Hosted PBX - my New White Paper with Metaswitch

I was recently engaged by Metaswitch Networks for some thought leadership in the hosted services market. Whether you call it cloud or hosted or managed, this is a strong trend, especially among SMBs. They had me research and analyze the factors driving this space, as well as evaluate how their Hosted PBX offering addresses the needs of the market.

They recently published the white paper, and it's now available for download on their website. The paper is titled "Hosted PBX and Beyond", and
you can register here to get a copy. If you like what you read, I'm sure they'd be happy to hear from you! If you have any difficulty getting the paper, just drop me a line and I can get you a soft copy.

Next Week - Cisco C-Scape, Las Vegas

Not doing much travelling lately, but I have back-to-back trips coming up the next two weeks. Next week I'll be at Cisco C-Scape, and with all the challenges Cisco has faced recently, this should be a very interesting showcase for their 2011 roadmap. Of course, there's still a lot of buzz around last week's launch of Cius, which I most recently wrote about on the UCStrategies portal.

C-Scape is always a great event, and Cisco really knows how to put on a show. If you don't have a sense of this, check out my post from last year's event, which included the first announcement of Cius (one of my photos shows a working prototype).

Cisco Cius - Will it Succeed/Can it Succeed?

Many questions around last week's launch of Cisco Cius, and I posted some initial thoughts following the in-person demo I saw here in Toronto. Opinions are all over the map about Cius, and there is no shortage of people who think or want it to fail. That's fine, but I think Cisco has done a lot of things right here, and while they may not succeed right away (or at all), this looks to me like what collaboration will become once the market catches up to this technology.

Some of this is ahead of the market still, but there's plenty there to get excited about if you're a Cisco shop and you think video is the way to go. Of course, if you still think that voice and telecom is the gold standard for communicating, then Cius is a huge waste of time and money. That may be where a lot of enterprise sentiment lies today, but I do believe that video will drive the future, and tablets will be a big part of that.

If you're still with me, then I welcome you to read my longer post today, which runs on the UCStrategies portal. There's a lot to like about Cius for UC followers, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Cisco Cius - Impressive Demo - But Will the Market Buy?

Been too busy to post about this til now, and hopefully, there's still an appetite to hear more about the launch of Cisco's Cius tablet on Wednesday. I say "hopefully", not just because I don't move in Internet time and am not big on instant analysis, but also because so much of what I've seen out there is just descriptive rehashing of what Cius does - not what it is or what it means. I can't believe how lazy people are, just endlessly re-tweeting this type of coverage - and surely I hope you don't view Twitter as the final word as an authoritative source. I'll save that one for another day.

I'll start off by saying this is the warm-up post. I'm just going to recap a few key takeaways, which I'll flesh out further in my next UCStrategies writeup - look for that early next week. I attended a hands-on demo of Cius on Wednesday at Cisco's Canadian headquarters here in Toronto, so I can actually say I have a first-hand account of the product as well as the benefit of the in-depth presentations onsite as well as via telepresence.

Before sharing some thoughts, you may know that the Cius story is a year in the making. Cius was announced at last year's C-Scape (and I'll be there this year in about 10 days), and I wrote up my impressions shortly after for the UCStrategies portal.

A lot has happened since the announcement last July, and in this case, I think it plays into Cisco's favor. The tablet market has exploded since then, and while the iPad is still the "it" device for consumers, we've since seen Flare and more recently, the PlayBook for the business market. I'm sure Cisco has learned from those launches, and following their hasty exit from the consumer video space with Flip, their go-to-market with Cius has become pretty focused.

Cisco's GTM for Cius isn't bullet proof, but I think it makes for a strong entry given how fast this market is growing. Nobody has a solid value proposition yet for the business market with tablets, which is still very much an early adopter space. The Cius demo only confirmed my belief that while this bright, shiny object has undeniable sex appeal, both vendors and end users don't really know what it or how to integrate it with everything else they're already using. The last thing we want is another gadget to carry around, and it's too early to tell if Cius will displace other end points, or simply add to the mix.

Regardless, I believe Cisco is in a truly unique position to make tablets a success in the business market, but a lot of things have to go right, and of course, businesses need to see a reason to buy. With so many employees using iPads for fun, it's going to be interesting to see how they drive adoption.

