The company’s XO IP Flex service was launched in April 2005.  Depending on how you want to slice the numbers, Frost & Sullivan says says XO is the VoIP access services market leader [...]]]>

XO Communications (www.xo.com) says it serving over one million business VoIP end-user customers.  So much for voice and VoIP being dead.

The company’s XO IP Flex service was launched in April 2005.  Depending on how you want to slice the numbers, Frost & Sullivan says says XO is the VoIP access services market leader with 22.2 percent of the market, with 1 in 300 people in the US using VoIP services delivered by XO; I’m assuming this is for business, rather than consumer since Vonage said it has 2.4 million consumer lines in operation as of June 30, 2010.

Be interesting to see how XO does going forward.  The cable companies want more SMB and enterprise customers and they aren’t shy about it.  8×8 (www.8×8.com) is in hog heaven with continued profitability and a stock buyback plan, plus continues to pick up traction with larger businesses.

Data point one comes from 8×8’s (www.8×8.com) annual shareholder meeting presentation on August 31, 2010.  Slide [...]]]>

While Wall Street and the mainstream media have become, well, bored of Voice over IP (yes, VoIP), two of the most financially successful companies in the space say that IP voice’s greatest potential has yet to come.

Data point one comes from 8×8’s (www.8×8.com) annual shareholder meeting presentation on August 31, 2010.  Slide 5 of the deck (data from 2008 Atlantic ACM) shows that Business VoIP is only a $1.6 billion business – with circuit-switched business voice at $40 billion.

8×8 reported that its last quarter (ending June 30, 2010) of $16.8 million was the largest quarterly revenue figure in the company’s 23 year history.  Further, 8×8 reports it has both generated net income in 10 of the last 11 quarters and increased cash and cash equivalents 11 of the last 12 quarters.

On June 30, 2010, the company had more than $18 million in cash and cash equivalents and no debit.  Topping it all off, the company repurchased nearly 500, 000 shares during the month of August and plans to buy back another $3 million shares.

Total business customers at the end of June was over 21,000; going back two year to June 2008, that number was a hair short of 12,000 – in two years through a down economy, 8×8 has nearly DOUBLED their business customer count.

Average revenue per business customer took a hit between September 2008 ($220) – when the economy went to hell – but is now currently on the upswing, between $205 and $210.

Data point two is from the “Define your Decade” folks: Metaswitch sees a big opportunity as carriers in many cases just start to migrate out of TDM to an all-IP world.    Over the next two years, the company’s expansion motto is “Going Global, going mobile.”

Metaswitch doesn’t need to rush into an IPO; it’s got enough cash and profitability to fund its expansion at a steady pace on a financially solid basis and its investors are in not in a dot.com hurry.  The company will ultimately go public, but it is not going to happen in the next 12 month is my bet.

When Metaswitch does go public, it will do so because it will need liquid stock to facilitate other mergers.  But there won’t be a lot of those, because of the company’s core values; Metaswitch will want the “right” fit in terms of supplementing/adding to its existing product lines.

Bottom line here is that there are two very financially successful companies in the VoIP space who are bullish on the IP voice future.  And their fortunes are likely to increase as 1) Businesses look for healthy firms for services and products 2) Everybody migrates to IP communications and 3) Other VoIP/IP communication firms start to lose customers due to financial woes and bad service.

According to XO, the upgrade will be completed later this year and is being done to continue to meet the increasing demand for high-capacity network services from [...]]]>

XO Communications bragged about its third major nationwide network capacity upgrade last week.  Using Infinera equipment, the company has “more than” doubled its inter-city transport network capacity.

According to XO, the upgrade will be completed later this year and is being done to continue to meet the increasing demand for high-capacity network services from its customers, including carriers, service providers, and large enterprise customers.  As a part of the upgrade, XO will be offering a “10 Gigs in 10 Days” carrier service guarantee, able to provision high-speed service (from 1 GBps to 40 Gbps, with up to 100 Gbps in the future) between any two points in the network in 10 days or less.

(And I remember when it took weeks to get a T-3 in…)

XO says it has invest more than $450 million to enhance and expand its network infrastructure and its network is now capable of reaching nearly half of all busiensses in the United States. This is a good sign for both IP communications and economic growth in general…

The benchmarks I used were–

In a press release today, Avaya announced it has signed agreements to pick up Nortel’s enterprise solution business for $475 [...]]]>

Avaya and Aastra have made separate moves to get into the Nortel bankruptcy circus.  Avaya is offering cash for assets, while Aastra will offer migration incentives (i.e. a sale) to get customers to switch.

In a press release today, Avaya announced it has signed agreements to pick up Nortel’s enterprise solution business for $475 million.  The acquisition includes Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions voice, data and government systems businesses, but the transaction awaits clearing a competitive bidding process and approval by bankruptcy courts in Delaware and Ontario.

