"I sense a shift in the force." As most in the VoIP blogosphere already knew, Eyeball Networks, a developer of VoIP and video telephony software for service providers and device manufacturers, hired Eric Lagerway, as their Chief Operating Officer. Eric runs the popular SIPthat.com VoIP blog and was formerly with Xten, another softphone company. TMC Labs did one of the first, if not THE first review of Eyeball Networks product back in 2001, which you can check out here.

Eric has always been a big proponent of open-standards and he promised me that he will push Eyeball Networks in that direction. Admittedly, Eric stated that Eyeball Chat is still proprietary but "before Xmas this year it will be SIP and open standards through and through." Part of my role here is to instill open standards and new product strategies. In fact, Eric told me that Eyeball produces a full SDK and Communications Server with SIP, SIMPLE and XMPP. Eric stated, "Eyeball's VoiP and video software is awesome, with SIP already integrated I will be bringing some other cool features as a new product strategy which I think it would greatly enhance the offerings..."

"Erik is one of the pioneers in VoIP software," said Eyeball CEO Chris Piche of Lagerway, who co-founded Xten Networks, where he served as President and Chief Operating Officer. "His vision for VoIP technology helped create an entire industry that is transforming many parts of our lives. We are honored to welcome Erik to Eyeball."

Lagerway will continue his leadership in the VoIP community, and help Eyeball deliver products that enable the next generation of VoIP services, developing solutions to issues like call completion, call quality, and VoIP spam.

Check out www.eyeball.com/news/images.html for video sound bites from Erik Lagerway about this announcement.

Eric looks to do big things with Eyeball Networks and if he can repeat the success he had at Xten, I will have to keep my eye on Eyeball (pun intended) to see if Eyeball can overtake Xten, Gizmo, Skype, Google Talk, and all the others. A mighty challenge for Erik that would be a shift in the force indeed...