Mayday, Mayday! - Johnny Comes Marching Home

Well, it's May 1st - and it really does feel like May Day. Well, Mayday, actually. The Red Sox Nation has had this date circled on their calendar ever since Johnny Damon went over to the Evil Empire.


When Johnny met Manny... happier times - never! (courtesy of Boston.com)






Tonight marks the return of JD to Fenway, as the Yankees and Sox meet for the first time this year. On paper, the two teams are fittingly tied for first place in a competitive division, but on the field, they're going in very different directions. It's only one month into the season, and I'm worried - very worried.

The Yankees are playing the kind of baseball that won them championships a few years back, while the Red Sox have gone into a black hole that I have no idea how they'll get out of. They return home after a disastrous 3 and 6 road trip - first time in 3 years they've dropped 3 series in row.

The first game of that trip was right here in Toronto, and it may have set the tone for the rest of the season. Going into that game, things were going smoothly, and the Sox were looking like the team to beat. They were cruising along 6-2 in the 8th inning, and Beckett was looking like the guy we wanted when we signed him. Then the wheels came off, and the Jays made an inspired comeback to tie it, and outlast the Sox to win it in 12. Beckett was shelled even worse next outing Cleveland, giving up 9 runs in like 3 inninings. Huh?? The only good that came out of that trip was Manny ending the longest homerless drought of his career.

It's the nature of a Sox fan to worry, and there's plenty of reason right now. I think everyone is happy to see Theo Epstein back, but the roster overhaul is not giving us the team we need. Just a few things to consider that are not working out yet as planned...

- Coco Crisp - should, and probably will be right move. But he's been hurt, playing only 5 games so far. So, nothing there, and we don't have that table-setter to get those big rallies going. So far, it doesn't look like Damon has missed a beat in NY - he's brought so much to their game, and they sure look strong now.

- Josh Beckett - a bit of a risk, but a key move to get a second ace for the rotation. Had a great start, but has totally flamed out the last 2, and he faces the Yankees tomorrow night. What, me worry?

- Tim Wakefield - has actually pitched very well, but Josh Bard can't handle the knuckleball, and he's losing games he normally wins, and all those passed balls are costing us games. To boot, having Varitek sit every fifth game to have Bard's weak bat in the lineup is a bad idea. Can someone please make a deal to get Mirabelli back?

- Giving up Arroyo for Pena - these are the kinds of bad moves the Sox used to make. What looked like a strong pitching unit has turned out to be anything but, and Arroyo is sorely missed. He's shining in Cinci, and is even keeping pace with Manny in the HR department. To think that he took below market value to stay with the Sox, and we then shipped him to the NL... To boot, Wily Mo is a strikeout machine and a liability in the field. He did come through yesterday, but he's left a lot of men on base. So, the Sox have taken two steps backwards on this deal.

- Manny who? What is he waiting for? You have to wonder if he's feeling overshadowed by Papi and doesn't like being second slugger. Manny being Manny - that never changes, but we need his bat, big time.

- Mark Loretta - his defence has been good, for sure, but he's barely hitting .200. Should he really be hitting second? We need something better in this spot to set the table for Ortiz and Manny.

- Matt Clement/David Wells. If these guys pitched well, the Sox have perhaps the best rotation in baseball. Of course that's a big if. It looks like Wells is done, and Clement has quickly reverted to form for the second half of last year, which was awful. He does give you innings, but when he loses it, we lose. Why can't we have the Matt from the first half of last year when he was a deserving All Star?

- Pitching roster is looking very shaky overall. On paper, we have 5 quality starters, which should carry you a long way. Wakefield will never be fully effective until the catching situation is fixed. Right now, we only seem to have one reliable starter in Schilling, and the middle relief is just a disaster. There's NOONE in that group who can come into a game and stop the bleeding. This is where the Sox are losing games - in the 6th and 7th innings, before they can bring in their good arms. Again, this is where Arroyo would have been so valuable.

- Where's the offence gone? Aside from Ortiz's superman numbers in April, there's nothing shaking here. Nobody else is coming up with clutch hits, and they can't get any rallies going. They must be leading the league with runners LOB, and near the bottom for homers and stolen bases. Time after time they've got good hitters coming up with men on base, and they're just not cashing in. It's costing them games, they're losing ground to both the Jays and Yankees who definitely have a knack of bringing their runners home.

- Finally, what you see is the team we've got. It's not like the Sox are racked with injuries. Aside from Coco and Wells, the team is pretty healthy. The offence just has to improve or we're going nowhere. The pitching has been problematic, but good hitting and offence will negate a lot of that, especially when you've got a great closer.

