The Flat Planet and a Phone !

On the tails of Broadsoft buying Sylantro and the great analysis by Thomas Howe and Jon Arnold, I would like to add an additional perspective.

There is no question that Broadsoft is the leading provider in their market. The big question in my mind is what the carriers do after they buy the Broadsoft platform. If I look at the carriers that I am familiar with the answer is not much. It seems that all they are looking for is to deploy the same ho-hum services at a lower price than their legacy systems. Nothing exciting.

If they are going the IP route why not take advantage of the tremendous possibilities that an IP platform brings with it? Look at what startups such as Fonolo, Iotum, Voxbone, Mobivox, Jajah, Jazinga and others are doing. What is the stopping the big guys doing the same on their IP platforms?

The answer may be in a conversation I had almost 2 years ago with Ken Camp the IP Communications analyst. I was invited to present The Flat Planet Phone Company at the Etel Launchpad. In my presentation I took the example of a small home business starting a web store on Yahoo! on Yahoo! the wizard takes you thru all the steps of building a store. There is only one thing missing - a 800 number. Every online store needs one, Yahoo! setups a store including inventory management, credit card billing, all the tools you need - except a 800 number!

So in the presentation I showed how Yahoo! could immediately provision a 80 number and set up a professional greeting and IVR for the new store in a matter of minutes. During the Etel conference I had the opportunity to brief a number of bloggers and journalists. One of them was Ken, who described our vision as revolutionary. My reaction was “hey anybody can do this” to which Ken replied, “At At&t we tried for years to do immediate provisioning and we did not succeed…”

If you think about it, Ken’s remark sums it up. Telecom companies have their way of doing things, buying an IP platform is not enough, The whole culture has to change. The mindset has to change. I see it every day with customers who come from traditional telecom companies and are unable to grasp the new terminology and methodology. One customer who has a SIP trunk with us with incoming numbers from multiple countries, constantly talks to me about sending out calls on the Spanish line or on the German line. Although I have explained to him many times that with IP there is no line , all calls go over the same SIP trunk, he still comes back with the same questions every few months. So I ask - Can you teach a telecom guy - software based communications?? That is the question!

Image by ptufts via FlickrA year ago one of my favorite journalists who happens also to be a great guy, Om Malik, suffered a heart attack which almost ended his life. As a result Om made major changes to his lifestyle. When I say major I mean major. Om did not do minor adjustments. Instead he took the following steps

1. After a 40-Dunhills-a-day-habit for nearly 20 years, I stopped smoking.
2. No more cigars, either.
3. No drinking.
4. No red meat.
5. Caffeine, sugar, salt and all unhealthy foods are now banished from my diet.
6. I go to the gym every single day.

As Om wrote

Making such drastic changes wasn’t easy, but they offered me the best chance of staying alive — and 50 pounds and 12 months later, have clearly worked.

I recommend that you read his full post, What Om wrote should inspire all of us. Change is possible!

Thank you Om for a great post and may you celebrate many more years in good health!

Image via WikipediaReading Jon Arnolds post on TMC , reminds me that in the VoIP service industry for the last few years we are used to hearing 2 voices at the end of each year.

The first voice with the superficial view is always there to tell us how VoIP is dying and hey look Vonage the voip poster boy is almost bankrupt. Then you have what I call the smart people like my friends and fellow bloggers, Andy Abramson, Jon Arnold, Ken Camp, Thomas Howe and others who realize that VoIP is all about unlimited functionality and not at all about cheap calls!

With that horizon in sight, the news is that VoIP is just beginning. Businesses are only starting to understand what they can do by integrating their communications with their business processes. At the end of the day it is all bits and bytes - so why not?

At the Flat Planet Phone Company (where my salary comes from) it is amazing how many projects are coming together. Business people are starting to get it!

Image via WikipediaAfter receiving 20 proposals, I am trying to narrow them down to a more manageable 4-5. First thing is to cut out those who answered with a canned “We can do all that you requested.” I am much more inclined to work with those who asked probing questions to better understand what my needs are.

These questions have actually assisted me in reaching a better definition of the project. Some of the bidders have also made suggestions such as integrating our web site www.flatplanetphone.com and this blog with the same look and feel. One went even as far as proposing to cancel our existing site and to put the site and the blog together on a wordpress platform. Both suggestions are definitely worth considering.

What do you think?

Image via Wikipedia

This report from VoIP News, is typical of what I have been seeing lately. How long will companies pay $50-100k for expensive Avaya and Cisco when they can get similar hosted solutions for a small fraction of that ?!?

Besides the price a hosted solution gives you flexibility that you will never get inhouse.  Benefits like continuous upgrades, unlimited expansion puts a hosted solution on a level above the competition. Will Avaya go the way of Nortel?

 

This fall, with the economic downturn in full affect and BCG’s customers concerned about their investments, customers were able to connect instantly with their agents, no matter where they were. The agents appreciated that their VoIP lines could transfer to their cell phones or to an available agent so customers could reach them anytime, which made customers more comfortable. This type of activity could then be tracked in real-time call center reports as well, and therefore, BCG could staff appropriately.  This activity tracking was not possible with their old system.

The management team also appreciated the use of the real-time call center supervisory report and management tools so they could monitor activity as it occurred.  They were able to integrate the reports into a more meaningful way than before, capturing real-time data where previously the same type of data had to be manually tabulated and reviewed.  With another hardware-based solution, this type of reporting system would have cost them $30-50K; however, using Alteva’s integrated solution, the service for 50 users was only $2500.

