I was reminded of this fact when I saw The Carousel from Mad Men. The video above reminds us how technology is not really exciting – neither are new products. What is exciting is how new ideas and solutions are weaved into a story which potential customers will embrace and be passionate about.

This is even more true decades after the above-scene took place because we now have social media which can instantly propel or destroy brands based upon how consumers feel about them.

When you are designing your new products and solutions be mindful of how you will communicate their existence to the market. Remember that the reason you are improving your products is to delight your customers – so they will hear your story, agree with it and in-turn tell it to others who will become new customers.

Quite often it is the story which the prospect remembers and this is what causes them to purchase from you. Remember this when allocating resources, figuring out where to focus and expecting a solid ROI.

---

For more on content marketing check out the latest from the Content Boost blog. Here are some of my recent favorites from the Content Boost team:

• A Brand Above the Rest?
• Grading MySpace’s Comeback Ad
• Top Fashion Designers Make Content Marketing This Year’s Hottest Trend
• Content Marketing and Flying Sushi
  

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I'm Too Sexy For Consumers: B2B Tech IPOs Are Hot - Sep 24, 2012

Ultrabooks Finally Get Needed Attention From Intel - May 04, 2012

Google Holiday Promo For Your New Gadgets - Dec 27, 2011

Cisco had some news in the space as well. The company’s Kelly Ahuja SVP, GM, Mobility Business Group spent about an hour discussing the impact of NFV on the company’s business. The bottom line is Cisco expects the move to software to be less lucrative but the flipside is they expect to expand their business into many other areas as part of the carrier transition to software on COTS servers utilizing network functions virtualization.

The financial analysts on the call showed they really understand Cisco’s product line and moreover they are far more technical than many might have thought.

Bottom line – while NFV was developed in-part to allow many smaller players to provide carrier solutions, companies like Cisco have no plans of ceding the market and will develop organic solutions and make acquisitions as needed to grow market share as this new space emerges.

Some of the slides from the presentation follow.








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• NFV conference Software Telco Congress
• NFV resource center

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Software Telcos Based on NFV Want Less Equipment Provider M&A - Jun 18, 2013

TMC's New NFV News and Analysis Site - Jun 12, 2013

NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability - May 17, 2013

Alianza Wants to Host Your Software Telco - May 14, 2013

Technology and TMC Happenings August 26, 2010 - Aug 26, 2010

Sagem-Interstar Adds Fax Support to Microsoft Exchange 2010 - Nov 15, 2009

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

The idea is if you have fewer customers, you have less pricing power which means lower overhead with means merging suppliers can eliminate redundant costs such as accounting, marketing, HR and other “synergistic” areas of the business.

Large carriers have also been known for choosing large suppliers for their hardware needs as they felt these larger companies were more likely to be around to support them in the future as they roll out their solutions. Carriers think in terms of decades and continuity is crucial when providing customer services.

One of the big hardware mergers of the last decade was a joint venture between Siemens and Nokia which moved the carrier product divisions of each into a new company called NSN or Nokia Siemens Networks. Joe Rizzo reported last week on TMC’s TechZone360 that Siemens is considering buying Nokia out and taking control of the carrier division once again.

It’s worth pointing out that generally the telecom market is still in consolidation. Gary Kim in fact wrote yesterday on TMC’s sister-site Mobility Techzone that the market is rife with potential acquirers of Canadian wireless firms.

It’s worth pondering a situation where a company is looking to turn (pictured NSN hiT 7100) back the time on a joint-venture. One possible explanation is NFV has the potential to change the current world of telecom equipment manufacturers into telecom software developers. This may mean that by taking more direct control, Siemens will be able to navigate the new world of software in a more rapid fashion. This may mean the ability to spin-off assets more quickly.

In an NFV white paper from ETSI the authors mention the following as one of the benefits of this industry move:

Enables a wide variety of eco-systems and encourages openness. It opens the virtual appliance market to pure software entrants, small players and academia, encouraging more innovation to bring new services and new revenue streams quickly at much lower risk

The document further explains that by creating further abstractions, faster innovation is enabled.

There are likely arguments to be made as to why NFV is good and bad for incumbent companies serving  communications service providers but it is likely more instructive to focus on the fact that software companies are generally more creative when they are smaller and nimbler.

Furthermore, carriers are telling the market they want to buy from nimbler suppliers.

This should make us ponder what the future will bring when it comes to M&A in in the carrier equipment market. It is possible that larger organizations will be able to benefit from scale as they sell their software which will run on virtualized servers but will such large organizations be able to keep up with the faster development cycles needed to effectively write the best software possible?