Most techhy types that I know routinely carry an iPhone and a BlackBerry - it's pretty clear that an iPhone just doesn't cut it for business. I could see the same thing happening here with tablets - where are people going to put all these gadgets? Restaurant tables are going to get very crowded now when people meet, and do their usual power moves to lay out all their devices so they don't miss a call, or a sports score, or a tweet, or whatever.

Can you picture that? Two guys meet for lunch, and out come the phones and the tablets. Two guys and eight gadgets on the table - as you know, men can't project power if they keep these things in their pockets. I don't know what women are going to do! This is getting silly, but that's exactly what's going to happen - let's move on.

I'll explore more about what I think Cisco has done right in my UCS post next week, as well as what all this might mean for the Unified Communications space. Until then, here are a couple of photos from the demo, and if you made it this far, I think you'll enjoy my post next week.

For those of you up here in sunny, warm Canada (is that an oxymoron?), happy Canada Day! And for my expats south of us, Happy 4th!

Canadian Blog Directory - Great New Resource

I know I'm getting older and the world is getting younger, but blogs still have value. Hopefully you feel that way - otherwise you wouldn't be reading this, right?

I've been blogging since 2005, and ever since Twitter came along, behaviors shifted towards shorter, more in-the-moment modes. Twitter is fantastic for that, but that's not how analysts are wired. We still feel the need to describe and explain, and you can't do that very well in under 140 characters. So, I continue to blog and share my ongoing thoughts and research in this space, and am grateful for those of you who continue to follow me.

I like to Tweet just like everybody else, but primarily as a conduit to my writing elsewhere, or to posts about current developments. You'll never see me tweeting that I just left Starbucks or that it's stopped raining, but it has its place for random fun - nothin' wrong with that.

That brings me to something new - the Canadian Blog Directory. Not only is it a resource to showcase bloggers, but Canadian ones at that. I had always assumed something like this existed, but I guess not. It launched a few weeks ago, and I just came across it yesterday - how's this for a segue? - via a tweet from Mark Evans. I've known Mark a long time, and he's done lots of great things in the Canadian tech space, with this directory being his latest venture.

So, hats off to Mark for putting this together, and I'm happy to say that my blog has now been added to their roster. I should explain this isn't just for tech bloggers - there are many other categories, much like you'd find in a newspaper (presuming you still read them - I sure do!) - business, politics, sports, travel, health, etc. So, if you want to read the best in Canadian blogging - for tech or otherwise, you've come to the right place. Check it out, and if you think Mark is missing any great blogs, just let him know, eh!

Social Media and Contact Centers - Lots to Explore

Social media and contact centers - these are two spaces keeping me busy lately, and it's even better when I can talk about them together. That's the focus of my latest column on Exony's website, and it's just gone live this afternoon.

As my research around this unfolded, more themes kept popping up, and now I've got way more to analyze than initially expected. I was thinking about doing 1 or 2 posts, but I now have 4 or 5 in the works, so this posting is really just an opener to put some issues out there for consideration.

Of course, contact centers aren't alone - everyone is making it up as they go, trying to figure out whether social media is a game-changer or a bad idea/colossal time waster. I'm still on the fence, but that will change over the course of my next few posts.

Being a work in progress, everyone has an opinion about social media, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on what it means to you on the contact center front.

XConnect launches Video Interconnection Exchange

Well, that title is a mouthful, but it's good news for anyone who likes using video for calling or conferencing - and especially those who want to do this but cannot.

Let's start with XConnect. They're a U.K. based pioneer in the IP peering space, a market I've been following for several years. It's been slow to develop critical mass, and I'm one of several analysts who have commented about the reasons, but most of us know that the underlying concept has value.

Until now, most IP peering initiatives have been voice-centric, but there's simply not enough money in it - or arbitrage opportunity - to make this a household name. The value proposition for video, however, is more attractive, and that brings us to VIE. Aside from the fact that video endpoints aren't ubiquitous, there are two basic barriers to growth. First is cost - video-enabling technology is expensive, and video is bandwidth-intensive, requiring operators and enterprises to invest heavily in upgrading their networks. The second major holdback is technology-based - specifically around interoperability. There's a mishmash of standards and protocols that make video difficult/impractical/impossible to do when trying to connect between or among networks.

This is XConnect's world, and to address these problems, they launched VIE - Video Interconnection Exchange - earlier this week. I had a briefing this morning with their CEO and Founder, Eli Katz, so I'll share some thoughts that go beyond the news.

