November 2005 Archives

Reading ABI Research's release today, "BPL May Boost Utilities' Bottom Line, says ABI Research," I was reminded of one of the possible benefits of Broadband over Power Lines, that is, from the point of view of the electric utility providing the service.

Naturally, power companies like the idea of offering broadband over existing grids, just as a way of making money by offering a new service. But ABI's report highlights another benefit of the technology, in that it increases the utility's ability to monitor the status of its grid and read meters.

Here's an excerpt from today's release with some good explanation:

"'Innovation in powerline technologies may or may not add to power utilities' revenues immediately,' [says ABI analyst Vamsi Sistla], 'but the cost savings they enable will certainly help their bottom lines.'

"Take the ability to remotely monitor electric meters. Traditionally, a human 'meter reader' would visit every customer's household to log power use manually. Even with the later development of 'drive-by' meter reading, a driver, a truck and some specialized equipment were required. All of those cost money and time, and ultimately drive up prices.

"Grafting a broadband network onto the power grid, on the other hand, means completely remote, automated meter reading, as well as instant reporting of outages and system failures. 'ABI Research believes the utility industry should focus on these low hanging fruits, even more than building BPL capabilities to generate additional revenue,' notes Sistla."

AB -- 11/29/05

VegaStream, manufacturer of enterprise VoIP Gateways, is announcing three new senior sales appointments today:

+ Steve Davis takes the job of senior vice president for sales and marketing covering the EMEA markets. He was previously vice president of global marketing for Mitel.

+ Andy Barrow joins as channel manager for the UK and Southern Europe. Barrow comes to VegaStream from Equip Technology and has held positions at Data Connectivity Services and Oceonics.

+ Ulf Sundin joins as sales director for the Nordics and Northern Europe, working out of VegaStream's newly-opened office in Sweden. Sundin has held positions at Panasonic, Texas Instruments, SCO and, most recently, at Transmode.

Today's release quotes Davis as citing some key market advantages of VegaStream: "a combination of proven technology, an established interoperability ecosystem and the foundations for a global distribution network."

VegaStream CEO Tim Burne cites "steady growth in demand for enterprise VoIP around the globe" as rationale for the EMEA sales-team expansion. The company recently strengthened its North American sales team as well.

VegaStream is sponsor of the Enterprise VoIP Gateways Channel on TMCnet.

AB -- 11/28/05

This is an update on my blog entry for Nov. 22, 2005, about a new noise-canceling headset from John Deere -- see "John Deere Releases a Noise Canceling Headset."

I raised the question whether the new headset will be John Deere green. Well, I have received an answer from the public relations firm for the headset maker and, sadly, the answer is no. "They initially made it a John Deere green color," the representative tells me, "but decided that they like the way the black one looked better."

Here's a preview of what the new headset will look like (notice the company logo):

Actually, now that I use my imagination a little, picturing myself driving around on a Deere-green tractor with Deere-green headphones, I realize that might look a little dorky. Black probably is better.

AB -- 11/28/05

Call center managers realize the value of a customer and the danger of letting a customer hang up while still angry or frustrated. So they are interested in processes and technologies that can help them identify calls that are about to go bad and escalate them before it's too late.

NICE Systems is one of the companies that make technology for this purpose. I received a pitch from their public-relations folks, and it makes a great stand-alone rationale for this kind of technology. So I thought it was worth quoting most of the pitch right here verbatim:

"Next time you call your bank, cable or phone company and lose your cool, a manager on the other end will know about it before your anger hits its peak.  And your call will be not only recorded, but saved for training purposes and corporate analysis.  Emotion detection is the latest technology from NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE), the world leader in telephone call digital recording systems, serving 67 of the Fortune 100, including 10 of the top 10 banks, capturing 50 million customer calls per day.  (Anytime you hear "This call is being recorded for quality assurance purposes," chances are NICE is recording that call.)

