Many people wonder how well the communications markets are doing in thse tough economic times and while the future is tough to know for sure, I just came across fantastic news. AudioCodes just confirmed its guidance for the rest of 2008.

AudioCodes is a major partner of a slew of communications equipment makers and also supplies equipment to service providers and even enterprises via gateways and other CPE equipment.

In short, AudioCodes is a pretty good barometer for the IP communications markets including contact centers and other subsets of the market such as wireless, etc.

As a major supporter of open source -- especially in the communications market, I cannot be more thrilled to announce that Digium will be co-hosting Digium/Asterisk World at ITEXPO this February in Miami.

It is well-known that open source companies consider ITEXPO an important event and one where they come to meet service providers, resellers and other companies looking to deploy open-source solutions. This news solidifies TMC's commitment to open source as a solid choice for companies looking to not only purchase today's solutions but to resell and develop tomorrow's breakthrough products.

Mark Spencer, founder and CTO of Digium and original creator of Asterisk had this to say about this news. "Hosting Digium|Asterisk World at ITEXPO East 2009 will allow us to share the vision and power of Asterisk with a broad set of customers who might not be familiar with open source. By giving them their first taste of Asterisk, we empower them to not only save money but to use and create new technologies that never existed before."

For my part, I salute Mark and his company which has brought open source communications so far, so quickly. The entire open source communications market has gained massive credibility due to Digium and the many other pioneers who supported Asterisk over the past years.

As always, all members of the open source community are welcome at all TMC expos and to learn more about this news, please visit the Digium/Asterisk World section of the ITEXPO site.

We looking forward to seeing you all February 2-4 in 2009.

I have been getting more and more questions on where the communications market stands in light of macroeconomic conditions. It is a constant in my frequent conversations. In most cases, when I get this question, people tell me their business is good but they wonder if the housing market problems will trickle down into the telecom space.

The answer is simply, I do believe there is risk to all sectors of the global economy. For the first time in my memory, US and other political leaders have come on TV and mentioned the term global crisis on a frequent basis. This sort of talk shakes confidence. This is simply the way it works.

The question we need to ask is how do we benefit in such a scenario or at best, how do we tread water so our sales, revenue, income does not decrease?

Most importantly, you need to focus on areas which save your customers money and make them more productive. UC, telepresence, workforce automation, FMC and other technologies pay for themselves quickly. In addition, SIP trunking is a natural in this market... You save your customers money and get a recurring revenue source if you are a service provider or reseller.

Subsets of the communications market are on fire. Mobile banking and WiMAX are a few. Emerging markets and rural America are ripe for wireless broadband.

In fact, these markets are ripe for all forms of communications and penetration in many cases is extremely low. Of course this equals tremendous opportunity.

In a slow market there is pressure to purchase less but we have crossed the chasm of mobile web browsing these past years and we will see more devices with mobile broadband and this leads to the increased use of the internet on the go. As this trend continues - the opportunity for wireless services increases as well. This leads me to the mobile application market. You need to have an application which works on the iPhone, RIM devices and eventually the Gphone. Don't forget about Windows Mobile or Nokia by the way.

I have seen many recessions in my day and the telecom space is one of the few which saw something called a nuclear winter between 2001-2003. What I learned from these experiences is that every slowdown ends at some point and customers do not ever stop buying - they may slow, they may delay, but they don't stop.

In other words, even if things slow down in our space, they will speed up again. The strategy for making sure you come out the other end of a slowing economy in a better position than you are in today is as follows:

Conserve Cash: This is obvious but how you do it is crucial. If you cut your PR, marketing and R&D, where do you think you will be in a slowing market? None of these areas can be cut by more than a few percent. If you have to cut a bit more, R&D is the area to cut incrementally from. The reason is that the feature wars most companies fight are less important than explaining to customers why they need to buy your products.

