Nokia, RIM, Skype, Cisco and ITEXPO News August 30, 2010

Tech once again has been an amazingly vibrant market in the last week of August when news is generally slow. A recent trend has to do withtechnology companies playing nice with global governments to make sure they aren’t rejected or find themselves out of favor like Google happens to be in China.

Nokia Spices up its Servers

Nokia for its part has decided to put servers in India to comply with local laws allowing government officials access to once impenetrable communications systems. You may recall India recently had some issues with not being able to monitor messages sent on Blackberrys.

Skype – an M&A Target

Skype made double news as late last night it was reported to be the object of an acquisition from not only Google but Cisco. These days it is becoming important to pick up networks with massive user numbers and with Facebook at a valuation of $34B, Skype at about $5B seems like a bargain to large tech firms with loads of cash and huge ambitions.

The world’s leading Internet telephony company has further been busy rebranding its Skype for SIP service as Skype Connect – As veteran tech and gadget blogger Tom Keating points out the move makes sense as SIP is a techie term and I am sure the investment bankers involved in the company’s IPO prompted this move as they scratched their heads when Skype execs explained the previous name of the service to them. The conversation likely went like this – “Ohh, it just connects Skype to corporate phone systems… Then why not just call it Skype Connect?” The rest as they say is history.

TMC Still Hiring

On the TMC front, we had a busy day hiring two new people in sales who started today and two new editors accepted job offers. We are still in hiring mode so if you know of awesome candidates in sales and/or editorial please direct them to us.

I failed to give you an update on ITEXPO last Friday and that is more because I didn’t get a chance to get to my laptop – today’s update will include news from today and Friday.

Second ITEXPO Show Hotel Block Sells Out

The Westin Bonaventure, and Omni Hotels in Los Angeles have sold out the room blocks we reserved and we now have a third room block we just signed for in the same Omni Hotel. This new block is very limited and the show is 34 days away. It will likely sell out (so will the hotel) by the end of this week. Details.

New Exhibitors

The booths keep streaming in and there are many more companies looking to sign contracts in the very near future. It seems like anyone and everyone you need to see will be at ITEXPO and related events.

  • Level Platforms added as an MSPworld Exhibitor
  • Palisade Systems added as an MSPworld Exhibitor
  • PhoenixSoft added as a CVx Exhibitor
  • Dualcomm Technology was added as an ITEXPO Exhibitor

There is also a compelling document which was sent out last week from channel market expert, Berge Kaprelian who explains why exhibiting at CVx (ChannelVision Expo) show helps companies meet face to face with the booming channel market and helps them stay in the decision-making process from the start.

Here is an update on New Speakers – We are thrilled to have the USTA and others as part of our conferences.

SG-19    KEYNOTE – USTelecom

 

Steve Oldham

 

Chairman

 

United States Telecom Association

 

Smart Grid

 

SG-04    USTelecom Panel – Influence of State Policy and Regulation

Robert  Mayer

 

 

United States Telecom Association

 

Smart Grid

 

CCS-07  Public or Private: Clearing up the Clouds

 

Russell Shriver

 

Vice President of Product Management

 

Level 3 Communications

 

Cloud Communications

 

VC-02    Virtualization Strategies – One Size Does Not Fit All

 

Ted Wagner

 

Senior Director

 

Level 3 Communications

 

ITEXPO

 

B-13       The IP Migration Isn’t Done Until You FoIP Yourself

 

Bob Green

 

Director, Business Development, Fax Technology

 

Audiocodes

 

ITEXPO

I also had a chance to interview James Awad, product manager for Octasic and as a speaker at ITEXPO West 2010 in Los Angeles, Awad provided insight into the expanding video technology industry in terms of where it’s going, and how it is getting there. Get a sneak peek at what Awad will be discussing in the fall and moreover learn about video quality from the same company that pretty much revolutionized echo-cancellation in the telecom space.

Here is an excerpt:

On the flipside, the telecommunications industry is still learning to cope with this deluge of information. A new set of standards such as H.264, WebM (VP8), and HTML5 are being adopted by web browsers on both the desktop and in mobile devices. Video is becoming a seamless part of any on-line experience, whether it’s a news report, Wikipedia page or corporate marketing. In order to support this video traffic, the routers and gateways that move all this content around are being scaled upwards to cope with this exponential demand.

One emerging requirement is that of video transcoding, brought on by the wide range of endpoints that are encoding and decoding this media. Octasic is a leader in silicon and software solutions that solve this processing bottleneck when it comes to video processing, which includes transcoding.

As the global economy sputters, tech continues to be the bright spot which allows companies to save money and explore new opportunities. There are untold hundreds of billions of dollars to still be made in the video space, wireless, smart grid, M2M, cloud computing, SIP trunking, videoconferencing and collaboration markets. While so many industries seem to have a gray cloud cast over their future, we are all very fortunate that tech innovation is coinciding with the global realization that tech and communications technology have the power to boost sales, service levels, employment and global economies.

I look forward to hosting you at ITEXPO and the dozen collocated and relevant events as we continue to discover new opportunities for us as an industry and as individuals looking to grow in our careers.

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