"When your voice hits a certain decibel level or if you use harsh or foul language (or the name of a competitor), NICE's call monitoring system will issue an alert to call center managers that there's a problem.  This can bring speedier intervention by a manager -- and swifter resolution of your issue.  Why?  Companies spend a fortune to acquire customers, and they'll do everything they can to hold onto them.

"Like all recorded calls, your angry call will be digitized and stored on a server, where it can be batched with other angry calls, searched by keyword and emailed as a sound file among company managers.  The idea?  Find out what makes callers angry -- and address it systemwide."

AB -- 11/28/05

Today Left Bank Solutions announced that Michael Bateman has joined its board of directors. Left Bank Solutions is a provider of workforce management (WFM) software; its product Monet is used in call centers for efficient deployment and management of workers.

Michael Bateman brings to Left Bank over 40 years of technology and call center experience. He was previously chairman, president and COO of Blue Pumpkin Software, and has served in management at Tandem Computers, International Data Sciences, Arthur Andersen, ADL Systems and Honeywell EDP.

Bateman cites Left Bank's "massive potential" as the key motivator for his joining the board. He says that Monet WFM OnDemand "is strongly positioned to capture significant market share in the small and midrange call center markets." Monet WFM OnDemand was launched in July 2005 as a hosted WFM product for companies that want to try out WFM without a large up-front investment.

Charles Ciarlo, CEO and founder of Left Bank Solutions, serves as TMCnet's Workforce Management columnist. His most recent contributions are "Customers Are Demanding On-Demand" and "On-Demand Means Immediate ROI."

AB -- 11/22/05

This announcement from design firm Outside the Box Inc. came across the TMCnet news feeds a little while ago:

Increase Safety And Comfort With New John Deere Noise Canceling Headset; Outside the Box, Inc. Designed a New Headset for Blocking Ambient Equipment Noise

This is of interest to us here at TMCnet, as we cover the call center industry, where the headset is a key piece of equipment -- see our Headsets, Wireless Headsets and VoIP Headsets channels. Headsets are also of interest to us because we cover consumer electronics and many of us own iPods and other digital audio players.

The interesting twist here is that this new product is being marketed by John Deere (appears to be a private-label product designed by Outside the Box), a maker of lawn care and farming equipment. If I understand correctly, the John Deer Noise Canceling Headset doubles for audio listening and ear protection. During my younger years, I served for awhile as safety officer for a construction firm and wrote on safety issues for construction trade journals. Ear protection is an important safety issue in many industries, as machinery noise can cause permanent hearing loss. (For that matter, so can loud music -- so a headset can mean the salvation of your hearing or its destruction.) So a hearing-protection product has a natural tie-in as an accessory to be sold by John Deere.

When I review product announcements like this, I like to look beyond the pure technical content of the release and consider the marketing effectiveness of the communications as well. I noticed a few things that concern me about this headset announcement:

+ The release doesn't specifically come right out and say that the John Deere Noise Canceling Headset is an audio product -- in other words, they don't actually say you can use it to listen to music! Rather, the focus is on the product as a device to protect the user from equipment noise. I would think the release would function better as a marketing vehicle if it was more explicit in saying that this headset has a dual purpose. The copywriter shouldn't assume that the reader will understand that.

+ The release refers the reader to www.johndeeregifts.com, but the product is not available on the site. Looks as if the product does not actually go on sale until January 2006. It would be great to be able to see a picture of the product now, but I don't see any way to find one. (Will the headset be colored 'John Deere Green'? Hope so!) I do see that ProTravelGear.com sells noise canceling headsets from Outside the Box, so maybe the product will look something like the ones on that site, e.g.:

+ I also notice that Outside the Box has no web site itself other than a home page with a logo at outsidetheboxgroup.com. Too bad. It would be interesting to know more about this company.

AB -- 11/22/05

Seagull Software hit the news media with several announcements today:

+ Support for Linux on IBM zSeries Mainframes -- LegaSuite, Seagull's platform for migrating legacy systems into SOA services, received the "Ready for IBM eServer with Linux" validation from IBM.

