Recently in Cisco Category

I have been meaning to thank my tech vendors for a while - the companies which allow me to be as productive as possible on the road. I am going to be brutally honest and not sugar coat so brace yourselves.

Verizon EVDO - without this gem of a service I am not sure where I would be. I am able to upload 30Mb files in rapid-fire fashion as I perform video interviews worldwide. Moreover I am almost always connected to this service when there is no WiFi alternative. Amazingly, it is often faster than hotel broadband!

iPhone - Thank you Steve Jobs for reinventing the way a wireless phone works and in the process producing an environment where developers flourish providing applications which make the world a better place. In the interest of being honest, the lack of Flash support and multitasking for non-Apple apps is upsetting.

Verizon MiFi 2200 - All that you love about Verizon with the benefit of WiFi access.

Boingo* - A lifesaver when you have a few minutes to log onto a foreign WiFi network and don't want to establish an account. I have tested it worldwide and am happy with the service.

Dell Latitude E6500 - What an amazing laptop when it comes to battery life - but when it comes to Dell's ControlPoint Connection Manager which manages the wireless connections, this is the buggiest piece of crap I have ever used.

iGo AC power Adapter - they make a small and light adapter allowing me to power-up in the car and plane but it has lots of problems when it stops working from time to time. This is my third one in about five years and I am pretty fed up with its finickyness (Yes, I know that's not a word).

Plantronics** - I use this company's headsets in my office, on the go and even a stereo Bluetooth headset when I am in the need for great sound without wires. The company has solid products that are a pleasure to use. This was not always the case. They have evolved nicely over the last eight years.

CellPoint Flamingo Headphones* - Flamingos are the best wired headphones I have used from the perspective of staying in the ears. They are virtually impossible to shake out regardless of what you do.

Brookstone NXT flat-panel speaker - just plug it into a laptop or phone and play music from this device the size of stack of 25 postcards. It chews through batteries fast but packs the most sound for its weight and space.

Macbook Air - Great for presentations - people love this thing. The downside is it is finicky and I still haven't figured out how its keychain works.

Glance Networks* - One of the best services for screen sharing around... It doesn't have all the bells and whistles but is dead easy to use.

Targus Rolling Laptop Case - It works well, and takes a beating - carrying everything in this blog entry and more.

D-Link DWL-G730AP - This little gadget turns any wired connection into a wireless hotspot/access point. It works flawlessly and has been a pleasure to use.

Bose QuietComfort 3 headphones - they work great but are too pricey and should at least let you listen to music when the battery dies.

TomTom Go 740 Live - this GPS unit is not especially small or easy to read in the sun but it does let you connect to Google search and gives you real-time traffic alerts for $10/month. During a massive rainstorm it rerouted me twice in an hour and saved me precious time. It is a good, not great product which has proven to be more and less accurate than an equivalent Garmin unit. Its graphics are far inferior to Garmin. Also the connection with the base unit is flaky and not reliable.

Skype - Lets me talk to and see my family on the go - likewise with coworkers and colleagues. I hate when someone I don't know too well sees I am online and wants to have a lengthy chat discussion. Just because I am online doesn't mean I am not in a meeting, etc. Presence is not always accurate especially for me as I am always online. What I am saying is - hey, how about asking if I have a moment? Pretty please.

Google - Do I need to explain? I must search 100 times a day at least.

Remote Desktop - Microsoft Software which has saved my life allowing me to be as productive as possible on the road by "pretending" to be in the office. It hangs one out of a hundred times or so but otherwise it is great.

There is probably more but this is enough for now. Time to get back and put some of this tech to work.

The FTC has a new rule on disclosure of paid blogs/reviews with an $11,000 fine per offense so * denotes a free product/service and ** denotes some free products.

I applaud the FTC on this great idea which should reduce conflict of interest and wonder if they will move forward to ensure financial rating agencies, other government agencies and elected officials will have to play by the same rules as bloggers. I would love to know which laws are influenced by lobbyists and gifts on corporate jets for example. I am looking forward to seeing this happen but am not holding my breath.