The basic idea here is for XConnect to serve as the hub for a federation that addresses the above-stated technical issues, hence enabling video between IP networks. It sounds simple, but it's not - XConnect has been at this a long time, and they feel the market is now ready. Their news included comments from one VIE member, Telio. Long time followers of my blog will be familiar with this Norway-based operator, and they've been doing video calling for years. Telio is definitely an early adopter-type, and represents the type of operator that sees the value here.

I suspect U.S.-based operators will take a bit longer to catch on, but video calling is not new in E.U. or Asian markets. For consumers, of course, smartphones and tablets are simply kicking video into overdrive, and that's really going to accelerate the adoption of all things video. This means that consumers will actually drive demand here, and that's where I think things will get interesting for VIE. Think of it as video roaming. It won't take long for consumers to get beyond their My 5 circles of friends and family to wanting to do video calling anywhere/any time, with anyone.

The enterprise market is a different story - same for SMBs - the other two markets VIE is after. Now we're talking about conferencing and collaboration, which takes us into the worlds of telepresence and UC. There's more complexity here, especially around security, and I think carriers will have to be more proactive in pitching the VIE story to their business customers. As such, I think the business market for VIE will be driven more from the supply side, but that's ok. At least in this case, carriers are addressing a known problem, and there is pent-up demand for businesses to make greater use of video.

Being vendor-neutral, VIE sits in the middle of all this, and with their cloud infrastructure, offers a safe middle world where federation can take place. The key here is getting carriers to add their IP addresses to XConnect's ENUM registry, and as with anything cloud-based, there is a basic matter of trust to consider. However, carriers need to weigh that against current alternatives, and if they factor in what VIE offers in terms of enabling IP interconnectivity, scalability, security and cost effectiveness, the business case should become a lot stronger.

On that note, the business models aren't entirely clear to me, but once carriers decide they need to offer this capability to meet customer demands, they'll figure out pricing schemes pretty quickly. This will probably take the form of monthly subscription fees, much like the tiered options we have for broadband service. Whatever form that takes, I think the odds of success are pretty good, since market demand is real. As mentioned, the business market will probably take longer to kick in, but once carriers find success with consumers, they'll find ways to make it work for enterprises and SMBs.


Disclosure - I'm an Advisor to XConnect, but not actively involved in their everyday operations. I'm sharing this to be fully transparent, but that aside, I can objectively say that the trend around video peering is becoming more real now, and VIE is a tangible proof point. As other developments emerge in this space, I will comment accordingly. I am in fact, working on another one currently, but it's not ready for public consumption. Stay tuned!

Interactive Intelligence - CIC 4.0 Updates - Adding Value with Speech Analytics

I've written about Interactive Intelligence before, and this morning they announced some interesting enhancements to their CIC platform - now version 4.0. I got an in-person briefing in advance last week, and have shared my thoughts now on the UCStrategies portal.

The key focus for me is on speech analytics and their Interaction Analyzer applications. I've been following the contact center space more closely lately, and this is exactly the kind of intelligence that contact center managers need. If you like what Google does with search or what Cisco does with Social Miner, then this should be of interest to you. And if not, let's move on. My takeaways are posted now on the UCStrategies portal, and as always, your comments are welcome.

Service Providers and Contact Centers - Leveraging Trust

That's the topic of my latest analysis for Exony's website. My column has been building steady readership, and this posting examines the value that service providers can bring with a hosted model for contact centers.

There's a lot to explore here, and I'll be continuing this thread in future posts. However, as a starting point, I think trust is the foundation upon which carriers can position themselves as the right partner to help enterprises better manage their contact center operations. Without further ado, here's the link to the writeup, and I hope it broadens your thinking on the topic.

Focus.com Webinar - AT&T, Avaya and Me...

Just a shout-out for the latest Focus.com webinar. It's this Thursday, June 9, at 1pm EST - and of course, is free to take part in. Titled "The Road to Cutting Edge, Effective and Revenue-Enhancing Communications", we'll be exploring challenges and opportunities facing enterprises, especially those with legacy PBX systems.

I'll be the lead presenter, and will be discussing the trends driving the changes that enterprises need to deal with sooner or later. Of course, the sponsors - AT&T and Avaya - will have their take on things, and on the whole, it should be time well spent. I hope you can join us, and all you need to do is register here.

