UBy David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Everybody’s Bach, a Deutsche
Grammophon collection of Bach pieces released this year:
The Oki Electric Industry Co. is announcing
that it’s delivered an IP telephony
system to Kobe Steel, Ltd. based on Oki’s IP telephony server, IP Convergence
Server SS9100.
Kobe Steel installed 2,000 units of Oki’s IP phones in its
Tokyo headquarters, according to Oki officials, and expects to expand to 15
locations to reach 10,000 IP telephony units throughout the country by the
fiscal year ending March 2009. If that happens it’ll be one of the largest IP
telephony systems in Japan.
NTT Communications Corp. took charge of the system
integration, and Kobelco Systems Corp. took charge of the total coordination.
First CoffeeSM realizes that Kobe Steel’s headquarters are in Tokyo,
not Kobe, but still, perhaps mindful of the terrible Kobe earthquake in January
of 1995, which cost thousands of lives and billions of yen in damages, disaster
considerations are built into the system: “In addition, even in a time of a
disaster when PSTNs restrictions apply to communications, outgoing calls can be
made via Kobe Center, which makes it a disaster-resistant system,” Oki
officials say.
Or maybe that’s a nationwide thing now, like New Zealand,
Japan’s earthquake-proof construction requirements are tight and strict.
…
First CoffeeSM’s tiring of the Siebel – salesforce.com game of announcing new customer wins in the
style of “Acme Anvils chose salesforce.com, NOT SIEBEL! HA HA! for their new…” so it’s
nice once in a while to see someone get the better of both of them. Ridgewood,
New Jersey-based SageCRM.com, a subscription-based, hosted CRM product aimed
at small and mid-sized companies is announcing “after completing a rigorous selection process, Shelko Consulting, LLC has selected SageCRM.com to be included in
its product line over Salesforce.com.”
Not that we really
need more of what a friend of First CoffeeSM calls “nyaah-nyaah”
marketing, which Salesboom seems to
be picking up on as well, you understand.
Sage is another comprehensive CRM product that lets your
sales, marketing and customer care professionals have fast, up to date access
to important information – the standard package – at a lesser cost than
Salesforce.com.
Aric Shelko, president of Shelko Consulting, LLC said choosing Sage lets their
clients “select an online, hosted CRM solution with the option to migrate their
database to an in house system as their company grows.”
Shelko Consulting? They do business software consulting, making their bread and
butter customizing and implementing accounting and CRM software systems for
small to mid-size companies in need of automation services.
Now everybody grow up.
…
Just passing this
along:
Intelligent Output
Solutions are announcing
that they’re “expanded their Sales Agent programme [sic] and are looking for seasoned sales staff to
promote and supply their extended range of document management, data
management, business communications and data security tools.”
Evidently Intelligent Output Solutions’ current Sales Agent
program “allows experienced salespeople to expand the range of solutions they
may already offer their clients and increase their revenues, without the cost
of managing the many vendor relationships or support costs usually associated
with these products.”
First CoffeeSM knows next to nothing about salespeak,
so better to reproduce the language wholesale to let those in the know pick out
the code words:
“Sales Agents work from their own premises… because they use
their own resources, the revenue share percentages are high to compensate for
their activities, and the ‘on target earnings’ (OTE) are highly attractive.”
The Sales Agent program includes the provision of training, sales collateral,
customer brochures, case studies, white papers and regular sales leads, all
backed up with constant marketing and an ever expanding portfolio of products.
Interested? Find out
more at the Sales Agent
Program site. Good luck.
…
True Corporation Plc, Thailand’s integrated
telecommunications vendor, has expanded its Internet backbone capacity and
availability, upgrading to a 10 Gigabits
per second network capacity, based on the deployment of equipment from
Cisco Systems. It’s part of True’s movement towards an IP Next-Generation
Network.
Using Cisco’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology, a first in
Thailand, the upgrade will improve True Internet’s (True’s subsidiary) performance,
availability and efficiencies.
Comes at a good time, too, Thailand’s broadband penetration
increased 421 percent from this time last year. Granted it’s still down there
with the likes of Mexico, Colombia and Peru in terms of actual broadband lines
per population, with something like one percent, but that is one of the highest
growth percentages in the world right now.
At the heart of the network upgrade are Cisco Catalyst 6500
Supervisor Engine 720-based 10 Gigabit Ethernet modules, supported across all
Cisco Catalyst 6500 chassis and interfaces so customers can run stuff like Internet
Protocol version 6, Multiprotocol Label Switching and network address
translation.
…
Huh? Oh, the highest is Slovakia, where broadband penetration’s growing at a rate of 640 percent from last year.
Next highest’d be Turkey at 615 percent
growth and about the same percentage hooked up, then there’s a pretty big drop-off
to Lithuania at 442 percent, Poland at 425 percent – all those
plumbers need something to do in their spare time when they’re not driving lazy
French people out of work – Thailand at 421 and South Africa at 340.
Not surprisingly all the high-growth countries
are at five percent or under penetration, low-growth places like Japan, Hong
Kong, the United States and Taiwan already have ten to twenty percent of the
population hooked up.
…
And as long as we’re keeping score here, according to a
report released on Wednesday profiled in Tom’s Hardware
Guide, more than 17 million people
around the world already use VoIP.
Skype is the market leader with an estimated 5.3 million
users.
“According to market research firm Point-Topic, the global
subscriber base of retail VoIP services more than doubled within the past nine
months. About five million consumers used such a service in mid-2004; at the
end of March this number was estimated to be 11.5 million. Counting in soft
phone services such as Skype, the current total comes to about 17.4 million,” Tom said.
Japan continues to be
the largest VoIP market with about 7.2 million retail VoIP users. Yahoo
Softbank serves the majority of these users.
After Japan, the American cable sector is numerically the
most important VoIP sector, with around 2.1 million subscribers. Point-Topic
says Vonage’s poaching voice customers from DSL customers contributed mightily,
as Vonage grew its subscriber base by almost 38 percent in the first 3 months
of 2005.
In Europe, France is the largest market for VoIP with a reported 1.2 million
subscribers.
Since Skype, the most popular soft client VoIP product, does not report user
numbers, Point-Topic said it is difficult to make conclusions on the service’s
market share.
If read off-site hit http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/
for the fully-linked version. First CoffeeSM accepts no sponsored
content. This means yours, too.