So, there's LOTS of room for improvement. Of course, there have been some bright lights so far, and that's at least given them a winning record in April. Papelbon has been perfect, and is preserving the wins that Foulke was giving up so painfully last year. That's huge. It's been a while since the Sox have had anyone they can trot out to shut down the Yankees and counter the all powerful Rivera. That said, Foulke has pitched well, but even he knows that Papelbon is the man right now to close.

Schilling has also been great, and really does look to be back in winning form. The Sox have to have that to be contenders. Same goes for Beckett, but now he's got to prove his mettle after his last 2 train wreck starts. He'll have his chance tomorrow night.

Of course, Ortiz has been even better than hoped for, but it's very troubling to see Manny not feeding off this to raise his game.

Finally, the new look infield has been a huge upgrade, and the Sox are right at the top alongside the Twins in team defence. Again, they're saving games that guys like Renteria were throwing away for us last year. Gonzalez has the good glove, and we can live with his low average in the #9 spot - so long as the guys ahead of him are hitting a lot higher. That's not really happening right now, and the bottom 4 of the order is too weak for a contender.

So, a lot of problems are compounding each other, and the good things are being overshadowed by problems that weren't supposed to be there. Well, they've been laid bare, especially on this last road trip. This mini-series with the Yankees will be a big reality check. Is it too soon to be screaming Mayday??? Hopefully not. The Sox have a way of picking up their game against New York, but if they get blown out, I can guarantee you, the alarm bells will be ringing by Wednesday.

Residential VoIP - Facts and Figures

A colleague of mine passed along a very recent report published by eMarketer about the U.S. residential VoIP market. No 'aha' insights here, and much of the data is actually culled from other sources. However, sometimes it's nice to get an update on some basic facts and figures that you can pick up in one place. So, I'm going to do the same here, and share with you some of the numbers I found interesting.

- For 2005, there were 5.2 million residential VoIP subscribers in the US, and the penetration for broadband households was 12.3%. In other words, 12.3% - 1 in 8 - broadband HHs had VoIP.

- For 2010, the forecast is 32.6 million subs and a broadband penetration of 38.5%. So, 5 years from now, only 40% of broadband HHs will have VoIP. I would have thought the penetration will be much higher. 2010 is a long time away, and I'd think by then VoIP would be further along as a replacement for POTS. That said, these basic subscriber numbers work for me. When I was at Frost & Sullivan, I published a report in 2004 that pegged the number of subs as being quite comparable to these numbers.

- Landline telephony accounts for about half of all communications revenues in the US (2005). But interestingly, the ARPU for each type of market is fairly similar. No doubt this profile will change, as landline declines, video goes to digital and IPTV, and wireless goes to WiFi/WiMax.

Market type// Revenue, $billions// ARPU

Landline// $192// $50
Broadband Internet// $20// $40
Basic cable // $87// $45
Wireless // $119// $50


- In 2005, global VoIP numbers were as follows:

US - 5.5 million
Europe - 2.8
Asia Pac - 8.8
Total - 17.1 million

So, already, Asia Pac has over half of the world's VoIP subscribers.


- VoIP minutes is another good growth metric. The report cites TeleGeography data saying that VoIP traffic was 72 billion minutes in 2005, and will more than double to 183 billion this year. Their forecast shows the market basically doubling each year over the next few years.

- The report shows the mix of traffic (VoIP minutes) by two basic types of operators. One type is the network operators - telcos, cablecos and ISPs, and the other is the pureplays, including VoIP operators (Vonage, 8x8, etc.) and Skype. Including Skype can be misleading, but remember, the metric here is minutes, not dollars or subscribers.

Based on minutes, the mix at year end, 2005 between network operators and pureplays was 53% vs. 47% in North America. Europe had a pretty similar mix - 51% vs. 49%. The research doesn't break out the minutes by operator, so it's difficult to tell how much of the pureplay volume is driven by free P2P services like Skype and FWD. It's still interesting to note how much the pureplays account for total minutes overall, though.

- Market share by number of subscribers tells a different story, however, at least in the US. The report segments the market into 3 buckets - MSOs, Telcos/others, and Pureplays.

In 2005, MSOs had just over half of US VoIP subs, at 54%. Pureplays had most of the rest - 40%, with Telcos mopping up the remaining 6%. This is not really surprising given how little the RBOCs have done with residential VoIP - so far. Of course, the MSOs came on strong in 2005, and I suspect data for 2004 would have shown the Pureplays being the market leaders. That was then, and this is now.

The outlook for 2010 is a bit different. MSOs are still forecast to lead the market, actually growing their share slightly to 57%. Pureplays, as one might expect, lose ground to Telcos, with shares of 25% and 19% respectively. By then, one can only hope that the RBOCs will have a major focus on VoIP, as there won't likely be much left of their POTS business by then.

- The report takes a quick stab at the U.S. IM market, and there's nothing new here. However, when you've got your head in the VoIP numbers, the IM numbers provide some interesting context.

