Cisco

Shoppers: Possible VoIP merger and acquisitions in 2009?

Doug Mohney — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:36:21 -0500

Apple

Would Apple buy Yahoo? At less than $11 a share and a market cap of $15 million it may be a target too tempting to resist. We could also see Mr. Jobs make a quick strike or two for software and/or HD audio technology.

BroadSoft

Sources tell us BroadSoft quietly secured some amount of venture capital in September, disconcerting staff who had been told last year that the company wasn't going to take another round.

Last week, Tessler told FierceVoip, "We always carefully consider opportunities for consolidation, but we want to stay in the applications layer and have been very clear that we won't go beneath that in the stack. Of course, in this climate, something may present itself as a must-take opportunity."

We're not sure if SaaS/hosted companies fall into the above definition, but being able to acquire recurring monthly revenues is always a good thing for any company.

Cisco

Do we need to explain further? Cisco may be trimming up its expenses, but it has plenty of free cash coming in quarter after quarter and an appetite for devouring companies. We wouldn't be surprised if Cisco reached deep into its wallet to make one big (multi-billion dollar) deal in 2009.

Dialogic

Dialogic wants to be a company with at least $400 million in sales, so we expect them to steadily add to the portfolio in 2009 with at least one player "consolidated" under the Dialogic flag.

EXFO

After buying Brix Networks and Navtel this year, what else is there left to buy in the testing and service assurances market? Maybe a SaaS play to get recurring revenue.

GENBAND

Nortel's Ethernet and optical networking assets may represent an opportunity for GENBAND to move beyond its IMS core strategy. Or not - Nortel wants a billion, it will "only" get $500 million.

Regardless, GENBAND doesn't mind buying up individual divisions of companies, and a number of vendors will want to tighten up their portfolios.

Dialogic and GENBAND

Could the two M&A kings end up together to build a potential billion dollar baby? It'd be an interesting marriage with Dialogic at the edge and GENBAND at the core.

Global Crossing

The company told the Wall Street Journal it was interested in possible mergers and acquisitions to gain scale, as they expect a new wave of consolidation in the next 18 months. CEO John Legere said the company has been "in talks with everyone" - whatever that means.

Who do you cross Global Crossing with? Given their all-IP religion, a pairing with XO might make sense, giving GC a bigger U.S. presence and a large metro network. Another interesting combination might be a merger with one of the top three CDN players - Akamai, Limelight or CDNetworks. CDNs need cheap pipe, while GC and other long-hauls would like to accumulate more peering relationships and more IP traffic.

Google

If it's a slow news day, Google will likely buy a VoIP/IP communications company it thinks is hot, then sit on it for about 12 to 24 months while it figures out what to do with the acquisition. At least the company being bought will likely see cash, rather than stock, unless it's a mega-deal.

Microsoft

With $17.8 billion in cash on the books and no publically professed interest in Yahoo this minute (If Yahoo was such a great deal at $31 a share, why wouldn't be an excellent deal at $11 a share? Probably because Microsoft could afford to wait until Yahoo hits $5-7 a share before rolling back in), Microsoft has plenty of cash and a decent stock to offer young UC companies an offer they just can't refuse.

Who's buying? Significant VoIP M&A shoppers of 2008

Doug Mohney — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:12:23 -0500

You shouldn't be surprised to hear these names when it comes to snapping up smaller companies or even engineering larger deals.

Cisco

Notable acquisitions this year: Jabber, PostPath, Pure Networks; investment in ip.access.

Why do in-house R&D (the ASR 9000 zettabyte router being a notable exception) when you can just let someone else do the hard work of building a product, working out the bugs and establishing market viability?

Or, if you wake up feeling particularly Fierce, take some of that $26 billion in cold cash and go buy somebody, big, really, really Big. Cisco has been cranking cash flow at a clip of around $2 billion a quarter. Even if that slows down due to a sluggish economy, there's still a nice happy money stream to do whatever it pleases.

This year Cisco bought Jabber and PostPath to beef up its collaboration portfolio. Jabber brings presence and messaging software expertise for embedding those attributes "in the network," including WebEx Connect and Cisco UC offerings. PostPath will enhance the existing email and calendaring capabilities of WebEx Connect.

We'll toss in brownie points for investing in ip.access (Femtocells) and picking up Pure Networks (Home network management software that will likely have a VoIP hook to it in the near future).

