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Dialogic: The Disruptor Combats Disruption

2012-08-30T21:10:06Z

Perhaps nothing has disrupted communications more than Dialogic innovations. This post shows how they are reacting to disruption they initiated

Disruption is not a new concept. We all get that Amazon disrupted Circuit City, the advent of the MP3 reduced sales of CDs and digital photography wreaked havoc on filmmakers like Kodak. But what of companies who develop new technologies which disrupt multibillion-dollar markets – only to see these innovations turn on them, causing their own product line to become legacy in short order?

Dialogic is one such example and they recently announced replacing CEO Nick Jensen with Kevin Cook (pictured). The company is legendary for those of us who have been in telecom for a while as much of the technology that enabled computer telephony and pioneered VoIP came from their engineers. Companies like Interactive Intelligence have leveraged off-the-shelf PCs and DSP resource boards made popular by Dialogic to build contact center solutions to disrupt proprietary solutions from the likes of Avaya.

More importantly, a slew of CLECs and other new communications providers providing services such as calling cards have relied on technologies pioneered by Dialogic to disrupt the incumbent carriers of the world. Without these boards in fact, telephony might still be a proprietary and closed technology where office phones are not interoperable and Skype didn’t exist.

It is indeed ironic that the same innovations which made the world of telecom dramatically more competitive have turned on the company’s leading-edge products to make them considered “legacy.”

Some History

As mentioned above, the core business at Dialogic was once DSP resource boards you would need to enable a PC to record and playback voicemail. These products had huge markups and competitors like Aculab, Rhetorex and NMS fought tooth and nail for marketshare by appealing to developers – like Interactive Intelligence who would place these boards in their systems. The good news is once a product win was achieved, you rode the wave of the product’s success without having to do very much. After all, it would be a herculean effort to rip-and-replace a DSP resource board.

This once margin-rich business evolved over the years as the processors in typical computers became powerful enough to handle what once needed proprietary DSP-based solutions. In other words, over time you could purchase software allowing the host processor to handle the media processing (HMP) which helped commoditize the market and pushed prices lower. In addition, a new competitor emerged last decade in the form of open-source/Asterisk coupled with lower priced boards from Sangoma and Digium.

As a result of the pressure on margins, Dialogic looked to new forms of revenue and moreover thought it made sense to consolidate the market purchasing Cantata, NMS and others.

The Focus on Video

At the leadership of Nick Jensen, Dialogic not only went on an M&A tear, it devoted a tremendous amount of energy to the video market. Nick was a major evangelist for getting service providers to provide video-based services which consumers would pay for. In fact these enhanced services have been the holy grail of the communications space for as long as I can remember. As you may know, some new service ideas fail spectacularly and others like music-based ring tones and SMS have become multibillion dollar markets few saw coming in advance.

Video is much more processor-intensive than voice so if there was a way for Dialogic to help carriers profit by providing such services it would have been spectacular for the company’s sales. And it’s obviously a rapidly growing market – just one that’s been tough to monetize effectively. After all, consumers have fast broadband connections in much of the world and don’t need the carrier to do much. Then there are app stores and Skype which make it more challenging for carriers to add any value they can charge for.

For parts of the world where bandwidth is constrained, consumers will pony up some money for video services but the challenge is, these parts of the world are generally poorer by definition meaning less revenue is to be gained by providing such enhancements.

The Financial Reality and Helm Change

Dialogic’s combined assets at the peak of their worth would likely command a value north of $1.5B but the market cap as of this writing is under $20M. The company combined wstith Veraz Networks in October 2010 and from the chart, between the arrows you can see the entire value of Dialogic has been eliminated since the merger.

The company was proactive in restructuring its debt and as a result, $39.7M owed to Tennenbaum Capital Partners, LLC has been converted into stock. Typically, these are the sorts of situations where companies change management and this explains part of the reason Kevin Cook has taken the helm. I spoke with him recently and the story he tells points to a future where the company’s new solutions are beginning to sell at a sufficient rate to offset the reduced sales from legacy businesses.

On a related note, company execs tell me additional shares due to debt conversion are likely to increase Dialogic’s market capitalization in the near future.

Streamlining Everything

Kevin spent time explaining that the elimination of the Tennenbaum debt also reduces interest payments to the tune of just under $10M per year. Moreover the company is spending its energy consolidating areas of redundancy and slowing R&D in areas which won’t provide a return while investing more in growing areas.

These changes have resulted in the company lowering its quarterly breakeven point from a cash flow perspective from $60M six quarters ago to roughly $40M today.

But What’s Next?

Since video has been the company’s obsession for many years we’ll start there. They will still focus on mobile video but watermarking and analytics will be spun off or discontinued. The areas of focus going forward will be PowerMedia HMP, softswitching, optimization and SBCs among others.

But What of The SBC?

It’s no secret that the SBC space was one of the hottest areas of telecom for a number of years and although the performance of the publicly traded companies may not show it, the future of the market is expected to be quite good. Dialogic seems to agree and Cook says he has reinvigorated the R&D in the SBC space with an addition of 25-20 heads. The company’s BorderNet 4000 SBC is doing well in the peering space and works quite symbiotically with the company’s softswitching solutions he says.

Cook believes the performance of this product line is ahead of the competition and expects to be a more potent threat to Acme Packet and Sonus in the future as more features will be added. The company’s BorderNet 2020 SBC plays in the access market on the border of carrier networks and the sales funnel for this product are ahead of projections he explained. He believes the company’s transcoding and multimedia capabilities will be a differentiator as the product moves upstream.

This product line also has potential to expand into the enterprise especially with IP based contact centers.

Who is Dialogic Now?

For most of its history Dialogic was a building block company then a video enabler for carriers. I asked, what should the company been known for now? Cook says, “We’ve staked out a claim in an area we call mobile experience management.” He went on to say the company has a lot more experience in the mobile space as opposed to Genband or Sonus or others who have more experience in the fixed line area.

Moreover there are a few parts to this vision. The first is service creation which is the value added service parts of the business like video gateways and video enabling applications which could for example allow a carrier to provide a social game where users could watch other players over their mobile devices.

Then there is the PowerMedia platform where people are building applications like mobile videoconferencing, roaming and signaling. Moreover, the company’s PowerMedia XMS solution provides a software media server allowing standards-based media control (XML, etc.) in a data center or cloud as part of a carrier’s IMS architecture.

Service delivery is another area of focus – where the company supplies softswitches as well as SBCs. Service optimization is another one and perhaps one of the most important from my perspective. Here the company supplies myriad solutions from the radio tower to the mobile switching center with the I-Gate Session Bandwidth Optimizer Mobile Backhaul which optimizes Abis and Iub data streams, including both ATM and IP-based Iub streams in 2G and 3G networks. Cook says it provides optimization of 70-80%, has customers like Telefonica and other major operators around the world, and sits between the RAN side of the network and the MSC.

Cook said, “The product does more header compression,” and continued to tell me this optimization is pretty unique to Dialogic and incremental to compression already done in switches from companies like Huawei and ZTE.

From there he discussed the company’s core network bandwidth optimization product, the I-Gate Session Bandwidth Optimizer (PDF) used in major networks around the world, which handles traffic optimization in and between VoIP and 3G networks.

The company is making a big bet on a product code named internally as DV which is short for data and video optimization and he says, “There are some very unique things we can do with this product and we’ll do some proof of concepts this December and launch in 2013.” He continued to tell me he the product can optimize 20-30% on top of what all the other players are doing, and that it is targeted for LTE/IMS networks. He invited me for a deep dive discussion which may take place at some point in the future.

