Archive | Telecom RSS feed for this section

Tech Half Life Plummeting

By on May 16, 2012 in Telecom

Today I looked in the glove box of my ten year old car. Among the typical glove box stuff (which never includes gloves) I saw my new/in-foil disposable camera. The package said to use it before 2006 – oops. The camera was in the glove box because my car insurance agent said it’s a good idea to take photos if you get in an accident, so I bought a camera and stuck it in the glove box probably ten years ago. I tell the story because my kids cannot comprehend the idea of a disposable camera in the glove box – why not use the camera on your phone?

Ten years ago, camera phones were rare and sucky.

Fourteen years ago, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan starred in “You’ve Got Mail”  which was the iconic line AOL recited when someone sent you an email. The movie has not survived the test of time, and if kids should watch it – they will never get the AOL references in the film.

Google and Facebook dominate our Internet today, but the prior stars were CompuSERV, AOL, Yahoo, and MySpace. Apple too will pass – five years ago RIM looked unbeatable. Soon Google and Facebook will be yesterday’s news. The vultures are beginning to circle companies after just one bad quarter – Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce…

Never before have we seen innovation at this rate.

I just posted an interview with Futurist Thomas Frey on NoJitter.  He talks about the rate of change:

Every 60 seconds:

* 700,000 Google searches are conducted
* 168 million emails are sent
* 695,000 Facebook entries are posted
* 370,000 Skype calls are made
* 98,000 new Tweets are posted on Twitter
* 13,000 iPhone apps are downloaded
* 1,500 new blog entries are posted

To reach the 1 million user milestone, it took AOL 9 years, Facebook, 9 months, “Draw Something”, 9 days.

Disposable cameras make no sense any more. Film cameras make no sense. At this point, the camera will be more useful as an antique so I will keep it in the wrapper.  Continue Reading →

Comments { 4 }

NEC’s Advantage

By on May 14, 2012 in Telecom

This week is the NEC Advantage conference in Florida.

NEC actually hosts two back-to-back conferences – the first one is for consultants and dealers, and then comes one for customers. It’s sound logic as they put a significant effort into their exhibit hall and demo setup. This will be my second trip to NEC Advantage.

NEC has a lot of history. It was founded in 1899 and originally worked closely with Western Electric to create Japan’s telecommunications infrastructure. The company is well established as a recognized player in business communications, not just in the US and Japan, but globally. Some studies list NEC as the world’s third-largest telephony vendor, with noted success in both SMB and very large deployments. Key vertical markets include hospitality, education and health care. NEC Americas (NECAM) is the US subsidiary that does communications, and a range of IT products and services from displays to storage.

  • 1899 Nippon Electric Limited Partnership was formed as a joint venture with Western Electric. The first Japanese-US joint venture with foreign capital.
  • 1902 Completes its factory for telephone and switch production.
  • 1904 Begins exporting telephones to China.
  • 1919 Produces first domestic Type 1 common-battery switchboards for long-distance toll calls.
  • 1927 Delivers first domestic-made A-Type automatic PBX to Mitsukoshi Department Store.
  • 1929 Produces domestic A-Type automatic switching system for central telephone office.
  • 1952 Receives Deming Application Prize (first time for company in communications industry).
  • 1953 Produces microwave PTM (Pulse Time Modulation) multiplexing equipment.
  • 1955 Produces first domestic-made XB switching system for PBX. Continue Reading →
Comments { 0 }

Your iPhone or your Life

By on May 9, 2012 in Telecom

Lately, I’ve come across several stories about stolen iPhones.

The first one that caught my attention was here by Colin: Who Profits from Mobile Phone Theft? Evidently, iPhone theft is a real problem that continues to grow. Colin points out that Apple could put a stop it if they wanted to, but don’t. Instead the US Government is stepping in with a stolen phone registry. Since Colin’s article, I’ve seen several more posts. There was this one that got stolen at a TSA screening which apparently quite common. The article points out that the maze of bureaucracies make reporting the issue a nightmare. Stolen iPhones are big bucks – particularly in poorer parts of the world. Benjamin Cohen just got his stolen, at knife point last week. He wrote a detailed blog post about his experience and lessons learned.

