Ratatouille, Shrimp and the Best PBX Features

David Byrd : Raven Call
David Byrd
David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.
| Raven Guru Marketing http://www.ravenguru.com/

Ratatouille, Shrimp and the Best PBX Features

I began developing a new recipe Saturday morning. It was so different for me that I decided I’d better do a back up dish in case it came out badly. The backup dish was curd free scrambled eggs. These eggs are fantastic and while they use the same method as regular scramble eggs the cooking technique is quite different. However, you will have to wait on that recipe as my chosen recipe turned out very well.  I also made French toast with Virginia country ham on Sunday. It was suppose to be a back up recipe as well until I remembered I already shared my French toast recipe. Most of you have heard of the animated film “Ratatouille”. However, I am willing to bet that most of you have never had the dish, including me. Having seen the movie, I was very familiar with how to make the dish and I also knew that it used a vegetable that I rate low on my list of likes, eggplant. Finally, I wanted to make ratatouille in a unique way. I decided to make a country tart. Thumbnail image for Tart Example.jpgA country tart is somewhat free formed. It is usually round but never a perfect circle. It also does not use a pat to maintain its shape. It is place flat on a sheet pan, filled with a single layer of fruit or vegetables leaving an inch or so of uncovered dough around the edges. The uncovered dough is folded up and over the filling forming the baking container. My first thought was to use puff pastry, which would have been good but very high in calories. I normally don’t count calories but as we approach the holidays it is a useful thing to consider. I substituted yellow squash for the eggplant and I added shrimp and a crème fraiche sauce to top off the tart. My wife and I both had seconds on this dish. It is simple to make and well worth the multiple steps. The recipe of the week is Ratatouille and Shrimp Country Tart. Enjoy!

The Most Used Features of PBXs

Last week I was thinking about subjects for some future articles and blogs and realized that I had not seen a study on the most used PBX features. As Broadvox has a virtual PBX offering called GO!VBX and hosted PBX offerings are on the rise, I decided to look at the most used features and the most valuable features. We’ll see if this is a two day or three day blog. Anyway…the distinction between most used and most valuable is made by whether an end user is polled or the IT manager. Users identified PBX features that are quite common and, of course, used every day. IT managers tended to emphasize features that supported administrative practices or business productivity improvements. It is important to note the differences in the list as they should determine which value proposition will be proposed if the speaking to users, IT managers or both. Selecting the correct value proposition should shorten the sales process and improve your competitive position.

The top PBX features according to users were call forwarding, call waiting, conference calling and call hold. I believe it is safe to say that is a very expected list of most used features. However, I also wanted to know what features would be on the list if we included Unified Communications and IP Telephony. While again I did not find a study to answer the question, I did discover some commonly requested features; Presence, unified messaging, instant messaging, find me/follow me/one number reach, and click to dial. There are lots of other capabilities as part Unified Communications but these are the ones users identify as most desired. Just as before, IT managers selected a different set.  I’ll go over those on Wednesday.



Feedback for Ratatouille, Shrimp and the Best PBX Features

Leave a comment

Featured Events