Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com - E-Commerce Archives

IPgallery Helps Carriers Become Social Hub and More

2013-03-01T19:57:11Z

Communications service providers once the center of the customer's world have awoken to the new reality - social and apps are the new hub. In fact, Facebook, Twitter and a wave of other social networks have fully overtaken the telephone number as the primary method of communicating among many - especially younger users. Then there are the the OTT VoIP and video vendors such as Skype. The telephone number has gone from being a protected client relationship to an afterthought. Even the bright spot related to phone numbers - massive texting revenue has recently been eroded by OTT apps like WhatsApp and even iOS messaging which seamlessly takes text messages off the operator network.

Enter IPgallery, a company playing in the IP communications carrier space for over a decade who wants to help service providers become the focal point of this brave new world of social and apps. Their suggestion is to provide customers with a social communications and hosted-PBX solution which integrates so seamlessly with popular web-based servies that users will rarely need to leave the comfort of the environment. An HTML5 interface allows a cloud-based service to tap into APIs of a slew of other companies to provide social, mapping and just about anything else a user can think of.

Just like a person might use HootSuite as a central hub to interface with numerous social networks, IPgallery helps carriers provide customized user interfaces which they believe are captivating enough to keep consumers living inside them.

Consumers for their part have shown a willingness to spend huge amounts off time interfacing with specific services such as Facebook. In fact, companies are tripping over themselves to have users interact with them on the world's most-popular social network. Carriers have a shot to get control back by providing customers with a user interface worth "living in."

In addition, they can add services such as shopping and entertainment and even combine location information to provide compelling applications which rival those of the OTT world. As carrier information is even richer than what is available to typical smart phone applications, they can actually provide better services than consumers can get elsewhere.

At Mobile World Congress in 2013 the Israeli company showed me an app they wrote which accesses Facebook and Maps and provides the photos of friends on their actual locations on a map. A user can select one or more friends and start a group communication, complete with file sharing and collaboration.

There is a great deal more - such as integrated e-learning, a hosted PBX with separate skins and functionality broken out by department such as accounting or sales. Finally, operators can add functionality by providing cloud-storage which could be used to hold content which is shared between users on the system.

IPgallery functions as part software/integration vendor and part systems-integrator, working with carriers the world-over to develop solutions which they need in their particular markets. This allows carriers to focus on their core competency while taking advantage of best-practices being developed by other service providers.

We often hear of discussion revolving around whether carriers are ok just being "dumb pipe" providers and regardless of the answer, there is definite value in owning the home page of the customer's world. Amazon has used this prime real estate to successfully push Kindle devices and Google uses it to push its Chrome OS, tablets and other devices.

Perhaps the better question is - what are the benefits from being the gateway to your customer's online activities including social, commerce and shopping? The answer of course is increased revenue and flexibility. And as service providers grapple with stagnant to lower ARPU and increasing network costs as they upgrade to 4G and beyond, exploring new revenue opportunities which could also reduce churn seems to make a lot of sense.

NICE Systems at MWC2013

2013-02-28T16:39:42Z

At Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona NICE had a very compelling story regarding its multiple product lines which are generally analytics, security, financial and the contact center. In a conversation with Yaniv Zukerman and Eyal Kirshner I learned the company will be focusing more on its multi-channel analytics solutions across its product lines. Moreover, we will see more cloud solutions from them as well - including in the anti-fraud space. This technology will be rolled out across product lines - and used to allow for CFPB compliance. The solution tells agents what they can and can't say including disclaimers. In fact the company showed this product at the show - complete with providing an activity trail which can be provided to regulators in case of an audit. Speaking of the back office, Zukerman tells me there are increasing threats in this area and the company's anti-fraud technology tracks patterns and can help determine malicious activity and fraudsters.

Yaniv Zukerman and Eyal Kirshner of NICE at Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona

In addition, the company's Voice of the Customer solution allows an innovative way of using text messaging to allow free-form survey responses via text post interaction which can be live, via phone, visit to website etc. Again, this is free-form text messaging allowing a customer to respond however they want and the analytics kicks in to respond accordingly. They could say for example, I really think the agent I just spoke with, "Jim Smith" is atrocious.The information supplied by the customer is then used to alter training of the particular agent if needed. It can further be used to modify products or product training. The idea is acting in real-time to business challenges. In one example a survey after a flight allowed the crew manager to get the results immediately and then call a meeting to adjust before the next flight took off.

