Recently in Conferencing Category

At a time when the world is tightening its belt but still using broadband and wireless services like they are going out of style, you might imagine an increasing portion of companies would be interested in managing telecom expenses. And if you think about it - with companies cutting travel budgets and utilizing technology to substitute for air and other forms of travel, it makes sense that broadband and telecom costs could increase while headcounts shrink.

During the recession of the early nineties telecom costs decreased

more or less in lockstep with business activity and headcount. Nowadays this is far from the case as companies further look to reduce costs with hosted solutions which they used to run locally. In addition, there is an increased focus on accessing information everywhere - via phones, netbooks and smartphones. As more information is accessed in different ways such as mashups and IVR systems, broadband use increases and so can costs.

The increase in telecom use at a time when companies are looking to decrease costs across the board could explain why some companies are looking to rein in their telecom budgets by looking to telecom expense management companies.

This would explain why Veramark Technologies, one of the companies in the TEM space is adding staff. Yes, someone is actually adding people in this environment. And while TMCnet's Michael Dinan was busy writing an article about the happenings at Veramark, I was meeting with Troy McCracken the CEO and Trent McCracken the President of Spectrum Incorporated, a company also providing services in the telecom expense management space. One comment the brothers made in the meeting was that TEM solutions will save 25% of telecom expenses over four years. I have heard similar numbers from others in the industry and from researchers.

One differentiator Spectrum brings to the table is the company's focus on ensuring agents can manage customers easily through an intuitive software program. In addition they have a focus on paper invoices allowing data to be easily extracted and loaded into SQL tables.

The company has a unique way of looking at the field - they blend the help desk with sourcing and procurement, asset management, financial reporting and expense management. An important  theme in our discussion was the fact that TEM is much more than auditing and with increasing complexity of broadband services, they make a great point.

Feel free to visit the company's site for more.

In addition here are some other related and sponsored TMCnet resources for more:

One of the most maddening parts of traveling for me has to be finding hotels which have adequate bandwidth. Generally you have to learn the good properties from bad via trial and error. For those of us used to continuous and fast broadband access, having to wait for a computer to respond due to poor hotel connectivity is frustrating beyond belief. In this economy, many of us need to be more productive than ever and often work efficiency is directly related to speed of information access.

But when you think you have nailed it and found the hotel which offers the absolute best connectivity, you are often disappointed when a technical trade show comes to town and that fat pipe seems to clog pretty quickly. Especially telecom shows where it seems everyone goes to their room and downloads the Library of Congress at night.

Is there anything worse than realizing your connection is so slow, you have time to catch the evening view between email downloads?

I recently came across a post from Andy Abramson which discusses his experiences with hotels and broadband speed. He has some good tips for the road warrior as well. He closes with hotels which have good bandwidth. To his list I would like to add the Palms in Las Vegas and the Dallas and Orlando Gaylord Hotels. I am sure there are more I could add but to date I haven't really kept a good list.

Las Vegas Palms Hotel

Feel free to add your good and bad hotel bandwidth comments at the bottom of this post and maybe together we can prevent that next road warrior from a frustrating night of playing hurry up and wait with their laptops.

As companies reduce their travel budgets - they still have the challenge of conducting business without being face-to-face. Of course by now my readers have heard me discuss countless solutions to how you can conference using technology. One of my more recent encounters with companies in this space took place earlier this month in a meeting with Greg Plum of The Conference Group, a conferencing company specializing in audio and video and selling through wholesale and retail channels. Both agents and resellers are targets of the company's wholesale approach and they are currently servicing the US, Canada and have some partners in the UK.

Plum tells me to differentiate themselves, by allowing recordable conferences which are turned into podcasts. These can be subscribed to by RSS readers which means you can keep people informed on happenings in a new way. In addition the company offers toll-free conference call numbers in 60 countries allowing customers to seem as they have an international presence.

I asked about competition from free services and Greg mentioned Skype and DimDim are the biggest competitors - but they differentiate by offering multipoint service and he said with his service you don't get solicited by other callers such as "sexysamantha" referring to the spam you get on services like Skype.

He further explained his company has focused on the quality of their calls which he says are better than that of free services. I haven't had a chance to use the service myself by will certainly cover it when/if I do get an account.