Dialogic

Notable acquisitions this year: Open Media Labs, NMS Communications

Love the Nick Jensen.

Dialogic's CEO tells you what he is going to do, then goes out and does it. Jensen was practically rubbing his hands together in glee as the credit markets started to tighten up this spring, driving down valuations. He wants to buy good assets at the best price he can get, so long as they fit into his master plan of A) Adding more revenue and profit to the bottom line, and/or B) strategically building his technology and customer base.

At an analyst/press meeting last year, Jensen said the future is video. This year, Jensen showed up with Open Media Labs in tow and said he was interested in acquiring SBC and DPI technology. We suspect he took a pass on obvious buy NextPoint because the price tag was too high for what was there, and instead worked a deal with NMS Communications to open up Dialogic's reach into the mobile/wireless space.

EXFO

Notable acquisitions this year: Brix Networks, Navtel Communications

By purchasing Brix and Navtel, EXFO has gone "up stack" from hardware to networking and applications testing and service assurance solutions. Navtel brought on board IMS, VoIP and GMPLS test solutions, while Brix had a broader story (and more key customers) in the business of VoIP and IPTV data services. Brix also had a great story with the end-user QoS/QoE experience.

GENBAND

Notable acquisitions this year: NextPoint networks

We sang praises for GENBAND in the Fierce 15. This was a slow year for GENBAND buying, as compared to 2007, but when it bought, it bought what it needed. Acquiring NextPoint gives deep packet inspection (DPI) and session border control (SBC) technology to the company to implement on its boxes. Adding new security capability on existing GENBAND open standards-based hardware should be a simple code load.

Oracle

Notable acquisitions this year: BEA Systems.

After devouring BEA for $7.2 billion (net) early this year, Oracle has been pretty quiet on the acquisition front. Among BEA's assets are the WebLogic communications platform family, so there's a lot of nice middleware that can snuggle up to an Oracle database, including presence, virtual PBX, call management, routing and the all-important billing functions.

Cisco sees UC profits, but slowing future sales

Doug Mohney — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:44:01 -0500

On Wednesday, Cisco announced smoking growth in its Advanced Technologies and unified communication areas. However, the company is battening down its hatches with a hiring freeze and other cost-cutting measures in anticipation of a slower economy.

Advanced Technologies, which includes unified communications, wireless LAN, video, security and networked home products, was up 17 percent from last year, with a total of $2.7 billion in revenue. Of that, unified communications grew 22 percent, while security was up 19 percent from last year. Cisco believes it has the strongest positions in customer relationships in the enterprise and service provider markets.

Cisco's belt-tightening measures include the aforementioned hiring freeze, and cuts in travel, events and marketing expenditures. The company expects to trim expenses by $1 billion for its second quarter. Currently, U.S. orders are down 8 percent, with enterprise orders declining in the "high teens."

Revenues are expected to decline 5 to 10 percent in the second quarter but long term growth rates of 12 to 17 percent are still predicted.

For more:
- Network World dials in on Cisco's profits and future challenges. Article.

LumenVox, Top VoIP Company 2008: FierceVoIP, Fierce 15

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:27:18 -0500

LumenVox

Where it's based: San Diego, CA
When it was founded: 2001
Website: www.lumenvox.com

Why it's Fierce: Speech recognition technology is one of the unsung building blocks of new wave voice applications. LumenVox has been around for a while, but they've officially opened up their speech recognition software to the wide world of open source over the past few years. The company now supports VoiceXML through a partnership with I6Net, opening up thousands of existing VXML applications to run on Digium's Asterisk platform; there's also support under "numerous" Linux distributions.

Other firms working with LumenVox include Active Voice, Aculab, Avaya, BroadSoft, Metaphor Solutions and Pactolus; work is in progress to integrate the software with Cisco, Envox, Genesys and Sun solutions.

Did we mention that LumenVox is an affordable solution for speech recognition?

Digium, Top VoIP Company 2008: FierceVoIP, Fierce 15

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:39:06 -0500

Digium

Where it's based: Huntsville, AL
When it was founded: 1999
Website: www.digium.com

Why it's Fierce: Digium single-handedly defined open source telephony with Asterisk and is now almost always on the checklist for many businesses when it comes time to sit down for a discussion of IP telephony. Other open source competitors compare themselves to Asterisk and - perhaps the ultimate complement - Cisco has an internal marketing document loaded with talking points against the solution.