The product also is able to determine which interactions could be used as an upsell opportunity. Speaking of which, the company's Service-to-Sales solution in conjunction with IBM the uses analytics to determine if an upsell opportunity exists on a service call. At this point, the agent is guided through the process of selling the customer in a seamless manner which Zukerman tells me shortens the sales cycle.

The company also discussed its Mobile Network Optimization solution designed to help wireless carriers see a 3D view of a city's wireless coverage based upon its deployment of base stations, small cells and femtocells. The system does its best to approximate what real-world coverage will be indoors where most of large-city traffic emanates from.

NICE also showed a real-time-authentication solution using voice-biometrics. It auto-enrolls customers based on past conversations and shows the agent if the person is verified or not. If there is a doubt about the caller's identity, an authentication process can be launched.

Another product designed to lubricate the sales and service process is Mobile Reach which the company tells me integrates with mobile apps and allows a user to instantly connect with a call center if there is a problem with a transaction. At this point the agent is able to follow the exact context of what the user is doing and they can subsequently push information back and forth. For example an agent can push the specifics of a special plan the prospect could be eligible for and the caller could send a photo of their ID to prove who they are.

Its interesting to see the numerous product lines NICE has - they seem to overlap more and more as time progresses. For example, security which once was needed primarily in financial services is now needed more broadly as threats have become more common. Biometrics - once used primarily by the military is being rolled out to call centers across all sorts of companies looking to reduce the amount of time agents spend on the phone and to improve customer service and retention.

The silos which once existed seem to be eroding and as this continues, it seem NICE is well-positioned to provide solutions across a wide range of markets.

Thank You Amazon, Retailers May Now Merge at Will

2013-02-18T23:05:04Z

When reports surfaced regarding Office Depot merging with OfficeMax, the first thing which may have occurred to many, is regulators wouldn’t let this approximately $2 billion happen because the resulting store would be too large and create antitrust concerns. Much of these worries in retail however have decreased as of late because of the strength of Wal-Mart, Costco and of course Amazon. Let’s also remember that Staples is a major player in the space. It’s worth pointing out that Amazon in particular can be used by just about all retailers to justify industry consolidation.

If Internet radio was deemed enough of a threat to allow the only two satellite radio players Sirius and XM to merge, exactly what is the limit in retail when the threat is ecommerce? As pressure increases, can we can expect wave after wave of small retailers being forced to seek others to combine with.

Of course it is a bit soon to declare retail dead. Let’s take a look at the state of brick and mortar and e-tail.

Although Wal-Mart seems to be in the midst of a disastrous quarter, this may be due primarily to the elimination of the payroll tax holiday. Still, these tax breaks don’t seem to be coming back and Amazon’s strong sales seem to show they are more resistant to woes at the low-end of the consumer market. At least they were in Q4, we’ll see what happens in the next quarter. It seems the high-end of the mall market is doing fairly well according to Simon Property’s earnings – the low to mid-tier retailers however are expected to continue struggling.

It’s worth pointing out flash-sale sites like Ideeli may be in trouble as retailers have deployed a good deal of technology to combat the excess inventory which is the lifeblood of this market.

Best Buy for its part has decided to keep its price-match policies allowing it to compete with Amazon more effectively on the topline if not the bottom. I think there is more the company can do to increase profits but this is still a big step in the right direction.

No one expects Amazon’s e-commerce sales to get weaker and if anything they will continue to be a serious threat to just about every retailer in the world. And this will give the entire retail market cover to seek mergers with companies regulators wouldn’t even let them consider a decade ago.

Scam Users, Accumulate Facebook Likes, Buy a Ferrari

2013-02-18T22:11:47Z

Bitdefender Labs recently reported that a site showing kittens and unicorns suggested users download a “business flash” plugin in order to see a video. At this point the plugin takes control of the user’s computer allowing cookie information to be taken and replicated on another computer – effectively locking a user out of their social networking account.

Bitdefender describes the people behind this scheme as crooks which makes this story more interesting as this exploit seems to be designed to “borrow” a user’s identity. If your account isn’t taken over, the extension sits on your computer and can continue to like site after site without your approval.

