Google

Kremlinology and the Vocito/GrandCentral app

Doug Mohney — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:52:46 -0500

Back in the days of the Cold War, intelligence analysts would pour over cryptic statements and publicly released photos published in the Soviet-run newspapers to gain clues as to the real state of affairs behind the "Iron Curtain." Today, observers are forced to do the same thing to make educated guesses on what Google is doing with GrandCentral.

The latest clue is the release of Vocito through GoogleCode, a Mac desktop user interface for GrandCentral. Vocito enables users to easily dial anyone from their desktop, utilizing GrandCentral to dial a remote phone and a local phone simultaneously to connect people together. For Mac users, it integrates into Address Book, Quicksilver, supports "tel" URLs and is fully scriptable. You can use it to build and save little applets to automatically dial your phone with a double-click.

But what does it mean? In the general discussion of the product, there's the whole "GrandCentral is currently in a limited beta" - a state they've been in since Obama started running for President. But the author urges us to run out and reserve a GrandCentral number now to "get in on the action as soon as more invites become available." Certainly, there's the implication that more invites will become available sometime in the near future, preferably before Obama has to start his re-election campaign.

For more:
- Go visit the Vocito web page. Maybe there's something airbrushed out of the pictures we've missed.

Ifbyphone lands $4.6M in funding

Pete Wylie — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:01:50 -0500

Ifbyphone, the Skokie, Ill.-based voice app company, announced the closing of $4.6 million in Series B funding. Origin Ventures and Apex Ventures, which both invested in Ifbyphone's first round of funding, led this round as well.

Ifbyphone CEO Irv Shapiro said the company planned to use the capital infusion to continue to expand its infrastructure, to more aggressively pursue the mid-market, and to market the company more actively.

"We want to improve our ability to handle the needs of the middle market," Shapiro said. "Ifbyphone technology can automate the answering of routine call center calls, like delivery dates and hours of operation, which can be up to 25 percent of total call volume."

Shapiro said the expanded marketing operations would help to reach potential customers who might find Ifbyphone's services very attractive in a recessionary environment. He said customer support remained a top priority for the company, and he claimed that the company doesn't have customers, it just has raving fans.

One such fan is Wayne Boulais, general partner of Apex Ventures, which led both fundraising rounds.

"Ifbyphone was an attractive investment because it's successfully capitalizing on two trends," Boulais said. "It's providing low-cost VoIP services very reliably, and its compatibility with Asterisk is changing the possibilities in exciting and flexible ways. Shapiro is an experienced entrepreneur, and we've been pleasantly surprised with the company's performance."

Boulais said Ifbyphone's customer retention and conversion rates were high, and the company was well suited in challenging economic times, because of good testing methods and low barriers of adoption by customers due to an aggressive pricing scheme.

For more:
- see ifbyphone's press page here

Related articles
Ifbyphone, Top VoIP Company 2008: FierceVoIP, Fierce 15
Ifbyphone mashes call data to Google Analytics

Shoppers: Possible VoIP merger and acquisitions in 2009?

Doug Mohney — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:36:21 -0500

Apple

Would Apple buy Yahoo? At less than $11 a share and a market cap of $15 million it may be a target too tempting to resist. We could also see Mr. Jobs make a quick strike or two for software and/or HD audio technology.

BroadSoft

Sources tell us BroadSoft quietly secured some amount of venture capital in September, disconcerting staff who had been told last year that the company wasn't going to take another round.

Last week, Tessler told FierceVoip, "We always carefully consider opportunities for consolidation, but we want to stay in the applications layer and have been very clear that we won't go beneath that in the stack. Of course, in this climate, something may present itself as a must-take opportunity."

We're not sure if SaaS/hosted companies fall into the above definition, but being able to acquire recurring monthly revenues is always a good thing for any company.

Cisco

Do we need to explain further? Cisco may be trimming up its expenses, but it has plenty of free cash coming in quarter after quarter and an appetite for devouring companies. We wouldn't be surprised if Cisco reached deep into its wallet to make one big (multi-billion dollar) deal in 2009.