While it positions Asterisk as a customizable "telephony platform" to build solutions on rather than just a vanilla IP PBX, Digium continues to steadily evolve as it hires the best and brightest programmer and developer talent as well as seasoned executives. Partnering with Skype was a Fierce move and last year's acquisition of Switchvox gave the company a needed boost in providing a flexible SMB turnkey solution for resellers. About the only thing missing to complete its Cinderella story would be a blessing by a Fortune 500 IT powerhouse.

Microsoft steps to UC interoperability

Doug Mohney — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:41:48 -0400

Friday, Microsoft announced it signed up with the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) Working Group, an organization focusing on the development on an open industry standard for ubiquitous messaging. In other words, a standard so apps can talk to each other.

Microsoft says it is signing up at the behest of existing AMQP members, including several of its customers in the financial services industry; figure Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs and/or J.P. Morgan "requested" that Microsoft sign up. Cisco, Novell and Red Hat also are among the AMQP members.

Since AMPQ is a spec for platform-neutral, open standards-based business messaging, this would presumably mean that, down the road, Microsoft unified communications apps would be able to communicate with Cisco, Red Hat and Novell UC apps. Customers would be able to mix and match applications to improve business process communication both within an enterprise and outside the corporate infrastructure.

AMQP may provide greater interoperability for a number of vertical "scenarios," in addition to obvious ones for financial services, insurance and health care.

For more:
- Microsoft's press release on joining the AMQP working group.

Cisco's WebEx gets UC SaaS makeover

Doug Mohney — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:35:14 -0400

Cisco's WebEx Connect, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering combining presence, IM, web meeting, and team space for workplace collaboration, is getting heavy play as a unified communications solution.

Offering a hosted solution, Cisco WebEx Connect provides a "toolbox" for working with collaborative project data. WebEx's wikis, calendaring and social bookmarking are rolled together with Cisco's UC platform to include integrated messaging components such as video conferencing and IM.

Happiness is provided by the ability to provide a "cloud-based" home for project work and communications, while IT gets the benefit of being able to provide collaboration in addition to policy and security management. Since WebEx Connect lives outside of the host company's firewall, enterprises can work with customers and partners without compromising security.

Cisco WebEx Connect may cause some déjà vu to anyone who's seen Microsoft SharePoint. As one might expect, SharePoint has better integration with Microsoft products, while anyone already familiar with Cisco's UC platform will want to look at WebEx Connect.

For more:
- CMS Wire gives the rundown on Cisco WebEx Connect. Article.

IDC: UC hype affecting phone, service purchases

Doug Mohney — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 16:31:15 -0400

Publishing two survey reports today, IDC says increasing "attention and buzz" around unified communications is getting to decision-makers in how they select phone systems and services.

The first study, "Key Trends in Enterprise VoIP 2008: Customer Perspectives on Unified Communications," shows that end users have become more sophisticated in understanding UC and have higher expectations about what solution providers should be able to offer.

Survey respondents ranked Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya and IBM as the top 4 key vendors in their company's UC plans; last year, respondents ranked Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft and Nortel as their top 4 UC choices. More than 41 percent of respondents believe that advanced applications integrating business communications with business applications should come directly from Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes or Domino environments.

What's more, 79 percent of respondents believe that UC is a desktop or mobile-based solution or platform that combines a common inbox for email/fax/voicemail, advanced IP telephony calling and management, Web/audio/videoconferencing, instant messaging, and presence management, which can be integrated with business-critical applications.

"Key Trends in Enterprise VoIP 2008: North American Enterprises' Buying Behavior," IDC's second study, focused on how U.S. enterprises are buying phone systems and services. The intro of desktop-based IP telephony solutions by Microsoft and IBM has led to a shift in focus on the source of key advanced communications functionality and call control. Long distance savings, ability to integrate with existing business applications, and cost savings over legacy equipment are the three most popular reasons why businesses are currently using or planning to use IP telephony within the next 12 months. Finally, unified messaging, remote/teleworkers solutions, and videoconferencing are the top 3 IP communications applications expected to drive future investment in data and telephony network budgets.

For more:
- IDC says UC hype affecting telephony purchasing decisions.

