ITEXPO West 2006 is Over

October 14, 2006

The show went very well and I am on the way home. When I got to my seat I found it was located next to the door. There was no seat in front of me so I couldn’t keep my laptop bag, food or magazines with me. I knew a flight attendant was going to come and take everything away and store them in the overhead compartment.

Naturally being the complainer I am I called my wife and whined. Unbeknownst to me the couple sittng next to me was listening and asked if I would switch my window seat for their aisle.

To put this in perspective I woke up at 5:30 am this morning, had minimal cofee and for the life of me could not figure out why anyone would want my seat. Perhaps my brain was too tired to understand it. It turns out seat 10A has infinite leg room. Six feet or more in fact. This is something I just didn’t appreciate.

Of course I traded leg room for storage space and then realized I would have preferred the window when I was sleeping as I got hit with the drink cart repeatedly.

But I had my magazines so I was happy. A short time later I woke up to hear the ground was soaked by my old seat. Of course this was something that concerned us passengers and many other people nearby started to listen intently to the fight attendant who told us the rain last night in San Diego must have leaked in.

We were all stunned to hear the doors aren’t waterproof but it seems the pressure in the cabin keeps them sealed so rain can’t leak in.

Here is a photo from my new seat. The flight has been uneventful except for the water incident. I must admit I am as bored as I have ever been. I really enjoyed last week and can’t wait for ITEXPO in Ft Lauderdale this January 2007.

Blogged via wireless handheld

ITEXPO: Lots of Activity in the Conferences

October 13, 2006

I was happily surprised by the attendance in the security session on a Friday.

Blogged via wireless handheld

IP Communications IPOs are back

October 13, 2006While a single positive offering does not a trend make, the negative effects of the Vonage IPO have been felt far and wide and yesterday at ITEXPO many people in the industry told me they hope the Acme Packet IPO goes well today. As an industry this latest offering has the ability to reinforce the negativity started by Vonage or it could have the opposite effect.

Of course the business model of Acme Packet and Vonage could not be more different as Acme sells to service providers and has an A list of equipment provider partners. Still, many see the companies in the same sector.

I am getting ready to head over to Internet Telephony Conference & Expo now but so far the news on the Acme Packet IPO is good. The shares have soared 47% in their debut.

The shares opened at $14 before climbing as high as $14.50 in morning trading on the Nasdaq. The 11.47 million share offering raised $109 million Thursday, after pricing at $9.50 compared with an $8 to $9 forecast.

The range was upgraded earlier Thursday from an initial $6.50 to $7.50 per share forecast.The pricing gave the company a market capitalization of $538.7 million.

More from Reuters.

Tags: acme packet, ip communications, ipo, itexpo, voip, vonage

ITEXPO: No Comment

October 13, 2006

Blogged via wireless handheld

ITEXPO: Top 100 Voices Party

October 13, 2006

Duane Sword and Andy Huckridge - 2 award winners and competitors sharing a drink.

ITEXPO is the Ultimate IP Communications Experience!

Blogged via wireless handheld

ITEXPO: Dash911 Welcoming Nadji

October 12, 2006

Having fun in San Diego. Work hard Play hard.

Blogged via wireless handheld

ITEXPO: Radisys Reception

October 12, 2006

Having fun on the last show night! C U tomorrow.

ITEXPO is the Ultimate IP Communications Experience!

Blogged via wireless handheld

click Play button above to play video

ITEXPO: Even More Photos

October 12, 2006

Have fun viewing these.

ITEXPO: Photos, Photos, Photos

October 12, 2006

Enjoy!

ITEXPO: Eli Bordow Speaks

October 12, 2006The Self-Healing, Self Optimizing Call Center

Eli Borodow who was recently CEO of Telephony@Work — now a part of Oracle — did a great job speaking at the Call Center 2.0 Conference this morning and gave a riveting speech about how the call center of the future will be much more automated and flexible.

As you can imagine Conference this morning and gave a riveting speech about how the call center of the future will be much more automated and flexible.As you can imagine, he touched on multi-tenancy (a core differentiator of Telephony@Work products) and went on to say that multi-tenancy is not only useful for service providers but also for many large customers who can take advantage of multi-tenancy to share infrastructure across sites and business units without sacrificing local autonomy and control over each group’s business processes.

Call Center 2.0 was the theme of this keynote, with a focus on tight integration with Oracle’s CRM offerings, unification of the disciplines of Customer Relationship Management and Customer Interaction Management, multi-tenancy and its benefits for corporate hosting (to service diverse internal business units on common infrastructure) and commercial hosting of IP contact center technology (through carrier-partners and Oracle itself), as well as the differentiated ability to adapt and change IP Contact Center ACD business processes in real-time via human inputs into Oracle’s unified Administration Manager tool (for their multi-channel ACD offerings). The goal of such adaptability is to achieve ongoing technology lifecycle renewal, increase efficiency and maximize customer satisfaction. Eli also alluded to the fact that real-time automated business process optimization is “call center 3.0” and that much of that is possible at Oracle today via Oracle’s Business Intelligence Suite, including its acquisition of Sigma Dynamics (a real-time analytics company that can enable real-time automated business process optimization for call centers on a custom basis based on a customized set of performance goals). Eli’s vision is that such technology will ultimately be packaged as a ‘productized’ and pre-integrated solution to empower ‘mass market’ mainstream call centers to get the most out of their Oracle ACD and CRM investments.

The point is we will soon see an increasing ability to automate call center optimization, with metrics that are driven by performance goals and the ability to make real-time adjustments to technology-driven business processes. The technology should also become easier to implement and more affordable. So apparently, while TMC thought we were ahead of the curve by launching a call center 2.0 conference, perhaps the call center market is moving even faster than even we imagined.

Certainly Oracle’s vision of the call center of the future is very exciting and portends a world where call centers become more efficient than our wildest dreams.



Tags: call center, oracle, telephony@work.eli borodow