Disruptive Telephony

Attempt to join a VoiceCon/Mitel presentation on UC foiled by Real Player on Mac

So today my participation in a VoiceCon webinar was foiled by "fun" with RealPlayer and my MacBook Pro. The VoiceCon team was running a webinar called 'Demystifying Unified Communications' and I was curious to check it out as it was sponsored by my prior employer, Mitel, and the speaker was Mitel's Doug Micheaelides who I know well. I was just curious more than anything else to see if Mitel's marketing had changed in the six months since I left. I'm also one to often listen to analyst presentations - it's part of what I do.

It was not to be. Now, admittedly, this is largely my fault for not checking whether the webinar system would work with my Mac in advance. But attending the webinar was low priority to me and something I would just try to "fit in" if I could do so. Since it looked like I could, I jumped over to the page, registered and clicked the link to launch the presentation...

Oops.

Turns out that the web presentation system the VoiceCon folks are using needs Real's player and as shown in the image to the right, my browser wasn't very happy with that.

Naturally, I did try to install the plugin. Clicking on the images shown there to "download the plugin" took me to Real's page about Real Player 10 for the Mac OS X, but here was the first problem:

Where's any mention of the "plugin"?

Plugin? What plugin? All that is mentioned here is the "Real Player 10 for Mac OS X" and far more annoying is the fact that I have to "Get it now with SuperPass". This of course takes me to a screen where I have to register to sign up to get my "free 14-day trial"!!!

NOTE TO REAL:

I DON'T WANT YOUR 'SUPERPASS'!!!

I don't want to do a 14-day trial. I don't want to do a 1-day trial. All I want to do is download a browser plugin to view a #$%@@#? webinar!

Clicking around the site I eventually did find a page that let me download the unencumbered RealPlayer 10 for Mac. So I did that. This was where I hit the second problem. On the page, it says simply:

4. Drag the RealPlayer icon into your Applications folder.
5. Double-click RealPlayer to begin using it.

But I didn't want to "use" the RealPlayer. I just wanted to use the plugin for my browser. So I didn't double-click it, knowing that many Mac applications do whatever installation they need when you simply drag them to the Applications folder. After I copied it to the Applications folder, I restarted one of my browsers and... nothing. I tried the installation again with the same result.

At this point I gave up on attending the VoiceCon webinar and went off to do other work.

Sometime later I tried just double-clicking the RealPlayer icon and... ta da... there was the installation screen! So here's a note to Real - your page should really read:

5. Double-click RealPlayer to complete the installation.

All in all a brief bit of frustration. I guess the good news is that I now do have it installed for future VoiceCon webinars, but it shouldn't be this hard! The part about the "SuperPass" was particularly annoying to me. (Could you tell?) I realize that Real wants to capture names in return for giving away the player for free and wants to get people to buy more services from them. But I would argue that should be something that users can more easily opt-in to. Real has, perhaps, found that this "in-your-face" method yields better results. But it really turns off some % of people - of which I am obviously one.

Technorati Tags: real, realplayer, voicecon, mitel

Mitel/Inter-Tel integration plan restructures me out of a job...

UPDATE - October 23, 2007 - As of yesterday, I started employment with Voxeo.  MANY thanks to all of you who offered kind words, job leads, references and help in many other ways. Thank you!

UPDATE - Sept 13, 2007 - Because I have been repeatedly asked about the type of roles I am seeking, I posted some thoughts on the kind of positions I would ideally like to pursue.

UPDATE - Sept 9, 2007 - My resume is now available for those wanting more information on my background.

---

 

"Every new beginning starts with some other beginning's end."

I found myself humming that chorus from the song "Closing Time" by the band Semisonic late on Tuesday after a very frank and cordial call with my manager (Mitel's CTO), who has always been great to work with and with whom I've had a wonderfully open relationship.  Some of you may have seen the news - there was a "reduction in headcount" at Mitel on Tuesday as part of the "integration plan" resulting from the merger with Inter-Tel.  This is pretty much inevitable in any merger as there is always some duplication and some need to reduce the overall number of employees. Unfortunately this time around my head was one of those.  My last day with Mitel will be September 21.