On a recent trip to Canada I sat down with Mitel CEO Don Smith and President and COO Paul Butcher to discuss the company, industry and future. The dynamic duo is exactly that, mixing copious amounts of humor and friendly verbal jabs (this time at each other and not me ;) ) with frank talk about technology and marketshare.

Avaya Purchasing Nortel

The issue of greatest importance was the demise of Nortel and sale to Avaya, since both are Canadian companies with a similar tradition of great engineering.

Don and Paul explained off the bat that they are excited to see two of their biggest competitors Nortel and Avaya merge as they have 100% channel/geographic/product overlap (may be a slight exaggeration but at least 85% is probably a "safer" estimate) and the two companies hated each other for 100 years. They say they are getting calls from not only the Avaya channel but the Nortel channel as the combined channel from the newly combined company will make it more difficult for these resellers to compete for business.

Software, the Strategic Direction

I must say, Siemens was probably the first large PBX company to sit me down years and explain that they believe the future of the business is software. Of course this idea has been the holy grail of startups and small companies alike. Altigen, Comdial and Televantage were just some of the pioneers in this space from a decade ago.

But Mitel has always been a strong engineering company and they took the PBX-as-software concept a step further by integrating tightly with VMware. What's that you say? VMware doesn't support real-time applications. Well, it seems Mitel worked closely with VMware engineers to get real-time working on a virtualized system. Specifically Mitel Communications Director software and Mitel real-time voice applications can run on the VMware vSphere™ 4 platform.

From there Don explained how more and more meetings with CIOs include discussions regarding how an increasing number of data center applications have to live in a virtualized world.

A Bigger Shift Than IP

What the execs said next was perhaps the most important... They explained that the shift from TDM to IP while dramatic is really a lot easier than the shift from hardware to virtualized systems. This explains why in 2001 the company spent 60% of its R&D on software but today it is over 90%. The question I have is when will other companies catch up and will lack of virtualization support be a deal-breaker for CIOs??

Avaya Going Down Wrong Path?

From there Paul explained the model Avaya is using of increasing the price of hardware while reducing the price of software is unsustainable and it will be difficult for Avaya to shift back. While I did not have time to independently verify Avaya raising hardware prices, the New Jersey-based enterprise communications market-share leader has been lowering prices on software-based UC solutions in the hopes of greater adoption. Interestingly Iwatsu, a smaller player in the PBX space has been giving away some software features such as UC in the past year or so.

The Power of Virtualization

The incredible power of virtualization reveals itself when you realize you can have a single server running different instances of your communications software. Imagine that one division can have one version of the software while another division uses a completely different version. In addition, each division has autonomy while data center functions such as backups etc can be centralized.

Smith said at this point, "Multiple Instance Communications Director, it doesn't roll off the tongue but that is what it is." And with that, a new a new telecom acronym, MICD opened its eyes for the very first time. ;)

Vonage Not a VoIP IPO Killer?

It was widely believed that the Mitel IPO of a few years back as squashed because Vonage tanked so badly and the stigma would be associated with Mitel. To this the company replied the reason the IPO was pulled was that they were able to raise the money quickly without an IPO and moreover they had a short window in which to acquire Inter-Tel as the company's founder Steve Mihaylo was in competition for the Arizona-based enterprise communications company.

What's next for the Mitel? Well for the short-term it is trying to figure out the optimum way to sell VMware-based telephony. In a business where resellers used to distinguish themselves by running wires neatly, we have seen a shift in the skillset necessary to be successful. First there was CTI, then VoIP, IP communications (including video) and now virtualization is the latest frontier. Expect more interconnects/resellers to hang up their hats as the complexity level eclipses their skills. Filling this void is the new opportunity for the channel.

After my meeting, I spent some time in Sir Terry Matthews incubator-land (Wesley Clover is a Terry Matthews company which also owns Mitel) where a slew of communications startups compete for time, attention and resources. My wife tells me I have an obsession With Sir Terry but I would call it a fascination with a person who can launch and invest in so many companies and maintain such a successful track record. At this point, the man is a legend and companies he starts have a head-start in the world. But when I compare sir Terry to different legends in tech I realize while others merge and slash jobs, Matthews keeps launching new companies, creating new equity and incentivizing new generations to build new companies which hire the engineers, marketers and salespeople of the future.