Keep in mind, every company you sell to now has to go through more internal scrutiny before they buy. You need to reinforce sales with more marketing and sales efforts. In order to last in a slowing market you need to ensure you are still selling. If you are too heavily R&D focused and don't do marketing and PR effectively, hire an agency to help you immediately.

Become More Productive: Every company needs to operate at 100% efficiency. Cut off your dead wood. Do it today. It is time to let the complainers and high maintenance people go. If they aren't happy, you are doing them a favor. Believe me; it will work out better for you and for them.

Rally the Troops: Explain to them why they need to work smarter, harder and faster. Customer service is key. Don't lose customers because of bad service.

Hire PR/Marketing People: If you aren't strong in these areas, you have to hire an agency or top people who can help you market more effectively in slow times. I have witnessed many millions of wasted marketing dollars in my life. Spending a marketing budget and spending it wisely are totally different things. A million dollar marketing budget can be blown stupidly with 10 newspaper ads or used much more effectively in focused media vehicles where your potential customers are actually looking for your products.

Market Analysis: There are hundreds of small companies which are engineering driven in the communications space which do not know how to market. Companies founded by engineers are typically the worst run from a marketing perspective. (Remember - I am an engineer myself so no insult intended - we aren't sugar coating here). These companies - where the engineer runs marketing are likely going to have trouble selling products in a slowdown (or any other time for that matter). Keep your eyes open for acquisitions or weakness in the markets you serve. Keep your ear to the ground. One of these small companies about to go under may have good ideas for products but just no clue how to sell them. You may determine developing a competitive product/service to one of these small companies makes sense.

Speed: It is better to be fast than right. After all, you can't be right every time but if you are fast, you can adjust and become right faster than the other guy.

Optimism: Be optimistic. If you are smart and run things well and your entire team works together to support you, your company can come out of any downturn stronger than it went in. Sure, be cautious --but in the end, business is cyclical. It just is. That is the nature of the beast. Work harder, faster and smarter and you will be rewarded.

Remember, things are still generally good in the communications and technology markets and if you follow these rules you should make it out the other side of any slowdown in better condition than you are in today.

How do you celebrate one of the worst days for the US stock market in years? Simple -- you go out and buy a yacht with 26,000 square feet of sales. Oil money at work you think? Nope. Credit goes to VC, businessman and early HP employee Tom Perkins a founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Worried about your job? No need. With this many square feet of sails and a yacht of this size, Perkins alone could be responsible for thousands of new US jobs.

Please note this post was written approximately one week ago -- before the news of the bailout bill failing began to spread fear in the financial markets. Stay tuned to learn how the financial markets will affect communications and technology.

Many people asked me recently at ITEXPO West 2008 Los Angeles, what I see happening in the communications market from an economic perspective. Let's just say that on the way to the show, I was watching TV as the stock market plunged and there was talk of another Great Depression. When I got to the show I must say I was unclear how the financial markets would affect the communications space.

After speaking with many people in our markets, the end result is most people believe the space is very strong and in fact some companies are seeing increased sales of their solutions as a result of travel cutbacks and high fuel costs. It seems if you sell products which increase productivity when corporations are belt-tightening, you are in good shape.

In fact the attendance at the show was very strong. I feel we would have had even more traffic if there wasn't as much fear in the financial markets. What really made it an interesting week was when I turned on CNN; I thought I was on CNBC. The coverage was 100% financial, all the time. In such an environment, people probably have trouble leaving the TV. Even the news anchors on CNBC who typically leave in the late morning were at their desks until after midnight.
Certainly TV stations feed on this viewership and seem to ensure they position the news in such a way to ensure it is self-perpetuating - but this is a topic for another day.

The tremendous focus on negative financial news from the general media led to the stories I heard of hedge fund redemptions leading to lower industry stock prices. In addition, a general theme in our markets and beyond is companies pausing more before signing contracts. There is more indecision than at any time I remember. Companies want to reinvest in their businesses but they seem to just be waiting more than they used to.

