Cisco Has a Message for Carriers - the Future is Video, not Telephony

Cisco made a lot of noise this week announcing the CRS-3 router, and I took part in the webinar briefing. I'm not an expert on routers, but I got some pretty strong takeaways about the bigger picture implications for carriers. In short, their future is about video and the Internet, not telephony. It sounds like strong medicine, and what you'd expect to hear from Cisco, but I happen to agree.

I've put my thoughts together on this for my latest Service Provider Views column, which runs on TMCnet. It's running now, and you can read it here.

You don't have to look far for coverage of Cisco's announcement in the press and blogs, and I'll just steer you to one from here in Canada - ITBusiness.ca - where I contributed some commentary. Just as the carriers face a lot of risk adapting to new technologies and changing customer preferences, Cisco has its own set of challenges, some self-created, and others stemming from general market conditions.

Nobody has a free ride here, so it's an interesting story that goes way beyond the current state of router technology. I'm sure I'll be revisiting this theme soon, but would love to hear your thoughts any time.

Metaswitch Makes a Smart Move

With the recent news around making Kevin DeNuccio their CEO, Metaswitch is starting to execute on their global marketing push. If any of this is news, my last post about Metaswitch will get you up to speed. Have a look at that, and then read the rest of this post.

Today they've announced their first acquisition since then, and it's exactly what you'd expect given their big picture plans. In short, Metaswitch has acquired Richardson, TX-based App Trigger, an established vendor in the service broker space. I wasn't familiar with this company before, but I followed this space fairly closely when there were more players.

As with other IP comms sectors, service brokers have gone through their share of consolidation, and companies I was close to for some time - such as Personeta and Leapstone - are long gone. However, App Trigger remains - until now - and this looks like a good exit for them, and a smart move for Metaswitch.

If you thought the SBC space was misunderstood, it's even more so for service brokers. This is complex network technology for telcos, and being so engineering-heavy, it's no surprise that market adoption has struggled and that these companies have remained small. Bad for them, but good for Metaswitch.

As I understand things, service broker platforms bring value by enabling carriers to bridge the worlds of legacy and IP for both service creation and service delivery. A lot of legacy apps are still widely used and profitable for carriers, but they also need to move into IP, and that's where service broker platforms come into play.

Being a small company, this was a manageable acquisition for Metaswitch, and adds another layer of value right away. As noted in my last post, they're in a great spot to make acquisitions, and this seems to be the right kind of move. There aren't that many service broker players left, and it makes Metaswitch a more complete solution. First, App Trigger has a global footprint, and several Tier 1 customers, giving Metaswitch a new base to sell into.

Even better, though, is the capability this gives them to better service the global market, which is a key part of their growth plan. One of the challenges for global carriers is the wide variance of protocols used to hand off traffic to each other. This applies equally across different types of protocols, as well as addressing varying flavors within one, especially SIP. Perhaps equally important is wireless, which is a key growth area for Metaswitch, and as carriers adopt IMS and migrate to 4G and LTE, wireless service broker capabilities could become a key differentiator.

That's as far as I can take the technical discussion, but I see enough here to conclude that it's a good deal for both parties. Terms were not disclosed, but I can't imagine the cost was all that much, and certainly within Metaswitch's means. So, it's another step forward for the company, and am sure this will put some pressure on the competition to keep pace.

Thomas Howe Shout-Out - CEBP Report Published and Other Vital Updates!

Thomas Howe is definitely one of the good guys in our space, and he's been a good friend and supporter of mine over the years. If you follow either of us, you'll know he's had a few gear changes the past year or so, and I've got a new one for you.

He recently followed my Smart Grid lead and partnered with TMC to run the Cloud/Mashup Summit at the last ITExpo in January. My event duties kept me from seeing his, but I know enough to say it was great, and he's still Mr. Mashup to me. Building on that, I've got two news items for you from this week - well, actually three.

First is the launch of his CEBP Report, which was announced on his blog on Wednesday. It's been produced in partnership with UK-based STL Partners, and it looks you have to have their Subscription Service to get the full report. If you want to get beyond the front page summary, you really should drop Thomas a line or sign up with STL.

Second is the refresh of Thomas' webpage. Y'know, I don't know what to call these things any more - it's website, it's a blog, it's a Twitter feed, it's a news portal. Whatever you want to call it, I like it, and it's what I'd expect from a such a sharp guy who is comfortable trying new things. I need to take a page that book, and am on that path now myself. Stay tuned folks. I have a few new initiatives in the oven, and am planning a blog refresh as well. And yes, I'm starting to tweet, and am all ears for finding the best way to have 100,000 followers in 5 days or less! :-)

Finally, going back to Thomas' Cloud Summit, part of his planning included putting an ebook together, which will be made freely available once ready. I love the idea - he invited a variety of thought leaders to prepare short essays about cloud communications. I'm happy to say I was invited, and really enjoyed putting my thoughts together. The contributors are all reviewing the rough draft now, which means it's getting close to being published. It's going to be a must-read for this space, so kudos to Thomas for the brainwave and the wherewithal (along with Pam Shapiro!) to put it all together. Am sure you'll be hearing about this big-time soon enough, and I'll do my part to spread the word.

With that, you now you have the latest on Thomas Howe. I think he's going to have a happy St. Patty's Day - but I doubt we'll be in the same place to enjoy a green brew together. Back to work and thinking about Spring Training...

Aastra MX-ONE's Canadian Push Continues

Last month, I attended a briefing for Aastra's launch of MX-ONE in Canada. I know it seems strange that a Canadian vendor is just now bringing this solution to the home market, but things are a bit different up here. We don't get a lot of firsts, but we're still #1 in hockey, and hey, Canada won more gold medals than anybody in Vancouver - nothing wrong with that.

Anyhow, I don't have much news for you, but earlier this week I came back to visit Aastra for part 2. This time I got a full demo of MX-ONE, which is their enterprise class offering. As with all the telecom vendors, MX-ONE is much more than an IP PBX. It's full of all the requisite features to support Unified Communications and contact center applications. They showed me lots of multimedia examples, including wireless handoffs, calendaring integration and presence.

Not being an IT guy, this was nice to see, but I found the go-to-market, value proposition conversations more interesting. Probably the most important takeaway here builds on what we heard at the analyst briefing. Namely, their close working relationship with HP, and how MX-ONE offers a versatile and complete alternative to Cisco, as well as Avaya/Nortel. Those are really the major players that Aastra is up against, especially in terms of building their channels. Of course, there is Mitel, Shoretel, etc., but for MX-ONE in particular, they're aiming pretty high.

While the technology appears to be solid, and I'm sure the pricing is attractive, Aastra's biggest challenge will likely be brand recognition. I've long contended Aastra is the best kept secret in this space, and seems typical in so many ways of successful Canadian companies that don't get much attention elsewhere. This is especially strange for Aastra considering they are a profitable public company, rapidly closing in on $1 billion in sales. I don't know how you keep this under the radar much longer, but I don't need that external validation to know that Aastra has a good thing going here.

Just a couple of photos from my visit...

How Bloggers and Analysts use Social Media

This week's UC Strategies podcast was about how we're using social media. The "we" in this case pertains to the UC Strategies group, of which I'm a part. For the most part, we're independent analysts/consultants with a focus on Unified Communications, and to varying degrees, we all make use of these tools.

We touched on a few themes here, starting with the tools themselves, especially how some are using Twitter on a regular basis. Since we more or less work on our own, we found these tools quite helpful for staying in touch, doing research and keeping on top of breaking news. I'm still new to Twitter - so call me a laggard on this one - but I am starting to see its value, so look to see more tweets from me soon.

Another theme was about where social media fits in the Unified Communications schema, and how it's becoming part of the business communications landscape. I'm not sure there's a way to monetize this, but we talked about some examples where social media is becoming integrated into the fabric of UC. Pretty interesting topic, and I hope you'll give us a listen. You can access the podcast here, and while you're at it, please spend some time exploring the portal.

Mitel Mobile - Shape of Things to Come?