I'll be honest and say that this was not entirely unexpected.  Taking a role in a CTO organization focused on analyzing emerging technology is not without its risks.  It's a great role to be up in the crow's nest with a spyglass scanning the horizon to identify opportunities and threats and calling down suggestions about where to steer the ship.  You learn a huge amount and, quite honestly, it's a great amount of fun. (That is, if you are a techie/geek who is interested in how emerging technologies can be applied to solve business/communication requirements/issues.)  But the risk is that if the seas get really rough, you're role isn't absolutely necessary for steering the ship.  Navigation can still occur from the decks down below, albeit with a shorter perspective, at least until the seas are calm again. I knew this was a risk when I took the role two years ago - and so on one level I wasn't overly surprised to get the call.  Disappointed?  Absolutely. Initially shocked? Sure.  Even with the intellectual preparation, I don't think you're ever fully ready for "the call".

That's the situation.  Mitel's got a little rough patch of water to work through right now as it merges the two ships into one, and to keep with the metaphor, I guess, I'm one of those who had to go overboard.  The company will get through it, I'm sure.  It's got outstanding products and some of the most amazingly talented people with whom I've ever had the privilege to work.  As they sort out the right size and structure, I know it will do fine and get back to clear sailing.  I'm very grateful for the six years I had there. I learned an incredible amount and was honored to be part of the team.  The list of people to thank is way too long to include here.

So now it's time for a new beginning for me.

What's next?  I'm not sure, to be honest, as there are several pathways.  I'd love to run back up to the crow's nest and perform that kind of analysis/investigation/exploration/communication/evangelism for a company in the IP telephony/unified communications space, especially with a focus on social networking / social media.  I think its a great fit with my technical, strategic, marketing and communication skills - and I think sites like Facebook will have a profound effect on our communication. I'd love to help explore and guide people through that space. Having said that, I definitely recognize that those roles are few and far between.  I may look into something focused in the VOIP security space, where I've obviously got some great depth and experience, or something related to IETF standards, another strong interest of mine.  I've considered some form of strategic consulting, or joining the analyst ranks.  There are a couple of books I'd like to write.  There's a startup idea I'm pondering. As is obvious, I completely enjoy blogging, podcasting, etc. and may pursue a role focused in those areas - or in community development, another strength.  And then there's always returning to my open source roots in the Linux space...

Whatever the case, my aim is to be with of an organization that is part of the disruption in this space (or at the very least chronicling the disruption).

Right now I'd love to hear from folks who have openings in any of those various areas (or know of such openings).  Please do email me - or contact me via Facebook or Skype.  For folks in the IT telephony/unified communication's space, I'll be out at the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo next week in Los Angeles and would be delighted to speak with folks there. (As I mentioned previously, I'll be speaking there.)  Information about my background can be obtained at LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/danyork ), my VOIPSA bio or my (soon to be updated) www.danyork.com.  In my ideal world, I'd love to find a role that lets me continue to live in Burlington, VT, (with some amount of travel) since we're nicely settled in here and love the area.

In the meantime, I may be blogging a little less here for a bit as I focus on what comes next. Also, I've already had a couple of questions sent my way:

Q: What does this mean for your role on the Board of the VoIP Security Alliance?
A: No change, assuming I wind up in a role where continuing with VOIPSA makes sense. My VOIPSA appointment was a personal one and was not associated with my employer, so it will move with me to wherever I land.

Q: What does this mean for Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast or any of these blogs?
A: No change.  While I was always keeping Mitel PR and Marketing management in the loop on what I was doing with those sites, they were and are personal projects.

Technorati tags: dan york

Mitel and Inter-Tel announce the completion of their merger (and there was much rejoicing!)

Very good news here in Mitel-land today - at about 4pm the merger of Mitel and Inter-Tel was completed! At least, in the legal sense... obviously there will be more work to be done on the integration, but for now the celebrations can begin.  The company has now doubled in size, gained a very strong US organization and is all-around well-positioned for growth. As the news release stated:

The company will now be #1 in the North American SMB market¹, #2 in the Western European IP PBX market², the overall leader in the U.K. communications market³ and continues to grow its operations globally. With three trusted brands (Mitel, Inter-Tel and Lake), the company offers customers a broad choice of solutions from the very small to the very large, from IP enabled to pure IP unified communications, from standard solutions to tailored, from single site to multi-site and from outright capital purchase options through sophisticated managed services. 

It should be a fun ride to see where this all winds up!

Technorati tags: mitel, inter-tel

UC Strategies podcasts with Mitel executives about unified communications, Microsoft, Sun, HP and more...