The story got better with the addition of a slew of board members who are really well-versed in managing public companies as well as a discussion of customer diversity. No single customer in fact makes up more than 4% of the company’s revenue and North America revenue is less than 40%. The point is the company is more diversified than many of its competitors from a customer and country standpoint.

The Concern

Carriers want to work with companies who are in solid financial shape and this presents a chicken-and-egg problem for a publicly traded company. Dialogic needs to increase its stock price to be more attractive to its customers but in order to do so it needs to sell more products.

Conundrum may be the best way to explain this challenge.

The good news for the company is they already have a solid relationships with so many companies and carriers and they’ve been around for so many decades that they likely get far more leeway than other less-known organizations.

The Future

The takeaway from the conversation is the company is beginning to see traction in its new products. The legacy lines are seeing less investment and there has been large amounts of cost-cutting between office closures and debt conversion making interest payments less onerous.

There is an impending data crisis in the world and mobile carriers are scrambling to provide bandwidth to towers around the globe. The optimist will likely point out it is always cheaper to maximize the bandwidth of existing circuits than it is to dig trenches and shoot new fiber meaning sales growth of products which help in this area should be a given.

Moreover, carriers do want to reduce churn and managing the customer experience is obviously an important part of doing so.

At the end of the day, Dialogic must execute and if they do they could be in solid shape. Of course some of their future is dependent on carriers feeling optimistic enough to spend money improving their networks. Moreover, if legacy product sales decrease more rapidly than anticipated or new product growth stalls, the company will likely have to make more and painful cuts. But again, the optimist will say Dialogic's unique compression solutions will produce a rapid ROI for carriers who will spend more freely. And since mobile broadband growth is predicted for years to come, the company does seem to be positioned to take advantage of some of the investments carriers are bound to make.

See Dialogic at ITEXPO, Oct 3-5, 2012, Austin, Texas in booth #308. Disclosure - I am the Chairman of ITEXPO.

What the Auto Market can Teach us about Mobile

2012-08-14T21:23:55Z

Have you ever heard from someone that they don’t like Starbucks coffee but they like the experience at the store so they go in, sit down and buy the coffee? It is quite a testament to the world’s largest coffee chain that they are able to lure in customers who don’t like their premium-priced primary product but are instead attracted to their comfortable seating areas and atmosphere replete with cushy couches and free WiFi.

The point here is people buy things for subtle reasons they may not consciously realize. But how you may ask does this translate into tech and cars?

Recently Rob Enderle , President and Principal Analyst, Enderle Group wrote about the patent lawsuit between Apple and Samsung and related the pace of automotive innovation and competition to what is happening in the mobile space.

And he got me thinking about the similarities as well and moreover how the segmentation in one space can potentially be translated into the other.

Brand/Image: For many, Mercedes and BMW are the only cars they will purchase because they are considered top brands but are also priced reasonably enough when compared to a some even higher-end product lines like Bentley or Maserati. Both German manufacturers have done an incredible job in automotive design and performance and to some degree safety. BMW’s “Ultimate Driving Machine” moniker generally tells you the car is more performance oriented while Mercedes is more slanted towards luxury. Audi is similar to Mercedes in its brand positioning.

Of course Apple comes to mind when looking at the top brand in the consumer electronics world. Microsoft has become a strong brand for the older generation – perhaps most like Cadillac. It should be noted this isn’t a great place to be. Nokia may be closest to Chevy or GMC in that its brand was widespread and oftentimes a strong player in the less expensive areas of the market.

Performance is an important part of the automotive market and most car brands have their halo car. Chevy has the Corvette which has helped breathe excitement in the brand and Dodge has the Viper. Nissan has their GT-R and Lexus has their $375,000 LFA made of carbon fiber. BMW has an entire line of performance cars while Mercedes has their AMG brand and Audi has their S and RS cars which boost horsepower and other performance attributes over their less boosted counterparts. For example the A6 generates 211 horsepower while the S6 which looks quite similar on the outside generates 414 hp.

The PC market has followed the automotive space with processor speed and type being akin to engine size, torque and horsepower ratings. For example, a Dell XPS 8500 is promoted on the company’s website as costing $749.99 and for that price you get an Intel Core i5-3450 which is rated at up to 3.5 GHz. For an additional $150 you can upgrade to an i7-3770 processor which has speeds up to 3.9 GHz and is “Dell Recommended” whatever that means.

The tablet space is led by Apple which likes to keep things simple so speed hasn’t been as much of an issue. Over time and iterations of mobile products, Apple has increased its processor speeds and even gone from single to dual-core and quad-core processors but they don’t focus externally on the hardware to a great extent.

The one exception and where the company generates gobs and gobs of money is memory. Apple will charge you a $200 premium for 48 GB of memory while you can buy a SanDisk Cruzer 64 GB USB Flash Drive for $34.99. Then again, it is far simpler to understand memory size than it is to comprehend the difference between an Intel i5-3450 and i7-3770 processor.

Apple has simplified the tablet and smartphone purchase to the point where spec differentiation is tough to pull off beyond memory size and number of cores. This is likely one of the reasons Samsung and others have had to focus on increased phone screen sizes to differentiate themselves from the iPhone.

Safety is an important area for some in the automobile market and most people think Volvo when they think of cars which survive crashes best. Have you noticed however that Volvo hasn’t set the world on fire with its sales? The analogous area in mobility is likely security and guess how many people were concerned about moving from very secure RIM devices to less secure iOS and Android devices? Hint: not too many.

Environmental concern is an area where Toyota has shone this past decade with its Prius. The crossover with tech is the “greenness” of the companies themselves. Recently in fact Apple had to change its stance on the EPEAT environmental standard listing as a result of consumer backlash. It was a rare misstep for the consumer electric brand with a virtual halo around it.

Utility is another reason people purchase their vehicles. How many minivan owners do you know who overlook the chunkiness of their vehicle’s design because of the convenience and/or cost? SUVs are cooler looking and so are crossovers – at least to most eyes but they usually require a lot more cash.

The tech space is similar in that you can spend almost nothing for a clunky, ugly and slow laptop or netbook but a state-of-the-art ultrabook could cost you two times as much or even more! An HP 2000-410US Notebook PC will run you $409.99 while an HP ENVY Spectre XT Ultrabook 13t-2000 will set you back about a grand.

Price/Economy is another area of differentiation for car companies. By economy I am referring to fuel by the way and the point here is the low-end of the market buys their vehicles on a tight fuel/monthly payment budget. They can’t necessarily afford to buy a hybrid car so they settle for a low-cost car which doesn’t weigh so much and which has a smaller engine to conserve on fuel.

The analogous area in tech is the 7” tablet where prices are lower than the iPad. RIM popularized the smaller-sized tablet but their prices were similar to or higher than Apple when they first launched. It took Amazon to come out with the $199 Kindle Fire to shake up the tablet space and attract the lower-end of the market. Apple countered with a $299 iPad 2 which was a brilliant move.

Still, this is the area where many tablet makers will be forced to compete – at least that it unless Apple releases its rumored tablet of similar size.

The mobility space for its part has its own areas of differentiation.

Enterprise sanctioning was perhaps the most important area which has become fairly unimportant. One of the strengths of the Cisco Cius table for example was its centralized app control. The market responded with crickets – not because CIOs didn’t want to exert control over apps downloaded on corporate devices but because users could care less what devices their enterprise sanctions.

