September 2005 Archives

Telecommunications & Software Industry

Erik's history in software, VOIP and IP Communications goes back more than 11 years now. As the CTO for Shift Networks (http://shiftnetworks.com), Erik is responsible for identifying, sourcing and delivering next generation SMB communications applications. Essentially Erik owns the R&D department at Shift.

Before Shift Networks, Erik was the COO for Eyeball Networks. Erik redefined the product marketing strategy and lead a team of software engineers on new product execution. Knowing the VoIP and IM landscape well Erik redesigned the Eyeball Chat client into the Eyeball Messenger.

Prior to Eyeball Erik Founded and served as President/COO at Xten Networks (now Counterpath - OTCBB:CTPS).(Public Company; 40+ employees)

At Xten Erik was responsible for daily operations (Product Strategies, Marketing, Sales and Engineering) and conceptualizing the features and functionality for Xten products and identifying the best market opportunities. Erik designed the softphone products and go-to-market strategies. He was instrumental in growing Xten from 3 to 40+ people and bringing the company from conception/zero revenue to more than 3 Million in sales on award-winning product in less than 2 years. Xten customers acquired during Erik's stay include Yahoo!, Vonage, Deutsche Telekom and 55+ carriers, OEMs, and Portals. Erik's understanding of the VoIP industry and his ability to uncover opportunities in the market provided Xten with the perceived lead in the industry for SIP softphones and contributed greatly to Xten winning 6 industry awards.

Before Xten, Erik was the CEO and founder of Vocalscape Communications Inc., a Canadian VoIP and eCRM start-up. Vocalscape went from 3 people in Erik's basement to 30 people in 2 years winning several technology awards and obtaining many technology research grants from the Canadian government. The company was eventually bought.

Most of you will know that I have just recently moved my blog to TMC but for those of you who are not aware you can read my text and audio podcast archives from the last couple of years here:

http://sipthat.com

Here is a good article on standards, based on UK business primarily but it hits home. Excerpt.. Yet the evolution of VoIP will follow a predictable path. It's all about the money. Because the incremental cost of adding VoIP to broadband is effectively zero, broadband users are migrating to VoIP in droves. For a while, there will be revenues from PSTN gateways — but not for ever: the cost of using VoIP on broadband is actually zero, so the existing users will draw more people into broadband subscriptions. Eventually, it will become cheaper for BT to service the remaining PSTN customers with a broadband connection and VoIP disguised — and billed — as an ordinary telephone. For telephony, the digital switchover will be complete. more..

Several days ago Chris Pirillo and I had conversation about the various IM clients out there and the one that that really pisses Chris and I off is the lack of interop. Open standards of course would be the best way to solve this but as Chris mentions in the interview it will be a while before this happens across the board. According to Chris, it would seem that he thinks the second best alternative is a hybrid client that can connect to these other proprietary networks ie. Yahoo, AOL , MSN and maybe Skype but also complies with open standards like SIP and SIMPLE and/or XMPP. Well, I don't know of ANY client that does all of this today but if there were one that was reliable and feature-rich I would download it in a second. I am getting really sick of running 4 IM clients. Hmmm, maybe I am on to something here

With Avaya's purchase of Nimcat and eBay's purchase of Skype I think it's obvious that P2P VoIP is one hot topic with investors and press lately. Something that surprises me is the lack of Video in these offerings. Neither Skype nor Nimcat offer video. Yes, Skype has said it is working on Video but it would seem as though the technology needs work. At the recent VON show Niklas Zennstrom was supposed to make his keynote via Skype's new video component but it failed and hence no keynote. I think P2P VoIP has merit but in order for it to really take off it must be standards-based and offer all the features. If 2004 was the year of VoIP maybe 2005 is the year of P2P VoIP.

It looks like the CRTC made the right move lately by denying the incumbents lower price handicaps over the newer VoIP offering e.g. Vonage. This is great news for consumers and could very well spur innovation due to the stage that has been set here. Combine that with the Telus strike and we might see some interesting new consumer trends. More...

More proof that P2P VoIP is hot right now and getting hotter, first Skype now Nimcat. Should be interesting to see how this P2P landscape shapes up. Excerpt from National Post: "Embedding communications intelligence directly in the endpoints rather than the network will enable enterprises to implement streamlined peer-to-peer IP communications quickly and cost-effectively." The nimX software includes the most frequently used telephone features such as voice mail, conferencing and auto-attendant. "All that is required for installation is to plug the IP phones into the same data network used by office personal computers," Avaya said.

VON was such a huge success for eyeball we decided to roll with punches and continue on to NYC to paste a few more zeros on our revenue numbers for the quarter. On the way a funny thing happened. In order to conserve some time our very patient CEO, who was driving at the time, decided that total gridlock was completely unacceptable and quickly found a solution in the emergency lane. Our driver thought it was very fitting for us to be in the emergency lane since we indeed had an emergency. Afterall, if we did not make our numbers this quarter someone was surely going to pay for it. The adventure was cut short when a police cruiser jumped in behind us at which time we proptly got back into the right lane. The cop was unimpressed to say the least but then things took a twist... when our CEO told the officer that the emergency was that we had to race to our next appointment or the next floater that was to turn up in the East River would closely resemble a certain sales person the officer was clearly flabbergasted. He was so beside himself he simply sped off muttering obscenities. If that wasn't funny enough, not more than 3 minutes later we spotted the cruiser pulling over another victim. Based on the cavity search posturing of the cop I would say this second group did not have quite as good an excuse for driving in that lane. It happenend over an hour ago, we are still driving and I am still laughing.