Back at our Mitel Forum event in late June, analyst Blair Pleasant from Unified Communications Strategies recorded a couple of podcasts[1] with Mitel executives and I've been meaning to write about them here. (Full Disclosure: While Mitel has no direct connection to this blog, I do work for Mitel.)

First up, Blair interviewed Mitel CEO Don Smith.  They discussed Mitel's view of unified communications, business process improvement, the use of SIP and XML interfaces and much more. Don discussed the importance of presence and availability, the need for "in the moment" communication and the importance of "presence everywhere". He also offers his view of the greatest challenges facing Mitel and the industry in the time ahead and his view of where Mitel is heading.

Second, Blair interviewed Stephen Beamish, Mitel VP of Business Development and Strategic Alliances about the partnerships Mitel has with Microsoft, HP and Sun. Given the announcement before Mitel Forum of the partnership with Sun, this interview gives one of the first views into the Mitel-Sun relationship.  Blair and Stephen also, of course, discuss Mitel's relationship with Microsoft, especially in light of the Microsoft-Nortel relationship as well as Microsoft's other partners.  Stephen also talks about the HP relationship and Mitel's participation in HP Procurve's upcoming "Taking It To The Edge" Seminar Series. Finally, he discusses some of the environmental benefits of using Mitel products in terms of power savings.

For those interested in where Mitel is heading and Mitel's views of unified communications, both podcasts are highly recommended. Each podcast runs around 16 minutes.

[1] And yes, as a podcaster I had serious geek envy of the Sony PCM-D1 recorder that Blair was using  courtesy of her colleague Jim Burton.  Very nice piece of hardware! (And also just a wee bit outside of my personal price range!)

Technorati tags: mitel, unified communications, blair pleasant, don smith, stephen beamish, uc strategies, microsoft, sun microsystems, hp

TMC.net interviews me: "Security and Disaster Recovery for IP Telephony Systems"

Just out yesterday, TMC.Net published an interview with me titled, "Security and Disaster Recovery for IP Telephony Systems", by Mae Kowalke, where I talk about general VoIP security issues and then get into specifics about Mitel solutions.  Given that the author nicely gave me the chance to review the text and offer feedback before she published it, I have to say I'm pleased with how it came out. :-)

(And yes, I normally blog about VoIP security over on the Voice of VOIPSA weblog, but I just field weird about posting something like this over on that site.)

Technorati tags: mitel, security, voip security, voipsecurity, dan york

Remote VoIP teleworker sets serve as an Internet connectivity warning device...

Here's a great side benefit of having an IP phone in teleworker mode hanging off of a system somewhere out there on the Internet - you have a close-to-instant warning system about Internet connectivity issues. 

Take this morning... I walk into my home office and see that one of my phones has come out of its sleep status and the backlight is on and showing "CONNECTION PENDING..." with these black square boxes next to it.  I glance at another IP phone:  "PLEASE WAIT"

Oh, %#$#?!.  It's going to be that kind of Monday morning!

Yes, indeed, as I woke up the PCs, I did indeed have no connectivity.  Couldn't get to any websites and all the IM clients were cycling waiting to get connected.  After doing the usual power-cycling of the cable modem and verifying that I could get an address but couldn't ping beyond the next hop router, a relatively-quick call to Comcast brought the word that there was a "partial outage" in my area and that connectivity might be going up and down for the next two hours.

Great.  Wonderful way for a home office worker to start a Monday.

But it did remind me of one great benefit of having these IP teleworker phones[1] - they are a great way to know almost instantly whether my connection is up.  If I'm in the middle of doing something on my PC and it seems like connectivity is down, I just turn my head to look at the phones and can see very quickly if they are up.  Likewise, if I'm downstairs using my wife's PC and it seems like Internet access is down, I just go up the stairs and pop my head in the office... first glance is to see if the phones are up. 

It's a great side benefit of having the phones, although admittedly it wasn't anything on my mind when we were rolling out the Mitel Teleworker solution back in January 2003.  (Full disclosure: I was the product manager for the product when it was released.)