Ecosystem is another area which doesn’t exist in the automotive space – at least not in a major way. The idea here is there can be only a handful of big ecosystem players and so far we have Apple, Google/Android and Microsoft as our major players… Even RIM has to run Android apps on its OS to even play in the mobile space.

Another area of differentiation for the mobile and automotive spaces is the automobile market can have many more models because of the wide variety of prices in an auto manufacturer’s complete line up of vehicles. Volkswagen for example sells its cheapest car the Jetta starting at $16,675 while its more expensive cousin the Audi R8 GT Spyder starts at $210,300 and its most expensive corporate cousin the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport starts at $2,426,904 or the equivalent of 145.5 Jettas!

But device manufacturers should be cognizant of the parallels between these markets because at the end of the day, consumers are consumers and can be motivated to purchase products for reasons we didn’t foresee ahead of time. Who would have predicted before the iPhone was invented for example, that consumers would prefer a sleek phone made of glass to one which was made out of military grade plastic?

Seven Online Community Best Practices

2012-06-05T13:11:23Z

There are so many different types of online communities and ways of building them. There are social sharing sites such as Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. There are standalone sites and even hosted third party portals which you can build in conjunction with other companies.

In short, community building online is alive, well and about as confusing as trying to figure out which European countries will still be using the Euro in five years.

The good news is there are some simple best practices you should be using to ensure your online community (OC) performs as well as possible.

Be objective

Provide loads of objective information which will act as a lure to get potential customers familiar with you. Even if your company is already a household name, every organization needs to reinforce its place in the market through thought leadership-based education to ensure its customers continue to see it as the company in the space they should work with.

Leave the selling to your website

When customers visit online communities they don’t want a sales pitch, yet so many companies think every bit of content they produce needs to be self-promotional. Based on my experience in building hundreds of these communities for our partners, the sales pitch is the worst approach to community building there is. A website can be used to sell, but not your community.

Don’t forget video

Make sure you have lots of text on your OC, but don’t forget about multimedia like video. How-to videos regarding best practices are a great idea. For example if your company sells hiking shoes you should be sure that you produce videos on best practices for hiking from beginner to expert. Talk about mosquito repellant, rain gear, safety tips, how to maintain hydration, and more.

Educate

We have discussed being objective, but let’s focus on the importance of education. If you work in a more complex area of the market - a product more elaborate than gum or candy for example, your potential/existing customers could really benefit from being educated. For example if you are a tech company, how about helping customers understand emerging trends which will affect them such as IPV6 or HTML5?

In fact the education you give doesn’t have to be 100 percent related to what you do – for example an IP fax company could easily benefit by educating on the above matters, even if they aren’t specifically IP fax-related topics.

Branding

Your OC is a branding product primarily – it may generate leads but more importantly it will increase the chance your leads become sales. In other words by reinforcing your company’s name and products in the mind of the potential customer, a company is able to increase the likelihood that a potential customer in the sales funnel becomes a buying customer.

Technology marketing is going through a transformation at the moment with companies looking to get as many leads as possible for the lowest cost per lead. What they need to focus on even more is total marketing spend versus total marketing ROI. In other words, generating 20 percent fewer leads could be even more cost-effective because your sales people have higher close rates and waste less time on leads which will not convert. In other words, the mentality of maximizing leads at the expense of branding is a fad in my opinion. The companies remaining in the market will be the ones who understand the benefits of the holistic approach outlined in this best practices document.

Be a conversation starter

Can you relate current events into your educational activities? If you can, you are at a significant advantage as this approach to education is likely to get your audience participating and responding to your content, which in turn brings in more comments and subsequently related content.

If current events don’t make sense, be sure you provide other content which makes sense and is likely to elicit a response. If you sell fishing gear, post lists of the top fishing spots in the world. Challenge participants to send in their own videos and photos – even have a contest to reward the best entries.

Be a thought leader

You need to be a thought leader in your space. Salesforce.com is a thought leader in cloud, IBM is a thought leader in tech and consulting, Apple and Samsung in consumer electronics. What is your company a thought leader in? Do you speak at conferences? Are you promoting these topics and concepts in your community?

To become a thought leader you need to simply have thoughts which people value and amass enough of them that others look to you to point to the future of your market. Think more about how to do well here and less on maximizing leads at all costs and your sales will do well.

Conclusion

We are in a brave new world where companies have to give away loads of free “things” as part of their marketing initiatives. It could be content on social networks, eBooks, webinars, videos and/or podcasts but it is crucial to understand that marketing is shifting. Finally, in a world where related information is a search box or a Twitter post away, you need to ensure your company is in all the right places with all the right information so you can successfully connect with potential customers and retain existing ones.

Need a New Car? Win a Mustang at ITEXPO in Miami Next Week

2012-01-27T15:48:11Z

I think I may have one of the best jobs in the world. I admit it is a bit ADHD-inducing as I get involved in lots of areas from new media to the latest technologies in the market as I run this major media company which is TMC. Not only do I get help influence tens of millions of people online I also get to host live events where I meet many of the readers who frequent my blog and TMCnet - the main web portal of TMC where I am CEO.

But the most exciting part of my job comes twice a year when I give away a car to an unsuspecting attendee at ITEXPO. Next week - Friday Feb 3rd at 1:45 pm at the Miami Beach Convention Center, I get to give the next car away and it will be a Ford Mustang. In order to be eligible to win you need to pick up a card at registration and get it stamped by all the sponsors of the car giveaway.

Thank you sponsors for making these giveaways possible. If I were an attendee at a show I would want a mix of solid education, a chance to network with peers, see the leading exhibitors in the space but also to have some fun and that is what events like our various receptions and giveaways are supposed to provide.

The TMC team and I look forward to hosting you next week. Thank you all in advance for coming to our event and hats off to the TMC team who is managing not only ITEXPO but a host of collocated and unparallelled events such as Super WiFi Summit, MSP World, our SUITS technology patents event, M2M Evolution, Mobile LATAM, HTML5 Summit, Cloud Communications Expo, The Channel Vision Expo (CVx), Business Video, Asterisk 123, 4GWE, StartupCamp5, Avaya Tech on Tap, the Blackberry Hackathon, SIP trunking workshop, business development workshop, telecom reseller week, to name a few.

http://itexpo.tmcnet.com/sip-trunking-workshop/miami/

ITEXPO East 2012 Miami Out of Office Message

2012-01-24T22:15:59Z

While I digest the super-strong, mind-numbing Apple growth numbers which propelled the stock to a high of $460 per share after hours I have just set my out of office message for next week when I will be at ITEXPO. The message is below in case you want to use something similar. And for your convenience here is the first show daily from the event – which covers news from Sprint, AT&T, Whitespace Alliance, Panasonic, Accedian Networks, Cycle30, FaxSIPit, Phone.com and Polar Media.

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Thank you for your message. Starting Jan 30th I will be at ITEXPO (www.itexpo.com) in Miami.

This is the global tech and communications conference - covering cloud, MSP, super WiFi, 4G, M2M, Patents, SIP, VoIP, HTML5 and featuring keynotes from Google, Sprint, Samsung, The FCC and Sir Terry Matthews.

On Friday, Feb 3rd @ 1:45 pm I give away a new Mustang - You must be present to win so I hope to see you there. (http://goo.gl/vkqrd)

Have a wonderful week and enjoy the New Year.