While identity theft laws likely come into play here, the interesting area of this scheme is ascertaining damages. After all, a bank account isn’t being cleaned out. You can imagine a judge saying ok, so this person installed software on your computer which made it appear as if you liked a site which you never heard of… Big deal!

So what’s in it for the scammers? Bitdefender Labs discovered a recently created blank page with 40,000 likes due to this scheme. A site with 100,000 likes sells for $150,000-$200,000 or slightly less than an entry-level Ferrari. Not bad work if you can get it – moreover if this is really a grey area of hacking we can expect to see a lot more energy devoted to such exploits. I wonder if retweets on Twitter and repins on Pinterest are fertile areas for future scams.

Backup DNS, The New Yellow Pages Scam

2013-02-12T15:54:43Z

If you have ever registered a domain name you have no doubt been solicited by a number of companies you never heard of trying to renew your domain name. Lately I have noticed this trend has died down – no doubt because customers have wised up and realize if they registered with Network Solutions, GoDaddy or 1&1 then they should pay that company only.

Yesterday a relative presented me with a document which looks a lot like an invoice from a company called DNS Services. The company’s logo looks very official – you might even make the point that the infinity symbol looks a bit like the NS logo preceding Network Solutions.

The DNS Services invoice-looking non-invoice (click to enlarge)

Putting that aside, if you aren’t technical or you aren’t reading carefully you may think this is a legitimate invoice. It isn’t. In fact the fine print (see first red arrow) says:

This is a solicitation for the order of goods or services, or both, and not a bill, invoice or statement of account due. You are under no obligation to make any payments on account of this offer unless you accept this offer.

Note that you are given a statement date and an account number as well as an amount in yellow highlighting yet this document is not a bill or invoice.

Moreover, this “offer” is for backup DNS services – something only a handful of websites would need – assuming they are hosting their sites at a reputable facility. This isn’t to take away from backup DNS providers who don’t use such questionable tactics – it’s just that companies that require backup DNS services know who they are, they certainly are very unlikely to need direct mail to get them to purchase.

If you look at the arrow at the bottom right the text says:

Note: DNS Services is not affiliated with your current name services provider.

For decades a common direct mail scam was to send invoices to companies for snow plowing services which were never performed. Typically these were seasonal bills and companies didn’t scour them too carefully – it became easier to pay them than figure out if they were legitimate. In the past decade this scam seems to have diminished being replaced by useless directory listings leading you to believe they are the official Yellow Pages. A common ploy is sending a “check” which you naturally sign and deposit and in doing so agree to purchase their online directory service.

Lately these offers seem to have diminished as well. There is a saying in the direct mail industry “If you want to know what is working – pay attention to the offers you get most often.” If we start to see the backup DNS market ramp up their direct mail efforts we’ll know that the business of duping unsuspecting businesses is doing quite well.

Is Regulation 1.0 Slowing the Networked Economy?

2013-02-10T17:19:34Z

Fred Wilson alerted me to a talk Nick Grossman recently gave representing their company Union Square Ventures relating to how regulators haven’t kept up with a number of peer to peer business models from Kickstarter to AirBnB to the lending business. Specifically there are fire code regulations which apply to renting out apartments to many tenants. Moreover neighbors may not want the foot traffic of strangers associated with renting apartments to others for brief periods online. Finally Kickstarter was sued in part for enabling accompany funded on its platform to infringe the patent of another company.

Grossman proposes regulation 2.0 which applies to the new intermediaries which function as service provider and information provider. He wonders how they should be regulated in the real world. He goes on to discuss trust 2.0 allowing members to transact with some degree of certainty.

My take is the challenge in getting to a regulation 2.0 world where global governments will facilitate the growth of new networked business models is the patchwork of local, state, federal and international laws which would need to be harmonized. Moreover there is a great deal of money in entrenched business models which gets funneled to government decision-makers who are being pressured to keep the status quo. The question will be whether regulators will side with the new entrants in the interest of helping the local population or get swayed by the existing business leaders looking to keep a lock on their current business models – like the taxi business as an example.

Here is the video of the presentation which has some audio issues and the slides follow below.

Awareness Ads Important but Often Forgotten

2013-01-17T17:29:31Z

I'm sitting here at a restaurant called Tengda in Darien, CT a stone's throw from my office just thinking about how I came to know about this restaurant. You see I've eaten at Tengda before - but I didn't know they had a location right by my office. In fact when the weather is warmer I often walk here - its probably just over a mile away from TMC's River Park headquarters.

