Conference

Being Part of Squawk Box

May 23, 2008

I spent part of my morning on Alex Saunders' Squawk Box -- a gathering place for industry analysts and thought leaders to discuss important technology issues of the day.

Topics today included Ariel Waldman's harassment allegations against Twitter. This conversation digressed into what Twitter is... Is it a communications vehicle or is it media -- like a magazine or website?

Andy Abramson had some well thought out comments on the matter and others had great points too. Andy likened the concept of harassing someone on Twitter to taking a megaphone out and broadcasting negative things about them in public.

The whole argument reminded me a tremendous amount of the Juicy Campus website and the problems the site is having as it seems to be a forum where college kinds primarily gossip about one another.

This conversation morphed into a discussion regarding freedom of speech and the refusal of YouTube to take down Al Qaeda videos from its site.

Posted in Apple, Blackberry, Broadband, Cisco, Conference, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, E-Commerce, Google, IP Communications, Microsoft, Nortel, Podcast, SIP, Security, Technology, Unified Communications, Video, VoIP, Wireless

SIP Forum Growth

May 28, 2008

The SIP Forum seems to be making some nice progress in attracting a broad swath of companies to its organization.

In case you aren't aware, The SIP Forum is a non-profit IP communications industry association that engages in numerous activities that advance and promote SIP technology, such as the development of industry recommendations, the SIPit interoperability and testing events, special interoperability workshops, and general promotion of SIP in the industry.

One of the Forum's recent technical activities is the development of the SIPconnect Technical Recommendation -- a standards-based recommendation that provides detailed guidelines for direct IP peering and interoperability between IP PBXs and VoIP service provider networks, and the SIPconnect Compliant Certification Program through which eligible companies can gain SIPconnect validation and the right to license the use of the SIP Forum's 'SIPconnect Compliant' certification mark.

What sort of progress are they making you ask? Well, they have recently told the world they are experianceing 100% 100% growth compared to the last quarter of 2007. The organization now has
46 Full Member companies and more than 5,000 individual members from around the world.

Why do people join the forum? Well Ken Kuenzel, Founder and CTO, Covergence, Inc. says his company joined the SIP Forum because of its efforts to build on existing IETF standards to define a standards-based approach that will enable seamless IP peering between IP PBXs and VoIP service providers.

Eric Swift, Senior Director of the Office Communications Group at Microsoft Corporation said We at Microsoft have long embraced SIP as an important standard and foundation for interoperability...

Posted in AT&T, Apple, Avaya, Blackberry, Broadband, Call Center, Cisco, Communications Developer, Conference, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, FCC, Google, IP Communications, Nortel, Open Source, SIP, Technology, Unified Communications, Verizon, Video, Virtual Worlds, VoIP, Vonage, Wireless, Yahoo

Headed to Telx CBX 2008

June 3, 2008

Later this week I will be a video reporter at the Telx CBX (customer business exchange) event in New York. I always like the CBX events and am looking forward to meeting with the companies in the carrier hotel space (many lease space in the Telx interconnection facilities throughout the US) who come to network and exchange ideas and do business with one another.

I reached out to Telx to get a quick quote on why you should be at the show and Tesh Durvasula, Chief Marketing Officer of Telx had this to say,"With over 400 NANOG attendees at the Marriott and by moving CBX to Thursday to accommodate those traveling in for ITW and GTM in Washington which ends on Wednesday, our theme 'all roads lead to the CBX' is the final networking event of a week filled with major international meetings featuring ISPs, Carriers, Service Providers and more."

Here are some more notes on the event from the CBX website:

This year's event is shaping up to be the biggest in Telx history. 2007 was a year of tremendous growth and change at Telx as we integrated various acquisitions that included 10 Meet Me Room Facilities from Digital Realty Trust and NYC Connect, the Meet Me Room at 111 8th Avenue.

2008 offers to an aggressive start as we integrate our latest acquisition, 21,000 of Colocation Space in Dallas at 8435 Stemmons Freeway. Our growth doesn’t stop at acquisitions though, we were recently announced as the first company to Host a NANOG in New York City.

