Am flying out this morning to Los Angeles for I expect will be a great week between the IT Expo and the launch of our Smart Grid Summit on Tuesday. As noted earlier, this is the 10th anniversary of TMC's flagship event, and with all the challenges faced by telecom conferences in the past year, the Expo continues to stay fresh and explore new opportunities.
Last year they added a wireless event - 4GWE - which is becoming a conference of its own, and this year they've added a sister event - Machine-2-Machine and ours, the Smart Grid Summit. All of these represent new markets for TMC, and aside from what I'm doing with the Summit, you have to give kudos to Rich Tehrani and his team for evolving the Expo experience and staying on top of the leading trends.
I've done plenty of shout-outs and posts to promote the Smart Grid Summit, and at this point, you'll have to find them on your own - or just go to the Smart Grid portal.
Otherwise, I'd like to steer you to a post from Friday by Andy Abramson, who echoes my comments here, but in more detail and more objectively. If you're still sitting on the fence about coming to LA, I hope Andy's thoughts will get you off it and on your way. You might be thinking I'm attending so I can see Manny and the Dodgers - although it certainly crossed my mind - but the Expo will keep me pretty engaged all week, and I'll have plenty of distractions going on where I'll be. Come on out and see for yourself.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Red Sox, White Sox
Back to baseball. Since my last post - Good Sox, Bad Sox - the last seven Sox games have been against teams with black and white uniforms, and they've gone a disappointing 4-3 during this important homestand. The Yankees series last weekend was a mind bender - the Sox scored more runs in both the fist two games than the Patriots mustered against a pathetic Bengals team last week. Ugh. The ChiSox are a pretty mediocre team, but it's never easy to sweep a 4 game set, especially for a Sox team that's still trying to center itself for the last quarter of the season.
Anyhow, yet again, you just never know which team will show up. The lineup from the 14-1 game on Saturday is by far the best they've fielded 1-9 all season, and if that lineup is clicking, I still think they're the best team in MLB. That's a big IF, of course, and the Yankees hitters last Friday were just so INSANELY good - nobody can match that kind of production. On the other hand, that same lineup was held to 1 run the next day by an Tazawa, a no-name pitcher, so go figure.
And the same Tazawa gets bombed last night, giving up 9 runs before you even knew the game had started. Go figure again. Gee, maybe Nick Green should have started instead of finished - he was actually pitched pretty well all things considered. Not only that, but even after spotting the White Sox to a 9-0 lead, the Red Sox had several chances to chip away and get back into the game. All those solo homers went to waste, but with the confidence from winning the first three, and the walkoff Ortiz HR the night before, it looked do-able. If the game went another 2 innings, they probably could have evened things up. Again, go figure.
Anyhow, between Good Sox, Bad Sox and Red Sox, White Sox, these posts are starting to sound like Dr. Seuss. The way the Rockies are playing right now, I can just see the next post being something like Our Sox, Your Rox, and then we'll be back to 2007 again. A very unlikely rematch, but October is pretty far off right now.
Back to the present. Actually, a small detour to last Friday. There are three things I've come to dread about my teams - 2 for the Sox and 1 for the Bruins. For the Sox, it's Friday night games and extra innings. Last Friday was the 20-11 blowout, which actually exposed the Yankees as much as it did the Red Sox. Sure, there was the perfect storm of their hitters being on fire and terrible pitching, but we did score 11 runs. We also left the bases loaded in the 7th and 8th innings, at which time the score was 16-9, or something like that. A couple of big hits in those innings, and that could have been a winnable game. The Yankees have their flaws, and they're not going to score 20 runs every night.
However, it was a Friday night game. So was the 10-9 game the Sox won in Toronto the previous Friday night - and that was one of the weirdest games I've seen in a long time. It was a laugher early on, but somehow, the Jays kept coming back, again and again. Something about Friday night games with these guys that is worrisome. And - oh! - it's Friday, and we're playing the Jays again tonight. Should be interesting...
Quickly - the other two things I dread. For the Sox, it's also extra innings games. On paper, they're 4-6 this year, but it seems much worse than that. They have had some crushing OT losses, esp to the Rays and Yankees, most notably the 13 inning game with Tampa and the epic 2-0 game in NY that went 15. The moral of the story - we need more clutch hits in the late innings and walkoff wins - I don't like our chances when the game goes past 9 innnings.
Finally, I don't know why, but I've noticed a pattern with the Bruins the past few years. Whenever they have a Saturday matinee (usually when double-booked with the Celtics), it's almost a guaranteed loss. These games almost always are against dreary teams like Ottawa, Chicago or the Islanders, and for some reason the Bruins never score more than 1 or 2 goals, and the outcome is almost always the same - losing 2-1, 4-2, etc. It doesn't keep me up at night, but it sure is hard to figure out.
