Todd is doing a great job keeping the packed crowd captivated. Focus areas of the talk are SOA and unified communications. In addition Todd had a great Star Trek spoof video which the audience appreciated.
Marc is doing a great job keeping the keynote audience captivated. Similar to what Keith spoke about earlier today Marc infers some applications will be very successful. We just don't know which ones.
Here are some photos from the show that are of better quality than my camera phone. The conference rooms are very packed and I have been in the press room for far too long. Time to put on the walking shoes and see what is happening upstairs. We are looking forward to a fantastic week.
Call centers are responsible for so much but often don’t get the credit they deserve. In the early 1990s it was the call center’s need for screen pops that pushed Novell and Microsoft into pushing the CTI market which for the first time allowed a phone system and a Intel-based server to communicate. These big operating system vendors essentially copied what Rockwell and IBM had done by connecting the former’s ACD to the latter’s mainframe.
Indeed the CTI market eventually spun off IP telephony applications which became today’s better-known VoIP applications. Ironically when the VoIP market was presumed dead between 2001 and 2003 the call center market came to the rescue by purchasing thousands of gateways deployed around the world to allow offshoring of call center services.
This came up today after the first keynote at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo and it makes a great segue to a conversation I had with Bill Hunt the President and CEO Dirigo Telecommunications. Before I get into why these two topics are related I should point out Bill spent a few minutes with me explaining how the recent name change from Dirigosoft to Dirigo Telecommunications is going well. One of the reasons for the name change was to ensure people understand the depth of communications experience within the company.
But more on that later. Now for the segue. Bill tells me the reason their IP PBX is so intelligent is because its parents were ACDs. You see in virtually every other case a company starts with PBX and then adds ACD functionality later. In many cases it makes more sense to start with an ACD and subtract some functions to end up with a PBX. One other company using this approach is Interactive Intelligence with their Vonexus product line.
Bill tells me the Intelligent Assistant in the company’s iQueue IP PBX really separates their phone system from others in the space. It gives you ACD functionality in a PBX he tells me proudly. Bill thinks they have the only PBX on the market with third party call control. He says the call control looks like first party to the user.
What are the advantages of this approach?
Well if you wanted a customer service quality check, you could offer the chance for a caller to take a survey after the call is hung up. Why? Third party call control recaptures the call and sends it to a survey application
It also means their solution has the reporting capabilities of an ACD. Not just CDR but averaged calls to answer and the ability to know how long calls are in voicemail before they are listened to, etc.
He also emphasized the pricing of the iQueue IP PBX is the same as a PBX which makes the product that much better.
I mentioned how the name change was meant to highlight the years of experience at the company and Hunt says the company has 17 customer contact and telecom patents. This is a very good amount for an organization with perhaps the newest IP PBX on the market.
I asked Bill about his outlook for 2007 and beyond. He says the company is in major growth mode with new product releases, new resellers and they feel these initiatives will help keep them ahead of the market.
The response from the reseller channel seems to be very strong and according to Bill most PBX vendors aren’t liked by the reseller community. Dirigo wants to be the best vendor there is. The company is spending great care to continue building a solid reseller base and to become a recognized presence in the PBX and ACD marketplace.
So with all the consolidation in the market it is good to see new entrants coming into the space with a strong focus on quality and service. It is good for companies of all sizes as well as the resellers looking for strong backing when they go out into the market and compete for business.
Here is a great shot of the packed room today in with WiFi Telephony session. So far the show is going amazinglyy well. As I stand here I am learning a great deal about all of the different things that could eat up 802.11 capacity through interference . Microwave ovens, radar, etc.
ITEXPO Kicked off today in Ft. Lauderdale, FL with a keynote from Keith Chappell, Vice President at Alcatel-Lucent. His talk began discussing the concept of transforming services. “What do users want?” He asked.
To that he answered as follows.
Service Agility: The technical agility behind service environment allowing carrier business agility
Service Personalization: Think of ringtones or ringback tones
Service Blending: Services are not connected in a very robust way today according to Chappell. They become much more robust when you can connect them quickly and transparently. An example is on the internet with click to dial which connects a web session with a telephony session. You can get more complex he says with personalization.
Quality of Experience: Is the service performing adequately? Is voice and video quality acceptable? The quality is not there yet according to Keith. He says the question worth asking is how easy is it to use these services? Chappell says if the services are not easy they will not be used.