Here are some videos of my experience. I am still not as smooth as Larry King - but I am working on it.

Cisco has done a remarkable job pushing the telepresence market forward but on the low-end of the market the company left lots of room for smaller players such as Tandberg, Lifesize, etc to prosper while relying on Cisco's marketing and PR to carry them forward. Now Cisco is about to pick up Norway based Tandberg, a strong player in the video market for $3 billion in cash.

Obviously this deal is in line with the John Chamber's vision of video everywhere and moreover allows Cisco to control a large part of the video market. Cisco is now in the position now more than ever of being able to lower the prices of the video units it sells so as to move more routers and other data center products.

Companies like Polycom are not pleased with the situation. Stefan Karapetkov, Emerging Technologies Director for the company had this to say in his blog:

Cisco announced today that they will acquire Tandberg, and this will have significant impact on the video communications market. It will reduce competition, and limit customers' choices, especially in the telepresence space. It will, hurt Radvision who now fills the gap in Cisco's video infrastructure portfolio.

I am however more concerned about the standards-compliance that have been the pillar of the video communication industry for years. Tandberg and Polycom worked together in international standardization bodies such as ITU-T and in industry consortiums such as IMTC to define standard mechanisms for video systems to communicate.

Cisco on the other hand is less interested in standards, and considers proprietary extensions as a way to gain competitive advantage. The concern of the video communication industry right now should be that the combined company will be so heavily dominated by Cisco that standards will become last priority, far after integrating Tandberg products with Cisco Call Manager and WebEx.

Telling is the fact that both Tandberg and Cisco declined participating in interoperability events over the last few months.

While I am not as up to date on the travel schedule of Tandberg and Cisco - especially as it pertains to standards meetings, it is obvious that with this acquisition, Cisco will have a major, overshadowing position in video and this is bad for customers as there will be less room for competition.

As a Cisco investor, you should look at this move in a positive way as Cisco has had a good track record with M&A in the b2b space.

Still, the Tandberg acquisition is a large one and the larger the acquired company, the more chance for failure. This deal will be a tough one to screw up though as Cisco's sales channel has the right relationships to move lots of Tandberg s gear. Polycom is not a small company and they are well respected in voice and video. This deal will put pressure on them but could also open up gaps in the market which can be exploited as Cisco digests this large video meal.

xG Technology proclaimed in 2005 that they have a revolutionary technology which allows wireless broadband using unlicensed and licensed frequencies. They said they could build the equivalent to a WiMAX network without the need to spend a massive amount on spectrum auctions and moreover, their technology had better range than WiMAX.

It seemed too good to be true and after some years of waiting, the communications industry got impatient. After all, this revolutionary technology had the potential to change the way wireless networks are deployed. If it was real, where was it? Again, it seemed beyond what was possible and after time, even patient old me figured the story didn't add up. I even asked the company to show us the technology so we could set the record straight.

xG responded with an invitation for a visit a short while after.

I drove to xG Technology's Florida headquarters and met the management team and drilled them with questions. I was the first person from the outside to see the company's xMax technology in action and wanted to come back with an accurate story. Of course, I wanted to know what you want to know - are they going to change the wireless world or not? Are they going to give WiMAX and LTE a run for its money? Most importantly, I wanted to understand how it is possible for a company few have heard of to go up against the major wireless players and win - doing something in a different way.

The results of my questions can be summed up as follows... The company bit off more than it could chew in 1995 and should have waited before talking.

A discussion of xMax, frequencies used, etc



It is obvious now they underestimated the complexity of what they were trying to accomplish. xG had to develop a wireless technology in a noisy spectrum from scratch. This is far more difficult than developing technology in a licensed spectrum where interference is a relative afterthought. They had to build base stations, chips, test gear and even a phone. In the world of WiMAX you can purchase chips from one vendor, test systems from another and phones from other companies. Time to market in WiMAX is much shorter as an entire ecosystem is developing products which interoperate and interconnect with one another. Imagine building it all yourself in spectrum which most engineers will tell you is not usable.