Now, this works in my case because the phones are using Mitel's own MiNET protocol and always have an encrypted MiNET connection established back to the Teleworker server sitting on the edge of the corporate network.  If the connection is broken, the phone flags that by displaying the aforementioned warning messages.  It's not *instant*, but typically within 30-60 seconds of the connection being down the messages appear.  If the phones were, say, in SIP mode connected to a SIP server out there, I wouldn't get the same fast notice because in SIP mode they are essentially stand-alone endpoints - think of them as mini-computers with a phone handset.  The first time I'd really notice was when I went to make a connection (or if the phone went to make some regularly scheduled connection and couldn't and put up an error message). 

This "side benefit" is, of course, not at all unique to Mitel implementations.  Basically any other IP phones that have "always-on" connections back to a central server will have the potential to do the same thing.

It works the other way, too, in letting you know when the connection is back online... while I was on the phone talking to the pleasant customer service rep at Comcast, how did I know that my Internet service was restored  (at least for the moment) without looking at my PC?  Simple...

... all my IP phones were back in operation.

[1] And yes, I have several teleworker phones- three to be exact, but hey, I'm working on emerging technology stuff so I have to be able to experiment and work with these phones.  They are also on different switches and trial systems.

Technorati tags: voip, teleworker, networking, mitel

YouTube video from Sun blogger sets shots of Sun/Mitel gear to hip-hop...

Following on my previous post about Sun blogger Craig Bender, I should note that he also posted a video to YouTube that is the first time I can honestly say that I've ever seen shots of Mitel and/or Sun gear set to hip-hop music!   Enjoy...

Technorati tags: mitel forum, mitel, sun, sun microsystems, sun ray

YouTube video shows the Sun / Mitel collaboration - voice/data hot desking via card...

 One of the many cool things I've been hoping to find the cycles to write about coming out of Mitel Forum last week is the collaboration occurring between Mitel and Sun Microsystems.  First announced June 19th, there are really two components to the collaboration: 1) the Multi-Instance Call Server (MICS) that can have up to 200 instances of our 3300 ICP call control software running on a Sun server; and 2) a very cool integration of a SunRay thin client computer into the base of one of our phones.  With the phones, a user can simply insert their "Java card" into the base of the phone and the user is automagically signed onto the computer and to the phone.  Pull the card out, the user is logged out.  Insert another user's card and the computer and the phone are logged in as that user.  It takes the "hot desking" we've had for years and extends that to now also include the PC.  As I said, it's very cool!

The good news is that I can actually share a bit of the experience with you courtesy of Sun blogger Craig Bender, a.k.a. the "Thin Guy", who writes the Sun Ray Blog.  I didn't realize he was at our show, which is a bummer because it would have been great to meet, but he posted this video to YouTube:

You can see my colleague Stephen Beamish demonstrating the capabilities at the Sun booth at Mitel Forum.  Craig did a nice job editing the video and it's great to see it up on YouTube.

Technorati tags: sun, mitel forum, mitel, sunray, voip

Returning from Mitel Forum...

It's been an absolutely exhausting week out in Las Vegas for Mitel Forum. Presentations, meetings and events basically from dawn until late in the evening both Tuesday and Wednesday... travel all day yesterday...  I'm tired. Very tired.  But... I do have to say that it was an absolutely outstanding event.  Great meetings with our resellers/solutions providers.  Excellent sessions with analysts.  Great exhibits showing the work of many of our partners - many cool things to write about here in the days ahead!  There was such a level of excitement there at the event... it's definitely a great time to be part of Mitel.

Hopefully we will be able to follow some of the analysts' blog postings as they get home and start writing... right now, though, a Technorati search on Mitel is just a wee bit preoccupied with other recent news releases. :-)

Technorati tags: mitel forum, mitel, voip

Heading out to Mitel Forum June 25-27 in Las Vegas...

FYI, while I don't usually write a whole lot about Mitel here, I do in fact work for Mitel and after I return from a week of vacation I'll be heading down to Las Vegas on Monday, June 25th, to speak at our Mitel Forum event for resellers, consultants and analysts.  If any of you who read this weblog will be down there, I'll look forward to seeing you there (and please say hello).  You'll find me giving presentations on... gee.... "VoIP Security" and "Business Continuity"!  (Surprise, surprise...)  Should be a very good event.

