Hold On - My Fridge is Calling!

If the title of this post got your attention, and if you know that I keep busy in the worlds of both telephony and smart grid, then you'll want to read my latest Focus Brief. I'm really writing about the USNAP Alliance - who will be participating at our upcoming Smart Grid Summit - and I thought their latest news marked a good time to talk about their work and how the smart home environment will in time become relevant for businesses.

When you think about how many people work from home, and how intertwined our work and personal communications have become, the title of this post will start to make more sense. See for yourself by reading the brief, and by all means, add your thoughts and keep the dialog going.

Internet Television - Busy Times in Canada

June has been a busy month in Canada for VOD, with both Shaw Communications and Videotron recently launching online portals for viewing television programs. This is the local version of TV Everywhere, and it's clear that the cablecos feel the time is right now. Consumer viewing habits are changing, and if they don't offer an online complement to cable TV, they risk losing revenues and even subscribers. I'm sure the telcos are smiling, as the cablecos finally have something to worry about that's comparable to all the threats they've been living with these days.

I've written my take on this for my latest Service Provider Views column, which is running now on TMCnet. Give it a read, and let me know what you think.

Cisco C-Scape - Day 1

Well,there's not much to post about yet, but I've been here for a couple of short receptions. The full Cisco C-Scape event really starts later today. I realize it's now Tuesday for most of you, but it's still late Monday night here in Las Vegas.

I got here early afternoon, and have been catching up on deliverables and email most all afternoon. Things have been fairly quiet on the analyst front, but that's going to change very quickly. Until then, thought I'd pass along a few photos from this afternoon. The real work starts bright and early at 7am, PST!


What do they do with this thing, once the conference is over?



Nice lounge here. I keep thinking about Dire Straights looking at this...."that ain't woikin', that's the way you do it, your money for nuthin...."



Had an interesting visit at the Flip kiosks. This represents Cisco's first true consumer offering, which is a bit of a departure for them. The Flip is a pretty neat product, and I got a taste of all the various flavors they have on tap. I especially liked the underwater model, which was on dispaly here with a waterproof case. It may seem trivial, but with summer here, I can definititely see the appeal. Cisco may have a way to go catch up to Apple in the cool cachet department, but I think they're doing a pretty good job here.

Next Stop - Cisco C-Scape, Las Vegas

Next week is Part 2 of my back-to-back western trips, and I'll be in ridiculously hot and excessive Las Vegas for Cisco's annual C-Scape analyst event. The event is paired with Cisco Live, which is a great showcase for all the collaboration technologies and solutions they've been so aggressively marketing.

Cutting down on travel saves time and money for everyone, and from what I've seen so far, Cisco Live is a pretty good virtual experience. It's really come a long way from their earlier virtual environments, which reminded me a lot of Lego Island (anyone with kids will know what I mean). There's a much stronger social media component now, and in some ways, it's a better way to collaborate, since it's much easier to know more about others in your midst, as well as being able to engage with them.

Collaboration is always better in person, but that assumes you know everyone around you, and are able to bring them together at the same time. C-Scape is a pretty big event, and for everyone in your orbit that you know, there will always be many others that you don't.

Enough said, and I'll just add that I'm glad to be part of the in-person contingent going to C-Scape, and I'll do my best to keep you updated here and on Twitter.

Electric Vehicle Summit, Day 2

The second day of the electric vehicle summit was just as good as the first, and all told, this was time well spent. My recap of Day 2 is running now on our smart grid portal, so you can read all about it there. For more commentary, you can read my post about Day 1 here.

Below are a few photos from the presentations.

Bill Moore, EV World


Sam Smith, EV World


Broc TenHouten, Coda Automotive


Tom Gage, AC Propulsion


Prof. Andrew Frank, U Cal - Davis


Ted Miller, Ford


Mike DiNucci, Coulomb Technologies

Electric Vehicle Summit - Day 1

Yesterday was Day 1 of IQPC's Consumer Electric Vehicle Adoption Summit in San Francisco. So far so good, and I posted a review of the highlights on the Smart Grid portal earlier. Am not going to rehash things here, so I'll steer you to my writeup for the narrative.

I'm just going to add to that here with a few photos from the sessions. Hope you enjoy this, and I'll have the Day 2 highlights in my next post.





Marc Tarpenning, Co-founder, Tesla Motors


John Bryan, Burt Fleet Services


Simon Saba, SABA Motors


Sven Thesen, Better Place


Policy and regs session


Sven gave us a chance to test drive this fully electric Rav 4, which I did. Very smooth and totally silent - takes some getting used to. Love the license plate!


Finally, just little bit of fun. Simon was nice enough to let me hop in - literally, since there are no doors - to his SABA which was conspicuously on display outside.

Next Stop, San Francisco - Electric Vehicle Summit

I've been traveling much less this year, and I'm not complaining. That said, I'm coming up on back-to-back trips out west over the next two weeks. Next week I'll be in San Francisco for the Electric Vehicle Consumer Adoption Summit. It runs through Wednesday, and if this is your world, you really should be there.

