In my honest opinion AOL ran screaming into this broadband telephony race with what would seem little or no pre-thought. Andy makes mention of Phone 2.0 being partially represented by AOL AIM Phoneline. I am not sure about Phone 2.0 but I do think they are on the right track and should stick with messaging. Hmm, didn't Google just buy $1B worth of AOL? Yes, I would say the softphone + IM strategy is better for AOL and they should pour more resources at that initiative. Vonage seems to be on the same page who look to be throwing a lot of resources towards their new V-phone product (a launch party for a USB softphone?? <ugh>).

For SMBs email, fax and calendaring are equally as important as Voice something I call SMB 2.0 (tongue firmly planted in cheek). Presence is also gaining some height on the hit list for Small and Medium Businesses, useful for click-to-call address books and alike.

We're looking for partners to share our vision for transforming the phone service and customer experience available to small and medium businesses.

To find out more about Shift's hosted VoIP partner program, please contact:

Vancouver
Matthew Campbell
778-329-4952

Calgary
Dan Astete
403-355-2729

Edmonton
Kristie Henderson
780-702-9109

There are a few job openings within the R&D department here at Shift, click here to see them all. Here is the latest opening...

Job Description:

Shift is the leading provider of Voice over IP (VoIP) phone services to the Canadian small and medium business market. Since inception Shift’s focus has been to combine enterprise-class technology with a uniquely customer-oriented approach to service and support. Shift trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "SHF". For more information please visit our website at http://www.shiftnetworks.com.


Responsibilities:

Engineers the support and maintenance of large-scale production networks and systems, including the design and development of tools and scripts to assist with such maintenance.

Integrates and/or consolidates servers and services between different business units and technologies, including the design and development of the necessary integration tools.

Designs, integrates, and maintains network services such as DNS, DHCP, SMB, SNMP, Radius, Kerberos, electronic mail, LDAP directories, IPSEC virtual private networks and firewalls applications.

Designs and develops high-performance groups of servers for resource-intensive network applications.

Designs archive and backup systems. Works closely with technical staff to insure that backup and archiving designs and procedures are implemented properly.

Plans and implements system security policy, to include firewalls, host and client access, file permissions, and user accounts.

Develops best practices, operational procedures and design documentation

Plans and coordinates system utilization, and performs growth analysis and capacity planning.

Reviews current systems and makes technical/process recommendations for improving efficiency.

Plans and to manages multiple projects.

Provides on-call support advice and technical support to various users/clients regarding operational/applications issues.

Installs and debugs new and/or upgraded software on server and client platforms.

Troubleshoots networks, systems, and applications to identify and correct malfunctions and other operational problems.

Stays up to date with relevant state-of-the-art technology, equipment, and/or systems. Evaluates new hardware and software technologies, and presents analysis and purchase recommendations to the administration team and to management.

Function collaboratively as part of a fast-paced, customer oriented team and perform effectively as an independent producer under broad management direction.

Rotational on-call responsibility.

Requirements:

7+ years of network engineering and systems administration experience in a large heterogeneous Windows/UNIX/Linux production environment is required.

Solid understanding of UNIX-based and LINUX operating systems - HP/Solaris and LINUX/Redhat strongly preferred

Experience with service oriented architecture, PHP, J2EE and JSP is essential, e.g., JBOSS, Apache Tomcat, etc.

Significant experience with and understanding of LDAP, TCP/IP, NFS, DHCP, SMB, SNMP, etc.

Superior communication skills in working with technical and non-technical people and the ability to develop and maintain collaborative relationships among all levels of an organization.

Excellent organizational and time/task management skills are required.

Experience with business collaboration tools such as Outlook, Excel, Visio, MS Project essential.

A Bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent work experience is required

Technical knowledge and experience in any of the following is highly desirable:

- Kernel
- Network services
- Network-attached storage devices such as Network Appliance Filers.

We are now building a talented web applications team in beautiful Vancouver British Columbia and our first order of business is to hire a kick-butt Web Apps Team Lead.

Work for an ultra-cool new era communications company and build some of the coolest web apps on the planet in one of the most beautiful settings on earth - Vancouver! Less than 30 minutes from incredible skiing, snowboarding, hiking, mountain biking and more, Vancouver is THE place for the outdoors enthusiast. It also has a great music scene!

Interested? Email me: elagerway@gmail.com

We all knew this was going to happen, as it has happened in the past (Dial Pad of old for example) when VoIP made it's first commercial appearance.

The closer we get to end to end IP we will see more free services like this, but Michael has delivered service over the last mile. This is historically where the telcos live, Gizmo is sure to get some attention for this move.

In some ways Michael is taking the Skype approach. By this I mean that if a user wants to access this free calling they will need to download and use Gizmo to make the call. A great way to build a user base past what they already have.

Many of us want to make calls from a cell phone but still use the Gizmo / SIPphone network. If they could find a way to do this without me having to dial toll free or local access numbers first I would use it daily.

The Press Release.