This posting seems fitting in the wake of Canada'a post-Olympic glow. Ottawa-based Mitel recently added an interesting twist to their expanding portfolio of advanced communications offerings.

Just when you thought the UC umbrella was wide enough, they launched Mitel Mobile in late January. I've written about this before, and when vendors start competing with carriers, you know the status quo is a thing of the past.

I'm just adding another perspective in the form of my latest Service Provider Views column on TMCnet. It's based on an interview with Laith Zalzalah of Mitel NetSolutions, and you can read about it here. I'm sure I won't be alone in tracking their progress, and it will be interesting to see if this is a one-off variation, or a new model for other vendors to emulate.

Skype/Verizon News - My Take

Tuesday's news about Skype and Verizon Wireless was a pretty big deal. I wasn't at MWC to see the press conference, and other things kept me from blogging about it until now, but I wanted to share my thoughts in some form. The uber bloggers have covered all the news angles by now, so let's not go there.

The next best thing is to write about the bigger picture, and I've done that in my latest Service Provider Views column, which is running now on TMCnet. So, if this story is still of interest to you - and it should be - you can read my take here, and by all means, you're welcome to keep the conversation going.

Cisco - Q2 Collaboration Review

Today was the first time I've attended one of Cisco's Collaboration Reviews via telepresence. Telephone or WebEx sessions are the norm, and while they're usually pretty good, TP is the next best thing to being there. Before getting your hopes up too high, this wasn't a full-blown TP session (and I've been on plenty of those). It was just me and their AR liaision, Andrea Berry at Cisco Canada's HQ in downtown Toronto. While this was a global event, with 22 analysts participating, it looks like I was the lone Canadian analyst - lucky me. So, I can say with pretty good confidence that this may well be the first news you've heard about today.

There wasn't anything really groundbreaking, and the session was just an hour - and I mean that literally. Cisco makes extensive use of TP internally, and apparently their TP rooms are booked months in advance. So, when your time slot is up, it's up. The screen abruptly went blank on the host in mid-sentence at 1pm on the dot. Gotta keep the train moving I guess.

Most of the talking was done by two key drivers of their collaboration initiatives - Barry O'Sullivan - SVP Voice Technology Group, and Carl Wiese - SVP Global Collaboration Sales. They had a lot to recap from the recent quarter, and here are the main points that I can share:

- they posted 17% year-over-year growth across their collaboration portfolio - UC, contact center, telepresence, IP telephony, WebEx, etc.

- like any vendor in this space, they have been aggressively going after competitors who have struggled, namely Nortel, Siemens and ALU

- while revenues were not disclosed, they cited early successes in their various spaces - 12 customers now using WebEx Mail (all are U.S. and primarily SMB), 450+ are using cloud-based IM, over 3,600 locations using telepresence, and 75 customers using Show and Share

- perhaps the strongest message overall was their move into hosted services - this will now give their customers a choice between premise-based and carrier-based solutions

- highlights were given about 4 recent customer wins - each one showcasing a particular strength of Cisco or attractive market opportunity

- their objective of providing "pervasive video" - both big and small - was briefly discussed, but no updates on the Tandberg deal were given

A couple of these points warrant a bit more detail, so here goes...

Regarding WebEx Mail, that was a highlight for me at their Collaboration Summit last November. They shared one lesson learned with us today, which I found interesting. Their early deployments did not support BlackBerry, and it looks like they underestimated how important this was, even for SMBs. As such, they've had to accelerate BlackBerry integration to keep these deployments moving forward. I asked if they had any indication yet as to whether their email platform has led to faster adoption of other collaboration tools. They liked the question, but didn't have much to say - am guessing it's early days, but I have to think that's the end game here.

The move to hosted has huge implications, and the analysts had lots of questions about this one. I wanted to better understand the role they seek to play, especially in terms of owning the customer and sharing revenues with service providers. They talked about their intent being to get the carrier set up to offer hosted, and then let them run with it. The acronym they used is BOT - "Build, Operate and Transfer". That's the process, and we'll just have to see how it actually unfolds. It's clear they want to have it both ways - deploy on-prem, as well as partner with carriers - with the customer choosing the best path. They wouldn't quantify the market opportunity, but did go so far to say that it "appears real". They're in talks with 10 carriers now, and BT is the one they point to as an announced partner for hosted. There is a lot of potential here for channel conflict, and Cisco is not afraid to tread on new ground. However, I got the sense they are approaching hosted cautiously, and it looked to me like they were choosing their words carefully. Regardless, they're not going to ignore the hosted market, so get used to it, folks.

Two customer wins were of particular interest to me. One was Duke University, where they talked about how they're using telepresence to help extend the classroom experience off campus. I've long felt that distance learning is a huge opportunity, and that IP technologies will play a big role in re-defining higher education.

The other customer win was Molina Healthcare. Aside from this being another great vertical market for collaboration, they cited an interesting outcome from deploying telepresence there. They're finding that people are meeting twice as often, but for half as long. That's a pretty good result, and a great way to validate the value of telepresence.

Finally, I just had to comment on the actual experience of using TP today. Since the topic was collaboration, one would expect the tools for the meeting would properly reflect that. For the most part they did. Even though the screen we used was fairly small - see photos below - both the audio and video quality were very good. However, there was no use of split screens, which would have been effective at times, since Barry and Carl were in different locations. As such, the visuals were very much in a serial manner. One speaker at a time - cut to the next speaker - cut back to the first speaker, etc. I found it a bit like watching a newscast - it's ok, but not that engaging.

Two other small things. I suspect other locations had multiple screens, whereas we only had one. When the host was addressing me, she was looking to the right, which must have been the screen she was seeing me on. This would look perfectly normal from her end, but Andrea and I only saw her looking right, and not at us. This takes some getting used to, as it wasn't clear that she was talking to me. To us, it looked like she was talking to someone else. Live and learn.

The other small thing was the use of a slide deck during the session. They were really just used in passing reference, and most of our attention was centered on the speakers. That was probably for the best, since the slides were only displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen. Since we had a small TP unit, the slides were really small, and almost impossible to read. I'm sure this would be less of a problem on a full-size system, so I guess this comes with the territory. On the other hand, I would have been just as happy to have no slides, which would give us an unobstructed view of the speaker (see photos below). For any speaker sitting on that side of the screen, the slides block out a good portion of their body. While Anderson Cooper would probably roll with that, Ted Baxter would be freaking out - so, as long as the egos are in check, it's probably not a problem. :-)


Barry O'Sullivan


Carl Wiese

Aastra MX-ONE Comes to Canada

This may seem like a strange headline, considering that Aastra is a Canadian company. However, that's the news that we got updated on at today's analyst briefing at their HQ just outside of Toronto. MX-ONE is Aastra's mid/large enterprise offering, and comes out of an acquisition from Ericsson. I commented on this briefly in a recent writeup on the UC Strategies portal.

Today's briefing actually addressed two items - MX-ONE and their Q4 earnings, which were announced yesterday. Keeping with my recent blog theme about good news stories, Aastra is definitely another solid example, and it's especially nice to hear about a Canadian success story.

On the earnings front, this is their 47th consecutive profitable quarter - does it really get any better from a company that flies below a lot of people's radar? Sales were $833 million - flat from 2008 - but they're well on target for hitting $1 billion, which is pretty significant for a Canadian telecom company not named Nortel. Similar to the strong numbers reported by Acme Packet last week, Aastra has money in the bank - $117 million - and spent a respectable $82 million on R&D, which is just under 10% of sales. So, they have the means to both continue innovating and make strategic acquisitions as needed - that's a nice combination to have.

With Nortel folding into Avaya, Aastra now becomes one of the four major players in the U.S., along with Cisco and Mitel. This leads us to MX-ONE, and their roadmap to become established now in Canada and enter that select circle up here. Of course, all the vendors have their let's-exploit-Nortel's-demise strategy, and Aastra feels they offer a strong alternative. Aside from being financially stable, they talked about some other core virtues - namely proven technology, a commitment to open standards, and being easy to do business with. I wasn't able to stay the whole morning, but from what I saw, they did a good job backing these claims up.

