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Get Better Om
Om, I and many others in the blogsphere hope you get better very soon. Here is to a Healthy and Happy 2008 for all.
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IPitomy: Branica's Latest Creation
Nick Branica is one of the few living legends in telecom having been responsible for the voicemail vendor Key Voice Technologies. This company was purchased in the nineties by Comdial and is credited by many for allowing Comdial to stay afloat during its rough years of operation late in its history.
Branica was President and CEO of both Key Voice and Comdial and to this day many in the reseller channel - those people who we affectionately know as interconnects appreciate the wonderfully reliable voicemail systems built by this man's company.
Branica's latest creation is IPitomy, a company making IP PBXs which are adapted quite well as key system replacements. In a conversation by telephone I had a chance to ask Branica about how his company's solutions are suited to small business. Here are some of the features he explained his systems have/can:
Busy lamp fields - You can press lit busy lamp and pick up ringing call
Button press to turn forwarding (offsite) on and off
Using speaker phone to announce calls
Using speaker phone as intercom
Also XML features built into the phones to increase functionality
Park list
Go to and see which calls are on park to retrieve
Create key to turn night service on and off from operator position
IPitomy sells through interconnects/VARs and CLECs and Branica explained that one CLEC, Daystar Communications is using an IPitomy PBX to provide converged voice and data services to customers. As Nick explains, customers are charged around $400/month for an SDSL connection including 10 phone lines and support. The equivalent service from Verizon would cost about $650/month and would not include the PBX.
Branica is highly enthused about his new company and speaks with a great deal of enthusiasm about how IPitomy is being received by resellers. He further points out the fact although the price points for his systems are low, the quality is solid. He emphasized this by mentioning the phones are from Aastra.
As I have been writing about for a long while now, there seems to be an ever-expanding opportunity to sell IP communications to the SMB space. This market is still hungry for cost savings and the added functionality the internet protocol brings to business. Whether IPitomy becomes as famous as Key Voice is to yet be determined, but for now Branica is back and at it again. We will all be watching closely to see what sort of mark his new company leaves.
If you want to hear More from Nick Branica be sure to come to Internet Telephony Conference & Expo later this month in Miami, FL where he will be on my panel targeting resellers which will discuss how to make money selling VoIP. This panel will be part of an entire free reseller day of education.
See Also:
VoIP Phone System Q and A
TELECO to Distribute IPitomy's Line of IP PBXs and VoIP Gateways
IPitomy: Microsoft's OCS 2007 Launch is a Major Endorsement of Unified Communications
Growth in VoIP Adoption Gives a Boost to VoIP Phone Systems
VoIP Phone Systems Help Companies Implement Business Continuity Plans
ABI: Voice Services Being Transformed by SIP into VoIP Phone Systems
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Microsoft Paper Clip 2.0
This seems like a 2.0 with week with MC Hammer 2.0 news yesterday and now that famous paper clip in Windows has gone 2.0 as well. You know what I mean don't you? When you are starting a Microsoft Word document with Dear First Name, that paper clip appears and starts asking questions.Most people I know lump the paper clip in the same category usually reserved for people they hate. There is just something so annoying about these characters. But perhaps the people I know I know are in the minority.
To make a meaningful improvement over paper clip 1.0 the company would have to monitor blood pressure, brain signals and even galvanic skin response used in lie detector tests. These signals could then be combined to monitor workgroups and subsequently offer help when one or more people in the group is frustrated or having problems.
This may seemed far fetched but it is exactly what has been applied for by Microsoft in a recent patent application according to The Register.
I would imagine IP communications could be brought into this sort of environment as monitoring stress in a person's voice is a technology already being used in call centers.
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VoIP-News Top Blogs
Thanks to VoIP-News who were nice enough to name me to their Top 25 VoIP Blogs of 2007.
Here is what they had to say:
VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com: Rich Tehrani is president of TMCnet. Tehrani's blog is for deep-thinkers - people who want to know not only what happened, but what it means. Here you will find thoughtful analyses of FCC (Federal Communications Commission) minutes and decisions; what was discussed at the latest conference; and what Google could mean by its Android development platform.
Other bloggers on this list are Om Malik, Andy Abramson, Jeff Pulver, Skype Journal, O'Reilly and many more.
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