Not much is happening these days on the hosted VoIP front which means that there is consolidation going on. That means in the technology continuum we have moved beyond the hype and into the reality of how to make the technology work profitability (aka mainstreaming). As part of the VoIP reality is the news that Microsoft is continuing it's SIP trunking relationships into mainstream release.
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Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
2007 will go down in history as the turning point where smartphones became mobile phones. With RIM on a roll with it’s business ready blackberry, to Apple charging onto the scene with their user (and app) friendly iPhone, to Google’s Android mobile platform, 2007 was packed the sort of tipping points that make Malcolm Gladwell giddy.
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Although we are currently used to cellular phones being tethered walled systems, my feeling is that this is not the natural order. The natural order is that personal mobile communicators are peer to peer tools not fixed point products as we have today.
At EComm2008, Jonathan Christensen from Skype discusses the next 10 years of Skype and mobile devices.
Now that Kleiner Perkins is handing out their Pets.com profits to iPhone developers, here are 10 things I would like to see on my iPhone:
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Apple is going to allow VoIP clients on the iPhone using it's new SDK.
More specifically, Jobs stated that, as long as an application is not using the mobile carrier's network, VoIP functionality in applications will be allowed. The exact wording from the iPhone SDK agreement is that "If an Application requires or will have access to the carrier network, then additionally such Application: ... May not have Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) functionality."
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I had a chance to drive a Ford Explorer this weekend that had the Microsoft Sync installed. I of course had my trusty Video iPod and USB cable so attempted to use the ipod integration. The big draw back with a rental car is no manual. So after half an hour trying different combinations to use the iPod integration, I gave up and returned to the Sirius satellite radio.
However the use of integrated software systems for entertainment is well on it's way to migrating to un-luxury class vehicles such as the Toyota Yaris:
According to Autoblog, certain models now include Tom Tom integration:
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The quote of the week comes from Google at the World Mobile Congress:
Google on Wednesday said it had seen 50 times more searches on Apple‘s iPhone than any other mobile handset, adding weight to the group’s confidence at being able to generate significant revenues from the mobile internet.
“We thought it was a mistake and made our engineers check the logs again,” Vic Gundotra, head of Google’s mobile operations told the Financial Times at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
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Elmore County Schools operates 15 schools and over 10,000 students. Recently it implemented the Cistera Event Alerting and Notification solution:
To verify the effectiveness of Cistera's Event Alerting and Notification solution in a simulated emergency, administrators recently conducted a successful training exercise focused on a campus intruder scenario at one of the district's middle schools.
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The National French Police has started moving its desktop environment to Ubuntu after successfully moving to Sun Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird over the last two years.
"We will introduce Linux every time we have to replace a desktop computer," he said, "so this year we expect to change 5,000-8,000 to Ubuntu and then 12,000-15,000 over the next four years so that every desktop uses the Linux operating system by 2013-2014."
The short take from this is that it possible for a large organization to move completely off Windows and move to open source.
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In reference to the Microsoft Yahoo Drama:
It's like taking the two guys who finished second and third in a 100-yard dash and tying their legs together and asking for a rematch, believing that now they'll run faster.
There has been a lot of bytes chewed up today over the unsolicited bid by Microsoft for Yahoo but there are a few things you may not know about the bid and the history surrounding search and Microsoft's attempt to get into this market:
* Bill Gates wrote "At the Speed of Thought" in 1994 and completely missed the Internet. The book was irrelevant almost from it's release. All of their thoughts revolved around a walled garden product called MSN that was to compete with AOL's dial up product. Search was never in their radar. Their idea was that content was king, much closer to Yahoo than Google. In fact their preoccupation with AOL allowed them to completely miss the search/advertising market. Also Microsoft was offered an investment in Google but they declined.
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Microsoft has made a public bid for Yahoo where Microsoft will pay approx $44.6B made up of half stock and half cash.
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Nokia continues beefing up it's software portfolio with the acquisition today of Trolltech.
Trolltech has gained success in a small but growing corner of the mobile-phone business, offering widely used software tools for creating programs that can run across a variety of devices, from handsets to PCs to consumer electronics.
Nokia now has a firm control not only of the Symbian platform, but now the linux mobile platform creating strong cross platform strategy with Symbian at the top and Linux at the bottom.
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The big news here at IT Expo in Miami Beach is the partnership between Fonality and Dell announced Tuesday and broken on Rich Tehrani's Blog.
Fonality is a provider of unified communications and contact center solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. According to Lyman, Dell partnered with Fonality because it was looking for three things, must be high in value; must be super easy to use; must run on Dell.
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Verizon has continued lately to talk about their "Open Network Initiative". However, there seems to be two types of open: the first is where you can use an unlocked device on any network you choose (ie GSM open) and Verizon open which means that you can use any device (within reason) on their network.
Seemingly in a nod both to regulatory pressure and movement by companies like Google in the mobile space, the No. 2 wireless carrier said it had decided to open up its network to device and application developers--with what it portrays as few limits.
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Sprint PCS has announced that it is axing 4000 jobs and 120 stores as customers sprint away from its offerings:
Industry analysts had estimated that in the fourth quarter Sprint lost about 350,000 contract subscribers — a carrier’s most valuable customers, signed up for contracts of a year or more. Instead, Sprint announced that it had a net loss of 638,000 contract customers.
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The big numbers story this January is that General Motors has held on to its spot as number one car manufacturer in the US over Toyota who has beaten Ford for the first time:
Toyota sold 48,226 more cars and trucks than Ford, according to sales figures released today. Toyota's sales were up 3 percent for the year, buoyed by new products like the Toyota Tundra pickup, which saw sales jump 57 percent.
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It's night and a guy loses his watch and so he starts looking for it under the nearest lamp post. His friend says to him, "Why are you looking over here for your watch?". The guy replies "I am looking over here because the light is better".
So too is Brian McConnell's lament over on Gigaom titled Take This Job And Shove It — Why I Retired From Telecom. His argument is this, there is no innovation in telecom so he left this part of the industry
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The City of Maastricht (yep that Maasticht who invested in Linux Desktops) has deployed Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite with Cisco Call Manager.
No word on whether they are using the dual mode (wifi/cellular) (GSM/Cisco Skinny) phones for this.
Greg Royal is one of the original founders of Cistera Networks and has been the chief technology officer/EVP since 2001. He has more than 20 years of IT sales, marketing and management experience in New Zealand, Australia and the US. He also has significant experience in designing and deploying large scale IT systems including experience in financial services, government, education and retail.
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