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Zultys Restructuring Documents

October 2, 2006

Recently I was sent the Zultys restructuring announcement as well as the Chapter 11 filing. If you aren't following it, there is a very lively debate taking place on my blog about the future of Zultys, what led to its demise and the company's future. Past employees, current employees and a number of resellers have differing views on the future of the company. Many call the discussion a soap opera and I agree.

The one thing that resonates with me is what some of the Zultys community had to say about the number of people who looked at the company's financials over the past year. I provided the list at the bottom of this post and it is staggering. It seems only HP, IBM and Cisco are absent. And what is Dell doing on this list? Actually sources tell me Dell has been approached numerous times by p2p VoIP phone companies in the hopes the Texas-based computer giant would start carrying their own line of p2p phones.

If you check out this story I wrote last year, P2P VoIP Kills The PBX you can see I have been expecting a computer maker to get into the communications business at some point soon.

At the time I wrote the above-mentioned story, my sources hinted at Dell's marginal interest level on the matter and I think if they were very interested they would have picked up Nimcat Networks before it fell into Avaya's hands. Regardless, the fact that Dell was interested in Zultys financials at all is a big deal and may be sending a clear signal that Dell is looking at seriously entering telecom.

-----

Alcatel USA
Avaya, Inc.
Dell
Ericsson
F5
Foundry Networks
Fujitsu
Hitachi
Ideacom
Intel
InterTel
Juniper Networks
Packeteer
NetGear
Samsung
Shoretel
Tadiran Telecom, Inc.
Tandberg
Toshiba
Vodavi Technologies
Patton Electronics
Telrad Connegy (Avi)
InPath
Millenium Technology Ventures
Acclaim Ventures
Platinum Equity
Silicon Valley Bank
Gordian Group, LLC
Invester Growth Capital
Investor AB
Investor Growth Capital

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In the Company of Royalty

October 2, 2006

The point at which blogging becomes mainstream is either when most of the world checks blogs frequently or perhaps it is when a princess in Thailand decides to start one. Either way it is very interesting that blogging is being embraced so many. And the funny thing is many company execs likely think they are still too important to blog. More.

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Microsoft and the BBC

October 2, 2006

According to this article Microsoft is working with the BBC to redistribute the British Brodcasting Corp's content.

This coupled with the recent news about Zune and Microsoft's competition to iTunes shows how serious the Redmond-based company is taking the competition. It would seem the company with access to the most and best content will win the war. This is exactly what Sirius and XM seem to think.

Blogged via wireless handheld

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Heading Home from CA

October 2, 2006

Old post stuck in e-mail to blog limbo

It has been a great week. I got to meet a whole bunch of new people and some old friends out here in California. I even spent a day in San Diego home of ITEXPO in 2 weeks. I have met with so many companies lately I haven't had time to share all the news. The best part of this trip had to be the food. California has amazing restaurants. I am always thrilled by them. I had lots of Asian, Brazillian and Mexican. Hard to believe I was here for less than a week. Maybe the best part of the trip was missing traffic. I think I may have lost 90 minutes or so after a few hundred miles of driving. I hope to find some time to blog all my meetings very soon. Stay tuned.

Blogged via wireless handheld

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Headed to the West Coast

October 2, 2006

I am off to LA today but I have scheduled a few blog posts to go live this week so check back regularly. I am flying American Airlines and I am pretty sure the parking structure hasn't been finished. As a result I am on the monorail hoping I am going in the right direction. Wish me luck.

Blogged via wireless handheld

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Police Update

October 2, 2006

Old post stuck in e-mail to blog limbo

Great news. A guy who is built like a 2-family house is now sitting next to me and breathing like some animal from Wild Discovery. I am not sure I like how this is going. If you don't hear from me in 10 minutes someone call 911 - please use the PSTN just to be safe.

Blogged via wireless handheld

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At the Police Station

October 2, 2006

Old post stuck in e-mail to blog limbo

I must have blogged about my wife's pink "Barbie" phone from Motorola. Well it turns out that she lost it and thankfully has insurance on it. This of course means in order to get a replacement phone we need a police report. The phone is in my name so here I am at the local police department. The girl behind the desk almost laughed when I told her I was here to report a lost phone - certainly the concept of CRM is not discussed here too often.

She then told me to have a seat. Well the seat is right by the door so an army of policemen have been passing me by looking at me suspiciously - like why is this geek typing on his phone? Did he break a grammar law or something?

Anyway while I love what policemen do to keep us safe but I would rather thank them with a donation to some police charity and go home and spend time with my family. It is a holiday weekend and this place is getting pretty lonely. I think I would even prefer shopping to this torture. Can't they have a website for this?