VoIP News » Blog Archive » VoIP Success 2008: Benefits Consultant Group, Dec 2008

 

Image via CrunchBaseNow that I have decided to renew my blogging activities, the time has come to give a new face to the blog. At the same time I want to make sure that all the needed plugins will work as advertised.

Based on recommendations from Tim Ferris (The 4 hour work week), I an checking out elance.com. I am so amazed with Elance, that am going to keep my readers updated on my project. For those of you who are unaware of Elance, it is the ebay of web professionals. Elance works similar to ebay. You post your project, qualified professionals then bid on it. Just like ebay you can read the feedback they received from previous work and compare offers.

So far I have received 17 bids on my project with an average offer of around $100. Amazing. I will keep you updated.

A number of my fellow bloggers wrote recently that the Mumbai terrorists used VoIP technology and how that complicated things for the local security forces.

Well, it ain’t true. As one comment explained on Preston Gralla’s post -

I live in India, and I can tell you from first hand knowledge that there are no data services fast enough to support clear VoIP transmissions over cellular phones. That is to say, no 3G. Only GPRS and Edge. There are also very few WiFi Hotspots designed for public use. The CST Station has one, the Taj would very well have dozens. But I assume that the power was out when the Commandos were storming the building. Satellite internet access may be possible. I saw in one of the pictures posted on the internet that they are using Thuraiya Sat phones. A simple net search shows that its a UAE based company and one of their models also acts like a modem, but they would still have needed line of sight with the sat, or installed repeaters inside the hotel. Very unlikely that they would have been using wireless VoIP in India.

A look at the original NYT article confirms this observation. The ones who were using VoIP were the handlers in Pakistan. They probably had a IP connection and then made calls out thru one of the many SIP providers who then passed on the call to the PSTN

Such a communications method is hard to track live, but it does leave, like any IP communications, a trail which the investigators are now following.

Hosted VoIP telephony has experienced another year of steady growth, as the small business market continues to be the sweet spot with most deployments in the 20-to-50 seat range, reports In-Stat.
Hosted VoIP will continue to experience dynamic growth over the next few years, with projected revenues exceeding $2 billion by 2010, the high-tech market research firm said.

When I read this quote 2 years ago, I believed that Instat was right on the money, and Hosted IP PBX services for the SMB market such as what our company offers would be very successful. Although it was slow at the beginning, the last few weeks have proved them right.

I am not sure what is the exact driver, but we have seen a sharp spike in inquiries from resellers interested in selling our hosted pbx service in the last 2 months. Most of the potential resellers are providers of traditional SMB phones systems such as Panasonic. Others are installers of computer systems who are looking for additional services to sell. For both, The Flat Planet Phone Company service is an interesting addition to their existing offerings.

In a nutshell, we provide a platform which enables you to set up your own Phone Company in less than an hour and immediately start selling. For the whole spiel go to our website!

For me it is really exciting to see an idea sprout into a money making service. Flat Planet is a win-win proposition for the both the business owner and reseller. For me it is a great feeling to sell something that is both profitable and beneficial for all involved. Nothing makes me happier than showing a new reseller how to set up his own phone service. Well, let me qualify that — Nothing in my business life….
After all there is a life after work

In the late 90s, selling minutes was a big and very profitable business. Companies like ITXC, IDT, Net2phone, Deltathree traded in the billion dollar range. They were innovative and created a whole new landscape.

Fast forward to 2008, IDT (and Net2phone now a fully owned IDT subsidiary) is almost done burning its 1 billion dollar pile of cash and is on the way to be delisted from the NYSE with the stock trading at around 50 cents. Deltathree, already delisted from the NASDAQ, is trading at 6 cents and rumors abound that they are about to close. Even Kayote which was founded by Deltathree veterans with a much more service orientated business model, has closed down their “minutes” operation in the last week.

The advent of Asterisk and other open source switching solutions enables anyone with a few dollars to put together a switch and sell minutes. All you need is a PC, a PRI card and you are in business. My guess is that these Mom & Pop operations put the big guys out of business.

Where does that leave us? Services, Services, Services. There is plenty of money to be made in the value added arena. Integrating and streamlining business processes with voice and video is still a big business and will be for years to come. Those who understand that will also make money from minutes as an add on. Selling minutes alone is unfortunately, as these former leaders are showing us a sure way to go bankrupt….

Actually 2 of them. About a week ago, I wrote about the Digium/Asterisk agreement with Skype. In my post I expressed the opinion that Skype was the winner, since in one swoop they opened up the Skype network to the business market.

In a discussion that evolved from my post, on Facebook, Olle E. Johansson (one the leading Asterisk developers) disagreed with me. Olle’s point was that networks come and go, today Skype might be popular, but Gtalk might take the lead from them in a couple of years. However, if Asterisk becomes the primary operating system for IP communication (it is on the way there!), then this will be just another deal on the way to Digium becoming the leader of the telephony/communications world ….

On second thought I must agree with Olle. The more I work with Asterisk, the more I realize that the sky is the limit!

My second mistake concerns my post on IDT, I wrote that it may be a good idea to buy the company with over a billion dollars of sales and a market cap of $50m. However after I read this article, I realised that with their current capital structure the ones who hold the keys to the company are management and it doesn’t look like they can let go… Too bad, IDT was an innovative leader at one time.