Attendees will have the unprecedented opportunity to network with over 1,000 industry decision makers in one of New York's most spectacular boroughs.

See you there this Thursday, June 5th, 2008.

Posted in AT&T, Avaya, Broadband, Call Center, Cisco, Conference, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, Google, IMS, IP Communications, IPTV, ITEXPO, Microsoft, Nortel, Patent, SIP, Security, Skype, Technology, Unified Communications, Video, VoIP, Vonage, WiMAX, Wireless, Yahoo

Telephony Hardware Community

June 3, 2008

Be sure to visit TMC's newest Global Online Community (GOC), Telephony Hardware sponsored by Pika Technologies. Why would you visit? Simply because regularly visiting a TMC community is an ideal way to learn about a specific topic such as in this case "telephony hardware."

As always, we promise the best editorial quality of any site. We do our best to blend in-depth articles with an overview of the most important news taking place in the market.

If you are researching or looking for products to buy, we hope there is a TMC channel (micro-community) or GOC that addresses your needs.

Posted in Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Communications Developer, Conference, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, FCC, Google, IP Communications, ITEXPO, Microsoft, Open Source, SIP, Speech Technologies, Technology, Unified Communications, VoIP, Wireless

Mobile Virtual Worlds Emerge

June 4, 2008

There are so many communications companies pushing products and services revolving around virtual worlds, one wonders if we are about to see a new subset of communications break out and achieve mass appeal like VoIP, the iPhone or Blackberry. Do you think we could see a time when we all have avatars -- or even multiple avatars used when communicating with different people?

Think about it... A work avatar in a suit, a casually dressed avatar for hanging out with your friends and yet another more "elegantly dressed" avatar for communicating with members of the opposite sex.

I recently wrote that Nortel, Dialogic and NMS are in this space but I forgot to mention that IBM too is deploying a virtual world communications system for US intelligence agencies. (Credit goes to Tony Rybczynski for reminding me yesterday of this).

Nortel recently espoused how we will one day use avatars on our mobile phones and it seems they were right on -- at least in theory.

Posted in AT&T, Apple, Avaya, Blackberry, Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Cisco, Communications Developer, Conference, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, E-Commerce, Google, Green, IMS, Microsoft, Nortel, SIP, Security, Skype, Technology, Verizon, Virtual Worlds, VoIP, Wireless, Yahoo

Podcast: AudioCodes Mediant 1000 MSBG

June 10, 2008

Recently, AudioCodes released the Mediant 1000 MSBG (Multi-Service Business Gateway) a device which combines the following: media gateway, enterprise class session border controller, data router, firewall, LAN Switch, WAN access, Stand Alone Survivability and an on-board general purpose server.

This is a big product release for the company and from what I hear there has been positive reaction from the market. In addition, this release shows the progress AudioCodes has made expanding on the solutions acquired from NetRake a few years back.

In order to learn more about this product I conducted a podcast interview with Nimrod Borovsky, Vice President, Marketing, Enterprise Business Group at AudioCodes. In the interview, we discuss how this product fits into the competitive landscape and we also delve into the benefits the gateway affords Service Providers, Businesses, OEM and ISV Customers. It is worth a listen and I hope you enjoy it.

Posted in Broadband, Call Center, Cisco, Communications Developer, Conference, FCC, IP Communications, Microsoft, Open Source, Podcast, SIP, Security, Technology, Unified Communications, Video, VoIP

Build Communities With Google's Help

June 10, 2008

Let's say your company plays in a few different spaces such as information technology, security and storage. And let's say your company has decided to build a community of interest which is dedicated to a specific subject area as you are hoping like-minded people will visit the community regularly and begin to associate your company as a leader in the space and hopefully some of these people will become new customers.

In this example, your resources are limited and even if they aren't, you need to choose one of these above areas to build your community. Assume each of them has equal market sizes and growth rates and you need to determine where the highest level of search interest lies.

Using the updated Google Trends, you can now see a graph over time of search volume on a relative and absolute basis and this information can be exported for analysis.

You may find for example that storage interest spikes around the year-end holidays but also seems unusually high in May of each year... This information can be useful in your business as it helps you see how people are searching for various terms.

