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.
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February 2011

You are browsing the archive for February 2011.

Holding Fast

February 28, 2011

Going into the weekend I already knew the recipe of the week, which was a good thing, all things considered. After returning to Dallas late Thursday night I came down with the flu. Generally, speaking not much slows me down but on Saturday the flu threw me for a loop. My wife was not feeling her best either and requested soup for lunch.

Connecting at Enterprise Connect

February 25, 2011

Next week during  Enterprise Connect, Frank Grillo, Executive Vice President of Implementation and Product Marketing, will represent Broadvox and Cypress in discussing if a multinational enterprise wanted to eliminate all or most of its premises-based communications equipment and deploy a fully loaded Unified Communications (UC) solution from a hosted and managed cloud services provider, could it do so today? If so, what would such an implementation look like? Who could deliver it? What would it cost?

IPv4 is Running on Empty

February 23, 2011

According to Latif Ladid, president of the IPv6 Forum the IPv4 addresses managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority were exhausted on February 3rd. There are no more IPv4 address blocks available for allocation. The sky is not falling, numbers are being hawked on street corners and, yes, please step away from that ledge. The IP community has known of this impending event for years and has developed a solution referred to as IPv6.

Playing Chicken with Net Neutrality

February 21, 2011

What a weekend for food. On Friday, I made Philly cheese steak sandwiches with thinly sliced rib eye steak, onions, bell peppers and Swiss cheese. Saturday was a smash with Italian Chicken Cacciatore. I make it with chicken thighs for the tenderness but chicken breasts can be substituted.

Excellence and Killing the Monkeys

February 18, 2011

To succeed in a competitive environment and difficult economy, it is important to hire and retain excellence. When a merger takes place, one inherits unknown talent and determining who has the characteristics needed to succeed takes time to assess. However, it is imperative to do so as quickly as possible making as few errors as possible. I met the new members of my sales team this week during our national sales meeting and I learned how difficult it is to make the assessment with regard to excellence.

Together, For the Very first Time

February 16, 2011

Today begins our first national sales meeting as the combined Broadvox and Cypress Communications sales force. The usual format for this meeting is a deep dive pipeline review, company update, product education, OSS/BSS update and some type of sales exercise. However, this meeting is different. We are not a team again.

VAD and Waffles

February 14, 2011

I wasn’t sure of what to fix this weekend as I needed to smoke some salmon for next week’s national sales meeting. All of the Broadvox and Cypress Communications sales personnel will be in Dallas meeting each other for the very first time. I decided I wanted to do something special for the two days. I used hickory to cold smoke several whole fillets of salmon and they came out fantastically well.

Pins and Needles

February 11, 2011

The FCC voted to reform the Universal Service Fund and potentially eliminate the InterCarrier Compensation (ICC) system this week and much to my surprise there were no screams of protest. Perhaps, because the FCC, Congress and the carriers now that the system must change to meet the demand of today and position for the needs of the future. All interested parties acknowledge that the USF and ICC were designed in the early 1900s and no suit today’s communications and technology infrastructure. Moreover, the wastefulness and gaming the system such as traffic pumping has become wide spread. 

Interoperability and Lync

February 9, 2011

Prior to the rush to Microsoft Lync, Broadvox was intending to extend its interoperability to latest release of Office Communications Server (OCS). However, we have now agreed with Microsoft engineers to complete interoperability testing on Lync. Interestingly, Wikipedia refers to Lync as the latest instantiation of OCS. Being in sales I sometimes use the excuse that I can’t keep up with all of the technology changes and need a sales engineer to engage prospects. However, when Microsoft decides to update OCS with a new product like Lync, then I have to take notice.

Super Bowl and Sinful Sunday

February 7, 2011

Although it didn’t feel like it, I cooked a lot this weekend. I was really up for it given that I spent the entire week traveling. Anyway, Friday consisted of pulled pork sliders done three ways: Carolina style with vinegar and hot sauce, Memphis with BBQ sauce and, my favorite, seasoned with my white seasoning mixture of salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder. Saturday was chicken with a Caesar salad and Sunday was the Super Bowl. We began the day with waffles that had slivers of cooked bacon added to the batter, very tasty and surprisingly light.

SNR Dreaming

February 2, 2011

As a result of the Broadvox and Cypress Communications merger, we decided it would be a good time to redesign our logo (most of you will miss the change) and redesign our business cards (much needed). As such, the new cards have been on my mind for weeks. So much so, that last night I dreamed about my new business card and the phone number designation SNR (Single Number Reach) that I chose. Those of you that have read this blog the last couple of years (and I thank you) learned some time ago that I do not know my cell phone number.

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