Siemens announces mobile UC offering

Pete Wylie — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:58:32 -0400

Siemens announced an update to its OpenScape Mobility Solution Tuesday, a move it says makes it the leader in the Mobile UC space. Siemens claims OpenScape is the first single-vendor solution that combines enterprise telephony, unified communications, wireless capability and fixed mobile convergence.

Luc Roy, vice president for enterprise mobility for Siemens, said OpenScape combines those four elements into a reliable and completely flexible product that will enable greater worker productivity and all-wireless enterprises.

"We feel the product is well-differentiated from our competitors' offerings," Roy said. "Avaya talks a big game but doesn't have an end-to-end solution or a presence function, Cisco doesn't have FMC products, though they do a reasonably good job on the UC side, and Divitas isn't established enough to have the prior credibility of telephony services. That's why we strongly believe Siemens is the leader in the Mobile UC market."

Roy said OpenScape has seen strong interest from health care providers, such as large hospitals, who have seen significant cost benefits from employing the solution.

"I can't mention the name of the hospital," Roy said, "but it is the largest hospital in its region with between 350 and 400 beds. By using the OpenScape Mobility Solution, it was able to reduce its cost for communications by close to $2 million."

OpenScape Mobility is compatible with RIM, Windows Mobile 6 and Symbian OS, with compatibility for the iPhone coming soon, according to Roy.

For more:
- see the Siemens release here

Verizon Business adds managed Cisco UC solution

Doug Mohney — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:22:10 -0400

Verizon Business has unveiled a managed (i.e. hosted) UC & collaboration solution around Cisco's Unified Communications Manager 6.1 platform.

Verizon is the first major U.S.-based service provider to offer Cisco's UCM 6.1 platform to customers around the world. U.S. and many European customers get immediate availability for the offering and an Asia-Pacific launch is scheduled for early next year.

The new platform includes the standard functionality to integrate voice mail, email and IM, as well as unified message (voice and email via one source access), single number access and unified presence to deliver visibility into a user's availability for a phone or IM chat.

Del Monte Foods is the launch/showcase customer for Verizon's UC announcement and has deployed the service across the enterprise with plans to leverage the platform to support the company's internal contact center needs.

For more:
- Read Verizon's release discussing its Cisco hosted UC offering

My Blabber about Jabber, Unified Communication and Collaboration

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:14:03 -0400

By Carl Ford

As I wait for my plane to Astricon, I am writing this article about Jabber being acquired by Cisco. And as you would expect, I like it!

I am a bell head with a history around the Unified Messaging fiasco of the 80s and 90s. To the point where x.400 and "Profs" were terms I used regularly, and I did not draw clouds, I drew gateways. I say this because, when SMTP invaded my life, it was like I was the character from Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," and had been freed to see the light of day for the first time. So still today, whenever the word "Unified" comes at me, my muscles tense and my nerves twitch.

I worked on a Presence and Instant Messaging conference where I got to see some great collaboration tools in the late 90s. So the fact that the world is finally trying to harness the power of presence feels pretty old to me. So for me the dominating subject of Unified Communication should be the use of presence engines and not just about people. Presence can be associated with any entity including documents, phone numbers, on duty people in roles, etc.

I think this is the real power in the Unified Communication & Collaboration story.

As I watched SIP come of age, the Jabber folks felt like the SMTP of IP communication to me. As maniacs took the SIP protocol and started adding every Internet Drafts to SIP, Jabber was fairly focused on its purpose, which allowed them to escape the massive amounts of Internet Drafts weighing down SIP. This is partially because Jabber has a loyal community wanting to progress their standards. It's also because they escaped the focus of formerly proprietary communication manufacturers looking to embed themselves into SIP. The Jabber folks got to implement SIP as an adjunct to their system and stay close to interoperability, as opposed to the folks making middleware out of SIP.

So now its part of Cisco, and I expect that a lot can be done within the Cisco ecosystem and the Jabber community. I don't expect it to be immediate, but I expect it to be simple (pardon the pun).

A few weeks ago I advised a client to use Jabber in connecting their systems with Microsoft OCS. I said it because the interfaces are stable. I expect that as the Cisco community comes to understand the value of Jabber, it will see the opportunity to be empowered by presence.

And with that I will be listening to the same empowerment at Astricon, where Skype is speaking at the Digium-run event.

Presence should be the dominant conversation in UC. Not mailbox consolidation and, for me personally, not address book synchronization. If you want to talk to me about presence, my handle is "alwaysoncarl" on all the systems, including hotmail, and, while unfortunately I am not always there, I do get the non - unified message.

