Is Acme Packet Worth More than Vonage?

Very intriguing question, and it�s been on my mind since yesterday. From the looks of today�s IPO, it sure looks that way for Acme Packet. It�s a big day � and a good day � for anyone who has been in this space, or following it for the past few years. From what I�ve been told, this is the first IPO from a nextgen equipment vendor since 2000. Any guesses as to who that might have been? Sonus? AudioCodes? I�m not sure myself.

I�ve been close to Acme for some time, and have posted about them several times. One of their most public faces, Seamus Hourihan, is here at the ITExpo, and was on my FMC panel the other day, so we�ve had some time to reflect on Acme and what it means for the IP communications market.

So, with today�s opening, Acme�s market valuation is actually pretty darned close to Vonage � main difference being that Acme�s IPO price has held steady, whereas Vonage�s went south very quickly. Interestingly, Vonage�s IPO trading price isn�t far off from Acme�s, and you have to shake your head a bit and wonder � can these two companies really be comparable in value?

Of course, they�re in very different ends of the business, so it�s hard to compare. To me, the bottom line is you don�t have to be really big to have a viable business in the IP world. Vonage�s revenues are 10-15 times that of Acme�s, but look who�s making money, and look who�s been profitable for a while now, and look doesn�t have any debt, and look who�s coming out of their IPO with a dominant market position, at least among the Tier 1 carriers. Acme's opening price may be unsustainable, but it's a good story, and they've earned their stripes in my books.

Enough said, other than congrats to Acme � am sure they�re all smiles there today. And hopefully, the rest of the IP vendor space is breathing a little easier, especially the IPOs-in-waiting.

Quick coda - the Boston Globe was nice enough to cite me in their article on Acme today.



Technorati tags: Acme Packet, Jon Arnold, Session Border Controllers, J Arnold & Associates

TMC ITExpo - Images of the Show

Conferences are great, but there always way too much going on. I haven't been able to post until now for a variety of reasons, and just have time now to share some photos of what I've been seeing/doing here at the show. Will write up my impressions of the show later, hopefully by tomorrow.

Photos, as usual, courtesy of my Nokia N90. Newsflash! I now have the N93, and get to use a new phone real soon. So, this may be the last you see of my N90 photos...


Really, does it get any better than this??? (view from my hotel room, 18 stories up)



The convention center way down below...




Any guesses to what this is??? Answer at the end of this post...



Tuesday..... Wednesday!



A couple of the keynotes...




The N Team - Natasha MacArthur and Mr. T, Nadji Tehrani


Dan York, Simon Gwatkin (Mitel) and Carl Ford (Pulver.com)



Andy Abramson's blogger dinner on Tuesday. Tough act to follow - great night, Andy!




Where we'd all rather be at the end of the day....



Answer - looks like a screen display of a video game, huh? It's a vertical shot, again from my room of a patio reception being set up outside the convention center.



Technorati tags: TMC ITExpo, Jon Arnold, VoIP

Mark Evans Moves On - Congrats!

I'm way late on this one, but wanted to post just to be on the record to publicly congratulate Mark.

By now, anyone following IP/telecom bloggers - especially Canada - knows that Mark Evans has left the National Post for B5 Media, an up and coming Toronto startup that's trying to monetize the blogging space. I got the news the way most people did late Thursday via a heads-up email from Mark, but I've been so buried with last minute deadlines before my travels, I'm way late on the news.

In short, this is Mark's second stint with a startup, and it sounds like a really exciting move. Now, the Post has lost both its key tech/telecom writers in Mark and Kevin Restivo, although they're continuing to podcast together. It will be interesting to see how they fill those holes.

So, I just want to pass on my warm congrats to Mark, and I'm sure he's very excited to put all his great know-how to work with a local company that has a lot of promise. I've been following B5 for a while and with their recent funding, things become much more real, and it's great to see a Toronto-based company making this kind of noise.

There are lots of details about everything I'm touching on here on Mark's blog, as well as B5's website (and elsewhere - just follow the threads). I urge you to start there if want to get the full story about how all these good things are coming together now for both B5 and Mark.




Technorati tags: blogs, Jon Arnold, Mark Evans, B5 Media

On the Road

Just after catching up from Fall VON and getting back to everything else on my plate, it's time for more shows again. I don't really travel that much, but the Fall is a busy time for shows, and I've got back-to-backs starting next week on the West coast.

Next week I'll be at TMC's Internet Telephony Expo in San Diego, and for the first part of the following week, I'll be at the Sylantro Global Summit.

