Communications and Technology Blog with the latest news in the IP communications, telecom, VoIP, call center and CRM space, with plenty of opinion & analysis...
What specific sources of power we use tomorrow and in what proportions is anyone's guess but what is certain is in order to take advantage of the various sources available we will have to develop a better electrical grid. We know it needs upgrading and for now, the term applied to what some might call power grid 2.0 is smart grid.
The tech and communications space should be eyeing the power industry with great interest as it is so similar to telecom in many ways where ownership of the wires resided with a small group of companies and over time a plethora of networks began to peer with one another to interchange information.
The network opened and the grid will likely do the same. But remember please don't touch the live wires.
As the grid gets smarter we will see power generation from users combined with generation from wind farms and geothermal locations and solar farms all generating power which will be used by a variety of customers.
The concept of p2p power generation should seem logical as some customers deploy solar cells which produce more power than they may use. What a great feeling it should be to help power your entire neighborhood while getting paid or at least credited in the process.
I truly believe that as the smart grid world evolves we will see more standardized protocols, gateways and products which interact intelligently and for lack of a better world - communicate.
And therein lays the logic in combining a Smart Grid Summit at ITEXPO - the World's Communications Conference.
I truly believe we will see convergence before the two markets and I suggest you keep an eye on the space and attend the show. After all, $57 million has already been targeted by the US government to grow this space. Now is the best time to learn more.
Check out TMC's Smart Grid News site for more information on the topic and be sure to register for the Smart Grid Summit which is being sponsored by TMC and Intelligent Communications Partners a company backed by veteran communications entrepreneur Shidan Gouran (blog) and IP communications thought leader and analyst Jon Arnold (Jon's articles) (Jon's take).
Again, this event is collocated with ITEXPO September 1-3, 2009 in Los Angeles so make plans to be there the whole time and you can register for the Smart Grid Summit onsite or online as the registration page is being developed now. The event will likely be one day of ITEXPO and which day is being determined.
In my recent trip to northern California a few vendors told me they were integrating bluetooth into their products for the home market. Generally until now most bluetooth applications have been of the mobile variety. Sure, you have some bluetooth options from GN Netcom and Plantronics for the office but Bluetooth generally is found in cars and headsets which allow mobility.
Some exceptions are stereo speakers and headsets but it doesn't seem like stereo Bluetooth has lived up to its potential yet.
As further evidence of how the Bluetooth market is looking to become more embedded into home automation, today Broadcom put out a press release explaining how their Bluetooth technology is going to be embedded in LGE (LG Electronics) TVs.
This means you can now listen to TV with wireless headphones so you don't disturb others. You can also sync music and view large-screen photos and videos.
Perhaps the most exciting part of this news is the ability to add accessories to TV like a wireless keyboard, mouse or even game controllers. The TV now has the capability to become the video game player - imagine a partnership between TV manufacturers and game companies.
You can now potentially use a TV as a videoconferencing screen for truly HD quality video communications. Coincidentally there will be some big news soon about consumer HD video but I can't share the specifics as of yet.
The timing of this news couldn't be better as you may recall I was in the Samsung Experience store a few weeks back and when I was using the YouTube widget to watch videos I asked why the remote control didn't have a keyboard. The answer? Well the widget was developed after the remote control.
Seems like Bluetooth would solve these chicken and egg problems and to my wife who just thought I was procrastinating and that is why I haven't bought a new TV - actually I must have subconsciously been waiting for Bluetooth.
Wireless backhaul is one of the fastest-growing areas of the tech space as it seems almost no matter how poor the global economy does, consumers and businesses need more broadband on the go. And as the devices get more powerful and do more like download podcasts and watch videos, existing wireless infrastructure just can't keep up and as a result base stations need to be added and reinforced with more connectivity. It is difficult to predict anything slowing this trend down for at least five years.
One company playing in the space is Proxim Wireless and they recently debuted a 4G backhaul product line consisting of the Tsunami QB-8100 point-to-point and the Tsunami MP-8100 point-to-multipoint - solutions with throughput of up to 600Mbps.
I spent some time at the Proxim Wireless office in Milpitas, CA where I met with Robb Henshaw the Director of Marketing & Communications. We talked for a bit about how the company was focusing resources on municipal WiFi in past years and eventually found this market did not have the opportunity they believed.
Proxim's current focus is on ensuring more bandwidth over more distance and Robb commented that the iPhone shows carriers that that they were unprepared for the onslaught of wireless traffic which continues to come.