Blogged via wireless handheld

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The Hosted IP Communications World of the Future

October 2, 2006

If there is one thing I have noticed more and more in the last few years it is the market wants hosted solutions. There was a time about a year or so ago when I questioned whether this was the case. Lately though I hear more and more about customers who outsource to companies like Covad, M5, Packet8, Eagle ACD, Contactual and many others. There are so many companies supplying hosted solutions to companies of all sizes I lose touch of them all.

The irony of the hosted market is the hosting companies are hosting as well. In fact it seems like a series of Russian matryoshka dolls where the more you solutions you open the more hosting you see.

One of the companies making a living from the hosting of service provider applications is LogicaCMG the company behind much of the electronics in the Mars Lander. The irony of LogicaCMG is they supply solutions to over 300 network operators and their solutions are used by 800 million end user customers and pretty much no one knows who they are.

Of course the company's customers know them but it is rare to see a company with so many high profile customers keeping such a low profile

Hopefully this article will change that and many will know more about some of the company's strengths.

One of the areas where the company excels in fact is very popular in America -- American Idol is where their solutions enable service providers to absorb the instant onslaught of a tsunami of SMS messages. This is not a trivial task as you can imagine and most equipment would be on its knees with such a surge.

It is no secret all operators envy the sheer volume of SMS messages generated by a hit like "Idol," and when they are ready to deal with the demand they often turn to LogicaCMG for assistance.

In an interesting trend Greg Poumakis Director, North America tells me across their sectors outsourcing now represents 16% to 20% of revenue and they look forward to seeing older voicemail systems get switched over to their hosted platforms as well.

Greg also shared that while hosting was once an afterthought to service providers, every RFP now has hosting included in it. He believes market pressure is making this happen and service providers need to bring operating costs down. Part of the reason is they need to be nimbler and outsourcing lets them focus on their core competency.

LogicaCMG is also doing well in content management; billing, and other areas. They handle the digital rights management, access to content and systems integration. So one of the best kept secrets in telecom is a secret no more and as service providers look to the future and realize more of their customers are looking for hosted solutions... They too are getting ready to host.

Whether you are an enterprise or service provider you owe it to your company and career to be at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo next week in San Diego, CA to learn about topics like IMS, IPTV, VoIP, SIP, collaboration, open source, voice peering and more.

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Voyager 510-USB Bluetooth headset

October 2, 2006

Thanks to Plantronics my life has gotten a lot easier as of late. I have so many wireless headsets connected to my phone it is just unreal. The headsets are connected serially making the whole contraption a bit of a mess. I just haven't had a chance to do anything with the headsets after I review them and manufacturers generally don't want them back so they just stay on my desk and the scene is like a giant headset graveyard. The situation with my computer is also messy as I have myriad wires connecting my phone to the inputs of my sound card so I can record interviews. In short I probably have as many audio and headset cables as Bill Gates has cables in his home entertainment system. Of course his are probably all made out of a titanium platinum alloy coated with diamonds but you get the point.

So making VoIP calls from my computer gets to be a pain because I haven't connected a switching system to allow me to use a wired VoIP headset and if I want to disconnect the cables from my phone to the computer so I can plug in a headset, I have issues. What issues? Getting a flashlight, digging under my desk and finding the computer and assembling it all back together when I am done. Also, my USB headset is always at home. When I remember I bring it in to conduct VoIP calls via softphone. But In reality I use the laptop for my VoIP calls so the USB headset rarely comes to Technology Plaza.

Recently though I needed to have a VoIP conversation and my laptop didn't have the ability to punch through the firewall with UDP packets so I had to use my PC. Thankfully Plantronics sent me a Voyager 510-USB Bluetooth headset which I had been meaning to try for quite some time.

I had a bluetooth adapter on my computer which I tried to connect to the headset but it just didn't work for whatever reason. I then realized I never use the bluetooth adapter for anything so I disconnected it and plugged in the Plantronics adapter that came with the headset. I then installed the CD that came with the headset and voila everything was connected. A few moments later I was VoIPing away like a champ and the beautiful thing is I can now use the same headset with my mobile phone.

My daily headset is a Plantronics Voyager 510S and I have beat this thing up something fierce. It has been dropped, twisted by my kids, thrown and who knows what else. It has taken the beating and always kept working. Occasionally the headset is out of sync with my Verizon XV-6700 but a simple reboot of the Microsoft-based OS device brings them back into sync. So I am looking forward to using the upgraded headset and who knows? The consolidation of the VoIP and mobile headset on my desk may start a trend in my life where I start to get rid of the older headsets I hardly use anymore.

