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I’m going to be running around at IT EXPO West 2011 in Austin, Texas, from September 12 through September 14. I strongly recommend TMC’s media day on Monday. Briefings starts at noon at the Austin Convention Center; contact TMC to schedule a briefing time. Location updates during that period will be posted on Twitter at DougonIPComm. Want to know more about SMB video conferencing? Robert Poe has just released a 31 or 32 page report “SMB Video Conferencing: Getting Beyond Clouds & Interoperability.” The report surveys 10 companies “to Watch” and compares 16 cloud solutions in a matrix to clarify strengths and weaknesses. A complete description of the report can be found here. You can get your hands on a copy for $299. August 23rd, 2011 | Tags: smb, video, videoconferencing, VoIP Evolution | Category: SMB, videoconferencing | Leave a comment | Theme for the upcoming Metaswitch Forum 2011 in Las Vegas is: The Power of “M.” Uh hmm. Now I’m nothing but an uncivilized American, but even I know that when we talk about the power of “M,” we’re talking James Bond’s “M.” Even Wikipedia has “M” listed as James Bond! Take your pick, either old-school Bernard Lee M or new school Dame Judi Dench. I prefer the new school M because she’s never taken any guff from Brosnan or Craig, but it’s a very, very narrow divide, since Bernard Lee is a tough act to follow. August 18th, 2011 | Tags: MetaSwitch, Metaswitch Forum, Metaswitch Forum 2011 | Category: Carrier services, IP Core | Leave a comment | Digium (www.digium.com) has been talking up its Switchbox product in the education markets, both K-12 and higher education. The laundry list of customer wins is interesting, but it took a couple of queries to get an answer as to how many extensions you could support on a campus (Answer: A lot). Customer wins include The Earth Institute, Columbia University (New York, N.Y.), Summit Public Schools (Redwood City, Calif.), University of Puerto Rico (San Juan, P.R.), and Southeast Kansas Education Service Center (Topeka, Kan.) Since I used to work at a couple of Universities back in the day, I asked just how many extensions could be supported. A single Switchvox system can support up to 400 users today. But you can gang multiple Switchvox systems together to support thousands of users in a large campus environment – something which is very cool and interesting. Digium says some campuses are deploying fewer phones in each dorm building; makes sense since students now come with cell phones. Often, an individual department will upgrade the existing phone system to VoIP for UC features and use Switchvox to talk to the rest of the campus phone system. There’s an interesting case study at: http://www.digium.com/en/company/casestudies/viewcasestudies/ucsd for the Union County School District of Georgia. There’s a multi-site Switchvox solution supporting over 230 IP phones, with a Switchvox server (“appliance”) at each of the five schools and the district office. Have just firmed up my travel schedule for the next three months–
August 8, Gigaset reseller/press event, Dallas, TX A quick overnight trip, no chance for briefings other than with Gigaset.
IT EXPO West 2011, September 13-15, 2011, Austin, Texas. TMC is scheduling a press day on Monday, September 12, starting at noon. I’m also moderating two (2) panels at the event– “Why Video is a Must for Enterprise Communications” – Tuesday, September 13, 12:30 PM to 1:15 PM. “Evolving Interconnection – From TDM to IP to IMS Peering” – Wednesday, September 14, 3:00 PM to 3:45 PM.