Time will tell but is certainly worth wondering if NFV-based software telcos will change telecom equipment M&A economics. If the industry moves in the direction the carriers want, it will need lots more companies producing solutions and this means additional equipment M&A could hurt the resulting players rather than help them.

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• NFV conference Software Telco Congress
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TMC's New NFV News and Analysis Site - Jun 12, 2013

NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability - May 17, 2013

Alianza Wants to Host Your Software Telco - May 14, 2013

Dialogic and Cisco Round Out Day's NFV News - Jun 18, 2013

How M2M Saves the Amazon Rainforest - Jan 23, 2013

Verizon Wireless Back to 97.2% after Sandy - Nov 02, 2012

Dialogic: The Disruptor Combats Disruption - Aug 30, 2012

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

The web interface displays a message when the phone is registered so you know immediately if you put the SIP credentials in correctly. I have to say, I really loved how every change I made DOES NOT require a reboot. I've never tested a phone that didn't require a reboot, especially after putting in the SIP settings. Even after putting in the SIP settings on the SIP-T28P, I didn't have to reboot. It auto-registered immediately.

• TI Aries chipset and TI voice engine
• Dual-port Gigabit Ethernet (Router & Switch)
• Supports IPV6
• Power over Ethernet
• 4.3” TFT-LCD, 480 x 272 pixel, 16.7M colors
• Color Picture Caller-ID, Screensaver, Wallpaper
• Convenient and intuitive user structure
• Headset, EHS support, LCD Expansion module
• 6 VoIP accounts, Hotline, Emergency call
• Call hold, Call waiting, Call forward, Call return
• Call transfer (blind/semi-attended/attended)
• Caller ID display, Redial, Mute, DND
• Auto-answer, 3-way conferencing
• Speed dial, SMS, Voicemail
• Message Waiting Indication (MWI) LED
• Direct IP call without SIP proxy
• Ring tone selection/import/delete
• Phonebook (1000 entries), Black list
• Call history: dialed/received/missed/forwarded
• Soft keys programmable

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IPhones Become Enhanced Services Platforms - Jul 17, 2009

Digium's Support Services Makes Open Source Communications Safer - Apr 20, 2009

Michael Robertson's New Dar.fm - Dec 11, 2012

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The logic here is baffling... They say that people inside the beltway live on a different planet - I'm wondering if this planet allows people to think through the logic of their decisions.

As Kashmir Hill at Forbes reports, this sort of request puts employees in an uncomfortable position of either keeping up with current news or following orders.

To many of my readers, this sort of twisted logic can explain a heck of a lot of other government policies that make similar amounts of sense.

One last point - technically the documents are still mostly classified - my assertion in the headline that they are "unclassified" applies to how any logical person would approach these widely-available and publicized documents.

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Your iPhone Could Get Hacked Through the Charger - Jun 04, 2013

Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week - May 17, 2013

All Windows Passwords at Risk and What to do about it - Dec 12, 2012

Anonymous May Have Just Taken Down Go Daddy and Related Sites - Sep 10, 2012

How Much Freedom Have we Given up Since 9/11? - Sep 04, 2012

NQ Mobile Protects Android Phones from Malware and Viruses - Mar 20, 2012

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NFV will be huge – for the carrier space it will be as big as the move from circuit switched to packet switched. Think about all the disruption – the opportunity – strategy shifting that took place as carriers upgraded their networks the last time and you’ll get an idea of what’s ahead. Expect a slew of new software vendors who are lean and mean and born in the cloud to be competing with established players to provide best-in-breed solutions.

On the flipside, expect legacy players to evolve rapidly… In fact in another move from hardware to software – SDN or software-defined networking it turns out Cisco has become the biggest beneficiary. They were supposed to be the biggest losers according to many but disruption doesn’t mean you have to lose… It means you have to adjust quickly or could lose share quickly.

I’ve had the opportunity to report from a number of industry trade shows recently and one of the interesting new entrants in the NFV space is LEMKO – the company has virtualized the mobile packet core at the edge of the network which runs on any radio device.

Lemko discusses NFV Solutions

HP Details their service provider virtualization (NFV) and other solutions (yes I slipped up the COTS acronym on "live" TV - ouch!)

NSN Discusses NFV and other solutions

Freescale Details Wireless, SDN and NFV Solutions

I was fortunate enough to be involved in the VoIP space early – TMC launched the first magazine in the space in 1997 Internet Telephony and received a registered trademark for the term. We see the broad space of software telco as being as big a disruption to existing business models rife with opportunity and the potential to change the marketshare of a number of companies. We also expect a slew of new entrants in the space such as Affirmed Networks who has raised $51 million so far.