While building Xten (now Counterpath), I was exposed to many business plans and product strategies that were years in the making. Many of the carriers’ softphone plans were focused on the Enterprise. Near the end of my time there I saw a shift towards the SMB. Now some of the largest operators on the planet are integrating softphones, Outlook plug-ins, browser toolbars, and SDKs that enable rich IP Communications on SMB and Enterprise user’s desktops. We have come a long way since NetMeeting although it took a while before we actually saw the same features in SIP that H.323 applications could offer. If you think about it, NetMeeting was a pretty good app for its time, offering a fairly complete SDK and let’s not forget the “callto:” html tags which Skype, and others, have since used as their own.

EL: Robert, where are we with SIMPLE today, is it nearing a useful state?

RjS: Definitely. The good news is that SIMPLE is primarily a done deal from a standards perspective. We have long finished the core parts of the protocol. The Working Group still exists and is active. With a couple of exceptions most of our work now is simply taking the last crumbs of the meal. The exceptions are to do with some ongoing work in putting together the last of the framework that’s needed for a user of SIMPLE to be able to tell a service provider what their preferences are on how people can reach them.

EL: What will partial updates for XCAP mean to the users?

RjS: The best way to look at that would be talk about a couple of use cases. We currently have the technology to reproduce a classic Instant Messenger not unlike Yahoo!, MSN, AOL and that has been in place for a while. The work that we are doing right now will allow the user to say additional things apart from the typical status messages like “At lunch” or “On the phone”.

More here: Read the entire article

Andy ponders the reason for the purchase and delivers, as usual, a great summary on the transaction. He speculates that this buy will provide technology that eBay can own as opposed to license.

"We exceeded our subscriber target for the first quarter and booked over one million dollars in contracted revenues in a quarter for the first time. We've also launched Shift in our third major western market, Vancouver, western Canada's largest market. Vancouver just opened in late March and over 10% of our new subscribers signed this quarter are Vancouver clients," comments Trent Johnsen, Shift President and CEO.

Shift Press Release

Analyst Perspective - Session 3 - Optical Stocks (13 mins)


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analyst-perspective-cisco-om-malik.mp3

VON Canada - I've been to the edge...

Fellow blogger Om does a good job of summarizing yesterday's Lucent Alcatel announcement. Our analyst Angelo and I have been speculating what this will do to the market, check out the podcast for some Wall Street perspective.

Looks like Alec is at it again, braking all the laws of physics going against mother nature and generally just messing with people's heads. Just kidding. But he is doing some cool stuff with IAX.

For the more than 250,000 Asterisk IP-PBX installations around-the-world, getting the right phone call, at the right time, and on the right device just got easier thanks to iotum. Today, at VON Canada in Toronto, iotum announced the beta availability of the iotum Asterisk integration module; two relevance-enabled call management applications for Asterisk and a rich new set of developer API’s.

Analyst Perspective - Session 2

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voip-analyst-03-31-06-final.mp3

I will be presenting alongside Jon Arnold at VON Canada (on the SMB - The IP Market Opportunity session) this year and Trent Johnsen (Shift CEO) will be on the Show Me The Minutes - Voice Over Broadband panel.

Fellow bloggers, Alec Saunders is giving an Industry Perspective and Mark Evans, speaking, recently pointed to Skype's pending lawsuit as reasoning for their VON Canada with drawl and we already knew that Vonage wasn't participating, they weren't at Spring VON either.

Apparently Shaw has decided not to participate either as I do not see them on the speakers roster nor on the exhibit floor. I am not surprised, in conversation with one of their CSRs (trying to upsell me to Shaw Digital Voice) it was clear to me that they do not want to be associated with VoIP, even though they are doing POTs replacement using VoIP. VON or Voice On the Net show participation would potentially blow their cover.

This is the second half of the first session. The original posting is listed directly below this posting.

VoIP-Analyst-Perspective-1b.mp3 (Part 2)

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I have somehow managed to convince Angelo Liberatore to join me once a week for a podcast that we call "Analyst Perspective". Angelo will be reporting on current market activity surrounding VoIP and related technology.

In order to kick off this new podcast Angelo and I took the opportunity to talk about Spring VON '06 and some of the companies that were there.

We talk about the reality of IMS and how the various players are positioning for this. We comment on Nortel's current situation and how the Lucent / Alcatel merger will affect the market. This podcast is quite diverse and covers a great deal of ground. I have broken the segment into to parts for easier downloading and listening. Part 2 of this segment will follow soon.

Every week, starting today, you can look forward to the Analyst Perspective. Next Monday we will have a little more structure. Angelo will be reporting on specfic companies topics and we will try and keep it under 15 minutes. We hope you enjoy listening in as we peel the layers back on some of the industry's most interesting companies.

VoIP-Analyst-Perspective-1a.mp3 (Part 1)

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When it comes to Internet phone services for small to medium businesses, Trent Johnsen sees his Alberta-based company Shift Networks as the barbarians at the gate of the major telephone and cable companies.

And, as of today, Shift -- which previously only offered voice over IP (VoIP) service to firms in Calgary and Edmonton -- arrives in Vancouver, the home territory of telco giant Telus.

Shift's intent, over time, said Johnsen, the company's CEO, is to become the WestJet of the telecom industry with the company's offering of $25-a-seat-per month VoiP service to firms with from five to 200 phones.

Fellow blogger Carolyn Schuck recently quoted Andy and I in a published article in the San Jose Business Journal...

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2006/03/27/story6.html?page=2