A Bold and Rich Choice

This was another weekend where I knew the recipe of the week on Friday. We had some finger foods on both Saturday and Sunday for watching the football games. Although, my wife and I enjoyed every bite of Sunday’s finger food, crispy sweetbreads and garlic fries, it would not be typical for most football fans. Consequently, I am presenting a dish I made last week as the recipe of the week. Last weekend I made Osso Buco or Bucco and having thought I had given the recipe before, I shared a German cabbage dish with you. After I posted the blog I looked for the osso buco recipe only to discover, I never wrote it down. Since osso buco and beef short ribs share a lot in terms of how they are prepared, I could say use the short rib recipe substituting beef shanks and that would taste very good. However, I will share what I call my restaurant style recipe versus family style. Family style is where the original vegetables are placed in a blender to thicken the sauce or they are strained and fresh vegetables are cooked with the meat in the final 30-45 minutes and then served as part of the sauce. For this recipe the vegetables are strained out and the sauce thickened with a roux. The shanks are then served over mashed potatoes, turnips, couscous or other starch along with the delightfully beefy sauce. One other big difference was to use Murphy’s Irish Stout Beer instead of red wine which created a very bold and rich sauce. I liked that so much, it may become my favorite way of making the dish. Anyway, Osso Buco, the recipe of the week. Enjoy!

Broadvox and Cypress Communications become One

Last Friday the merger between Broadvox and Cypress was concluded. It means a lot to us as part of our strategy to deliver better solutions and maintain our position as a market leader. Just a week or so ago, ABI Research generated its list of top ten Hosted VoIP and Unified Communications (UC) Service Providers. While I could quibble over the makeup of the list, I am most proud that Cypress was in the top five joining the likes of Verizon Business and AT&T. It is this type of recognition and technical prowess that gives the merger its reason. Together, Broadvox and Cypress will be much stronger in the marketplace, better able to meet the growing requirements of a UC solution and to compete against the other major players.

The merged company will be called Broadvox. The merger press release offers a few details regarding the merger. As the week progresses other details will emerge and I will share them with you early next week. In the meantime, we have completed a bold and rich move that will positively affect the IP community and ecosystem. We will have a larger VoIP/SIP Trunking network that is MPLS enabled. This will benefit our VARs, customers and technology partners. We will have more resources in customer service and technical support which as a rapidly growing SIP Trunking service provider we need. And we will have industry leading UC platforms to address SMBs and Enterprises.

Broadvox has quadrupled in size in just three and half short years. That is an amazing feat during these economic times. I offer sincere thanks to our customers, partner program members, technology partners, media partners, employees and management team. It is proving to be one heck of a ride.