The point is I found out about this location through one of the daily deal sites - it was likely LivingSocial but perhaps Groupon. I didn't respond to the offer but the email has caused my company and family to spend at least $1,200 over the year plus since I started coming here.

And the interesting thing is this restaurant will never know (they may of course be reading this) I started to come to this location based on an ad which was designed for direct response but instead generated awareness. Better yet for management - I didn't take advantage of any cut-rate offer to come here. I always pay full price.

The advent of the Internet has made many companies advertise solely on a per-lead or per-inquiry basis but as I order my sashimi I am reminded of the importance of generating awareness - the success of many businesses in-fact depends on it.

How Mobile Will Destroy Retail Margins

2012-12-21T22:45:17Z

Some of the news of the week has to do with eBay deciding mobile advertising doesn’t work for them as it clutters small screens and doesn’t provide that much revenue. This seems to make sense but if you think this in any way is going to change the impact of mobile advertising and commerce you are dead wrong.

Logic and rumors tell us Amazon will be releasing a telephone soon and the reasoning for them to do so goes far beyond expanding its ecosystem and pushing people to download apps and watch videos online.

Location based advertising is where everything is going.

We all know about the potential to flash an ad for a company when the customer is nearby and this will no doubt be an effective strategy to boost sales and traffic. Especially for restaurants who want all their tables filled.

The real power of mobile ads however comes into play when customers aren’t near the company’s retail location. Imagine you go to a car dealer and its competitor across town flashes an ad on the spot with a $1,500 rebate on any car in their lot and maybe offers to buy you lunch as well. You may not get up and go to the other dealer but you’d be a fool to not show the salesperson your cellphone in order to get a better price.

Think of all those purchases you have made over the years on your supermarket loyalty card and imagine if your supermarket had an opportunity to flash ads at you for the items you’ve previously purchased when you are at a rival grocer or at a pharmacy which now stocks almost everything the grocery store does.

And so it begins.

Sure, many savvy customers currently collect coupons and look for numerous retailers before going on a shopping expedition but the sheer ease of discovering competitive pricing will mean everyone will have access to the best prices at all times.

And retailers will have to price match or risk watching customers turn their cars around before they even park their cars in front of the store!

This is why the Amazon Kindle Phone has to happen. This is why Google purchased Motorola and is working on a killer “X Phone” to rival Apple and Samsung.

Moreover, this is why mobile devices will get cheaper as commerce will continue to subsidize them. Amazon and Google will no doubt want to get these devices into as many hands as possible – even if it involves losing (more) money on each one sold. Apple and Samsung will have to find ways to get a piece of this market and may have to partner or acquire. Suddenly Groupon has become more valuable. Suddenly, eBay has a chance to proactively sell you used products when you are in a retail store looking for something new.

Today, Amazon will sell you a Kindle Fire for $159 if you don’t mind the ads or $174 if want an advertising-free experience. In other words it is worth at least $15 to Amazon to show you ads on a tablet. Over time, if Amazon is successful with this dual-pricing strategy we can imagine it lowering the price of the subsidized model even more. A phone with permission to show you ads would be even more valuable than a tablet as you take it everywhere. Certainly Google can’t wait to bring its massive ad network into play in new ways. It certainly shows location-based ads today – but on a less proactive basis.

The takeaways are as follows:

Mobile devices will increasingly be subsidized
Google and Amazon have to have the best devices possible in order to compel users into their mobile commerce ecosystem
Apple, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, Nokia and RIM have to come up with a strategy to compete in mobile advertising, commerce and location-based services
Retail margins for electronics and many other items have already taken a massive hit as a result of the Internet and mobile – but we haven’t seen anything yet
There is the potential for consumer backlash as they deal with ad overload
Apple will likely come out with an ecosystem for commerce and shopping – let’s call it iShop where it will handle flashing the offers while taking a cut of the sale
They may even (gasp!) charge less for a device which shows ads just like Amazon
Samsung may do the same
Carriers have an amazing opportunity in this space they will likely squander over the next few years
Consumers will win