Cisco buys Jabber

Pete Wylie — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:00:57 -0400

Cisco has announced plans to purchase presence and messaging specialist Jabber. The additional features Jabber brings in play will be integrated into Cisco's WebEx Connect and UC offerings.

Jabber purports to have a carrier-class best model for presence and messaging, and offers operability with a range of common presence products, such as AOL AIM, Microsoft Office Communications Server and IBM Sametime.

This acquisition is one of many recent purchases by Cisco intended to bolster its software offering. Other buys include WebEx, IronPort, Securent and PostPath.

All Jabber employees will become a part of Cisco Collaboration Software Group, part of Cisco's larger software group which manages UC products, the IOS operating system and SaaS offerings.

Terms of the deal was not made public and it is expected to be completed in the first half of fiscal year 2009.

For more:
- see the Cisco press release jabber

FierceVoIP Leaders: Chris Lyman, CEO Fonality

Pete Wylie — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 08:56:36 -0400

FierceVoIP: How did you get the idea for Fonality?

Lyman: I had purchased a start-up residential VoIP service from a friend and I realized I needed a phone system for the office. I had never priced one before, and so I was shocked to get a five-digit quote for the office staff of four. That's when I realized I was in the wrong market, and that's really how I started Fonality. I realized there was a huge opportunity in the SMB market for a better priced option than the major players were offering.

FierceVoIP: Bloggers have raised concerns in the past about the remote access you have to the IP-PBX solution. Have customers raised the same ones?

Lyman: Well it's more something we just discuss with the customer. We do have access to the end-users box, but that's a cost-saving mechanism, not a privacy invasion. Part of our value proposition is that updates and add-ons to existing systems don't require a truck roll. We can do it remotely, and save the customer a lot of money, while also ensuring the highest level of security. I mean, that's how we competed and eventually won the Dell deal. We weren't even on their radar until they realized our solution runs on a Dell box, and they looked into it and saw how much more cost-effective the Fonality solution is.

FierceVoIP: Speaking of the Dell deal, who was your biggest competitor there and in general in the VoIP space?

Lyman: I think in order it's probably Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Shoretel and I guess down to someone like Panasonic.

FierceVoIP: Why do you think you are competitive with these companies, all of which are larger and have more legacy business?

Lyman: I think we are competitive, and will continue to be competitive for two reasons. The first, most obvious one, we just are a better value. Our systems, since they are PC based, are much cheaper to make and install. Secondly, the open source code that we built our solution over enabled a really low cost of development, which we can in turn pass to the customer. We also offer a higher degree of mobility and ease of transition to additional systems or features.

FierceVoIP: Do you have any plans to expand out of the SMB market and compete for larger accounts like Dell more often?

Lyman: We are really not comfortable working with a customer with over 500 seats at one location, and I offer this rationale. There is a deli near our office, and you go in to order, they hand you the menu; it's got like 16 pages. You can be pretty sure, that while nothing is going to be outright terrible, nothing is going to be that good either. I don't want to be that company. Our business model depends on the pricing we offer SMB's and I don't see a move out of that space anytime soon.

FierceVoIP: Well it's obviously working well for you; Fonality has demonstrated 15 consecutive quarters of growth.

Lyman: It's actually 16 now. We just got the second quarter numbers, and surprisingly enough, it was the largest percentage growth we've ever experienced at Fonality, revenues increased 31 percent.

FierceVoIP: That's impressive for a business that has already grown considerably. Do you foresee any slowdown in the growth given the present condition of the economy?

Lyman: I don't quite know, to be honest. We continue to grow and I guess I can think of two reasons why we would see continues growth in recession conditions. One, as budgets get tighter, our solution becomes more attractive. It enables people to work from home elegantly, as well as being cheaper to install and operate than traditional PBX offerings.

Second, I think more and more businesses are recognizing that the whole communications industry will be IP soon, and they are examining IP-centric offerings to cut costs and increase mobility.

FierceVoIP: Where do you see the industry, both your niche and the broader VoIP space, in the next three to five years?