Between Unified Communications and Contact Center solutions, they feel there's a $2 billion market opporunity in Canada, and following the Nortel saga, the time is right to go after the mid/large enterprise market with MX-ONE. They have a global footprint today with this offering, so there should be a natural appeal for multinational companies with Canadian branch offices. They also stressed their ability to integrate with other PBX vendors, and with their HP ProCurve alliance, they have a solid software-based solution. This plays nicely into their focus on SIP and virtualization, making it easy for deployments to scale and add new IP-based applications. Given how Cisco is crossing into HP's territory these days, the Aastra/HP combination presents a best-of-breed alternative for businesses concerned about vendor lock-in with Cisco.

They also talked about channels, and it's clear their success will weigh heavily on developing the right partner mix. Aastra prefers a more select approach with partners who are either strong in a particular vertical and/or selling against a key competitor. I agree that channels are the name of the game, and with Canada being a greenfield market for MX-ONE, they'll need to pick their partners carefully. Two of them were on hand today - Demarcation Point, and Conpute, and we heard a bit from the latter, who is particularly strong in the education market.

The more I get to know Aastra, the more I like them, and it's great to see a local company become so large and successful. I asked how much MX-ONE drives their top line growth, but didn't get an answer. That's ok. You could argue that their Canadian push will not have much impact in the short term, but if Canada really is a $2 billion market for them, even a 10% share would account for almost 25% of current revenues. Clearly, they've done very well to date without this market, but if they execute well, there's no reason why MX-ONE can't be a big part of helping them get to $1 billion in the next 2-3 years.

Yves Laliberte, EVP kicking things off



Craig Ballard, Technical Sales Manager - reviewing their competitive differentiators



Mark Marshall, VP Enterprise Sales - discussing Aastra's go to market plans



Don Conley, Conpute - the channel perspective

Good News, Part 2 - Acme Packet

Picking up from yesterday's post, here's another good news item of note. Acme Packet has done more than anyone else to personify the session border controller space and has emerged as the clear market leader. It's one thing to be number one in your market, but it's even better when you're dominant, as is the case with Acme. I've written about Acme many times, and a quick search on my blog will take you to posts that help explain how they got to be this way.

Earlier this week I was briefed on their latest news in advance of next week's Mobile World Congress, and that embargo was lifted today. There are really two threads to this good news story, and I'll touch on each separately.

First would be their Q4 2009 earnings, which has largely been re-hashed by the financial analyst community. Being an industry analyst, I'm more focused on the business metrics than the earnings, and even just a few numbers tells a lot.

On the finance side, it's hard to ignore the basics:

- Revenues are at critical mass now - $141.5 million in 2009. When I began following them back as a tiny startup, let's just say the numbers were a lot smaller. 2010 is looking even better - they expect 30% growth, which will put them on track for about $185 million.

- Net income was $17.1 million, up 47% from 2008. This isn't huge, but they're making money, folks, and profits are up sharply.

- Money in the bank - $175 million. Wow - that's pretty healthy, especially when you consider they absorbed Covergence last May, and there's not much left out there competition-wise that's worth buying. Maybe Sipera or Sansay. Being public, no doubt the portfolio managers will be watching closely to see what they do with that stash. They'd either have to move sideways and acquire related or complementary technologies - perhaps firewalls or routers - or make a big upward move to acquire someone much bigger but less stable. I'd bet on the former if they do anything at all.

Speaking of being a public company, it's also worth noting that Acme's share price has recovered very nicely from last fall, when they were under $4, and is now up near $14. Going public cuts both ways, but with their current momentum, Acme looks about as good as it gets for companies in this space.

Financials aside, the customer footprint really tells the story for me. I'd say the most impressive metric is customers - 980 and counting. I don't know if they'll have a special prize for customer #1,000, but that will be a nice milestone to hit. Keeping pace with their strong financial metrics, Acme added 235 customers last year. I'll bet it takes a few years for a lot of companies to add that many. I should also add that almost 20% of their customers are enterprises, so Acme is more than just a carrier play.

Unlike Vonage, where churn is a fact of life, and ARPU is hard to grow, Acme doesn't lose many customers, and most of them have a lot of upside for SBCs, as the migration from circuit to packet continues. Finally, it's worth adding that Acme is truly global, with customers in 104 countries.

Enough said. The second strand of news was announced today in a rather long, complex press release. The news covers three big updates to their Net-Net portfolio.

First is the Net-Net SIP Multimedia-xpress. This update focuses on the challenges service providers face with IMS compliance, which has proven slow to materialize. Acme has come up with an "IMS equivalent alternative", with the idea being to provide a lower cost, more flexible way to help carriers introduce new SIP services in a scalable manner. The focus is on time-to-market, which carriers desperately need to stay competitive.

Second would be their Net-Net SBC Cluster/Session-Aware Load Balancer. That's a mouthful, and all I can say is that it enables SIP multimedia applications on a large scale. And they do mean large - up to 2 million subscribers. That's a big number, and I can't validate that for you, but clearly, Acme is aiming high here. Bottom line is that Tier 1 operators are adopting IP at a fast rate now - especially with mobile - and it won't take long for them to support services on this scale.

The third element is the Net-Net Route Manager. This seems more straightforward, and supports more centralized management of SIP routing across the network, which may have many nodes across many geographies.

I'll be the first to say this is a simplified summary of the enhancements, and the details are simply too technical for me to explore further. SBCs are complex, and I'm not the only analyst out there who can only digest Acme's news at a high level. Most network elements are fairly intuitive, but Acme has taken SBCs to a very advanced level, and even their press release - which should only be 1-2 pages - requires 5 pages to explain it.

I'm not technical enough to say whether this complexity is by design, and I'll take it on faith that all these enhancements are going to make life better for operators. If you want a higher comfort level, I suggest you talk to an Engineer. However, from my vantage point, I believe Acme has a strong story to tell, and have no doubt the carriers at MWC next week will be a great point of validation for them.

Good News, Part 1 - Xconnect Doubles Revenues

Being shut down with a head cold for a few days will put a damper on things, but I'm definitely on the mend. Haven't been able to follow things much lately, but good news seems to come in cycles, and I'm seeing one now. Last week I talked about the new CEO at Metaswitch and how that's lining up nicely with a bigger growth story they seem to be managing very well.

There was a second good news item last week from XConnect, another company I've followed closely for a long time. Being an Advisor, I've deliberately held off blogging about this, and don't want to give the impression I'm sharing anything sensitive or a scoop ahead of the pack. Am just treating this as a straight up news item, and I think it speaks for itself. As announced, their 2009 revenues doubled, and traffic is up 81%. The metric I look
at with even more interest is customer acquisition, and they added a healthy 63 new service provider customers last year. The peering market is still advancing slower than anticipated, and the revenues are still fairly small, so doubling sales is not as impresssive as it would be in a more mature market.

That aside, XConnect is on track for a strong year. The press release notes the addition of a London POP, and money in the bank to support expansion via last year's $10 million Series B raise. Like many companies focused on the long term migration from TDM to IP, XConnect is riding on some big trends that will play in their favor over time, with the most recent being the explosion of mobile broadband (and with it, more and more wireless substitution), and the adoption of HD services. It's early days for HD voice, but just like with HD TV, once you try it, there's no turning back.

XConnect is far from a household name, but they're a leading player in their space, and I know their time will come. The company got some nice recognition along these lines month, being named a Red Herring Global 100 Winner. This may have been the first a lot of people heard about them, but those of us following them more closely, it's hard not to argue that their prospects are looking good.

Tomorrow I'll continue the good news theme with Part 2, and a bunch of news from another company that's driving IP to the masses.

Metaswitch Announces New CEO

Was just on a briefing call about some news from Metaswitch. I don't track news items as a matter of course, but this announcement came my way on short notice, and being a company I follow closely, it's worth noting.

