VOIP News

Inter-Tel

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

Inter-Tel executives Aron Aicard (Director of Product Marketing), Jon Young (Director, Softswitch Technology) and Rick Ringel (Strategic Solutions Engineer), gave me this exclusive interview. They talked to me about Inter-Tel’s new corporate initiatives, the impact of SIP technology, and the future of the market in general. Recently merged with Mitel Networks Corporation, Inter-Tel is a high-profile provider of business telephone systems and related software products. It will be interesting to see how Inter-Tel/Mitel does under the leadership of the capable Mitel and Inter-Tel management. This includes of course Sir Terry Matthews who seems to turn everything into gold. Please outline your new corporate initiatives. Now that its merger with Mitel has been concluded, Inter-Tel is working closely with its colleagues at Mitel to broaden its collective suite of solutions to deliver seamless, advanced IP platforms, applications and services to businesses ranging from large enterprises to SOHO environments. How has SIP changed communications? We are only in the early stages of SIP acceptance, but Inter-Tel sees SIP—and other industry standards—as integral to the evolution of business communications. SIP gives businesses the flexibility to choose the applications and devices that best fit their needs without having to be locked into proprietary architecture. This type of flexibility is a prime factor in Inter-Tel’s decision to build the Inter-Tel 7000 on industry standards like SIP. We are hearing more requests from businesses that are looking to integrate their own preferred solutions into their networks, as well as link communications with other business processes. SIP plays an instrumental part in facilitating these requirements. What is the biggest request coming from your customer base? Customers want to see a tangible return on their technology investments. As a general rule today, customers will not make any investment in technology until they understand the benefits they will receive operationally, as well as financially. We fully understand and support these requirements.

How are you answering their demands? Inter-Tel has always had the ability to accurately demonstrate the value of its solutions in hard numbers. Our calculators go far beyond measuring the typical efficiencies in communications, such as reduced toll charges and network efficiencies. Inter-Tel has created tools to show how our technologies can help customers generate leads, shorten sales cycles, reduce travel costs, increase inventory turns, and certainly reduce communications expenditures. These are issues that face every business. When we can demonstrate how our solutions positively impact these ubiquitous business needs, we position Inter-Tel as a strategic partner as opposed to just another vendor. What do you think the future of the market is? There is a lot of room for growth in the industry, particularly in the areas of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA.) Many businesses are exploring SOA as a viable means to integrate communications with other business processes like accounting, CRM, and inventory management. This is a concept that we feel has enormous promise, and will help re-define how communications can serve the market. What sorts of things will we be hearing about during your presentation at ITEXPO? Aron Aicard: “One of the concepts we want to stress in our presentation is that the requirements of small businesses are in many respects more sophisticated than those of larger companies. When you look at a small business, they often have similar—if not identical—needs as their larger counterparts. They very often compete on a global basis, they rely on mobile and de-centralized workforces, and their sales cycles and time-to-market is compressed. The major difference is that small businesses do not have the human or financial resources as larger companies, and as a result, they need to rely on advanced tools, such as VoIP, in order to survive. I feel it is a mistake for vendors to minimize or overlook the requirements of small businesses. They need to leverage technology as much as any other business.” Jon Young: “With all the talk about SIP in the industry, very few businesses really understand how this protocol can transform business processes. We want to show attendees with a grounding in SIP how it can be implemented efficiently, how it effects important requirements like security and redundancy, and certainly, how it practically serves the needs of the customer in terms of delivering new capabilities, and streamlining communications.” Rick Ringel: “Unified Communications and collaboration really takes IP Telephony to a whole new level by breaking down the barriers of geography. Through these applications, businesses can link together mobile workers, remote sites, off-shore suppliers and even customers to work and communicate in real time. In many respects, unified communications marks the first step in creating an SOA-type of environment by facilitating business process integration on a one-to-one scale.” What do you want the industry to know about your company? Inter-Tel, along with its partner Mitel, intuitively understand the needs of businesses, and has developed a comprehensive array of platforms, applications, devices and peripherals and services to help customers address real business needs, like increasing revenue, streamlining operations, enhancing customer service, and controlling costs. Inter-Tel and Mitel offer leading edge technologies that scale from SOHO environments to large enterprises. Inter-Tel’s leading managed services program provides customers with a comprehensive communications solution that includes all hardware, software, applications, data network build-out and provisioning, carrier services, customer support, and migration strategy, all for one fixed monthly fee.

