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Kathy Johns
December 15, 2006
Heading back from Mass we were looking for a lunch place that was better than fast food you might find off the highway. The decision of course was Kathy John's restaurant in Storrs, CT located a stone's throw from the University of Connecticut (UCONN) my alma mater. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to stop by and see how the university has improved. The last time I saw it was five years ago or so and the campus was much nicer than when I was a student. I hear it continues to improve.
Back to the restaurant, the hodgepodge soup is still as good as always. The desserts looked fantastic but I resisted temptation. Back in the late eighties the ice cream at the restaurant came from the UCONN dairy and couldn’t be better. Kathy Johns is on the corner of route 44 and 195. It is still highly recommended.
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Happy Holidays and Thanks!
December 15, 2006
I would like to take a moment and thank all my readers and wish you all a great holiday season and a Happy New Year. In addition I want to specifically thank you all for visiting TMCnet so frequently as we have once again hit one million unique visitors in the month on November according to WebTrends. This is the second time this year we have done so. (Apparently our October numbers are still being run -- long story. We may have hit this number in that month as well.)
Thank you for making TMCnet the largest community of communications and technology decision makers in the world.
A few things you should know about TMCnet going forward are the site will soon have a more streamlined look that is easier on the eyes. We realize the site is busy but then again there is so much information to share it is difficult to present it all without appearing a bit dare I say cluttered.
Expect TMCnet to become much more flexible and customizable going forward allowing you to continue to count on the site as your primary resource for communications and technology news, views, opinion and analysis.
Thank you once again and Happy Holidays to all!
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Jon Shaprio: Larger Than Life
December 15, 2006
One comment I made in article a few months back has turned into a fun conversation in the industry. I called Jon Shapiro “Larger than Life.” Apparently this led to much ribbing of Jon and someone even designed a photo of Jon as larger than life. I have yet to see it but I promise to publish it if I get a hold of it.
So who is Jon? If you aren’t aware, he is the founder of Alliance Systems and throughout the explosion of PC-based telephony systems his company has been a dominant supplier of boards and industrial computer systems. In the nineties before VoIP existed the exciting area in telecom was CTI or computer telephony integration where the telecom and computing worlds came together. APIs such as TAPI and TSAPI from the major OS vendors allowed the telecom industry -- for the first time to take advantage of commoditized PC hardware and open development environments. DSP resource board vendors such as Dialogic, NMS, Rhetorex, Brooktrout and Aculab supplied the building block components allowing you to build an inexpensive IVR platform or ACD or whatever else you felt like assembling.
As the VoIP gateway market began to grow in the late nineties, the early models were comprised of industrial computers with DSP resource boards and software. When I took tours of industrial computer plants at the time many of them were churning out gateways for companies like Lucent and other big name equipment manufactures.
Alliance Systems has remained a big player in telecom and Jon tells me his company had 15-18% market share of all ATCA systems sold this year. He is beginning to see equipment manufacturers and service providers buying more than they have in a long while and an increasing percentage of sales are coming from this category. The percentage could be as high as 40% or higher going forward.
They have a new series of product coming out soon which will save 40% on electricity and allow 4X current density levels. He has a customer who is in a data center currently where they aren't able to get any more electricity for a year. They are maxed out. These new servers will help this customer increase their server capacity by 40%.
The company also has a government customer who has a simulation trailer with 350 computers in it. This customer can now see a power drop and at the same time have room for an additional simulation chamber onboard.
In addition Alliance computers will work on DC power -- a major trend in data centers. This allows more power savings as well as less heat dissipation. John says current power supplies are rated to last 100,000 hours but now with DC you can get 7 million hours out of a chassis. Part of the reason for this massive increase is the removal of fans in some systems which are a moving part that fails relatively often compared to solid state electronics.
In systems that require fans you can have a fan that blows air out from the top of the chassis allowing a data center to blow the hot air out directly into the HVAC system for warming of the building if needed. With these new servers the data center doesn’t need a cold aisle meaning increased density, lower cooling costs and more flexibility in data center design.
Jon always tells it like it is and I have never heard him so optimistic. He sees the telecom business and his business as well exploding with growth. There are numerous reasons for this. For example the need for corporations to record more and more of what happens means the need for computers and storage continues to increase exponentially. Phone calls take up lots of disk space.
Moreover, Alliance Systems has been in the communications space for so long they are well known as telecom experts and in addition with their new denser more power efficient computers they have a great value proposition.
Jon also spoke with me about the recent Dialogic Integration -- his company has been a top Dialogic reseller for many years. In his opinion the company has significant challenges but seems to be executing well so far. As he puts it, Nick Jensen the CEO of Dialogic has ambition and it's good to see ambition.
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Costco CRM
December 15, 2006
I have been hearing relatives, friends and just about everyone else tell me how Costco is a great place to buy electronics from as their warranty policy is amazing. You can return things apparently forever. I am no sure if this is the case but it seems everyone is buying from Costco and returning things at will.
At a recent lunch with TMC team members a waiter heard us talking about technology and asked us if we could help him. He had just purchased a TV from Best Buy and it broke after a few weeks. The company wouldn’t take the TV back -- they said he damaged it: He denies this is the case -- and the manufacturer told him it would cost more to fix the TV than the TV cost.
Anyway the lunch became a 5 minute sounding board on the virtues of Costco and the poor customer service and return policies of Best Buy. I have never had a problem at Best Buy and perhaps this is because I never returned anything there.
The moral of the story is having the best return policy can turn your customers into huge advocates of your company. I rarely buy electronics from Costco but I am considering doing so now.
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Happy Holidays Vonage From Skype
December 15, 2006
Today I am back on the road heading up to New England again. I am not such a fan of cold weather so I usually avoid going north when possible this close to winter. Thankfully it seems like we are having very mild weather with a high in the fifties. Lucky me.
And luck is something the VoIP industry is experiencing as Skype recently decided to stop giving away free PC to phone calling in the US and Canada. Pricing is between $15-$30 a year for the service (depending on when you pay) or a flat rat of 2.1 cents per minute.
This small announcement by a single company is enough to perhaps change an industry. Skype – as positive it is for the PR of communications is a cancer in terms of allowing other service providers to prosper. The company has done an amazing job in virtually every way and keeping Skype Out prices free makes it very difficult for other service providers to make money.
So Skype has decided to lose a bit of market share in exchange for revenue. This is great news for everyone. Skype can afford to lose share and apparently they are interested in making lots of money after all.
Now Vonage and a host of other companies have breathing room. Sure Skype is still cheaper but competing with a service which is 1/6 your price is still easier than competing with free. Vonage’s stock has seen a minor gain this week and perhaps this Skype news is the reason. This single bit of news could change the VoIP landscape for years.
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