Mitel Partner Conference - More Highlights, Takeaways and Photos

Getting through the analyst briefing session now. This is where we get more detail on Mitel's product roadmap and go-to-market plans. Not much talk here about VoIP, SIP, IP PBX, etc. They're repeatedly cited how they've moved on from TDM-to-IP, and how the conversations now are much more about business appplications and flexibility to support end users across a variety of scenarios.

There has been some talk about UC, but it's mostly about cloud, virtualization and data centers. Freedom is their overriding architecture, and following the best-of-breed approach, they're adding partners to support the full ecosystem, and that's what we saw at the Solutions Expo yesterday. It's a different model from the bigger vendors who want to do it all. Lots of flexibility here to support all the major smartphones and tablets.

As the morning unfolds, it's becoming clearer what they meant earlier about shifting from being a solutions provider to offering Freedom, which is really an enabling architecture. So, most of the discussion is about the virtualization story rather than the specifics about varying UC or telecom features.

They certainly have all those pieces - just like everyone else - but their differentiation is really built around virtualization, which brings us to VMware. I think this is a good plan to create some market separation, and they seem to have a pretty good head start here, so I like their chances. Other vendors work with VMware too, but it looks like Mitel has made the biggest bet with them. So, there's a lot riding on this relationship, and I'd say it works so long as it works for VMware. I'm sure this is an interesting market for them, and if Mitel has success selling their customer base on virtualization, they'll be fine.

This is a different Mitel from their last analyst event in 2009, where they first announced plans to work with VMware. With Inter-Tel pretty much behind them, I think they've done a great job to position themselves for the present environment. The pool of vendors is smaller today, and you need to be big but also agile to survive. They look pretty ready to me, but it really comes down to the channel, since most all sales go/come through them. Based on what we're hearing, they seem pretty ready too. Rich McBee and his team look to have a clean slate here, and we're hearing all the right things, and I think it's fair to say we'll see the results by year end. I'll certainly be watching and updating you here.

Things wrap up later this morning, and I'll leave you with a few photos to complement my thoughts...



New CEO Rich McBee


Steve Beamish and da Bears - this was fun - the Chicago Bears are a Mitel client, and they shared their deployment story with us


VMware's Carl Eschebach - very impressive growth story - a bit too strong for my liking. I see a great future for virtualization in the comms space, and I know the core audience is Mitel partners, so we're only going to hear about the upside here.


Solutions Expo - Magor's TeleCollaboration - I think there's a great story here, and even though they're a Wesley Clover company, we heard barely a peep about them during the Mitel sessions - that's why I'm here to get the word out, I guess...


RIM's booth - I think this is a key partnership for Mitel - aside from these being two Canadian companies, there's great synergy here, esp with the PlayBook being so new - this really completes Mitel's UC offering

Focus UC Guide Published Now

As you may know, I'm a regular contributor to Focus.com, and have been involved with a few of their buyer's guides. The latest one was a joint effort with fellow indie David Michels, and the focus is on Unified Communications. It's really a follow-on to the guide we recently wrote for enterprise telephony systems, which has been generating a lot of interest on Focus.com

With that said, the Focus Experts' 2011 Unified Communications Guide has just been published, and I think it's going to be pretty popular as well. To get it, you just need to register on the Focus.com site, and you'll have it right way. It's hot off the press - they don't say that so much any more, do they? - and you can get it here. Comments as always, are welcome!

Mitel Business Partner Conference, Day 1

Good start to Mitel's conference today. Over 1,000 partners here, so it's a pretty big event, and it's a great chance for the analysts to spend time both with Mitel's team as well as this extensive community.

Yesterday afternoon, we had a nice update session with Mitel's management team, and if you've been following Blair Pleasant's ongoing tweets, you'll pretty much know the story. That aside, here are the key takeaways for me...

- big changes since their last analyst event in 2009 - new CEO, new exec team, Inter-Tel merger now fully absorbed under one brand, now a public company, Freedom architecture is the new basis for their offering - no longer focused on solutions, bigger shift to the cloud and virtualization (VMware), and a stronger focus on mobility - esp with their RIM partnership

- I could just leave it at that - lots to digest there, and I'll touch in these things in upcoming posts

- lots of discussion about their roadmap to simplify the business, better align their channels and leverage their head start in virtualization - again will talk more about these later

- more focus on virtualization, and explaining how Mitel has success with the best-of-breed approach, and this is where they play very well with VMware - better than the bigger vendors who favor an all-or-nothing approach

- the changing role of VARs - glad to hear this - talking about how they need to be more consultative with their customers. Mitel is definitely ahead of the curve moving from hardware to software and now to the cloud/virtual world, so they focused on the need to aggressively recruit the right VAR partners who can sell converged voice and data solutions. Mitel has the offerings and they have the customers - pretty simple, but you know it never is.