Dialogic

Dialogic wants to be a company with at least $400 million in sales, so we expect them to steadily add to the portfolio in 2009 with at least one player "consolidated" under the Dialogic flag.

EXFO

After buying Brix Networks and Navtel this year, what else is there left to buy in the testing and service assurances market? Maybe a SaaS play to get recurring revenue.

GENBAND

Nortel's Ethernet and optical networking assets may represent an opportunity for GENBAND to move beyond its IMS core strategy. Or not - Nortel wants a billion, it will "only" get $500 million.

Regardless, GENBAND doesn't mind buying up individual divisions of companies, and a number of vendors will want to tighten up their portfolios.

Dialogic and GENBAND

Could the two M&A kings end up together to build a potential billion dollar baby? It'd be an interesting marriage with Dialogic at the edge and GENBAND at the core.

Global Crossing

The company told the Wall Street Journal it was interested in possible mergers and acquisitions to gain scale, as they expect a new wave of consolidation in the next 18 months. CEO John Legere said the company has been "in talks with everyone" - whatever that means.

Who do you cross Global Crossing with? Given their all-IP religion, a pairing with XO might make sense, giving GC a bigger U.S. presence and a large metro network. Another interesting combination might be a merger with one of the top three CDN players - Akamai, Limelight or CDNetworks. CDNs need cheap pipe, while GC and other long-hauls would like to accumulate more peering relationships and more IP traffic.

Google

If it's a slow news day, Google will likely buy a VoIP/IP communications company it thinks is hot, then sit on it for about 12 to 24 months while it figures out what to do with the acquisition. At least the company being bought will likely see cash, rather than stock, unless it's a mega-deal.

Microsoft

With $17.8 billion in cash on the books and no publically professed interest in Yahoo this minute (If Yahoo was such a great deal at $31 a share, why wouldn't be an excellent deal at $11 a share? Probably because Microsoft could afford to wait until Yahoo hits $5-7 a share before rolling back in), Microsoft has plenty of cash and a decent stock to offer young UC companies an offer they just can't refuse.

2009 emerging VoIP merger and acquisition trends

Doug Mohney — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:29:23 -0500

Consolidation for the sake of consolidation

If you buy into Dialogic Nick Jensen's speech at a NYC analyst event this spring, carriers don't want to deal with vendors with revenues of less than $100 million dollars; $200 to $400 million is better. Some companies are going to get big.

Content delivery networks (CDNs)

CDNs need cheap pipes and provide recurring revenues. Plus, there's the whole IP peering thing. Could AT&T or Verizon make a play for a CDN? Verizon has purchased ISPs in the past, so a CDN acquisition would be a logical next step.

If you want to think big, Google and Akamai would make a great paring. Would it be a practical one? Don't know. Would it result in some anti-trust noises? Oh, yes!

Cloud computing

Amazon, Microsoft and Google all "get" clouds. And we're talking Microsoft here, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building out massive data centers to support clouds. Cloud technology can support everything from simple web hosting to call center applications.

HD Technology

Moving out of the "me too" legacy 56Kbps landline slowboat into high-quality audio is where the industry is going.

Hosted services and/or SaaS

Repeat after me: Monthly recurring revenues are good. Monthly recurring revenues are good.

We expect to see a bunch of complementary buys in 2009 involving applications companies wanting to offer their own champagne through their own storefronts via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Or, where they see synergies that include both technology (see below) and SaaS. Logitech's buy of Sightspeed is one of those two-for-one deals, assuming that Logitech is comfy with running services as well as selling mice, microphones, webcams and keyboards.

Anyone who has half a brain is going to want to buy themselves some recurring revenue businesses. The challenge is having a full brain and being able to mange the dichotomy of being both a basic product company and a services company, because you likelyend up competing with customers.

