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Leveraging Ecosystems Eclipses Developing Products

Widgets for TVs, application stores for wireless phones, applets for the connected home and automobiles... The trend is clear as smart ecosystems have emerged on the scene as a new way to generate revenue while locking in customers to specific hardware/software solutions. For many manufacturers such as Avaya, Cisco, RIM, Nokia, Apple and makers of televisions, it is no longer adequate to focus exclusively on the products your company develops. Now you have to figure out how to build a smart ecosystem around your offerings in order to leverage an able and willing (hardware and software) developer community who will evangelize your platform and develop long-tail applications, services and add-ons which boost the value of your ecosystem.

In order to help educate the emerging smart ecosystem community, TMC has partnered with Crossfire Media and distinguished college professor Mary Cronin PhD to launch a smart ecosystem portal containing news, thought leadership and analysis called SPEC which stands for Smart Product Ecosystems Connection and located at www.specosys.com.

As you may recall, Crossfire Media is home to Carl Ford and together we have already partnered to build online and live communities (4GWE and M2M Summit) in the 4G and M2M spaces.

This partnership also includes Mary Cronin, a professor in the Information Systems Department of Boston College's Carroll School of Management. Mary is a true thought leader in the space and you can expect to hear her prescient thoughts on how ecosystems will take root and evolve. Her first article is titled Five Rules for Smart Product Ecosystems.

The coverage areas will extend into a variety of industries and for now they include Telecom & Mobile; Health & Medical; Automotive & Telematics; Home Automation and Connected Home Entertainment Devices; Energy Monitoring and Personal Energy Management Solutions. We are open to adding new areas so drop us a line with suggestions.

It is evident that as time goes on, companies in all industries will be looking to tie their products and services into more and more ecosystems. They will either develop their own and/or leverage others on the market. In order to stay up to date on the investment, partnering and other opportunities ahead, be sure to bookmark the new SPEC smart ecosystem site and check back often.

Companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the decades to ensure their contact centers are as efficient as possible. In a business where you have hundreds of agents in a call center you have to worry about any excess spending and you must minimize waste. Calling queues and skills-based routing are just some of the simple technologies call centers have used for decades to efficiently connect the right agent with a caller. Amazingly, the average healthcare worker makes 2-5 times as much as the average call center agent and we don't spend the money to automate healthcare processes the way we have in the contact center. Obviously hospitals use technology but their processes can be automated the way ACDs and predictive dialers have automated the contact center.

There is a tremendous opportunity to automate healthcare through unified communications and other related technologies and Nortel is one of the companies looking to seize this market. I recently visited the company's corporate campus and saw a demo of their solutions in action and yesterday I had a chance to speak with Wes Durow, VP Nortel Enterprise Solutions about how his company is helping hospitals and municipalities with their healthcare automation needs.

Have a listen.

I travel a great deal and have had a chance to test AT&T's wireless

service in areas such as Dallas, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Los Angeles, San Francisco and others. What I have noticed is the service is improving and aside from occasional glitches, surfing the web on an Apple iPhone 3Gs is a more pleasant experience. I don't think it approaches Verizon Wireless yet but then again, VZW doesn't have to deal with the onslaught of wireless data requests generated from legions of iPhone users. AT&T has an opportunity of a lifetime to upgrade its network before it loses iPhone exclusivity (assuming it does).

To say the company is rushing to improve its service would be an understatement - in fact it is doubling its data speed through the use of HSPA in six cities -- Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami and Charlotte. This is great news as the next ITEXPO and - East 2010 and the collocated 4G Wireless Evolution will take place in Miami this January and these upgrades should be in place by year's end. I am looking forward to testing the service out then.

He is worth billions and he still works as hard as anyone I know. He travels the world and closes business. He actually said selling things turns him on. It shows - the companies he has started are some of the most successful around. I hope to have a fraction of his energy at his age.

Based upon the crowd here at his address and the focus by audience members on every word Terry is saying, it seems we picked a great keynoter for this event. Here is a clip of Terry speaking and the crowd shot of who was there.

NORWALK, CT- August 31, 2009 - Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) today announced that their editorial and conference teams have completed final preparations for this week's ITEXPO West 2009 at the L.A Convention Center in Los Angeles. The conference and EXPO, being held for the 20^th time since its launch in 1999, features a robust conference program, keynotes by industry leaders and visionaries, and networking opportunities where buyers and sellers can meet and forge relationships.

ITEXPO officially opens Tuesday, September 1 with a full-day of conference sessions, workshops, keynotes, and a networking reception.

The ITEXPO exhibit hall is open during the following hours:

Wednesday, September 2: 4:00pm - 8:00pm
Thursday, September 3: 11:15am - 5:00pm

TMC also reported that all dedicated hotel room blocks at the Westin Bonaventure, the official show hotel, have completely sold out.

