A Refreshing Bit of News

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/

A Refreshing Bit of News

Happy New Year! My goodness but it feels like it has been weeks since I wrote this blog. Yet, I find myself wondering how to start off 2012. Although, it is a Wednesday, I do think I should share a little bit about my food adventures the last week of the year. First, I took what I call an eating vacation. My wife and I visited a different restaurant each day for lunch seeking new food ideas and places to enjoy. While we had pleasant meals, we found nothing uniquely pleasing. This led to me re-establishing a tradition of cooking a New Year’s Eve dinner just for us. The menu consisted of Oysters Rockefeller (freshly shucked oysters covered with seasoned spinach and Pernod, parmesan cheese and panko breadcrumbs. It is then roasted for 12-15 minutes at 425oF). Next was a my version of a Waldorf Salad made using toasted walnuts, grapes, thinly sliced celery, pear (instead of apple), mayonnaise, pomegranate vinegar (instead of lemon juice) topped with pomegranate seeds. The soup was She Crab Soup using homemade crab broth, whole milk, crab and tobiko caviar (flying fish roe). I used the tobiko because it is very difficult to find crab roe in Dallas. The pasta course was lobster ravioli (I made the pasta earlier in the day) served with a vodka tomato cream sauce. Moving from seafood, the next course was pan seared filet mignon with a Marsala wine and mushroom sauce served with crispy Yukon gold potato fries. Finally, I served a many layered Russian Honey cake with a rum and eggnog sauce (tis the holiday season). With dinner finally over, we rung in the new year at midnight and went to bed. So what was the recipe of the week? None of the above, as that would have taken too much time with all the measuring, ingredient tracking and keeping time and such. Sorry.  However, the most welcomed new treat this holiday season was a most refreshing Peppermint Ice Cream. Made with peppermint extract and a candy cane, it was readily accepted as a new flavor by my grandkids. Enjoy!

And now for the Refreshing News

After a 2011 that seemed to rebound from the slow equipment sales of 2009 and 2010, it looks like 2012 will be the year of Unified Communications, video conferencing and cloud computing. While Broadvox is investigating video solution to add to our product portfolio, we selected the Cisco HCS platform to succeed our awarding winning Unified Communications as a Solution (UCaaS) C4 IP solution. GO!UC joins our GO! product offering just as analysts are predicting Unified Communications to lead IT spending/investments for IT budgets. I say investing because 76% of companies implementing UC met or exceeded their ROI forecasts. Furthermore, implementing UC in conjunction with a transition to SIP Trunking only improved the ROI and delivered additional convergence features.

2012 will certainly be exciting for the IP community as innovation and growth are experience by our many partners and members of the IP ecosystem. Personally, I will continue to work towards advancing our industry and the success of our many partners. Join me here three days a week to learn about industry trends, the best marketing practices and more. I will do my best to educate, entertain and elucidate IP communications and food.



 

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