- go-to-market issues - they were pretty frank about the challenges they had, esp with the Inter-Tel merger. This was a welcome conversation, and the exec team talked about they're re-aligning things, both regionally and by size of business. They also recognized that the brand needs some support - "Mitel who?" was the way they referenced this.

Lots of good ideas here, and the messaging around eliminating channel conflict has probably been the most warmly received, especially among the 1,000+ partners here. So, this basically means no more Mitel competing with channels - it's all about partnering now. Ok, as Phil Keenan is saying this morning, "if it's not working, fix it".



As a random aside, is it just me, or did Mitel pick this hotel because the elevators have a design pattern on their doors that looks a lot like their logo? Guess I've been in the sun a bit long, huh...

Next Stop - Mitel, Ft. Lauderdale

This has been my busiest travel month in a long time, and after this, I'll be home for a while. On Wednesday, I'm off early to Mitel Freedom 2011 - their annual partner/analyst event.

It sure has been an interesting year for Mitel, especially with Don Smith retiring. Am looking forward to meeting his successor, Rich McBee, and getting some in-depth updates on their roadmap, including virtualization. They've been out front on this one, and I'm keen to see how that's fitting into their Freedom initiative. Lots to catch up on, and I'll share what can here and on Twitter.

Connectivity Week - More Photos, Day 3

Yesterday was pretty full, starting with some VC perspectives and then a keynote from the CTO of the United States, Aneesh Chopra. Pretty heady way to start things off, and from there I've been keeping tabs on the wireless panels I put together for the conference. That run started with Ben Boyd's panel on FCC policy issues around wireless networks. He was followed by Berge Ayvazian and the lively public vs. private networks debate. If you weren't there, you missed a good one. The afternoon closed out with Kat Shoa and another big topic - critical communications infrastructure. I did several posts and tweets about Day 3, so I'll keep this short and share some photos. More to come with Day 4 highlights.


Silicon Valley business models roundtable, led by Chris Hickman


Aneesh Chopra, CTO of the United States


Ben Boyd's wireless policy panel


Berge Ayvazian and the public vs. private networks debate


Kat Shoa's critical communications infrastructure panel

Zpryme’s New Energy Consumer Report Launched at Connectivity Week

It’s Day 3 here at Connectivity Week, and I’ll be busy running the sessions related to the role of wireless in the smart grid. This isn’t the kind of conference with a lot of news releases or product launches, but there was a launch that I think will be of interest to anyone in smart grid – either on the supply side or as a consumer.

Some of you know that I recently partnered with Zpryme to jointly produce smart grid research, and we launched our first report in March focused on the U.S. renewable energy market. We’d be happy to field your inquiries about this, but let’s come back to the news here.

Zpryme does first rate research, and yesterday their latest study was launched here at Connectivity Week. Not only is it an insightful barometer of what today’s “new energy consumer” looks like, but you can download the report at no cost. The research was underwritten by Itron, but the research is totally market-focused – no vendor pitches here.

To pique your interest, I just wanted to share a few highlights that caught my eye. There is so much to learn about what consumers really think about energy and everything around that, and I’m pretty sure you’ll have a few I-had-no-idea takeways here.

- The report provides a tangible connection between two variables that I think are highly related – the price of gas and electricity. With gas prices jumping so much lately, the research shows that 76.5% of the consumers are now more sensitive to energy prices. They also looked at a sub-set of the sample, which they call High Tech Users (HTUs), and among them, this sensitivity is notably higher – 92.2%.

- That said, there are several data points that show a true lack of knowledge and engagement around energy and smart grid issues:

-- 39.3% are not aware of what smart grid is
-- 48.2% are not interested in an EV- electric vehicle
-- 45.2% don’t know what type of electricity meter they have
-- 21% spend less than a minute reviewing their utility bills, and 48% spend less than 3 minutes - wow!

Clearly, utilities have a huge job ahead of them, and this report is a great resource to better understand what needs to be done.