The conference is run by IQPC - they're a major global event producer - and they've invited me to be the event Chair. So, if you plan to attend, I won't be hard to find. I'll certainly be writing about the event while I'm there, and I expect to meet and hear from the best and brightest in that space. I'm a big advocate of electric vehicles, and am looking forward to being in the middle of all this innovation and market leadership.

Thoughts on Innovation

Innovation comes in many forms, and that's what makes the communications market so interesting. I come across all types of this, both within and from outside the space, and am always interested in finding better ways to communicate.

In my latest Service Provider Views column, I touch on a few of these, namely Vonage partnering with Amdocs, and a company I just wrote about, Ringio, who have a pretty attractive cloud-based CRM solution for SMBs. The article is running now on TMCnet, and you can read it here. As always, comments are welcome!

BroadSoft Goes IPO

Well, the big day has finally come for BroadSoft, a company I've been close to for about as long as I've been following telecom. It's a long road to IPO, and a lot of things have to go right, not just on opening, but after all the hoopla dies down.

I've been too heads-down today to jump on this, and a hat tip to Larry Lisser who IM'd me earlier to say the stock opened today at $9. That's at the low end of the expected range of $9-$11, and last I checked it has traded today as low as $7.83, and is now around $8.40. I'm not a financial analyst and don't really follow stocks on an intraday basis, so I'll leave it at that.

The bigger picture is the news that they've gone public, so congrats to Mike Tessler and his loyal team for getting this done. If you follow my blog, you'll know that BroadSoft has been doing a lot of things right for a while now, and they earned their stripes. Of course, being a public company brings a whole new set of pressures, and it remains to be seen if the profits are there to keep the markets happy.

For lack of a better word, VoIP IPOs have not fared well, so BroadSoft has its work cut out. In recent times, the likes of Vonage, Veraz and even Mitel do not bode well. However, when you look at Acme Packet, things are a bit brighter. Like Acme, BroadSoft is very strong in their space - not quite as dominant, but strong enough that their market position can sustain long term success and profitability. Acme's stock price did languish for some time, but it's very hot right now, so when the market catches up to how well you're doing, good things can happen. There's no reason why BroadSoft can't turn out the same way, and at the very least, it's a good day to be in VoIP - or whatever you choose to call the business BroadSoft is in!

Unified Communications Market Update

Yesterday, the UC Strategies group had their weekly podcast. I try to make these when I can, and while I was able to listen in, some unexpected disruptions kept me from adding my take.

The basic theme was market deployment successes, and there were some good accounts of how UC is being used. Most of the UCS consultants have first-hand experience with how businesses are using UC, and it was interesting to hear the various scenarios. The common thread to me is that businesses don't generally come to these consultants asking for Unified Communications. They talk about specific business problems, which the consultants are then able to frame in the context of UC. So, in many cases, they're getting UC but may not really know it. That works for me. I think trying to sell UC as UC is more of a solution looking for a market rather than the other way around.

Also of note is the fact that most UC deployments have a vertical focus. Health care came up quite a bit, and again, I think this is a big part of the UC value proposition. By understanding the processes and bottlenecks that drive a business, it's much easier to show where, how and why UC solutions can really add value.

Even though I didn't add to the conversation, I wanted to share this with my readers here. UC is still a work in progress, but when it's thought through correctly, there's a lot of value for businesses. An MP3 file of the call has been posted to the UCS portal, along with a full transcript if you just want to read the commentary.

Electric Vehicles - Now That's Progress

Switching hats, I want to quickly post about smart grid. Our next Smart Grid Summit is in October, but next week, I'll be attending a conference focused solely on electric vehicles. This is a really exciting space, and I'm really looking forward to it.

In short, this is the Electric Vehicle Consumer Adoption Summit, and it's hosted by IQPC. Initially I was invited to speak, then moderate, and now I've topped out and have become the event Chair. I must be doing something right, and if you're in San Francisco next week, let me know. It would be great to see you there, and to find out more, I've written a backgrounder on the summit that's running today on our Smart Grid portal.

Alteva - Hosted VoIP and Microsoft is a Strong Combination

Continuing on today's back-to-blogging theme, I have another new writeup running, this time on UC Strategies. Alteva is a hosted provider I've known for a while, and they've done a good job staying ahead of the pack with advanced applications. Their most recent focus has been integrating VoIP more deeply with Microsoft to give it a stronger unified communications foundation. This is good news for SMBs, as most hosted providers don't take VoIP this far, preferring instead to offer it as a standalone service.

Alteva understands where the clould is going - not just for their business, but what it means for their customers. SMBs constantly need to reduce costs and get the most out of IT, despite having little or no in-house technical expertise. That's where I think Alteva has a good read on what the market needs, and if you want know why, you can read my take here - it's running now on the UC Strategies portal.

