You may have had a chance to read my article a while back about Metcalfe’s Law and peering. The article mentions the power of any network increases as a square of the number of nodes on the network.

While this is plainly understood for networks consisting of many fax machines and peering of all sorts it may not be understood in the world of partnering. It seems the more vendors I speak with lately the more partnering I hear about.

This sentiment was reinforced when I saw the news from ITEXPO this week about NetLogic who provides business class VoIP and data partnering with Switchvox a developer of Asterisk-based IP PBX systems. Together the companies will develop next generation VoIP products and services.

And when you think about it the partnership makes sense as one company provides service and the other hardware. Lots of synergy here. It seems the more vendors come into the IP communications market the more I am reminded of Metcalfe’s law.