Congratulations to the ITEXPO West 2008 best of show winners here in Los Angeles.

Breaking News

There is big news out of ITEXPO this week in Los Angeles. 8x8 and Microsoft just released the news that the two companies will be working together to offer Packet8 VoIP SIP trunking service with the Microsoft Response Point Business Phone System.

At a press conference held by Bryan Martin CEO of 8x8 and XD Huang General Manager of Microsoft, the two companies addressed a large crowd of analysts and press regarding the huge opportunity the two will take advantage of.

In order to maximize the relationship, the both will jointly market the combined solution through their respective VAR channels. In addition, they will jointly market this solution online and via other marketing channels.

For 8x8, this agreement further cements its position as an SMB IP communications provider who seems to be operating on all cylinders. The company was smart to focus on the SMB market years back when it became clear the consumer VoIP market was hard to make money in. In addition, 8x8 has done a great job marketing these past years.

For Microsoft, this agreement is a big deal because the Response Point product is still relatively unknown in the communications market and Microsoft has been very successful with their VoIP As You Are campaign but they haven't necessarily branded the Response Point product as well as they could.

What this means is the Redmond-based software company will be able to leverage the experience and marketing expertise of 8x8/Packet8 who lives and breathes the SMB VoIP service environment. The two companies are natural partners and I look forward to seeing what the uptake of this new partnership is. After all, the Microsoft name will no doubt help sell more Packet8 service -- even if the Response Point brand is not well-known yet. In short this is a win-win for customers, VARs who have one less throat to choke and the shareholders of both companies

According to analyst David Yedwab (pictured at right) with Market Strategy and Analytics Partners, "This could be the revolution because it is the coming together of several best in class players to serve an underserved market with forward looking solutions."
 

XD Huang above left and below
 

8x8 Chairman and CEO Bryan Martin

Here is a shot with me on the right
 

You know what? I was looking at Tom Keating's blog today and there is some good stuff worth sharing. First he points to an Om Malik interview of Josh Silverman the CEO of Skype and then reminds us of how to get Skype to run on an iPhone (sort-of) until Skype releases an official version.

The interview is great -- it shows Skype is laser-focused on profit, mobility and embedding itself into other applications. Malik pushed Silverman on a few fronts -- explaining that the telcos aren't a monopoly (contradicting my thoughts and those of Silverman) -- he also pushed Silverman on why they are still part of eBay and finally on why Skype is boring. If I were an eBay shareholder though, I would be less interested in being amazed by the company's products and more interested in profitability.

Silverman sidestepped this point a bit but did say they are focused on innovative products. He went on to say, people want the product to be more reliable and easier to use -- rather than something with more features.

This gets me thinking -- is there a disconnect between what us bloggers want and write about and what Joe-sixpack needs?

Getting back to Keating -- in his blog --  he does a great job reviewing the Pika Warp appliance for Asterisk which is not a turn-key Asterisk IP-PBX but rather a platform which developers and VARs can use to configure Asterisk 1.4.x to their liking. In fact, the main concept behind the WARP Appliance is to offer resellers and VARs an inexpensive Asterisk hardware platform that they can OEM and offer under their own brand name.

It is worth mentioning the WARP Appliance also works with FreeSWITCH, so developers can also choose to embed FreeSWITCH instead of Asterisk. In fact, any telephony application such as IVRs, call logging, predictive dialer etc. built using PIKA's telephony APIs can be integrated onto the appliance, whether it is a proprietary application or based on an open source platform.

Finally there are some thoughts in the blog on wireless Zune and you can bet Tom will be listening to his on the flight out to ITEXPO next week.

And yes, you will find Pika at the show as an exhibitor (booth# 102 and a Gold Sponsor -- Communications Developer Pavilion) -- which takes place September 16-18, 2008 in Los Angeles as well.

I was just reading the Phone.com blog by Ari Rabban where he mentions:


As the founder of ITEXPO, it's been a long road since we first launched ITEXPO in 1999, but my team has worked very hard to make ITEXPO the premiere communications event in the industry.

Currently this show is the only one in the world we know of which attracts resellers, service providers and business decision makers. It has truly become the gathering place of the communications industry and we are busy this week putting the final touches on what we think will be the best show we have ever held.

Remember the show is next week -- September 16-18 in the Los Angeles Convention Center -- West Hall.

Ari I hope to see you at the show and the same goes for all of my readers.

