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WYDE Voice Debuts Better Conferencing Solution

A new product was just announced today and I cannot be more excited as it shows innovation is very alive and well in communications.

WYDE Voice is a new start-up venture backed by Free Conferencing Corp. founder and CEO David Erickson... The company just launched the industry’s first real-time voice conferencing appliances that support 16-bit, 16 kHz voice quality.

The solution offers service providers and enterprises the capability to deliver a broad range of affordable, high-quality audio conferencing solutions.

New models are available now with pricing for the VM1000 model starting at $160/port and $140/port for the VM3000. The boxes have the ability to be controlled via SIP and there is an API available for third-party developers.

While I think this is great news for the industry, I hope users understand what a leap forward this is in technology. Traditional conference bridges for lack of a better word, stink.

They stink because they generally use PSTN quality and don't attempt to improve on this decades-old technology. Let's hope this new advance changes conference calling for the better. When you think about it, conference calls are really where quality phone calls make the most sense to have.

I do need to point out you need end devices which are able to take advantage of these new frequencies. I will leave it to the company to explain what devices they interoperate with but theoretically a SIP soft client should do the trick for users at computers and possibly on smart phones.

I wish the company good luck.

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Podcast: Peter Vicars, Newstep Networks

There is a race taking place in communications. Everyone is looking to converge as fast as they possibly can. Service providers want to provide enterprise service. Wireless carriers want to own the SMB and consumer markets. Oh... And I forgot -- they also want to own all the land line business.

Then there are equipment providers who are looking to integrate their products with multiple wired and wireless service provider networks and provide seamless inter-connectivity between these once  once-disparate realms.

There is such a trend towards unification that it seems it will soon be difficult for customers to differentiate networks from one another. But underneath all the cool whiz-bang telephony gadgets of the future will be sophisticated technology allowing fixed-mobile convergence or FMC to take place.

In fact, it will be an incredible world when devices are are able to tap multiple wired andwireless networks in order to make calls and download data as efficiently as possible.

To provide this wireless utopia to users, service providers will have to deploy state-of-the-art technology allowing their customers access to solutions which let these users traverse networks in a seamless fashion.

One company leading the charge in this space is NewStep Networks. The company has done a good job producing technology-agnostic products while having a wide target -- service providers and enterprise customers.

Less than two months ago Newstep secured a $9.5 million round of financing and also appointed a new CEO -- Peter Vicars.

It just seemed obvious that I should sit down and have a podcast conversation with Peter to see where he sees the market going in the next few years.

This podcast interview will give you a candid insider look at NewStep and should hopefully answer any pressing FMC questions you have been dying to get answered.

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Adding Value to Wireless VARs

In the communications space there has been accelerating progress these past decades. In the eighties we had IVR, voicemail and unified messaging. In the nineties, we had CTI (TAPI,TSAPI, etc), international callback, the PC-PBX and later the IP-PBX.

This decade we have open source, unified communications, communications as a service, communications enabled business processes and mobility as well as a host of other hot topics.

It seems the more I speak with resellers at conferences, the more I am amazed at how much growth there is still left in this space.

The innovation is not just on the business side of the house. In fact, some could easily argue that consumer telephony has leapfrogged its counterpart in business.

Yes, the world seems to have gone smart-phone crazy and now the initiative in company after company is finding ways to integrate these powerful handheld computing devices into a company's core communications infrastructure. Of course we don't want to discriminate so it is worth pointing out that even the intellectually-challenged devices need to connect seamlessly to corporate telecom systems.

For typical resellers, this may present a challenge as you generally haven't been a mobility expert. Even if you are, there are companies who are looking to help the VAR community better server their end customers.

One is Westcon, a leading specialty distributor in networking, convergence, security and mobility who recently announced MobilityPoint, a program designed to tackle the opportunity I outlined above.

Specifically, the company's new program delivers resources and capabilities to deliver business value. One important area Westcon is focusing on is sales-enablement or helping resellers position mobility solutions around the desires of the customer.

In other words, where a typical reseller might go to market with a widget and show their potential customers that their widgets is shiny and does lots of things, Westcon helps you understand it is not just about widget selling. Instead, the company takes you through how to show the customer your widget lowers their OPEX and also boosts productivity.

Like I have been saying for years… Resellers need to stop the widget sales and instead focus on value and selling solutions.

The rule of thumb I like to use is one or less acronyms per sentence when selling to customers. They don't generally care about flavors of SIP and open source vagaries… They want to know how a solution helps them in their business and makes them more successful.

As you might imagine, this new program also focuses on VoWLAN/VoWiFi and they also help a reseller stimulate demand in the market. This last point may be the most important as in a recent conversation with Duncan Potter, Westcon's CMO we discussed how even the most successful resellers can use assistance in demand generation. A scenario we have both seen over and over is where the reseller is successful selling and then spends a good deal of time installing and servicing their clients.