+ Report on legacy migration submitted to the European Union -- Seagull has joined a consortium of nine companies submitting a research project to the EU. The project is entitled "Stepwise Migration of Legacy Systems to Service Oriented Systems." The project is in response to a tender issued under the EU Framework Programme.

+ Web integration partnership with Kapow Technologies -- Seagull will sell Kapow's Web Integration platform along with Seagull's own LegaSuite platform. This allows Seagull customers "the option of integrating with any application or information accessible through a Web browser."

+ Financial results for Seagull for Q2 and first half-year FY 2006 -- Seagull announces that revenues are up 22%. The company is reporting $101,000 net income for the half-year completed Oct. 31, as compared with a net loss of $2.9 million for the same period the previous year.

AB -- 11/22/05

In case you haven't seen it, here is the new AT&T logo, released in the wake of the final merger of SBC with AT&T under the high-recognition AT&T brand name:

An announcement from AT&T's PR firm says the new branding will be rolled out over the next several months on nearly 50,000 company vehicles, over 6,000 buildings, about 40,000 uniforms and hardhats and over 30 million monthly customer bills, as well as literature and web sites.

AB -- 11/21/05

This news item just came across on our TMCnet news feeds:

Cisco Systems, Inc. Announces Agreement to Acquire Scientific-Atlanta, Inc.; Acquisition Completes Cisco's End-to-End Triple Play Solution for Networks and the Home

The companies have scheduled two conference calls for today to discuss the union.

This acquisition should accelerate Cisco's progress in the triple-play arena. Today's release says that Scientific-Atlanta is a supplier of "digital content contribution and distribution systems, transmission networks for broadband access to the home, digital interactive set-tops and subscriber systems designed for video, high-speed Internet and Voice over IP (VoIP) networks."

AB -- 11/18/05

Today Google released the beta of a new publicly searchable knowledge base that allows you to upload your own stuff to it -- see "New Service Expands Google's Reach," the AP story from Wednesday morning for details.

I'm not sure whether this is part of Google's carefully-constructed master plot to take over the world, or whether they're just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it sticks. In any case, if a lot of people start using it, it seems to me that Google Base could potentially grow into a huge depository of all kinds of information and content. Just to start out with, Google Base is accepting content in these areas:

• Course Schedules
• Events and Activities
• Jobs
• News and Articles
• People Profiles
• Products
• Recipes
• Reference Articles
• Reviews
• Services
• Vehicles
• Wanted Ads

And you can create your own "item type."

To try it out, I used it to enter a job listing. Here's the opening page for Google Base:

I entered my Help Wanted ad in the system. Here's what it looks like in Preview mode:

And here's my own cool personalized Google Base dashboard, where I can manage my content on Google Base:

AB -- 11/16/05

As reported by TMCnet bloggers Tom Keating and Greg Galitzine today, as well as the Associated Press, the World Summit on the Information Society has agreed that management of the Internet should remain with the United States (via ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a private-public partnership), rather than be turned over to the United Nations. The Summit is meeting this week in Tunisia.

TMCnet Contributing Editor David Sims also wrote about this today (see "Whew: Internet Escapes U.N. Clutches"), and I hadn't realized until I read his article that one of the original purposes of the Summit was to address the "digital divide," the gap between rich and poor in access to information technology. Apparently, this aspect of the agenda has taken a back seat to the much-publicized effort by elements of the U.N. to take control of Internet management.

The AP story quotes the U.S. Department of Commerce: "The rural digital divide is isolating almost 1 billion of the poorest people who are unable to participate in the global information society."

Interestingly, a study released just last week identifies a significant "digital divide" in Europe, based on age, education, employment status and other factors. Quoting the study, AP said inequities in Europe were caused by "missing infrastructure or access; missing incentives to use information and communications technologies; lack of the computer literacy or skills necessary to take part in the information society."

