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Nuance: Bright Future
December 14, 2006
Mass based Nuance Communications seems to have a very bright future with strong sales of desktop, medical and call center speech systems. The company has enviable market share: 90% in desktop dictation, 80% in call centers, and 60% in health care dictation. Seems like a very distributed revenue base. I wonder how the desktop dictation market will do going forward. It seems this market is poised for growth but it seems more a problem of getting users comfortable with speech as the technology is much better than ever.
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GlobalTouch Telecom and Cantata
December 14, 2006
I just ran into Greg Welch of GlobalTouch Telecom this week when I spoke at the VPF meeting in Los Angeles. He told me he had some news to share – some of which is now here. The company has just deployed a Cantata IMG 1010 including integrated transcoding and SS7 connectivity. GlobalTouch will use the gateway to bridge the PSTN and the IP network.
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International VoIP Growth
December 14, 2006
Is international VoIP growing or shrinking? On the one hand the market is twice the size of last year but on the other the growth rate has slowed for two quarters.
From my perspective there is a tremendous amount of international activity in VoIP now. Specifically there have been registrations at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo from the following countries just this week:
- Peru
- Germany
- Haiti
- Russian Federation
- Brazil
- Sri Lanka
- Pakistan
- Israel
- Hong Kong
- China (Peoples Republic)
- Nicaragua
- Columbia
- Mexico
To date, 46 different nations are represented on the pre-registered attendee list. This is great news for the international VoIP market.
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AT&T on VoIP
December 14, 2006
What is AT&T’s take on VoIP? Well nowadays they embrace it wholeheartedly. In fact they see VoIP as an integral part of their success going forward. They want to the be the enterprise VoIP service of choice. Did you know virtually all of AT&T’s employees use MPLS-enabled VoIP today? Neither did I.The company has a white paper on VoIP I thought you would be interested in because as you know making informed decisions requires educating yourself. Part of the white paper is a table explaining how to deploy VoIP depending on your individual requirements such as a greenfield environment or new one.
Educating the market on communications and technology is what TMC does -- this is why we have been building the best whitepaper library in the business. I suggest you read all the white papers that apply to your situation. There are some real gems in here.
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Saving Money on IP Communications Education
December 14, 2006
If you haven’t been watching, the early-bird deadline for conferences at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo (register) is approaching --tomorrow actually -- and we are talking about a savings of up to $1,000. The show is in 40 days so be sure to make your travel arrangements now as hotel prices will skyrocket soon. For many people there company foots the bill so this isn’t important. To us however, we would rather have you save some of that hard earned cash and spend it with one of the exhibitors at the show. It is just TMC’s way of giving back to the community.
Speaking of giving back, the conference program (PDF) has a ton of amazing new content I hope to cover in future blogs. We are also giving away a Harley Davidson Roadster and Toyota FJ Cruiser. You must be present top win however so be sure to plan your travel accordingly. I wouldn’t want to call your name as a winner and have to keep pulling names because you decided to leave sunny Florida for something like a business meeting. Hey this is the age of IP communications... You should be using telepresence by now. ;-)
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Verizon Shares Falling
December 14, 2006
Why are Verizon shares falling? Well it seems the massive costs of its FIOS initiative has investors wondering if the fiber to the home strategy makes the most sense or is AT&T’s cheaper plan to use copper in the last mile via its U-Verse initiative a better choice?.
A great concluding paragraph from a related article on TheStreet.com is worth sharing:
"People were OK with FiOS until they saw the cable companies were actually doing better, not worse," says one money manager with no Verizon positions. "Winning phone customers is always a lot easier for cable companies than winning TV customers is for phone companies."
My take on all this is AT&T is doing the right thing in the short term and Verizon is doing the right thing in the long run. What am I talking about? Well simply stated copper bandwidth can be increased and increased but to a point. Sooner or later consumers are going to demand gigabytes of bandwidth to play multiple 3-dimensional games and to watch 3-D movies and to take advantage of telepresence. The question is how far can we stretch copper technology? Certainly there are a slew of companies working on this problem but in the end fiber has virtually unlimited bandwidth and copper does not. At least not for now.
So the battle here is over making the right decision for the long haul and I believe Verizon is doing the right thing. Especially in light of the fact that they have to compete with cable companies who have coax. Wall Street may not get all of this and that is probably the reason the stock is getting punished. In addition Wall Street usually won’t focus on a few years down the road – just a few quarters ahead.
Still, making the right long-term choice as a public company may be as difficult as getting through the holiday season at TMC without getting tempted by the delicious daily gift baskets sitting in the kitchen. At least at TMC the problem erodes after Christmas – well really after Easter. Verizon will have to struggle much longer.
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Google Bank
December 14, 2006
Is Google thinking of getting into the banking business? Well according to this Motley Fool article the company has done something novel with its stock options program allowing options granted after the IPO to be traded on the open market once they vest. This protects employees from a stock price meltdown and should in theory lead to happier workers. The program is not for Google executives by the way so we can’t assume this is a way for the top brass to sell stock early on bad news. Rick Munarriz makes the logical leap that this marketplace could become the underpinnings of Google Bank. He could be correct. The company currently wants to organize the world’s information, why not our money as well. I’m game. What’s the interest rate?
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