ITEXPO West 2011 Austin Highlights

2011-08-23T19:09:30Z

Before all ITEXPO events I do a final proofread of the show directory and this one may be the biggest ever at 132 pages with tabs (just doing our part to support the economy). We will post a PDF version soon so you can see what’s in it but until then, here are some highlights that caught my eye:

Keynotes & Exhibits Tuesday, September 13^th at 9:15 AM we have Ian Pennell from Cisco and at 4:30 PM-5:30 PM we have keynotes from Siemens and IBM followed by a Grand Opening Networking Reception sponsored by Interact from 5:30-7:30.

Wednesday, September 14^th at 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM we have keynotes from Polycom and DHL followed by exhibits from 11:00 AM- 4:00 PM. Then at 4:00 PM there is a Cocktail reception sponsored by Rackspace Hosting and at 4:45 you could win a pair of mountain bikes from Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop - an Austin Institution ( I am told). Then at 5:00 PM Bob Metcalfe kicks off StartupCamp4 Comms Edition with a keynote and this event continues until 8:00 PM and is free to attend.

Thursday, September 15^th Exhibits open at 11:00 AM and the Jeep giveaway begins at 2:45 PM (see below). Thanks to Jeep sponsors AireSpring, AudioCodes, Windstream Communications, Panasonic, Sotel Systems, Taqua, WildPackets and VocalTec.

ITEXPO West voted #3 fastest growing trade show by Trade Show Magazine – thanks to the fine editors of this publication and to all our loyal attendees who have allowed this conference to honored. We really appreciate your support.

You can win a Jeep – TMC has given away dozens of cars over the years and we will be giving away yet another on Thursday, September 15^th at 2:45 PM. And YES, you have to be present to win.

Free WiFi, as long as less than 5,800 devices are trying to connect at once, I am told the Austin Convention Center will have fast WiFi access for everyone who wants it. Like many of you, I know from painful experience that tech crowds like ITEXPO attendees can bring just about any WiFi network to its knees so I am looking forward to seeing how this network does under heavy load.

Super WiFi & white spaces Speaking WiFi, Tuesday morning 9/13 Super WiFi Summit kicks off and this paid conference will teach you about how white space technology could be as disruptive to 4G/wireless as VoIP was to the PSTN. Imagine if you knew what you know about VoIP today – but in 1998. What investment and career decisions would you have made as a result? And now you see the Super WiFi opportunity. It all takes place in room 5C on the 3^rd floor – learn more here and check out the agenda or register.

HTML5 Revolution In room 6B, Sept 13-15^th you will find the most authoritative conference on HTML5 anywhere and if you are interested in learning how HTML5 will disrupt app stores and allow developers to create broad-reaching apps without having to develop for multiple architectures, this conference is for you. Sessions will allow designers, entrepreneurs, programmers and investors to learn everything they need to know about the future of cross-platform and mobile development. Here is the link to the HTML5 Summit, a Devcon5 Event. Here are some of the latest developments on the show.

MPLS University MegaPath is sponsoring MPLS University on Wednesday, Sept 14th in room 7 between 2:00 and 4:00 PM and it is free to all attendees. Please contact the company with questions and pregister here.

Regulations change everything: Regulatory 2.0 Workshop takes place in room 4A for a half-day on Thursday, September 15^th. The federal government, FCC and other governmental agencies have changed the fortunes of entire industries with the simple passing of a bill. And with the massive disruption in the market taking place with the PSTN potentially being eliminated, OTT set-top boxes eliminating the need for cable operators and wireless eliminating the need for fixed lines and countless USF issues, you need to get a sense of what the feds and state regulators are planning for your future.

Voice peering continues to grow The VIPeering conference takes place in room 5A Tuesday, September 13^th and focuses on crucial factors in the voice peering market like the role of the SBC, number portability and more.

SIP Trunking on a tear Let’s face it, virtually all SMB and enterprise telephony on a global scale will be replaced by SIP trunks and this massive opportunity is why the Ingate SIP Trunking Summit has been such a success at ITEXPO for many years. ITEXPO was the first show in the world with a SIP trunking workshop and we continue to have the most knowledgeable speakers and curriculum designers anywhere. Learn more about this free 3-day event.

Asterisk and open source telephony You know who you are – you prefer to have your telephony be open-source either because you enjoy the added flexibility, want full-control or perhaps you like the cost-savings that comes with this more open form of telecom. Whatever the reasons for your interest, you have to be at Asterisk 1-2-3 training hosted by Digium in meeting room 2 on the first floor on Monday September 12^th where you can learn how to connect SIP phones to Asterisk, how to add logic and even how to compile Asterisk from source code. This is a good fit if you are relatively new to the topic or are exploring your options.

What, more SIP? You know you need to know as much about SIP as possible to ensure you can effectively interconnect your organization’s telecom systems. This is especially true in light of the fact that SIP systems aren’t always interoperable out of the box. And just for you we have assembled some of the best speakers anywhere to teach you at the SIP Tutorial which takes place Thursday, September 15^th in room 5A.

Need talent or a job? We are thrilled that the people from Dice will be hosting a high tech job fair at ITEXPO September 15^th, between 11:00 AM -3:00PM. For more information email Bob Westerkamp or call 800-695-1939.

Dialogic Solution Showcase? On page 53 of the directory there is an ad from Dialogic touting a Solution Showcase. I am not sure what this is but is certainly reminds me of the nineties when Dialogic used to feature its solution partners at shows around the US and world. Anyone else remember the Computer Telephony shows in LA? I’ll be stopping by their booth #407 to learn more.

Send your marketing team Marketing departments have never had to deal with the level of technology and complexity that exists today. SEO, social, deal sites, print, TV, radio, online ads, online communities, resource centers, lead generation, CRM management, analytics and so on. To help, we have launched a CMO Summit on Tuesday, Sept 13, 7:30-9:30 at Fogo de Chao. This event requires an application be filled out and approved so thanks for your understanding.

When a cloudy future is good You mean you haven’t thought about moving your communications in the cloud like millions of others? Well even if you are sure you don’t want to move all your comms to the cloud you should explore moving some of it or at least be educated enough to defend your position in the next meeting with your boss. The best place to learn about cloud communications of course is at Cloud Communications Expo on the level one ballroom C Tuesday, September 13^th and Wednesday, September 14^th.

Some highlights from the above expo are:

International Hour on Tuesday
MidMarket Session on Tuesday
M&A Social Networking Lunch/Track
Analyst Keynote on Wednesday

A 4G future it should come as no surprise that your wireless future will be 4G but how does a company leverage all the opportunities this new standard allows? Well of course by participating in the 4GWE conference where you can learn how to solve picocell issues, deal with backhaul challenges and more. Be sure to come to room 4A and 4BC where this conference will take place and learn more. As part of this event you will also get to hear two awesome keynoters – Cameron Coursey of AT&T as well as Charles Jolley the CEO of Strobe. Here is a link to part of a past keynote Jolly did at the TMC DevCon5 event in Manhattan a few weeks back. It was one of the best presentations we had at the show.

Billions of M2M devices Yes, as amazing as it sounds there will be billions of machine-to-machine devices from tablets to sensors to appliances. Yes, your refrigerator and washing machine will be connected to the network allowing them to utilize power when it costs less and moreover making the world a more efficient place. Opportunity in M2M abounds – witness my recent pieces on Sprint and OnAsset. Life often imitates musical chairs – and if you aren’t quick, you lose. Come to M2M Evolution Tuesday September 13^th through Thursday, September 15^th in room 5B to learn more about the industry.