At this point, the reseller looks up and notices that the sales pipeline is completely dry.

This is exactly why resellers need partners like Westcon because the company does understand reseller challenges and moreover they have devised a variety of programs targeted to help you in their sweet spots which today are networking, convergence, security and mobility.

A big differentiator of MobilityPoint is the manufacturer participants who include Aruba, Cisco, Hitachi Cable, Nokia, Meru, Motorola, Nortel and Trapeze. This is an A list for sure and should give resellers some added level of confidence in exploring the benefits of such a program.

If I have just one hope in the market it is that resellers spend more time learning. In past decades, traditional interconnects were good if they could rapidly pull wire and connect phone systems. Today's technology reseller has to be a chameleon… They need to know many technologies including the ones outlined above and they need to understand how these technologies integrate with one another. Most importantly, they must listen to customers and help solve their problems.

It is good to see distributors like Westcon putting more skin in the game by partnering with their reseller customers in order to ensure these VARs are better educated and that the end customers are better served.

Remember that the "V" and "A" in "VAR" stand for "Value Added." Today's resellers are measured not by the wires they hang but by the value they add.

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Bill Gates Promotes Education and Immigration Improvements

Today the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology will hold a hearing on the future of innovation and U.S. competitiveness. This hearing commemorates the committee's 50th anniversary and as part of the event, Bill Gates will be speaking.

Microsoft sent out a document prior to this meeting in order to give us an idea on what he will be saying today.

"I know we all want the United States to continue to be the world's center for innovation. But our position as the global leader in innovation is at risk," Gates said. "If this nation is to continue to be the global center of innovation, Congress, the current administration and the next president must act decisively."

Continuing on a theme Gates has spoken about before, he will explain that science and math education need to be improved in this country. Gates said, "If we don't reverse these trends, our competitive advantage will continue to erode. Our ability to create new high-paying jobs will suffer."

In addition he will address the need to allow US corporations to hire the best and brightest minds from overseas. "At a time when talent is the key to economic success, it makes no sense to educate people in our universities, often subsidized by U.S.taxpayers, and then insist that they return home," he said. "To address the shortage of scientists and engineers, we must ... reform our education system and our immigration policies. If we don't, American companies simply will not have the talent they need to innovate and compete."

Gates urges Congress and the White House to address this problem by extending the period that foreign students can work in the U.S. after graduation, raising the cap on H-1B visas, creating a clear path to permanent residency for high-skilled foreign-born employees and increasing the number of green cards. "The shortage of scientists and engineers is so acute that we must do both: reform our education system and reform our immigration policies."

Gates said he is optimistic that information technology will continue to transform business productivity and the quality of our day-to-day lives, adding that private companies alone cannot ensure that the U.S. will remain the pre-eminent force in innovation. "Without leadership from Congress and the president ... and the commitment of the private sector to do its part, the center of progress will shift to other nations that are more committed to the pursuit of innovation," Gates said.

You probably recall that at the beginning of this month I wrote about this same problem in an entry titled Flood us With New Careers, not Money referring to how our government is trying to boost the economy with handouts, not education and retraining.

I should also mention that what Gates is doing should be considered heroic - he is a true US Patriot.

Keep in mind that Microsoft as a corporation should probably not care about hiring American engineers as it is cheaper to hire this talent in other countries.

If I may be so bold, I would like to reiterate from my past article that a mandatory increase of 1.5 hours a day (or more) focusing on math and science should take place in all US schools ASAP.

I look forward to following this hearing closely as the day progresses.

[AP]

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iPod Nanos Exploding in Japan

If you are reading this while listening to your iPod nano purchased in Japan, it may be time to take a few step back from this popular music player before it shoots flames.  For more information on this  problem, be sure to check out this engadget post.

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Paul Reynolds Joins XConnect Board

Sarah Hofstetter is a VoIP veteran as she was the head of PR for Net2Phone since the 1990s and has been in the IP communications space longer than just about anyone else out there. The reason I point this out is that Sarah now handles PR for XConnect, the global VoIP peering company. Recently, I just received some news from Sarah that she was able to frame nicely for all.

You see, XConnect has a new board member and this sort of thing does not generally constitute big news. But as Sarah points out, in this case the board member of this IP communications company is Dr. Paul Reynolds, the CEO of Telecom New Zealand and the former CEO of BT Wholesale.

This announcement is very big not only for XConnect but for the IP communications market as a whole. It is not like the market needs a legitimizer anymore but it is still nice to see that traditional telecom players are really seeing how powerful IP communications can be.

This sort of board addition certainly helps XConnect as it allows the company to leverage the relationships that Reynolds has and in addition, it is a nice thing to mention when you are courting large PTT customers worldwide.

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