Enough sports. I've got more important things to figure out today, so back to work.
Anyhow, yet again, you just never know which team will show up. The lineup from the 14-1 game on Saturday is by far the best they've fielded 1-9 all season, and if that lineup is clicking, I still think they're the best team in MLB. That's a big IF, of course, and the Yankees hitters last Friday were just so INSANELY good - nobody can match that kind of production. On the other hand, that same lineup was held to 1 run the next day by an Tazawa, a no-name pitcher, so go figure.
And the same Tazawa gets bombed last night, giving up 9 runs before you even knew the game had started. Go figure again. Gee, maybe Nick Green should have started instead of finished - he was actually pitched pretty well all things considered. Not only that, but even after spotting the White Sox to a 9-0 lead, the Red Sox had several chances to chip away and get back into the game. All those solo homers went to waste, but with the confidence from winning the first three, and the walkoff Ortiz HR the night before, it looked do-able. If the game went another 2 innings, they probably could have evened things up. Again, go figure.
Anyhow, between Good Sox, Bad Sox and Red Sox, White Sox, these posts are starting to sound like Dr. Seuss. The way the Rockies are playing right now, I can just see the next post being something like Our Sox, Your Rox, and then we'll be back to 2007 again. A very unlikely rematch, but October is pretty far off right now.
Back to the present. Actually, a small detour to last Friday. There are three things I've come to dread about my teams - 2 for the Sox and 1 for the Bruins. For the Sox, it's Friday night games and extra innings. Last Friday was the 20-11 blowout, which actually exposed the Yankees as much as it did the Red Sox. Sure, there was the perfect storm of their hitters being on fire and terrible pitching, but we did score 11 runs. We also left the bases loaded in the 7th and 8th innings, at which time the score was 16-9, or something like that. A couple of big hits in those innings, and that could have been a winnable game. The Yankees have their flaws, and they're not going to score 20 runs every night.
However, it was a Friday night game. So was the 10-9 game the Sox won in Toronto the previous Friday night - and that was one of the weirdest games I've seen in a long time. It was a laugher early on, but somehow, the Jays kept coming back, again and again. Something about Friday night games with these guys that is worrisome. And - oh! - it's Friday, and we're playing the Jays again tonight. Should be interesting...
Quickly - the other two things I dread. For the Sox, it's also extra innings games. On paper, they're 4-6 this year, but it seems much worse than that. They have had some crushing OT losses, esp to the Rays and Yankees, most notably the 13 inning game with Tampa and the epic 2-0 game in NY that went 15. The moral of the story - we need more clutch hits in the late innings and walkoff wins - I don't like our chances when the game goes past 9 innnings.
Finally, I don't know why, but I've noticed a pattern with the Bruins the past few years. Whenever they have a Saturday matinee (usually when double-booked with the Celtics), it's almost a guaranteed loss. These games almost always are against dreary teams like Ottawa, Chicago or the Islanders, and for some reason the Bruins never score more than 1 or 2 goals, and the outcome is almost always the same - losing 2-1, 4-2, etc. It doesn't keep me up at night, but it sure is hard to figure out.
Enough sports. I've got more important things to figure out today, so back to work.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
New Tekelec White Paper on Telecom 2.0
I've been busy this summer on a few fronts, including writing White Papers for various clients. One of these was with Tekelec, and building on their dominance for signaling in legacy networks, they're well positioned for Telecom 2.0. That's the focus of this paper, and if you give it a read and get to know them better, you'll see that they get it with Telecom 2.0.
To download the paper, you need to register at their website - it just takes a minute - and the link is here. If for some reason this doesn't work, let me know, and I can get you a copy.
To download the paper, you need to register at their website - it just takes a minute - and the link is here. If for some reason this doesn't work, let me know, and I can get you a copy.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
4GWE Preview - Focus on Wireless
Lots going on this week, and my latest Service Provider Views article is running just days after the last one. This column focuses on the 4GWE event - 4G Wireless Evolution - running next week at the TMC IT Expo in Los Angeles.
I've addressed wireless issues in earlier columns, and this one serves as a timely preview for what 4GWE will be covering next week. To do this, I put together a Q&A with Carl Ford, who most of you will know, and he shares his thoughts on the the evolving mobility market as well as what's coming at 4WGE. The interview was published this morning on the 4GWE portal, and you can read it here. Their event runs September 1 - 3, and I'll be dropping by during the 2nd and 3rd days, as I'll be busy running the Smart Grid Summit all day on the 1st. See you there!