Other interesting points had to do with the significant quantity of signed deals which Henshaw said evaporated from the market due to financing challenges among carriers. He says the financing market is coming back slowly and so is broadband stimulus funding. He thinks September is when we can expect more of it to hit.
The backhaul market was already on a solid trajectory before broadband stimulus funds were to be rolled out. It seems apparent that vendors in this space are in a pretty solid position as the US government and demand for consumer electronics drives the need for ever-increasing broadband capacity.
The challenge for Proxim is the company's market cap is low at under $3 million which means they have little margin for error. But they are entering a rapidly growing space which could become a cash-cow rather quickly. Although a speculative investment, Proxim could be a play on broadband stimulus funds and the need for ever-faster data pipes at cell towers. A lot of this company's future success depends on execution which is difficult to predict. What is known is that the tide is rising and Proxim's boat could rise as a result.
For more information on the 4G and wireless backhaul market be sure to be at the 4GWE -- 4G Wireless Evolution show September 1-3, 2009 in Los Angeles
One of the constants in the enterprise is a proliferation of systems and data which is directly responsible for increase storage needs. This last fall in fact IDC predicted a 62% CAGR for unstructured data. Moreover enterprise storage as a whole is predicted to increase tenfold between 2005 and 20011.
The research varies from firm to firm but it is obvious that the data collected by organizations of all sizes has tremendous value and as such there needs to be ways to tap into this massive treasure trove of information.
One company looking to be your enterprise search vendor is not surprisingly Google. I spent some time last week meeting with Vijay Koduri the Solutions Marketing Manager at Google Enterprise regarding the need for better enterprise search tools in corporations today.
Utilizing search appliances, Google puts its search technology to work for your business allowing you to find the crucial needle in the data haystack both quickly and efficiently. Koduri explains the biggest competitor to Google Enterprise search is no search and moreover less than 25% of companies employ enterprise search.
Another interesting nugget is that Gartner says 66% of enterprises have six or more separate data repositories meaning employees need to search across each repository to get the answers they need. He added that some companies think they have enterprise search but instead what they have is search functions on a few of their disparate systems.
Vijay spent some time making the case for the technology his company sells through Google Search Appliances, bright yellow rack mount devices. He started by going back to the history of search. He explained Yahoo! started to categorize websites but the job quickly became too big and a search engine was needed. Google became the defacto search engine as no good alternatives existed.
He then went on to explain that now that Google exists he is able to use it to check the status of flights without having to go to individual sites and remember separate URLs. In a similar manner he says users no longer have to worry about which app holds the data but more importantly they can just use Google as a front-end.
In fact the company uses their own appliances internally and when tracking trouble tickets you just enter a company name to see what tickets exist. He mentioned the tremendous productivity boost enterprise search can bring to an organization and in fact as you can imagine the company is looking to deploy its technology in contact centers as this is a natural place for technology which can speed customer interaction which boosts CRM levels and allows more efficient agent utilization.
In fact Vijay recently partook in a Google-sponsored TMC webinar where he discussed the virtues of enterprise search as it applies to contact centers.
Google is taking contact centers seriously and Vijay told me they are gaining traction with Google Apps in contact centers as they are lightweight tools. This makes sense as when you are outfitting a contact center with hundreds or thousands of computers the inherent savings in purchasing computers with less horsepower utilizing cloud-based apps which reduce license fees can really add up.
Most recently the company rolled out the 6.0 version of their Search Appliance which has a new architecture called (GSA) n which is designed to scale to billions of documents. In addition the GB-9009 is a new appliance which can search 30 million documents and the GB-7007 can now reach 10 million documents. Other benefits of this new release are social search features allowing user-added results, more customizable security and relevancy fine-tuning.
From my perspective I see no end in sight for the exponential growth of enterprise data and if you look into the future where all voicemails will be archived and meetings will be recorded via audio or video, there will be just that much more information which can be useful in corporations. As the proliferation continues it seems obvious enterprise search will achieve penetration in the 75% plus ranging meaning there is significant opportunity ahead for vendors in this space.
I spent a solid week in Silicon Valley and as I wrap up my trip and reflect back on the companies I met with I was pretty happy to see a good deal of optimism from the communications and technology executives I met with. Some areas of growth are the usual spaces such as products which support broadband growth and wireless backhaul.
For the companies not in those spaces there seems to be more optimism coming from companies which are not the premium players in their markets. The so-called value players seem to be attracting more interest as budgets have tightened.