Tags: apple, Aron Aicard, google, inter-tel, iphone, Microsoft, Mitel, Rick Ringel, sip, soa, soho, Terry Matthews, uc, unified communications

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Robot Mouse

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

I don’t get to share many of my new business ideas with my readers but I had one today I won’t be patenting or producing myself so it’s yours if you want it. How about a mouse that doubles as a desk cleaner at night? Like the automated floor cleaners it would basically move around your desk and vacuum at night. In the morning you can empty the dust collected from the previous evening. OK, now back to my real job.

Tags: clean, invention, irobot, mouse, Robot

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Polaris IP

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

Polaris IP is a company you probably never heard of but they have a patent on an e-mail routing system and are using it to sue the Internet’s largest companies. In particular, Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, A9, Borders, AOL and IAC/Interactive Corp among others are named in a suit claiming infringement on patent 6,411,947. With ITEXPO just around the corner I haven’t had the time to delve deeply into this patent. Here is the abstract:

A method for automatically interpreting an electronic message, including the steps of (a) receiving the electronic message from a source; (b) interpreting the electronic message using a rule base and case base knowledge engine; and (c) classifying the electronic message as at least one of (i) being able to be responded to automatically; and (ii) requiring assistance from a human operator. The method for automatically interpreting an electronic message may also include the step of retrieving one or more predetermined responses corresponding to the interpretation of the electronic message from a repository for automatic delivery to the source.

This patent seems to apply to a number of advertising related companies as they all use a machine to determine which ad will be served based on web page content. The original patent claim was applied for by a company called Brightware. I did a search and found TMCnet did cover the company in 2000. Here is an excerpt from this article which ties directly into the patent:

Brightware, Inc. announced the immediate general availability of Brightware Converse, a fully integrated live chat product that builds better relationships with e-customers through real-time Web-based interactions between the e-customer and a company’s customer service representatives (CSRs). Converse is the first product of its kind that works in concert with Brightware’s Web and Email Assistance products to deliver an integrated, personalized experience for the e-cCustomer. Built on Brightware’s proven automation technology foundation, the Converse product line provides:

The ability to maximize resources by enabling agents to respond to chat and email messages using a common, intuitive Agent Desktop;

Supervisors with the ability to more smoothly manage operations, using the Contact Center’s integrated Supervisor Desktop to oversee both chat and email interactions;

Added benefits of intelligent automation to classify and automatically pre-compose suggested responses to chat inquiries that agents can rapidly review, approve and send to a supervisor to improve their productivity and chat consistency; and,

Collaborative browsing to not only answer chat inquiries but simultaneously direct customers to the right Web page when appropriate.

The patent was applied for on April 2, 1998. There were a number of companies doing similar things to what this company does at the same time or possibly before. Brightware was subsequently purchased by Siebel Systems which is now a part of Oracle so it is surprising the patent did not come packaged with the sale of the company. It seems Polaris IP purchased this asset. As the New York Times mentions, patent suits are a dime a dozen so I won’t cover this case again unless it becomes bigger news.

Tags: 411, 6, 947, A9, Amazon, AOL, Borders, Brightware, court, Google, IAC/Interactive Corp, itexpo, lawsuit, oracle, patent, polaris ip, Siebel, Yahoo!

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Call Center Outage

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

A call center outage could be disastrous for your business. Some of the largest call centers sell millions of dollars worth of products and services each hour so an outage of minutes can be devastating to the bottom line. According to Boston.com, NStar the Boston gas and electric utility had a four-hour outage in their call center due to AT&T cable failure. This outage on top of the recent Skype outage written about last week are both wake up calls for any business looking to ensure they can communicate effectively at all times. Even if you do not have a contact center in your company, dhow would you like to be the person explaining to the CEO why his call to your company’s top client was dropped unexpectedly. These wake-up calls should be heeded and you should definitely be at ITEXPO in a few weeks to ensure you are aware of the latest technology which can help your company avert communications downtime. Here are some parts of the event worth noting:

Disaster Preparedness Workshop
Reseller Solutions Day
Ingate’s SIP Trunking Workshop
Service Provider Shootout
Vocalocity – How and Why to sell Hosted VoIP
Voice Peering Workshop
Call Center 2.0

Tags: at&t, boston.com, boston globe, Call Center, disaster preparedness, itexpo, outage, Skype, Verizon

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TorrentSpy Case Ramnifications

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

I just learned of TorrentSpy.com, a site which allows users to search for files on a p2p network named BitTorrent. Typically this isn’t something I would devote brainwaves or electrons to but in this case it seems like an important exception. You see TorrentSpy.com is going to shut down access to US users. In addition a US judge will soon decide whether the site has to turn over user information to the Motion Picture Association of America. I went to the site and searched for “John Stewart” and received the following message:

Sorry, but because you are located in the USA you cannot use the search features of the Torrentspy.com website. Torrentspy’s decision to stop accepting US visitors was NOT compelled by any Court but rather an uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparent tension between US and European Union privacy laws.

TorrentSpy does not actually host movies on it’s site, has other legitimate uses besides supporting piracy and is located in the Netherlands. I am not a lawyer but it is difficult to understand how the MPAA has a case against the company. The site does however run ads and although I could not verify this fact, it is possible it is generating revenue from ads connected with pirated videos. This latter issue is obviously a legal problem for the company. But the larger concern here is TorrentSpy is essentially a search engine, albeit a specialized one. If US legal pressure can force this site to shut down in the United States and also hand over its user records, what does this mean for other search engines and websites with casual links to pirated content? Will a judge force TorrentSpy.com to turn over the search I just ran on John Stewart? Does this mean I had the intent to download something which is copyrighted and now I can be held liable? Will this blog entry linking to TorrentSpy.com get me in trouble with the law? I don’t know about you but it seems to me user privacy and freedom seems to be potentially at risk here. I am not a lawyer but I am a concerned citizen. More on this issue can be found at CNET.

Tags: bittorrent, judge, law, legal, Mpaa, shut down, torrentspy, us

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Dell, Solio, Provia and More

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

Today has been a pretty hectic day for me as I was up late at an uncle and aunt’s 50^th anniversary party last night (amazing number of years isn’t it?). This AM I had a meeting with the doctor who tells me I am healthy but have higher blood sugar than I should. I would appreciate any of my readers reminding me to not eat chips or cookies going forward. Yes I am serious.

Tomorrow I have major (for me anyway) dental work and I will be at Pepe’s Pizza later this week with college friends and I will not be dieting. The trick is to eat like a normal person the next day of course. My ideal weight will be achieved when my face looks like the one at the top of my blogs and columns. How I got off on this tangent of my personal life is unknown. I guess I am justifying why I haven’t blogged today. I did write a detailed piece on Second Life this weekend so I don’t feel too guilty. But the news of the day is that ITEXPO registrations are coming in at a fast and furious pace and I am hearing numerous hotels in the Los Angeles area are sold out or filling up quickly. Be sure to make hotel reservations asap and be sure to come to LA for the conference. Remember the dates are Sept. 10-13^th, 2007 at the LA Convention Center. Other interesting news is actually in the green technology arena as Honda who brought hybrid cars to the US is now trying to regain the top hybrid spot in the world with a new concept car. Code-named the “Global Small Hybrid,” Honda’s new gas-electric model won’t be a version of anything else in its lineup. Instead, Honda execs say it will be a five-passenger, small family car priced under $22,000. This time Honda won’t make the mistake of wrapping its hybrid in the sheet metal of its everyday cars: instead, analysts expect the new Honda will have the larva styling the Prius pioneered—which now embodies the green-car look. Honda will also outdo the $23,000, 60mpg Prius on price and mileage in hopes of attracting 100,000 buyers a year—three times what the hybrid Civic sells. In the world of green data centers, Dell introed the OptiPlex 755, what they call the world’s most manageable, energy efficient commercial desktop ever. According to this release, Dell wants to be the “most green technology vendor.” In other news, Working Assets Wireless has introduced a new solar-powered charger for mobile devices called the Solio. It is a $100 charger which is free for a limited time only. I did some research on the offer and you need to buy a phone to take advantage of it. Here is link. Finally, Tom Keating has a great write up on a new iPhone like GPS/media player called the Provia A1 GPS. It is a 3D device which has picture in picture support allowing you to watch a movie and see your GPS directions simultaneously. I bet that won’t cause accidents.

