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By Doug Mohney, on August 26th, 2010
Making free phone calls just got easier through Google(www.google.com) (so long we all remember that “free” is not really free, but subsidized through someone else’s money) via “Voice Calls from Gmail.”
More specifically, you need a Gmail account and calls through your computer to American and Canadian numbers are free through “at least” January 2011. As is typical in the Great VoIP shell game, calls to other countries start at around 2 cents a minute to landlines, 15 cents a minute to cell phones.
One can get inbound calls through Gmail if you have (free) Google Voice account.
Timing on this offer is everything, but when you pull up the comparison between Google’s rates and “Leading internet telephony provider,” The Goog’s per minute rates are equal to or better than “Leading.”
If the folks at Skype haven’t already figured it out, Google is NOT their friend.
By Doug Mohney, on August 16th, 2010
Newly launched eZuce (www.ezuce.com) comes with some familiar names in the IP PBX world. Hoping onto the UC bandwagon – ok, so everyone is these days – eZuce openUC is bragging about seven years of development through SIPfoundry efforts.
Founder Steinmann started up SIPfoundry and the sipXecs project in 2004, along with morphing Pingtel from a handset manufacturer into an open source IP PBX software company . He was rolled into Nortel in 2008 with the acquisition of Pingtel from its parking spot at BlueSocket to support its implementation of sipXecs as the Software Communications System (SCS), but you know what happened to Nortel, right? Also onboard is SIPfoundry/sipXecs-er Doug Huber, who is listed as “Lead Architect.”
eZuce openUC is being touted as an enterprise-grade open alternative to Microsoft, and being targeted at firms with anywhere from 200 to 10,000 users. There’s also some positioning to put it as “where Asterisk left off” – uh, guys, do you really want to go there again? – by offering a fully standards-based solution for replacing existing legacy IP PBX systems both as premise-based CPE and through hosted deployments.
Yes, I’m skeptical. If one remembers the snake-bit history of Pingtel – parked at BlueSocket because the cash ran out, then bought by Nortel before it went bankrupt – you might be skeptical as well.
By Doug Mohney, on August 11th, 2010
After being off the PR radar for nearly a year, Fonality (www.fonality.com) has gone through an extreme makeover and started making noise again through a “relaunch” of the company that includes 1) A website redesign 2) Actually talking to media again and 3) Doing a big presence at IT EXPO West. Oh yes, and expanding its focus to enterprise and cloud-based services.
Yes, “cloud” is now in, Fonality Fight Club is, well, out.
The new management has decided to file off the rough edges and polish everything shiny as it goes to reach upward into the enterprise space. The whole “hybrid hosting” concept Fonality touted in the beginning isn’t out, but being respun as “Go to the cloud and if something happens, you’ve still got the equipment on premise if something happens.” Kinda like the whole ShoreTel pitch.
A press release yesterday says that new customer sales have “more than doubled” compared to the prior year (Yah, but doubled from what? Seriously, I hate this vague “Be impressed” language and frankly, your VC are whoring out your numbers to their buds at happy hour anyways, so publish numbers already).
Fonality attributes the doubling in growth to new product enhancements, corporate expansions and increased customer signups. The emphasis on cloud and enterprise means that Fonality can move up from a sweet spot of SMB and up to 100 users to going after large businesses with thousands and tens of thousands of seats.
Company execs I talked to yesterday emphasized the company’s ability to offer functionality above-and-beyond the stock PBX and its emphasis on cranking up ops outside of North America.
But still, no more Fonality Fight Club (yes, it is gone from the website, it appears). *sigh* It just won’t be as entertaining with Chris Lyman at the helm.
By Doug Mohney, on August 11th, 2010
Polycom (www.polycom.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) have declared their love, er a “global strategic agreement” for developing and marketing “integrated,” standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions.
The agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s “key strategic global alliance” for UC; both sides will invest in product development, sales, and marketing.
Polycom will develop a broad base of solutions for Microsoft Communications Server “14” and beyond, including lots of new Polycom CX series endpoints featuring HD voice and video, new room-based video systems designed for direct integration with MCS “14” and additional interoperable solutions between Polycom’s existing and future video conferencing solutions.
The biggest hoot out of this announcement is seeing a quote from Microsoft Corporate VP Gurdeep Singh Pall, the go-to guy when it comes to Microsoft’s telephony products. Two years ago at VoiceCon Orlando, he poo-poo’ed the traditional desktop handset, waiving around a cheap $300 netbook and saying one didn’t need all that dedicated hardware.
Today, Pall is singing the praises of one of the biggest phone guys in the business. “Microsoft and Polycom are committed to a roadmap that will deliver interoperable UC solutions with choice and innovation in video conferencing and customer devices that will help transform enterprise communication,” Pall said in a press release.
It’s a VERY different tune from “We don’t need no stinkin’ desktop phones.” Now Microsoft is the new BFF with the best desktop phone and videoconferencing company. Guess they figured out they can’t do everything standalone, especially when it comes to telepresence. Either that or the Acer netbook died…
By Doug Mohney, on August 9th, 2010
Ringio (www.ringio.com) has completed its public beta (It doeth beg the question as to what that means, but it’s nicer than how Google handles its beta process, regardless) and has added more than a dozen new features to its “Rich Calling” service.
“Rich Calling” integrates data from CRM and IVR tools for SMBs, giving customers “call center style” screen pops, visibility into coworker availability and “sophisticated” call routing.