In general Keith mentioned the service provider infrastructure must mirror what has happened with the web with layers and abstractions. He likens the future of the service provider being a factory that churns out applications. Users will rapidly determine what they like and what they don’t. Service providers will have to react instantaneously to what users want and what they don’t. Expect more applications from service providers – like shows that go off the air he says. Using this analogy perhaps network hits will be the equivalent of killer applications in the services/software model.
I think Chappell did an admirable job as the first keynoter of the day. He describes a world where service providers will be able to act quickly and respond immediately to customer demands. He envisions a future where these providers are able to generate revenue in ways they don’t today.
In a way this is exactly the sort of speech you want to hear at a show called Internet Telephony (ITEXPO) as when this show was started back in 1999, consumers and businesses expected to pay large sums of money for long distance. Over time the price for these calls has decreased and as it has service providers need to look anywhere and everywhere to generate additional revenue. Perhaps the concept of the services factory will be what replaces long distance in the future.
Good friend and fellow blogger Garrett Smith tells me his company VoIP Supply has a new affiliate program. It works like this: You bring their catalog to your website. How? You put contextual links and ads, etc. You then get paid between 3% and 10%. There are bonuses if you sign early and real time reporting, etc. It is similar to running Google ads on your site without the need for Google.
Two esteemed consultants in the IP communications space are Marc Robins and Jon Arnold. The two have known each other for years and toyed with the idea of joining forces. It seems the time has come for this to become reality as the two have officially become a team and will collaborate to develop a joint website, electronic newsletters, etc.
My take? The duo is perfectly positioned to speak to many aspects of the market from the service provider space to the enterprise. Jon is a session border controller expert having put together much research on the topic at Frost & Sullivan. They have many decades of related experience between them and I wish them both tremendous success.
One wonders if they will come up with a new logo or name like Robins, Arnold & Associates. Or perhaps A&R Advisory Services. Of course I am just thinking out loud – well typing out loud – you get the point. ;)
Spirit DSP recently announced an enviable portfolio of customers for the 2007 year. They include Adobe, Agere, ARM, Atmel, Compal, Flextronics, Ericsson, HP, HTC, Interwise, Kyocera, LG, Marconi, MediaRing, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, NEC, Nortel Networks, Oracle, Paltalk, Panasonic, Philips Semiconductor, Plustek, Polycom, Quanta, Radvision, Samsung, Siemens, Texas Instruments, Toshiba and Trinity Convergence.
The company provides embedded voice, video and conferencing engines typically taking advantage of VoIP/IP communications. I thought the roster of clients interesting as it is a cross section of communications and computing companies. Everything from Microsoft to Polycom.
It seems a wave of new Asian companies are key to the company’s growth plans this year.
One thing is for sure. Spirit DSP is never afraid to take competitors head on. Take a look at this quote for a sense of what I am talking about.
“The major global communication market players trust SPIRIT by integrating our products and bringing new customers to us by recommendation and reference,” said Slava Borilin, VP Products at SPIRIT. “We have extremely aggressive goals to meet for the next two years. Embedded and mobile voice and audio markets have been SPIRIT’s core strength for the last 10 years, and we are the global leader here, as clearly evidenced by our OEM customers and sales partners traction in 2006. As a result of our 10 years experience, today SPIRIT software powers 100M+ voice channels embedded in hardware, and this is far more than any of our competitors can show, without counting free PC voice channels. SPIRIT delivers unique embedded voice experience.”
Technorati
Del.icio.us
BoingBoing
Slashdot
Digg
Spurl
Furl
This came up today after the first keynote at Internet Telephony Conference & Expo and it makes a great segue to a conversation I had with Bill Hunt the President and CEO Dirigo Telecommunications. Before I get into why these two topics are related I should point out Bill spent a few minutes with me explaining how the recent name change from Dirigosoft to Dirigo Telecommunications is going well. One of the reasons for the name change was to ensure people understand the depth of communications experience within the company.
ITEXPO Kicked off today in Ft. Lauderdale, FL with a keynote from Keith Chappell, Vice President at Alcatel-Lucent. His talk began discussing the concept of transforming services. “What do users want?” He asked.
Good friend and fellow blogger Garrett Smith tells me his company VoIP Supply has a new affiliate program. It works like this: You bring their catalog to your website. How? You put contextual links and ads, etc. You then get paid between 3% and 10%. There are bonuses if you sign early and real time reporting, etc. It is similar to running Google ads on your site without the need for Google.