When you realize the size, scope and you might even add lunacy of the undertaking, it makes sense that the company spent $100 million dollars developing it all. Moreover, while they have about 50 engineers today, they averaged about 30 during their corporate history. It does seem impossible when you think about it.

Now that we got that out of the way - on to some specifics about the solution.

What frequencies does it run on? Currently 902-928 MHz but it is software definable meaning the solution can potentially be used in white space situations as well.

I had a chance to see the digital and RF boards which end-user devices would incorporate. At this point they are 2-8 times as large as a comparable WiMAX chipset but I would expect them to come down in size over time and as they are produced in volume.

xG xMax digital and RF boards

Voice is transmitted over the network via SIP with header compression and other techniques which minimize latency, bandwidth use, etc. The company's first handset the TX60 has integrated WiFI.

TX60 with soon to be added flip antenna

Perhaps the most interesting stat is they estimate that 700 MHz spectrum costs about 12 times more than equivalent xMax coverage when you factor in the cost of the frequency auctions.

Mobile base switching center

I was further told that one of the company's customers Townes Tele-Communications, Inc. has a few towers and their 100 foot tower has a range of 2.5 miles while one at 350 feet in the air has 6-8 mile range and is superior in coverage area to the nearby GSM equipment.

Now for the real-world test. President and CTO Joe Bobier handed me a TX60 phone and told me they are still working on their battery management technology. This phone had none I was told.
 

With that we made a call and I started talking to the command center from a few feet away. The voice quality? It was good. As good as any cell phone for sure. We then went into the test vehicle which had a massive power inverter for laptops which run diagnostics on the phone in a real-world setting. The quality was still great.

xG Technology command center

 

We drove for 30-45 minutes and the voice quality never diminished except in one spot where everyone warned me voice quality would be a bit choppy. Generally There was no latency or anything which made you think you were talking on any phone which is inferior to what you may use today. I kept asking the people on the other end to count to ten when we were near overhead wires or in areas I suspected there would be poor reception. Other than the spot mentioned above, the quality never diminished.

Mobile testing in South Florida

As the test ran on, the phone got "fry an egg on me" hot and at some point the sound stopped working. The phone was still connected according to the laptop but you couldn't converse. We called once more and after a while the voice couldn't be heard again.

It is worth pointing out that the phone was plugged into the laptop which graphed its diagnostics and this meant the phone was charging and subsequently running hotter than it would have on batteries alone. It was as hot as early WiFi phones I had tested some years back and Joe suspected the heat was the issue with the phone. I have no reason to doubt this assertion.

In summary, it works. Was it a perfect demo? No. But they never are and when you compare this to what the wireless carriers have had years to perfect, you come away very impressed. There are lots of discussions we can have about noise floors in the 900 MHz spectrum and how the company deals with interference but they are beyond the scope of this article. Moreover, we drove around enough residential and commercial areas that I am satisfied that I experienced a real-world test.

Who is the target for this technology? Incumbents (playing in other areas) CLECs, cable companies, mobile operators, OEMs,content providers such as Google, MVNOs, etc.

What does it cost? Well for a cool $2 billion you could have 70% POP coverage for 452 metros or about 90% of the population of the US. This would include at least a megabit of bandwidth per channel.

I know what you are thinking. Can it scale? The answer of course is I don't know but any customer is going to test it out before they buy and the company knows this. In addition, the description of how xG lays out its channels leads me to believe they have thought this issue through well.

But in the end there is nothing like a real-world volume test to know for sure.

So was it worth the trip? Yes. Can xMax from xG Technology change the wireless world? Quite possibly. But before we go too far down this path it is worth mentioning that areas of coverage are exclusive meaning only one carrier can pick up each city or metro area. This is an important consideration for companies looking to become a next-gen wireless carrier.

For now I believe the question has been answered. At least for my demo, xMax worked well and is real. When you realize that this company may have found a way to take a frequency riddled with wireless garbage and turn it into a fully functioning wireless voice and data network you start to see how much of a game changer this could be for the wireless industry.