Greg thinks his company is positioned well in this economic downturn as the competition in the business space is the cost of first-class round-trip tickets abroad. Moreover the company seems to have a great strategy on focusing on keeping agents, VARs and customers happy.

PAETEC like a slew of other voice and data providers is looking to differentiate itself but perhaps its biggest asset is CEO Arunas Chesonis (pictured) whose unique style allows him to impress you about the company's direction without coming off as boasting. In fact in a recent conversation with Arunas, he told me the company is still growing and hiring. He mentioned a large non-cash charge this last quarter which made the quarter look worse than it was. I researched a bit and in the company's recent conference call there is a discussion of a goodwill impairment charge which is related to the company's acquisition of McLeodUSA. PAETEC is taking a charge now because it is not sure it can have positive net income for four years allowing it to recognize the benefits from carry forward losses. The company has some of these details in a press release and the transcript of the conference call is available for those people who like a heavy dose of financial acronyms mixed in with their telecom nomenclature.

Chesonis is optimistic about the future and the reason has to do with changes in the economy. You see much of their revenue revolves around providing outsourced services and as companies cut heads, they are in more need of assistance. For example the its Pinnacle division which handles telecom expense management among other tasks is more useful to companies who have less available people to crunch spreadsheets.

He further explained incumbents are cutting back as well and they have fewer resources to support customers with bills in the $10k/month range. Chesonis says this level of customer is good for PAETEC. Interestingly he says companies are more willing than ever to look to alternatives now that the economy is slow and savings are becoming more important.

Another interesting data point is the fact that the company has more software financing contracts out to market now than in any other six-month period as a result of reduced CAPEX budgets. And this is exactly the type of sale which makes PATEC happy because as Chesonis explains, "If you can do 20% of revenues from the DMARC inside [such as] managing Cisco gear, routers and enterprise software, it's a stronger bond and tough for a competitor to displace you."

I asked Arunas if his company is getting lots of calls from companies who want to be acquired. He says yes and that the callers are much more flexible on their terms and conditions. I received a mixed answer as to whether the company is looking to pick any of these companies up. On the one hand he said they would have to get a no-brainer price to go through the extra work. On the other he mentioned he would rather pay up for stronger assets - mentioning, "What else is going on if the price is so low?"

And it was here where Chesonis made the comments that few company leaders make and it should remind us all that a bit of humility can be healthy, no matter how successful you are... He said, "We have our own issues to fix. We are a strong B student but have more to do," referring of course to the integration of past acquisitions the company is still digesting.

What can we expect going forward?

The company is continuing to expand overseas selling Allworx (SMB IP-PBX) and Pinnacle solutions and they hope to be in 15-20 countries in ten years. In addition, they are focusing more on their energy business and they think the time is right as CIOs are getting involved in energy purchase decisions than ever. So while I have heard the argument from some that all CLECs are the same, this one is going to put natural gas and electricity on invoices in the next few years.

The Chesonis lost me. He said energy costs are going higher. Half of me wanted to get up and leave  . Are you serious I thought  ? Didn't we already burst that energy bubble? My brain just couldn't help thinking and as more neurons fired I said to myself, can we just keep oil at $30-$45 for ten more years? Please? Then reality hit me - I was in an interview after all, I better pay attention. After all, Arunas will still talking and I must have missed at least two sentences. And this guy doesn't waste his breathe. He makes great points - what was that he said? Oh yeah, apparently he thinks it will take 20-30 years for renewable energy sources to make an impact - does Obama know about this I wondered? Then he went on to say most customers spend four to five times more on energy than on telecom. Sounds like a big opportunity.

PAETEC has 3.8% market share in the northeast and the company's goal is to duplicate this share in other parts of the US. They have 1.1% share in the west, 1.3% central and 2.5% in the south. To help make this happen he tells me his company cares more, every new employee gets stock options and they get fair bonuses. In the end I can't speak for the thousands of employees at PAETEC who I haven't met but what I can tell you is this CEO is accessible and is always selling, saying smart things and seems to care. Will this translate into world domination? That isn't for me to decide but with a suite of software solutions, web hosting options, SMB phone systems, VAR relationships with communications hardware makers, an energy business and more going on at the company there is enough diversity of revenue to protect the company from shocks in one part of the business. The flipside challenge is managing a business which has as much diversity as a typical ILEC while keeping the "we care more" mantra at the forefront of the minds of 3,700 employees. And Chesonis is a weapon - I think he is the right guy to motivate a team going up against the big guys in the market. Now let's see what the economy has in store for PAETEC and the rest of the market this year and next.

