Cisco Watch-Out

September 2, 2009 7:08 AM


Alan Sulkin, an experienced market watcher, has published his 2Q09 North American view on IP Telephony market shares, putting Cisco at #1 and Avaya and Nortel as #2 and #3 respectively.

According to Alan, Nortel + Avaya, if no other bidders submit bids by the end of the week, would be #1 with a combined 27% vs 21% share for Cisco.

A couple of other interesting points:

The market 'rebounded' by some 10%, a positive indicator of CIO mindsets on economic recovery.

This may be Alan's last IP Telephony share analysis as he argues that all PBXs support IP in some form and so the IP PBX designation is no longer relevant.

Continue Reading...

$14 for a cell phone

August 31, 2009 7:22 AM

But not here.

Vergatario.jpg

The 'vergatario' was launched by Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela.

And it's not just a phone but also a cell phone, a WAP internet device, and MP3 player and an FM radio.

It is the result of a collaboration between a Chinese company, ZTE, the designer of the phone, and a Venezuelan manufacturer... o yes and some creative branding by the latter.

600,000 will be manufactured this year.

It demonstrates that extermely price sensitive mass markets (not just Venezuela, but India, China and many others) will be served by the likes of Vergatario and its cousins, rather than pricey iPhones and Blackberries of our part of the world.

UC Reality Check

August 28, 2009 7:27 AM


Brent Kelly from Wainhouse Research is a straight shooter and does a great job laying out the UC landscape.

In the first part of his article, he points out that Microsoft is winning the UC seat and perception war (Nortel was right in their alliance with Microsoft), and that UC costs are increasingly untrackable and very difficult to compare.

In the second part, he talks extensively of the prospects of UC as a Service, a scenario that is becoming really interesting.

I would add that CIOs are still very confused by what UC is and how they should justify the investments, and questioning particularly how UC relates to social networking and the consumer effect in enterprise.


How about an on-line database of 2500, correction 250,000, medieval soldiers from the 14 and 15 century Britain.

There you can find that "Robert Fishlake served on three successive expeditions in 1378, 1379 and 1380, presumably in each case as an archer, before going on to give further service in Scotland and elsewhere, showing that archers might be just as professional in attitude and outlook as knights and esquires."

Fascinating stuff.


With only 5% of music downloads resulting in any cash exchange, copyright owners (artists, musicians, record studios and so on) are rightfully concerned.

But what to do? The French Government is taking a rather unique approach.

In France, there has been a raging debate over what is called the proposed 'three strikes law', whereby any Internet user observed as undertaking what are deemed illegal file transfers would be disconnected (on the third incident), UNILATERALLY.

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Hyperconnectivity By Mail

August 19, 2009 1:23 PM


Blogger Yoani Sanchez, 32, was recognized by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

The catch is that she runs her blog by mail, and never sees what she writes! You see she lives in Cuba where connectivity is very limited and blogging not encouraged (to say the least) by the current government. Her audience spans the globe but excludes Cuba.

Being hyperconnected sometimes requires extreme measures!

Hyperconnectivity- A Must Have?

August 17, 2009 8:42 AM



Google's My Location service allows you to search for "pizza take-outs" nearby without having to enter a specific location. It uses any information that would help, including GPS, WiFi AP's and IP addresses.

But it can go well beyond that!

In the future, will personal tracking become a requirement from your employer, insurance company, bank or whatever?

For example, your employer may want to know that the company car is only being used for business; or your car insurance rate may be dependent on not driving to work every day; or your bank may want to know where you are to avoid fraudulent use of your credit card. The list goes on.

Will Hyperconnectivity become a life requirement?

ZigBee will be in your home sooner rather than later.

ZigBee is a set of application and security standards that build on the physical and MAC layers defined in IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Its main application is for monitoring and control environments. This contrasts with Bluetooth, which is really a cable replacement technology, and WiFi which is a broadband mobility technology.

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Mike Z Out At Nortel

August 12, 2009 7:15 AM

Mike Z, the last CEO of Nortel, failed on three counts:
1) to rebuild a great company- instead he filed Chapter 11;
2) to re-emerge from bankruptcy- instead he undertook a sale of all its assets; and
3) to get maximum value for these assets- instead only one fourth of the company has been sold and that is under government review, and there is still no plan for getting maximum value from thousands of patents.

Employees, that have built the company and shown so much commitment to service and technology excellence over the years, have been left the task of turning off the lights.

Corporate greed has destroyed a great company and impacted employees, past and present, in so many ways. Very sad.

Continue Reading...

Mike Z Out At Nortel

August 12, 2009 7:15 AM

Mike Z, the last CEO of Nortel, failed on three counts:
1) to rebuild a great company- instead he filed Chapter 11;
2) to re-emerge from bankruptcy- instead he undertook a sale of all its assets; and
3) to get maximum value for these assets- instead only one fourth of the company has been sold and that is under government review, and there is still no plan for getting maximum value from thousands of patents.

Employees, that have built the company and shown so much commitment to service and technology excellence over the years, have been left the task of turning off the lights.

Corporate greed has destroyed a great company and impacted employees, past and present, in so many ways. Very sad.

Continue Reading...

Skype at 80

August 10, 2009 7:13 AM

I have used VoIP at work for over a decade, but I only recently downloaded Skype on my personal netbook.

The first call I received was from my 80-year old uncle in southern France. I knew he was on Skype because he had called his 94 year old sister in Canada on something she called 'Sky' though she had received the call on her land-line phone. He told me he didn't have ADSL but rather piggybacked on a friend's WiFi connection.

Continue Reading...

Smart Phones Are More Secure... But

August 7, 2009 8:00 AM

I heard on BBC's Digital Planet podcast, that, in 2008, there were 1 million malware incidents, but only 6 on cell smart phones! Unfortunately, the podcast is no longer available and the source wasn't cited.

This was given as an example of how secure smart phones have become.

At the same time, last week, Apple fixed a well-publicized security flaw in their iphone.

What's happening?

Well, the two most common smart phone architectures (Symbian and Blackberry) use a centralized architecture, which is easier to secure. Importantly, telephony is isolated from the data side.

The world is moving towards peer networking and VoIP, so security (I suspect) is not a permanent attribute of smart phones (unfortunately).

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Twitter for Objects

August 4, 2009 1:53 PM

But you thought it was only for people.

Well now you can use Twitter to track activity at the Tower Bridge in London.

Tower Bridge.jpg

For example, you could get a message such as
"I am opening for the MV Dixie Queen, which is passing downstream."

How about a Twitter message when your garage door is opened?

Seems like a Twitter world of endless possibilities.

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Alligator cloud.jpg

Cloud computing has been around for years, originally as timesharing..

But the difference this time is the wide-open Internet and the dominance of Windows-based computing.

Concerns range from protecting data privacy to inter-company collaboration.

Most of all, don't assume quick fixes or simple prescriptions.

What years of experience has taught us is that the answer will lie in a myriad of security products and capabilities.

Don't get bitten!

RFID Passports Insecurity

July 29, 2009 8:39 AM

Quite a scary story on how easy it is to snoop in on new Passports with RFID chips.

One should ask what were governments thinking in exposing their citizenry to identity theft in this fashion?

But the cat is out the door as Passport have a 5 or 10 year life and I can't imagine a recall once a more secure solution is developed.

Anyone with such a Passport, or driver's license or whatever, should consider a shielding envelope, as came with my US-Canada Nexus card.

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