Technorati tags: mitel, mitel forum

Bandwidth.com to supply SIP trunking to Mitel solution centers

Yesterday, Bandwidth.com announced that their SIP trunking service would be powering Mitel solution centers across the US.  From the news release:

Bandwidth.com, a leading nationwide provider of complete business communications solutions, today announced that it will be powering all Mitel(R) Solution Centers across the country enabling customers and VARS to preview innovative solutions, including SIP Trunking technology in a live environment. Mitel operates solution centers in five locations; Chicago, Costa Mesa, Atlanta, New York and Herndon (Virginia), all of which will be equipped with Bandwidth.com's SIP Trunking VoIP solution by the end of June.

There's been a relationship between Bandwidth.com and Mitel since last September. This announcement yesterday is a logical evolution of that relationship.

There's a lot to write about the incredibly disruptive power of SIP trunking... I don't think we yet fully understand how the power to obtain SIP trunks from anywhere in the world is going to so severely disrupt the global telecommunications infrastructure.  With IP, geography no longer matters... and there are all sorts of local carriers - and tax authorities! - who I don't think fully understand how much this messes up their business models.  I really need to write that up........

Two notes for Bandwidth.com:

1. On the positive side, they have to get credit for one of the coolest graphics I've yet seen for SIP trunking!  I'm talking about the image above that is also on their bandwidth.com/mitel page.  I'm going to have to see about getting permission to use that graphic in some presentations... I just really like it from the design side!

2. On the less positive side, it continues to astound me the number of companies that do not immediately post their news releases on their web site "news" area!  This news release went out yesterday (June 11) but yet it's still not on Bandwidth.com's news page!  It's too bad, because they are missing out on a good potential for inbound links to their site.  Instead, we're left to link to either TMCNet or PR Newswire, both of whom I'm sure don't mind the traffic.  Our (Mitel) PR team have moved to getting the news releases posted on the site right away... I don't know the stats on what kind of traffic we get, but I do know that it lets bloggers like me link directly to the site if we want to.

(See also Ken Camp's commentary about the rising importance of SIP trunking in SMB.)

Technorati tags: mitel, bandwidth.com, sip, sip trunking, voip, pstn

Mitel announces $723 million agreement to buy Inter-Tel

Yesterday after the close of the market, my employer, Mitel, announced an agreement to acquire Inter-Tel.   There's not much I can say beyond what's in the news release... but I can say that I am quite excited by the news!

Technorati tags: mitel, inter-tel, telcommunications, voip

Gokul Blog: Top Ten Most underrated VoIP Contributors

(Continuing my effort to flush my "queue of things I want to blog about"...)

Some time back, I stumbled upon this post "Top Ten: Most underrated VoIP Contributors".  Yeah, okay, so I liked the list because it had my employer on it, and mentioned the work Mitel has done with VOIPSA, which is really the activities that I do. So, yes, it's nice to be recognized and nice to hear the kind words about Mitel's contributions.  Some of the other people on the list were also interesting as well, so it was good to be introduced to others whom I haven't read.

Technorati tags: voip, telecommunications, social media

Mitel connects directly to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 via SIP

In my incredibly long queue of things I've wanted to write about for the past few weeks, one item was the Mitel news release about making a direct SIP connection to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging. The cool part is that you can just use our basic 3300 ICP communications platform (or IP-PBX, or whatever you want to call it) and connect it directly into a Microsoft Exchange Server to use the Exchange Server for a unified inbox (email, voicemail, fax, etc.).  No other boxes or gateways necessary.  Just a nice, standard SIP trunk.  As a long-time proponent of open standards and general "standards geek", it really can't get much better.  It's great to see.

Technorati tags: mitel, microsoft, exchange, voip

My article "Using IP Communications as a Tool for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity" is now online

I just realized that I never wrote here that an article I wrote recently came out online.  Published in Mitel's "Presence" magazine, it's titled "Using IP Communications as a Tool for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity".  Okay, so the title's not overly catchy, but here's the first paragraph:

If a hurricane devastated your main office, how rapidly could you restore telephone connectivity? If a branch office had a fire or other disaster, how soon could you connect back into the main office? Or if Avian flu or some other pandemic created a situation where you needed to stay out of the office, could you access remote phone capabilities equal to that at the office? How long would it take your business to recover? How much (and how many customers) could you afford to lose in the process?

I go on to talk about why IP communications/IP telephony/VoIP fundamentally changes the traditional way you might address these issues and offers tremendous benefits.  In fact, to me, the ability to put an IP phone pretty much anywhere you can get an IP address remains one of the major - if not the single biggest - disruptive aspect of IP telephony/communications.  Remove geography as an issue and suddenly things like disaster recover and business continuity take on a whole different view.