Back to Blogging - Ringio and the Cloud

Where does the time go? Sometimes you get heads-down busy with business development, fulfilling projects and a bit of travel. Then you realize things like blogging have gone quiet - well, that's the cycle I've been caught in lately. Have just come through an intense two week stretch like that, and am heads-up now to blog a bit.

First up will be a review I just wrote about Ringio, a pretty interesting company I briefed with the other day. I've been coming across a lot of cloud-based communications services recently, and this one is a great example of bringing a valuable application to SMBs that they really cannot get otherwise. Ringio's application is best thought of as intelligent Caller ID and CRM with some desktop collaboration.

These things are always best understood with a demo, but at least my writeup will serve as a starting point for you to learn more. It's running now on Focus.com, and you can read it here.

Is Skype for Business Enterprise-Ready?

Now, there's an intriguing question for Skype followers. I'm one of them, and have been following them closely since the beginning. The most recent iteration of Skype for Business is targeting the enterprise market, and I think there's a good story here.

That's the focus of my latest Service Provider Views column on TMCnet, and it's running now. You can read it here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Mobile VoIP Webinar Archive Posted

Just a quick note to say that the replay for last week's mobile VoIP webinar is posted now on the USTA website. In case you missed it, the webinar was focused on new ARPU opportunities for mobile operators using VoIP and HD.

I shared the presentation with Media5, and GIPS was cited as the lead sponsor. They were supposed to present as well, but with last week's acquisition news, things changed, and they had to take a lower profile.

Launch News Item #2 - Focus.com

Switching hats, I was involved in a second launch today! This one is for Focus.com, where I'm an Adviser, and I've been posting about them here off and on. There's also a lot of Twitter activity supporting the portal, so it's not hard to pick up on what we're doing there. It's a pretty exciting opportunity, and I'm very happy to be part of it.

Anyhow, the main details about the launch are in the press release. The fun part is their launch party tonight, but San Fran is kinda far from Toronto, so I'll miss it - dang. Next best thing is to follow the Twitter feed, which is pretty steady right now - you can pick it up using the hashtag "#FocusLaunch".

Launch News Item #1 - Smart Grid Summit

Things are moving quickly today, so this post will be short. This afternoon, the program and first round of confirmed speakers was announced for the Smart Grid Summit. Not many speaking spots left already, and I know we're going to have a first-rate program. You can read more about it here, along with a full outline of the agenda on our website. Gotta go...

Interactive Intelligence Extends Their CaaS Platform

I've followed and written about Interactive Intelligence for some time - both here and for the UC Strategies portal. They're a very interesting company, and it's great to see them doing so well in this weak economy. Today they announced some enhancements to their CaaS platform - Communications as a Service - and while most of this is focused on the contact center, I see them as a great example of how cloud communications is evolving - and that's a good thing.

There's a lot to consider here, and I explored this a bit further in an article that was posted this morning on the UC Strategies portal. If this space is of interest, I'd love it if you gave this a read and then to share your thoughts.

Google Acquires Global IP Solutions!

This may not be news to you by now, but for the record, Global IP Solutions is being acquired by Google for $68.2 million. I got wind of this first from here, courtesy of GIPS's on-the-ball PR agency, HighTech PR.

The deal isn't that large, but it sure is a big story in the voice business. GIPS is truly a pioneer, and have long been the standard for IP voice and video codecs. Their roots go back to Skype's beginnings, and it's not all friendly. The main implication is that Google adds a really important piece to their voice portfolio, and by extension, takes GIPS out of the market for their competitors. If any of the IM/Web portals can truly take a run at Skype, it's Google, and that storyline just got stronger today.

There's a sidebar to this story that I just have to add. I've known about this since early this morning, and I Tweeted about it then. Not long after followed many Twitter posts from everyone else catching up on the news, and you don't have to look far to get a dozen or two reactions to the news.

I very much wanted to blog about this ASAP, but ironically, I'm presenting on webinar hosted by GIPS on Thursday, and we had to work through the draft early this morning. With the Google news, GIPS has had to alter their plans for the webinar, so things have been a bit hectic here, and I haven't had a chance to post until now.

The story has been Tweeted to death by now, and it really makes me wonder why we blog sometimes! Blogging definitely has its place, and many of my Tweets simply point back to my posts here, where I can actually write some thoughts beyond 140 characters. Anyhow, when it comes to news that you want to talk about, blogging now seems so painfully slow compared to the near immediacy of Twitter. I'm sure I'm not alone among bloggers who are struggling to figure out when and how best to use each tool. Never a dull moment....

Mobile VoIP ARPU Solutions Webinar - May 20

Just a quick shout-out about our webinar this week. It's being sponsored by GIPS - Global IP Soluions - and I'll be presenting along with Media5.

It's a hot topic, and should be of interest to any mobile operator or developer with big ideas about how to drive revenues with mobile VoIP. In short, the webinar is this Thursday from 1 - 2pm EST, and you can get all the details here. Hope you can join us.