Avaya gets to scale a bit, expand its channel partner network, and add to its portfolio of products and services.   Nortel gets cash to pay off its creditors and some of its employees will land as Avaya employees.  Bell Canada and BT praised the move and BT went so far as to say it would “expand” its engagement with Avaya over the next year to offer a full unified communications portfolio.

Aastra’s move is less concrete, more ambulance-chasing.  For “a limited time” Aastra says it will offer “extraordinary incentives” to get Nortel large enterprise customers to move to its Clearspan UC solution. Discounts include free unlimited numbers of SIP integration trunks, “significant” discounts on Aastra 67ix SIP phones, free instructor-lead training for admins during the first year of deployment (up to 2 students per class) and free end user, web-based training for an unlimited number of users during the first two years of deployment.

Aastra says that a 3,000 user enterprise deploying 300 SIP integration trunks and 1500 new SIP phones to users can save $500,000.

Billy Mays, you passed too soon, my friend.  You could have made some serious coin off someone looking to rob Nortel of its customer base…

Issuing a statement yesterday,  the company said “Although Mitel has been advised that there are legal grounds to seek judicial review of the City’s decision, we have concluded that it [...]]]>

Mitel won’t sue the city of Ottawa over aVoIP contract award that went over to Bell Canada and Cisco, reports the Ottawa Citizen.

Issuing a statement yesterday,  the company said “Although Mitel has been advised that there are legal grounds to seek judicial review of the City’s decision, we have concluded that it would not be in the best interests of Mitel, the City, nor its taxpayers to proceed further with this matter.”

Last week, Mitel was threatening to sue the city of Ottawa, but after much review, the city decided to soldier on,  advised by its procurement people that Mitel’s protests were not valid and by its lawyers that Bell Canada and Cisco likely had the better case to sue if the procurement process — worth $7 million (CN) – was restarted.

Mitel invested significant time and energy trying to get a do-over for the Ottawa VoIP contract, first offering $2 million (CN) worth of VoIP phones as a “gift” in exchange for getting exclusive rights for it and its partners to supply VoIP services.  When that didn’t work, it withdrew the gift and started threatening to sue if the procurement process wasn’t overturned, as it started an extensive lobbying campaign that included hiring the former mayor of Ottawa to talk to city officials.

Mitel has waged a concerted PR and lobbying effort to get the current procurement thrown [...]]]>

The city council of Ottawa voted 16-5 to award a $6 million (CN) VoIP contract to Bell Canada and Cisco yesterday, reports The Ottawa Citizen.  Will Mitel now sue over how the contract was handled, as it has threatened?

Mitel has waged a concerted PR and lobbying effort to get the current procurement thrown out, even going so far as hiring former Ottawa mayor Bob Chiarelli to press the flesh with councillors; Chiarelli has declined to speak with the Citizen on the work he has done on behalf of Mitel.

Ottawa city staff and advisors, including an independent procurement expert, have reviewed and rejected Mitel’s positions on all points, ranging from an allegation that Cisco had an unfair advantage on the VoIP bid because it had earlier won a contract this year to upgrade the city’s computer systems to a $2 million “gift” offer of VoIP phones in exchange for exclusive rights to supply VoIP telephony to the city.

Meeting with VoIP VARs, Response Point Program Manager John Frederickson said Microsoft doesn’t currently plan to release future versions of Response Point. It will, however, continue to maintain the product and evaluate specific feature requests.  The [...]]]>

ChannelWeb reports that Microsoft is wishy-washy about what will to happen with it’s Response Point SMB VoIP system.

Meeting with VoIP VARs, Response Point Program Manager John Frederickson said Microsoft doesn’t currently plan to release future versions of Response Point. It will, however, continue to maintain the product and evaluate specific feature requests.  The company will also continue supporting OEMs and selling Response Point 1.0 Service Pack 2.

So, you want to buy a dead/legacy-ed out product because…?

Back in May, Microsoft laid off a bunch of people working on Response Point and hasn’t said diddly about plans to develop/release a 2.0 version.  Things don’t look good as the Response Point GM has been moved over to Microsoft’s search group and there’s a “small” engineering team still around to maintain the product, but Response Point is “funded” and has a marketing budget through June 30, 2010.

An email from Microsoft to ChannelWeb said the company didn’t “announce anything” at the meeting and expects to have more details to share on future development at the end of this calendar year.

Some VARs love Response Point, but they are discomforted that Microsoft has basically frozen the product.  Other players in the IP PBX game would like to see Response Point just Go Away – the Digium people seem to be especially catty when it comes to the SMB PBX.