Video

Video compression, HD video, video delivery, multi-party video conferencing, video transcoding, mobile video, "all screen" video between TV, PC, and mobile devices, these are a few of our favorite things. We're talking hard problems to balance off compute power, bandwidth availability and quality of experience for the end user.

VoIP Inc.

Doug Mohney — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:05:26 -0500

Founded: 2004

Status: Died Feb. 2008

What did it do: Vonage clone/pay-per-ad call software

At its peak, VoIP Inc. was a CLEC in 40 states, had an E911 solution, was terminating lots of traffic, announced deals with Google and eBay for its pay-per-call ad solution...and then, abruptly shut its doors in February 2008. The company laid off its 25 member engineering staff, wrote off $24 million in losses and stiffed Verizon out of $8 million in the process.

Shareholders demanded an SEC investigation as the stock price plunged from $8.40 a share down to under a penny within a year.

VoIP Inc. started its shady life as Millennia Tea Masters and ended up as a hastily assembled set of parts, including the eGlobalphone VoIP service launched in 2004. In its November 3Q07 earnings report, the company ‘fessed up to not making a profit since starting operations in 2004, having experienced negative cash flows from operations and being dependent upon the issuance of debt and common stock to fund operations and capital expenditures. On top of that, independent auditors said they had substantial doubt about VoIP Inc.'s ability to survive. And they were right.

Grand Central

Doug Mohney — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:23:00 -0500

Founded: 2005

Purchased by: Google, July 2007, $50 million.

Status: Smothered by The Google. Will it escape?

What did/does it do: Hosted mobile UC solution for the common man

Website: www.grandcentral.com

After collecting a whole bunch of awards in 2006 and 2007, GrandCentral was bought by Google and the company slowed to a crawl. No more press releases. There's an "in beta" logo still on the home page -- more than a year after acquisition. A trickle of sporadic blog postings from the founders continued, with the last, dated April 22, 2008, promising "a ton of cool new features."

As of October, the division was no longer taking subscribers and Google was supplying cryptic answers as to its fate. The real problem with the app may be that it doesn't have a direct tie-in with the company's ad business, unlike Android, Chrome, Mobile and StreetView.

Will GrandCentral ever emerge out of the labyrinth of Google's hallways and back into the daylight? Its blogger fan club hopes so, but The Goog is starting to smell like Xerox - if it isn't a copier, er, ad play, it's just going to look good on the shelf.

Ifbyphone, Top VoIP Company 2008: FierceVoIP, Fierce 15

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:05:35 -0500

Ifbyphone

Where it's based: Skokie, Ill.
Where was it founded: 2005
Website: www.ifbyphone.com

Why it's Fierce: Ifbyphone is doing more than just running vanilla VoIP apps, building unique services that we expect to be copied in some form by others down the road. It is a company that understands marketing and business as much as the "Gee, this is cool" world of Voice 2.0.

Ifbyphone has built: A hack to link phone call data web-based ad info from Google Analytics to make it possible for marketers to gauge the effectiveness of lead-generation campaigns; a "smart" conference call API callable from a web page; a lead distributor tool for virtual call center use and... you get the picture. We're talking a tool kit of applications that continues to grow quarter by quarter and made affordable for small businesses.

In addition, the company has a large and diverse set of customers, ranging from popcorn companies using basic capabilities to an automated "12 Step" prayer reminder. CEO Irv Shapiro "gets it" when it comes to customer service.

Where, oh where, has Grand Central gone?

Pete Wylie — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:31:07 -0400

Google hasn't mentioned any plans for virtual phone service Grand Central, which it acquired in July 2007 for $50 million. ZDNet's Sam Diaz reports that, after a blog post he wrote calling Grand Central "his favorite telecommuting tool," readers tried to sign up, but were informed that new registrations have been suspended.

Diaz got a response from Google claiming the product had been put into a closed beta test, hence the closure of new registrations. He makes a valid point that Google has had its hands full with all of its recent product announcements and might have let Grand Central fall by the wayside for the time being.

Grand Central has many convenient and useful features, like temporary call forwarding to another number, unified messaging and web-based voicemail. Integrating the voice application with other features could add value to some of Google's other services, like GMail and YouTube, for instance. With its immense research and development budget, you would think Google could take Grand Central's interface and create something innovative. We'll see if the next few months hold any Grand plans for Google in this area.

For more:
- see Diaz's post on ZDnet.com here

Ifbyphone mashes call data to Google Analytics

Doug Mohney — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:57:58 -0400

In the latest "Gee, that's cool" Voice 2.0 mashup, Chicago-based Ifbyphone has created a mashup to integrate direct response call date with web advertising info from Google Analytics to enable customers to gauge the overall effectiveness of a lead-generation campaign.

The "Marketing 2.0" (ugh!) mashup creates a pseudo web page that is dynamically linked to a "Smart Telephone Number" assigned to an Ifbyphone's customer account. Each time the phone rings, a page view is automatically counted by Google. Advertisers run the reports on the web page hits and therefore get the number of times the assigned phone number has rung.

Since it's all integrated under Google Analytics, marketing wonks can add up website and click stream clicks in the same report with phone call reports; each phone number can also be associated with a Google tracking value for source, content, campaign, term and medium.

For more:
- Read the Ifbyphone release on the new Google analytics mashup

Will Ebay auction Skype?

Pete Wylie — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:09:12 -0400

EBay admitted that it paid far too much when it acquired Skype in 2005 for $2.5 billion. Today, analysts and investors are clamoring that Skype's lagging growth and growing competition may require a sell-off of the VoIP/IM/video company.

When first purchased, EBay expected Skype to fuel its online auction business by providing an ultra-cheap ways for buyers and sellers to connect directly online. But the two companies have remained apart and failed to build a joint story

Skype continues to face increasing pressure to perform beyond even reasonable expectations, as EBay's growth slows and adoption of Skype for auction communications proves to be marginal. Granted, Skype has had six consecutive (but marginally) profitable quarters and plans new iterations of its trademark offering that has already won hundreds of millions of users. But that might not be enough for EBay to continue to hold on to the Luxembourg-based company.

Rumors abound that EBay seeks to spin Skype off to another suitor and Google is not surprisingly at the front of these M&A rumors.

Any potential sale also will be shadowed by rumors of the Skype backdoor, narrowing market cap and potential security issues with payment plans.

For more:
- read the full report at businessweek.com. Article.

Google VoIPing for White Spaces

Doug Mohney — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:50:22 -0400

Google has tapped into the power of Cause Caller and its underlying Asterisk technology to lobby Congress.

Cause Caller is one of a couple of services floating around mixing IP telephony with political activism. For Google's campaign, Cause Caller allows a user to enter a phone number and then uses the information to setup a VoIP call to a randomized list of Congressional representatives focusing on telecom issues. GigaOm says as of Friday afternoon, a whole 11 calls had been made on behalf of Google's White Spaces lobbying push.

Cost per call is "less than 3 cents per minute" and the infrastructure is a combination of Amazon's EC2 server service and Asterisk handling the PBX functionality.

While Cause Caller is a "hobby" for the operator, there are other folks out there combining Asterisk and politics for profit. Popvox, run by David Troy, has been working with various Democratic political causes since 2005. During the 2006 election cycle, Popvox logged over a million voter-to-voter phone calls for 25 Democratic campaigns. Volunteers would use a website to make calls to potential voters, preserving privacy by not displaying a volunteer's phone number, while at the same time providing call monitoring information to the campaign.

For more:
- GigaOm reports on Google's use of VoIP service Cause Caller. Article

Related articles
Asterisk--Threatening or Boring?
Digium CTO parses unblocked Caller ID hack

GrandCentral vs PhoneFusion One

Doug Mohney — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:51:34 -0400

While Google's GrandCentral is free, it hasn't done much since Google bought the FMC/UC service. PhoneFusion One is a low-cost alternative.

In a recent review, Web Worker Daily gave PhoneFusion One kudos for offering more features than GrandCentral at a cost of only $9.95 per month. There's also a premium service featuring VoIP outgoing calls for 3.5 cents per minute, but you may not need that if you've got a bundle of minutes.

Like GrandCentral, you tell PhoneFusion which phones should ring on an inbound call and you have the ability to transfer calls or screen them to voicemail. However, PhoneFusion adds auto-attendantesque features similar to Wildfire, including immediately answering a caller with an audible greeting and providing a verbal screening function ("Who may I say is calling?"). In addition, you can upload your own hold music.

Configuration is extremely flexible, allowing for options to set hours for phones to be accessible, how long the system should wait for you to answer and how long to wait to accept a call, plus others. A PhoneFusion number doubles as a fax number, with the number detecting a fax tone and sending along a fax as a .PDF attachment.

If that's not enough, there's also support for up to five participant conferencing, visual voice mail and management of PhoneFusion options with a touchtone phone.

For more:
- Web Worker Daily reviews PhoneFusion One

Related articles
Google's Grand Central takes a Sunday morning stroll
Google releases free UC for the masses
PhoneFusion releases bargain UC product

Nimbuzz Retreads Familiar Ground

Doug Mohney — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:25:39 -0400

Nimbuzz has announced an application to provide free calls, chat and more, pumping an all-in-one solution for free mobile VoIP calling, conferencing calling, instant messaging, chat and group chat, and photo and file sharing across multiple IM communities, including Skype, MSN, Google Talk, Yahoo, and AIM, plus 23 social networks, including Facebook and Myspace. Is an offer to include a set of Ginzu knives far behind?

It's hard to get excited because of the glut of companies offering bits and pieces to the puzzle, ranging from Skype with a mobile client, free client-to-client calling and IM solution to Jajah/Jangl's bits splicing in VoIP to social networking. Nimbuzz's Swiss Army knife approach with a S****-out approach to pick up a couple of pennies per minute per call sounds tired. Skype isn't standing still either, moving to testing a mobile VoIP client in Europe and other improvements no doubt in the works.

Despite being officially announced today, Nimbuzz says it already has more than 500,000 registered users (collected through their beta started in January 2007) and is generating more than a million logins per week. The company resides in Rotterdam and boasts of venture and strategic funding by Mangrove Capital Partners, the VC backers of Skype.

For more:
- Nimbuzz TechCrunch/Washington Post write-up.

Related articles:
A fring fling on iPhone
Jangl and TalkPlus On the Block
Skype's mobilized phone play

The Telco Skype Killer?

Doug Mohney — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:22:48 -0400

AT&T, in cahoots with 10 to 15 other incumbent carriers including BT, Deutsche Telecom, and NTT, is allegedly planning to launch a Skype killer. GigaOm is placing good stock in a ThinkEquity research report making the prediction, ThinkEquity previously augured Cisco would buy Scientific Atlanta.

Incumbents would to offer a VoIP client that will work on incumbent broadband and 3G wireless pipes, using a backend to allow people to make free phone calls to anyone logged into it, similar to AIM, Yahoo, MSN, and Google.

Calls from client-to-client would be free, and the backend platform would keep “calls” (data streams) from the participating carriers free. Termination charges would be avoiding, but each carrier could still make money when calls S****-Out to a rival’s phone or wireless network. A common platform and client means everyone gains in lower support costs and simplicity, rather than having 15 different standards.

Maybe another way to think of this is this would be the VSTN (VoIP standard telephone network) to the PSTN.

Anyway, the crystal ball says Skype-Killer will be launched in 2009, run on broadband connections and on top of 3G/4G wireless connections (which are, after all, broadband), extended to other mobile phones eventually, and be used as a hook to sell other services such as video.

Why are telcos prepared to eat their own young, so to speak? Voice is a losing proposition and they continue to lose fixed-line customers at a rapid clip. Providing VSTN gives them a way to retain customers, rather than letting them skip off to cable, an independent VoIP service, or a rival’s wireless service.

For more:
- Read the GigaOm post on the Telecom Skype Killer

Dimdim: Web Meetings For Free & Open Source

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:59:55 -0400

Dimdim has launched its free web meeting service to the public, along with making the underlying code open source. The free version of the service will support up to 20 people while the pay-for-it Pro version supports up to 100. All products are in public beta immediately.

Like other web meeting services, a single click starts up a web meeting and allows anyone to share their desktop, show documents and slides, as well as talk, listen, chat and broadcast via webcam. Dimdim had a private beta launch in September 2007 and says more than 375,000 people have used the service; the company cites the United Nations and Amnesty International as users, not to mention immigrants wanting to learn English, a church group providing online seminars, and an Australia-based veterinary group.

Dimdim Free includes desktop sharing, document sharing, video broadcasting, multi-way VoIP chat, IM, annotations and shared whiteboards. Starting at $99 a year, Dimdim Pro provides custom branding, greater performance and reliability and starts at $99 per year, with additional fees for scaling up to 100 people. Dimdim Enterprise enables multiple simultaneous meetings, onsite or hosted configurations, and can support up to 1000 participants per meeting. In addition to the open source version, there are also open APIs available for additional integration and development.

For more:
-Dimdim Free Meeting Press Release
-Venture Beat's Coverage of the Dimdim Launch

Related articles:
Nortel, Tandberg Telepresence Announcement
Is Google going after Cisco/WebEx?

Telcos Have Google Envy

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 06:59:54 -0400

A new report by Heavy Reading asserts that when it comes to delivering differentiating next-generation services, Internet companies like Google have the edge, while major carriers aren't sure what to do. Surveyed firms--France Telecom, NTT, TelaSonera, and Verizon Communications--know what they don't know and realize they will have to partner with third-party application companies to deliver the advanced services consumers will ultimately want.

Telcos are looking at third-party applications and trying to find ways they can add value to them. Most of the carriers feel they bring value to the table with billing, security, and QoS; policy control is also an area which carriers are looking at, but it's very controversial and kicks up the net neutrality crowd.

The bottom line--traditional telephony--is a dying asset and if they want to keep growing revenues in the future they will have to partner up and open up their networks to third parties. Sprint and Verizon Wireless have already taken the first steps in opening up their network and movement is expected on the wireline side as well. When it comes to advanced services, carriers see Google as their biggest threat, but Google doesn't make money as a service provider. Instead, Google relies almost exclusively on online advertising for revenues.

For more:
- Light Reading's GoogleEnvy writeup
- Reinventing the Telcos Report

Related articles:
Verizon Wireless embraces open access
Sprint outlines Xohm WiMAX plans
Sprint: 'We're creating a platform for innovation'

NewStep Gets Android and Social

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 06:59:57 -0400

NewStep Networks is teaming up with D2 Technologies to deliver a joint FMC/UC solution for Google's Android platform. NewStep has also announced that it has incorporated a social networking communications framework into its Converged Services Node (CSN) platform, underlining the company's commitment to redefine itself from a FMC player into a service convergence company.

D2 will provide its mCUE embedded mobile unified communications software on top of the Google open source mobile platform and make sure it is interoperating with NewStep's CSN platform for FMC/UC applications. The companies have already successfully tested D2's software with NewStep's VCC-compliant CSN. D2's software pares a communication user interface with the company's vPort MP VoIP software platform to provide enterprise users with mobile access to full directory services, extension calling and corporate IM.

On the social networking front, NewStep has developed a Facebook application that enables a converged click-to-call experience, providing user control over one's identity, social network, and communications channels. It has also developed widgets for Yahoo!oneConnect and iGoogle to bring convergence into a user's own personalized mobile or web portal, leveraging all available presence, location, and behavior characteristics.

For more:
- Read the D2/Android release here.
- Read the Social Networking release here.