MSPs are the cloud Recently a managed service provider I was speaking with said his company was the cloud. Of course this sounds a bit silly but he had a point – and that is, without a network of cloud-based providers supplying backup services, payroll, email, collaboration and other apps – the cloud would not only be boring but not as profitable. Leave it to MSPs to act as the glue that makes all the really cool cloud-based apps stick. Come learn more at MSP World Tues-Wed, Sept 13-14^th.

Without the channel, where are we? Starting up companies which make great products is sometimes the easy part of the equation. The tough part is finding a channel to market – a set of resellers who can hold the hands of your customers and walk them though a more complex sale. There is no better place for the channel to gather than at Channel Vision Expo or CVx Wed-Thurs Sept 14-15^th, located on the show floor.

Customers are tweeting and facebooking, are you listening? Social CRM Expo is an event I decided the world needed because to be honest there are so many ways customers can complain and comment regarding your company that if you aren’t engaging prospects and customers in near real-time you risk major reputational and potentially financial damage. Social CRM is the discipline which brings together the art of listening to what customers are saying and engaging them to ensure problems are resolved quickly and your company’s reputation is as good as it can be. Social CRM Expo is the place to be to learn all about it Tues-Wed Sept 13-14^th in room 8A.

Be sure to check TMCnet for the latest on Telecom reseller week – an event all resellers should be particicpating in and of course Avaya has a great event on Monday, Sept 12 at 7:00 PM called Technology on Tap which will explore how the workplace needs to evolve to handle the millennial generation. Oh great, now we need to tweet these kids to get them to do something we want. :)

It should be really great – like all the past Avaya events they have always included great drinks, food and course objective information.

I really can’t wait to see you all at the show – it should be the best one ever. Please register now if you haven’t – and keep in mind you may need to register for multiple conferences if you have interest in their sessions.

Got Big Telecom Data? You Need Infinity Ear from Empirix!

2011-08-16T08:35:59Z

OK, this isn’t a real product name – yet but you could potentially help pick it – be sure to let the company know if you have a name for their new product line.

I sat down with Tim Moynihan and Gordon Eddy of Empirix at SpeechTek and was happy to hear the company has been experiencing double-digit growth. Testing companies like Empirix are a great barometer for the markets they serve as they grow with the percentage of deployments in the spaces are in. In this case, the company is seeing increasing orders as a result of the migration to IP so SIP trunking and SBC deployments have really helped the bottom line.
Moreover, companies are seeking out testing services from Empirix before they deploy CRM, call center and UC services.

Mergers have been another positive factor in the company’s growth as companies have to ensure their disparate systems can interop smoothly before they go live as part of a more seamless network of communications systems.

An interesting area of expansion will be introduced this fall – analyzing “big data” for the telecom space. The point here is big data is being scraped and analyzed with positive results in data centers but there has been a lack of tools to do the same in the telecom space. You could use such a solution to determine how a massive amount of data growth on a network would bog down voice and video calls.

Speaking of video, the company is beginning to get requests for video testing, meaning video is likely past the tipping point – of course this may not be the biggest surprise – but it’s always good to get 3rd party verification of what the research analysts and Cisco ads tell us.
Regarding the big data product – it doesn’t have a name yet and I couldn’t help thinking of a few names myself. Empirix used to be called Hammer Technologies in the nineties and the Hammer product line exists today. As you can imagine the name refers to “hammering” systems to ensure they operate correctly. These products have evolved of course and a cloud-based Hammer solution is available for really large tests.

So I figure if Hammer is the name of the testing tool the listening/analytics tool could be called the Ear or perhaps the Antenna. I am thinking you need a really large ear for big data so how about Infinity Ear? Dear Empirix, don’t worry – you don’t have to pick my name – I always have my day job. But how about some advanced notice before you release the actual name? :)

Latest Trends in Speech Technology, CRM, IVR, Collaboration and Cloud Computing

2011-08-14T23:45:22Z

Speech analytics in greater demand

At the recent SpeechTek 2011 conference in New York I gained some great insight into the state of speech technology. For example, Jeff Schlueter of Nexidia told me his company’s speech analytics solutions have been in greater demand in this current economy as the desire to control costs has led to increased adoption of speech analytics. In addition, the company has released version 9.0 of its Enterprise Speech Intelligence product suite which cuts the TCO in half and allowing for customers to handle even larger amounts of data.

Voxeo goes big

The idea of handling larger systems was echoed by Dan York of Voxeo who told me the latest version of the company’s new VoiceObjects 11 solution has scaled for a mix of global carrier and enterprise customers to handle 20k ports. More importantly the ports are all linked into a private cloud of sorts allowing central reporting across the VPN, a central console, full resiliency, redundant failover and one-click roll back in case there is a problem which quickly needs to be undone. York explained the company has also rolled out Prophecy 11 which adds HD voice, IPv6 and fax support. One good bit of news is wideband audio makes it easier to recognize voice because as York explains, “There is a lot more data to analyze.”

New player Novauris intrigues

Competing against established players like Nuance, Microsoft and Loquendo isn’t easy but Novauris, a newcomer to the speech technology space has already inked some deals with tier one OEMs and carriers and they have a specific niche where they think their performance is best in class. Specifically, accessing very large sets of databases such as addresses, names of people, product catalogues, IPTV and electronic programming guides, local search and directory assistance. The company works with Angel and SpeechCycle in the call center space as well – doing name and address recognition in the cloud and passing back the data via XML in real-time.

Industrial speech apps boost productivity

Wavelink Corp has been in the mobile device management space for many years and its Avalanche software has been upgraded to 5.2 providing increased capabilities in terms of reporting, organizing devices, security, location-based services and two-way messaging between administrator and user devices. Moreover, in a conversation with Jay Cichosz, he tells me the company has been enjoying success in the industrial market where the company’s terminal emulation solutions help workers more efficiently manage packing and shipping logistics via handheld devices. Moreover, by speech enabling these apps – his customers have seen productivity gains as floor workers no longer have to glance at a watch or PDA to see what they need to do next – they can now just listen and respond with voice as well. The company’s Speakeasy voice solution was upgraded this past March and differentiates itself by being priced very competitively and doing the speech processing on the mobile device in order to save precious bandwidth on factory-floor networks which typically aren’t designed to handle bursts of multimedia traffic.

Microsoft to abstract devices for more seamless experiences

Last year, Microsoft introduced me to their Xbox Kinect gaming system with built-in speech recognition and I was very impressed. To date though the gaming system has been better known for its motion detection – allowing the body to be the controller than its speech technology. This will potentially change soon as speech has now been put into the SDK.

In my meeting with Grant Shirk, I also had a chance to use Windows Phone 7 Mango and as Shirk explained some areas of speech integration are apps, search and address book. By the way, the new Mango OS supports 500+ new features 4 of the top 15 requests for improvements included speech.

I asked Shirk about his thoughts regarding HTML5 and he believes there is a lot of opportunity for speech to be integrated into HTML5 and moreover, he said companies HTML5 investments generally start with customer interactions and he said, “Speech is a natural interface.” When queried about where Microsoft sees itself in these spaces, he replied, “We are in a great position to provide services to help companies build cross-channel experiences independent of device.” To me that makes the company sort of a super-middleware provider of the future and in some ways, Adobe’s new Edge tool I just covered will be competitive with this vision.

SAP feeds customers feeds

SAP is best known for a suite of software solutions used to help companies get products from manufacturing to the customer, allowing them to collect money and pay taxes – and just about everything in-between. In a conversation with Anthony Leaper and Dr. Volker Hildebrand, they told me how the company sells their solutions in bite-sized chunks and also makes rapid-deployment solutions available for delivery in 6-8 weeks. Sales, service and marketing are just some of the areas where such packages are available.