In my opinion, in order to counter this delay in contract signing, we have to work harder and/or smarter, making more sales calls and doing more marketing. Sales after all is a numbers game when all else is equal. Now is when companies who are good marketers will take share from those who are good engineers. It happens every time the economy slows and this time will be no exception.

In fact, companies who used to rely heavily on existing companies to fuel their growth by supplying solutions to a growing workforce are going to have to shift to customer acquisition. Companies are not adding as many employees as they used to which means growth has to come through competing for new customers.

If you work internally, you need to spend time selling the productivity benefits of the solutions you propose purchasing. In some cases, vendors will work with you on financing (assuming there are banks left when you read this) who can ensure a positive ROI from day one of the investment.

So my final response to financial question in our markets is that if I had a choice of industries, I would want to work in one where our products help companies save money. Moreover, I would want to work in an industry which has little excess and has already seen its bubble burst years back. I do believe communications is a great place to be and new technologies like UC, mobility and telepresence make companies stronger and more productive and in a slower market, these are the things companies desperately need.

Huge news out of Astricon 2008 -- Skype and Digium will begin to collaborate. I will have more details soon but for now this likely means easy integration between phone systems based on Asterisk and the Skype network. I have talked about Skype trunking before -- this news will likely mean that there will be native Skype trunking in all Asterisk boxes.

This could potentially give these open source platforms a huge advantage over companies like Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Etc where an external Skype trunking gateway will be needed to communicate with the Skype community.

This can be huge news for telecom markets as the price to make calls will drop substantially from Skype devices and software to Asterisk-based open-source PBXs.

One other point -- the Skype gateway market may now become based on Asterisk appliances/software. This means we could see more interoperability between the Skype network and SIP and other standards.

Update:

My theories were accurate. You will now be able to treat Skype calls like any other protocol on Asterisk systems. What this means is you can forward them, transfer them and make and receive Skype calls on Asterisk phone systems.

With Skype For Asterisk, customers will be able to get access to many of the Skype features coupled with the capabilities of Asterisk. For example, the beta version of Skype For Asterisk will allow customers to make, receive and transfer Skype calls from within Asterisk systems using their existing hardware; enable inbound calling solutions like free click-to-call from company websites or virtual offices; and manage Skype calls using Asterisk applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voicemail.

What this means to Skype is the company has finally found a way to get into the enterprise in an easy way -- partnering with Digium/Asterisk which has great traction with developers, resellers, carriers, SMBs and more. Expect more enterprise use of Skype and as this happens, Skype should see more revenue from business users.

For Digium, this partnership allows the company to leapfrog the larger telecom players and gives the company major momentum and also makes them a magnet for more leading-edge deals. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft approaches the company for a UC partnership soon if they aren't talking already.

For the communications community this collaboration means more flexibility and lower cost calling for consumers and businesses worldwide. Finally, Skype users should be able to call companies over native Skype and for free. This news could become a major game changer if companies integrate Skype click-to-call functionality on their websites.

Further Update:

In a call with Digium CEO Danny Windham and Stefan Öberg, vice president and general manager for Skype Telecom and Skype for Business, Caller-ID will work with a Skype In number and if you choose you can set your mobile number as your Caller-ID number. This is subject to SMS verification over a few day period.

The companies envision a Skype client running on a desktop with a mirrored desk phone utilizing a Skype name. Although configuration options are flexible, this would allow both phones to ring together.

Any call type can be connected to the Skype client. This means you could get a call over the PSTN or a SIP trunking connection and this call will be answerable on your desk phone and Skype client.

Asterisk version 1.4 and 1.6 and beyond should be compatible with the Skype Connector for Asterisk but prior versions will likely not be. Derivatives of these products should work as well. Resellers should have a tremendous retrofit market to go after.

Businesses can assign Skype Names to Asterisk calling queues allowing a company to give customers a service Skype ID, a sales Skype ID, etc. This allows Skype to become a company's global 800 number. Moreover, agents can log in via Skype and be connected from anywhere to a calling queue.

