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LiveVox
September 6, 2007
I recently had the opportunity to ask Louis Summe, CEO of LiveVox, about the company’s on-demand contact center solutions, their customers, and the IP communications space.
LiveVox provides on-demand, voice application solutions integrated with existing systems. The company is a leading contact center carrier, delivering on-demand inbound and outbound voice solutions.
To learn more about the company, read this article published on TMCnet from earlier this year or check out the LiveVox snapshot page.
RT: Tell me a little bit about LiveVox.
LS: LiveVox provides an on-demand voice portal solution that delivers unique capabilities for the billing and collections industry, and offers the only global, multi-site management capability. Companies are no longer restricted to viewing and managing resources within one physical call center location at a time. Rather, management can allocate and manage resources across all locations, including offshore centers and those managed by third-party partners, giving them tremendous flexibility for how they run and optimize their businesses. And with IMS-based applications on a SIP backbone, we are able to deliver our Voice Portal to clients faster and with the lowest total cost of ownership in the market, compared with any network or premise-based solution.
RT: How was the company started?
LS: LiveVox, founded in 1999, focused on outbound collection solutions for the healthcare industry. Leveraging its initial success, the company expanded its product capabilities to include many innovative capabilities for both outbound and inbound voice applications. The company has expanded its reach to address all vertical segments in the billing and collections industry.
RT: Your company claims they have the only tailored on-demand contact center solution. Can you explain this?
LS: Every implementation is tailored to each customer’s unique business requirements. Built using the latest open standards-based development tools, LiveVox is able to rapidly prototype, tailor and deploy applications as a hosted solution.
RT: How does this benefit customers?
LS: Customers have the ability to monitor and make real-time changes to campaigns using a Web-based console. The on-demand architecture of the solution allows it to be deployed without having to remove or replace any existing systems. Each customer can then continue to use or replace their existing infrastructure based on their own strategic plans.
RT: What other customer pains does your company solve?
LS: There are a number of tangible results for our customers: Global, multi-site visibility: Companies have always wanted to see the status of all their resources across all their locations at any given time. However, either the tools weren’t available or IT couldn’t keep up with changes in systems, software and WAN configurations to effectively deliver the information to management. LiveVox changes all that. Its on-demand model provides a unique ability for managers to know the status of all resources worldwide and to re-allocate resources on-the-fly as needed.
Clear path to VoIP migration: LiveVox delivers the clearest path to VoIP migration. Many companies are struggling with how to simplify their IT infrastructures and lower communication costs. LiveVox’s SIP-based platform delivers unlimited capacity that supports both PSTN and IP voice traffic. And because LiveVox bundles telecom transport with its voice applications, customers no longer need to provision and maintain voice applications-related telco services directly from the carriers.
Greater agent productivity: Just one feature within LiveVox Voice Portal, Agent Registration, has accounted for an average 21% increase in agent productivity (measured by how many calls they handle in a day).
Unlimited capacity: Companies have always faced a tradeoff between the cost of increasing call capacity — such as software licenses, servers, phone lines and voice boards — and having enough capacity to keep agents fully productive. Further, some cost is wasted on capacity that is only fully utilized during peak load periods. These restrictions are no longer valid. LiveVox delivers unlimited capacity, allowing customers to run very high-volume campaigns that they previously were unable to execute, offering them greater flexibility on how they want to run their businesses.
No capital expenditures and no upfront costs: LiveVox charges only for voice traffic as it is consumed. There are no servers and software to purchase, integrate and maintain. There are no charges for developing the applications.
Lowest Total Cost of Ownership: LiveVox delivers the lowest TCO when compared with hosted or premise-based solutions. We guarantee it. Customers typically experience significant ROIs, including some as high as 900 percent.
RT: You recently got funding. How will this help you?
LS: The funding will be used to increase market awareness, expand our sales channels and bring on new staffing in both engineering and customer facing resources.
RT: What is the future of contact center technology?
LS: Further adoption of emerging industry standards, such as IMS and SIP, will make it easier for companies to integrate multi-vendor solutions. Migration to VoIP will also be easier, allowing companies to realize some of the change that has been promised in the industry for the past five years.
Video will play a larger role in how service is delivered. Companies will need to deploy solutions that can support multi-media services on demand to the customers and partners.