Important Tech News of the Day Dec 14, 2012

2012-12-14T20:34:59Z

Amazon Prime Instant Video app for iOS is out
Alcatel Lucent says providing video to devices is a great new revenue opportunity for carriers
Google Just Settled a Six-Year Dispute with Belgian Publishers
IT spending will pick up in 2013
Mobile data growth is booming
Apple lost patent litigation to MobileMedia
Easilydo is an app which aims to become a personal assistant
There are some good apps to help manage your holiday shopping
A win for the free market in the EU
There’s an app to measure skin health
Social is playing a major role in news dissemination in tragedies as
Sprint’s Clearwire bid will help it deliver true unlimited and unthrottled data plans
Small business hopes for better 2013
Cities are cutting out ISPs
We are actively trading privacy for security
But at least the government wants to make it tougher for apps to share our private location data
Comcast now allows video downloads
Social media has destroyed the web
If mobile payments are booming why is Verifone telling us it is an unprofitable market?
China will be less restrictive with their Internet censorship

Amazon Prime Instant Video app for iOS is out and in my testing on a 4^th generation iPad it worked well. Some complaints remain that for non-Prime users the experience isn’t that great. I for one would like to be able to download video on the app – there is a download area but no instructions as to what is downloadable or how to download.

Alcatel Lucent says providing video to devices is a great new revenue opportunity for carriers. According to Marcus Weldon, chief technology officer, “Left unmanaged, the rapid growth in video traffic can turn into a deluge and spell disaster. It is important to look at where service providers’ investments can have the most impact, and this research makes clear that the IP edge of both wireline and wireless networks – which are increasingly becoming one and the same - offers the greatest opportunity to improve network performance.”

It is undeniable that video streaming will grow in popularity – the war between cable providers and companies working with Roku, Apple TV, Google and others will only continue with the goal being to keep the viewer watching as much content as possible on your service(s).

Google Just Settled a Six-Year Dispute with Belgian Publishers and must pay them for their legal fees and in the form of advertising in the newspapers whose content was used by the search giant. Some say the settlement totals $6M. Moreover, there will be an ongoing advertising partnership between the news outlets and Google. The challenge for the search leader who profits handsomely from content on the web is if this case could set a precedent allowing many other companies to sue for damages because their content too is being used without permission.

IT spending will pick up in 2013 which is great news for the tech market which has had to deal with numerous ups and downs since the dotcom bubble burst over a decade ago. Gartner recently noted that “most enterprises have already significantly cut discretionary IT spending growth over the past several years,” and that “they have little room to reduce IT spending further over the long run.”

Mobile data growth is booming and has seen a compound annual growth rate of 25.4% between 2006 and 2011. Interestingly only in United States, Japan and Australia does mobile data revenue exceed fixed broadband revenues. No surprise here but voice revenue is declining in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2011 according to Ofcom.

Apple lost patent litigation to MobileMedia and this is the danger of the patent wars – even if you were smart enough to invent lots of cool new ideas, there will always be some people somewhere who thought of some things before you did. This is why the tech patent wars may on the surface seem like a smart way for a company to protect their intellectual property but in reality, when defending your inventions in every country you are bound to lose sometimes.

All of this litigation hurts consumers at the end of the day.

Of course I am referring primarily to Apple and Samsung, in the case of MobileMedia, they are a patent troll (but owned by Nokia, Sony and MPEG LA) so there isn’t much of a defense when you lose. Moreover, you are generally a sitting duck, waiting for these companies to come after you. Especially when you become successful in the market.

Easilydo is an app which aims to become a personal assistant of sorts by managing friend’s birthdays, your schedule and more. It offers you time to leave alerts based on your schedule, can track packages and more. It can notify you of based weather the night before and can jump into conference calls for you three minutes before they start. I just downloaded it on iOS and will post further if it is as great as it seems. I set it to remind me of free songs to download each week and to remind me once-a-month which apps are accessing my personal info.

There are some good apps to help manage your holiday shopping and TMC’s Brooke Neuman details them for you. Gilte Groupe and others make the list.

A win for the free market in the EU as Apple and four other publishers have made an offer to ease price restrictions against Amazon in the book market as a response to an anti-trust investigation.

There’s an app to measure skin health – just take well-lit pictures of yourself and receive a personal beauty number which the company, Own says is 95% accurate.

Social is playing a major role in news dissemination in tragedies as the dreadful Newtown Sandy Hook, CT Elementary School shootings remind us. Trending topics on Twitter include #Connecticut, #Newtown, #PrayForNewtown, 27 Dead and Sandy Hook.