I'll be speaking and moderating at both events, and if you're there, I'd love to hear from you. More detail about where I'll be at these events is on the J Arnold & Associates website.

Heads-up - my blogging will light during this time, but I'll post when I can.

More Mainstream Cred for Bloggers

GREAT article in today's Ottawa Citizen, and the title says it all - Blogging for Dollar$. It's a great example about how blogging is getting attention from the mainstream media.

Nothing revelatory in the article, but one of our own, Iotum CEO, Alec Saunders was a key feature of the story, so hats off to Alec! The article does a nice job explaining how Alec shifted his blogging focus from personal matters - mostly politics - to business, esp VoIP, and he's gained enough profile to generate a nice base of advertising revenue from his traffic. Since the article is focused on the business potential for blogging, Alec's example shows how blogging can pay.

Personally, I'm not an advocate of commercializing blogs, but I'm very much swimming upstream on this one. It's definitely a good idea to make money off your blogging efforts, but I have a concern it will attract too many people to blogging for all the wrong reasons. It's a mixed bag for sure, since there should be a way to reward the really good bloggers, as well as create mechanisms where people are readily able to find the best blogs amidst the endlessly multiplying stream of lesser blogs that we all have to wade through.

On that note, the article notes how Alec is in the top 10 of VoIP blogs based on Technorati rankings, and I think that's great. He's definitely a must-read in the VoIP space, and if Alec isn't on your VoIP/IP blog roll, he should be.



Technorati tags: VoIP blogs, Jon Arnold, Ottawa Citizen, Alec Saunders

Canadian IP Thought Leaders Series - Fredericton's Free Muni WiFi

Anyone following muni WiFi will want to give this week's podcast a listen. My guest was Don Fitzgerald, Executive Director of Team Fredericton - you gotta like that title! Don is really the public face and evangelist for Fredericton, New Brunswick's muni WiFi service, which is Canada's first free WiFi offering, and has been running since 2003.

They have a lot of experience over just about any other North American muni WiFi deployment, and if you listen in, you'll hear why Don believes free is the way to go, lessons learned along the way, as well as some of the creative applications they are bringing along to facilitate closer communitiy ties between municipal government and the citizens of Fredericton. Teaser - one of these has to do with hockey - are you surprised?

This podcast is actually the sequel to a blog posting I recently did after inteviewing Don at length about this topic. You can download the podcast here, and learn more about Don's role and background.

NOTE - due to upcoming travel plans, I'll be taking a 2 week podcasting hiatus. My next scheduled podcast is w/o October 23, when I'll be speaking with Ross McLeod. He's one of the driving forces behind the Voice 2.0 conference being put on by OCRI in Ottawa the week before. I had to pass on speaking there due to a conflict with another conference. That's too bad, as this looks to be a terrific show. So, I'll be looking forward myself to hearing first hand what I missed.





Technorati tags: Municipal WiFi, Jon Arnold, Fredericton, VoIP podcasts

Vonage Canada Gets Creative

This isn't a big story, but it came across my radar the other day. Vonage Canada has partnered with BelAir Travel with a promotion deal. Basically, if you book a winter travel package with BelAir Travel before November 30, you get 3 months of Vonage service for free. The offer is bundled in with another Scratch and Save promotion, so it takes some digging to find, although you can't miss the Vonage banner ads on their home page.

The offer is a bit like the way long distance plans used to be bundled with all kinds of things, but putting the marketing angle aside, the fit does make sense. People who travel need to call home, so why not do it with Vonage? Makes sense to me.

The bigger picture really is the challenge Vonage Canada faces in not being able to use the more accessible online channels that its parent relies on so extensively in the U.S. As such, they must be more creative in getting their message out, and ultimately this means more locally-based marketing - such as BelAir Travel. For more on this, you may want to listen to my recent podcast with Joe Parent of Vonage Canada.

It's interesting that you can't miss this offer on BelAir's website, but it's nowhere to be seen on Vonage Canada's site. Maybe it just takes some time to get posted there or to their corporate press room. That said, there is a press release there for another Vonage announcement from Friday - and yet another promotional deal. This one is with HP/Compaq, where you get a special rate on Vonage service with a new PC purchase. It's another form of bundling, and yet again, Vonage is trying to find new routes to market any way it can. Is it just me, but with all the bad karma going on at HP right now, one wonders if the timing of this just isn't right.

Quick coda with a Canadian twist - let' not confuse BelAir Travel with BelAir Networks, who announced a healthy round of funding yesterday. That's a great vote of confidence for the muni WiFi market, and another feather in Canada's hi tech cap.


Technorati tags: VoIP, Jon Arnold, Vonage Canada