Metaswitch is a great example of a company that goes about its business quietly, deliberately and effectively. These really aren't 2.0-style virtues, but I'll take their track record any day over the fast and furious.

The news item is pretty pedestrian - Kevin DeNuccio takes the CEO reins from John Lazar, who now moves into the Chairman spot, in turn from Ian Feguson, who remains on the board. You can read the details here on the press release that just ran this morning.

Kevin has big company experience from Redback Networks and Cisco, and it looked like a good move when he came on board as a director in 2008. I've seen this with other companies who are ramping up for growth and/or targeting bigger customers. This type of pedigree can be invaluable on a few levels, and it's not surprising to see Kevin now in the CEO spot.

You could argue the company wanted more of a U.S.-based/style of CEO, but I think that's the short answer. Their culture is too strong, and I don't see them becoming a rah-rah type of company trying to get really big by acquiring competitors and raising lots of money to fund it. That's not their style.

I see this more as another step along the way to deepen their management team, and position the company for continued, global growth. Metaswitch is definitely growing into new frontiers, namely wireless and developer-based applications, and of course moving further up the chain with bigger telco customers. I can see Kevin's presence helping with bigger telcos, but I'm not as sure about these other areas.

Regardless, I think this sends a positive message that Metaswitch is well positioned for 2010, and having gone through some corporate re-jigging/branding last year, they have a plan in place, and this news is just part of how they're executing on it.

I'm still not entirely sure why this move is happening and why now, and we'll just have to take it on the faith that it's all for the best. My only concern is their ability to assure core customers that nothing changes for them. They've done a great job acquiring - and keeping - Tier 2/3 carriers, and will need to be careful not to give them a reason to think they're moving away to chase bigger game. We got assurances on the call this won't happen, and I'm confident that's how things will unfold. They know their roots too well - just consider where their next customer forum takes place - Nashville. Great music aside, I can't think of a better spot to be among your people. I hope Kevin likes country and bluegrass....

UC Strategies - ITExpo/Industry News Recap

After a brief hiatus, I was able to join the weekly UC Strategies podcast on Monday. This week, the focus was a recap of recent industry events as well as news of note, namely the iPad launch.

A few industry events were discussed, but ITExpo was the only one I had attended. I shared my thoughts on the Expo along with others who were there such as Jim Burton and Dave Michels. All told, it's a nice recap, esp from Dave, who was attending for the first time. Towards the end, we also talked about the iPad, and I managed to add my take to the mix.

The podcast is running now on the UC Strategies portal, and you can access it here. Hope you give it a listen, and if you attended the ITExpo, by all means, let us know what you thought of it.

DAVE Wireless/Mobilicity - the Next Wave in Canadian Wireless Competition

The second shoe dropped today in terms of new entries for Canada's wireless market. I've been following this space for some time, and the winners of last year's AWS auction are starting to make moves to shake things up here. About six weeks ago, the most ambitious entry - Wind Mobile - was the first to launch. I've generally been skeptical of the chances for these new players, and as first movers go, I haven't been overwhelmed with Wind.

Enough said for now - but we can talk more about that later. Let's focus on today's news, which has a few angles of interest. The next entry making noise is DAVE Wireless. The acronym is awkward and misleading - Data and Audio Visual Enterprises - but guess what?

Breaking news - they've just done their branding launch, and I like the new name MUCH better. They're coming to market under the moniker Mobilicity, and the press release just hit the wires. A bit like Sex and the City - rolls off the tongue nicely and hints at adventure, and combines two words that define their value proposition - mobility and city. I also can't help but notice the subtle homage here that comes from their CEO's former role as head of Toronto Hydro Telecom, the telecom arm of our local electric utility.

While that news is very much here and now, let me rewind to earlier this morning, where I attended the first public address about their plans at the Toronto Board of Trade. That's what I'm trying to post about, but the re-name news just came out while writing this up.

So, bright and early at 8am, DAVE Wireless's CEO, Dave Dobbin addressed a very full house about their latest news. First off, the service hasn't launched yet - that's coming in the spring. This gives Wind a 4-5 month head start, but if DAVE really is as distinct as promised, it may not be much of a factor.

Dave's main message this morning was to set the stage for their launch by explaining why competition is a good thing for consumers, and how their service is going to be different. Just a quick aside - TELUS is one of the sponsors of this breakfast speaker series, and in my recent conversations with them, it hasn't been lost on them that their dollars are helping provide a stage for a new competitor to tell their story. Am sure Mr. Dobbin sent Mr. Entwistle a friendly text message to thank him.

Back to the presentation. I certainly like the opening comments, where he noted that the mere threat of competition has already benefitted consumers. That's very true, esp considering that the AWS auction seemed to be ages ago, and so far, only one new service has actually come to market. Despite that, prices are lower today, system access fees are going away, and Canada now has 6 3G networks. Well, if that isn't progress, I don't know what is. Nice way to start things off.

Moving on to the more pressing questions, things are a bit less clear cut. Dave focused on the three questions his company gets asked about the most - is there room for DAVE?, can you afford to build out a network to be competitive?, and how will DAVE compete?

On the first question, I have no issues. I've long felt the Canadian market is too small to support more than 3-4 wireless operators, but there's no doubt there are many ponds to fish in for customers. Sure, there's the greenfield opportunity (but I think it's overrated), and we'll get our share of wireless substitution up here. The bigger variables are the unhappy subscribers they can siphon off from the Big 3 as well as the prepaid plans where there are no contracts to lock people in. To reel in their share of customers, DAVE simply has to have a great marketing plan and execute on it. This isn't about technology - it's about meeting customer needs better than the other guys.

I also agree strongly with Dave on the second issue. Our incumbents have been crying for ages that it's taken almost 20 years to start truly becoming profitable given the high costs of building cellular networks. This is why they've fought competition for so long, as they'll now have to share those profits with newcomers. It's a bit like the pharmaceutical game where patent protection is necessary to enable a payback on the long R&D cycles to develop new drugs. Of course, this is one of the great things about Canada - all those low-cost generics, thanks to the absence of patent protection here. The tradeoff is simple - we get cheap drugs, but all the R&D is done elsewhere, and with that come lots of high value jobs. You can't have it all, right?

Anyhow, I've long concurred with Dave that networks can be built more quickly, more cheaply and more flexibly today, so cost isn't the issue it once was. I've certainly followed this long enough in the VoIP world, and it's no different for wireless. Dave added another important point that works in DAVE's favor - they're not building a national network. They're only serving the top 10 urban markets, so they're optimizing both their spend and coverage - good idea.

On to the third point - how will DAVE compete? That's really the big one, and I'm not entirely convinced they can bring enough differentiation to make a huge impact. On the other hand, maybe they don't need to. They're not as leveraged financially as Globalive, and to their credit, don't have any foreign ownership issues to hold things up (which I believe hurt Globalive by causing them to launch after the Xmas season rush). Aside from being a low cost operator and having a high value offering for a distinct segment of the market, I'm not really sure what their service will actually look like. Dave talks about having a flexible business and following the best of breed partering approach - Amdocs, Ericsson, Ingram Micro, etc. Nothing wrong with that, and it sure makes the risk factors more manageable.

It seems to me they'll be targeting urban users who are somewhere between the prepaid market and high end power users. There's a big middle ground there, and I'm sure with some well executed marketing, backed by reliable market research they'll hone in on this target and hit it pretty well. Dave also made it clear they won't be competing directly with the incumbents - again, a good idea. However, I think that's easier said than done. We don't know how the majors will respond, but whether it's their prepaid plans or postpaid plans, I have no doubt they'll find ways to counter any new entry that makes life difficult for them.

On that note, my impression is that the weak link for DAVE is channels. All Dave would say is they'll have "some forms of national retail". I don't think he means Sears or Walmart or Canadian Tire - or maybe this is just a red herring. There's a reason why Bell Canada bought The Source (Radio Shack) - to take another channel away from new entries. Sure, DAVE will have their own stores and independent dealers, but I suspect they'll need a lot more to get beyond grassroots support. If you look at my post about Wind that I cited earlier here, there are some photos of their kiosk, and it's not very encouraging. Guess what? I pass by that kiosk a few times a week, and it looks the same every time. With this kind of traffic, I don't think the incumbents have too much to worry about.