Sprint’s Clearwire bid will help it deliver true unlimited and unthrottled data plans, especially to its iPhone customers according to TMC’s Senior Editor, Tony Rizzo.

Small business hopes for better 2013 but don’t expect them to hire more according to a study by IP communications, data and cloud provider Cbeyond. Other important parts from the survery: 83 percent of cloud users said it made them "more flexible," 78 percent said it made them "more productive," and 71 percent said it was actually saving them money to use the cloud that they wouldn't have saved without.

Cities are cutting out ISPs to get high-speed networks to their citizens and Seattle is the latest city to do so.

We are actively trading privacy for security in the US and terrorism has definitely eroded many of our freedoms. A sense that citizens are presumed innocent seems to be slowly eroding.

But at least the government wants to make it tougher for apps to share our private location data. A new bill would require companies to get a customer's consent before collecting or sharing mobile location data. It would also ban mobile applications that secretly monitor the user's location — a feature that Senator Al Franken said allows for stalking and enables domestic violence.

Comcast now allows video downloads – this may mark the first time a cable company is doing so and is a great help to people who don’t always have fast and cheap broadband access. Airline passengers are an obvious beneficiary.

Social media has destroyed the web – it’s brought in hundreds of millions of new users but has locked us in, taken over our online identities and made it more difficult to share our information from one service to the next.

If mobile payments are booming why is Verifone telling us it is an unprofitable market? Moreover, why is it pulling out?

China will be less restrictive with their Internet censorship and has already ublocked searches for the names of many top political leaders in a possible sign of looser controls a month after new senior officials were named to head the ruling party.

eBay Now Gets Serious in NYC

2012-12-08T17:58:20Z

The home delivery market could be huge as predicted back in the dotcom days when companies like WebVan and Peapod were springing up faster than Android produces device variants today. Who comes to mind when you think of home delivery in the world of tech? Certainly Amazon, Google and more recently Wal-Mart.

But eBay? Sure, the news broke this past August they are doing delivery trials in San Francisco but all the way on the other side of the US in slightly less liberal New York the company is ramping up its home delivery service and if you happen to be in certain parts of "Gotham City" and head into a Starbucks, you will might run into someone handing you a flyer pictured in this post which offers free eBay Now delivery and $15 off your first order.

I ran into an articulate spokesperson for the company today in Manhattan and she was extolling the benefits of the new service. As we spoke, others came to her and thanked her for the flyers she had handed out as they entered the coffee shop earlier.

One thing is for certain, the delivery wars are heating up and while guerrilla marketing is a great strategy, I suppose a far larger home delivery marketing war is about to unfold. For media companies looking to fill the holes left empty after a bountiful election advertising season, this could be just the replacement business they need.

Acme Packet Getting Ready for WebRTC's Second Wave

2012-11-28T23:12:01Z

At the inaugural WebRTC Conference & Expo in San Francisco, much of the crowd was focused on demos of WebRTC working in a production environment. In one example at a luncheon keynote Mozilla showed how WebRTC communications could take place between two browsers on the same laptop. This one of the first demonstrations of the technology much of the audience had ever seen.

The event has brought together a wide swath of technology companies like Google, Plantronics, Oracle, Sangoma and Ericsson who are all very optimistic about the potential for WebRTC to be as some describe it, “A once in a lifetime opportunity in telecom.”

One speaker at a standards panel today mentioned perhaps the biggest challenge to WebRTC is overhyping. And he is partially correct. A bigger challenge to this emerging new space may be security.

Patrick McNeil and Chad Hart of Acme Packet

This is where a player like session border control maker Acme Packet comes in. I spoke at length with Chad Hart, Director of Product Marketing and Patrick McNeil, Senior Security Engineer, CISP from the company earlier today at the show and the takeaway is they are getting ready for the second wave of WebRTC… When it gets deployed in the real-world, across network borders.

The point is that past technologies like VoIP and SIP had to deal with major regulatory issues once the technologies reached critical mass. The FCC for example put onerous 911 regulations on the VoIP market as a result of a death related to a VoIP line which didn’t support E911.

Hart says you need to get ahead of these situations as we leave phase one of adoption and head to phase 2.