If you have read my blog before, you know TMC has been building communities (Global Online Communities, Channels) for companies in the communications and technology space for some time now.

Posted in AT&T, Apple, Avaya, Blackberry, Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Cisco, Communications Developer, Conference, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, E-Commerce, FCC, Google, Green, IMS, IP Communications, IPTV, ITEXPO, JITC, Merger/Acquisition, Microsoft, Musings, Nortel, Open Source, Patent, Personal, Podcast, Rates Technology, SIP, Science, Security, Skype, Speech Technologies, TMCnet, Technology, Unified Communications, Verizon, Video, VoIP, Vonage, WiMAX, Wireless, Yahoo

Sipera Looks To The Channel

June 11, 2008

Expect Sipera, the Texas-based company focusing on VoIP/UC security to look for resellers to sell their products worldwide. Brenadan Ziolo, the company's VP of Marketing Operations visited TMC this week to brief us on where the company is going with its products and to discuss their forward-looking strategy.

Greg Galitzine has written an article which goes into some detail on the happenings at the company.

As communications has moved to IP, the need to secure IP communications has increased. If you are a reseller looking for a product which will help protect your customers, be sure to factor in VoIP security products from companies like Sipera and others.

Posted in AT&T, Apple, Avaya, Blackberry, Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Cisco, Communications Developer, Conference, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, E-Commerce, FCC, Google, IP Communications, Microsoft, Nortel, SIP, Security, Skype, Speech Technologies, Technology, Unified Communications, Verizon, Video, VoIP, Vonage, Wireless

Cisco's Managed Services Push

June 17, 2008

It has been an interesting day so far here at NXTComm. The first meeting of the day was with Cisco who plans on becoming a much bigger player in the managed services space… Al Safarikas the Sr. Director, Wireline Segment Service Provider Marketing at the company shared some thoughts on how Cisco is helping service providers worldwide deploy managed services.

One issue that came up is what precisely is the definition of managed services. From Cisco's point of view it is as follows:

Information technology which is remotely managed and provisioned, delivered as a finished product - operated by skilled professionals from a NOC.

Safarikas mentioned where the equipment sits is immaterial and this makes good sense.

Other points worth noting from our conversation are as follows:

Predefined SLAs that are negotiated with end users
It does not matter where the box sits or who owns them
Companies want managed services to support business initiatives

From there we discussed how Cisco helps its partners deliver managed services.

The company has expanded on the popular Cisco Powered program and helps its partners with sales and marketing, providing channel managers and other services to ensure a partner's success. AT&T Telepresence is a great example of this.

I asked what pain Cisco takes away for customers and to this Safarikas replied, "Partner with Cisco and improve your chance for success with managed services - We have the best technology, understanding of the marketplace, best capability of building [our customer's] operating capabilities through Cisco professional services."

This was a pretty memorable meeting and Cisco should be commended for looking to help the industry by defining terms such as managed services.

Posted in AT&T, Blackberry, Broadband, Call Center, Cisco, Communications Developer, Conference, Conferencing, FCC, Google, IP Communications, IPTV, Microsoft, Open Source, SIP, Speech Technologies, Technology, Unified Communications, Verizon, Video, VoIP, WiMAX, Wireless

The Importance of Communications

June 21, 2008

Do we realize the importance of what we do? I have been thinking about this question a great deal lately. I see the amazing technology being developed by the entire industry and I just can't help but wonder - do we realize how important we are to the world economy. I am far from an economist but I know that when productivity improves so does the standard of living.

Posted in AT&T, Apple, Avaya, Blackberry, Broadband, CRM, Call Center, Cisco, Communications Developer, Conference, Conferencing, Consumer Electronics, E-Commerce, FCC, Google, Green, IMS, IP Communications, IPTV, ITEXPO, JITC, Microsoft, Musings, Nortel, Open Source, SIP, Skype, Speech Technologies, Technology, Unified Communications, Verizon, Video, Virtual Worlds, VoIP, Vonage, WiMAX, Wireless, Yahoo

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 ... 37 Next

Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com

Conference