- On the network and infrastructure side of things, the research also quantifies some promising growth prospects:

-- The U.S. smart grid communications network equipment market was $735M in 2010, and will grow to $1.6B by 2015 – that’s a healthy 17% CAGR

-- The mix of spending is roughly 65% for wired equipment, and 35% for wireless

-- Supporting the wireless opportunity, the research shows that 53.1% indicated that they would be comfortable with their utility working with a cellular provider such as AT&T, Sprint or Verizon.

There's plenty more to explore, and I encourage you to get the report and see for yourself. We all know the opportunity here is huge, but it won't happen unless you understand what's on the consumer's mind.

Connectivity Week - Takeaways so far and Photo Highlights

Am tweeting and blogging as time allows here at Connectivity Week. Sessions are well underway here, and so far, the program has been great. Yesterday we had a full day with Judith Schwartz's Consumer Symposium, followed later by a very engaging keynote from Geoffrey Moore (Crossing the Chasm), and provided broader context around how difficult it is for utilities to make the transformational moves related to smart grid.

This morning has been more of the same with an interactive panel focused on a major theme of the conference - defining the value proposition for smart grid. Lots of different views here, especially with speakers from India and Japan.

This was followed by a keynote from Mickey McManus of MAYA Design. His point of view was far more organic and was as thought-provoking as anything I've seen at eComm. In short, he posed the question for utilities regarding how they would manage all the information that would flood into their networks if smart grid was wildly successful. Phew. For guidance, he turned to nature, and gave a fascinating perspective as to how information is collected and managed for all life forms, including humans. You had to be here to connect the dots - I'm still trying to get my head around this.

Enough for now. I'm currently sitting in on the V2G - vehicle-to-grid panel. This is the kind of stuff that leads people like me to agree with the idea that EVs are the killer app for smart grid. Potentially, it has the biggest impact on home energy use, and is something most of us think about and use every day. As gas prices keep climbing, the EV storyline gets stronger. This session, however, is a good example of the practical challenges - storage, battery life, driving range, charging stations, reverse energy flows, regulations, auto maker priorities, etc. - that need to be coordinated and addressed before EV's can be mainstream. Bottom line - we need more pilots, and don't worry if some of them fail.



Judith's symposium and after panel




Mr. Clasma, Anto Budiardjo


Geoffrey Moore


Day 2 opening panel - the smart grid value proposition


Mickey McManus


Vehicle-to-grid session

Connectivity Week, Day 1 - Smart Meter Consumer Symposium

The Day 1 focus to this point at Connectivity Week has been smart meters. It's one of my favorite topics in this space, and I'll be moderating a panel about it later in the week. This day-long session is a consumer symposium exploring various facets around smart meters.

This symposium is really covering the gamut with speakers/experts from across the whole spectrum, including utilities and the press. It's a great way to explore a pretty touchy topic, especially here in California, where the biggest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric has come under a lot of fire for how they've handled their smart meter rollout.

Lots to explore here - issues of privacy, data security, consumer perceptions, health concerns, pricing issues, etc. Bottom line, consumers really don't understand what smart meters are and why they're being installed without much input from them. Can you blame them? Utilities are not customer-centric by nature, and there's a real disconnect between their motives for deploying smart grids, and why consumers should welcome them. The more you talk about this, the more issues come up, and it's quickly apparent that a lot of things need to go right for this to be a win-win.

In short, it's a trust issue. Consumers haven't had much reason to trust utilities, and so far, smart meter roll outs haven't done much to change that. On the other hand, when you have intelligent discussion happening - as we're having here - consumers definitely get it, and if you make them equal partners, the odds of success go way up. Privacy is definitely a bedrock issue, but it's confounding when you look at how readily people share private information when using social media. As such, there isn't a straight line path here - am sure it will be a lot of zigs and zags, but I think we will get there.

Enough for now - back to work...

Next Stop - Santa Clara and Connectivity Week

All next week, I'll be in sunny Santa Clara for Connectivity Week - whoo hoo! Sure will be a great show, and I'm happy to be part of it. I've been blogging and tweeting about it pretty regularly, and if want to see what I'll be doing out there, it's all in my post from earlier this week.

If you're out that way and want to get in touch, I'm not hard to find.

UCStrategies Podcast - the Future for Service Providers

This week's UCStrategies podcast was about the future for service providers, especially incumbents. I've been keen on this topic for years, and still believe that the service provider of the future has yet to emerge.

Anyhow, Russell Bennett did a great job pulling this together, and I enjoyed being part of it. The podcast has just been uploaded to the UCS portal, and you can give it a listen any time. Enjoy!