ITEXPO Blog
| The ITEXPO blog is where you can view the latest news and happenings at TMC's leading VoIP conference.
Why the Cisco Cius Failed & Why Microsoft Might Beat the Mighty iPad
Rich Tehrani has a good post today on why the Cisco Cius failed. He put it succinctly and with a nice metaphor...
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Turns out Cisco Cius Can't Compete With the iPad Either
Company after company is learning what most of instinctively know already – competing with Apple head-on is like trying to tackle...
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Disruption Targets Currency Exchange Kiosks
Technology has resulted in massive margin compression among industry after industry. Retailers have to struggle to make money to pay their brick...
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Will It Rain for EarthLink in the Cloud?
EarthLink is really pulling out the umbrella to get it to rain in Cloud. EarthLink picked up XO's former CMO, Michael Toplisek,...
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A Lesson in Value Proposition
This came across my twitter stream this week:"Must-read for founders: A VC explains how to build a killer value proposition" on VentureBeat...
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Combatting Mobile Data
How do you offer your broadband customers mobile access? There are a couple of options. One is MVNO, reselling cellular data cards...
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Yahoo Reinvents Mobile Browser with Axis
Yahoo has taken the mobile browser and improved it dramatically by integrating search and allowing users to view results rapidly without the...
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Kickstarter, A Solution for the Patient
If you want to be involved - intimately involved with the manufacturing process behind a product you purchase then I suggest you...
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Sonos SUB Expensive but Convenient
Sonos makes a great WiFi-based sound system allowing wire-free sound in any room in your home. The only problem with this strategy...
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The Mobile VAS Ecosystem
Last week in Thailand, Dialogic held an event for our APAC customers. Although Dialogic is evolving to provide more and more...
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Say it With Skype Facebook app Wants to Be American Idol
Skype announced a new contest to find the next great music band using their Say it With Skype Facebook app, an engaging-group...
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TV to GO: Cablevision Customers Access TV Beyond the Home
Cable companies having come together to share their WiFi networks in order to compete somewhat with 3G and 4G networks are also...
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Skype v4.0.1325 Released for Apple iOS
A new version of Skype was just released to the Apple App Store. No new major features to report - just some...
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No Special Sauce
There is no special sauce.Everyone has the same technology (or will 5 minutes after you market yours).It was never about the technology.It...
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The New In Your Face Facebook Ads - Coming Soon!
After Facebook's disastrous IPO leading some to speculate Facebook's actual worth is in the $16-$24 range, it's worth examining what went wrong....
Full Story »Is Yahoo Just Doomed?
May 16, 2012
Years back I was at a conference with a consultant who worked at Yahoo! and told them they need to take on Google more directly and he was told, “That is not the Yahoo way.” I still remember the dumfounded feeling I had when I heard this ridiculous comment. We all know that Yahoo is a company with outstanding assets but with major internal problems. CEOs seem to be ousted annually, the company is behind in just about every market it invented and even with all its traffic, it seems to be all about yesterday’s Internet.
There are lots of stories about the company’s incompetence – one past high-level exec detailed the situation at a TMC conference (at the person’s request I won’t share more detail) and his explanation of the corporate politics remind me more of a sitcom than a company looking to win.
Politics are nothing new… Every company has them. Egos are fragile things and people want to amass more power.
There are lots of stories about the company’s incompetence – one past high-level exec detailed the situation at a TMC conference (at the person’s request I won’t share more detail) and his explanation of the corporate politics remind me more of a sitcom than a company looking to win.
Politics are nothing new… Every company has them. Egos are fragile things and people want to amass more power.
GM to Facebook: Your ads Don't Work
May 16, 2012
When you are about to have one of the largest public offerings in the world - north of $100 billion and much of the reason for the size of your IPO has to do with advertising revenue, there is nothing worse than having one of the world's largest and most sophisticated advertisers telling you your ads don't work. And that is exactly what just happened to Facebook when GM pulled the plug on a $10 million dollar ad deal.
To put this in perspective, GM is the third largest advertiser in the US and its budget is absolutely huge. Last year in fact it was $1.8B. The interesting part of the situation is that even though GM won't be continuing its ad spend this year it plans on continuing to spend $30M or so for Facebook content.
What this tells us is Facebook is just becoming a driver of the Splinternet or another Internet which advertisers and developers need to take into account.
To put this in perspective, GM is the third largest advertiser in the US and its budget is absolutely huge. Last year in fact it was $1.8B. The interesting part of the situation is that even though GM won't be continuing its ad spend this year it plans on continuing to spend $30M or so for Facebook content.
What this tells us is Facebook is just becoming a driver of the Splinternet or another Internet which advertisers and developers need to take into account.
At Utah Olympic Park
April 9, 2012I stopped by the Utah Olympic Park in Park City and took the tour which was very informative. Sadly, I didn't get to see any athletes training. I did notice AT&T had very fast service here with full bars throughout my tour. I felt like I was in a commercial actually because I had to download a presentation of about 4 MB while here for proofing purposes. Verizon only had a 3G connection with three out of four bars on my MiFi device. BTW, athletes train here all year long but sadly I didn't get to see any. This trip reminded me of the Vancouver Olympics I was lucky enough to witness as a VIP thanks to Avaya.
