Category: Telecom Industry
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Congrats to Dean Elwood for joining Truphone!
Continue Reading: Congrats to Dean Elwood for joining Truphone!Congratulations to Dean Elwood for joining Truphone as their Director of Platform Operations! I’ve known Dean for a couple of years now through Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast where he’s commented from time to time and also provided us the SIP-based comment line (sip:bluebox@voipuser.org) through his involvement with the VoIPuser.org web site. We had a chance to meet a year or so ago at the first Blue Box dinner we had in London and Dean also hosted a dinner at VON Fall Boston a few weeks ago. He’s a great guy with tremendous talent and I’m sure he’ll be a great resource for Truphone. Speaking of Truphone, they are also a fascinating company to watch and I’ve come to know a good number of folks involved over time. I’m looking forward very much to seeing what comes out of their work and I wish Dean all the best in his new role.
Technorati Tags: dean elwood, truphone
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Verizon brings in 40 Gbps IP circuits… OC-768, anyone?
Continue Reading: Verizon brings in 40 Gbps IP circuits… OC-768, anyone?Having been online now since the early 1980s and having watched/used the ever-increasing amounts of bandwidth we have available, it still made me pause to read that Verizon Business has launched 40Gbps connections on its backbone using Juniper Networks routers.
40 Gbps?
Pretty mind-blowing, considering where we have come from. I’ll spare you all the tugging on my beard (that is now gray in spots) and reminiscing about how we all had to connect at 110 baud using acoustic couplers… I will say that back in the late 1990’s when I wrote the Networking Essentials Exam Guide, I did cover the OC-n naming convention for connections, but I don’t think we would ever have imagined that some day there would be “OC-768”. Pretty cool!
Not that we as consumers will necessarily see that bandwidth anytime soon… but it is nice to know it is there in the backbone. (Also interesting that they note that the growth of their VoIP offerings is one of the reasons for being interested in this backbone.)
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Jeff Pulver on the status of VoIP-related legislation in the USA…
Continue Reading: Jeff Pulver on the status of VoIP-related legislation in the USA…I haven’t written much here about the state of VoIP-related regulations in the USA, but Jeff Pulver just did yesterday on his blog with his post, “VoIP in America: The State of VoIP“. I would encourage you to give it a read, even if you don’t live in the USA. It’s great that we all are building useful technologies… but we also need to make sure that government regulations do allow us to use those technologies.
Technorati Tags: politics, regulation, voip
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It’s about the platform – Google finally answers the “Gphone” speculation… with an Android!
Continue Reading: It’s about the platform – Google finally answers the “Gphone” speculation… with an Android!“It’s about an open platform, stupid!” While I didn’t include Google when I first wrote my post about how voice is really all about application platforms, I did note in the comments that I had intended to do so… and today’s announcement really shows that they should be in anyone’s list of telephony application platforms. As announced on the Google blog with “Where’s my Gphone?“, Google today announced the Open Handset Alliance and the associated set of forthcoming software called Android. The front page of the Open Handset Alliance provides a rather compelling (to me) statement:
What would it take to build a better mobile phone?
A commitment to openness, a shared vision for the future, and concrete plans to make the vision a reality.
Welcome to the Open Handset Alliance™, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. Together we have developed Android™, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.
We are committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform in the second half of 2008. An early… -
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It’s the (app) platform, stupid!
Continue Reading: It’s the (app) platform, stupid!“Phone systems” are dead. PBXs are dead. IP-PBXs are dead.
Well, okay, not really… people will still be buying “PBXs” for quite some time. Just as there are certain communities out there who still buy horse-drawn wagons. But the reality is this:
“Phone systems”, PBXs and IP-PBXs without easy application programming interfaces (APIs) are a dead branch on the evolutionary tree.
The future of communication belongs to mashups. To quick and easy ways to interconnect disparate systems. To integration of communication systems with business processes and other applications. In a world where voice is no longer always the primary mode of communication, we have to stop thinking about “phone systems” and take a larger look at how “communication” in general fits into our infrastructure. More than just how we use the system, we have to look at how we can get data in and out of the communication system. To borrow from the 1992 Clinton campaign:
It’s the platform, stupid!
As you look at communication choices, the question is really about who has the “best” APIs… whose system is easiest to integrate with…. who lets you get data out of their system easily – and also lets… -
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A heck of week to choose to go dark! (Microsoft, MySpace/Skype, iPhone… )
Continue Reading: A heck of week to choose to go dark! (Microsoft, MySpace/Skype, iPhone… )Boy, did I choose the wrong week to go dark! Way too many amazing things going on out there this week… here is a quick view of some of the disruptions with relevant links:
- Microsoft formally announces release of Office Communication Server – tons of coverage out there but I recommend the analysis by the UC Strategies team.