One of their latest announcements is Sales onDemand – a feed-based system which brings structured and unstructured data together in a collaborative, Facebook like way. Similar to Salesforce Chatter or Cisco Quad, the company is targeting very large companies and will also release Service onDemand. These two products will work together allowing salespeople to see a feed of customer late payments or service requests. Leaper believes SAP has an advantage over Salesforce because his system is more integrated allowing all objects in the CRM database to be seen while he sees Chatter as a bolt-on solution.

The challenge for SAP is they are late to the game but they may see these new releases as a way to protect and cross-sell to their installed base and speed-to-market has to be balanced with interoperability across the company’s ever-expanding software suite.

Turning Oscar Madison communications into Felix Unger

The Odd Couple was a favorite TV show of mine as a kid featuring a very Messy Oscar Madison who was roommates with a very neat Felix Unger. I couldn’t help thinking about these two when I met with Alok Kulkarni of Cyara Solutions and his customer Sam Jackel from Westpac, Australia’s largest bank with 6-7 million customers. Cyara provides next-generation premise and cloud-based solutions for simulating, testing and monitoring IVRs, voice biometrics, outbound dialers, voice callback and other contact center systems and applications.

And what they did for the bank was to help them take disparate solutions handling IVR, speech, complex routing algorithms, Websphere, java apps and more and integrate them more efficiently to dramatically improve customer satisfaction. A three-year project resulted in customers being able to get to the information they want via phone in only 14 seconds. This is down from 90 seconds – a significant improvement. To get an idea of what challenges the company had, every time there was a customer interaction, messaging needed to traverse a number of different firewall hops and pipes between Telstra, IBM and Westpac networks causing potential packet loss, latency and jitter.

In addition, by using automation, the need for human testing has been reduced by 50% - allowing these testers to be deployed for more sophisticated testing.

The bank is thrilled and says they view Cyara as a key plank in their strategy around quality and efficiency and use the company for end-to-end regression, systems integration, functional, stress, performance and load testing and real-time monitoring of the customer experience in the production environment. You generally don’t get such a large company to give such a glowing testimonial to a relatively new company so I thought it worth sharing.

Zoho’s Appleization

In a conversation with Sridar Vembu and Raju Vegesna of Zoho they explained to me their take on the future of computing. Sit down before continuing because this is a really big deal. The software market is going through a gut-wrenching change. Consider, even the most complex apps can be put out in a few weeks because of the maturity of the latest development tools which can be constructed atop existing frameworks. And once released, distribution of these solutions has been commoditized through app stores. Basically, software is on the verge of being commoditized and if we learned anything in the PC Vs. Apple war it is that a slick, simple-to-use interface is worth far more than a commoditized solution.

Subsequently, Zoho, a company with a suite of 30+ cloud-based solutions is working on making their interfaces even simpler to use. I got an early glimpse of their new CRM software and was very excited about the new and much-cleaner interface which loses no functionality in its pursuit of Apple-like simplicity.

What I like best is the ability to tie together email, office apps, CRM and everything else so users don’t have to bounce around between a myriad of apps on the desktop to get their work done. An early pioneer in the cloud space, Zoho is now up to 1,500 people and is profitable and experiencing 100% YoY growth.

In two weeks you can expect a new solution, Contact Manager which the company bills as CRM for the beginner. For more on Zoho, check out this video interview TMC’s Erik Linask conducted with the company late last month in San Jose.

So there you have it – if you made it this far, thanks and be sure to catch up on other articles from Speechtek from TMC’s Tammy Wolf:

Will AT&T, T-Mobile Merger Slow Wireless Innovation?

2011-07-25T18:46:59Z

AT&T has done an incredible job of getting special interest group after group to endorse its merger with T-Mobile, saying it will provide better broadband access for minorities, rural subscribers and just about any group of people you can think of. The broader gay community too has endorsed the merger - apparently transgender-Americans have been hoping for the day when there was one less GSM provider to choose from.

Here is how the system works - AT&T has hundreds of thousands of workers and inevitably large numbers of them in myriad groups. This in turn coupled with large contributions to various organizations and associations is rewarded with the reciprocal endorsing of anything AT&T requests.

To help grease the wheels even further, AT&T has further upped its lobbying budget by 58% according to PC Magazine.

AT&T is doing the smart thing by getting rid of its sole GSM provider allowing it better negotiating leverage in its roaming agreements with foreign carriers and gaining the ability to raise rates with one less major competitor to depress market pricing. It will also gain more leverage when negotiating with hardware and software companies.

An anti-merger video by the Free Press Action Fund

If the US government blocks the deal it will be because the remaining major companies AT&T and Verizon will have so much share that they are effectively a duopoly at about 80% - allowing them to raise prices at will.

Again, if you are an AT&T or Verizon shareholder, you likely want this merger to happen and AT&T is serving its short-term shareholders well by seeking this transaction.

But the challenge I see is that with one less major telecom carrier in the US it becomes that much more difficult for innovative start-ups to launch, get funding and hold their breath long enough for a carrier to buy from them. Sprint and T-Mobile have been fairly aggressive working with smaller companies that provide FMC solutions for example and because of this, funding has flowed into a bunch of companies serving the needs of the telcos. To make matters worse, Alcatel-Lucent has struggled for years to make money in this new landscape of shrinking carriers and NSN is really having problems making profit. Moreover, Nortel well bankrupt largely because of a single wireless contract it missed out on so obviously the challenge here is for the telecom hardware and software ecosystem as a whole.

So with less competition there will be less need to innovate and subsequently telecom equipment providers will have more trouble making money, getting funded and spending on R&D. This in-turn will cause a negative feedback loop where there are less companies innovating and Verizon, AT&T and a host of other carriers have less advanced services to offer. This in turn will eventually reduce revenues for carriers.

But this outcome will take a while to happen because investors aren't thinking about these issues, they are still licking their lips trying to take part in a telecom deal like the one where Skype sold to Microsoft for $8.5B.

AT&T should know these dangers and they probably do - but it is possible they are giving up on services. After all, IMS was supposed to unleash a wave of new applications and the carriers were going to share in the profit. Well the the app store quickly brought an end to that hope.

But then again, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam is set on bringing what he calls the innovation from wireless, into the wireline side of the business. But if Verizon really wants an environemnt where there is lots of innovation, one would imagine it would be very vocal in opposing the AT&T, T-Mobile deal. To date they haven't said much.

So for AT&T, Verizon and a host of other larger carriers in the global market, this merger could make it more difficult for them to find the next killer service like SMS. But then again, if you own one of the two major wireless superhighways, you may not have to offer anything in exchange for increasing your toll prices.

TMC Dallas Video Interviews 2011

2011-07-25T15:57:02Z

Recently I spent some time in Dallas doing video interviews with companies in the Dallas, Texas area and during the course of the discussions I was able to get a sense of where the markets have been and are going. The vast range of different opinions really comes together into a few themes.

They are simply that wages and turnover rates in India are skyrocketing meaning some jobs may be headed back to the US. This is offset by an interview with King White of the Site Selection Group - an organization which helps companies decide which countries and states they should locate in. He tells us that states with higher taxes are less attractive and subsequently deter companies from opening there. Simply stated, voters electing candidates who consider raising taxes are likely killing the future job prospects of their state.

This is also the case in elections of congressmen, senators and obviously presidential elections.