Lyman: Well I think IP is the only way to go in the future. I just think "VoIP" as a term, can be misused and misunderstood, because it's really a question of "Which communications will not be IP in three to five years?" Kind of like if you asked me when the first digital camera was released, where I thought that industry was going. I think there really isn't any other way to go. Most of the big telcos even, its IP for most of a long-distance call, and it might travel the last mile on copper. And that's even getting replaced soon enough. The biggest question to me is when all the communications someone wants begin to converge; for instance, on my Blackberry, I'm texting, browsing, SMSing, all in addition to regular phone calls. I think that's where the industry is moving, total communications convergence and ease of use and access, and the mobility that IP can bring.

VoIP Auto QoS with Cisco

Doug Mohney — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:46:44 -0400

Gotta love it when Cisco adds an automatic QoS configuration command for VoIP network tweaking into its routers.

AutoQoS, a new command in IOS, allows a router to classify types of traffic by importance and ensure that the traffic is passed along as quickly as possible. If necessary, other traffic gets queued until the higher priority traffic has gone through.

The new command is limited in scope but is designed to prioritize VoIP traffic for a "good enough" solution, rather than having to put a network admin through a lot of hoops and pain for router tweaking. AutoQoS speeds up administrator training, makes VoIP often go much smoother and creates config templates that can be modified and copied for deployment as needed.

Configuration requires three commands, one to specify interface, a second to specify bandwidth and a third to invoke AutoQoS for VoIP.

For more:
- Read the nicely geek-speak piece on Cisco AutoQoS for VoIP. Article

Related article
SSA Gets NetIQ for VoIP

CONTACT CENTER CORNER: Pro-active Customer Contact, Part 4 - Learning From the Leaders

Doug Mohney — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:22:39 -0400

By Joe Outlaw

There are countless stories of how enterprises have reduced their contact center operating costs by improving center and agent utilization with the additions of outbound and blending customer contact applications. There are also many stories of increased agent satisfaction and retention as a result of well-managed outbound campaigns, such as Avaya's Proactive Contact customer, The Altman Group's proxy solicitation service, and Interactive Intelligence's Interaction Dialer customer Health Benefits Direct, an independent health insurance broker.

Healthcare
One of Cisco's outbound contact applications customers, a healthcare insurance provider, has a successful disease management application. The application proactively reaches out to recently diagnosed persons to be sure they follow, or are at least aware of, their healthcare coverage and the protocols to get treatment. By actively treating diabetes, for example, the disease is better managed, progression is slowed and costs of treatment are reduced. The application is also used for early-stage heart disease patients.

Cable
Aspect Software has a cable company customer using its Unified IP contact center suite that has deployed a number of proactive customer contact applications. Among these applications are service appointment reminders, special service request status update notifications, outage notifications with status updates, and completed work order notifications with optional customer feedback surveys.

Utilities
Genesys' customer Tampa Electric serves over 650,000 residential and commercial customers in West Central Florida. They notify customers using a Genesys Voice Portal-based application for scheduled maintenance and emergency outages, such as those caused by hurricanes. They also provide proactive periodic updates of the status of efforts to restore power transmission services.

Gaming
Genesys customer Betfair is a UK-based sports betting company. It uses Genesys's Outbound Voice and Express Mail applications to dramatically increase the effectiveness of its customer outreach program. Having its agents better prepared with customers' betting history and preferences before proactively contacting them has been the key to driving new business growth with these customers.

Part 1 in this series introduced the business drivers for pro-active customer contact, Part 2 reviewed the leading-edge business uses of pro-active customer contact solutions and services, and Part 3 compared some of the leading pro-active customer contact solutions and services on the market.

Joe Outlaw is President and Chief Analyst of Outlaw Research, a firm that provides results-oriented analysis and consulting of the customer contact marketplace. The objective of Outlaw Research is building a community around the leading edges of customer contact -- the advanced strategies early-adopter companies are applying and the technologies and vendors they are working with.

iSkoot gets Social

Pete Wylie — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:07:36 -0400

Mobile VoIP start-up iSkoot has expanded out of its previous Skype-client model with the purchase of messaging client Social.im, which allows customers to IM Facebook friends. Before Facebook launched its own messaging feature, iSkoot looked capable to fill the profitable niche. The purchase gives iSkoot messaging capabilities that it can meld with its current VoIP offerings.

Although the terms of the deal were not disclosed, it is likely iSkoot got social.im for a song, given that Social.im's prime market has been dominated by larger players.

iSkoot has received $13 million in venture funds, and this is a notable acquisition that could increase its standing in the VoIP arena and beyond.