I've addressed wireless issues in earlier columns, and this one serves as a timely preview for what 4GWE will be covering next week. To do this, I put together a Q&A with Carl Ford, who most of you will know, and he shares his thoughts on the the evolving mobility market as well as what's coming at 4WGE. The interview was published this morning on the 4GWE portal, and you can read it here. Their event runs September 1 - 3, and I'll be dropping by during the 2nd and 3rd days, as I'll be busy running the Smart Grid Summit all day on the 1st. See you there!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Fonolo Makes Time Magazine List
Making Time Magazine should be a big deal for anyone in our space, and it was so great to hear that hometown startup Fonolo just made their list of Top 50 Websites for 2009! How cool is that?
I haven't had time this week to blog about anything other than Smart Grid, but this was too good to pass up. Now, sure, I'm an Advisor to Fonolo, and am a bit partial to Canadian startups - and guess what - Fonolo CEO Shai Berger will be on one of my panels at next week's IT Expo. What a happy confluence of events! Let's just put those things aside for a sec - c'mon, this is great recognition for a company that happens to be on a pretty good roll these days. Just have a quick visit to their website and you'll see what I mean.
To provide some context, after looking over all 50 sites in the list, Fonolo is the only startup in our space that I recognize. However, they sure are in good company with other Top 50 sites, including household names like Skype, Flickr, YouTube, Google, Hulu, Twitter, Amazon, Wikipedia and Facebook. Pretty nice crowd to be running in, so hats off to Shai and his team for making this list! Needless to say, I'll be making sure the audience knows about this at our session, and I'm looking forward to buying Shai a drink - care to join us?
I haven't had time this week to blog about anything other than Smart Grid, but this was too good to pass up. Now, sure, I'm an Advisor to Fonolo, and am a bit partial to Canadian startups - and guess what - Fonolo CEO Shai Berger will be on one of my panels at next week's IT Expo. What a happy confluence of events! Let's just put those things aside for a sec - c'mon, this is great recognition for a company that happens to be on a pretty good roll these days. Just have a quick visit to their website and you'll see what I mean.
To provide some context, after looking over all 50 sites in the list, Fonolo is the only startup in our space that I recognize. However, they sure are in good company with other Top 50 sites, including household names like Skype, Flickr, YouTube, Google, Hulu, Twitter, Amazon, Wikipedia and Facebook. Pretty nice crowd to be running in, so hats off to Shai and his team for making this list! Needless to say, I'll be making sure the audience knows about this at our session, and I'm looking forward to buying Shai a drink - care to join us?
UC Strategies Podcast - Cloud Computing
This week's UC Strategies podcast was on a topic I'm quite keen on - cloud computing. We had the usual mix of UC analysts/experts/pundits, and a pretty lively discussion about the opportunities around UC, what it means for the telecom vendors, the software players, and the VARs/channels. We also (myself included) talked about what Mitel is doing in particular with the cloud, especially since a few of us got a detailed upate at their recent analyst event.
The podcast is running now on the UC Strategies portal, and you can download it any time. As always, comments are welcome, as are suggestions for topics you'd like to see us cover in future podcasts. We do these weekly, although I'll miss next week's call as I'll be in transit to LA for the IT Expo.
The podcast is running now on the UC Strategies portal, and you can download it any time. As always, comments are welcome, as are suggestions for topics you'd like to see us cover in future podcasts. We do these weekly, although I'll miss next week's call as I'll be in transit to LA for the IT Expo.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Smart Grid - Where Service Providers Meet Utilities
My latest article for Service Provider Views is running now on TMCnet. Not surprisingly, the focus is Smart Grid. With the Smart Grid Summit being a week away, that's what's on my mind right now.
With this article, I'm adding another dimension to my focus on the service provider space. The Smart Grid Summit is all about where energy meets communications, and with every passing day, we're convinced this is going to be a major trend in 2010. If you're not there yet, this article is a good place to start, and as you'll see, TMC has published it on our Smart Grid portal, so hopefully it will serve as a jumping off point to explore all the other content we're putting up there.
With all this being so new, I'd love to hear your thoughts or suggestions, and if you're coming out to the IT Expo next week, I sure hope to see you there. The summit runs only on the Tuesday, and we're starting at 9am sharp.
With this article, I'm adding another dimension to my focus on the service provider space. The Smart Grid Summit is all about where energy meets communications, and with every passing day, we're convinced this is going to be a major trend in 2010. If you're not there yet, this article is a good place to start, and as you'll see, TMC has published it on our Smart Grid portal, so hopefully it will serve as a jumping off point to explore all the other content we're putting up there.
With all this being so new, I'd love to hear your thoughts or suggestions, and if you're coming out to the IT Expo next week, I sure hope to see you there. The summit runs only on the Tuesday, and we're starting at 9am sharp.
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