On the tech side, there is an increased push towards video, wireless, small cells, mobility and the call center space is enjoying renewed growth and energy.

For more details, browse the descriptions below, view the videos and read the articles.

COMPANY			Description
Site Selection Group	Video	Article	Learn how higher taxes kills jobs
Varaha Systems	Video	Article	Mobile solutions - voice, data and video
Airband Communications	Video	Article	Fixed wireless for business
Vanillasoft	Video	Article	Inside sales automation
Airwalk Communications	Video	Article	Small cells and the future of mobile & wireless
Sipera	Video	Article	Unified communications security, simpler SBCs
ABP	Video	Article	Death of value chain PBX distribution
Mavenir	Video	Article	Mobile 2.0 discussion
Working Solutions	Video	Article	Home agents, social, call center technology
Alepo	Video	Article	IT solutions for wireless carriers
Conexion One	Video	Article	Hispanic outsourcing services
ViewCast	Video	Article	Coding formats for video delivery
Doublehorn Communications	Video	Article	SMB broadband communications, SIP trunking
Samsung	Video	Article	Mobile phones, devices, content, smartphones
Reallinx	Video	Article	Better broadband, security, VoIP service & support
Spectrum Corpo	Video	Article	Contact center monitoring, data analysis
ICON Voice Networks	Video	Article	Was Iwatsu America. Now more strategic US focus
Epygi	Video	Article	More scaleable phone & video solutions
Artisan	Video	Article	Infrastructure as a service - wholesale, pure-play
MinuteMan UPS	Video	Article	Extended run-time UPS systems
Facetcorp	Video	Article	Flexible, customized PBX systems
Fonality	Video	Article	The move to cloud communications
Telstrat	Video	Article	Workforce optimization, coaching, analytics
Novo 1 Contact Centers	Video	Article	Call center agents coming back to the US
Telstrat 2	Video	Article	Evolution of the call center, recording 2.0

Quad: The Death of E-mail and Cisco's Social Enterprise Ambitions

2011-06-20T21:42:20Z

Quad moves to the cloud, has native Cius tablet support and offers better interoperability

Last week I took a train into the city from TMC’s Connecticut HQ to spend time with the Cisco Quad collaboration team – using Cisco telepresence technology and it was a fascinating look into the company’s foray into a post-email, collaborative enterprise world. First things first, I wrote about Quad and spoke with Murali Sitaram VP/GM of Cisco's Enterprise Platforms unit last September and since then Quad has not been talked about much in the media and has limited buzz in the market. Moreover, Cisco is repositioning itself – lightening up on consumer products meaning much of the company’s messaging has been in other areas of the market including launching consumer telepresence product UMI – something which should never should have gotten the green light.

So I was skeptical at this point and went into the meeting trying to figure out if Quad has a future. Bottom line is Quad is enterprise Facebook with real-time collaboration built in and the idea is it allows easy searching of repositories of information – meaning the knowledge a corporation gains transcends the brains of the few people involved in information creation and it can be intelligently woven into training programs or called upon to more easily answer questions at a later date.

Imagine you are an auto manufacturer working on a green car initiative which flops. A few years later, a new manager reintroduces the idea – you can now go back and analyze the WebEx conference calls, telepresence and other video, presentations and knowledge bases associated with building a green car the first time around. You should be able to learn from your mistakes more easily because there is a record of what went wrong.

More importantly, if we live in a world where Congressmen are comfortable enough sharing photos of their private parts on Twitter, certainly it is time for the typical enterprise worker to start utilizing enterprise social networks as well to become more productive. Although one would hope the worker will deploy a bit more discretion before hitting send.

Quad goes cloudborne and targets smaller enterprises

The meeting didn’t blow me away but it is definitely worth sharing what I learned as Quad could become very important if e-mail does become less utilized and social networking does become the defacto standard for communications within organizations.

Probably the biggest news is Quad now will support enterprises as small as 1,000 users (down from 3,500) and be supported by cloud-based vendors allowing an organization to use Quad in a SaaS configuration. Moreover, the new 2.5 release will allow integration of activity streams and watch list functionality to enable users to better define and filter the content they consume.

Quad: See us on the Cius

I have yet to test the Cisco Cius tablet (ironically Cisco just invited me to a Cius event next week as I write this) but Quad will work on it natively which could make people who buy these tablets happier that they integrate natively with Cisco collaboration tools. Then again, Quad will work on a variety of mobile devices including iOS so this may not be such an important point. We will have to wait and see how it works.

Extending the Quad across campuses

Cisco has extended interoperability within Quad allowing it to work with enterprise IM clients Microsoft OCS 2007, IBM Sametime, and Cisco Jabber. This means a Quad user will be able to initiate and conduct an IM conversation with users of these other collaboration systems. It’s worth pointing out Quad also works with EMC Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint 2007.

Microblogging and template support

There is now support for hashtags, multimedia and other file attachments and of course messages beyond 140 characters. There is also template support allowing an admin to assign them to a community or a team.

Who are the hosting partners?

Depending on your geographic area, you can work with Capgemini, ACS a Xerox company or Infosys.

Suggestions and recommendations – enables semantic components to shine

One area of interest to me is the suggestion and recommendation functionality which comes in handy when using consumer social networks and even LinkedIn. Cisco’s solution works in a similar fashion by doing things like suggesting connections of other people within your company who have similar expertise. This could come in handy not only in a company like Google where people spend so much time working on secondary projects but since suppliers and partners could be on Quad together. It allows you to gain better visibility into your counterpart(s) with your partner or customer company.

Quad to become more visible

I asked Murali about why Quad hasn’t been visible with regards to marketing and PR and he told me it will be more visible going forward as it knits all the Cisco products and services together. I got to thinking though – this was also the case a year ago yet I’ve spent months looking at millions of dollars worth of TV ads for enterprise and consumer telepresence – much of it turned out to be wasted. And I am left still wondering – if Quad is as good as Cisco says it is then why aren’t we seeing it more? Generally when a disconnect like this exists between a vendor’s actions and words, we learn later of an underlying conflict. Perhaps I am wrong but I remain skeptically optimistic we will see Cisco start to promote Quad and more importantly we will start to see my fellow journalists start to write more enthusiastic pieces regarding its growth and future potential.

Quad SMB & Fremium?

I also asked about whether Quad needs to go SMB and have a free model to get smaller companies excited and hooked. Sitaram mentioned he didn’t think this made sense at the moment and utilized Yammer as an example of a company who does this but isn’t very financially successful as a result. I was thinking more Salesforce.com Chatter but I didn’t get a chance to ask about it.

Final thoughts

I am an advocate of using technology to boost productivity and make companies more productive and the research tells us the future will be one where email is less important and enterprise social is more important. And for Cisco the move from hardware to software makes sense as it is potentially more profitable (unless you’re Apple) and if you own the social collaboration platform you have a greater chance of selling the components which work with it. Routers, IP telephony systems, telepresence, videoconferencing are just a few of these and going forward, Cisco will be able to offer more software solutions which will have higher adoption rates because they work seamlessly with their collaboration solutions. IF this strategy is successful, over time, Cisco will become a threat to Microsoft and potentially Google, Oracle, SAP and others.

But of course this is the best-case scenario – Cisco isn’t batting that well lately and there are challenges the company faces as it decides which businesses to keep and which ones to get rid of. Moreover, Cisco is not known as a software company and quite frankly, Chatter is a lot easier to start using and deploying as it is in the cloud and free. Sure it doesn’t have the built-in IP communications and video bells and whistles but a Salesforce.com partnership with Polycom or Avaya could easily rectify this situation.