At Moabcon 2012
April 8, 2012I am at Adaptive Computing's 2012 user conference in beautiful Park City, Utah. The Hyatt Escala Resort is the host of the conference and is located on a ski slope in Park City, Utah. The air is fresh, the weather is good and I am looking forward to some awesome education on HPC and cloud computing. I speak on cloud computing trends this Wednesday and am looking forward to it. The photo of the lake below is one of the more beautiful sites I have seen so far but this is gorgeous country even if you don't ski. It is worth a trip.
ITEXPO IP Communications Trade Show Continues Solid Growth
February 8, 2012
ITEXPO East 2012 in Miami was TMC's best show ever with over 200 booths and over 8,200 attendees. Conferee attendance for ITEXPO East increased more than 50% from 2011, resulting in dozens of standing room only sessions at ITEXPO and collocated conferences such as HTML5 Summit, M2M Evolution, Business Video Expo, Super WiFi Summit, and 4GWE. As an example, here's a photo I took at the jam-packed Ingate SIP trunking conference session:
Even with the additional third day of exhibit hall hours, foot traffic was pretty good - on a Friday no less. I heard from several exhibitors saying it was their best ITEXPO ever.
TMC's next show, ITEXPO West 2012, is scheduled to take place on October 1-4, 2012, in Austin, Texas, (the 'new' Telecom Corridor) which will be the second time in Austin after moving from Los Angeles.
Even with the additional third day of exhibit hall hours, foot traffic was pretty good - on a Friday no less. I heard from several exhibitors saying it was their best ITEXPO ever.
TMC's next show, ITEXPO West 2012, is scheduled to take place on October 1-4, 2012, in Austin, Texas, (the 'new' Telecom Corridor) which will be the second time in Austin after moving from Los Angeles.
Forget Super Wi-Fi! Go with Super Wi-Fi! Wait. What?
February 3, 2012Everyone is hyping the new Super Wi-Fi standard which uses lower-frequency white spaces between television channel frequencies. These lower frequencies enable the signal to travel further (miles) and penetrate walls better than the higher frequencies previously used (hundreds of feet). Well, forget about Super Wi-Fi!
I met with Thomas Ngeow from Altai Technologies at ITEXPO, a Hong Kong-based company and he explained they coined Super Wi-Fi for one of their products long before the Super Wi-Fi standard was coined. You're probably wondering who cares who coined it first and you'd be right.
Billionaire Gives Secrets to Startup Success
February 3, 2012Sir Terry Matthews is a Welsh/Canadian high tech entrepreneur, and Wales's first billionaire. He has directly started 89 companies with an amazing 83 out of 89 success rate. It's an even more astounding fact when you consider that according to TMC's Peter Bernstein, 90% of startups fail. Terry has sold many of these companies for millions and even hundreds of millions of dollars.
ITEXPO Miami 2012 Day 1 Analysis
February 2, 2012
Trade shows are in fact barometers of industry sentiment and mood and to gauge what the feeling is in the technology and communications spaces I turn to Jon Arnold's blog post about the first day here at ITEXPO.
First off Jon is about as balanced as they come - even his compliments come with room for improvement weaved in. So I invite you to read his full post about the show so far - which again says a lot about where the rest of 2012 will be heading in our spaces.
First off Jon is about as balanced as they come - even his compliments come with room for improvement weaved in. So I invite you to read his full post about the show so far - which again says a lot about where the rest of 2012 will be heading in our spaces.
Across the board, I think most people will tell you the event is working really well. The hallways are full with activity, the sessions are well attended, the content is great, and the breadth of subject matter is far too great for any human to consume.
My day was spent either in briefings or moderating, so I didn't have a chance to see any other sessions. It's too bad, since there's really strong content for me in tracks such as Cloud Communications, SIP Trunking, 4GWE, M2M - and others.
TMC Showcases the Top 40 "Newsmakers" at ITEXPO
February 2, 2012
There is a lot of news (product launches, new versions) being made at TMC's ITEXPO, some of which I've already covered (Digium, Xorcom)... ITEXPO has a record number of exhibitors that have unveiled new products and services at ITEXPO in Miami.
There have been many competing shows over the years, most notably VON, which suffered an untimely demise. ITEXPO and VON were the two best shows focused on VoIP and IP communications.
Rich Tehrani With ITEXPO Facts + Super Wi-Fi, M2M, StartupCamp & VC Funding
February 2, 2012Rich Tehrani gave some interesting ITEXPO facts during his keynote introductions. He also covered Super Wi-Fi, M2M, Facebook IPO causing new millionaires to fund new companies and StartupCamp, which in the past has had actually VCs in the audience write checks to startups after they gave their pitch / demo during StartupCamp. Watch the video:
