Well, there are many ways to get thought leadership out there, and here's one I haven't seen much of - the eBook. This idea is courtesy of Fierce Enterprise Communications, and is sponsored by Acme Packet, who has been making their own big news lately.
So, an eBook is longer than an article, about as long as a white paper, but arguably not as authoritative. Regardless, SIP trunking is a topic still needs explaining, and if you're still wondering what it can do for your business, you'll want to give this a read. Fierce does good work, and I was glad to be asked for commentary on a couple of sections of this eBook. I'm certainly not the only voice here, and I hope you give it a read, and more importantly, I hope you learn something new.
Here's the link to download the PDF - it just takes a minute, and if you can't get this to go for you, drop me a line and I'll get you a soft copy.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
What Oracle's Acquisition of Acme Packet Means for UC and Telecom
Last week's news may have taken many by surprise, but when you look at where the communications landscape is going, seeing Acme Packet acquired by software giant Oracle isn't a big stretch to me. They are probably in the top 5 in terms of clout for shaping the IT/software/networking world, and it seems inevitable to me that communications will be subsumed there. The telco vendors have been losing control of their destiny ever since IP came into play, and as innovation continues to come from elsewhere, along with the rapid rise of the cloud, I just don't see that changing.
$1.7 billion is a lot of money to Acme Packet, but a minor investment for Oracle, so there should be nothing surprising about the economics. Oracle may not need 100% of Acme's SBC pieces right away, but their huge footprint with global Tier 1 carriers and solid enterprise customer base gives Oracle a ready ramp to support end-to-end IP applications. Acme's roots are in enabling voice over wireline networks, but the future is data applications over wireless networks, and they are ready for that as well as any other SBC vendor. This is the world that Oracle wants to be in as well, and pooling two dominant vendors only makes sense - so long as there's a shared vision and all the pieces can work together as a singular solution.
Time will tell, but until then, I think this marks a shift as to where telecom is heading, and while UC isn't the main story here, it will also be impacted. That's the focus of my current contribution for UCStrategies, and it's posted now on the portal. Even if you don't follow SBC's, I think there's an important message here for our broader space, and I'd love to hear your thoughts after you give this a read.
$1.7 billion is a lot of money to Acme Packet, but a minor investment for Oracle, so there should be nothing surprising about the economics. Oracle may not need 100% of Acme's SBC pieces right away, but their huge footprint with global Tier 1 carriers and solid enterprise customer base gives Oracle a ready ramp to support end-to-end IP applications. Acme's roots are in enabling voice over wireline networks, but the future is data applications over wireless networks, and they are ready for that as well as any other SBC vendor. This is the world that Oracle wants to be in as well, and pooling two dominant vendors only makes sense - so long as there's a shared vision and all the pieces can work together as a singular solution.
Time will tell, but until then, I think this marks a shift as to where telecom is heading, and while UC isn't the main story here, it will also be impacted. That's the focus of my current contribution for UCStrategies, and it's posted now on the portal. Even if you don't follow SBC's, I think there's an important message here for our broader space, and I'd love to hear your thoughts after you give this a read.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Know Your Alternatives Conference
Yesterday, I participated in the 3rd Know Your Alternatives event, which took place in downtown Toronto. I've written about the conference before, and attended last year as well. There just aren't many telecom events in Canada outside of the Canadian Telecom Summit, but that's a very different type of event.
This one is on a much smaller scale, but with many familiar faces. IT consultant Emily Nielsen runs the event, and hats off to her and team for doing such a good job and providing a forum for buyers and sellers to meet and maybe do some business.
In short, UC is gaining traction in Canada, but the market lags the U.S. for a few reasons. There's the oft-cited conservative nature of businesses here, and there is truth to that. We also have a less competition on the carrier front, and this tends to keep TDM going strong, with slow takeup for SIP trunking.
Over the course of the day, the sessions were focused on educating the market about the various aspects of UC, along with how various trends are making life harder for IT decision makers. There wasn't much about social media, but we heard lots about desktop video, BYOD, the cloud, multimedia in the contact center, mobile customer care, etc. For a one-day event, we covered a lot of ground, and hopefully IT attendees came away better prepared for the "alternatives" that KYA is trying to get across to the market.
Host Emily Nielsen welcoming the audience (apologies, lighting wasn't great for my smartphone camera)
Executive leadership panel, with Ross Pellizzari of Avaya, Rick Otway of Cisco, Tom Lang of Mitel, Kevin Gavin of ShoreTel, and Emily Nielsen as moderator
Our "Why VoIP Now?" session, with Emily and myself (photo courtesy of Rob Gowans)
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Collaboration - What it Means to Employees
Just a quick note to share my latest article running in TMCnet's Internet Telephony magazine. This is part of my regular monthly column titled Rethinking Communications, and the current article focuses on the value of collaboration to employees. My previous column looked at the value to the business, which has a different set of drivers.
Here's the link to the article, and as always, your feedback is welcome, along with suggestions for future topics.
Here's the link to the article, and as always, your feedback is welcome, along with suggestions for future topics.
Buying and Selling UC - My Webinar This Friday
Just a quick shout-out for my webinar this Friday at 2pm EST.
This continues a series I've been doing with Ziff Davis B2B, and this time we're moving up the value chain to focus on Unified Communications. The twist here is that rather than focus on the technology issues, I'll be talking about two different hats IT needs to wear when going down this road.
First regards the range of things that need to be done to make good buying decisions - which entails more than you might think. Second is the job of selling IT - not only must you convince management this is a good investment, but also to convince employees that it's a good idea to use UC.
There's plenty of ground to cover, and I hope you can join us. It just takes a minute to register, and you can also read more about the webinar here on the web page.
This continues a series I've been doing with Ziff Davis B2B, and this time we're moving up the value chain to focus on Unified Communications. The twist here is that rather than focus on the technology issues, I'll be talking about two different hats IT needs to wear when going down this road.
First regards the range of things that need to be done to make good buying decisions - which entails more than you might think. Second is the job of selling IT - not only must you convince management this is a good investment, but also to convince employees that it's a good idea to use UC.
There's plenty of ground to cover, and I hope you can join us. It just takes a minute to register, and you can also read more about the webinar here on the web page.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Know Your Alternatives - This Thursday, Toronto - Am Speaking There
Busy week! Just back from a great ITExpo event in sunny Miami, and on Thursday, I'm speaking at the Know Your Alternatives event here in chilly Toronto. Am also doing a webinar on UC on Friday, but I'll have a separate post about that.
So, the third Know Your Alternatives event is coming up fast - this Thursday at the Metro Convention Center, North Hall. First off - it's a solid event - I was there last year. We have very few telecom events up here, and the fact that this one is run by an IT consultant tells you just how different this space is from the U.S. KYA is only a day long, so it won't take up too much of your time. If you're local, it's not too late to register, and hopefully I'll see you there.
I'm speaking at 11:30 on Track #4 - Business. The session is titled "Why VoIP Now? End of Life Scenario Opens the Door to UC", and it's a fireside chat format. I'll speaking along with Emily Nielsen - she's the show organizer, as well as being President of her IT consulting firm. So, we'll be contrasting perspectives between an analyst and an IT consultant on the roadmap leading to UC. We'll have lots of time for audience participation, so please come see us if you're attending!
So, the third Know Your Alternatives event is coming up fast - this Thursday at the Metro Convention Center, North Hall. First off - it's a solid event - I was there last year. We have very few telecom events up here, and the fact that this one is run by an IT consultant tells you just how different this space is from the U.S. KYA is only a day long, so it won't take up too much of your time. If you're local, it's not too late to register, and hopefully I'll see you there.
I'm speaking at 11:30 on Track #4 - Business. The session is titled "Why VoIP Now? End of Life Scenario Opens the Door to UC", and it's a fireside chat format. I'll speaking along with Emily Nielsen - she's the show organizer, as well as being President of her IT consulting firm. So, we'll be contrasting perspectives between an analyst and an IT consultant on the roadmap leading to UC. We'll have lots of time for audience participation, so please come see us if you're attending!
Friday, February 1, 2013
ITExpo Highlights
Time sure flies, and that's not a good thing when the weather is sooo nice in Miami Beach. ITExpo is finishing up this afternoon, but I need to get on my way now. Guess I won't be winning the Jeep, but you can't have it all, right?
Seen a little of everything this time around - all the sessions and speakers I heard were quite good, but attendance was variable. I ran 3 panels - 2 were well attended, and 1 hardly at all. Video seems like the hot topic - those sessions were busy, as was Ingate's SIP Trunking program and Crossfire's M2M tracks. I'm not the only one feeling this way, and it's no reflection on the content - just a lot of demands on our time. Between visiting the show floor, catching keynotes, doing briefings, stepping outside for some sun, networking in the hallways and dropping in on sessions, there's a lot of ground to cover. This means attendance of your session has a lot to do with what else is going on at that time, and every conference has to deal with that.
Overall, TMC does a great job keeping things moving along, but I think the stress level would be lighter if there were fewer things to be running to. No time was wasted, and everything I saw was worth getting to - just wish I could have seen more.
With that, I have a highlight and a lowlight to share.
The highlight, as expected, was John Sculley's onstage interview during StartupCamp7. Larry Lisser has done a great job with this, and it always draws a full room. Quickly, the format is to have 4 startups do a 5 minute pitch, then take questions from an expert panel as well as the audience. There were two winners - the audience went with Verbalizeit, and the panel went with Thruview. I liked Thruview the best as well, but none really did that much for me. Seems like everybody is in the mobile apps business now, but they all face the same challenge of monetizing a cool idea. Enough from me on that - you can read up on all this on the Expo website.
Back to John Sculley. I didn't know much about him, but his story sure is a good one. I actually found his Pepsi experience more interesting than his time at Apple. Sometimes you have go way back to revisit ideas that really matter now, and he's a great example of that. Looks like he was the driving force that made Pepsi a major player based on a simple twist of marketing logic - "don't sell the product, sell the experience".
With so much commoditization in the communications space, this is probably the most important message to impart. If it could work with Pepsi, it sure can work with UC, video, social media, mobility, etc. That's my big takeaway and highlight. When engineers run a company, it's all about the product; but when marketers are in charge, it's all about the experience. Ideally you want a balance, and that's why Steve Jobs was so successful. Obviously, it's hard to do, but it absolutely should be driving every company in our space.
Lowlight? Well, for me, it was my panel yesterday, which ended up having two speakers - BroadSoft and Metaswitch. How often does that ever happen? In headier times, this would have a been an SRO session, with everyone anxious to see how they would square off. Well, we played to a near empty room, so we ended up talking about more mundane things. Too bad - this could have been a very lively panel, but we were up against too many other things at that time, and that's the way it goes. Too bad. Maybe next time we'll be the headliners, and then we'll really have to be ready. I'm up for it!
Seen a little of everything this time around - all the sessions and speakers I heard were quite good, but attendance was variable. I ran 3 panels - 2 were well attended, and 1 hardly at all. Video seems like the hot topic - those sessions were busy, as was Ingate's SIP Trunking program and Crossfire's M2M tracks. I'm not the only one feeling this way, and it's no reflection on the content - just a lot of demands on our time. Between visiting the show floor, catching keynotes, doing briefings, stepping outside for some sun, networking in the hallways and dropping in on sessions, there's a lot of ground to cover. This means attendance of your session has a lot to do with what else is going on at that time, and every conference has to deal with that.
Overall, TMC does a great job keeping things moving along, but I think the stress level would be lighter if there were fewer things to be running to. No time was wasted, and everything I saw was worth getting to - just wish I could have seen more.
With that, I have a highlight and a lowlight to share.
The highlight, as expected, was John Sculley's onstage interview during StartupCamp7. Larry Lisser has done a great job with this, and it always draws a full room. Quickly, the format is to have 4 startups do a 5 minute pitch, then take questions from an expert panel as well as the audience. There were two winners - the audience went with Verbalizeit, and the panel went with Thruview. I liked Thruview the best as well, but none really did that much for me. Seems like everybody is in the mobile apps business now, but they all face the same challenge of monetizing a cool idea. Enough from me on that - you can read up on all this on the Expo website.
Back to John Sculley. I didn't know much about him, but his story sure is a good one. I actually found his Pepsi experience more interesting than his time at Apple. Sometimes you have go way back to revisit ideas that really matter now, and he's a great example of that. Looks like he was the driving force that made Pepsi a major player based on a simple twist of marketing logic - "don't sell the product, sell the experience".
With so much commoditization in the communications space, this is probably the most important message to impart. If it could work with Pepsi, it sure can work with UC, video, social media, mobility, etc. That's my big takeaway and highlight. When engineers run a company, it's all about the product; but when marketers are in charge, it's all about the experience. Ideally you want a balance, and that's why Steve Jobs was so successful. Obviously, it's hard to do, but it absolutely should be driving every company in our space.
Lowlight? Well, for me, it was my panel yesterday, which ended up having two speakers - BroadSoft and Metaswitch. How often does that ever happen? In headier times, this would have a been an SRO session, with everyone anxious to see how they would square off. Well, we played to a near empty room, so we ended up talking about more mundane things. Too bad - this could have been a very lively panel, but we were up against too many other things at that time, and that's the way it goes. Too bad. Maybe next time we'll be the headliners, and then we'll really have to be ready. I'm up for it!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
RSS Feed
