Recently in Technology Category

I spent the night having dinner with the TMC team at the new LA Live area of shops and restaurants by the Los Angeles Convention Center and Staples Center. We were in ESPN Sports Zone which sports a pair of 103 inch Panasonic TVs with stunning picture quality.

But getting back to downtown Los Angeles, I have been coming to the Los Angeles Convention Center for over a decade and am happy to see such a large amount of investment is taking place in the area. It will probably be unrecognizable to most people who have not seen the area in a while.

Much more of the team are arriving tomorrow and there will certainly be much more to share in the morning. Good night for now.

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.

I have said it repeatedly - the way to get the most out of any conference is to not only attend sessions and the exhibit hall but also network with people who can help you. Perhaps they can help you purchase a product or service or even land that lucrative consulting gig. Maybe you are looking for potential customers or partners at the show. Whatever you seek, if it is in the communications space, there is no better place than ITEXPO to find it.

And before the show kicks off this Tuesday, September 1 in Los Angeles I wanted to share the fourth installment of interviews from the show. These interviews provide guidance, allowing you to get a feel for who will be at the show and more importantly, who can help you learn valuable information.rise-voip/articles/63128-dangers-ubiquitous-wireless-networks.htm%20

As a reference, here are interviews, one, two and three.

Here are the details of some of the giveaways at ITEXPO West 2009 and a lot more. I hope it helps. Good luck!

A recent Forbes survey shows business executives prefer face-to-face meetings over those of the virtual type. As expected 58% of respondents said they were travelling for business less today than they were at the beginning of the recession in January 2008, with more than a third (34%) indicating they were travelling much less frequently.

What seems obvious (to me anyway) is that executives still expressed an overwhelming preference for face-to-face meetings, with more than eight out of ten (84%) saying they prefer in-person contact to virtual.

Even more interesting, those that prefer face-to-face meetings believe they facilitate the following: Building stronger, more meaningful relationships (85%), the ability to "read" another person (77%), and Greater social interaction (75%).

Other tidbits worth sharing, 64% of those who prefer technology-enabled business meetings like them because they allow them to multitask and 87% agree that there are tangible business benefits to in-person, face-to-face meetings that outweigh the cost savings of alternative, technology-based meeting methods such as web conferencing or videoconferencing.

I find this survey refreshing as it confirms what we may all know - that

face-to-face meetings are much better than meeting in any other way.

The timing of these survey results are interesting as I am headed to TMC's ITEXPO (Sept. 1-3, 2009 in Los Angeles) -- (This photo was taken at the last ITEXPO this past winter in Miami) to engage in a live event which focuses on virtual meeting technology based on IP communications. As it happens, the attendance to the exhibit hall portion of ITEXPO is ahead of last year and I am thrilled to welcome the global crowd to the exhibit hall and conference areas.

I take this as a sign that although IP communications technology is gaining more traction by the day, sometimes, face-to-face gatherings are the best way to learn more about how to meet virtually, save money on communications and boost productivity.

Jeff Wiener is President of Digitcom Canada and an Avaya dealer who believes that the DOJ should rubber stamp the Avaya/Nortel merger without much fuss. He explains that the field is extremely competitive and furthermore that the competition is also coming from Microsoft, Skype, Google and hosted VoIP. I agree with all of the above but would say the real challenges for Avaya will continue to be Cisco as they are such a strong data player.

In addition I am surprised open-source didn't even make the list. As I head to ITEXPO which takes place Tuesday through Thursday next week in Los Angeles, I am aware of what a large presence Digium and Fonality will have at the show. I wonder if the companies deploying open-source solutions don't appear on the radar of the typical reseller. This was a surprise to me to be honest.

I am not in any camp on this issue BTW, I say that if any company other than Cisco gets the enterprise assets of Nortel, the market will be safe and there won't be too much anticompetitive power in the hands of any specific company. Here is his letter.

I am happy to hear from a number of companies attending ITEXPO that they are being overwhelmed with requests to meet and do business at the show. This is yet another signal to me that the communications markets are resilient and from what I hear, a number of companies at the show are expecting nice growth for the rest of the year. A few first-time exhibitors told me they think they have sold products to companies who saw them on the exhibitor list. This is great news as ITEXPO has always been the premiere communications event attracting buyers and sellers.

But what I haven't shared is how we at TMC are doing our best to foster the buyer and seller relationship by adding tools to our community which allows them to arrange meetings with one another at the event. The service we added is called DealCenter and the details are below. I hope you find it useful

The ITEXPO DealCenter is now
available for attendees

and exhibitors to begin pre-show
networking!

NEW TO ITEXPO WEST 2009:THE ITEXPO DEALCENTER!

All registered attendees and exhibitors coming to Los Angeles for ITEXPO West 2009 are eligible to use the ITEXPO DealCenter to network and plan meetings with other attendees and exhibitors on-site at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The ITEXPO DealCenter is an online list of registered attendees and exhibitors available to meet on-site in Los Angeles. Attendees and exhibitors who create a profile in the ITEXPO DealCenter can view one another's names, titles, companies and industry sectors to determine with whom they would like to meet with on-site at the show. 

The DealCenter allows you to arrange 30-minute meetings with new prospects and partners, thereby introducing you to new business potential and increasing your event ROI. These meetings can be held at the on-site ITEXPO DealCenter meeting area, your exhibit booth, or any location at the Los Angeles Convention Center that you find convenient.

HOW DO I LOGIN TO THE ITEXPO DEALCENTER?

First you must register to attend or exhibit at ITEXPO West 2009.

Once an individual is registered for ITEXPO West 2009, please Opt In by sending a note to Michael Genaro from ITEXPO West and let him know you'd like to be included in the list of ITEXPO DealCenter participants.

If you have any questions about the ITEXPO DealCenter, please email support@deal-center.com or call 201.839.0177

To see the ITEXPO West DealCenter please click here.

Recently I had a chance to speak with Alan Burnstine - Sr. Product Manager at Aspect and he had some very interesting things to tell me about how his company's IVR/ACD/dialing solutions integrate with Microsoft's Tellme for post-call surveys. As he explains, in this economy you can't necessarily compete on price so you have to compete on service. This means you need to know how good your service is. Moreover, a hosted speech-based survey solution from Tellme is tough to beat as the company handles directory assistance for AT&T and Verizon meaning they have the largest library of speech utterances which in turn means the most information available in one place to help improve speech rec quality. And then there is the whole hosted/SaaS OPEX vs. CAPEX argument which continues to be the way to go for many companies in this economic climate.

Here is a video of Aspect's Alan Burstine explaining Aspect/Tellme integration in his own words.

It's just what you have been waiting for - the 76-page show directory for ITEXPO which will give you lots of needed information regarding the show (Sept 1-3 in LA) . Virtually everything you need is in here - sponsors, floor plan, exhibitor list, TMC University, Trixbox training, Ingate's SIP trunking workshop, Reseller solutions day, keynotes, Asterisk Training, WiNOG, Sipera SIP Security, Wireless Broadband training, M2M, Smart Grid Summit, 4GWE, agenda and Q&As with industry thought leaders. Get it while it's hot and download it to your smartphone or laptop/netbook so you can refer to it often.