Something miraculous happens when I travel to the West Coast. All the travel companies advertising sunny California probably shudder when they hear that I'm heading out this way. I bear clouds. I bring rain when I travel to San Diego. I bring clouds to Anaheim. I grey out the skies over Santa Barbara. I interrupt tanning at Venice Beach. I don't mean to do this, but I do. I'm sorry.

So here I am, in not-so-sunny San Jose, gearing up for the VoIP Developer Conference. Grabbing a moment to check my e-mail I came across an announcement from Excel Switching, a Silver sponsor of the event.

Excel plans to showcase their new 1010 AnyGen platforms.

The platforms are designed to provide application developers with scalable signaling gateways, media servers and media gateways that all leverage a common graphical management environment. The 1010 platforms expedite IP and TDM network convergence across both fixed and mobile networks and speed service deployment of profitable and innovative applications. Excel’s SwitchKit software tools offer a set of Web-based OA&M tools plus an advanced develop environment that supports call control plus IN (MAP, CAMEL, INAP and AIN) and IP (SIP and H.323) signaling. In addition, through its partnership with Vocalocity, a provider of VoiceXML and SALT software, Excel hopes to enable developers to leverage VoiceXML and an easy-to-use service creation environment for rich speech-enabled and IVR-based applications. The company figures that the combination of Excel and Vocalocity should further speed time to market while reducing development and operational expenditures for both application developers and service providers.

This is just one example of the important industry news you can find on the Exhibit Hall floor at VoIP Developer Conference. If you happen to be in the area, come on down to the DoubeTree Hotel in San Jose, and drop by the show. It'll be worth your while.

Wait! Stop the presses!!! ... I think the sun is coming out...

Will wonders never cease?