For more:
- skoot to the TechCrunch blog on the acquisition

Verizon Announces VoIP Public Safety Solution

Pete Wylie — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:21:40 -0400

Verizon Business announced it is launching an IP-based platform that links radio, voice, data and wireless networks, enabling them to operate on a single network. The Verizon Communications Interoperability Solution, is designed to resolve the deep-seeded impasse in emergency communications between public safety organizations operating on incompatible networks.

The service will employ Cisco devices and applications to complete the interoperable networks.

While other companies--such as Raytheon--already offer interoperable devices that similarly link diverse communications, Verizon is the first major carrier to implement service and support for such systems. Public safety management is rarely trained to initiate and maintain interoperable networks, so Verizon's considerable national presence will be an attractive element of its pitch to interested public safety organizations.

Verizon will demonstrate the solution this week at the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials' annual conference in Kansas City.

For more:
- Verizon Business announces IP-based public safety interoperabilty solution

Related articles:
Public safety operators test interoperability concerns
Verizon began planning ventures into the public safety market in September 2006

The Ease of Hacking VoIP

Doug Mohney — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:54:14 -0400

Most of the 300,000 privately owned IP PBX systems throughout the U.S. are "wide open" to anyone that wants to hack them, says ChannelWeb. Compounding matters are a lack of regulatory interest and failure of vendors to disclose vulnerabilities.

With VoIP systems being implemented on data LANs and blended with other software for unified communications solutions, the potential for mischief can get very large very quickly. VoIPshield has been posting and demonstrating publicly documented (i.e. available through The Google) hacks. While Cisco Call Manager gets a workout on how easy it is to exploit, the real problem lies in companies not updating their VoIP and IP PBX software with the latest security patches and fixes like they do all with all their other software.

If you're not worried yet, there's a free utility called VoIPhopper to jump between voice and data VLANs so one can easily bypass firewalls and nearly all the IDS software for sale today.

For more:
- Hacking VoIP is easy, reports ChannelWeb

Related articles:
Last HOPE Launches Security Season
SPOTLIGHT: Survey: U.S. firms lax about VoIP security

CONTACT CENTER CORNER: RADVISION Adds Video to Cisco Contact Center

Doug Mohney — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:34:33 -0400

RADVISION is providing integrated voice communications for Cisco's Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP).

With the new solution, RADVISION's SCORPIA Integrated Video Platform (IVP) and iCONTACT content center video-enabling software component provide Cisco's CVP with the capability for video interactions, including self-service, queuing, and agents.

Video enabling the call center provides a number of features and benefits, including video menus for a more intuitive caller experience, video self-service with prerecorded or live videos, video queuing (think videos instead of music on hold), and video agent support allowing agents to push additional pre-recorded or live video content to callers. Support is provided for 3G video-enabled mobile devices and video kiosks for broad user access and reach.

Video support for the call center might sound a little "out there," but it ties in nicely with Cisco's ongoing theme/push of visual networking and video becoming ubiquitous. Dialogic has also touted the potential for bringing video into the IVR and call center environments, so it's not just Cisco that's promoting the concept.

For more:
- RADVISION release on video-enabling Cisco Contact Center

Related articles:
Dialogic goes video hog wild
Comcast buys Plaxo for ... video?

UC Insecurity

Doug Mohney — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:00:21 -0400

Is time to worry about UC security? In its latest report, entitled "Unified Communications: A Sense of Insecurity," Light Reading thinks so.

Because UC integrates so many established and emerging technologies, it is difficult to predict what future security problems might crop up in the future. Combine that with many existing security features in existing UC platforms that are not implemented correctly, and there is some cause to be worried.

UC providers are turning to third-parties such as Clarus Systems and Sipera to look over their systems and find vulnerabilities, as well as encouraging customers to seek third-party assistance to review internal security policies before installing a UC solution. Hosted solutions run by service providers may be less vulnerable, but end-user misuse could "trickle up" to affect larger UC installations.

Other tidbits include assigning enterprise users the "most glaring point of vulnerability" when it comes to UC security breaches and the potential damage from a major UC breach is leading Cisco, Avaya, and Microsoft to work together to establish tighter UC security.

For more:
- Light Reading summary of its UC security report

Related articles:
UC security urgent priority
Sipera IPCS Security Products Get Nortel Blessing