After I and about 30-50 other press people were turned away because they room had been packed to the [...]]]>

Las Vegas – I tried to get into the Cisco press conference today.  Should have known something was wrong when they stared handing out “Stand-by” tickets and had sign-holders for “Confirmed” and “Stand-by” lines.

After I and about 30-50 other press people were turned away because they room had been packed to the gills with standing people, some Cisco PR droid made the suggestion that “You can watch the press conference live on the web.”

Um, Droid, if I wanted to watch it on the web, I wouldn’t have arrived 20-30 minutes early to get a stand-by ticket and stand in line. Or even put this on my “to do” list of conferences to view today.

And say, just FYI, to all the Cisco PR people the next time you suggest something that inane– The Wi-FI in the press room is crap and the media is falling out of the runty little room into the hallways, so if its’ a choice between burning battery on watching the webcast or flaming you, I’ll pick door #2.

You couldn’t have gotten a bigger room, Cisco?

I mean, if you had to print “Confirmed” and “Standby” tickets and made up signs, there’s this implication that you knew you would have a lotta lotta people, so, why not get a bigger room?

(And a Big Shout Out PS to Gary Shapiro, head of the CEA, who is plugging his new book, The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream.  Hopefully, Mr. Shapiro and CEA could apply some innovation to the nightmare of CES “Press Day” press conferences – BIGGER ROOMS, HELLO – and the crappy Wi-Fi and generally treating the press like a bunch of cattle, because I’m not real interested in buying his book from Barnes & Noble at the moment).

I think you could call this a big #Fail day all around.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see if I want to roll the dice on getting crammed into a too-small room for Samsung’s press conference at 2 PM – wasting only 30 minutes in line if I make it or get turned away – or proceeding directly to stand 90 minutes in line for the 3 PM Panasonic press conference. 

And people don’t understand why I keep getting a greater hate for CES.

The trial is expected to enable participants to see how cloud-based UC&C (unified communication and collaboration) capabilities can be used quicly and cost-effectively across an enterprise.

Participants include  “a multinational auto manufacturer, a woman’s [...]]]>

Verizon Business (www.verizonbusiness.com) will run field trials of Cisco’s new Hosted Collaboration Solution for the next two months.

The trial is expected to enable participants to see how cloud-based UC&C (unified communication and collaboration) capabilities can be used quicly and cost-effectively across an enterprise.

Participants include  “a multinational auto manufacturer, a woman’s fashion retailer and a state government agency” and will use Verizon Business solutions built on Cisco UC&C capabilities on/in a cloud infrastructure.

LifeSize has been targeting its high-end HD video telepresence and videoconferencing solutions squarely into the enterprise space, undercutting the likes of [...]]]>

Logitech, best known for its PC add-ons such as keyboards, mice, and *ding*ding* video cameras, has gone upscale, purchasing videoconferencing hardware firm LifeSize for $405 million.  Does it make sense? Time will tell.

LifeSize has been targeting its high-end HD video telepresence and videoconferencing solutions squarely into the enterprise space, undercutting the likes of Cisco, Polycom and TANDBERG.  In addition, it has a range of personal office/teleworker and SMB solutions for HD 720p video to complement its higher-end gear.

With the onset of the recession, Austin-based LifeSize has faced stiffer competition in the telepresence arena in the likes of HP, Siemens, and IBM.   The combination of Logitech (deeper pockets, bigger marketing) and LifeSize will be interesting to watch.

Last year, Logitech bought SightSpeed,  a multi-party videoconferencing/video chat services company with some long-distance VoIP services thrown in, so the company’s expansion into the higher-end video solutions and the enterprise space shouldn’t be a total surprise.   Be interesting to see if there are synergies to leverage between the SIP-based SightSpeed division and LifeSize in terms of offering a one-stop shop of services and high-end hardware.

Regardless of the success/failure of the purchase, the further consolidation of the high-end videoconferencing world is likely to stimulate further twittering on the future of Polycom… something I’m going to have to ponder over at HD Voice News later today.

It’s an interesting premise, since purchasing Polycom would give Cisco an effective lock on the videoconferencing/telepresence market AND add some [...]]]>

Yesterday, Cisco announced it bought Tandberg for $3 billion.  The deal effectively gives Cisco a video sales pipe into the enterprise boardroom. Speculation today is that Polycom might be next on the shopping list.

It’s an interesting premise, since purchasing Polycom would give Cisco an effective lock on the videoconferencing/telepresence market AND add some sizzle to Cisco’s enterprise desktop phone line.   As of Friday morning trading, Polycom’s market cap is around $2.1 billion, so if you were to pay a 2x premium, that’s be a top end cap of $4.2 billion — pocket change for Cisco’s warchest.

But I don’t see it happening today, or tomorrow.  Cisco needs to assimilate Tandberg first and, judging from the *ahem* way Linksys fits so neatly in with Cisco,  the process is likely to take a while.   If someone at the Department of Justice is awake, there also might be some anti-trust implications — Cisco suddenly grabbing up a large chunk of the IP phone market.  It would likely make people uncomfortable.