While it's in a Mitel publication, there's nothing in the article that is really Mitel-specific.  Listeners to Blue Box or readers of Voice of VOIPSA probably won't find it terribly new since I've been talking about this before in those sites... but for those of you not familiar with DR and BCP and how VoIP can change that, I think you'll find it a useful read.

Technorati tags: voip, voip security, disaster recovery, business continuity, mitel, dan york

Blogdesk meme ... Jon Arnold tags me... so I get to talk about phones, too...

Jon Arnold tagged me.  Of course, we really have to blame Luca for starting it and Jeff, phoneboy and others for pushing it along - and Moshe Maeir for adding the phone angle. I don't usually like to play the meme games... but it's Friday, it's lunchtime, I have a horrid cough and generally feel lousy... so I'll take a moment of distraction to blog my setup.  Plus, I get to talk about phones.  So here it is (click for larger view), and courtesy of 5 minutes in PowerPoint I've even numbered the phones.  What you are looking at is two computers with three screens.  The screen in the corner of the room is my rather old home desktop PC.  My (also older) laptop is then connected to the second monitor in the right foreground.  You can see pieces of my podcasting rig, although much of it is hidden by the laptop screen.  I write on either computer depending upon what time of day it is and which of the 5 or 6 different blogs I'm writing in. 

 

As to the phones, proving that VoIP teleworking can be secure (unlike what ComputerWorld.au thinks), most of the Mitel phones are hanging off of different teleworker servers back up at Mitel's office in Ottawa.  Why do I have so many phones?  Well, part of my job role is to test and experiment... so I'm always trying out new things - and from a security point-of-view, trying to break them.  So here goes the list:

1. Uniden cordless handset for household land line 
2. ancient Mitel 5020 that I started using as a secure teleworker set 4 years ago and never bothered to upgrade (see, we protect your investment ;-)... actually, the truth is I got a newer set to replace it and then decided to use that new set as a SIP set instead 
3. DUALphone for Skype calls (and yes, I could also use it for my land line) 
4. Mitel 5340 IP phone - connected as a secure teleworker set back to an IP-PBX in Ottawa... excellent phone, great acoustics, backlit 
5. Mitel 5220 IP phone (now replaced by the 5224) - running in SIP mode and connected to a local SIP proxy 
6. Mitel Navigator - perhaps the coolest phone I have... see the long silver bar under the monitor - that's the phone!  Handset is off to the right.  Connected as a secure teleworker back into Ottawa.

Plus I've generally got 1 or 2 softphones running on my laptop.   Using our "hot desking" support, I am usually logged in with my extension to either #4 or #6.  Often #6 because the Navigator has the excellent feature of acting as my PCs speakers and allowing me to have music playing in the background - and the music cuts out when a phone call comes in.  Very nice for someone working alone in a home office.

So now, who to tag:

• Alec Saunders 
• Martyn Davies 
• Irwin Lazar

With that, I think I've now down my blog meme playing for 2007....   off to get some cough medicine.

Rich Tehrani hops on the Mitel "Presence" tour bus... at least for a day...

Scanning RSS feeds early this morning, I was pleased to see that Rich Tehrani will be speaking at our "Presence 2007" event in Costa Mesa, CA, today. I've known the tour was going on, but wasn't tracking who was speaking at the various stops.  Glad to see Rich there... I'm sure he'll give a great talk for whoever attends.  The good news for Rich, too, is that at least he was flying out of the New York area yesterday instead of the day before when the glorious storm played havoc with air travel all over the northeast.

Technorati tags: mitel, presence, rich tehrani, sip, unified communications

Rich Tehrani learns the passionate power of Sir Terry Matthews

Rich Tehrani now understands why I and many others continue to work for Mitel.    Rich's post does indeed capture some of the infectious enthusiasm and passion that spreads from Terry Matthews on down into the organization - as well as into the other sister companies.   The telcom revolution is well underway... and it's definitely fun to be a part of an organization that has that vision.

P.S. Rich also wrote about Terry's other investments in real estate and, yes, Rich, I can understand why you liked the Brookstreet Hotel.  When I up visiting Ottawa I often stay there and yes, it is definitely a very nice place to stay.