"The hotels are sold out, pre-registered exhibit hall attendance is up over 2008, and the exhibit hall is filled with companies displaying some of the most innovative communications technologies. All elements are pointing toward a terrific event," proclaimed TMC CEO Rich Tehrani.

Tehrani added, "And what's most exciting is that the registration figures that are trending ahead of last year suggests that companies are ready once again serious about investing in technologies that can help be more productive. It appears that buyers and sellers are once again poised to gather in L.A. to close deals, form partnerships and develop new relationships - the hallmarks of the ITEXPO experience."

Highlights of ITEXPO West 2009 include:

• Conference tracks covering Enterprise and Service Provider solutions, unified communications, SIP, and Wireless/Mobility solutions
• TMCUniversity Certification Courses: IP Network Security and Microsoft OCS
• Fonality trixbox Open Communication Certification (FtOCC)
• Ingate's Free SIP Trunking Workshop
• Sipera's UC Security Workshop
• Collocated M2M Evolution Conference
• Collocated Smart Grid Summit Conference
• Collocated 4GWE Conference
• Asterisk Training Courses
• Reseller Solutions Day free workshop
• Keynotes by ShoreTel, Aspect, Paetec, Alvarion, Sir Terry Matthews of Wesley Clover, Clearwire, and Interactive Intelligence
• Open Source Pavilion on the exhibit floor, showcasing open source solutions

In addition to the educational and networking opportunities, attendees have the chance to win a brand new Jeep, an iPhone, Slingbox, or HP Netbook.

Visit www.itexpo.com for more information or to register for ITEXPO West 2009.

Contact Information:

We are heading into ITEXPO with one day to go and today I got great news from my team who all arrived safely in Los Angeles and are busy preparing the Los Angeles Convention Center for the best ITEXPO ever. The good news? The preregistration for Avaya's social networking kick-off event is over 3X greater than last year's Avaya conference so far. Either this is an indication of the interest in social networking or there are more people coming to the show. Hopefully it's a bit of both.

My weekend in Los Angeles has been great... I have spent time with many relatives - at least 100 and counting. Yes, I have a huge family.

As always, we are looking forward to welcoming you all to what promised to be a great show - full of collaboration tools, videoconferencing solutions, IP communications tools and more. Moreover, there are new areas of the show such as Smart Grid, M2M, 4G and WINOG which I just can't wait to learn more about.

Then there are open source certifications (Digium/Asterisk, Fonality/Trixbox) on all the important flavors of open source communications solutions.

As a follow-up to the ITEXPO interviews I posted links to last week, here are the latest responses from the industry. Of particular interest are answers from Doug Mohney who explains how he got into the business by being employee number 11 or 12 at DIGEX. I also found the responses from Eli Katz of XConnect enlightening... If you are interested in peering or IP communications you want to give them a read.

There is so much great information here and I suggest you click all the interviews and read them - these are some of the true thought-leaders in our spaces and they have a wealth of useful information to share. I hope to meet you as well as all the speakers and exhibitors very soon at the show. We are officially 13 days away.

Be sure to register now if you haven't already.

I felt quite honored today as I learned my communications and technology blog was on a top VoIP blog list over at Focus - thanks David Hakala. Other names on the list include TMC contributor Jon Arnold. Jon is also a partner in TMC's Smart Grid portal and event which takes place in collocation with ITEXPO in 24 days in Los Angeles, CA.

Notable industry figure Jeff Pulver made the list as did Andy Abramson - the prolific blogger and PR 2.0 leader. Others include Brough Turner, Irwin Lazar, Alec Saunders, Luca Filigheddu and Stuart Henshal. Here is the complete list.

Speaking of Luca, he was nice enough to mention me recently on a podcast with Suzanne Bowen of DIDX. It makes a great listen. Thanks to Suzanne and Luca for the nice comments about ITEXPO.

To me industry recognition is always the most humbling praise one can get. Without loyal readers like you this would never take place so thanks for participating in TMC's community building activities, in-print, in-person and online and have a wonderful weekend.

Fierce competition among emerging market broadband providers is a rule as so many carriers and subsequently vendors are coming to market with low-cost solutions. ECI Telecom is differentiating itself in a variety of ways by growing new markets for the service providers who rely on their solutions.

Broadband in emerging markets is a hot topic because many nations have realized connectivity = economic growth. One of the players in this space is ECI Telecom and I was pleased to have a conversation with company CMO Laura Howard who gives us an overview of what is happening in the world of emerging market for wired broadband.

By listening you will get perspective on what operators in Africa and other parts of the world are deploying. Other topics of interest are the staggering growth rates and the battle between services and content - which is more important?