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It is definitely worth pointing out that even in the toughest economic environments; some companies believe the telecom space makes a great investment. Witness the recent ADC investment of $33 million by Citadel (which some call daring) and today's news that Intel Corporation's strategic investment group, Intel Capital, as well as DFJ Esprit and Eden Ventures will put $11 million into Tribold to help company's position in the enterprise product management space as it relates to carriers.

The company offers their SOA-based Tribold Integration Services Framework which provides the necessary product data management infrastructure to interface product and service data to BSS and OSS applications. Examples include CRM, billing, order management, SDP, provisioning and  online portals. The company further focuses on making carriers more efficient and in this economic climate they seem to have the right product at the right time.

The money will be used to bolster sales and marketing as well as product development.

From my vantage point the service provider market has never been at a better and worse point. If you are supplying legacy voice equipment and/or products you will have a tough time but if you have equipment which helps carriers provide wireless data, or save/make money, you are in a great area of the market.

For the foreseeable future, many segments of wireless will be most resistant to a downturn and the jury may be out on WiMAX for now. In fact, well-known 4G analyst and TMCnet blogger Paul Kapustka is the only person I know who figured out Clearwire, the king of WiMAX is hedging its bets on LTE.

Still, there seems to be insatiable demand for wireless service and one can only imagine how much more spending there would be by global consumers on wireless devices and service in a good economic climate.

Attention bloggers, analysts, editors, reporters, industry gurus, etc - ITEXPO registration is open for you and we are looking forward to a few days of important dialogue with you regarding where our markets are headed. ITEXPO continues to be a show which not only focuses on the important future of communications but more importantly, is a place where you can come and meet with the companies who have business plans and are selling products and services today.

In other words the companies which have a higher likelihood of being around in 18 months. I welcome your participation in what is shaping up to be the most important communications industry gathering of the year.

Important links:

• Exhibitors
• Speakers
• Floor Plan
• Conference Agenda
• Travel Info

• Digium Asterisk World
• 4G Wireless Evolution

In my conversations with many in the telecom industry they tell me they are very excited about coming to ITEXPO next month in Miami. They explain, now is the best time to be at a communications show which not only addresses the entire telecom space but focuses on business - or making money.

They tell me this year, more than ever, they need to focus on generating earnings. Sure, the future, visionary aspects of communications are great (and will be disussed at the event) but I can tell you from personal experience, the companies in communications that haven't been focusing on sustainable business models can't pay their bills and many have already quietly closed their doors.

I sincerely believe as an industry we need to come together and focus on the meat and potatoes... How do we make the money we need to make in the toughest economic environment of our lifetimes? How do we help ensure our jobs and companies will be here in 2010?

If making money or saving it is important to you, you need to come to ITEXPO where we will focus on how to benefit from the future of communications. But not benefit in the far future like in 2013, I am talking about increasing the bottom line rapidly with solutions like SIP trunking, open source and a plethora of other no-brainer technologies you need in a slow economy.

The show also offers certifications (OCS, trixbox, fax over IP, IP network security and Asterisk) which can help you stay employed or find a job. There is also a satisfaction guarantee if you attend ITEXPO conferences. Yes, there is free content as well (Microsoft Response Point, Reseller Solutions, SIP Trunking, Telecom Agent Day).

If you go to one telecom show in a recession, it has to be ITEXPO because you will learn to generate real and rapid ROI.

And of course the cherry on top of this proverbial communications sundae is airfares to Miami and hotel costs are at a record low meaning you will pay less money than ever before to come to a show which can get you saving and/or making money immediately.

And believe me this event is cost-effective for you as you can meet with all the vendors that matter in one place. In many cases, you will meet with top execs who go to few or no other shows all years.

There are too many to list but to give you an idea, you can meet with Digium, Microsoft, Aculab, 8x8, AudioCodes, Interactive Intelligence, I2Telecom, AllWorx, VoltDelta, Applianx, Dialogic, Sangoma, Quintum, Sansay, TelcoBridges, Adtran, Aspect, Broadvox, Cbeyond, Dash Carrier Services, DIDX, Grandstream, Intelepeer and so many others. To be honest there are just too many to list.