Another challenge Quad faces is Facebook or LinkedIn deciding they want to own enterprise collaboration and rolling out a product which competes head-on. Then there is Skype. Now that Microsoft owns them and the Internet telephony software is integrating more closely with Facebook, perhaps the stage is being set for a SharePoint/Lync/Facebook/Skype combo which will one-up solutions like Quad, Chatter, Twitter and others.

It is worth mentioning another challenge with enterprise social solutions in general. With infinite repositories of corporate intelligence you face potential legal issues where discovery could create volumes of information which could be used against you.

The one constant is change – and I am reminded by Warren Buffet’s famous statement which I am paraphrasing – where he said he doesn’t understand technology. What he meant is he could look at a market leader like Coke and know 20 years from now they will still be the market leader. In tech, he said, this is much tougher to do. And boy is he right. The analysts tell us the next generation of worker will demand social tools and in order to attract the best talent you will have to have a social enterprise. The question is how does the enterprise make a social enterprise decision today which will be the right one in the long run? For Cisco’s part, they are saying the right things – but for my readers, I would wait to see Quad become a more common story and gain more momentum before plunging in with both feet.

Leading SIP Client Bria Gets Upgrade to 3.2

2011-04-06T10:44:53Z

CounterPath released Bria 3.2 today and the offering has gotten significantly better with the ability to manage multiple accounts in a single view, enhanced contact management GUI, a ribbon for MS Outlook, support for company chat rooms and better workgroup management functionality. Tom Keating has the complete write up and the good news here is a very popular SIP client should make its users that much more productive.

The Other Side of the iPad 2 Hype

2011-03-03T17:47:56Z

While virtually every article you read about the iPad 2 release is positive and I expect it to be a hit - I already instructed my team to get one for me, there are two sides to every coin. For example, Seth Weintraub has a great piece on CNN/Money - Fortune the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field where he discusses how information is being presented in a potentially misleading manner.

Perhaps the item which is most shocking is claiming the iPad 2 is the first tablet to ship in volume with a dual-core processor. The Dell Streak 7, Motorola Xoom for example both are shipping and have dual core processors. Moreover the Atrix is a dual-core phone which is shipping in volume.

The question of course is what does "in volume" mean? If it means shipping as many devices as Apple does then you can make any claim you want as no other manufacturer (for now anyways) will be able to keep up.

One final point is you should appreciate negative articles about companies like Apple - as quite often reporters and companies are restricted from getting information, invites to media events, review units etc, if they write negative articles about certain organizations.

Why PAETEC Acquired XETA Technologies

2011-02-09T14:59:43Z

Updated at 6:15 pm EST 2/9/11 with comments from Arunas Chesonis chairman and CEO of PAETEC at bottom

Last week at ITEXPO the rumor on the street was PAETEC may be doing a deal in India soon since Chairman and CEO Arunas Chesonis was in the country. Well it seems if this is the case it comes on the heels of another purchase - XETA technologies was just picked up by the company today.

I know what you're thinking - the company is on a mission to roll-up all other companies who use all caps in their names. Of course you are only partially right as PAETEC sees strong synergy here as XETA is a large reseller of Avaya, HP, Juniper, LifeSize and Mitel gear with a strong focus on the healthcare, financial and retail markets.

For Xeta, the move makes sense as its long-term chart looks like the Manhattan skyline just after the Empire State Building was built - basically a massive valuation around the Y2K/dotcom time frame when most companies were installing new gear. Other than that it has been mostly in the $2-$3 range for the last five years or so. As of this writing the stock is up $1.58 or 41% to $5.42.

Long-term stock performance of XETA technologies

So for XETA an exit makes good sense and for PAETEC, they get a chance to add to their cloud services as XETA offers managed solutions in security, training, telephony management, end-user support and more.

Still at a P/E of 41, the valuation of a company making most of its living rolling trucks seems high. But then again a pure-play cloud company like Salesforce.com trades at a sky-high 244 times.

For PAETEC this purchase is about expanding its reach and relationships as well as the managed services aspects of the deal. Moreover, the company has a large new channel which will carry the Allworx product line. Chesonis says in a press release that this move is partially motivated by th vertical markets XETA focuses on - hospitality, education, healthcare and government - but this is enough verticals to make the company a horizontal reseller - sure manufacturing is left out but what sane businessperson is focusing here if they don't have to?

This move is smart for both companies and so far PAETEC's stock is up 3 cents to $4.15 which means the street probably likes the news or they don't think it is big enough to make a big difference.

PAETEC did not immediately respond to emails on any acquisition or other plans in India.

Updated as referenced above:

According to Chesonis, another reason for the purchase was they could bring the company's Quagga business - an acquisition on June 8, 2010 and make it national overnight. Moreover, the fact that Xeta is located in Tulsa where the company has one of its large data centers was a factor in making this deal more attractive.

The head of PAETEC called me from Las Vegas where the Quagga user conference is taking place and he says the timing of this deal was great as the audience was buzzing. Moreover he says some Quagga founders came from XETA and both businesses share common business process principles and are growing in double-digits.

Moreover, both have been on the Avaya advisory council. Chesonis believes the enterprise value of $65M is fair for XETA and the close should take place in April or May of this year.

He further sees integration of managed services and cloud where the former is more telecom oriented and the latter is more of an IT function. He also beleives the larger channel - with more feet on the street means the thousand partners the company has amassed as interconnects and VARs will likely start to consider giving more of their network business to PAETEC instead of other carriers.

Chesonis confirmed the rumor I heard at ITEXPO about a potential India deal. He explained how he went to Mumbai recently with some board members to potentially do a deal which he said could be in Canada, the UK and/or India. The goal being to support current customers in the US. As he explained, he couldn't tell me if anything is imminent but he did say this was his first trip to India and the best part was the food.

ITEXPO East 2011 Tues, Feb 1, SIP Trunking, Cloud Computing & More

2011-01-30T21:35:44Z

Be sure to get to ITEXPO on Tuesday, February 1^st to take advantage of what has shaped up to be a great pre-conference day of networking and learning about communications and technology.

First up us Ingate's SIP Trunking Workshop at 1:00pm. Here is the schedule for the day:

1:00pm – The Case for SIP Trunking
1:30pm – Delivering SIP to the Enterprise
2:30pm – The Value of a Service Provider Demarcation Point
3:30pm – Ensuring Interoperability: The Key to Service Revenue Growth
4:30pm – Addressing Security Issues
5:30pm – Generating Revenue from HD Video
6:30pm – Wine Reception

Then at 2:00pm is Telecom One-on-One, a JS&A Power Networking Event. Bring lots of business cards and the sooner you start planning, the more meetings you can schedule and the more networking you can do. I attended the last one in NYC is was quite impressed with all the quality meetings I witnessed.

Finally at 4:45pm - Interactive Intelligence presents Cloud-Based Communications, an interactive event for Fortune-class organizations at the Gansevoort Hotel. This panel and reception is promised to be full of relevant discussion about the cloud and the benefits afforded to companies migrating their applications out of their own data centers.

Here is the list of panelists you can see – I am on it and can’t wait for it to start:

Tim Passios, Interactive Intelligence – Moderator
Jon Arnold: Independent analyst – communications and smart grid expert
Rich Tehrani: Yours truly
Gary Kim. Respected writer and media figure
David Yedwab: Independent analyst
Alan Percy: Often the face of AudioCodes
Thomas Howe: voice mashup and cloud communications guru

See you in two days.