As international outsourcing claims more jobs, two things happen - unemployment in developed nations increases and companies lower their costs. As sad as this is for now unemployed workers, it is a byproduct of automation - the internet and IP communications. Moreover it accelerates during recessions. In order for the trend to cease, the standard of living has to increase in developing nations to a point where it doesn't make sense to move jobs away from developed countries.

It seems evident that one of the results of the economic crisis of this past year is deflation/margin compression which while generally bad for the economy actually helps reduce the lure of developed nations as a place to hire.

In an article in the Asian Pacific Post, TMC Senior Contributing Editor Brendan Read who among other things is a major part of TMC's Customer Interaction Solutions magazine was quoted. Here is an excerpt:

Brendan B. Read writes on TMCnet that the reasons for moving call centres to the Philippines are all too familiar: cost cutting, reluctance to invest in new technologies, and, unsaid but all-too-real: a challenging economy and the popularity of web self-service.

"The moves are also the latest retrenchments of contact centers in Canada, due to and accelerated by a relatively strong Canadian dollar, pushed by commodity chiefly oil price rises, that has made it less competitive as a location," he explained.

What does scare me about this trend is that the current US administration hasn't mentioned how technology has changed the global landscape on hiring and competition. It seems discussing this trend and how to solve it should be at the top of the list of priorities. The Bush administration didn't mention it either but during the first seven years of this decade while jobs were being lost to other countries, housing and finance employment related to a housing/debt bubble took their place.

Now however we are left with increasing unemployment and I fear developed countries will not see rapid job creation until the global standard of living reaches approximate equilibrium.

Having said that, the Obama administration needs to address these challenges head-on as the need for a President to ensure he provides an environment where citizens can find jobs is probably the most important priority after ensuring public safety. Sure, fixing health insurance is great but I just have trouble understanding how it is a more important priority than making sure we reduce unemployment in the US.

I guess what I am wondering about specifically is where is the employment tax credit which was discussed during the campaign? Moreover, why are all people out of work not forced to take career training - to better themselves in some way (every way)? I can understand if a person can document that they are on five interviews a day - perhaps they have no time to be trained but for all other able-bodied citizens receiving any government assistance, it is obvious they need training - in computers, foreign languages, science, selling on eBay, whatever will help them generate income.

I realize these topics are beyond my usual scope but it is the technology discussed in TMC publications, my blog and TMCnet which has enabled a massive transformation in the way the world employs people and I hope the thoughts outlined above are implemented so we can ensure that developed nations have the most employable and best-trained workforce possible.

I truly beleive it is irresponsible to discuss technology without discussing solutions to the problems these advancements can create for society.

I should end this post by expressing dismay that every US administration doles out taxpayer dollars to so many who are underprivileged without pushing those people to be as employable as possible. After all, if you give a person a fish they eat for a day, teach them to fish and they eat for a lifetime.

In the year 2000 when society was in the midst of realizing how technology and the internet in particular was going to change the world, I noticed there was a need by companies and carriers to better understand the hosted communications space. There were a number of companies with very compelling business models being launched such as Congruency, the early pioneer and leader of the communication ASP movement.

Shortly after realizing the need for education in the market, TMC launched a magazine titled Communications ASP. The magazine was a hit with advertisers and readers for about six months until the VC community and the tech market as a whole seemed to turn on the term ASP" I haven't a clue to this day why the acronym wasn't accepted but it seemed to get lumped in with other technologies which were left for dead but emerged later - like "ecommerce," "VoIP" and others.

Suffice it say this publication and dozens of companies in the space were sentenced to death when funding was cut off by investors. I credit Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, for defying gravity and keeping his ASP and the entire movement going.

This leading hosted CRM company showed Wall Street that the ASP model was a good one and now we take for granted that hosted communications and hosted everything else is something the market needs - especially in a slow economy. But now we call it "cloud-based" computing or "hosted" or "on-demand" or whatever seems to be trendy at the moment.

I was thinking about the history of ASPs during a meeting with Evolve IP's Scott Kinka, the senior vice president of network services. Kinka's company supplies hosted voice, security, UC and messaging services to companies in the U.S. During our conversation he kept mentioning call center wins and how companies are embracing hosted contact center solutions.

