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Skype is Innovating, Are You?
March 17, 2007
Dear VoIP Provider,
What have you done for me lately? You see Skype keeps doing more and more and you are farther and farther behind. Pretty soon your state of the art VoIP software or service will be considered legacy.
Sincerely,
Rich Tehrani
President
TMC
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It seems to me that Skype is one of the few companies that sits down and maps out the future in the communications space and in fact if other software/service companies aren’t careful Skype will end up using its voice platform as a way to disrupt their businesses as well.
Skype is the ultimate disruptor. Not because they invented VoIP or anything like that but the company understood that by providing a simple interface to VoIP they would stand out among the crowd and rise to the top of the VoIP crowd.
But when a company gets acquired it usually slows down the innovation. Not so with Skype – the company is a machine of new ideas – even many months after the eBay acquisition.
And every new idea from Skype I hear about makes we wonder what other VoIP providers are doing to compete.
What is Skype up to most recently? They are turning Skype into a forum for communication between those who have information ad those who want it. In other words they are becoming the eBay of consulting allowing anyone who has an expertise to be hired by the minute or project.
The name of this initiative is Skype Prime and it is currently in beta.
An example of how this service could work is if you want to help others learn a foreign language you enter your rate information and you can be hired by another Skype user. Using video, a magician can even provide live entertainment for a birthday party.
This model can be extended into a virtual classroom where a teacher instructs multiple students. Skype collects 30% of the revenue on the transactions which are currently limited to a $2.50 per minute or $12 for one-time fee.
My analysis of this service is wow. This is how to take you service to the next level by providing value and building an ecosystem of people who make a living using you service. The eBay model has finally met VoIP.
One comment is the maximum payment amounts are low and need to be increased at some point. Skype seems to agree the numbers are low but also thinks it is better to start with lower prices to make sure users have a positive experience.
The company has also launched Skype Find which is a service allowing users to rate any sort of business such as restaurants. This allows Skype users to share knowledge with one another. In a few weeks the company has amassed 8,500 listing which seems like a great start.
Of course Skype is able to launch successful new services on top of their core VoIP offering because they have so many users. This is an obvious drawback to other VoIP providers who do not have as big a network to rely on for services such as those detailed above.
But still, why is it that Skype keeps impressing us time after time and so many other providers are simply providing PSTN replacement? Tomorrow’s VoIP providers will have suites of services integrated with voice. This is what VoIP 2.0 is all about. Skype is building a voice mashup company – are other providers paying attention?
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Cantata
March 17, 2007
Cantata is a veritable conglomerate in the communications space. The company was formed a year ago through a combination of Excel Switching and Brooktrout Technology and has product lines for developers and service providers. The company is soon celebrating its one year birthday and company executives were kind enough to take a break from their birthday party planning and give me feedback on where the company is headed.
As the briefing went on I realized the company was onto something interesting. You see IMS is a complex architecture and no existing network can become fully 100% IMS-based overnight. In fact in some ways 2007 is the year of IMS reality where implementations begins and the hype stops. Like any other technology it takes some time to get comfortable with it and then rapid adoption ensues.
We witnessed something similar in 2004 where VoIP hype stopped and serious adoption began.
So Cantata wants you to think of their products as the step along the path to full IMS-based networks. In other words, gain the opportunities afforded by IMS without the pesky hassles of waiting until you have upgraded your entire network.
The Massachusetts-based company is confident in the applications being enabled by their platforms such as ring back tones, prepaid services, gaming, alerts, streaming audio and video and new state of the art services like RAZZ Mobile allowing mobile users to mix custom sounds and then interject them into conversations through a simple key press.
Cantata has an interesting tagline to match their new positioning and it aligns nicely with the briefing I was part of. It is as follows:
Creating Next Generation Services From Now Generation Networks
It is interesting that from a branding perspective the company’s logo and tagline remind me of something very Lucent-like which is great thing when you realize the Cantata is competing for similar customers with Alcatel-Lucent.
Cantata tells me their products are IMS compliant today and there is no need for service providers to wait to roll out new services. In fact service providers can take their pick of leading edge telecom platforms from the IMG 101, SnowShore IP Media Server, Excel CSP 2090 and Excel MSP 101. The functions of the above products varies from media and signaling gateway to converged services platforms and IP media servers.
To celebrate the company’s first year with a new name the IMG 1010 has a slew of new features such as fault tolerance via load balancing and support for ITU Q.699 for supporting TDM signal mapping between ISDN, SS7 and CAS. In addition there is ENUM support and the product has been tested on the VPF or Voice Peering Fabric.
There is more Cantata news of course and I would love to detail it all but I am late for the birthday party and I don’t even have a card yet ;).
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