Chili Crab, Pepper Crab, the Heat is On

On Friday, I blogged that I would share with you one of my favorite recipes. Well, guess what. You are going to get two of them today. Although, my wife insists I am wasting my time with these, as she doubts anyone will make them. That may be true but it would also be too bad. As these are fantastic crab dishes and very easy to make. Granted, as a purist, I do go to an Asian market and buy my Dungeness crab live. It is the only way to control the flavor. If you buy pre steamed or boiled crab, the seller controls the flavor. Buying live and cooking fresh delivers the most punch. Anyway, on Sunday I made Singapore Chili Crab, Singapore's national dish, and Singapore Pepper Crab, a strong runner-up. In a previous job, I used to go to Singapore a lot and the restaurants along the East Coast Parkway serve an array of seafood consisting of shrimp, octopus, squid, fish, lobster and crabs. I haven't seen either the blue swimmer crab or mud crab in Dallas but I can always get fresh Dungeness crab. Once purchased, put them into the refrigerator for a bit and they will calm/slow down. It is then easier to split them in half for this dish. You will need to remove the large back shell before cooking. Normally, I only make one of these dishes at a time but Sunday, it seemed appropriate to make both. They are very different in flavor but share one thing in common. They are very messy to eat. So, bring on the crab with lots of napkins and enjoy Singapore Chili Crab and Singapore Pepper Crab.

The Heat is On

During the Broadvox Partner Summit Andre Temnorod was asked if the addition of GO!Hosted to our product offering was an indication that SIP Trunking was no longer a priority to Broadvox. His answer was a simple "No". However, I gather that many still believe that we are abandoning our efforts to promote SIP and SIP Trunking products. While the hosted market is growing well, we see SIP and SIP Trunking growing even faster. Moreover, with so many competitive open source IP PBX platforms, the cost of acquiring an IP infrastructure continues to drop every quarter.

Why then add a hosted offering? Why confuse your VARs by having both a premise based and hosted platform? Why risk alienating your OEMs by providing a service that competes with their PBXs?

The move to SIP amongst SMBs, enterprises and carriers is heating up. Recent announcements by Dell and RIM to offer SIP compatible phones further validate the expected growth of the market. Moreover, the ILECs are beginning to promote their SMB and enterprise SIP offerings. Keep in mind that Centrex and hosted IP PBX services are really the same thing, just using different technologies and branding. Broadvox wants all of our Partner Program members to be able to push their IP PBXs with a reliable and robust SIP Trunking product and their IP end-points, where necessary or desired by the prospect, with a reliable and robust hosted offering. Our projections are that 80% or more of our retail sales will be premise based for some time to come. Selling a hosted offering, for many of our VARs, will require additional training and changes to their business practices. That is not a decision to be taken lightly. If they need a hosted offering to close or win business, we have a highly competitive product. And that is the point.

For those of you interest in knowing more about the recent Partner Summit, check out the latest Broadvox eNewsletter.