Related articles:
Has Android forgotten VoIP Report
T-Mobile CEO on Android Report

Is a Google-Skype union a marriage made in heaven?

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:59:56 -0400

ZDNet blogger Dave Greenfield writes that Google-Skype marriage rumors once again are making the rounds, this time with the news that Skype might be carrying a price tag close to $6 billion, a little rich for a company that has performed less than wonderfully for its current spousal equivalent, eBay.

Google's take-everything-on-the-Internet-and-make-it-ours philosophy actually makes the potential partnership more likely, especially when you consider Google's GTalk and GrandCentral. Like any good arranged marriage, there are upsides aplenty to a Google-Skype union.

For more on the rumored marriage:
- Check out Greenfield's blog

Related articles:
Google releases free UC for the masses
Has Android forgotten VoIP?
Skype struggles to find real revenue

IBM ups the ante in UC battle for big business

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:59:58 -0400

IBM has upped the ante in the battle for UC dominance this week committing $1 billion to UC research, development and acquisitions over the next three years. Stung by Microsoft's aggressive move into its big enterprise space, IBM is fighting back with a series of upgrades to its Lotus Sametime communication and collaboration platform. IBM's $1 billion commitment was made at a briefing this week led by Steve Mills, the senior vice president of IBM's software group.

The funding commitment follows an IDC prediction that the UC market will be worth $17 billion by 2011 and as both arch rival Microsoft and now Siemens have announced new UC server platforms. Siemens Communications enters the UC fray hoping to leverage its voice and carrier experience. Siemens is a working example of the evolution from carrier to enterprise that is now characterizing much of the vendor plays. Its all software, fully integrated and ready-to-use-now OpenScape platform has changed the race for mid-sized to big enterprises that has been traditionally an IBM v. Microsoft contest.

But IBM says it Sametime platform is part of a 10-year heritage of providing messaging, voice and, more recently, video to large enterprises. With 20 million clients installed, IBM does not intend to simply let others take away its hard-earned Rolodex of clients.

Maybe. Reports of IBM's demo this week of its new unified telephony features highlighted the ability to route calls to various devices and setting rules on how to handle calls based on status. Call forwarding has been around for at least 20 years so lets hope there is a better feature to sell when it finally hits the market in December. In a space on fire with new products, features and alliances, December seems a very long time to wait.

Meanwhile, there are a whole swag of smaller vendors really pushing hard into the enterprise space. IVT's Evolution PBX, Fonality's PBXtra and even Google's Grand Central Beta are offering sophisticated find me, cellphone integration, presence and call management features. Fonality has teamed with Dell and hopes to exploit Dell's 30 percent share of the U.S. desktop enterprise market.

But the real battle is at the big end of town and IBM has already integrated Sametime functionality into Lotus Notes to bring UC and collaboration together to compete against Microsoft's OCS/Office and Exchange platform. IBM last week got a PR bonus after Frost and Sullivan awarded the Sametime platform 2008 North American Enterprise product of the year.

For more:
- IBM pledges $1 billion for UC Article
- IBM Lotus Sametime wins two awards Release

Related articles:
Siemens announces new UC platform Article
Comcast takes aim at business Article

Mobile VoIP changes the game

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 07:59:59 -0400

Apple's announcement that it will allow WiFi VoIP on its iPhone is one of those big tech moments. With the imminent arrival of Google's Android platform and even industry conservatives like Verizon Wireless opening its platform for third party apps, no one wants to be left as the only platform/device not offering mobile VoIP. Just mix Skype's massive user base and tens of millions of open smart phones together and you quickly see the future.

And while the limitations of the 3G platform means VoIP will only be a WiFi game for the time being, the arrival of 4G is going to change that once and for all. In any case various bridging widgets such as those offered by Packet8 and Truphone will give users a viable and much cheaper "VoIP like" service. T-Mobile's new @home WiFi service and Vodafone's not dissimilar German play, suggests the carriers know the game is up for pure cellular and are already accepting that if you can't beat them, it's better to join them. Tom