Another trend which I haven't seen in a while is a fear of Microsoft on a scale I have not encountered in the past. It seems the company - according to competitors is being super-aggressive and in their words looking to dominate new/existing markets and stamp out competition. This concern came from companies of various sizes and even undisputed leaders in their spaces.
There also seems to be record interest in TMC's ITEXPO taking place September 1-3rd 2009 in Los Angeles. Many this week have commented regarding how many people in the communications and tech spaces are already planning to go to the show. I am looking forward to meeting with many industry players in just over a month at the show.
I was Skyping over T-Mobile WiFi here in my hotel in Santa Clara, California when all of a sudden the connection to the internet died. I still had a connection to the WiFi access point it is just that there was no Internet connection. As I called tech support to see what the problem was I tried logging in via my iPhone to see if the problem was the laptop or the carrier.
The iPhone did logon which meant the problem was likely my computer - assuming T-Mobile didn't temporarily cut off my connection because the video was taking more bandwidth than they liked. Once connected the tech support person explained I could only be connected to one device at a time.
The problem is - on a computer when you are connected to the net, a small window appears which allows you to click to logoff. This button does not appear on an iPhone.
So if you have a single WiFi connection with T-Mobile WiFi and want to use your mobile to access it - let's say at breakfast for example, when you get back to the hotel room and want to use your laptop to access the net, just point your iPhone to logoff.hotspot.t-mobile.com.
The highly anticipated news of Nortel's Enterprise Solutions business being sold to either Siemens or Nortel is here. The envelope please... And the winner is... Avaya - subject to bankruptcy bidding rules and court approval of course. Here are some details on stalking horse bids in bankruptcy auctions if you are so inclined.
What Avaya gains from this deal is marketshare, a talented engineering team, distribution channels, some very green systems and a lot more such as a great UC relationship with Microsoft and the B2B virtual-world technology including 3D stereo VoIP incorporated in Web.Alive.
The downside to mergers of course are integration issues, cultural issues, increased bureaucracy and lots of other challenges such as merging product lines, etc.
Then again in such a situation Nortel's employees which are kept on will likely be thrilled the company's assets were sold and could likely be some of the most motivated workers on Avaya's payroll. In addition, the chance of large-scale Nortel/Avaya defections is low in this economy.
In the end, Avaya picked up a distressed asset at what will likely prove to be great price, $475 million and with that comes lots of solid relationships and great technology.
More importantly all these products and services -- the ones that remain anyway, will now be promoted without the baggage of a half-decade plus on and off financial mess.
Probably most importantly, Avaya is one of the best marketers in the business and they will now have a more interesting story to tell, not to mention a slew of new products to promote.
I am looking forward to watching Avaya's integration efforts very closely and it will be interesting to see what they make of these new assets.
As companies continue to rein in costs the reality they face is they still need to operate - make widgets, fix widgets or distribute them with less resources. You see regardless of business type, productivity is important and even if there are less employees and smaller travel budgets, the show must go on.
Enter technology - the major casualty of the dotcom bust - the initial cause of the last recession.
But this recession while so many market segments are truly hurting, tech has emerged as a resilient sector. And this is true in a market where some analysts believe real unemployment numbers in the US are greater than 10% already.
Polycom released earnings this week and while they were below last year they were above analyst estimates and showed the company plays in areas of tech strength. For example voice communications revenue remained flat at $69 million while the unemployment rate is just under double last year. More importantly the video products business grew 3 percent quarter-over-quarter to $161.7 million and to learn more I visited the company's New York showroom this past week.
I met with Bob Preston, VP Industry Solutions and Caroline Japic, Senior Director Corporate Communications. Preston has a team of ten who focus on vertical markets such as healthcare and education and this group has literally embed themselves in the industries they cover by becoming part of associations and even heading them up. They serve as a huge funnel where their customer contact allows them to help determine market need while feeding the company valuable success stories and case studies.
This team in fact is becoming helpful to companies that have cut travel budgets but need to continue to be productive according to Preston. He further went on to describe how HD telepresence in the offshoring market has been growing as companies need to be able to see remote circuit boards, garments and other products for approval before production begins.
In another example, the Polycom execs told me of TV shows which are shot on the east coast with a creative staff on the west coast. It is the videoconferencing technology which allows the studio to produce shows more productively.
While we were having our discussion we sat in a custom telepresence room called RPX which costs in the $200,000 range and we spoke with a remote representative in another telepresence room. In our meeting of over an hour it became difficult to distinguish the virtual from real. The technology has gotten that good.