See Also

• PAETEC: Success Under the Radar
• Shelley Diamond Joins Paetec's Board

Truphone Local Anywhere is likely one of the more revolutionary products/services you will see this year and consists of a single-SIM, multi-country mobile service that will make any mobile call within the set of supported countries a local call. It combines technology with roaming arbitrage and as company CEO Geraldine Wilson says is, "The ultimate phone service for people who have an international lifestyle."
 

If you find yourself in a situation where you are carrying around multiple SIM-cards or are getting charged high roaming fees, this service which will be available later this year is worth a look. Wilson tells me this service is about keeping you local and on one Truphone SIM.

Here are some features and cost savings touted by the company and an audio interview with me for more:

• Number portability of existing mobile and landline numbers to Truphone;
• Full service multi-language customer support;
• Ability to manage their Caller ID (CLI);
• Competitive rates on domestic calls, SMS, and data in home country;
• Low cost international calling to the world from any Truphone Local Anywhere-supported country;
• Up to 80 percent savings on roaming charges when visiting other countries;
• No roaming surcharges to receive calls in most major destinations;
• TruFriends - providing even lower calling rates to call to other Truphone Local Anywhere customers;
• Additional "virtual" country mobile numbers to seem 'local' in another country so friends/colleagues can call at local rates. 

Oh and if you are interested, here is Geraldine's bio:

Geraldine Wilson joined Truphone in October 2008 after almost two and a half years at Yahoo!. In her previous role she was responsible for growing the ISP's broadband and mobile business in Europe, her remit including business, marketing strategy and operations. She joined Yahoo! from Vodafone where, among others, she held the key positions of Chief Commercial Officer for Vodafone Sweden, and Managing Director of UK Content Services for Vodafone UK. Before that, she was Managing Director of Vizzavi UK and Director for Prepay at Vodafone UK where she was responsible for the successful launch of the company's "Pay as you Talk" proposition. In total she brings more than 20 years of product, marketing and sales experience in the mobile and telecoms industry to her new role.

The TMC Newsroom has been bustling with activity and lately we have had a chance to interview a number of the leaders in the communications space. Check out the TMC Video News Room home page for the latest and some of the recent interviews are below.

One thought - many of you in the communications space should ensure your CFOs listen to how well some companies in our space are doing in the interviews below. Why? Because I am surprised that financial departments in communications are cutting customer acquisition budgets (PR, marketing, sales) when many in the market are doing well.
 

Interview with Taqua

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine speaks with Taqua Chief Marketing Officer Scott Weidenfeller

03/12/2009

Interview with NeuStar

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine speaks with NeuStar Vice President Sales Michael Misheff

03/12/2009

Interview with Mera

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine speaks with Mera Senior Sales Manager Vitaly Potapov

03/12/2009

Interview with Genband

TMCnet's Rich Tehrani speaks with Genband Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Mehmet Balos

03/12/2009

Interview with Dash Carrier Services

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine speaks with Dash Carrier Services VP Sales & Business Development Kevin Breault

03/12/2009

Interview with Covad Communications

TMC's Greg Galitzine speaks with Covad Communications SVP and General Manager Wholesale Services William Ferraiuolo

03/12/2009

Interview with Actelis Networks

TMCnet's Rich Tehrani speaks with Actelis Networks Director of Sales Rick Allan

03/12/2009

Interview with Accudata Technologies

TMCnet's Rich Tehrani speaks with Accudata Technologies President & CEO

03/12/2009

Interview with Accedian Networks

TMCnet's Rich Tehrani speaks with Accedian Networks VP of Marketing Scott Summer

03/12/2009

Interview with 360 Networks

TMC's Greg Galitzine speaks with 360 Networks Product Director of VoIP Services Nick Reifschneider

03/12/2009

Interview with Stratus

TMC's Rich Tehrani speaks with Stratus President Nathan Franzmeier

03/12/2009

Interview with tw telecom

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine interviews tw telecom Senior Vice President Michael Rouleau

03/11/2009

Interview with Pac-West

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine speaks with Pac-West Chief Executive Robert H. Turner