AB -- 11/16/05

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the calls and messages coming at you in so many forms from so many devices -- cell phone, SMS, home phone, IM, work phone, VoIP calls and so on? Need I even ask?

iotum has developed the Relevance Engine, a technology that intelligently routes the right call to you at the right time on the right device. I talked with iotum CEO Alec Saunders on our podcast this past Friday -- go here for the MP3 of this most recent podcast, or to our podcast page for an index of previous programs.

Rich Tehrani had a separate briefing with Alec and wrote it up in his article from today, "Just in Time Communications Getting Close."

AB -- 11/15/05

I thought this item from the TMCnet news feeds was interesting and worth noting:

New Autism Intervention Tool Accelerates Language Skills Development

Animated Speech Corporation (ASC) has released a new software-based learning tool, "Team Up With Timo: Stories." The idea is to help autistic children and others with language disorders to develop communication skills through story-telling.

AB -- 11/15/05

Today I got wind of a study to be released Monday (11/14/05) from the Customer Respect Group (CRG), ranking telecom companies on how they treat their customers online. This is particularly of interest here at TMCnet, as we cover both the telecommunications and contact center industries (and I'm always interested in how well companies do in this area -- I'm sure a number of contact centers have identified me as 'The Customer From Hell' in their operations.)

The Customer Respect Study focuses on how companies treat their customers online, according to attributes intended to measure the online customer experience. The study to be released Monday is for third quarter 2005. Here are some highlights I noted from the summary I received:

+ Based on a perfect score of 10, the telecom sector was given a CRI (Customer Respect Index) rating of 6.7 for the third quarter. This is down from 6.9 in the second quarter. The telecom industry has now lost its top-industry rating to Retail, which scored 7.0.

+ "Excellent" CRI ratings of 8.0 or more went to Bell Canada and CenturyTel.

+ "Very Good" ratings (7.5-7.9, I believe) went to Qwest, Sprint, Cablevision, Verizon Wireless and SBC.

+ The study includes a measure of "Privacy and Transparency," referring to treatment of customer personal information and clarity of policies. The study notes an aggregate decline in the industry's score in this area, down to 7.0 from 7.3 in Q2. Verizon Wireless, Verizon and Bell Canada all scored well in this area.

+ The study also measures Responsiveness to online customer inquiries. Findings show that 86% of email inquiries received a response, up from 83% the previous quarter. Interestingly, CRG finds that 74% of web users think that a day is "a valid period to wait for a response" but only 43% of email inquiries got a response within that time period; this is down from 60% in Q2 -- a big drop. The study also indicates that responses from companies have become less helpful and relevant.

+ SBC received a score of 8.7 in "Simplicity" and "Usability."

+ Verizon Wireless scored highest in "Privacy" at 9.3.

A prepared comment from CRG President Terry Golesworthy has this to say about this quarter's results:

"Trust is a critical factor for the online customer, especially in an industry that is so fast moving with the convergence of technologies and new options available. The increase in the quantity but drop in the quality of the responses may serve as an indicator of major restructuring to better communicate with the online customer.  Online customers are looking for usable websites from companies they trust to provide timely answers to questions in an increasingly complex purchasing environment."

Please visit TMCnet on Monday, Nov. 14, 2005, for more information about the results of the Customer Respect Group study.

AB -- 11/11/05

Just wanted to point attention to a good article from this morning by TMCnet Contributing Editor Susan J. Campbell:

Study Argues Market Is Ready for Broadband over Power Lines (BPL)

She discusses the results of a new study by research firm visiongain. Please see some of my previous entries for more news and info about BPL:

ABI: BPL May Go Over Better in Under-Developed Markets

Ham Radio Organization Challenges Manassas BPL Project

Broadband Proliferates in Hotels

Manassas Va. Launches City-Wide Broadband-Over-Powerline (BPL)

Broadband Over Power Lines Showing Initial Success?

BPL a Danger to Amateur Radio?

AB -- 11/11/05