New features include a “Bring Your Own PBX” function, allowing pre-existing PBXes to work with Ringio, enabling calls and CRM displays to be routed directly to those on PBX extensions as well as (of course) on direct-inward-dial numbers without having to change recorded greetings or prompts; Ringio can also do the whole “virtual extension” PBX trick, adding/creating a PBX out of home and mobile numbers.
Caller-centric router sounds cool, by being able to automatically great callers by name (OK, it’s a cheap caller ID trick, but long overdue) and automatically routing them to the person they spoke with last. Calls can be routed to a predefined list of employees or evenly distributed to all employees to handle particular heavy call volume.
Starting cost for Ringio is $99 a month for four (4) users, with additional users added at $25 per month.
By Doug Mohney, on August 9th, 2010
In the usual terse manner that all companies end up with, Skype (www.skype.com) has announced it has filed a S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed IPO of its “ordinary” shares.
The SEC prospectus can be found here on www.sec.gov. Be interesting to see what skeletons come out.
One thing that jumps out from a quick scan of the prospectus is while the company says it is 560 registered users, it only has 8.1 million average monthly paying users annnd 124 million “average monthly connected users.”
Not to be rude, but I’ve always thought the “registered users” number that the company has continually touted is, well, crap; reading between the lines on the number of “average monthly” connected and paid users and the math is pretty clear.
And seriously, hasn’t Skype run its “viral” course a la AOL and the bombardment of CDs? Everyone knows who Skype is and that’s why the Nimbuzz-es and other ankle biters are out there….
Number of shares and price ranges for the offering have not yet been determined – no big surprise there. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are the “Joint global coordinators” and running the books for the offering and there’s a lot of other joint and co-involved; BofAMerrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Citigroup Global, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities will also be acting as joint book-running managers while Lazard Capital, RBC Capital and UBS Securities will be acting as joint lead co-managers; Allen and Company and Evercore Group will be acting as co-managers.
If everyone is a “co-", who is in charge?
By Doug Mohney, on July 29th, 2010
I’m headed out to Las Vegas for DEFCON 18. To get the whole Jeff Pulver “Living in the State of Now” experience, I’ve got my Sprint HTC EVO fired up, GPS radio “on” and logged into FourSquare.
Once I hit the ground, I’ll fire up the WiMAX 4G phone in the EVO. As I run around Vegas, I’ll try to remember to “check in” on FourSquare and look at 4G signal strength and performance.
Las Vegas should be a good 4G city; it’s officially turned-up, dry and flat, lots of clear sight lines and should have good coverage because of all the WiMAX demos run in town over the past couple of years.
By Doug Mohney, on July 28th, 2010
AudioCodes (www.audiocodes.com) has rolled out Enterprise Session Border Controller (SBC) capabilities for its Mediant platforms.
The company says the new capabilities target a growing market for a range of IP-enabled services at the enterprise, including SIP trunking, Hosted IP-PBX, remote extension, and contact center and conferencing services.
AudioCodes says the solution addresses the needs of users seeking a combination of media gateway with SBC, as well as users who want stand-alone SBCS.
By Doug Mohney, on July 22nd, 2010
Dialogic (www.dialogic.com) has unleashed a raft of software-based products this month along with a cloud-based developer network/service.
The software announcements – four total, two updates, two new products – are all grouped under the PowerMedia media processing family/brand.
PowerMedia IP Media Server (IPMS) and Host Media Processing (HMP) software should be familiar to Dialogic users. IPMS includes the latest and greatest in videotranscoding, transrating, and transizing for H.263 and H.264 codecs and RTSP clients, as well as support for real-time ad insertion and other info using text overlays. HMP features newly released H.264 and HD voice codecs for media processing tasks on general purpose (i.e. off-the-shelf Intel-based) servers.
PowerMedia Web Media Server (WMS) is a new server-based software product to enable “extensive” media processing capabilities to web apps using industry-standard web interfaces, so service providers and web programmers can drop in real-time multimedia communications capabilities to their apps. Features include audio/video play/record, audio/video conferencing, and text overlay.
And to wrap it up, PowerMedia Media Server Connector (MSC) connects Java EE Applications Servers to the PowerMedia IMPS using JSR 309. The MSC enables audio processing features such as audio play/record, simple conference mixing and basic prompts and digit collection.
Developers can tap into Dialogic’s newly announced and FREE inCloud9 network to work with PowerMedia IPMS and WMS. The inCloud9 network provides applications developers with access to products, technical documentation and support for creating new voice and video-enabled value-added services – can you say Evo and iPhone 4 here? – without requiring local server hardware or a development environment.
There’s a bunch of third party products also available and Dialogic intends to add other Dialogic and third-party products to inCloud9 later this year. Cool, eh?
Developers can also get access to video training demos and sample code for a bunch of different applications ranging from Video Mail to Open VXML.
By Doug Mohney, on July 20th, 2010
Optimum Lightpath (www.optimumlightpath.com) has connected to CENX’s New York exchange.
The move allows Optimum to connect/reach more than 10 million Ethernet service locations worldwide, enabling Optimum’s customers to establish Ethernet-based low-latency and high-bandwidth connections between the New York metro area and key locations around the world.
Needless to say, Optimum has a lot of financial service customers it wants to give love, er good connectivity.
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