03/11/2009

Interview with Sprint

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine speaks with Sprint Director of Wholesale Services David Falter

03/11/2009

Interview with Qwest

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine interviews Qwest General Manager Michael Lipic

03/11/2009

Interview with Profitec Billing Services

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine interviews Profitec Billing Vice President of Sales and Marketing Randal Minervino

03/11/2009

Interview with Vixxi Solutions

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine speaks with Vixxi Solutions Senior Vice President of Sales Bucky Wallace

03/11/2009

Interview with Soapstone Networks

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine speaks with Soapstone Networks Senior Vice President of Marketing Esmeralda Swartz

03/11/2009

Interview with NeuStar

TMCnet's Greg Galitzine interviews NeuStar Senior Director of Product Management Timothy Cody

03/11/2009

There is no question in my mind that HD voice is the future of communications. The PSTN and associated codecs, microphones and speakers are all designed to transmit telephony based on technology a half-century old. Few other industries have such legacy standards. Today's smartphones have the power of a supercomputer from the nineties in them yet they transmit voice of inferior quality based on state of the art voice compression technology our grandparents invented. Kind of stupid wouldn't you say?

At ITEXPO last month we had a well-attended luncheon panel (video) focusing on HD Voice and although the current economy is no friend to most new technologies, I believe over time we will see it embraced more widely.

The speakers on this panel were Alan Percy (AudioCodes), Tim Yankey (Polycom), Debbie Greenstreet (Texas Instruments), Bill Bumbernick (Alteva) and James Awad (Octasic).

Skype must agree that the future of voice is HD because they recently rolled out their SILK super wideband high compression codec royalty-free. This news won't change the market overnight but it is a strong step in the right direction and hardware manufacturers and service providers should take note of the transition from legacy voice to HD.

Great news for readers of TMCnet blogs. As you know we now have 40 bloggers and continue to innovate with technology and integration additions to our blogs which allow you to use your social networking login to comment on our blog entries. But that was so yesterday.

Through the hard work of the development team here at TMC, we now have deep integration with a variety of social networking sites. For example, we can now have Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates directly imported into our blogs. Moreover, I will scan about 2,000 headlines in a given day and I flag many of them for later coverage. Many times I assign these articles to members on my editorial/blogger team.

Now however I can share news items directly from my Google Reader which brings in news from thousands of sources and all these items will show up on the Recent Activity area on the right of my blog under the search box.

If you want to bookmark my social media feeds, here are links:

• Rich Tehrani Twitter Feed
• Rich Tehrani Facebook Status
• Rich Tehrani Google Reader Feed

Please note that I will no longer update my status on Twitter but instead use Facebook. My Facebook status updates will be automatically copied to twitter and then my blog - at least that is the theory.  I set all this up a few minutes ago and am now testing.

TMC has been aggressively adding new bloggers to its arsenal of content which attracts 2-3 million communications and tech decision makers worldwide each month. We are now at blogger number 40 and counting. We are still aggressively recruiting many more and if you can write and have something of value to contribute and want the most exposure you can get, drop Greg Galitzine (ggalitzine at tmcnet.com) a line ASAP to learn more.

TMC is one of the few media companies - in fact companies of any kind, growing in this market. We are thankful that we have loyal readers, sponsors and customers who see the value of working with TMC in good times and bad.

In fact we are expanding rapidly into many new product areas and many of the products you have seen successfully deployed on TMCnet such as channels and GOCs (Global Online Communities) - what we believe to be the largest collections of sponsored communities on the internet (about 110-120, sponsors each month), will soon be rolled out beyond the communications space.

If you are a salesperson or publisher's representative firm looking to sell products which have high demand regardless of the economy, drop Dave Rodriguez (drodriguez at tmcnet.com) a line ASAP. Please forward this to any good salespeople you know.

Here is an excerpt from a rough draft of the press release we will post soon:

TMCnet Adds 40th Blogger to Its Blog Community

Norwalk, CT, (February 23, 2009) -- Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC^®), today announced the addition of four new blogs to their popular Web site, TMCnet, now boasting a community of 40blogs covering the gamut of topics in telecom, VoIP, contact centers, wireless, unified communications, open source and others.  Readers of TMCnet's communications and technology blogs account for 35 percent of the nearly two million monthly visitors.