That said, with DAVE being a pure consumer play, and no other bundled service to piggyback on, having strong retail channels will be paramount. Otherwise, you get stuck on the Vonage treadmill and black hole of marketing spend to acquire - and keep - new customers. No thanks.

To wrap up, do I think DAVE will succeed? It won't be easy, but so far, I like their chances better than Wind. It's not quite as ambitious, and maybe that's the point. There are plenty of free radicals out there up for grabs, so why not DAVE? From where I sit day-to-day, I'm not seeing anything truly innovative here, and not once did I hear "applications" mentioned. I think there is a world of opportunity for wireless operators to reinvent their business - with or without smartphones. This holds equally for DAVE as it does for the incumbents, and if DAVE does what Dave says they will, they have as good a chance as anyone to make this work. More chapters to be written on this topic, so don't go away for too long.




Great to see a packed room for this


Our backroom media scrum after Dave's presentation

january media roundup

Fairly light month in terms of media coverage, but I certainly had my hands full with the Smart Grid Summit. No quotes in the press - which hasn't happened in a long time - but I've already done a couple of stories that will run this month.

Basically, my citings are all article-based - three written by me, and one as an interview about the Summit. Let's start there:

- PR Vibes - Smart Grid Summit Preview, Q&A with Jon Arnold

- UC Strategies - Interactive Intelligence Moves Toward CaaS for Contact Center Automation

- Service Provider Views - Google in China - What Business are you Really In?

- Service Provider Views - 2010 - it's only January, and Already so Many Questions About Service Providers

Service Provider Views - Why Life is getting harder, not easier

My latest Service Provider Views column is running now on TMCnet. Having just come back from the ITExpo, a few things struck me there that would work well for my next article. This would have been enough material, but on top of that, the last week or so has been full of news that pose new challenges and raise new questions for service providers. Not the least of which is the iPad launch, Jajah's acquisition by Telefonica, and the latest earnings news from AT&T and Verizon.

I could probably squeeze a few more columns out of this morass - and I just might do that - but for now, I've managed to hit the high points in today's column, and you can read that here.

Any way you look at it, January has had more than its share of news that impacts service providers, and could be an ominous way to kick start the new decade. I can't wait to see what February holds in store.

ITExpo Photo Highlights

Never a dull moment at the ITExpo last week, and as per my earlier post today, here are some highlights of goings-on I caught outside the Smart Grid Summit. I'll preface this by tipping my hat to Rich Tehrani and his 24-7 team for putting on another successful ITExpo. More importantly - and as noted more extensively in a previous post - TMC continues to be open to new ideas for making the Expo a richer experience as well as reaching new audiences.

I'm very appreciative of the support they've shown for our Smart Grid Summit, and no doubt my cohorts feel the same for the other co-located events run under their tent, namely 4GWE, M2M, the Cloud Summit and Startup Camp. From what I can tell, all were successful, and I'm sure all of these will be back bigger and better this October for the LA ITExpo. With that said, here are a few photos to give you a flavor for what I mean.


Rich Tehrani kicking off the ITExpo keynotes


Rich hosting the lunch time panel exploring the implications of the Avaya/Nortel deal


Perhaps the sleeper event of the week - Larry Lisser's Telecom Startup Bootcamp. A bit like American Idol - here are the judges who gave their feedback after each startup pitch. The room was packed, which says a lot considering the event took place Thursday night after a full day of ITExpo activity.


Shai Berger of Fonolo during his pitch. I had mixed feelings about the pitches I saw, but they all had interesting ideas for sure. Shai shares his thoughts on his blog, which in turn takes you to Andy Abramson's blog, both of which are good reads. Like Andy, I have a vested interest in Fonolo, so I'll leave it at that for now.


Next stop - the show floor. Not as big as in the past, but healthy traffic. I didn't get to spend enough time with exhibitors to gauge the quality of attendees, but the energy level was high every time I got out to the floor. First, a couple of shots from the Smart Grid Pavilion - small today, but should be much bigger for the next summit. Below is the Redline booth and then Livecage, who did a series of video segments for us.




Here's the Ontario/Canada pavilion - busy as always


Keeping on the Canadian theme, here's the reception they hosted Wednesday night. An open bar and a motorcycle giveaway will always draw a crowd, but I'd like to think people were at least a little bit interested in what our companies are doing up here...


In what's becoming a tradition, no Expo is complete without an invite to Andy Abramson's wine dinner - good to the last drop. Big thanks to Andy for sharing his wine with us as well as Andrew Hanson and Freetalk for sponsoring. If you haven't seen how Skype is approaching the small business market with a Jazinga-based IP PBX system, then you need to do some homework. Or just call me.

Smart Grid Summit - photo highlights

After the Summit finished up on Friday, I had an extended family visit for a few days, and am just back to everyday stuff now. Had some technical difficulties with my new PC, and wasn't able to post my photos from from the show, so I've got those coming here in two posts. First, this post about the Smart Grid Summit, followed by some photos from the rest of the ITExpo.

Too much time has passed for a thoughtful review of the summit, but we did have a fair bit of media attention, and I'll be posting a roundup article citing all of this for our Smart Grid portal later today. If that doesn't do the job, then drop me a line and I'll be happy to tell you more.




We had four keynotes during the Summit. First up, Dr. Ron Sega, Colorado State University



Kevin Suitor, Redline Communications


John Bryan, Secure Smart Grid Association


Ryusuke Masuoka, Fujitsu Labs of America


Here are a few shots from the panels. Fist, Christine Hertzog moderating the Game Changing Apps session.


Shidan Gouran and the Standards/Interoperability panel


One of my sessions - What Utilities can learn from Telcos


Rose Gabriele moderating the Modern Network Solutions session

smart grid summit - day 1

Way, way too busy to give you a recap from our first day, but I can say it went really well. Our room was over-full from the beginning, and stayed that way all day. I'll get a recap article out to our portal ASAP, and have some photos to post here. For now, I'll steer you to the ITExpo Show Daily, which covers all aspects of what's going on here.

Will have more to report tomorrow - so please bear with me and keep visiting the Expo website.

Smart Grid Summit - Lots of Reasons to Come

Tying up loose ends today, and flying to Miami tomorrow for the Smart Grid Summit and ITExpo. I've been posting off and on about this for the past few days, and wanted to do one more post summarizing the highlights of what you can expect to see at our event, running this Wednesday - Friday.

Today, I posted Part 3 of my Smart Grid Summit preview series articles. You can read it here, and to get the full story, you can read Part 2 here, and Part 1 here.

That pretty much tells the story, and I hope to see you in Miami. If not, please check in regularly to the portal, where I'll be posting daily recaps. Also, one of our media partners - Livecage - will be doing live video streaming, and once it's running, I'll let you know where/how to find it. In fact, if you go to their website now, you'll see a couple of placeholder welcome video messages for our event. Trust me, it will look a lot better once we have our speakers up there!

Google and China - What it means for telcos

This is the Google mega-story of the day, and I think it's a big one for all kinds of reasons. Have you ever seen a company get so much global attention over such a short period of time across so many unrelated businesses? That's a story unto itself, and the irony isn't lost on me when I think about their name.

Google's differences with the great firewall of China are all over the news, and I'm here with a bit of a different take. In my latest Service Provider Views column on TMCnet, I'm more concerned with what all this means for privacy and how that impacts service providers.

Up until recently, service providers were in a very different business than Google, but today that line sure is blurry. So, it seems to me that whatever challenges Google is facing - especially with China - is going to matter to service providers. Pretty fertile ground here, and I'm sure I'll be revisiting it soon.

You can read the article here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Smart Grid Summit - Fly to Miami, Drive Home in a Honda Element

Well, I wouldn't say this if it wasn't true. Crappy economy be damned, Rich Tehrani and his never-stop-working team at TMC continue with the big prize draw hook to get you to Miami next week. Although it's been insanely cold there lately, the weather is usually reason enough to go in January.