Security is a hot topic these days and Anti-SPAM solutions even hotter. Yesterday Eyeball networks released their Anti-SPIT server as the newest addition to their product lignup. One of the FEW Anti-SPIT solution available today, perfect for Carriers, MSOs and New Era IP Communications providers. The Press Relese

I am very happy to be joining Eyeball as COO and think this private BC company is in an excellent position to do some great things in the SIP endpoint and IM server market. The technology along with the customer list is very impressive indeed. My job here will be to spur innovation, drive product strategies, assist in the adoption of open standards and reinvigorate various marketing efforts. Something that really excites me about Eyeball is the quick turn-around on engineering projects and the number of devices we support today. Software for set-top boxes (Linux and embedded Linux), PCs, Pocket PCs with both voice & video today! As for VON, we expect the show to be very good for us and we will be announcing some important news regarding VoIP security tomorrow. Stay tuned! The Press Release: http://eyeball.com/news/pr/erik_lagerway_eyeball.html Anyone interested in having a business meeting with me regarding eyeball should email me: [email protected]. Thanks Tom!, Andy, Om.

I am on my way to VON and events in the past couple of days have me very excited. I will be wearing a different shirt for this show and other shows as it would seem that my independent consulting days are over for the foreseeable future. Since the press release will not be hitting the streets until Monday morning I can't really say too much today but I will say this, it's going to be FUN!

I have been an advocate of Video Blogging for a while now and I sincerely think that vlogging is the catalyst we need to bring independent film makers right into your living room. Today you will find a wide assortment of crappy (crappy to me might not be crappy to someone else) home videos out there but there are also a few very well put together Vlog Programs or Vlogcasts, as I like to call them, which I watch regularly. Rocketboom is decent and maybe not always be rich with content I would like to watch but it offers something different that I find appealing. Hmm, maybe it's the uncensored tell like it is attitude? At any rate, set-top's like Akimbo will become more and more popular as time goes on. Our media is changing rapidly and the advertising mantra of days gone by are slipping by the wayside. If you want to get involved check out Vloggercon, Videoblogging.info and Freevlog.org. It's your media after all!

VoIP Security is quickly becoming a major concern. In this episode I spoke with Andrew Graydon over at Borderware, also Chair of the Security Requirements Committee within VoIPSA. We talked about SIP security, identity theft, SPAM, SPIT, SPIM and what the industry is doing about it. http://sipthat.com/mp3/Future-of-Vo IP/Andrew-Graydon-Borderware-VoIP-Security.mp3 Subscribe to the Podcast
Andrew Graydon is currently Chair of the Security Requirements Committee within VoIPSA, the industry's first Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Security Alliance. VOIPSA is an open group of leading VoIP vendors, providers, security researchers, and thought leaders with the purpose of improving the public awareness of issues and best practices for security and privacy of Voice over IP. In his role, Andrew and the Security Requirements Committee are tasked with defining security requirements across the wide spectrum of the VoIP ecosystem including individual VoIP building blocks, supporting security technology components (SBCs, Firewalls, etc.), architecture and network design (NAT, VPN, port security, etc.), network management, and end point access and authentication. In addition to his position on VoIPSA, Andrew is also the CTO at Borderware, where he is responsible for leading the technology innovations at the company, ensuring their position as a leader in the messaging security field. Bringing his technical expertise and years of working worldwide with customers and technical communities, his vision, energy and enthusiasm drive BorderWare products to being the best-of-breed in messaging security. Prior to BorderWare, Andrew was the V.P. Customer Engineering at Wysdom, a privately held company which pioneered the Software Delivery Platform for wireless devices, allowing wireless telcos to enable their internal infrastructure for secure delivery of functionality to external developers. In this role he helped to internally define the technology and concepts while working with the customers and the technical community. In his previous position as Director, Development with Origins Software Company, a startup in Boston bought by Wysdom, he architected the product and led the development team for ActiveBlueprints, a fourth generation development environment for generating N-tiered application code for mobile devices from graphical design flow diagrams. Andrew holds a B.Sc(Hons) from Dublin City University, Ireland, in Applied Physics with specializations in Computational and Mathematical Physics.

Skype, GoogleTalk, Gizmo, and now MSN Messenger recognize why GIPs has a reputation for superior voice quality processing software. I thought it was about time we talked to the CEO of the perceived market leader. Mr. Hermansen talks about where they are focused today and also what they will be announcing shortly which includes a Video engine, whoa! Global IP Sound has been powering Skype's voice virtually since the beginning, hear what Gary has to say about their revenues, product announcements, market penetration and future goals...this is GOOD stuff! http://sipthat.com/mp3/Future-of-VoIP/Gary-Hermans en--CEO-GIPS.mp3 Subscribe to the Podcast
Gary Hermansen, President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Hermansen brings to Global IP Sound over 20 years of sales and business experience from the telecommunication, Internet and semiconductor industries. In addition to his experience as CEO of Brightmail, Mr. Hermansen was President and General Manager of Glenayre Consumer Products and held senior positions at Wireless Access, Cypress Semiconductor and Intel.

Jon Arnold and I had a good conversation about IP communications from a Canadian blogger perspective. It's cool, check it it out! http://vonradio.pulver.com/podcasts/VONradi o-jon_arnold_erik_lagerway.mp3 Subscribe to the Podcast