Here are some thoughts (mine and his mixed) on the matter:

  1. It is easy to forget how valuable these little devices are. They are not $199 with a two year contract on the used market. These are powerful super computers and worth $500-$800 without contracts. I’m just talking about the hardware here, but the information within can also be valuable.
  2. Losing a wallet is stressful and exhausting – the mobile phone has much more information than a wallet.
  3. Benjamin points out he felt safe as he set his security code to 8 digits, but his phone was stolen while he was using it, thus it was unlocked. The thief immediately turned off location services and Benjamin has been unable to remotely wipe the device. You can only wipe the device while the SIM is active – and since that’s a whole separate risk, it makes sense to kill the SIM soon after the phone is stolen. The phone can still access lots of cloud content over wi-fi even when off the mobile network.
  4. When people think of high and low risk security sites – they think financial stuff like banks as high and social and email services as low. But email is probably the most sensitive and risky of our online accounts. With access to email, a perpetrator can learn a lot about you, determine where you have accounts, and often easily reset their passwords.
  5. I have a service that allows me to make one call to cancel all my cards if I lose my wallet. I don’t know of any such service for all my passwords. I can’t imagine having to reset all my passwords – social, financial, productivity, shopping, and all these clubs.
  6. I am always amazed when I find people that don’t even have a lock on their smartphones. Stupid.

There are several things going on here – the proverbial perfect storms.

A thriving black market for the stolen phones, there is an emerging black market for the content on them, there is huge demand for the devices without contracts, the devices are extremely powerful, and the devices are easy to steal -even grab. The vast majority of the population has little awareness of the risk that these devices are so coveted by criminals, and those of us that are often believe we are safe when we are not.

Comments { 2 }

Why Not Talk on the Phone?

By on May 7, 2012 in Telecom

Of all the devices we use for communications, the good ol telephone is the odd one out. Is it because the others are that much better, or because there is some stigma associated with talking on the phone? The answer is actually a bit of both.

Believe it or not, we’ve been trained by an evolutionary society not to blab on the phone. It was considered abusive of a precious resource! Do you think our forefathers went to all this trouble to string copper to every single home so you can socialize? It’s a lot of copper, a lot of switches, and a ton of infrastructure in general – so keep your gossip to in-person social circles. The phone network is for serious and important matters only.

Did I convince you?

From the book America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940.  Continue Reading →

Comments { 1 }

UCSummit 2012

By on May 5, 2012 in Telecom

This week is the UC Summit in La Jolla, CA.

This conference is all about the UC Channel, how it’s changing and what to benefit from the changes. What’s interesting is almost every major vendor has stated initiatives to expand their channel. This is for various reasons, but mostly because they want more sales. The channel partners also want more sales, but aren’t looking to the vendors so much as the solution. The rule are changing – with a few exceptions, the dealers are adapting faster than the vendors.

This conference is hosted by UCStrategies.com (Blair, Marty, Michael, Jim, Don, Steve, Jon, and Art will all be there seeking my advice -or versa visa). There are a few things that make this conference unique:

  1. Focused on the channel – the primary attendees are industry dealers and consultants. Note, I use the word dealer – I like it better than VAR, but I don’t mean to imply any difference. In fact, I think dealers, SIs, VARs, and even consultants are all merging into near identical roles. Continue Reading →
Comments { 0 }

iPad Initial Thoughts: Consumption

By on May 3, 2012 in Telecom

One thing about the iPad that I’ve been looking forward to is using it for consumption. I have a few movies in MP4, and I’ve been jealous of folks that have iPads on planes.  Compared to my notebook computer which is plagued with bulky keyboard and short attention span batteries, the iPad looks incredibly fit for entertainment purposes. So one of my first objectives was to copy over some movies onto the device.