The other day, I posted about 5 reasons to be at the ITExpo next week. Nothing has changed there, so I won't say anything more. Well, the Honda giveaway is a great reason #6, and if you want a 6B, they're also giving away a Honda motorcycle on Thursday. Maybe that's reason enough for you to go - if you're not sure, check it out for yourself here.

Our Smart Grid Summit is much smaller than the ITExpo, and we can't compete with that. I could offer something like one pick from my vinyl record collection, or an online guitar lesson by my shredder wiz son, Dean. He's only 13, but I've been taking him out with me to play to play at a local blues jam, and he's got the goods. I've been playing for decades, but he passed me by a long time ago. Remember his name - someday he'll do something cool....

Back to Smart Grid. With just a few days to go, we're tapping all channels to get the word out and hope you can join us in Miami. I just started writing a series of preview articles about the program, and you'll see those starting today on our portal. I've also been busy with shout-outs on my Linked In and Facebook pages and groups, and gained some good exposure on CircleID with my recent article about Google Energy.

By the way, if you haven't subscribed to our eNewsletter, you should do that now.

Finally, you may already be receiving eblasts from TMC with the latest news about the summit. Here's the latest one, and I think this will give you even more reasons to come. If you'd like to receive these eblasts, let me know and I can get you added to their database.

Metaswitch - Rolling Along Nicely

Metaswitch is a company I've followed for a long time, and as private companies go, they're right up there in terms of being well run. Their offerings are solid, their customer base keeps growing, they're making money, the management team is stable, and they have a strong employee culture.

Doesn't get much better than that, and yesterday they had their quarterly update call. Aside from public companies with their obligatory earnings calls, I can't think of anyone else in this space who does this. As far as I know, they're not required to do this, and I think this kind of transparency is great, at least for those of us invited to the call.

I won't go much beyond the highlights shared in today's press release, other than to assure you this is a company with a plan and the ability to execute on it.

I'd say the most noteworthy news is the announcement of their 500th customer - Misamis Oriental Telephone System, based in the Phillipines. Not only is this a big milestone, but a good example of the global reach Metaswitch is starting to achieve. The company actually has two operating divisions - this is their Carriers Systems Division - CSD. They also have NPD - Network Protocols Division - which ended 2009 at the 250 customer mark, with Celtro, a Delaware-based wireless backhaul operator.

Another bright spot was the trickle-down effect of the Broadband Stimulus funding to their bottom line. They highlighted Slic Network Solutions as a recent recipient, and that money will enable them to buy a Metaswitch solution, from which they'll be able to provide lower cost VoIP services to their base of rural customers. That may not sound like much to most of you, but there are a lot of operators like Slic out there, and the combination of this funding and IOC-friendly vendors like Metaswitch is very good news, especially after such a difficult 2009.

Something else caught my eye that was briefly mentioned - their expanding relationship with Huawei. This is a company you can't ignore, and either admire or fear. They represent a lower cost alternative to all the U.S./E.U. telco vendors, and it's just a matter of time until they become a major player in their home markets. I don't have anything to add beyond the public news, but it's a partnership that I will follow with interest.

Finally, it was great to hear John Lazar talk about smart phones and the impact they're having everywhere, especially for new applications. As is the case with all platform vendors, Metaswitch has its own developer ecosystem - Innovators Community - and it's become a key element of their overall value proposition. This isn't the MetaSwitch we knew from earlier days, and now that it's Metaswitch, I see a company poised for a great run this decade. I can't think of too many companies of this size who had a stronger 2009, and the critical mass is there today to make them a top tier player in the not-too-distant future.

Five Reasons to be in Miami for the ITExpo

As it gets colder in Canada by the day, Miami is looking better by the minute. Weather, beach and Latin music aside, it's time to start thinking about why TMC's ITExpo is the place to be later this month for all things related to communications. Here are my fave five...

1. The ITExpo. Having cracked the 10 year barrier, TMC's flagship event has become a cornerstone of our market, especially for anyone focused on enterprise and SMB communications. Many shows have come and gone in this space, and ITExpo keeps getting bigger and better. There are lots reasons to be there, and you don't have to spend much time at the show's website to see why. Digium/Asterisk World is a reason all by itself, but there's much, much more to see and do. If you can only look at one quick link, try this one - it's a great summary from Rich Tehrani about who's coming and the sessions you can see there.

2. Smart Grid Summit. Self-promotion aside, this is our second summit with TMC, and it didn't take long to expand this into a three-day program. We know we're on to something good here, and I really believe this is one of the ways that the ITExpo experience is truly different from most any other communications conference. We have keynotes from Redline Communications, Fujitsu, the Secure Smart Grid Association, and Ron Sega, a former NASA astronaut. Our agenda and roster have pretty much filled out now, sponsorship and industry support has been strong, and we've added a BOF session with the SIP Forum to talk about their new Smart Grid working group.

3. 4GWE. We have followed in the footsteps of Carl Ford and Scott Kargman to partner with TMC for a vertical event. Their wireless event has been a success from the start, and provides a lot of depth into all things LTE and 4G. Whatever stolen moments I can take from my Smart Grid duties, I'll be checking out their sessions. A sidebar to this is the M2M event, which they also put together, and is another important vertical for emerging communications technologies.

4. Cloud Communications Summit. Just as we've followed 4GWE, our good buddy Thomas Howe has followed us. He's teamed up with TMC to put this one day event together during the Expo. Tom will always be Mr. Mashup to me, but this venture will be a great showcase for something much bigger. It's one of the big trends I'm following this year, and am hoping to contribute some content that will be included with material Tom is preparing for the attendees.

5. Telephony Startup Camp. I feel like I'm building a pyramid here. One step behind Tom is Larry Lisser - another colleague I've worked with on several occasions. Larry is one of the best guys out there for working with startups and getting them to market. He also had brought a new concept to TMC, and hats off to them for running with this is as well. The economy can't suck forever, and in time, startups will get their mojo back. There are lots of reasons to believe that we'll see momentum build in 2010, and Larry has put together a mini-event to showcase a series of startups. The lineup hasn't been announced yet, but it will be series of 15 minute pitches. I don't think ITExpo has done this before, and I think it's a great way to expand their reach and give startups a new platform to show their stuff. Larry's event runs Thursday evening, and I hope to catch it after we finish up our Smart Grid sessions.

Meet the Canadians at IT Expo in Miami

Over the next few days, I'll be posting about the upcoming TMC ITExpo in Miami, running from January 20-22. It's coming up quickly now, and my hands have been very full with the Smart Grid Summit, which is co-located there. More about that on another post.

Right now I want to update you on the networking breakfast that's happening Friday morning. For those of you attending the ITExpo, I'm hosting this get-together sponsored by the governments of Ontario and Canada. I've been part of these breakfasts before, and it's a great way to network with up and coming Canadian tech startups in a relaxed environment.

I've posted about this before, and as of today, about half the available spots are taken for guests. If you'd like to attend, or review the agenda, drop me a line, and I'll send you the invite, which includes how to RSVP.

Interactive Intelligence - Using CaaS for Contact Center Automation

I'm a contributor to the UC Strategies portal, and my most recent piece was an article about contact center automation, and what Interactive Intelligence is doing with CaaS - Communications as a Service.

It's yet another twist on the cloud and hosted services that I think we're going to see a lot more of in 2010. My article is based on an interview I did with their CEO, Dr. Don Brown, and he shares his thought on what CaaS brings to this burgeoning area of contact center automation. Pretty interesting stuff, and you can read the article here. Comments, as always, are welcome.

December Media Roundup

Had lots on the go last month, and just wanted to provide my usual roundup of media activity. You never know when the press will call, and last month I had to decline almost as many requests as I could make time for. It was particularly busy in Canada with the launch of Globalive's Wind Mobile service, the first real challenge to our wireless oligopoly. I expect we'll see more of the same when the other new wireless players launch in 2010.

