About Me

Hello TMC Readers!

This is my first posting to introduce myself.  So here it goes:

I've been in the VoIP for more than a dozen years starting with VocalTec in 1995 -- the pioneering company in the industry.  During the past 9 years, I've led the marketing efforts at BroadSoft - the leading VoIP applications software company.

I've been fortunate to see the entire lifecycle of voice over IP (once called "Internet Telephony" and "IP Telephony").  I've primarily focused on the marketing aspect of VoIP but in a lot of capacities.  I started out in the consumer space with the first VoIP softphone, Internet Phone ("Talk for FREE over the Internet!).  Later, I helped with the launches of the first gateway and gatekeepers (a.k.a. softswitches) to market in addition to enterprise collaboration software (pre-NetMeeting) and Call Center software ("Surf&Call"). 

At BroadSoft, my focus has been on launching the VoIP applications layer, explaining on what this is, why this is important, and why BroadSoft had the best products and vision for how this would evolve.  In 9 years, we went from an idea and a dream to dominating the market with operations in 60 countries on 6 continents with nearly 300 service providers embracing BroadSoft as the standard.  It's an accomplishment I've very proud to have been a part of.

Some may say "so what?" - that and a few dollars will get you on the New York Subway (it's probably more than 2 bucks since I moved away 9 years ago now...).

I hope to share with the TMC readers my perspective on where the VoIP and the next-generation of telecom is going by leveraging my experience from the past 13 years of eating/sleeping/breathing where it has been.

And as the title of this blog suggests, I'll try to buck the conventional wisdom, going against the grain to provide a different perspective from the rest.

Since this is my first blog post, let me share some news with the community:  I'm leaving BroadSoft to start my own company.  The new venture is a service provider offering video telephony to consumers. 

I've watched the video market spit into 2 distinct camps: high-quality, high-priced video conferencing for the large enterprise market with large budgets and IT staffs; and lower-quality, free PC-based video calling that works fine but requires a bit of technical knowledge and inconvenience to make work.  I believe there is a big void in the middle for consumers to spend a modest amount but get easy-to-use, good quality video calling.

Here is an article I wrote with more detail on why I think the time is now for video calling:

http://www.ipbusinessmag.com/articles.php?issue_id=53&article_id=329

I've been using this technology for the past year and it works really well.  And after getting asked 20 times from observers how they could buy this service only to tell them that "they can't", I decided to put my money where my mouth is and try my hand at making it happen.

BroadSoft has been an absolutely wonderful experience for me.  But the start-up bug infected me again and as many of you know, there ain't no cure. 

So thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the posts to come.  If you have any opinions on video calling, I would love to hear all about it.

Regards,

Scott