New technologies that allow a company greater visibility to its global call traffic and real-time performance metrics and new management tools will empower them to negotiate more flexible contracts with third party outsource partners and carriers. Companies will be able to execute real-time arbitrage, easily routing traffic through the lowest-cost carrier or routing calls to the lowest-cost outsource partner at any time.
The role of IT departments will evolve as acceptance and adoption of on-demand solutions continue to grow. The architecture of WANs and LANs will evolve as these on-demand solutions integrate both applications and transport into single platforms.
RT: Where will your company be in five years?
LS: LiveVox plans to become a market leader by capitalizing on the high growth potential as call centers transition from legacy systems to next generation voice applications.
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Steve Jobs Apology Letter
September 6, 2007
I came across this letter Steve Jobs wrote in response to the many complaints about the iPhone price cuts. I am shocked consumers would be so upset. In the consumer electronics space price cuts are routine and Apple has never pledged to consumers they would not lower prices quickly. Sure, Apple has a history of not lowering prices until there is a product update but still, they are not locked into this policy.So hats off to Steve for writing this letter and offering a $100 store credit.
Here is a link to the letter on the Apple website and here is a copy:
To all iPhone customers:
I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to 'go for it' this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone 'tent'. We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you'll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple's website next week. Stay tuned.We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.Steve Jobs
Apple CEO
The author owns shares in Apple.
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Thanks for Registering Green
September 6, 2007
The Green Technology conference is doing well so far.
Thanks for your support.
Here is the full story.
Thanks for your support.
Here is the full story.
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SIP Trunking Course
September 6, 2007
SIP trunking is one of the most important growth areas in VoIP. It is something every company should be exploring as it reduces cost and complexity while allowing tremendous added flexibility.
If you are interested in learning about SIP trunking I urge you to read this in-depth SIP trunking article and also come to ITEXPO next week in Los Angeles where there will be a SIP trunking workshop.
I hope to see you there.
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Toshiba
September 6, 2007
I recently had the opportunity to ask David Fridley, senior product manager of IP Telephony at Toshiba America Information Systems, about the evolution of the IP communications space and the direction his company is taking.
To learn more about the company, read this TMCnet article published earlier this year. Interestingly I am writing this on a Toshiba laptop and I subsequently found the last answer very interesting.
RT: Please outline your new corporate initiatives?
DF: Toshiba has reinvented itself from a provider of key/hybrid TDM systems to a provider of IP communication solutions for enterprises. Toshiba’s IP communication solutions are designed to drive business process integration and unified communications to create value, efficiency and maximum ROI for our customers. Toshiba will continue to enhance our global line of SIP-based unified communication products that encompass telephony and business process integration.
RT: How is IP Communication changing your company’s strategy?
DF: VoIP technology has enabled the development of more sophisticated networking, centralized management, centralized ACD, remote user, video, and mobility applications. It has also created the need for and the availability of more varied endpoint devices to meet the need for these applications. Toshiba has helped educate our dealers in the transition from TDM to IP technology on both their sales and technical sides. This has also enabled us to add new channels of resellers such as data VARs to our distribution channel.
RT: How has SIP changed communications?
DF: SIP is creating an environment in which it will be easier for applications to interoperate in order to provide new solutions to customers in single and multiple locations. Examples are SIP trunking creating cost savings, and presence using the one IP address concept to find you and communicate with you wherever you are on whatever endpoint device you are using.
RT: What is the biggest request coming from your customer base?
DF: High-demand items include cost-effective call center and business process integration solutions, SIP trunking, and remote office applications.
RT: How are you answering their demands?
DF: Toshiba has introduced many sophisticated and cost-effective call center applications over the past year. We already offer a complete portfolio and our R&D direction will continue to strengthen our call center suite. Toshiba is currently involved in interoperability testing of SIP trunking with several carriers and others are planned. We are also in development of a 1,200-line IP communication system planned for release in the first half of next year. Toshiba continues to strengthen our remote office IP solutions/applications by providing solutions for unified communications, video communications (now three-party and eight-party by year end) with collaboration and total feature transparency.
RT: What do you think the future of the market is?
DF: We expect strong growth in the U.S. telecom market in the coming years as the transition from TDM to IP systems continues and accelerates. SIP and unified communication applications will also create more demand for new systems.
The future is ripe with opportunities for companies like Toshiba who know how to provide the right products and choices to customers.
RT: How does the U.S. growth rate compare to the rest of the world?
DF: Reports from industry analysts project U.S. growth rate higher than Western Europe, but slower than other emerging markets such as Eastern Europe and CALA.