Metaswitch Forum 2011, October 3-6, 2011, Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas I’ll be in from Monday afternoon local time through Thursday morning, so there’s plenty of open time for briefings. August 1st, 2011 | Tags: Gigast, IT EXPO, IT EXPO West, MetaSwitch, Metaswitch Forum, Metaswitch Forum 2011 | Category: Events | Leave a comment | ADTRAN (www.adtran.com) reported its financial results for the second quarter of 2011 on July 12, 2011. Once again, the company continues to roll, racking up an increase of 23 percent as compared to last year’s results. More specifically, ADTRAN had sales of more than $184 million, as compared to $150 million for 2Q 2010. Operating income hit an all time record high of $51.3 million for the quarter, with net income up 33 percent to $36.9 million for the quarter and earnings per share going up 27 percent to $0.56 for the quarter. Stockholders will get a quarterly cash dividend of $0.09 per common share, with a payment date of August 11, 2011. I don’t think there’s been a quarter where ADTRAN has lost money or even had flat growth, if memory serves. Over the past six weeks, Skype (www.skype.com) has announced new products and/or deals with Comcast, on Android, and with Facebook. Anything else? At The Cable Show 2011, Skype and Comcast (www.comcast.com) announced that Comcast users would be able to lease Comcast hardware to enable Skype video calling on HDTV video sets. The service uses a little adopter box plus a customized remote to manage the Skype – and to-be-named-later apps – session to make and receive Skype video and audio calls, IM, and watch TV at the same time. No price on the hardware has been set, but it kinda screams dead-end unless Skype is also going to offer/sell/promote this to other cable companies in the future. Later, Skype released Skype for Android 2.0, enabling video calling over Android in the (closed) Skype universe. Support runs over Wi-Fi or 3G, with downloads free. Again, it’s nice, but with all U.S. wireless vendors except for Sprint rolling out data caps, I’m not sure how useful running video on a mobile phone actually is, unless you’re next to a power outlet. To wrap up its summer of video, Skype announced a partnership with Facebook (www.facebook.com) enabling video chat within the Facebook environment. I think the embedded video message part is the most intriguing feature of this announcement since Facebook loads itself to asynchronous-ness communication. How it all plays out on the mobile environment will be interesting. I suspect the Facebook announcement was the last of the group and we won’t hear any Big Deals for a while, given that Skype now has to finish being consumed by Microsoft. In August,I expect to make a day trip down to Dallas for the Gigaset love-in. Probably drive them nuts with HD voice questions. If it’s September, it must be IT EXPO West. In Austin this year – a refreshing change from the LA/Miami circuit – from September 13 through 15. Austin is a great city, so I’m looking forward to the scenery. In October, I’m trying to pin down dates for Metaswitch Forum 2011. The event will be at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada , October 3-6, but the nice part about a mid-week event in Vegas is decent hotel rooms within walking distance. I’ll probably be footsore at the end of the day, but what the heck… or worse yet, I’ll rent a car and run up my carbon footprint. July 19th, 2011 | Tags: Gigaset, IT EXPO, IT EXPO West, Metaswitch Forum, Metaswitch Forum 2011, TMC | Category: Events, IP Core, IP Edge | Leave a comment | Polycom sage Jeff Rodman (@jefferyrodman) and I swapped around tweets last week about things you just can’t DO via telepresence these days. My brag was witnessing the last launch of the space shuttle program, STS-135 Atlantis last week. (Yes, like any good gawking media person, I took pictures and video. You can see the YouTube clip here. There’s also a bunch of articles over at http://satellite.tmcnet.com) Jeff added “first kiss” and “winning pitch” to the list. I’d throw in “rock concert” for the simple examples. July 11th, 2011 | Tags: telepresence, videoconferencing | Category: Carrier services, Enterprise, videoconferencing | Leave a comment | At the company’s annual user meeting, Metaswitch said it was going to expand around the globe. Over June, the company made a series of announcements to underline its expanded role in the Asia Pacific region. The company opened up a regional office in Singapore at the beginning of June, complementing its existing operations in Australia, Guam and Hong Kong, along with “partner activities” in several other countries in the regions. Metaswitch says it has customers in eight countries in the area, so the regional office will service as a training center for partners and customers. At CommunicAsia2011, Metaswitch announced Chunghwa Telecom would deploy the Metaswitch Service Broker to deliver services across both its legacy and IMS networks on a single platform. Subscribers will get services on any network at the same time without compromising IMS capabilities. In addition, Metaswitch announced customer wins in Australia and the Philippines. CallStream Communications, a new Australian telecommunications company formed by Telco Consolidators Group, will launch Metaswitch Hosted Business Services to small and medium-sized businesses across the country. In partnership with Pastels Inc, Metaswitch now has four customers in the Philippines. New additions announced are General Telephone and Irga Telephone, family-owned incumbent operators that are modernizing their networks and will offer next-generation services to their subscribers. July 4th, 2011 | Tags: Asia, Asia-Pacific, Australia, MetaSwitch, Philippines, Singapore | Category: Carrier services, IP Core, IP Edge, SMB | Leave a comment | |
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