- Skype will be providing voice to MySpace IM – again tons of coverage – Skype Journal has more info and a screenshot. See also the Skype blog.
- Per Business Week this morning, Skype will be rolling out its own mobile phone, starting in Europe.
- MySpace
- Apple, meanwhile, announces an upcoming developer kit for the iPhone via a note from Steve Jobs (some reactions here and here).
- And finally MySpace says it will open up to application developers in a similar manner to Facebook.
All in all a rather busy week! (And it’s not over yet…)
Technorati Tags: apple, applications, facebook, iphone, myspace, microsoft, ocs, unifiedcommunications, skype, voip
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The audacity of Asterisk – why the 3Com/Digium partnership fundamentally changes the game in SMB telephony
Continue Reading: The audacity of Asterisk – why the 3Com/Digium partnership fundamentally changes the game in SMB telephonyThe SMB VoIP game is changing. Fundamentally. And in a pattern we’ve seen before in other industries. In the news release out today, Digium and 3Com announced that:Under the terms of the agreement, 3Com will offer Digium’s award-winning Asterisk Appliance™ to small businesses that need a reliable, easy-to-deploy voice solution based on open standards. 3Com Asterisk will be available through the company’s proven channel of partners worldwide.
Let’s think about that for a minute. 3Com will make Digium’s Asterisk appliance available through “the company’s proven channel of partner’s worldwide“, which some reports are putting at around 60,000 resellers. Digium just wound up with a large global sales channel. Yet to be seen is whether there will be any channel conflict with existing Digium Partners/VARs, but regardless, Digium just wound up with a way to deploy Asterisk-based solutions globally. It does, however, get one step better (my emphasis added):“3Com is focused on delivering products and solutions for converged secure networks, in which voice is an application that can be readily integrated with many others,” said Bob Dechant, senior vice president and general manager for 3Com Corporation. “We’ve announced a complete voice strategy and new product offerings for small businesses, including…
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Telephony is disrupted because voice no longer matters… (as much)
Continue Reading: Telephony is disrupted because voice no longer matters… (as much)Does “voice” communication really matter as much today in business communications?
Think about it. When you need to reach someone today, what do you do? Do you call them on the phone? Or do you send them email? Or a text message? or IM?
I know personally that my normal communication flow usually goes something like this:
- Instant Messaging – I check first to see if I can reach the person on some form of IM. For me, I usually use Skype, GoogleTalk or WLM/MSN, although I do have accounts on other services as well. I use IM because I can see the presence of the other person. If they are online and available, I’ll shoot them a message. Sometimes the question may be dealt with entirely within an IM exchange. Other times I use the IM chat as the precursor to initiating a voice call, i.e. “Ping… do you have time for a call?”
- SMS – If the matter is relatively important and I want to talk to someone, I might send an SMS next to their cell phone, again often to see
- E-mail/Facebook/Twitter/other – Unless the matter is really urgent, the next mode I’ll use is some…
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iLocus – 2.23 million licenses of pure IP PBX sold in 2Q07 (Cisco, Mitel are the market leaders)
Continue Reading: iLocus – 2.23 million licenses of pure IP PBX sold in 2Q07 (Cisco, Mitel are the market leaders)Just out on WebWire today, research firm iLocus indicated that 2.23 million IP-only PBX lines were sold in the second quarter of 2007, apparently generating revenues of over $208 million. Cisco was the market leader and then, according to the news release, Mitel (my employer) was the leader of the non-Cisco shipments. Mitel apparently had 42% market share (of non-Cisco shipments, I presume), followed by 3Com, ShoreTel and Inter-Tel (now part of Mitel).
Now the point of this news release is obviously to entice people to buy iLocus’ research report, but I do find the data rather curious. Mostly due to the fact that there is no mention of Avaya and Nortel, two of the other major competitors in the IP-PBX space. Now perhaps this is due to this statement:
“iLocus has discontinued coverage of shipments related to legacy PBX upgrades or the hybrid systems. We focus on only the pure IP PBX shipments in the enterprise VoIP equipment quarterly tracking service.”
I don’t know. I do just find it curious. (Not that I’m complaining, mind you.) In any event, this research is now out there and available to purchase.
It would be interesting to know how this 2.23 million…
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Mitel and Inter-Tel announce the completion of their merger (and there was much rejoicing!)
Continue Reading: 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