RT: What do you think of Google and Apple entering the telecom market?
DF: Google Talk, which enables voice calls and instant messaging, represents Google’s entry into the voice communications market with a free service that could potentially evolve into a more robust offering.
Apple’s introduction of the iPhone indicates strong potential for growth in the U.S. telecom market. Even though the iPhone is a retail product, it could potentially lead Apple into providing business VoIP endpoints.
RT: How about Microsoft?
DF: With a strong office application suite, extensive development resources and advertising budgets, Microsoft has the potential to be major contender in the telecom space. Toshiba has a long term and very deep relationship with Microsoft as a result of our notebook computer business. Just as with other major telecom players, we expect to work with Microsoft to provide solutions that deliver telephony functionality integrated with value-added business processes.
RT: How will wireless technologies change our market?
DF: Wireless technology will continue to create new IP communication applications. For example, the wireless LAN used to be just for data, but now it is used for both voice and data, supporting notebook computers using soft phones and IP wireless handsets. In the future, multi-function mobile phones will operate on both the internal IP communication platforms and WLAN/WIMAX infrastructure and external cell networks. Toshiba already offers soft phones on notebook PCs and PDAs. We also have a very robust mobile phone division that has developed dual-mode telephones that are currently deployed in Europe and Asia. We intend to leverage this to deliver a complete line of solutions for our U.S. enterprise business customers. This will be one of Toshiba’s differentiators.
RT: How will communications evolve over the next five years?
DF: The evolution from TDM to IP will continue and accelerate. This is stating the obvious, but it’s an important point because new IP-based technologies will make business communication systems more efficient and more cost-effective. New applications and capabilities will grow out of the unified communications architecture, one-number/IP address access, instant messaging and presence. We think the cost to provide integrated solutions will come down over this period making it much more accessible to all segments of the market. We plan to play a big roll in this evolution.
RT: What sorts of things will we be hearing about during your presentation at ITEXPO?
DF: In our session about video in the IP communication system, we’ll look at why organizations may want their employees to use video. We’ll provide examples of how video conferencing and collaboration can improve communication by adding visual effects and seeing the speaker’s true meaning and body language. We’ll take a step back and look at it from a management perspective.
In our session on network assessments, we’ll talk about the value of doing them in advance of the installation to make sure the network is ready for voice traffic. We’ll also discuss the value of ongoing networking assessments to keep up with changes to ensure voice quality of service as part of the network management process. We’ll give examples of some of the things that can go wrong, how to detect them, how to point the finger in the right direction, and how to be proactive in solving issues before they become problems.
RT: Why is your presentation a “Can’t miss”?
DF: Many people don’t understand the value of video because video is only one piece of the puzzle. Collaboration, along with video, provides many communication benefits. It’s not about seeing; it’s about strengthening the message and the relationship.
For our session on network assessments, we want to emphasize the value of doing them in advance as ongoing as part of the management process, to show how it saves money and headaches. It’s great fun to talk about the disasters — they are kind of like explosions in an action movie.
RT: What do you want the industry to know about your company?
DF: Toshiba has reinvented itself from a provider of key/hybrid TDM systems to a provider of IP communication solutions for enterprises. Toshiba has been consistently in the top 5 in IP system shipments throughout 2006 and the first half of 2007 (source: InfoTech). Toshiba has the industry’s best National Accounts Program (according to Yankee Group), and the industry’s best warranty program with standard two-year warranty and optional five or seven-year extended warranties.
Toshiba has the unique ability to bring new integrated voice/data/video solutions to the market by leveraging it’s “in house” resources. An example is Toshiba’s IP Video Communication Solution (VCS) in which Toshiba has leveraged technology from our broadcast equipment business and its consumer video products. Another example is Toshiba leveraging its Imaging Systems Division (ISD), producing some of the world’s best IP security and video surveillance systems, which add an important new level of security to its communications solutions by integrating these IP video security products into its telecom system. Toshiba is also leveraging the expertise of its Digital Products Division (DPD), producing some of the world’s best notebook PC products, in creating portable clients capable of new voice/data applications (i.e. soft phone).
RT: Please make one surprising prediction we will see in 5 years?
DF: Toshiba notebook computers will become significant endpoint devices, supporting IP telephony and mobility applications, as notebook PCs evolve into various form factors.