So while you may think it is odd to couple a single bluetooth device with a mobile phone and computer I am hoping this Odd Couple will lead me to become more like Felix Unger and less like Oscar Madison.

You want to know about a truly odd couple? Next week the largest event in IP Communications will take place in San Diego, California. Internet Telephony Conference & Expo will be held in the San Diego Convention Center. Under one roof, attendees from up to 70 countries will learn about IMS, IPTV, VoIP, SIP, collaboration, open source, voice peering and more. A truly odd couple will be this award-winning event filled with hundreds of speakers and exhibitors -- without your presence. We hope to see you there. Register now.

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New VoIP Services Coming

October 2, 2006

Having written about enhanced services in the telecom space for about a decade or so it is refreshing to see so many companies beginning to talk about them. You see it is obvious we are on our way to cheaper and cheaper phone rates so the more sticky services providers create the better off they are. In many cases developing enhanced services is not so difficult to do -- you just look to an idea that is working somewhere else and modify it to fit into your particular situation.

An example of this is the digg model that took elements from other websites to build a community of democratized news aggregation and dissemination. And just like that the founder of digg found himself owning the 91st most visited website in the world according to Alexa. That's a rags to visits story if I ever heard one.

These are the thoughts that came to me when I had a chance to sit down with Rich Koch the President & CEO of RNK Telecom. You see RNK is a company in a nice position in the VoIP market. They are a wholesaler providing 100 companies VoIP service and they have 10 billion minutes a year going though their switches.

Over time they saw some of their customers doing well and others who weren't. They learned over time what worked and what didn't. They decided to get off the retail sidelines and pick up a ball and get into the game. Of course this was done with a launch and the name of the new company is ReVoS Internet Telephone Services.

This in and of itself is pretty boring. After all, there are lots of VoIP providers -- even more than the hundred RNK provides wholesale service too. So I pressed a bit asking what is different about the ReVoS service.

Generally when I ask questions like this from VoIP service company execs they immediately go into how they will undercuts Vonage. ReVoS is certainly no exception to this rule and there are some significant savings to be had by switching to ReVoS.

An example is a service for $24.95 per month that allows all you can call to China. By adding a feature you can easily call China from your cell phone as well. When you realize many cell phone rates to China cost $.80/minute you understand why this is a pretty sweet deal.

ReVoS has done an admirable job of providing the market with a myriad of international long-distance bundles that are more cost-effective and more enticing than run of the mill providers.

But getting to features the company owns a URL called SubjectTalk which is a really interesting voice community site. It is similar to a chat room with multiple rooms. There are rooms for sports, food, politics and other topics.

The service is pretty slick but in a test on a Sunday night I didn't see a tremendous amount of activity on the system. One of the features worth mentioning is the ability to hit *6 to make sure you never have to talk to a specific individual. All calls are anonymous which is really great for someone who is lonely and looking for some companionship.

Rich envisions being able to connect news stories to this service so at the end of an article there can be a phone number where people can call in and discuss the topic anonymously with others. In addition once users are speaking they can ask the system to provide a disposable number for 24 hours where callers can call each other and still stay anonymous.

The goal of this service is to voice-enable communities.

So a look at RNK VoIP shows a wholesaler, retailer and community builder. If you are looking for the optimal VoIP cushion, these are three business models that give you some diversity while allowing you to leverage your core competency. Rich tells me RNK is a software house and they hope to keep innovating. I am looking forward to seeing more enhanced services coming to the ReVoS brand and I am sure they will help the service differentiate itself.

Now for the multimillion dollar question, will SubjectTalk become the killer community building application of the next ten years? Is it the digg of VoIP? While it is tough to say there seems to be ample opportunity for a service like this to get adopted by newspapers and websites that have huge communities to begin with. They can generate revenue with ads -- the advertisers looking for new ways to make a splash online. There seems to be nothing to lose in this model and all that it needs to get it going is some initial buzz and perhaps a marquee customer like a major newspaper or news site.

One thing is for sure, the new services that could turn heads in the world of VoIP may be ad-based model and it makes sense to see how companies like Google have monetized their community and emulate their success in the world of IP Communications. By the way, if you have any comments on this article you will have to place them on my blog for now because TMCnet isn't currently a SubjectTalk customer. Perhaps we should be.

Where is the largest community of IP Communications decision makers going to be in a week? At Internet Telephony Conference & Expo learning about IMS, IPTV, VoIP, SIP, collaboration, open source, voice peering and more. If you are a service provider, reseller enterprise decision maker, member of the press, investor or analyst -- you should be there.

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