Others are trying to spin the purchase of TANDBERG as a Good Thing for other nimble telepresence players in the market since it will take a while for Cisco to assimilate TANDBERG and the whole process may slow TANDBERG down in the marketplace.   Not sure if I’m hip with this interpretation, since Cisco has a big marketing force, a big marketing presence, and is probably cutting a deal to do some product positioning for TANDBERG gear on “NCIS” or some other hot TV show.

LOCOG cited the pending dissolution of Nortel in bankruptcy court as the primary [...]]]>

Lost in the chaos last week, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) uncerimonously dumped Nortel as its “Official Network Infrastructure Partner” for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.  Never fear, Cisco is here!

LOCOG cited the pending dissolution of Nortel in bankruptcy court as the primary reason; the company diminished value as its pieces disappear, so LOCOG and Nortel “amicably” (i.e. polietly) decided to end the agreement.

Needless to say, Cisco was waiting in the wings and was more than happy to throw in a bid for the infrastructure contract and became the new Official Network Infrastructure Supporter for London 2012 in a tier two deal starting immediately.

For now, Nortel continues in the driver’s seat for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, but it remains to be seen if said event will be Nortel’s  last call before its pieces and brand are scattered to the winds.

“One of the great promises of hosted voice is as the feature server is upgraded, [customers] don’t have to pay for an upgrade, said John Macario, Optimum Senior Vice [...]]]>

Optimum Lightpath’s HD voice offering is as much about being just another hosted application as it is about better quality voice calls, said company officials.

“One of the great promises of hosted voice is as the feature server is upgraded, [customers] don’t have to pay for an upgrade, said John Macario, Optimum Senior Vice President, Product Strategy and Management. “They’re getting it as a part of an ongoing relationship with us… we believe as new features are available, they should be made available, that is really what this is about.”

Last week, Optimum announced the first business HD voice service in North America.  The service is being delivered using BroadSoft’s (formerly GENBAND) M6 Communications Application Server and is designed to be an end-to-end, turn-key solution with a flat rate fee for bandwidth, minutes,  support, and customer phones and service.   Customers will get Cisco’s 7945 and 7965 IP phones and everything is designed for the G.722 codec from end-to-end.  For a typical-sized medium to large-sized business,  an all-inclusive service including phone and CPE, bandwidth, 24×7 monitoring and maintenance can work out to be $35 per seat per month.

Macario doesn’t expect HD voice to be for everyone. “Voice is not one size fits all, different companies have different needs,” he said. “We want to be able to offer them whatever solution is most appropriate.”  Optimum provides everything from TDM to SIP trunks and Cisco Call Manager in addition to hosted VoIP and a premise-based solution.

However, potential customers for Optimum’s HD voice are expected to mirror the company’s core market of medium to large businesses, including hospitals, educational institutions, municipal and county governments and financial service clients. “HD voice is applicable where there needs to be crisp, clear, well understood communications, a doctor talking to a nurse in the middle of a noisy conference room, two guys on talks to each other on the trading floor,” said Macario. “It’s not our view that HD voice is a killer app, but it is of benefit in those situations where crisp, clear, well understood communication is necessary.”

By taking an intra-company approach to the offering at this time, Optimum doesn’t have to worry about a critical mass of end-points, codecs, or other interoperability issues. That’s not to say that the company isn’t thinking about HD Communications calls between its own customers and ultimately the rest of the world. “We’ve thought about it, and we still have a little run time,” said Macario.  “We will wait and see where the demand is [for interconnecting and interoperability].”

The release touts using Optimum’s hosted VoIP service, shiny new Cisco IP phones, and the company’s fiber-optic network to deliver the best [...]]]>

Optimum Lightpath, Cablevision’s business arm, has announced what it terms the “first” high-definition voice service for mid-sized to large businesses, with service available in June 2009 in the New York metropolitan area.

The release touts using Optimum’s hosted VoIP service, shiny new Cisco IP phones, and the company’s fiber-optic network to deliver the best quality voice calls to and from anyone “within its business facilities.”  The service uses Cisco’s 7945 and 7965 IP phones and since those phones support the G.722 wideband codec, we have HD Communications.

Optimum is offering a turn-key end-to-end solution, probably the best way to roll out the service so it can assure QoS.  How many customers will bite on HD-quality for intra-facility calling will be interesting given Optimum’s footprint in the New York region.

From a historic perspective, Optimum/Cablevision has always been “pushing the envelope” when it has come to bringing in new technologies; the company was the first to roll out high speed 50 and 100 Mbps broadband service for businesses before DOCSIS 3.0 was formally locked down.

Interesting questions that come to mind are: 1) Will Optimum promote INTER-business HD calling among the customers who sign up for it? 2) Will this offering speed up the wheels at Verizon Business for a HD voice offering? (OK, probably not) 3) How will Optimum work on expanding/exchanging HD voice calling beyond its own footprint?

Given NYC’s business and international focus, if Optimum isn’t talking to France Telecom and BT about HD/G.722 interoperability now, it likely will be in the weeks to come. Optimum would be in the unique position to build the first HD “bridge” across the Atlantic between its HD island and those in operation/under construction in Europe.