System programming will be more visual and object oriented making it easier for end users. This will drive ubiquitous deployment of business process integration across all sizes of enterprises.
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HelloSoft
September 6, 2007
I recently had the opportunity to ask Allan Johnson, vice president of business development in the wireless group at HelloSoft, about the evolution of SIP communications, wireless mobility and the direction his company is taking.
HelloSoft is a provider of VoIP technologies for wireline and wireless devices. The company enables mass deployment of low-cost, power-efficient, fully-featured multi-mode wireline and wireless devices by providing highly optimized RISC-based VoIP products.
To learn more about the company, read this article published on TMCnet from earlier this year. Be sure to read to the bottom as there is an interesting prediction.
RT: How is IP communications changing your company’s strategy?
AJ: HelloSoft invested in VoIP many years ago. This has expanded in recent years to Voice over WLAN single mode and dual-mode cellular handsets and now other media such as audio streaming and video teleconferencing and video broadcast wirelessly using IP over WLAN and wide area networks. IP has successfully unified a plethora of communications devices from PC’s to desk phones and cellular phones to cordless phones to a diversified set of media from voice to interactive video.
RT: How has SIP changed communications?
AJ: SIP has gained a universal footing in everything from voice to multimedia and has become almost ubiquitous as the protocol unifying devices and media. Some say it is unfortunate, because from the point of view of technical protocol design, SIP is far from optimal for any of these cases, but its universality has made it the most influential IP protocol of today.
RT: What is the biggest request coming from your customer base?
AJ: Usability. Simplicity of user interfaces, quality and reliability of service, power and resource efficiency and implementation on mobile handheld devices.
RT: How are you answering their demands?
AJ: HelloSoft has provided innovation for much better solutions in all three of the above areas. In user interface design, we’ve integrated with existing mobile device interfaces such as Nokia call dialer on Nokia cellular phones. To improve VoIP quality over wireless connections, HelloSoft has innovated algorithms that adapt the media to the wireless channel and improve end user quality significantly. HelloSoft is absolutely the market leader in power and resource efficient implementations of VoIP on mobile devices with technology that extends real usage battery life from 40 percent to 400 percent.
RT: What do you think the future of the market is?
AJ: Interactive voice, video and multimedia on wireless mobile devices. And throw in location awareness as well.
RT: How does the growth rate in the U.S. compare to the rest of the world?
AJ: The growth rate in the U.S. varies by sector and geography, but remains one of the highest in the world in key technology areas such as biotech and in innovative applications of IP. Certainly there is tremendous growth in powerhouses like India and China, and the days where India is service industry based and China is manufacturing based are long gone. The U.S. must maintain a leadership position by engaging fully with these powerhouses while continuing to create an environment where world-leading innovation and growth occur spontaneously.
RT: What do you think of Google and Apple entering the telecom market?
AJ: Apple has renewed emphasis on innovation in the mobile device market and Google is sure to do the same. The so-called shift in power toward device makers and the unbundling of innovative applications from tightly controlled “home decks” is good for consumers and the industry.
RT: How about Microsoft?
AJ: Regardless of what anyone says, Microsoft remains a strong innovator with growing numbers of Windows Mobile and WinCE devices in the market, Windows Live on mobile devices and many new capabilities enabled by Unified Communications Server. The telecom market can benefit tremendously from these. The trick is to ensure that these standardized platforms are complemented by cutting edge innovation from many other companies.
RT: How will wireless technologies change our market?
AJ: How will it not change our market? Consumers value convenience and accessibility, and wireless brings both to an unlimited set of applications. With location awareness, it also brings much greater relevance in the moment, not just to searches but to all applications. Location and time relevance, fully integrated with anytime, anywhere connectivity and voice, video and interactive multimedia, enable more than enough new capabilities for the next 10 generations of applications!
RT: How will communications evolve over the next five years?
AJ: Some say voice will become free, but in some form or another, end users will pay for quality of service, especially in the wireless environment. WLAN spectrum may be free, as with personal area networking and wireless home distribution of video and other media, but the “share of wallet” consumers spend on wide area connectivity such as the cell phone bill will continue to move upwards, because of the value it provides.
The greatest innovation, will of course be in the next 10 generations of wireless mobile applications. Some of the many emerging technologies from near-field-communication and banking from your cell phone, to location awareness and relevance such as the nearest restaurant with the kind of cuisine you feel like at that moment instantly appearing on your phone to advertising supported “free” communication will catch on. The next five years of communications evolution will be a very fun ride.