 

Technorati tags: mitel, terry matthews, wesley clover

Note to Siemens: Need better fact-checking: your OpenStage phones are NOT the first IP phones w/WLAN

(Originally posted to http://dyork.livejournal.com/258085.html)

Now I realize that often in sales and marketing, some folks tend to exaggerate claims... or split hairs to make various claims... or (more often) don't do enough fact-checking to verify their claims... but it rather annoys me when I see someone making claims that are just wrong - especially when the claims overlook products made by my own employer! As readers know, I don't really tout Mitel products here all that much, but in this case, I feel compelled to write a bit about one. In the recent announcements by Siemens of their new OpenStage SIP phones, which Ken Camp covered so well here, Siemens makes the claim in their PowerPoint presentation (available from Ken's post):

The first time an enterprise desktop phone has been able to connect to both wired and wireless infrastructures.

Um... no. You see, Mitel has been shipping this little product called the "Mitel WLAN Stand" since July of this year (2006) which just clips onto the back of any of our enterprise desk phones and allows that phone to connect to a 802.11 network. I've got one here in my home office... I'd be glad to show anyone if they'd like. In fact, our product has a few advantages over what Siemens announced:

1. It is available and shipping today.
   
2. It works with existing Mitel sets. You don't need to purchase new sets... just use your existing (52xx/53xx) sets and order some WLAN stands to make them wireless.
   
3. It works across our full range of sets, not just the top two most expensive sets.
   
4. A PC can be plugged into the PC port on the back of the IP phone and use the wireless connection (in fairness, I don't know from the info provided thus far in the announcements whether the OpenStage phones would support this... but ours can).
   
5. A Mitel set with a WLAN stand can be either a 802.11 client or a 802.11 access point.

Think about this last point for a moment if you have a rapid deployment you want to make. Say you want to drop a team of auditors into a client company location for a few weeks. You have Internet access at the location, but you want the employees to have extensions off of your main office wherever that may be and you want them to securely be able to talk back to your main office. So you ship to the location a bunch of Mitel sets with WLAN stands - all configured as Teleworker sets that will connect back to your Teleworker server on the edge of your corporate network. One of those sets gets a connection to the local wired network and has its WLAN stand configured in AP mode. All the other sets have their WLAN stands configured in client mode... and previously all the appropriate WPA/WPA2 keys were set up so that all communication between the sets is secured. Ta da... beautiful little rapidly-deployed "branch office"... all secure... wireless... and to make it even more convenient, through our "hot desking" the auditors can login with the same extension that they use at the main office. Powerful stuff... and it works today.

On the more mundane level, I have a WLAN Stand here in my home office which gives me the flexibility to move my IP phone to wherever I want to plug it in. So if I wanted to work out on the back patio (a wee bit too chilly right now), I just run an extension cord out there, plug in the phone, and I'm operational. (Next summer I'll have to get some pics sitting in our hammock...) In an corporate office environment, these stands could be used to locate phones in areas that are not served by LAN connectivity... or where you don't want the various cables running across the floor or tables (of course, you still need power).

So the net is that someone there at Siemens needed to do a wee bit more fact-checking, I'd say. Perhaps someone junior was assigned the task. Perhaps they just simply missed it. I know a good number of folks there at Siemens and I have great respect for what they do... so I'm certainly inclined to think this was just a fact-checking mistake.

Now, I'll grant them that their OpenStage USB key is definitely a neat solution. Smaller form factor and very easy to distribute updates when you want to support a new 802.11 variant. (Of course, the security guy in me also thinks... "very easy for someone to steal or misplace".) So if they want to make the claim:

The first time an enterprise desktop phone has been able to connect to both wired and wireless infrastructures using a USB WLAN adapter.

Well, okay... they are probably right on that one. It's that last clause that's the important part.

 

Technorati Tags: 802.11, mitel, openstage, siemens, sip, wlan, unified communications, voip, wireless

The intersection of VoIP and grocery stores? In Peru?

(Originally posted at http://dyork.livejournal.com/249301.html)

Progressive Grocer doesn't immediately leap to my mind as a place that would be writing about VoIP, but here they were writing about Peru's Number 2 supermarket chain deploying VoIP. On second thought, though, it makes sense that "progressive" food retailers would look at VoIP as a way to enhance/improve their operations. In any event, kudos to Mitel's partner in Peru, Data Voice, as well as our South American team, for winning the business. Our press release has more information (obviously from a Mitel perspective).

Technorati Tags: mitel, voip