Some videos of the fully immersive RPX telepresence solution
This demo is what they call fully immersive for obvious reasons but I was not 100% thrilled with the rear projection monitors in use as angled viewing was not 100% perfect. In other words some of the monitors were a bit darker than others. I was told the reason for this selection of monitor is the size of the monitors allows you to see the entire person and that for long-term viewing rear projection is a better solution. It is worth mentioning I have noticed this same slight problem in demos from other vendors as well.
We then went into the TPX telepresence room which is based on plasma TVs and by comparison these sets weren't as soft on the eyes and in addition they didn't allow you to see the same height as the rear projection units.
While companies know deploying technology can increase their productivity, many of these same organizations have CAPEX freezes in place so Polycom rolled out a leasing option last month to be able to utilize corporate OPEX budgets in equipment purchases.
I asked how the company is differentiating itself and was told they are happy Cisco is in the market as they welcome their ad dollars. This was a reference to how the networking company's' dollars are helping to expand the market as a whole.
From there they discussed how they embrace open standards like H.323 and SIP while Cisco does not - they speak to themselves. Japic said, "Can you imagine if you had to call people with same cell phone model?" In addition the company touted its depth and breadth of product line - Solutions from $3,000 to $300,000. They contrasted this to Cisco who they believe is in the video market to push more boxes referring to the incremental need for switching gear needed to handle the increasing bandwidth produced by video-based solutions.
At the lower end of the market is LifeSize and Japic's comments on this Texas-based company is, "they give you a kit and say good luck," referring to the holistic approach Polycom takes to selling complete solutions including monitors as opposed to a more segmented or piecemeal approach.
They did acknowledge LifeSize does compete on the lower end of the market and they have seen them show up in education RFPs.
From there I was told about all the value Polycom adds to the educational market. Solutions such as a video-enabled social network CAPspace which allows educators with similar skillsets or job responsibilities to network. For example third-grade teachers from Peoria to Philadelphia can collaborate on how best to teach. The solution further allows connectivity to museums, sports halls of fame and more.
To seal the deal there is also Polycom's support of Global Nomads, a group which explores the world and shares the experience with classrooms around the world.
Thomas Henkel, VP of Sales for the NY-Metro region Extols the virtues of Polycom's desktop VVX 1500 solution - on the product he is touting
Asked about competition from the low-end such as Skype the answer was that these solutions are fine for the consumer but for business where quality is important and you need the ability to conference numerous people you need to step up to a business-class solutions.
Asked what's next the company mentioned VC2 which we might call as an industry video conferencing 2.0. In Polycom's own words, "VC2 transforms traditional video conferencing into visual communication. With VC2, video is a pervasive component of enterprise communication--on desktops, in meeting rooms, on mobile devices."
As a leader in video, more video usage means more Polycom solutions will be sold. And as more of the world becomes video-enabled it seems to me the ability for technology to continue boosting productivity only grows. And this isn't just talk. Metcalfe's Law states the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of users on the system. The easiest way to understand the concept is by thinking to yourself, what is the value of one fax machine? Two? Ten, 1,000?
So as video proliferates so does the value of the video network meaning every investment in videoconferencing solutions increases productivity by that much more. And that my friends is why I love this business so much. And so should you.
I strongly urge you to listen to Bob Preston speak live about how video-enabled solutions can boost productivity at your company - he will be at ITEXPO Wednesday, September 2, 2009 in Los Angeles. Register now
While the media business in general has been like so many other industries such as financial and real estate - meaning lots of doom and gloom, I am happy to report TMC is hiring to fill new positions and looking for new people as well. We just hired three new professionals in our sales group and expect to add more people this year.
While print publications have seen advertising decline and we should know as we publish four magazines - we have positioned ourselves for the day when marketing moved to the web since the nineties.
A product we launched back then - online communities has now become one of our most successful products and in Q1 of this year our Global Online Communities grew in revenue by 50%.
We also saw record attendance growth at ITEXPO earlier this year and our customers continue to tell us TMC's solutions are some of the most cost-effective marketing and community building products they can find anywhere.
You have no heard me say how now is the time to reinvest in your company and how the organizations which make it through this slowdown will come out the other end in a much better position. We are putting our money where our mouths are and you will see rapid expansion from TMC in the years to come.
In addition, I truly expect this expansion to significantly benefit all our existing customers and we are constantly being mindful of the interests of our existing readers, sponsors and contributors.
There is much more to come but for now here is the news on the three new positions which were just filled.