RT: What sorts of things will we be hearing about during your presentation at ITEXPO?
AJ: I’ll be talking about the key technologies combining the benefits of “free” high-bandwidth WLAN connectivity with ubiquitous wide area cellular technology. Dual-mode Wi-Fi cellular phones are here now and are forecasted to grow to hundreds of millions in the next few years and enable a wide range of new applications, some IMS client applications on the mobile device, and some simple dual-mode packet based applications.
RT: Why is your presentation a “Can’t Miss?”
AJ: Dual mode phones are set to takeoff this year. Over 100 dual-mode phones will be on the market by the end of this year and volumes are projected at 100 million units by 2009. The cost of handsets is coming down rapidly and many applications are already available. Seamless voice call handoff between Wi-Fi and cellular is in many early deployments and trials in both enterprise and consumer markets. Many other applications are around the corner. The stage is set for disruptive change.
RT: What do you want the industry to know about your company?
AJ: HelloSoft is the world leader in highly optimized VoIP and IMS client solutions for mobile devices. HelloSoft has been developing VoIP solutions since 1999 and its products are in over 70 production handsets. HelloSoft’s voice call continuity solution has been through interoperability testing with many of the world’s leading carriers and with most of the leading infrastructure deployed in the market.
RT: Please make one surprising prediction we will see in five years.
AJ: The iPhone will work using VoIP over WLAN on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.
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Thanks Arjun
September 6, 2007
Arjun Roychowdhury was very nice in mentioning how well my team is doing with ITEXPO marketing and promotion. If you haven’t read his blog, Corporate Rat and Elusive Cheese, you should check it out. Arjun, thanks for noticing and I am forever grateful to the TMC team for doing such a great job. We are really looking forward to the show.
Thanks also to Ken Camp for pointing to this entry in an interesting blog post.
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Rich Tehrani Blooper
September 6, 2007
I came across this blooper of me during a video shoot. The thing about text is you can edit it when you screw up. Video on the other hand generally has to be perfect. Witness what happens when things go terribly wrong. Enjoy. :)
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Excendia
September 6, 2007
It is difficult to start this column without a reference to Wildfire the personal assistant launched in the nineties we all thought would take over the world. Of course by “we” I mean the people attending trade shows in the telecom space in the nineties. Wildfire was an auto attendant system allowing you to speak to the machine as if it was human. It would understand you and perform many functions for you. You could ask it to dial people and further conference others in.
I couldn’t help but think back to Wildfire when I spoke recently with the management team of Excendia. They have developed what I call Wildfire 2.0. They joke about the road they are walking on being littered with the dead bodies of companies trying to make better personal assistants. The jokes are spot on
They think they are doing it better than others before them and moreover they tell me their use of open standards such as CCXML, XML and SIP lowers costs and subsequently makes it much more likely they will be successful. They didn’t mention it explicitly but Moore’s law obviously helps products become more and more powerful at less and les cost. This is very important in the world of speech technologies. One look at the iPhone will probably be all you need to truly understand what I mean.
Aside from the above reasons for success the company’s founders tell me the world is more mobile than ever. They are right. If you don’t believe it take a look at RIM’s stock chart. The benefits of a virtual receptionist utilizing text to speech is you can be productive while driving which is an important time to be working with traffic become more of a problem around the world.
In other words if your Blackberry is important on the plane, Excendia is important in the car. Of course you can use the solution while you are at work as well if you choose.
In addition this sort of solution allows the handicapped to effectively communicate via speech. A disabled person could have e-mail read to them and respond with their voice which gets sent in a sound file to the recipient.
I witnessed the multilingual system which shares the same name as the company working flawlessly during a 15 minute demo. I am further told it works with current solutions you have today so forklifts are not necessary. For example there is POP and IMAP support built in. Yes there is even Lotus support if you need it.
How can you purchase the solution? As a service, or a hardware solution actually. Furthermore, I am told the company’s partners will decide pricing.
I am the biggest fan of virtual assistant technology. I am just waiting for it to become mainstream. Microsoft is playing in the space as is Cisco and many others. Someone will hopefully get the solution right and we will become more productive and efficient as a result. Will it be Excendia? I don’t know. What I do know is they understand the players who came before them and where each went wrong. They will do it better. Now the market will tell Excendia and others whether the desire for this technology exists in great enough numbers to make virtual assistants mainstream.
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