Jon Arnold's Analyst 2.0 Blog: MetaSwitch Forum

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

MetaSwitch Forum - Day 1

The MetaSwitch customer forum kicked off today in New Orleans. They really put on a great event, and it works so well because they have such a great customer base and partner ecosystem. Everyone is very friendly and seems real glad to be there.

Much of the day featured keynotes by MetaSwitch executives and then some breakouts later in the afternoon. Being a vendor event, the focus is very much about MetaSwitch's roadmap, both as a company and their ever-evolving technologies. Being a relatively private event (as best I can tell, there are only 2 other people here from the analyst or journalist world, and in total there are more than 500 people here), I'm not going to share the details here, but suffice to say, they are heavily committed to R&D and innovation, and have moved well beyond the Class 5 switch replacements that are pushing out legacy switches from the likes of Nortel and Lucent across the Tier 2/3 sector. In addition to the standard fare of VoIP and hosted services, they are enabling the full gamut of IP for their customers, including SIP apps, mobility, unified communications, IPTV and mashups.

View from my hotel room, overlooking the mighty Mississippi. It's quintessential New Orleans - the bridge, the river, the boat and in the foreground, the train tracks.