He in turn referenced Paul Adams, the director of product management for enhanced services at Broadsoft, the company supplying Evolve IP with equipment which allows their company to in turn provide services to their SMB, enterprise and call center customers.

I know Broadsoft very well as a major player in IP communications - their BroadWorks platform is a vital cog in the carrier machine of providing services for customers.

During a recent conversation with Adams, I asked about the company's call center strategy and he explained that they added contact center functionality about three to four years ago, and since that time they have been adding features, allowing the product to support more formal and larger centers.

Recently BroadWorks 16 expanded contact center functionality even more with the above trend being adhered to. I asked him how his company's products compare to premise or CPE equipment and he explained they are competitive with many hosted solutions but aren't focusing on the high-end centers where their needs to be a focus on blending (inbound and outbound agents coordinating calls) and multichannel routing. Interestingly, Scott goes into the sales process explaining this limitation upfront and it hasn't been a barrier to winning large deals, which he says are in the 400- to 500-seat range.

One of the advantages Broadsoft brings to the table is its integration with UC solutions and FMC. You see, Broadsoft's  end-customers get to take advantage of the latest in numerous technologies and they get it all integrated into their contact center solution.

And as agents become more informal and mobile, the company's ability to track calls while they are connected, including hold times, etc. mean that reporting becomes more accurate and call center management becomes more detailed and effective.

BroadWorks 17 is the next version in the pipeline and we can expect it to have enhanced reporting and ACD functions. A while back, Broadsoft purchased competitor Sylantro to pretty much become the 800-pound gorilla in the space. As the company continues to innovate and roll out new products, it can instantaneously upgrade the world's hosted contact center solutions provided by carriers. This is great for customers and yet another challenge for CPE vendors. But it seems there is still room to innovate on the high-end where Broadworks is not looking to compete - at least for now.

You really can't have a serious discussion about WiMAX without asking Alvarion for their opinion. I did just that with Ashish Sharma who heads up Corporate Communications and Market Development for the company. Topics covered include the WiMAX business model, broadband stimulus around the globe and usage patterns of WiMAX users. I also asked about the WiMAX/LTE battle and if there needs to be a single winner. Check out the video for the answer.

Last night I was at a media event focusing on WiMAX and 4G sponsored by Cisco and I spent some time discussing Clearwire's plans with Peter Cannistra who is in charge of market Development for the company. Peter detailed just how fast the company is rolling out towers and even mentioned New York and at least southern Connecticut will get coverage soon. I am very much looking forward to testing the service in TMC's Norwalk, CT headquarters.

One of the more interesting parts of the story is the complexity of getting fiber backhaul in New York from an "unnamed" company which Clearwire competes with.

We also had a chance to discuss the natural synergies his company enjoys with WiMAX operators which are in different territories which of course leads to the logical decision to deploy mobile roaming agreements with other operators.

This past February at ITEXPO East 2009, I was honored to host the first panel in the world (that I know of) on the topic of HD Voice. Since that time lots of other people have jumped on the bandwagon which I think is great. A tremendous amount of credit goes to Polycom actually for being a true pioneer in the HD voice market. For over a year in fact the company has sponsored a Global Online Community on TMCnet titled HD Voice.

As you can see in the video below, one of the drawbacks to ubiquitous HD voice adoption is the wireless carriers. This is why I am thrilled to let you know Orange Moldova seems to be the world's first carrier to embrace HD voice in all its glory.

The challenge of course is you have to have a specific Nokia handset the 6720c to take part in the HD voice party. And of course you and the party you connect with have to be in Moldova - which by the way is sandwiched between Romania and the Ukraine.

Other facts of interest - the country's network has recently been upgraded to 14.4 Mbps and the Nokia phone uses Adaptive Multi Rate - WideBand (AMR-WB) technology. This is great news for the communications market as this new standard could be helpful in generating new sales of communications servers and endpoints as the world transitions to better sounding communications solutions. Expect the discussion to continue at ITEXPO East 2010, January 20-22^nd in Miami, FL.