Oh, I almost forgot. Don’t forget to be at the Green Technology World conference which will be held concurrently with ITEXPO in LA.

Tags: apple, dell, gps, Honda, hybrid, iphone, optiplex, pepes pizza, prius, provia, second life, solio, tehrani, Toyota

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Virtual Customer Interactions

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

This is my next Customer Interaction Solutions High Priority column. If memory serves it will be the October, 2007 issue. As often happens this will be the unedited version. If this is of any interest be sure to subscribe digitally to the magazine so you don’t miss an issue. —– On a blustery day at a Virginia Beach hotel a decade or so ago, a group of call center decision makers gathered to hear Rich Tehrani, Group Editor-in-Chief of TMC speak on the topic of evolving customer service and technology. During the presentation I mentioned companies need to answer e-mail in real time. It was at this point a woman in the audience raised her hand and challenged this assertion. She said people should not get used to having their e-mails answered immediately by call centers. I was in direct opposition with what she thought and my presentation turned into a debate. Moreover, the woman was obviously very emotional about this issue. In the hundred plus presentations I have given since this one I never had a similar incident take place. Thankfully the ever-talented David Burd who was the head of marketing at the company sponsoring the conference stepped in and segued us out of confrontation and back into my presentation. I often think back to this woman when I e-mail companies who don’t immediately respond. I still think I am right but in the end, technology can change but the adoption of such technologies and implementation speed differs from company to company. I happen to be the sort of customer who likes a company to respond to my e-mails immediately. All things being equal, I will buy from a company who responds more quickly to my online queries. Technology stands still for no call center as it isn’t just e-mail that has transformed the call center into the contact center. IP communications too has dramatically altered the way we communicate and serve our customers. Agents located around the world can now easily serve customers. A company’s mailing address now has less and less to do with where the majority of its workers live and work as the internet has allowed corporations to find ever-more cost-effective ways to get work done. If you are a long term reader you remember me telling you in the mid-nineties to explore IP contact centers and numerous other technologies. Now it is time for a new technology to be introduced into the customer interaction mix. If you aren’t aware of virtual worlds, you should be. The most popular of these is Second Life and it is slowly becoming the 3D Internet. It has plenty of competition and this article is not meant to analyze the various competitors but instead focus on the potential for virtual worlds to change customer service and sales as we know it. In a virtual world you choose an avatar, dress the avatar and walk or fly around from place to place. Your avatar interacts in this world and can chat and use VoIP to communicate with other avatars. There is search functionality so you could for example find a car rental agency, find a store to buy clothes, more radiant skin, tattoos or whatever you feel like buying. Millions of people are experimenting in virtual worlds and meet in night clubs, on romantic islands, in virtual conferences and shops. Some companies use virtual worlds for training and others use them to extend their brand with a virtual storefront the same way they may have experimented with a web page back in 1995. Virtual worlds, like every new technology needs one or more champions. IBM has been on the forefront of speech, Linux and green technologies just to name a few. To this list you can add virtual worlds as IBM has been one of the biggest proponents of Second Life, buying virtual land and building virtual buildings. But what brought IBM into my sights as a company worthy of my coverage is their most recent virtual world announcement where they will staff their virtual business center with workers in Asia five days a week, 24 hours per day. They join others from North America, Latin America and Europe who started working there in May. ”There has been a huge surge in the popularity of the web activities like social networking. People are very accustomed to meeting each other on-line socially. We’ve just applied that concept to the business world,” said Paula Summa, General Manager, ibm.com, the company’s decade-old telephone and web sales organization.

“Social networking and virtual world participation is skyrocketing in Asia. Asia is, after all, a hotbed for 3-D gaming. Why not 3-D business, too?” added Summa.