Moreover, he pointed out that call centers will be some of the earliest adopters of WebRTC and will benefit from the technology a great deal and as a result they need to be ready to deal with recording and compliance issues which will have to now apply to WebRTC customer interactions.

This is where an SBC company shines and explains why the company was here and moreover, why there was so much interest in their booth.

As you might imagine, the company is evangelizing WebRTC as they stand to benefit greatly if the technology fulfills its role as a major enabler of the communications of the future. A simple way to think of WebRTC is basically open Skype which lives in the browser and doesn’t require a plugin. In other words, WebRTC could easily eliminate the need for Skype over time. I am not saying it will – after all, Skype provides many useful services such as acting an address book but you get the idea.

Acme showed an interesting demo called a “happy button” which allows a user on a website to click an icon to immediately connect with an agent while in context. Coincidentally, I recently was in the market for an SUV and none of the automobile websites allowed me to calculate my precise lease payments online. In each case I had to wait for the dealer to reach out to me. It seems they wanted me to speak with someone directly before I got a quote. As it turns out, I made a purchase before half of the dealers responded.

The “happy button” in contrast allows a user to click a button on a website during a transaction in order to be connected with an agent who is aware of the issue at hand based upon user’s browsing information. The alternative says Hart is to leave the screen, do a search for the company’s contact information, traverse an IVR tree, find an agent and potentially have to re-authenticate a second time.

All of this adds cost to the company providing the call center service when you consider the cost of the IVR, programming the IVR, the 800 number minutes and the time the agent needs to authenticate users.

Moreover, in my case at least – half the companies contacted, lost the opportunity for me to purchase from them because of spam filters or they called me back while I was busy. Keeping a buyer waiting to get a price is never a smart thing to do.

At this event Acme Packet also announced the first WebRTC to multivendor IMS interworking capability where they enabled a major tier one network operator to deploy what amounts to a WebRTC to IMS SIP gateway.

On a separate but related note, the company also discussed the release of their 6300 SBC which can scale to 200k sessions and 1M subscribers in a 3U chassis. They explain that as VoLTE rolls out and VoIP providers mature, the demand for higher capacity systems has grown. Moreover, this new platform can be 70% cheaper than purchasing multiple 4500s and supports simultaneous transcoding of 64k sessions and 32k sessions of simultaneous encryption.

McNeil will speak tomorrow on security in the world of WebRTC and it seems fairly obvious that corporations and carriers will need to be paying close attention to what he and others in the SBC space have to say about security. These companies have learned a great deal in the VoIP and SIP space and as WebRTC gets ready for its second wave, it will have to deal with some of these same issues as well.

Banks, The Latest Threat to Groupon and LivingSocial

2012-10-18T16:08:20Z

If there is one constant these days it is that your competitors tomorrow are going to come from the most unlikely of places. Apple came from nowhere to unseat RIM and Nokia in mobile phones, Amazon is becoming a major force in tablets, Google’s Chrome and Android products have made it a major force in software and operating systems.

But the examples above are technology-based so they shouldn’t be too surprising as we have come to expect tech companies to be quick to enter new markets. What could portend a future trend however is Bank of America’s move into the deals business. The feds have passed laws to limit how banks can generate revenue from consumers through fees so they are scrambling to make money in new ways.

Earlier this year the company announced it was going to launch BankAmeriDeals which would allow customers to get additional cash back on a monthly basis depending on where they shopped. The interesting thing is the bank doesn’t make money from these transactions – they do on the increased credit card processing of course. The idea here is to boost credit card usage by taking share from other banks and cards like American Express.

Some of the companies involved in the program currently are FedEx Office, redbox, ADT, HSN and Burger King?

American Express for its part already has merchants it works with on a customer cash-back basis so BoFA isn’t necessarily breaking new ground.

What may be new however is the television ad campaign the bank is running. In this economic environment, everyone is looking to save and if the company can position itself as a solid choice for customers seeking deals, it may become a magnet for vendors looking for more customers.

This could end up hurting Groupon, LivingSocial and others and it reminds us competition can come from anywhere.

I reached out to David Godsman, the bank's online and mobile solutions executive and didn’t immediately hear back on how large the ad campaign is but if I do I will update this post.

IBM Mobility Keynote at ITEXPO

2012-10-16T08:20:21Z

At ITEXPO, Michael Riegal of IBM discussed how mobile is transforming industries – and discusses case studies related to his company’s Smarter Planet Strategy. Watch the video and see how many people have 3, 4 and 5 devices with them at the show – amazing!