Using January 2006 as the benchmark, we see AOL having 53 million users to lead the Big 3 in the U.S. by a wide margin. MSN Messenger is next at 27 million, followed by Yahoo at 22 million. All told, then, these platforms have 102 million users in the U.S. For 2006, the U.S. VoIP subscriber market is forecast to hit 9.6 million, less than 1/10th of the number of IM users. And we're not even talking about Google.

Something else to think about. There are now more IM users in the U.S. than there are residential landlines. How many years has IM really been around? Just one of those things that hits home about how quickly Internet technologies are being adopted. And what's happening to voice is starting to happen now with video.


As a postscript, I just want to acknowledge that all the data herein was drawn from the eMarketer report. There's quite a bit more where that came from, and you can have it all for the princely sum of $695. It's all there on their website.

IPTV With a Twist - Bird Watching Reality TV

A colleague of mine here in Toronto, Mike Kinrys, sent this my way yesterday, as he knew about my interest in IPTV. I thought this was really neat, and wanted to share it here.

Disruptive technologies work in all kinds of ways, and here's a great example. Mike's wife is a bird watcher, and a fellow bird watcher out in British Columbia has done something that sure looks like IPTV to me - with a twist.

He's trained a webcam 24/7 on the nest of a bald eagle who is incubating her egg(s). This doesn't make for compelling viewing for me, but apparently it's HUGELY interesting for bird watchers out there.

How interesting? How about 3+ MILLION visits per day. I'd say that's traffic to die for. All to watch and listen to a bird sit in her nest and not do a whole lot else.

The site is called - not surprisingly, Eagle Eye - love the name. This is so Seinfeld, it isn't funny, but this guy is definitely on to something. Unlike the pilot of Seinfeld, where Jerry and George had a hard time getting network executives to buy into a show that was basically "about nothing", Eagle Eye has just gone out and done it.

Well, Eagle Eye is arguably about nothing, unless you're a bird watcher. But he didn't have to sell it to any producers or networks that controlled the content, the channel, the distribution, the rights, the money, the syndication, etc., etc.

He's got the perfect business model for the Web 2.0/IPTV world:

- a totally open channel to reach his audience, and at no cost
- total artistic control
- zero production cost (maybe a few bucks for hosting)
- zero time to market
- real time content that refreshes and updates itself
- a huge built in audience
- zero marketing costs
- lots of sponsors who want to get in front of his traffic

Now, I don't know if he's really making money. And due to the huge traffic loads, he runs out of bandwidth to provide streaming video sometimes (which I'm sure can be fixed). However, once you see this, you just go, uh huh! Anyone can do this, I suppose if you're creative enough and see the opportunity.

Of course, you may hear from wildlife activists decrying exploitation. And what do you do when the eggs hatch? Will the nest stay in its location? What happens if the eagle packs up and leaves, or somehow the nest gets dislodged? All kinds of what-ifs here, but I think the basic idea is there - for all to see and run with.

This is reality TV of the lowest order, but there is a market for anything, especially in the always-on world of broadband. So, if you can do something like this, and attract traffic volumes that any major network would be happy to get - at no cost - you can be pretty sure that we're on the verge of some very interesting times as the worlds of IP and broadcasting collide.

Canadian IP Thought Leaders Podcast - Mark Farmer, QuickPlay Media

This week's podcast was all about mobile media. Definitely a hot space, and QuickPlay Media is doing some interesting things on that front. This is a Toronto-based startup, and I spoke with their Marketing Director, Mark Farmer.

So, if you're interested in how the mobile media space is evolving, and closer to home, how a Canadian company is faring in this space, you'll find this podcast a good listen. You can download it here, as well as learn more about Mark and QuickPlay.

Is Tech Really Helping Productivity?

I'm a reflective person by nature, and I ask myself this question a lot. Anybody under 30 would probably never question this, but I can tell you that not everybody else feels the same way. Tech is wonderful, of course, and our livelihoods largely depend on it, but it's not the great emancipator. I could go on big time on that riff, but not now.

I'm not writing this post to be anti-tech, but some things only become apparent when you step outside your everyday skin, like when you go on vacation and learn to manage without broadband or cell phones for a while.

Today I was at a conference focused on the HR sector, and one of the speakers hit on this theme in a way that gives you pause for thought about our relationship with and growing dependency on tech to do our jobs. The speaker was Dr. Linda Duxbury, a Professor at the business school at Ottawa's Carleton University. She's well known in HR circles, and focuses on the impact of tech on corporate culture and employee performance. She's done some really great research and is a very engaging speaker. Sure takes me back to my MBA days and focus on Organizational Behavior, but PCs weren't around then, so the issues were very different!

Anyhow, one of her key points runs contrary to what many people living and breathing IP take as gospel - the always-on workplace is really not so great for employee performance. The expectations from employees at all levels increasingly spills over into our personal time/lives, and puts us all on an endless treadmill of managing information instead of living our lives.

