering company as opposed to other companies in the industry who focus more on marketing. Lately they have done a better job of promoting themselves than at any time in the last decade I can recall.
With this in mind I was curious to see if they are still focusing on engineering and developing leading edge products. It seems they are and more interesting they have some market-share numbers that are unexpectedly high. For example they have 7,000 call centers using their products and a huge number of agents per-center according to Jay and Bruce.
Soft clients are seeing tremendous growth and lots of customers are buying both phones and soft clients for their employees. They see the future as soft clients as the presence and directory apps are compelling reasons to switch to a softphone. We can expect to see some new USB handsets from the company in the near future.
The company also just released the UNIVERGE SV7000 Multi-Purpose Server (MPS) Linux-based IP voice communications platform. Developed for the SMB market, the product is a cost-effective solution with redundancy built-in as well as the ability to mix and match cards such as server and ISDN cards.
It supports up to 750 IP stations and is SIP enabled. In my discussion, NEC executives proudly proclaimed this system would save 40% on telecom costs and I asked 40% compared to what? They told me compared to traditional systems as system management such as moves/adds and changes will be less expensive. Here’s an NEC whitepaper on VoIP assessment which you may enjoy:
LONDON - (February 14, 2005) - U4EA Technologies, the leading embedded quality of service (QoS) software provider for multi-service networks, announced today that it has successfully completed another funding round Developed to support carrier and enterprise customers, U4EA’s next-generation network devices include two technologically advanced hardware products that will launched later in the first quarter of 2005. These products have been developed to enhance network access across converged, fixed and internet-based (IP) networks and enable simple migration to reliable triple-play communications. U4EA's Ethernet IP Telephony Adapter below: "In this Series D funding round, I am very reassured that those investors who backed us in each of the previous funding rounds continue to have confidence in our people and in the future prospects for our technologies and products," said Columb Harrington, chief executive officer at U4EA Technologies. "The drive for new, feature-rich applications across converged communications networks is unrelenting. Now tested and carrier-proven, we believe our core technology is pivotal to next-generation networking becoming a reality" About U4EA Technologies U4EA Technologies provides carrier-class, embeddable software components and hardware designs for multi-service network equipment. By integrating U4EA's software, manufacturers of edge and access devices can deliver products equipped for converged networks with a shorter time-to-market. U4EA's hardened, carrier-tested solutions enable reliable delivery of real-time, multimedia and mission-critical services, and have been brought to market in partnership with leading organizations such as Analog Devices Inc. and Ericsson AB. Headquartered in Bristol, UK, U4EA has a test facility in Sophia Antipolis, France and development facilities in Fremont, Calif.
Big news in the UNE-P world. The company formerly known as Z-Tel (now Trinsic) purchased equipment from Integral Access last December to allow them to transition to a facility based provider via UNE-L Lines, and Integral Access’ PurePacket Multiservice platform and softswitch based architecture. Now PCS1 is doing the same.
What is different with PCS1 is that all UNE-P lines are serving small businesses and that PCS1 will be leveraging not only PurePacket's POTS/ADSL2+ BLC capabilities but also Integral Access’ OUTburst IAD's (over G.SHDSL and DS1) to serve the larger SME's.
Integral Access is aggressively pursuing UNE-P providers which are now forced to look at different business models to survive. We believe that migrating to UNE-L with a complete voice and data service bundle is a viable and attractive approach to many UNE-P providers.
Remember to learn more, you will want to come to TMC's UNE-P to VoIP Summit at ITEXPO in
Probably the most exciting part of my job is being able to help leading companies in the world break important news. At the last Internet Telephony Expo in LA, Skype’s Niklas Zennstrom announced a slew of new products and initiatives. Zennstrom will be presenting again at ITEXPO in 
In addition, Time Warner Telecom will choose Internet Telephony Expo to make a huge announcement about their entry into VoIP. They say they will have something compelling and different to announce. I can’t wait to hear what it is.
Hear is the teaser text from the company:
Time Warner Telecom (Nasdaq: TWTC), the leading provider of voice and data networking solutions for businesses, invites you to a briefing as the Company launches its business-class VoIP strategy, products and services.
Capitalizing on its leadership position in Data and IP, Time Warner Telecom is launching new business VoIP applications over its metro Ethernet platform. Analysts have proclaimed Time Warner Telecom’s metro Ethernet suite as the most comprehensive in the industry with leadership position in breadth of services and network reach.
Time Warner Telecom’s VoIP strategy is different than most other service providers today with a focus on business-class service and convergence that delivers lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and improved ROI.
One last point... Expect a pragmatic approach, not a splashy, glitzy roll-out. The company is leading with substance, not hype.
Apple declared a 2-for-1 stock split today and I can’t believe the irony here. When they sold computers in the last five years, their prospects were dismal but now that they are a consumer electronics leader, they are growing, splitting stock and basically partying like its 1999 all over again.
The Elegant Mac Mini
My hats off to the company for turning things around when almost no body believed it could be done. When the iPOD was releases, no one knew it would do this well and I am sure the company is more surprised than the rest of us.
Leveraging this incredible success is the next goal and already they are launching products that play off the iPOD theme such as the MAC mini.
What is the future of Apple? They can become the next Sony if they want. The have the marketing an branding down and are now a consumer electronics force. They will likely have some sort of iVideo service (the URL is taken though) next to take on NetFlix. Their future is brighter than ever.