Simply stated “software telco” describes the move from a carrier who provides services based primarily on proprietary equipment to one which uses software running on common servers whether they are based on Intel, ARM, AMD – whatever is prevalent in the data center. In this manner they can take advantage of all the benefits of virtualization and other important benefits… They can power down servers as needed during off-peak times to save electricity costs, they can burst to the cloud (public or private) as needed to handle spikes in traffic, etc.

We believe the defacto industry gathering place for the market will be Software Telco Congress which takes place Nov 19-21 2013 in Santa Clara and we have received a number of requests for a companion website. Our answers are the sister sites SDN Zone which focuses on software defined networking and the newly launched NFV Zone which focuses on network functions virtualization.

We are excited to have you participate in our new sites – post comments, share the articles, etc and we hope to see you at our upcoming events. I just announced today that I will moderate a software telco panel at ITEXPO on Thursday, 8/29 at 1:00 pm and I would love to see you all there as well.

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Software Telcos Based on NFV Want Less Equipment Provider M&A - Jun 18, 2013

NFV-Based Software Telcos Need OSS/BSS Interoperability - May 17, 2013

Alianza Wants to Host Your Software Telco - May 14, 2013

HP Itanium Feud with Oracle Hurts Customers Most - Jun 09, 2011

Dialogic and Cisco Round Out Day's NFV News - Jun 18, 2013

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What Apple needs to do is make the radio integration so solid that you have no choice but to try it and perhaps like it better than the service you currently use.

As a fan of EDM I can tell you Pandora has been terrible these last few years with a library which is woefully out of date. Slacker was terrible at EDM but over the last few years their combination of artists and songs has become amazingly good.

Songza too has been amazing and another Internet radio player which I believe should be used by every serious music listener.

This leaves us with another favorite - Sirius XM… Their BPM, Electronic Area and Tiesto stations are quite solid and perhaps some of the best Internet radio experiences available for EDM lovers.

Pandora Playing Barcelona Nights Radio

Of course there are other genres – I am also a fan of Ottmar Liebert and have a Pandora station with my favorite song from this artist – Barcelona Nights. The station basically plays good but the same music every time with very little variation for a few hours and then starts playing music which is fairly unrelated and poor.

The point is Pandora could certainly improve its algorithms for music selection. Slacker is my favorite Internet radio service because it not only seems to have very good choices of artists and songs but also allows radio stations to be stored for times when you have limited battery, poor service or don’t want to eat data minutes up.

Apple has Genius which obviously will be leveraged heavily when creating custom stations. To date I haven’t been a fan of Genius – it doesn’t seem to match the music I like at all. Perhaps it works better for others and for Cupertino’s sake it better if they want to be a threat in this crowded space.

One wonders however what the benefit is to Apple having a radio service as many users buy music on iTunes they discover on these radio services anyway. Moreover, the business doesn’t seem to be profitable enough to invest in for the company. The logic could be that by providing the service as well, they can ensure users buy the music from them and aren’t pushed to buy music from a rival service like Amazon. In fact if Amazon purchase one or more of these Internet radio services they could cajole users to do just that.

In closing, iRadio won’t kill Pandora but the company could kill itself if it doesn’t keep up with superior music matching services which are proliferating.

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Gadgets to Have Integrated Welcome Ads Soon? - May 18, 2012

Sonos Wireless Dock Review - Oct 26, 2010

Shazam Discovers Cash - Oct 16, 2009

Aastra 57i and 57i CT Reviewed - Oct 17, 2008

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

Another new option is Moped 2.0 which goes live as you read this entry and allows users to more easily communicate with their social circles while adding in the capability of sharing media. I like to think of it as social SharePoint.

The company bills itself as open-web messaging and connects with contacts from Twitter, Facebook, Google and Linked In while enabling cloud storage via Dropbox. When you send media to your contacts it is also searchable later through a web-based and mobile application.

The company also has integration with IFTTT – a programmatic service which allows users to have the system automatically take actions based on specific sets of circumstances. An example is automatically saving all photos from an Instagram account to a Dropbox account.

Although the system does not act as an email client it can send you a message when you get a message sent to you via this manner when you are not logged in.

Moped is an intriguing addition to the collaborative process – allowing far richer and more powerful group discussions, work and play sessions. In some ways it overlaps social networking sites from Google and Facebook and in other ways it adds a great deal of value. There are certainly many workgroup applications for this innovative new service and we look forwards to seeing how the market accepts Moped 2.0. Perhaps it will one day be mentioned with the other services mentioned at the start of this post.