ITEXPO West 2008 attendance for the upcoming Los Angeles, California event to be held September 16-18 is looking great and I just can't wait for the show to start. We are brimming with enthusiasm about this year's event and it will truly be the World's Communications Conference. Perhaps the most exciting thing about this year's show is the record number of companies making news at the show. We are absolutely thrilled about this and are doing our best to help you absorb all the news emanating from the show in an easily digestible format. To that end, we have started producing show dailies which detail news from the exhibiting community.

Here is just a smattering of the news items from  ITEXPO West 2008 Show Daily #1 for your reading enjoyment:

By Tim Gray, TMCnet Web Editor. Hosted on-demand communications and rich media services company IntelePeer is pushing out its latest technology platform designed to make it easy for software vendors, service providers and Web companies to add the interactive impact of voice, video, SMS, data and other rich-media communications capabilities to Web sites and enterprise software applications - even with minimal or no telecommunications experience.

By Mae Kowalke, TMCnet Senior Editor. An ITEXPO panel will examine the business case for uniting various SMB communications systems and tools to boost efficiency and productivity while reducing communications-related costs.

By Rich Tehrani, President and Editor-in-Chief. Unified communications (UC) holds a lot of promise for transforming the communications technology landscape.

By Rich Tehrani, President and Editor-in-Chief. RT: What has been your company's biggest achievement in 2008 so far? SJ: Ingate has seen a continuing growth in sales driven in large part by the growth in SIP Trunking adoption.

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor. Officials of Iowa Valley Community College District, which operates two community colleges and a satellite campus, say they have adopted unified communications from Avaya and a network infrastructure from Extreme Networks to link faculty, staff and students across 15 buildings located within a 90-mile radius.

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor. The energy crisis is gaining the attention of many, from consumers to big corporations, politicians and small businesses, all are seeking ways to become more "Green" in their approach to business and to life.

For over six years I have been espousing the virtues of 3D, stereo voice conversations with articles  and ITEXPO demonstrations mostly focusing on DiamondWare and the company's patented 3D technology which allows you to have a conference calls with others and place them on the left right, front or rear.

Until you have heard a conference call in 3D stereo, you have not heard a conference call.

In addition, the technology allows the addition of overtones like adding a metallic sound to a speaker or group of speakers on a conference call. This function could be useful if you are looking to find a way to discern what group a person belongs to -- the Los Angeles office for example.

You may recall that on May 15th of this year, I suggested Nortel would even buy DiamondWare. Well today is that day as Nortel did just that... They purchased the company and further explained how they have a portion of their R&D budget devoted to making VC-like investments but of course with a potentially different exit strategy.

Nortel believes the future of communications is likely going to be avatar-based and even if they are partially right -- let's say 5% of all calls, this could be a huge market.

A Nortel Avatar Demo of their web.alive business communications platform:


Nortel is further betting that the technology advantage they have as a result of this acquisition will help insulate them against others in the market who compete. That would be Avaya, Cisco and even to a lesser degree (at the moment) Microsoft. You see, I personally believe that 3D, stereo communications provides such a rich immersive experience that once you have tried it, you will have trouble going back to traditional telephony.

This move is the second acquisition in a few weeks for Nortel as they just picked up Pingtel as well. For the Canadian-based company these moves are bold as Nortel seems to be gaining momentum in the enterprise. Many of us are aware that most acquisitions fail and Nortel's past acquisitions have not seen success above industry averages.

What the company has done these past weeks though is buy easily digestible companies which are relatively cheap. These companies are M&A training wheels and if the company can get better at acquiring, it can present a more formidable resistance to the Cisco onslaught. Over the years, I have heard more than one story of how Cisco has acquired Nortel partners and damaged Nortel in the process.

In order for technology companies to compete effectively against Oracle and Cisco, they need to know how to acquire successfully. So for Nortel, the world is their oyster... They have the DiamondWare 3D technology and  are now a player in open source and have time to practice the M&A game.

How the company handles these two new companies will show me and others if they are able to successfully pull off more deals and become a bigger competitive threat to other industry players.

In the mean time, these moves should serve as a signal to competitors that Nortel seems to have gotten its mojo back and for customers, I suggest you join me in pushing Nortel to get DiamondWare technology into the company's entire product line ASAP.

See Also

Jon Arnold's take
Press Release

Many of my blog readers know Bill Kelly well from his years of work building partner programs in the industry for companies like Excel and Cantata (after the company merged with Brooktrout).

Add to this a brief stint at Pulvermedia and Kelly becomes the perfect person to help improve the quality of ITEXPO conference content.

With Bill's vast experience he is the perfect person in fact to be at the show.

What will Bill be doing at ITEXPO? He will host two courses in the