Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

PBX

Twitter Exchange on Arbitrage

June 15, 2009

This will be a strange post but Alex Balashov and I had a Twitter exchange today about the telecom industry and its relentless pursuit of arbitrage plays. From long distance to calling card to SIP trunking, it's all about changing the bucket of minutes for something cheaper so someone can make some short change coin. Kind of ridiculous.

I asked where the Purple Cows are. Where's the HD Voice in my Hosted PBX?

VoIP Is Taking Off

June 7, 2009

The financial activity in the ITSP sector that I am seeing leads me to believe that the ITSP sector is taking off.
Although there have been analysts who think that IP Lines will slow down, I have to think that in the economic reality we are facing, the distributed workforce, the tele-worker, and the mobility of employees, more and more lines will move to VoIP. For cost savings as well as productivity reasons. 

If lines do slow down it will be due to the following reasons:
  • layoffs - less employees = less lines needed
  • mobility means less landlines needed
  • email, social networks, IM/chat, texting is replacing phone calls.
  • over all trend for less phone calls.
There are so many reasons for small and medium businesses (and self-employed persons) to migrate to VoIP that I don't see it being stagnant for long. 

Who to go with?
The one issue is the share number of VoIP Providers (with little differentiation) makes the decision difficult for the business owner. 

Premise versus Hosted
The premise hardware guys are selling their gear as if it was hosted at your site. Many business owners aren't familiar with having such a significant communication service outsourced (off property). It's a strange concept to wrap your head around.








The Ultimate Hosted VoIP Service

April 29, 2009

What's the perfect VoIP Service?

I have seen so many VoIP Providers, I can't keep track. But that also means that the VoIP providers are not doing a very good job of Messaging, Positioning and Differentiating their offerings.

The only VoIP provider I know that has married Hosted Exchange with Broadsoft is Simple Signal. It makes sense to me because what is UM (unified messaging) but voicemail to email - everything in one box.

Google Voice does it as well. One inbox for Gmail and Google Voice.





Hosted VoIP Can Save You Money

April 21, 2009

If you Google VoIP save money, there are a million hits. There is the article, "How to Save Money with VoIP Service" with 5 lame tips. VoIP News has one titled, "15 Ways to Use VoIP to Save Money During the Downturn", that lists ways to use different vendors for differing free services based on VoIP. VoIP News has another one which asks, "Will VoIP Really Save You Money?" The answer of course is yes.

IT versus PBX

April 20, 2009

If a business is moving to UC, how does the decision get made on the platform?

In many cases, the IT Administrator has some responsibility for the phone system (even if that means he calls the PBX vendor). When the IT Admin is tasked with replacing the phone system, what goes into that decision?

Certainly, if the admin is Cisco certified, he will be leaning towards a move to Cisco Call Manager. You don't get fired for buying Cisco. You also go with what you know.  If the admin is an MCSE, he may lean towards an OCS solution.



What the Heck is UC and UD?

April 20, 2009

Talking to a channel exec this morning about UC. There isn't really a clear definition of UC. When you speak to UC companies like Altitude, the UC is about the contact center, first call resolution, and unified desktop. To me, first call resolution is a business process management (BPM) issue.

7 Steps to Better SIP Security on Asterisk by JT

March 30, 2009

John Todd is an Asterisk evangelist and works for Digium. VoIP Users Conference reposted John's 7 steps to better SIP Security on Asterik (here). The reason for the 7 steps now?
"In the last few months, a number of new tools have made it easy for knuckle-draggers to attack and defraud SIP endpoints, Asterisk-based systems included.

Acredo Lays Off Staff

March 16, 2009

This morning on Twitter, it was announced that Hosted VoIP company, Acredo, had laid off all its staff. Acredo is the second Hosted PBX player in Orlando to axe its staff in the past few weeks. VOX also laid off most of its staff, while waiting for a big deal to close, which is supposed to be its savior.

We are entering the time when there will be a parring down of the 1000+ companies offering VoIP. The majority of users have migrated to cable digital voice service due mainly to the bundle, the price, the Quality of Service, the name brand, and the large advertising campaigns.

Acredo was Avaya based and not inexpensive.



An Excel-lent SUTUS Bundle for SMB's

March 2, 2009

SUTUS, the maker's of the Business Central 200 office-in-a-box, have announced inter-operability with Excel SIP Trunking.  The real news for the marketplace is that Excel and SUTUS (along with Polycom) are bundling a system for small business.

The Business Central 200 is developed specifically for businesses of up to 25 employees, Sutus Business Centralâ„¢ comprises a wide array of advanced telephony, data and networking functions. It includes a business-class phone system, file server, email server, router, firewall, wireless access point, VPN remote access server, and automated backups. It has the ability to simultaneously support both standard phone line and VoIP connections and comes with an array of business productivity features.

6 Questions when Choosing a VoIP Provider

February 19, 2009

If you are a channel agent or a VAR or a service provider looking for a VoIP Provider to be your VoIP provider, there are 6 questions to think about:
  1. Do you want to White Label, wholesale or a retail package?
  2. Will you be serving consumers or businesses?
  3. Will it be POTS replacement or Hosted PBX?
  4. Will you be selling PBX, phones and other hardware?
  5. Do you want to do Tier 1 support?
  6. How will you sell it? (Or do you have a sales team?)
While many ITSP's (Internet Telephony Service Providers) can do all of it - white label, wholesale, retail, hosted PBX, analog replacement - it is difficult for each to excel at all of that. And you don't want to get half way down the road to have your vendor shift gears and the wheels fall off.

Support is key because "the blinking light" syndrome means that you will be getting calls about "how do I do that?" or "why can't I dial long distance?" So it's good to define responsibilities (and what is Tier 1 support).

Why know your market? Because most ITSP's have not designed an offering to compete against Vonage, Magic Jack or the cable companies.




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