Here is the full list of speakers and exhibitors which I encourage you to check out immediately and then feel free to book your flight and hotel.

Some speaking companies of note are as follows: ClearOne, Communicano, Broadsoft, Bandwidth.com, Acme Packet, D-Link, Deloitte Financial Advisory Services, Empirix, Faxcore, Fonolo, Fujitsu Network Communications, Gigaom, Global Crossing, GIPs (again - too many to list).

I look forward to greeting you personally at the show.

Here are some scenes from ITEXPO last fall in Los Angeles:
 

 

In a number of my meetings with companies in the tech and telecom space over the last few years, they have told me they are aggressively targeting Nortel customers. This was before the talk of bankruptcy which will likely make it easier for customers to be poached.

Ittai Kidron at Oppenheimer believes Juniper will benefit most from marketshare loss Nortel will see. Cisco and F5 will benefit as well according to this analyst but the revenue increase to Cisco as a result of marketshare gains will be minor when compared against Cisco's total revenue.

"We calculate that just a 6% slice of the addressable enterprise business from Nortel --  $754 million in annual revenue -- would represent 16% of our 2009 revenue growth forecast for Juniper," Kidron states in his report.

Virtually all of Nortel's enterprise businesses -- switching, routing, security and VoIP -- are "up for grabs," according to Oppenheimer. Nortel has seen its marketshare deteriorate over the past two to three years in these areas, although it still retains a "solid, credible position" in VoIP, the firm asserts.

What Nortel needs to do ASAP is to come out with a strong branding campaign to assure potential and existing customers that they will be around for the long term.

In business, perception is reality and by not being more proactive, the company risks a tremendous amount. All the engineering prowess in the world may not be enough to convince a CIO to put his faith in a company who is linked with the term bankruptcy in the general media.

Nortel needs to act immediately or competitors will have an easy time of scaring customers away from the Canadian communications vendor.

The competition is certainly not waiting, why is Nortel?

Combined entity to provide enhanced performance management, coaching, employee review and workflow functionality

Aspect has done a great job rolling up a number of call center companies and even in a slow economy is not letting up. In fact, the company just acquired AIM Technology, a company which streamlines the contact center process allowing organizations to more easily motivate, measure and manage employees. The San Francisco-based group was purchased for an undisclosed sum and the resulting product line will be called PerformanceEdge Performance Management.

This acquisition is a natural part of building out the PerformanceEdge business according to the company.

In a conversation by phone with the Aspect Management team it became apparent that the icing on this acquisition cake is the fact that Aim Technology's solutions are based on Microsoft SQL Server. I am told the enhanced relationship between Aspect and Microsoft including a cash infusion by the operating system giant is a reason for increased business. This is especially true in UC environments and obviously having more Microsoft-based technology in its arsenal can only help Aspect. The company calls this addition of Microsoft technology "cost efficient" and you can consider this being synonymous a with saying it is better to have a single vendor than trying to get Linux to behave nicely with Microsoft.

For existing customers, I am told this acquisition will be transparent and the offering will come in flavors geared at the mid-market which is 200 to a thousand users. Beyond that, there is an enterprise edition which will be helpful for companies with multiple data sources and multiple sites. Prices are $350 and $500 per named agent respectively.

I asked Aspect about how the call center market is doing in these challenging economic times and they mentioned that decisions are slowing in customer service related sales but speeding up in collections. This is consistent with what I am hearing elsewhere by the way.

In terms of geographies they are seeing North America strong and CALA less so. APAC is growing in line with estimates and Europe is the weakest sector.

Aspect tells me they see themselves quickly evolving to become a unified communications solutions provider. This includes software and consulting services around UC and the contact center.

I am told going forward the company will absolutely continue to acquire the skills needed in the contact center, Microsoft UC and services sectors. Basically if you read between the lines (not that you need to), we will see more acquisitions and I wouldn't be surprised to see the company evolve into a major Avaya competitor across all the NJ-based company's product lines.

According to the company, there are elevated conversations with customers due to the Aspect/Microsoft alliance. There was some initial confusion among customers regarding how the Aspect alliance is different from the one with Nortel but I was told this has been cleared up by explaining the Aspect relationship is more focused on the contact center.

Aspect reiterated they are seeing more OCS and professional services sales due to the Redmond relationship.

In the marketplace, the company tells me Cisco is gaining some traction by bundling complete solutions and to combat this, Aspect is utilizing the Microsoft relationship.

On the workforce optimization side, Performance Edge has seen consolidation in the market and Nice and Verint are the two other companies they see in major deals they are involved in.

When asked about its differentiation, the company responded by saying it thinks it has the most complete set of capabilities to address the needs of a customer. From customer service to collections to sales and telemarketing, Aspect says they have a unified platform allowing for inbound/outbound and multichannel environments.

When asked about the hosted market, execs explained that the managed service offering they have in performance management is doing well as many customers are looking to get up and running quickly but IT departments are not able to keep up.

In addition, the company works with partners in the hosted ACD space and they are seeing more tire kicking by customers in the SaaS space. The company is also reselling TellMe as a hosted IVR solution. But where the relationship gets interesting is the integration of TellMe and the Aspect inbound routing and outbound dialing capabilities.

The company has slowly been rolling up so many competitive companies over the years and as it has done this, one of its claims to fame is the "one place to view reports" and "one place to manage routing rules" philosophy. This now applies to Microsoft's TellMe as well and gives the company a unique hybrid approach with on premise equipment merged with hosted in-the-cloud solutions.

Aspect tells me customers like this blended approach as it allows them to not worry about having the required ports to handle peak call volume. The usage-based model is something the company seems to like and will likely be an area where Aspect will devote more energy going forward.

The timing of this acquisition shows Aspect is still very committed to the contact center space and although I don't expect this purchase was for a major sum of money, it shows Aspect is still looking to round out its portfolio with companies which fit within its product roadmap. For Aspect customers, this is a good thing and for fledgling developers in the contact center market, Aspect still represents an exit strategy.

The good news is this M&A activity in the contact center space will likely fuel more investment in the market. In all, this is good for contact center industry and will increase the level of competition - which is great for all involved.

It is no wonder that in a slowing economy there is an increased focus on customers, CRM technology and practices. Many companies are cutting in these areas and they are sure to suffer in comparison to companies who put the customer first.

In a slow economy you need to fight to gain and keep every customer you can.

If you aren't keeping up with the latest on CRM tips, tricks, news and analysis - you are doing your company and shareholders a huge disservice. And most importantly you will likely be out of a job before you realize it.

Many companies are looking to cut cost and every person in an organization needs to work harder, smarter, better and faster or they will find themselves looking for work.

Fortunately, Inside CRM just put together their list of top CRM blogs which should keep you up to date on just about all you need to know in the space.

TMC's David Sims made the list with his First Coffee blog which as the article points out is the only CRM blog to my knowledge to disclose the musical ambience during the time of blog composition.

Here are a few others who made this list. I didn't list them all so as to not steal the thunder of the author Chris Bucholz:

• PGreenblog
• Brent's Social CRM Blog
• Beagle Research Group
• CRM Outsiders
• The CRM Consultant
• Destination CRM Blog
• Michael Maoz's Gartner Blog
• 1 to 1 Media Blog

In addition, I am sure my writing is not nearly as good as anyone else on this list but my CRM thoughts can be found under the CRM category tag in my blog.

When you have 425,000 employees, some will definitely do things which embarrass headquarters. Such is the case with this UPS driver who seemed to try to make a basket with this package. No word on how many points he will get for this one but odds are he received at least one pink slip followed by the words, "Don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out."

He is pretty lucky in fact the resolution of the video is not great enough for him to be recognized.

This is yet another example of how the web can take over a company's branding and messaging in ways they cannot control. Viral videos like this have to be the worst nightmare for those in public relations and I would estimate this video is worth millions of dollars in negative publicity.

Objectivity is the subject of today's thoughts - primarily because I came across a pretty harsh criticism of me being biased towards a particular vendor. I was going to link to the posts where an anonymous individual decided to skewer me but I then realized that the poster could be a short seller of the stock of the company in question or perhaps a disgruntled former or present employee.

Seldom, I do get criticism from people saying I am biased towards or against companies. They say I brownnose or they say I am in the pocket of this company or that. Sometimes they even say a company is not a customer and that is why I mention negative rumors I hear, etc.

Here is the reality. Every person on this earth has an opinion and if after writing thousands of blog entries I get an annual critic, I am doing pretty well.

Every company in the communications space is a customer of TMC. Yes just about every one. And lately we are seeing more and more tech companies working with us as well.

But in the end this is not as important as the millions of readers TMC has amassed over the years. On my blog alone I get about half a million pages viewed per month. TMCnet in total receives about 40 million pages viewed per month from readers around the world. The average visitor spends 30 minutes on TMCnet and up to three million people visit TMCnet each month.

The web is the ultimate democracy and millions of technology decision-makers worldwide have decided TMCnet and our associated print publications and events are where they want to go when receiving their education.

We have weathered the toughest of competitors and a nuclear winter in telecom media which surely should have qualified for a TARP bailout.

Still, loyal readers like you keep coming back.

Yes, this is an ad-supported site but like I have pointed out in the past, our first loyalty is to our readers because wherever you find readers, you find advertisers.

TMC was founded by my father in 1972. It has a strong association with him and with me and it is my duty to ensure we are doing right by the industry and helping you in making the best purchasing decisions you can.

As you may recall, I was an MIS director and I have a computer hardware engineering degree from the University of Connecticut. I understand more about the nuts and bolts of the industry than most journalists.

This of course does not mean I won't make mistakes and when I do I will try to explain where I went wrong. But what it does mean is in a world where we have lost trust in politicians, the investment community, our banks and other pillars of our markets, TMC has been building solid and lasting relationships with readers like you for over a quarter of a decade. Few other media companies anywhere have stayed under the same ownership for that long.

As always, we appreciate you choosing TMC as your source for information and we are humbled by your patronage. And yes, you will hear occasional critics... But for a site where the writers pen thousands of original stories a month, we think we are doing alright.

One of the most fascinating articles I have read in a long while is about the Siemens global bribery scandal where the company spent $1.4 billion on bribes from 2001 to 2007. Of that, get this - telecom accounted for $800 million or 57%! Consider the company also had divisions in industrial, transportation, control systems, healthcare and other areas and you see just how out of whack the telecom bribery spending was.

This leads one to wonder a few things... What would have happened if $800 million in telecom bribes weren't paid during this time period? Would Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya and others have done better? One would imagine they would have.

Would the terms of the Alcatel-Lucent deal have been different? How about Avaya being taken private - would the valuation had been higher if the bribery by Siemens didn't take place?

Then there is product development. Did it suffer over the past decade? Did Siemens need to innovate if it was selling more product than it should have? Is its innovation behind others?

Furthermore, if other companies were selling less, did they in turn have less money to put back into their own R&D?

Then there is the sheer amount of the bribes. I assume Siemens execs were not stupid and would not spend over a billion on bribes if they didn't need to. This begs the question - was there competition in the bribing process? One would imagine there had to be as the numbers are so high.

Yesterday I posted my interview with Richard Lowe the President of the Carrier Networks Division of Nortel. He told me in the interview that Nortel has always been above board and fair - even though the competition wasn't. I didn't ask - but I should have. Was he referring to Siemens? And if he was and is implying Nortel doesn't bribe, then what other companies are bribing?

This gets us to the next logical question which is where is the next scandal?

I have no illusions that bribery doesn't take place but I wonder where this will end. Did this scandal scare other multinationals enough to have them stop this practice? If it has, what of the people who are used to getting bribes in order to buy from a company? Do they automatically stop asking now?
 

To me, this scandal is the first cockroach you see. We all know there is a nest of

these things somewhere and I imagine once the financial challenges the world is facing are over, there will be more time to focus on spraying RAID on the rest of the world's corporations.