In theory, all our tech tools, like email, Blackberries, cell phones, etc. are great in terms of what they can do. However, Dr. Duxbury would argue they're not necessarily translating into to better employee - and ultimately - organizational performance. Too many people are becoming addicted to managing all these flows of instant communication, and simply don't know how to push back and say - I need time to think and do my job. Sound familiar?

So, in her view, and from an HR perspective - when technology is not properly managed, it becomes a drag on productivity and performance - not an enhancer. She cited familiar examples of the anxiety people get on the weekend that they'd better clear up their email backlog before going back on Monday, otherwise they'll start the week way behind. There is some truth to this, but that's a treadmill you can never get off.

An interesting solution she mentioned was a company that simply shut down their servers over the weekend so this problem wouldn't exist in the first place. That may not work for everybody, but it's certainly one way to manage your information flow.

This is obviously a BIG issue, and we're not going to tackle it here. However, sometimes it takes a day away from the routine to see how things look in a different pair of shoes. Personally, I'm onside with Dr. Duxbury's message, and from there, I can see lots of opportunity for organizations to get a better handle on how tech is impacting their culture - and for vendors as well. It's really just another problem to solve, but one that will need more balance between what the technology can deliver, and an understanding of what is really going to be the most helpful to performance. Always-on is not a means to an end - unless you're a machine.

Getting Your Blog Out There

Wanted to share a terrific post from colleague Alec Saunders today about getting the most out of your blog. Alec is a tech savant of the first order, so these things come easier to him than the rest of us. However, one reason why Alec's blog is well read is his ability to communicate his applied knowledge and experience in a way we can all understand.

So, if you're interested in getting more mileage out of your blog, it's a great read. I'll certainly be taking some of these ideas to heart. Based on all the comments he's been getting, I can see that others are too.

A lot of what Alec is passing on are simply good principals of journalism, with a bit of marketing and web savvy thrown in. Couldn't agree more about the need for catchy headlines, writing regularly, and replying to comments. Alec underscores a key point that can make a blog truly valuable to a broader community - open dialog. Big diff between a diary and a dialog, right? Diaries are too personal and self-centered to be much use in the blogosphere, but a dialog is really what the essence of the Internet is all about.

And sure, build that blog roll and link to other blogs, and comment about other blog posts. All fairly easy things to do, but they all work, for sure. I've got a ways to go myself on these things, and Alec has done a great job of putting some collected wisdom into one place, and getting it out there for all to use. So, spread the word, and put these ideas to work!

TrendIQ - A New Way to Look at the IP Market

Got something here that VoIP watchers should find interesting - maybe even fascinating.

I've started developing some ties to a company called TrendIQ, and wanted to share what they're doing. They provide an interesting form of market intelligence, as it's based solely on information gathered on the Internet using proprietary software. On one level, it's a bit like a search engine, but they've customized their data gathering so as to focus on variables that reflect things like what they call "market sentiment". It's not really primary research, but it's more sophisticated than secondary research.

This may not catch your eye right away, but it's intuitively appealing to me. I say this because I suspect the vast majority of people reading my blog do not come from a marketing research background. I've got 20 years experience in this world, and I haven't come across too many people who know the VoIP space and have this in their background. In that regard, I'm probably an anomaly, but that's fine by me.

Incredibly, during my years as an in-house analyst at Frost & Sullivan I didn't come across one telecom analyst who had real world market research experience, which to this day astounds me. If I learned one thing during that time, it's that analysts come from all walks of life. I digress...

So, that brings us to TrendIQ. They've developed some pretty impressive software tracking tools that aggregate a whole lot of Internet-based information about companies. What I'm about to show you is a summary chart they call the VoIP Sentiment Analysis:





What really jumps out here is how strong the sentiment is for Sun Rocket. There is a consistent methodology for compiling these numbers across 52 VoIP providers, and I can't really explain why their rating is so high. In that regard, TrendIQ may raise as many questions as they do answers, but I think it can be a very good tool, especially for leading indicators.

Their methodology is too complex to analyze here, but suffice to say, there is an awful lot of data behind the numbers, and their full reports provide an almost endless series of breakouts by provider, as well as other attributes.

For now, you can access the full data set for free once you register at their site. They will be moving soon to a subscription model, so if you want to play around with this, I suggest you do so sooner than later.

I'm in the process of getting my own website ready to launch, and once it's done, you'll be able to link up to TrendIQ from there. Their CEO, Paul Feldman, and I are exploring ways of working together, and adding more insight to the data so it's more manageable for end users. Paul has also got similar tracking studies going in WiMax and IMS, and you'll soon be hearing about some joint initiatives in these areas as well.

Until then, I hope you find this data of interest, and would love to hear your thoughts.