TMCnet's recently added blogs include Open Communications, IP Communication Design, Contact Center Strategies and Oh Say Do UC.

Open Communications by Paul McMillan, director UC strategy, Siemens Enterprise Communications, will be discussing the topic of Open Communications,particularly for enterprise, while delving into other areas of interest including what lies ahead in the industry. 

IP Communications Design by Kim Devlin-Allen, director of product management for Texas Instruments' (TI) CPE VOP business, will analyze voice in the consumer and enterprise market. From HD voice to VoIP and IP communications, Devlin-Allen talks about everything from "the next coolest gadget" to solving the design challenges of tomorrow's ever changing voice ecosystem.

Contact Center Strategies by Chris McGugan, vice president of marketing for the Contact Center Solutions group at Avaya,.will be focusing on how technology is evolving in the core of the communication systems and how that transformation is delivering on a new call center architecture.  

Oh Say Do UC by Clinton Fitch, Unified Communications product manager for Spanlink Communications, examines unified communications technology, trends and observations with real-world examples.  Plus insights on how to make UC decisions both now and in the future.  

"Expanding the roster of quality bloggers serves TMCnet's commitment to deliver the most comprehensive portal filled with quality content for the communications and technology sector.  Thanks again to our panel of experts that comprise our blogosphere and to the 2 to 3 million visitors who support TMC blogs and TMCnet every month," said Rich Tehrani, TMC president, group publisher and editor-in-chief.  "Feel free to visit our blogs and post your comments."

TMCnet's distinguished bloggers also includes TMC President Rich Tehrani, TMC Labs founder Tom Keating, TMCnet Editorial Director Greg Galitzine, plus David Byrd's SIP and Serve by a Foodie, Peter Radizeski's On Rad's Radar and Tony Rybczynski's The Hyperconnected Enterprise.

TMCnet's Blog Community is continually evolving to offer a higher-quality user experience.  Visitors to the TMCnet blogosphere can now sign-in using their social networking account, via Facebook, VOX or Movable Type, allowing them to post comments which will include their profile photo. Additionally, new technology deployed enables blogs to auto-populate with images pulled from related articles.

 Yahoo search for term Nortel

Do a Yahoo! search on Nortel and you see ads from Microsoft and Avaya which are quite friendly. Microsoft for example directs you to its People Ready Business site where it pushes its relationship with Nortel with messaging which emphasizes global solutions to empower the enterprise. Avaya's ad is pretty generic - and goes directly to the home page.

Microsoft Live search for term Nortel

If you use Microsoft Live as your search engine the results are similar to Yahoo with a Microsoft ad but the Avaya ad is replaced by one from Fonality going to their home page which touts their "New Deal" or a 20% discount on certain models.

Google search for term Nortel

The situation on Google gets much more competitive as Altigen goes after Nortel's customers with the statement, "Concerned about the future of your Nortel phone system?" The headline says "Customers and Partners," in an effort to go after the entire Nortel ecosystem.

Similarly, Avaya's ad direct and professional... It begins with "Upgrade Your Nortel" the ad then says "To New Avaya System." It finishes off with great marketing copy - "Free Information to Get You Started."

BTW - yes, I know, Avaya corporate has been very quiet. In response to the many questions you have sent us about more interviews with Avaya CXOs, my team has reached out and the interview ball is in the company's court. I will get back to you when the Avaya's CEO begins interviewing. I am looking forward to hearing what they have to say as much as you are.

But back to the matter at hand - yes, in a recession you need to capitalize on the weakness of the competition to grow or at least stay stable. All companies need to gain share and one way to do it is with search ads.

I have mentioned in the past that a number of companies have reached out to TMC as well to help them develop programs to target Nortel's customers. I can't disclose who or whether we took this business but it seems a common theme right now is to go after the low-hanging Nortel customer fruit.

On a related note it is unclear how current and future customers will view the Nortel sale of its application acceleration business to Radware. I don't expect the competition to let up due to this news but it does seem to be a positive sign for the company that it is able to sell anything in this tough economic and M&A climate.

Search engine ads change all the time so take this entry as a snapshot from a late Friday afternoon in February and nothing more. If I hear more details of other companies specifically targeting Nortel customers in the future I will be sure to share.

• Nortel Under Assault
• Nortel Puts Another Nail in WiMAX Coffin
• F5 Targets Nortel Customers