After a limited beta, Skype for Asterisk will be rolled out into a wider beta and finally a public product. The commercial product will support Skype presence but there is no release date for this product as of yet. In addition, it will eventually support video and every other Skype feature.

Skype chose to work with Digium instead of other PBX companies because both companies support affordable communications solutions. Skype's Öberg feels the companies have a great deal in common.

Skype appliances allowing things like Skype trunking are not scalable according to Öberg and this partnership should allow Asterisk to be a good choice for companies looking for large scale Skype trunking/connectivity. This is because the native Linux Skype client which these boxes are based was not designed for scalability.

Carriers may be able to take advantage of this collaboration -- and in fact some carriers have allowed their wireless customers to connect seamlessly with Skype. Still, Öberg reminds us the target of this collaboration is the small business.

Once the Skype for Asterisk module is installed, unlimited calls to Skype names can be made. To call a phone number via Skype you will be able to use Skype credits. There will be business packages allowing premium support which will include chat and voice.

LCR (least cost routing) will now include Skype -- allowing a  system to utilize Skype as a way to connect a phone call if the price is lowest.

Skype devices such as standalone Skype phones cannot transfer calls and thus cannot connect to Asterisk like a typical Skype client.

In addition, the Skype Connector does allow clients to be associated with a company and managed centrally.

You can assign Skype names to numbers allowing easy access to a phone directory of Skype names.

In short, this collaboration is unprecedented and brings the flexibility of the open-source Asterisk platform together with the size of the massive Skype user base. Now things like global 800 numbers are possible for free for companies and consumers.

Going forward, we may see Skype support as a must-have feature in the PBX/communications server wars. I am sure the industry is watching closely to see how much traction there is in the Skype integration market.

Just want to let you know there is some major open source news coming from Astricon 2008 taking place this week. Here are some photos (Greg Galitzine's photos) from the event. Stay tuned for the latest details. Here are some theories from Tom Keating while you wait.

We should know more in 15 minutes or so.

There are so many positive things you can say about Apple. The company is truly positioned to take over the computing and mobile worlds. They already seem to own the music and video businesses. But does Apple need to tell us what programs we should and shouldn't run on our phones? Is this their place?

Recently, Apple banned MailWrangler, an application which uses a web browser to access e-mail on the iPhone. I am still at a bit of a loss about why Apple needs to check applications to begin with. Why can I download applications for Windows Mobile without anyone checking the applications.

Getting back to MailWrangler, I haven't used the program but I have recently started to use OWA or Outlook Web Access on the iPhone to access email and what I like about working in this manner is that I can turn the phone sideways and more easily read email. The native email application on the iPhone does not allow the screen to be turned sideways so OWA gives me added functinality. I imagine MailWrangler may work in a similar fashion.

Of course with the removal of the program from the app store, there is no way for me to test how MailWrangler works at the moment but I must say any application which improves email access is welcome and many people get the feeling Apple's system of approving applications lacks transparency. Still, I imagine most developers will have no choice but to develop for the new iconic phone, regardless of how tight fisted Apple is.

More thoughts from the iPhone Blog and Web Monkey.

I came across this great article on SIP from John Carroll over at ZDNet which summarizes some of his thoughts from last week's ITEXPO. I like this article because it goes into depth on SIP, SIP trunking and more. I liked the article so much in fact I now follow this blog in my news reader. You can do so as well.

Here are a few news stories I came across today to keep you up to date on show happenings so far. I didn't get a chance to read them all by the way but I wanted to share as soon  as I could.

• Broadsoft's David Bukovsky Presents Keynote at ITEXPO West
• Taking a Closer Look at iLinc 10 ITEXPO West 2008
• Octasic Announces Mass Customization Program at ITEXPO for Vocallo Media Gateway
• BandTel Touts SIP Trunking at IT EXPO West 2008
  
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