Verizon's DROID, Blue Coat Systems, Elster in Ecuador, SPOTbuild

David Sims : First Coffee
David Sims
| CRM, ERP, Contact Center, Turkish Coffee and Astroichthiology:

Verizon's DROID, Blue Coat Systems, Elster in Ecuador, SPOTbuild

In an announcement sure to tingle the legs of Star Wars aficionados everywhere, Verizon Wireless has announced that the limited edition DROID R2-D2 by Motorola will be available online and in select Verizon Wireless Communication stores beginning Sept. 30, 2010.
 
So if you see a line of people outside Verizon stores, and you wonder why none of them look like they get out much, that's why.
 
With a graphic design to look like the iconic Astromech Droid from the Star Wars Saga, Verizon officials say, the DROID R2-D2 by Motorola will be packaged in a custom box resembling carbonite and come with a Star Wars media dock and wired stereo headset.
 
Yes, men over the age of 40 will want this. They will purchase this. They will expect you to share in the joy with them the next time you have an IT question and can't avoid them.
 
Read more here.
 
...
 
Never let it be said TMC doesn't span the globe to bring you the news you need. This is your New Zealand-based reporter checking in with news from Ecuador that Elster has announced that Electrica de Guayaquil, the largest electric utility in Ecuador, has selected the Elster EnergyAxis Smart Grid for one of South America's first two-way advanced metering infrastructure deployments.
 
EDG, Elster officials say, "will rely on Elster's EnergyAxis to accelerate its billing process, more quickly respond to customer requests and reduce commercial losses."
 
EDG provides electric power services to more than 550,000 residents across Ecuador. For the initial phase of its Smart Grid project, company officials say, the utility "will deploy the Elster EnergyAxis to more than 4,500 residential, commercial and industrial locations to enable remote meter reads, and will deploy more than 250 low voltage AGI nodes for load balance."
 
The two-way AMI deployment should let EDG remotely connect/disconnect service using Smart Meters, reduce its time-to-response to customer service requests and gain real-time access to meter data to accelerate the billing process from 10 days down to one day. That's the hope, anyway.
 
Read more here.
 
...
 
Blue Coat Systems, which works the Application Delivery Networking side of the street, has introduced the BlueTouch Cornerstone service offering, which company officials describe as "a service that provides an approach to optimizing investments in Blue Coat appliances."
 
The BlueTouch Cornerstone service provides an assigned customer contact for service account management and operational and technical support that includes proactive technical reviews, preventive action plans and best practice recommendations. So, if that's the kind of thing you were looking for, check it out.
 
A couple weeks ago TMC reported that Blue Coat andAlcatel-Lucent announced a "multi-year, global strategic reseller agreement to bring web caching and content delivery to service providers worldwide."
 
Under the terms of the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will sell Blue Coat products, including Blue Coat ProxySG and CacheFlow appliances, to Alcatel-Lucent customers worldwide, including tier-one telcos, managed service providers, regional ISPs and mobile operators.
 
Read more here.
 
...
 
Hey we like this company, Interact, with its SPOTbuild platform. Any company with a product named Spot that uses a dog in their company image is okay by us. We'll try to work the word "fetch" in the article somewhere as well.
 
"Why tie-up valuable resources and capital writing VoiceXML/CCXML applications by hand when Interact Incorporated can provide you with a cost effective, time saving alternative?" SPOTbuild officials reasonably ask, adding that SPOTbuild is "Interact Incorporated's graphical service creation environment for the design and deployment of calls flows and voice applications."
 
In traditional VoiceXML/CCXML application development, SPOTbuild officials say, the task of building call flows and applications "has fallen on highly skilled application programmers." Guys who know what they're doing. But Interact's SPOTbuild has been designed so "virtually any user," which, politely, means "you," can operate, design, build and deploy applications "without needing to write a single line of code."
 
Read more here.


Featured Events