“Although this started as an experiment, it has resulted in sales leads,” Summa added. “This is a new and exciting way for clients and IBM to do business.”

IBM’s Virtual Business Center’s technical support library gives visitors access to technical information including Redbooks and Systems Journals. One advantage of going to a virtual world to get your information is that finding it can be faster and easier than just navigating a web site. In the virtual Business Center you can browse the 3-D book shelves, view a 3-D book or just ask the librarian, just like in the real world.

My take on virtual worlds is, it is early, very early in its adoption cycle. Do I think many companies will have a virtual storefront in the future? Yes. The potential for this technology remains tremendous in my opinion and I imagine in the future when you log onto your computer your avatar will automatically come to life and as you are searching the web you will be able click a link to place your avatar in numerous locations. For example if you are surfing Sachs.com for a tie, you will be able to click a Second Life URL known as a SLURL which will immediately transport your avatar to a virtual Sachs where you can see the ties in 3D. Sound far-fetched? It shouldn’t. Whether the web evolves to become three-dimensional or a service like Second Life becomes our default conduit to 3D is unknown. What is known is the 3D world is coming and now is a great time to get accustomed to the technology. Sign onto some of these virtual world services and play around and see what the potential is. You may even spot your competition setting up a virtual storefront. Currently there are people conducting meetings and business in these worlds but just like on the internet there are many X-Rated activities going on in Second-Life as well. This shouldn’t dissuade you from taking Second Life and other virtual worlds very seriously. Just like the Internet, virtual worlds are open places where millions will visit and do a variety of things including buying products and services. I hope you will give these services a try and I hope to see you around the virtual world sometime in the future. If you want to meet me on Second Life, just send me an e-mail. Of course I will try to respond immediately.

Tags: 3d, avatar, cismag, customer service, david burd, ibm, Paula Summa, rich tehrani, second life, tmc, virginia beach, virtual

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Use Skype, go to Jail

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

OK, I have been writing about Skype almost continually and this is not intentional. There is just a great deal of news about the company lately. For example, George Ou discusses today how a man in the UK was arrested for using a neighbor’s WiFi network. He went on to say he was reviewing a Skype phone which automatically connected to an open WiFi network in an unfamiliar area. He wonders if using such a device will make a person a criminal and he has a point. If a WiFi network is unsecured, should it be a crime if your computer accidentally connects to it? This question needs to be worked out by law enforcement in many countries. If not, virtually all people with dual-mode phones and laptops are likely targets for jail. If you really want to protect your WiFi from being stolen be sure to cover your windows with this signal leakage protecting film I wrote about a few months ago.

Update: I received this e-mail in response to this post. The reply is below.

Rich, In the close of your article on “Skype, go to jail”, you mention using film over your windows as the only way to assure you don’t have anyone steal your wireless signal. Here I was under the impression with my D-Link 524 wireless router that when I restrict users by entering their number ID into the allowed user list, that only those identified users (my computers) could get on my wireless network. You leave me with the impression that my restrictions don’t really work. Is that what you are telling me? Please advise. Name Withheld

Dear “Name Withheld,” There are a number of wireless security methods such as the one you mention above which should protect you as well. Then again, hackers seem to get better and better at breaking through such defenses. The film mentioned above is really a last resort meant for corporations and/or government agencies.

Tags: dual mode, george ou, ip communications, jail, skype, tmc, voip, wifi, zdnet

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SIP to Skype

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

If you aren’t aware, Skip2PBX is a company which enables you to take advantage of Skype trunking. The company is based in Italy and I have met Caristopher Arkin who handles the company’s marketing. Caristopher recently sent over an e-mail telling me the company has gotten their gateway to work between SIP and Skype. I thought this was pretty big news and worth sharing.

Tags: gateway, sip, skip2pbx, skype

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Skype Usage Declining

admin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 05:14:45 +0000

Alan Percy has some thoughts about Skype and how less and less people seem to be using it. I have heard this before. Here at TMC, we are still using the software but are slowly transitioning to Microsoft Office Communicator. I still use both programs by the way and when communicating with family, Skype has proven to be invaluable.

Tags: alan percy, audiocodes, collaboration, ip communications, microsoft, office communicator, skype, tmc, video, voip

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