Update June 6, 2013 3:36 pm EST:

Moped founder Schuyler Deerman who you may remember as the whiz-kid from Digium and I have a discussion using Moped

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Alternion: Manage 220+ Social Connections From one Dashboard - Jan 26, 2012

Metaswitch Thrutu iPhone App Lets Carriers Become Social Hubs - Jul 20, 2011

Search Marketing: Where it Pays to be Young - Jul 05, 2011

Facebook Map of Japan Earthquake & Tsunami Status Updates - Mar 14, 2011

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

Although this may not be the most flattering segue, WebRTC is spreading like the soot from factories in London – it’s now available on one-billion endpoints… It’s beyond the point of no return and tech and telecom companies which don’t adapt will get eaten, just like a white moth on a black tree.

It’s worth pointing out there are some potential question marks regarding implementation of this new standard which encompasses peer-to-peer audio, video and data sharing. For example, when will Microsoft and Apple decide to support or ignore this standard.

It seems inconceivable however that either company could ignore WebRTC because quite frankly the ecosystem of companies developing new applications which leverage this new standard is staggering. In fact our upcoming WebRTC World Conference in Atlanta later this month had to expand its exhibit area twice to handle all the companies that wanted to participate.

These and many other entrants and existing organizations will be offering compelling services to the market and in order for companies to take advantage of them, they will have to leverage devices which run Chrome or Firefox as these are currently the browsers supporting the new standard. This will eventually force Redmond and Cupertino to come around and support WebRTC in my opinion.

But I digress – there are a few points regarding this disruptive technology which we should all consider. The first is how Unified Communications or UC vendors will handle this transition. Steve Anderson writes an intriguing piece about the matter on the WebRTC World website and it’s worth a read. Rory Lindstone writes another piece about how gateway vendors such as Voxeo, Huawei and Mavenir are helping bridge the old and new worlds of telecom meaning you won’t have to retire your existing solutions to take advantage of WebRTC.

Doug Mohney also writes on WebRTC World and describes some of the differences between RCS and WebRTC – he explains the latter is on a fast track when compared to the former. He has a good point – I heard about RCS quite often since the last few SuperComm shows which haven’t existed for years and still, RCS seems to be getting rolled out very slowly.

The point is, WebRTC is changing everything again. The same way IP led us to IP communications with new possibilities and entrants in the market, WebRTC will see hundreds if not thousands of new companies releasing products and services and many new entrants will displace older ones.

The adaptable startups and existing companies will make it through this transition and perhaps become tomorrow’s Skype, Facebook or Twitter. You may not realize it but Skype was released six years after the VoIP market was conceived! In other words when it comes to disruption it is difficult to predict who the next winners and losers will be but what you can generally predict is the more adaptable the company to new technology, the better it will do.

Oh and if you made it this far, I have a present for you… Here is a special code you can use for 50% off at WebRTC Conference & Expo. It’s only for friends of Rich Tehrani – if you enter it manually it is: WRTCRich and it will save you $397.50.

I hope to see you at the show.

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Skype Shows us Closed Can Win - Dec 03, 2010

Is Skype Microsoft's Only Chance for Mobile Success? - Apr 26, 2012

ITEXPO: Exhibits 90% Sold Out - Jul 21, 2008

Show Me the Opportunities! - Jul 19, 2008

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An article on TMCnet by Steve Anderson explains that a group of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology discovered the exploit which can be duplicated via a device called a Mactans charger. The device is built via a BeagleBoard which is a TI-based single board computer and costs around $45.

The biggest fear you should have is that a malicious individual will install one of these on the cardio equipment of a gym which has an embedded 30-pin or Lighting adapter. Another obvious area is an airport lounge or coffee shop.

Anderson continues:

The researchers in question went on to contact Apple about the Mactans' capabilities, though as yet have not received a response. But the Mactans itself can, reportedly, leave its malware behind in just under one minute of continuous exposure, and once it's in, it can be extremely difficult to dislodge. According to the researchers, the malware can be hidden in much the same way that Apple hides its own built-in hardware, making removal a difficult proposition.

Efforts from Apple came quickly in terms of blocking the ability to jailbreak an iOS device by using a USB port, and given the kind of damage that Mactans can do, Apple will likely be moving all the more quickly to find patches to block Mactans' capabilities. But with large numbers of people using Apple devices—especially iOS devices—it may well be that the metaphorical genie is out of the equally metaphorical bottle.

As mobile devices proliferate and the PC market decreases in importance, there an increased desire by hackers to keep up with the most popular devices. For IT departments everywhere this means they need to watch their BYOD device policy and ensure they are ready for the malicious attacks which could be produced as a result of unsuspecting users downloading a malicious program which affects the network and steals precious corporate data.