First, some articles I was cited in:

- ITWorld Canada - Globalive adds Calgary to cellular service area

- IT in Canada - Globalive is go ? New wireless entrant gets gov approval

- Tech Media Reports - Novatel Wireless' MiFi service helps Bell drive data revenue and backhaul ? for now

CBC Radio interviewed me for a couple of stories that ran nation-wide (MP3 files avalable upon request):

- BlackBerry Service Outages, December 23

- CRTC Update - Broadcasters vs. Cable Battle, December 9


Switching media modes, I participated in the 2009 year-in-review podcast with UC Strategies:

- UC Experts Review 2009 in Unified Communications, and Look Ahead


For my Service Provider Views column on TMCnet, last month was a double shot. Both my November articles got held up, so they ran in December along with my regular articles for that month.

- Will the Next Decade be Good for Service Providers and Bad for Privacy?

- How Can Service Providers Add Value?

- The Importance of QoS for IP Communications: Interview with Packet Island, Part 2

- The Importance of QoS for IP Communications - Interview with Packet Island, Part 1


Aside from this, I had my regular contributions to the Smart Grid portal, which will continue to be busy this month as the Smart Grid Summit fast approaches.

Looking Ahead - 2010 Thoughts on Service Providers and Privacy

As per my last post, I have a lot of thoughts about what's transpired over the past decade in our space, as well as what might be in store for 2010. Since the future hasn't happened yet, I have a bit more poetic license to write about what's coming, and I plan to do that in the coming weeks.

For now, though, my latest Service Provier Views column on TMCnet will have to do. The column ran earlier this week, and you can read it here.

My premise is that the concept of a service provider is becoming quite fluid, and is being driven as much by Web 2.0 as much as conventional telephony. In many ways, I think Google is being more than disruptive and will have a lot to do with this evolution - whether we like it or not.

Most of this will not be news to you, but what I'm not hearing much about is the price we're paying along the way. Call me old school, but the efficiencies we're getting from targeted advertising, smart browsing, semantic web, etc. are being offset by the erosion of privacy and even our sense of personal identity.

Lots to explore here, and I hope you keep the dialog going, as I plan to write more about this in the New Year. Until then, Happy New Year, and we'll connect again in the next decade.

Looking Back/Looking Ahead - Some 2009 Trends of Note

Been off blogging for over a week - and not really by design. No doubt the holidays, the kids, family get togethers, etc. have been the priority, but for the better part of two weeks I've had almost no use of my PC. Seems like viruses have found me, and I still can't get these stupid things under control.

My PC is mostly fixed up, but just semi-functional, and in the midst of this massive inconvenience, I went out and bought not one, but two PCs. Whoo hoo. My current notebook cost about $1,700 back in the day, and it has served me well. Haven't bought one since, and for a little under $1,000, I just bought a new notebook and a netbook - both are Lenovo's. Gotta like that. Will be setting these goodies up over the weekend, and I can't wait to start using my netbook when I head to Miami later in January for the ITExpo/Smart Grid Summit.

With that preamble out of the way, it's New Year's Eve, and I haven't had a chance to reflect much on 2009, let alone the past decade. I really did have a bunch of posts planned out in my head, but life happens, and at this point, I'm sure you've had your fill of year-in-review articles. If anyone still has a burning desire for my take on things, let me know, and I'll come up with something.

That said, I've got two posts for you. This is my looking back post, and it's pretty straightforward. I participate on a podcast series done by UC Strategies as time allows, and we did one last week on 2009 UC highlights. It was a round robin session - about 40 minutes - with each speaker touching on a specific topic related to UC that stood out for them in 2009. Mine was cloud computing, and how this has now crept into the Unified Communications vernacular this year. I think it's going to be huge in 2010, and am sure we'll do more podcasts in this area soon enough.

The podcast was posted to the UC Strategies portal a few days ago, and you can access it here. I hope you give it a listen, and if you think our ideas are on target, I encourage you to visit the portal often.

That's my looking back post, and if you could pop into my head, you'd see there's a whole lot more, but time's up for now. I'm now going to write my "looking ahead" post, so watch for that in a few minutes.

Wind Mobile - Wireless Competition comes Canada

Mobile competition came to Canada last week, and there are more questions than answers. No doubt the market could stand some competition, and the federal government has gone to great lengths to make sure that happens. I have long contended that the economics are not workable, but now billions of dollars have been sunk into creating a new set of operators who are chasing the few million people who haven't gone mobile yet, as well as the zero sum game of stealing subscribers from the incumbents.

It's too late to turn back, and with last week's surprise news from Industry Canada, Globalive's Wind Mobile service has been allowed to launch. They've gambled big time and done a of things to look and act like an operator in anticipation of a favorable ruling - hiring staff, building kiosks, erecting statues, etc. - and now they can finally be one. I still have a sneaking feeling that something isn't quite right in how they got the green light, but they're here, and the market can finally decide with their wallets if it's time for a change.

There's a lot of fat to chew on here, but I'll save that until the early results are in. Until then, here's a good starting point - an article from Friday's ITWorldCanada that included some comments from me.

There's a pretty major shopping center in my neighborhood, and here's what the Wind Mobile kiosk looks like:



Pretty good crowd, and after a few visits over the weekend walking by, you can quickly gauge the type of customer they're attracting. Mind you, it's not always this busy. I walked by at 3pm this afternoon, and it looked like this:



Sure, you can argue it's mid-week, mid-afternoon. However, it's Christmas week and school's out. Sorry, but I would have expected a bit more than this. Anyhow, if Wind is new to you, here's the basic story. They've come to market with a basic value proposition - simple plans, simple service, great prices. Fair enough - they've done tons of research to validate this, so it must be true, right? We all want these things, no doubt, but whether it's a strong enough pitch to win over the market, only time will tell.

If you're looking for this kind of plan, sure, Wind is a great deal. And I have no doubt they'll capture a decent share of the market. However, they're not alone. This is basically a prepaid service, and all 3 incumbents have well-established budget brands that cater to this market - Koodo (Telus), Fido (Rogers), and Solo (Bell). Makes you wonder why Globalive didn't keep the same theme and called their service Wino - then again, maybe not.

As prepaid plans go, they have lots of appealing packages and features - feel free to review them at their website - however, I'm not interested in those details. Give or take, prepaid is prepaid, and I don't really see that much here to get excited about. The service will be appealing to first-time mobile users, but so will the incumbent's budget brands, which have far more visibility. Fido built its base around this market, and long term, it's a tough haul to make money. Since there are no contracts, you have to buy the phone up front, and given how price conscious the prepaid market is, they'll probably be selling more low end $100 phones than $300 smartphones. That makes it hard to upsell customers to more lucrative plans.

I have to tell you, hanging around their kiosk a few times, it doesn't take much to see that these are novice technology users, and are going to need a lot of hand holding just to explain how the plans work. Then you have to tell them they have to fork over the cost of the phone as the price of admission. Hmm. If all you can afford is a $15 plan, you're not likely buying anything to write home about for a phone. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be taking on almost a billion dollars in debt to chase a market like this.

Having no contracts cuts both ways of course. Easy to join and easy to leave. There's a reason why mobile carriers like contracts - it takes time to earn back the phone subsidy that so often serves as the hook to get you on board. On the other hand, with no contract, the carrier gets their money upfront for the phone, and it's less of a issue when customers moves on once a cheaper plan crosses their path.

Bottom line - loyalty is hard to build with prepaid, and when the other new entrants come to market - most notably DAVE - they will likely have to resort to the same tactics just to get a foothold. I just don't know how much greenfield market there really is out there - even my 13 year old has a cell phone. I don't know anybody who doesn't have a cell phone these days, so I don't know where this 30% of first timers is that this whole fuss was started over. They sure don't live around here, and if they do, they're either too young or too old to care.