Walmart To Go is Webvan 2.0

2012-10-09T21:18:36Z

Have we finally broken the barrier to same day delivery?

During the dotcom boom, Webvan and Peapod were going to change the world and when things went bust and both companies had to deal with the realities of massive infrastructure and overhead with little to no sales by comparison. Peapod got picked up by Stop & Shop and Webvan imploded, and is now just a Wikipedia page.

Fast forward over a decade and Amazon has made lots of noise about same delivery service. If you are a retailer, you should be scared, very scared. In fact if you are the largest retailer like Walmart, you should be especially concerned.

This of course explains why the company is delving into the same day delivery service with a few toes with its new Walmart To Go "Beta" initiative. It is interesting to note that although the company will ship a variety of merchandise the title tags on the company's associated pages say "Walmart Groceries." Looks like it may be time to update these. Partnering with UPS you will be able to get lots of fun and exciting Walmart merchandise without leaving the couch if you live in Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Minneapolis or Silicon Valley/San Francisco.

You know what’s missing from the list? New York, Chicago and a number of other metro areas where you would think delivery services of this type would be easier to pull off.

But regardless, New York has a service like Fresh Direct which already provides delivery of groceries – similar to PeaPod. Perhaps the thought is the large cities already have competition, making it smarter to focus on wealthy neighborhoods with limited options.

The concept of same day delivery shouldn’t be too hard to pull off. After all, it is a volume and pricing game. You can get your dry cleaning delivered in a couple of days and if you stay at a hotel you can get same day laundry delivery. Assuming a warehouse is located close enough, delivery of items should be easier to handle than cleaning clothes.

The problem of course is the long-tail nature of delivering an array of TVs within a few hours. Certainly a few pairs of socks are easier to get up a flight of stairs.

As tough as the internet has been on retailers until now, they haven’t seen anything yet.

If Walmart, Amazon and a host of delivery-only competitors like Postmates and Instacart are successful, companies like Toys R Us are going to face difficult decisions. Will they partner with these last-mile companies, build their own networks or work out a deal with UPS? The issue of course boils down to logistics and how much inventory you want to have in various locations.

The challenge for retail going forward will be how much inventory do you want to carry in various warehouses and/or how well you can connect your retail stores to the shipping company’s order processing and delivery systems.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this news is the Internet is all about speed – we can get access to infinite information without leaving our homes or offices. But when shopping, the internet slows us down as we can wait for days or even weeks to get the items we order. Now, it seems we are going to have a future where the internet could be as fast as or even faster in delivering items than it would take us to get showered, changed, into the SUV and down to the store ourselves. I feel most comfortable calling same-day-delivery via the internet, Webvan 2.0. How about you?

One last thought – many union workers fought tooth and nail to keep Walmart out of Brooklyn, New York but all they really did is harm their local community by depriving them of the 200 net jobs. All Walmart has to do now is ship product from a nearby location and have access to the same customers!

This is just another example of how free markets disrupt business in ways you can’t anticipate and the resulting unintended consequences can often be tough to swallow.

Google Leverages Home Page to Promote Nexus Tablet

2012-08-28T10:08:12Z

Google has been "different" for over a decade because the company always resisted overt advertising seen throughout the web. Through the entire pop-up era where so many websites capitulated and ran ads for security cameras and other items, Google stood almost alone.

But as you can see from the page above - click to enlarge, Google has now decided to use its premium real estate - the home page to run ads. The first ad is for the company's Nexus tablet.

Sure, the company has been making sponsored links look more and more like regular ads over the past few months and years - this trend isn't new for the company. Moreover, we have seen the company promote Chrome and other software products in the past - most of these however have been free products.

For those people who said the company would become "evil" shortly after becoming a public company - you may be right (assuming you consider this sort of behavior to be bad." For those of you who said the Motorola Mobility acquisition was "stupid" well perhaps you are wrong if the company rings up massive sales as a result of perhaps the best marketing strategy on the internet.

Will public backlash be so great that the search leader is forced to change course? We'll see - but if people are OK with Amazon promoting Kindles on its home page then perhaps Google too can get away with this new method of promotion.

The question now is what sorts of ads will we see next and will Google start to let others promote themselves on the web's perhaps most prime real estate.