To learn more about the state of secure mobility and how your company can keep itself protected in the age of BYOD, attend the Secure Mobility Conference July 23^rd, 2013 in NYC.

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NQ Mobile Protects Android Phones from Malware and Viruses - Mar 20, 2012

Combofix is Great Antivirus Software - Jul 05, 2010

Malicious Software to Avoid Online - Jun 10, 2010

Cancelled Amazon Order Scam - Mar 11, 2010

Emerging Threats Combats a Million Plus Pieces of New Malware a Week - May 17, 2013

Scam Users, Accumulate Facebook Likes, Buy a Ferrari - Feb 18, 2013

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

If you are a tech novice or expert, I’d love to see you there.

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ITEXPO East 2011 Behind The Scenes - Jan 31, 2011

Interop 2009 Trends, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Ethernet and Wireless - May 25, 2009

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

Thankfully the piece reminded me to write something I have been thinking for a while. Yahoo! should buy Waze. Yes, the mobile, social company is rumored to be in discussions on-and-off with Google and Facebook but Yahoo! makes more sense to me as the best suitor because the world’s first web directory needs to be strong in mobile and social.

If you haven’t tried Waze, please take a moment to download it... Again, I’ll wait. This app is easy to use and is infectious in nature. It’s successfully warned me of a number of road hazards ahead of time and saved me from tons of traffic. Moreover, it is smart… It knows where I am going and routes me there without me asking. It’s an app with intelligence. Other developers can learn from their examples.

It is easy to see how this app can be extended to provide relevant information when you are walking around city streets or in a mall. For example, I can envision a popup from another Wazer telling me about the shoes they just bought on sale or the special two-for-one offer at the corner coffee shop.

The point is, Waze is an amazing app and gives Yahoo exactly what they need. If Google were to purchase the company, it would further cement their position in mobile and location based services. Facebook would gain from a Waze buy as it would have a strong GPS play but the social networks are obviously redundant. Then again, Instagram is redundant as well and that turned out to be a good decision by Zuckerberg.

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Google: Can it be Everything to Everyone? - Jan 27, 2012

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

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Technology and TMC Happenings August 26, 2010 - Aug 26, 2010

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company

Part of the reason is structural – using InfiniBand – a switched fabric communications link which can transfer data 40-80x faster than traditional solutions, the company is able to rapidly move virtual machines around their data center… “So fast, the VM doesn’t even know it has been moved,” they said. In the real world this means they can instantly size applications and machines with the resources needed.

The idea is that resources can be added and subtracted from applications an VMs allowing the cloud to become a much more flexible and customizable environment.

They believe their cloud is roughly analogous to a DVR in a world dominated by VCRs. Other benefits they touted were the fact they bill by the minute and the simple GUI interface (below) they provide for management.

Is ProfitBricks an instant Amazon killer? No, of course not but the added flexibility it brings to the public cloud arena means others in the space have some serious catching up to do.


Some TMCnet videos which explain more about InfiniBand

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InfiniBand over Ethernet Gives Speed and More - May 02, 2010

Important Tech News of the Day Dec 14, 2012 - Dec 14, 2012

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I recently met with the company at Interop in Las Vegas to learn about their IP and domain intelligence solutions ETPro Ruleset for IDS/IPS and IQRisk Suite for IDS/IPS, Firewalls, SIEMs and DNS. The company determines a Threat Intelligence level for a site which you could consider analogous to Google’s Page Rank but ranked for maliciousness. Rankings vary from 0-127 and each entry is categorized into over 40 different categories. Moreover, years of observation yields a history of sites which can be useful to determine for example if a legitimate site has been temporarily infected with an SQL injection or other exploit.

Moreover, the data includes geolocation which may help an organization fine tune its firewall policy.

Companies are free to determine their policies based on the data provided.

Byron Rashed with the company explained that the company uses proprietary methods to identify malware and further utilize human analysis and feedback loops to ensure accuracy of the rule set which is updated daily.

Emerging Threats sells primarily through OEMs. Moreover, the work companies in this field do is absolutely crucial for Internet users worldwide and keeps the web from becoming the Wild West it could devolve into if malicious code and the people behind it were free to infect devices at will.

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Your iPhone Could Get Hacked Through the Charger - Jun 04, 2013

NQ Mobile Protects Android Phones from Malware and Viruses - Mar 20, 2012

Combofix is Great Antivirus Software - Jul 05, 2010

Malicious Software to Avoid Online - Jun 10, 2010

Cancelled Amazon Order Scam - Mar 11, 2010

Sponsored by Apex Technology Services, a leading IT Services company