If I sound cynical, you're right. The incumbents are already serving the prepaid market with their budget brands, and we have MVNO's like Virgin Canada chasing this market too. Wind Mobile may be a good service and a well executed marketing package, but how are they going steal business from these competitors, who can easily match them on price to keep them out of the market? Price and features are good short term levers, but competitors can usually match these, especially if they already control the market. It's also worth noting that Wind was planning to be in the market in time for the Christmas season, which could have jump started them nicely. They're just going to catch the tail end now, so it's not quite the splash they were expecting.

Let's not forget the postpaid market, which is where the vast majority of subscribers and revenues lies. I don't know how much of Wind's business plans are based on capturing these customers, but this will be a tough market to crack since most are tied into contracts. Sure, Wind can buy them out - we've seen that before - but that just puts them on the same treadmill as Vonage, buying market share and then spending a fortune to keep them.

I'm just not seeing the light here, especially when you consider how much money was spent - and borrowed - to get into the game. In this day and age with 4G and LTE being the next wave, one would think that with a brand new network, there might be some innovation here - something new to leverage all that wonderful technology. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree, but there's nothing here that changes the game and really challenges the market - both subscribers and carriers. Zero.

On the other hand, this is Canada after all, and people generally play things a bit safer here. Industry Canada has pushed for more competition so we can have more choice and lower prices. I guess we'll get that, but we're sure paying a high price for it, and not getting much more. For all that money, you'd like to think the market would get something better. This isn't Android, this isn't Apple, this isn't Skype; it's more of the same - just a little cheaper, a bit more flexible and a bit easier to understand. I know - it's hard to take risks when so much debt has been incurred - but you'd think there would be more to it than this. More to come, but don't hesitate to jump in now with your thoughts!

TMC ITExpo - Canada/Ontario Business Breakfast, January 22

The winter edition of TMC's ITExpo - in its 10th year, by the way - is about a month away, and it's time to start thinking about Miami.

Normally, I'd be talking about sessions that I'm moderating, but this time my focus is primarily on the Smart Grid Summit, which regular readers will know all about by now. I'll leave that for another time, and will now switch back to my ITExpo hat.

One thing I'll be doing for sure at the ITExpo is host a networking breakfast jointly sponsored by the Governments of Ontario and Canada. They've been doing this the past few years at the Expo, with the idea being to showcase Ontario-based startups in the communications space. So far, they have six companies lined up, and the breakfast is being held as a friendly forum to meet with them away from the din of the show floor. The companies confirmed to date are:

- PIKA Technologies
- Comwave Telecom
- SVK Software
- Hostopia
- Phybridge
- InGenius

The breakfast takes place Friday, January 22, and requires an RSVP. If you want to meet these companies and see more about what's coming out of Canada, please drop me a line - jon@jarnoldassociates.com. To learn more about the details as well as the companies being showcased, I'll have to send you the invitation - or check my website - it should be posted there shortly.

Service Provider Views - How can they provide value?

My latest Service Provider Views article is running now on TMCnet. I'm focusing on a big topic - how can service providers add value? - and am really setting the stage for an ongoing exploration of this theme in 2010. I think it's going to be big deal going forward, and am hoping you'll follow my musings.

This article was basically triggered by my impressions from recent analyst events, and how I see vendor solutions getting stronger and stronger. Combine this with what Google is doing now with their own handset, and it's getting harder to see where/how carriers can add real value. Of course there are lots of ways they can do this, and I'll speak to those in future articles. However, it seems to me like the vendors have most of the momentum right now, and that puts the pressure on operators to be more innovative.

As an aside, Canada is going through its own convulsions in the mobile market with the recent turn of events with Globalive. That's a whole topic unto itself, but I can't get into that right now. I've been speaking to the media about it, but haven't had time yet to write something.

Back to the main story - the article is posted now, and you can read it here. As always, comments are welcome!

smart grid summit - product of the year awards launched

The Smart Grid Summit is moving forward rapidly on many fronts, and it's all good. If you've been to the website recently, you'll see that the speaking roster is filling out nicely - same for our sponsors and media partners. There's a lot more coming, and soon we'll be adding info about our keynotes. We have four scheduled so far, including a former NASA astronaut (he was on the first mission that hooked up with the Soviet space station). Others are pending, and we'll be adding those to the website shortly.

I should also add that people have started registering for the summit, and the e-blasts are going out now on a regular basis. Over on the Smart Grid portal, the content continues to flow from many sources, including a guest article today from Brendan Herron of the Current Group, with his take on the Copenhagen Climate Conference. If you like his insights, then you'll definitely want to join us on the Smart Grid Initiatives panel, where he'll be speaking.

Before moving on, I have two more items about the portal of note. First, our traffic continues to be strong. Our November visits were up from October - not as dramatically as the previous months, but still going in the right direction. For anyone looking to get their message out to the Smart Grid space, this is the place to do it. Second, if you haven't subscribed to our Smart Grid eNewsletter, now is as good a time as any. It's free, and it just takes a minute - click here, and you're on your way.

This has become a long preamble, but I'm getting to the real news item. TMC knows how to run a conference, and they're starting to add the pieces that will make the Summit really distinct from other grid events. Today, we launched the Smart Grid Product of the Year Award, and it's open to anyone in this space - not just exhibitors. You can read all about it here, and for those of you who want to apply, here's the form.

Media Roundup - November

It's been unusually hectic the past two weeks, but I did want to post about this for the record. November was a bit quiet media-wise, and a few items didn't run until this month, so my December roundup will be quite a bit stronger.

First, a couple of media citings in the business press:

- ZD Net Team Think - Cisco Announces Hosted Email Service, by David Greenfield

- Vancouver Magazine - Wireless Wars

In terms of my own writing and articles, I had a guest blog post on Microsoft, a feature insight about Aastra on UC Strategies, and a series of Ask The Expert writeups on TechTarget (registration required, but it just takes a minute):

- Microsoft Communications Sector behind3screens portal - BroadSoft Connections 2009 Recap

- UC Strategies - UC Expert Views - Aastra: More Than Meets the Eye

- TechTarget Ask the UC Expert - What are the operational costs associated with VoIP after implementation?

- TechTarget Ask the UC Expert - What are the soft savings of VoIP?

- TechTarget Ask the UC Expert - What type of company structure will maximize VoIP ROI?

Finally, I was on BNN TV again, talking about the state of wireless telephony in Canada:

- Telus Trumps Rogers in Ad Spat (link is temporary - if you can't access it, I have a file copy here)

Switching hats, I was my regular busy self contributing to the Smart Grid portal, which is closely tied to my main activity right now around getting the Smart Grid Summit program finalized. For all the latest on that front, you'll need to spend some time on the portal. And if you like what you see, I hope you're making plans to join us in Miami Beach about six weeks from now!

IntelePeer + Microsoft = More Cloud Solutions

The trend towards cloud-based Unified Communications nudged forward some more with this news that came out yesterday. It's been under embargo for a bit, but the press release tells the basic story. In short, Microsoft has formed another partnership to become better established in the UC space. Since stepping back from the SMB market and their Response Point solution earlier this year, it's clear to me that Microsoft sees a better/faster/more profitable upside to hosted and cloud-based services than premises-based offerings.

Regular followers of my blog would be familiar with the Microsoft's recent moves in this direction with BroadSoft, and a similar story is unfolding now with IntelePeer, a company I've been following for a while. In October, IntelePeer introduced their version of Caas - Communications as a Service - which I posted about. They certainly have Web 2.0 voice services capabilities, and their platform is a logical option for partners looking for a turnkey soluion to get into that space.

IntelePeer brings this to Microsoft along with a SIP Trunking service, making it very easy for channel partners to offer an integrated hosted solution for business customers. As noted in my CaaS post, IntelePeer also operates their Voice Peering Network, which mitigages most of the interop issues either between TDM and SIP, or across the numerous SIP variants out there.

As such, all the pieces are there for Microsoft-based channel partners to take advantage of cloud services and get their customers beyond simple voice services, and into today's world of rich communications services. IntelePeer interops with OCS, so there is stronger story to tell now about the virtues of a hosted OCS solution. That's good news for both IntelePeer and Microsoft, and in my view, even better news for those who think cloud-based services are the next big thing - myself included.