VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com

April 3, 2007

Big news over at Altigen. Jerry Fleming who ran the Vonexus division of Interactive Intelligence is at Altigen now and will focus on building the US operations of the company. I haven’t had a chance to talk with Jerry yet but his title will be President and COO.

 

Gilbert Hu will continue to lead AltiGen Communications as Chairman & CEO.

 

A word of history. Back in 1995 or so Altigen really wowed the telecom market with the world’s first PC PBX. Comdial was also doing similar things at this time and others like Mitel showed me some similar initiatives.

 

IP PBXs are nice and all but before these devices came to the telecom industry we had this stepping stone approach of PC-based PBXs.

 

In the late nineties I spoke at an Inter-Tel reseller meeting and after one of talks, one of the resellers asked whether they should wait for IP PBXs to be invented or start reselling PC PBXs. I am not sure specifically what my answer was but I likely mentioned opportunity cost. The point is the mindset of resellers was trying to figure out whether the PC-based solution or the IP–based solution made the most sense.

 

Gilbert is one of the major visionaries behind the PC PBX space and launched a successful company that made it through the bubble. Many who competed in this space did not make it through. I give him and the company a great deal of credit.

 

Jerry’s work is cut out for him as I am sure the goal here is to establish Altigen to its former levels of glory and thought leadership. Having worked at Interactive Intelligence, Jerry knows about innovation so this jump is a natural one.

 

It will be interesting to see how well the company does under the leadership of Gilbert and Jerry.

April 3, 2007

Perhaps a better headline for this blog entry is “US Trains Fall Further behind.” I was just reading an article discussing a high-speed train developed in France for the Chinese market. This train goes 357.2 MPH and this is short of the 361 MPH a Japanese train has attained.

 

I believe high-speed trains are an essential (or at least very important) part of any country’s infrastructure and although Amtrak has the Acela train which can exceed 100 MPH, in reality the train averages less than this speed.

 

I wonder what it takes for the US to have trains that average over 200 MPH and while I am on the topic what would it take to have more tracks in the US allowing better access to the country. I am lucky enough to live near the high-speed trains between Boston and Washington DC… The rest of the country does not even have this luxury.

 

One wonders what defines the concept of most powerful country in the world. Is that what the US is? I would imagine whichever country wants to be the best from a productivity and efficiency standpoint will have the best air travel, road travel, train travel and broadband access.

 

In technology we often talk about how legacy technology can slow a country or company down. It seems the legacy infrastructure of the first phone networks, electrical networks, roads and trains are now slowing the rate at which the US can innovate.

 

Now the US has so many things going for it… I am not implying the rail system can cause us to crumple. The point I am making is that an improved rail system in combination with numerous other factors can contribute to increased productivity and efficiency which in turn leads to a better standard of living for all.

 

I hope the politicians and Amtrak read my thoughts and change the system for the better. As a country we are not perfect – no country is. But it does seem obvious that a domestic high-speed train initiative makes sense to explore and implement.