I store a few videos on a NAS device that allows me to get to them from any of my video devices. There is the Boxee downstairs, my PC in my office, my Android phone, multiple household PCs (and a Mac), and we have a portable device (Micca) we use in the car (it’s a disk with a video-out that connects to the car TV). With all of these devices, I just copy the desired MP4 file to the preferred device. The Boxee actually indexes the NAS and treats the content as local.

Well, you can imagine my shock to learn there is no way to copy a movie over to the iPad via a simple USB drag and drop. Continue Reading →

Comments { 1 }

iPad initial Thoughts: Intuitive

By on May 1, 2012 in Telecom

I’ve been playing around with this iPad now for a few weeks. Of course, I was curious to see what this thing could do – it has changed computing and mobility forever. I was derelict in not getting one sooner. Though I am not quite the target customer.

Since I sold my company, I’ve been working in a home office and days go by without a need to leave. Therefore, I’m one of the few that mobility isn’t that important. April had no travel, but conferences are starting up. I’ve got the UC Summit next week, then NEC Advantage, and in more travel in June. I can’t wait to try it out on the road, but I’ve heard mixed reviews if the device can truly replace a travel laptop. I have a dedicated travel laptop that isn’t much bigger than the iPad – I suspect it will keep its job because of the amount of writing I do.

Coincidentally, I just got a new desktop. I can’t get over how cheap desktops are. For $973, I got a Dell XPS 8300 desktop with an Intel i7 2600 processor(8MB Cache, 3.4GHz), 8 GBs of RAM, 1 TB of disk, Win7/64, and a 24″ Ultra sharp DVI display. Wait, there’s more: USB 3.0 ports, DVD-RW, a video card that also supports my other DVI monitor. and a sound system with a sub-woofer. That’s a hell of a lot of computer for less than $1k. Continue Reading →

Comments { 2 }

Web Collaboration Services

By on April 25, 2012 in Telecom

I recently did some research around the web collaboration space, and thought I would share some of the great collaboration options available.  All of these offer some combination of voice, video, and document collaboration. I have not tried them all, but they are all generally suitable for small or enterprise business users. Most of these follow a freemium model or a monthly charge. None of them require special equipment or long term commitment.

Comments { 2 }

Polycom’s Wild Ride

By on April 24, 2012 in Telecom

Polycom’s been on one hell of a roller coaster. The company that is synonymous with non-Cisco video conferencing has had its ups and downs – mostly downs – lately.

From Fierce:

The company has come back to Earth with a thud, posting net income of $15 million or 8 cents per share, down from $34 million, or 19 cents per share, last year, a 56 percent drop and its first decline since 2010. And, said CEO Andy Miller, the company isn’t too optimistic about the second quarter. Polycom said it expects to earn between 20 and 22 cents per share on revenue of $367 million to $377 million. Wall Street was looking for a forecast of 25 cents per share and $387.3 million in revenue.

It has CEO Andy Miller on the defensive, until last July, Miller had only seen the stock trend upward since his appointment to the corner office in May of 2010. Miller believes the industry is ”in the midst of the company and industry transition from point products to solution selling. This mindset shift affects both our customers and our sales force.”  Polycom cut its first quarter revenue outlook April 5, prompting shares to decline to $13.46 April 11. The stock closed at $12.89 Friday. Continue Reading →

Comments { 2 }

Cisco Makes its Presence Heard

By on April 20, 2012 in Telecom

Yesterday, Cisco joined the ranks of Microsoft, (Skype), Google, Yahoo, Apple, AOL, Facebook, Salesforce.com, and others with free IM and presence. From the Cisco blog:

Today we’re announcing that we are making presence and instant messaging (IM) capabilities and Cisco Jabber clients available to our Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) customers globally at no additional cost. Cisco believes that together presence, IM, voice and video call control provide the foundation for real-time communications. Continue Reading →

Comments { 1 }