You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2009.
It’s day two of our seventh annual users‘ conference, Connections 2009, and today we raise the curtain on an initiative we’ve been trying to keep under wraps for some time now – the monetization phase of our Xtended program.
The Xtended initiative was launched in 2008 to open up the BroadWorks platform to third-party innovation and the Web 2.0 in particular. We picked the best practices of Web 2.0 – open standards, RESTful APIs, forums, and an online presence for our community in the form of a developer portal and marketplace for them to post their creations. Today, with a developer community of 2,000 strong, we take another big step forward – adding ecommerce functionality to the Xtended marketplace. Now, any BroadSoft-powered operator (more than 450 worldwide by the way) can distribute third-party apps, sourced from the Xtended developer community, in their own custom-branded online store.
Think of it like the Apple App Store for IP Communications apps with a twist. Every BroadWorks-powered service provider can pick and choose from the eCommerce-enabled marketplace and create their own mini app store. This is a big deal not just for service providers that have a new revenue-generating channel, but for consumers and businesses who will have fast, easy access to a diverse array of solutions online and available for download in one click. Plus third-party developers in the Xtended community stand to benefit with online stores where they can shop their apps to more than half-a-billion people.
Several BroadSoft-powered service providers including Comporium, SimpleSignal, Telesphere and WorldxChange will be launching their apps stores in early 2010. And when they do, a number of developers will be at the ready to hit upload including:
- Spinvox, which offers a ‘Voicemail to Text’ app
- JoeDeveloper whose Quickset Pro application manages a host of call functions such as Sequential Ring, Speed Dial and Remote Office
- Mobile Max’s Enterprise Edition a unified communications client that allows access to all call functions – Do Not Disturb, Call Forward – from a mobile handset
Of course, we think this is game changing – but don’t take our word for it. See for yourself here.
Avaya Labs recently demonstrated a prototype application that integrates call-control with Facebook, with the nifty moniker “FacePhone.”
Doug Mahoney from Doug on IPComm calls it a “UC Killer”:
Built using Facebook’s APIs, Avaya’s FacePhone is an enterprise app that loads into Facebook and is designed to enable social networking functionality within the enterprise, on a business-to-business basis, and on a business-to-consumer basis and enables voice, video availability, as well as the stock Facebookness of chat and IM. … doesn’t this sound a whole lot like UC?
Hmmm… it’s like UC, but it’s built on a common platform and is built to leverage social media with both call center features (consumer to biz, biz to biz), as well as enable communications within the large enterprise. Smells a lot like “traditional” UC solutions, but at a MUCH LOWER cost of implementation. Since users are already familiar with and using Facebook for communication, this app fits right in.
I’m going to respectfully disagree with that.
I think Doug’s argument relies on the assumption that UC solutions are ‘closed’ systems – so, therefore, if you can get UC-like functionality from places like Facebook, which are outside of the closed UC system, then you’re ‘killing’ the UC solution.
But…really, isn’t the whole point of a UC solution that it’s open? That’s certainly our philosophy: when it comes to CRM, you can integrate BroadWorks into salesforce.com, or ACT, or Microsoft Dynamics; when it comes to business messaging/presence solutions, you can integrate BroadWorks into Microsoft OCS/Exchange, IBM Sametime, or Google Apps….or even Facebook – something our BroadSoft Xtended team demonstrated about 18 months ago.
So – if you’re bringing a ‘closed’ UC solution to market –if your UC solution is basically an “all-in” PBX on steroids – and yes, there are plenty of “PBX in UC clothing” boxes out there – then Doug’s absolutely right: Facebook is going to be a threat to you. But if you’re a Service Provider delivering UC off of the BroadWorks platform – a platform that’s committed to application integration – then Facebook, salesforce.com, mint.com – these are all assets to you, not threats.
Many businesses once married to the idea of having everything on their own servers are starting to come around to see the value of hosted services. SIP Trunking is grabbing attention as the way to go in the interim, and perhaps long term for companies who prefer a hybrid solution.
BroadSoft works with nearly 200 service providers offering SIP Trunking. Figuring out which one can meet your business’ specific needs can be tricky. A couple of key questions can get you started. While price often plays a role, it shouldn’t be the only or even most important consideration. Especially if the least expensive offering is not SIPconnect compliant, doesn’t ensure business continuity and falls short in enhanced services.
A first step is finding out if the SIP trunking service is delivered over a managed IP network with SLAs. This guarantees a single point of contact for trouble shooting and resolving issues. It also means the provider can deliver expected voice Quality of Service (QoS), unlike services that run over the public internet, which are inherently less reliable.
Network infrastructure is another important criteria– it can be the difference between reliable uptime and frequent outages. For service provider to scale to millions of users and meet uptimes of 99.999%, they must have carrier class VoIP network infrastructure. This ensures service availability for all but 6 seconds a day or five minutes a year. Enterprise-grade platforms like Asterisk, SIP Express Router, or home-grown technology often don’t have the proven track record of delivering five 9s of reliability or scaling beyond a few thousand users. Don’t be afraid to ask a provider for historical network uptime statistics.
Providers who can support Business Continuity must have redundant trunk groups into an enterprise IP PBX. This supports automatic re-routing and load sharing, so even in an outage, employees can access communications networks no matter where they are located. In worst case scenarios such as a natural disaster, this enables a business to continue operations.
SIPconnect is the industry standard for SIP trunking. If a service provider is not SIPconnect compliant they cannot guarantee all of your PBX features will work properly with their SIP trunking offer, or that their service will continue to work when you upgrade your PBX software (typically twice a year). A proper service provider will be certified interoperable with all leading IP PBX vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, and Nortel.
Finally, enhanced services are critical for businesses to remain competitive. By supporting Video, Mobile extensions, Telecommuters, and Unified Communications, a SIP Trunking provider helps you increase productivity and efficiency across your company. Examples of this include lower travel costs and less time lost in transit for employees who can connect virtually through video to communicate, attend meetings and training sessions. Through Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), a single number service eliminates multiple voicemail boxes and lost time associated with two devices. Network-based services eliminate CAPEX and are PBX vendor independent.
We’ll be diving deeper into this subject at our upcoming users’ conference, BroadSoft Connections 2009: Voice & Vision. The session, Tap Trunking’s Possibilities, will look at how a number of operators have used business continuity as part of their SIP trunking proposition and the impact it has made to the success of their services.
A few years back, CBeyond CTO Chris Gatch, a pioneer in SIP Trunking, famously said that using an IP PBX with TDM PRI circuits was “like driving a Ferrari on a dirt road.”
I thought about Chris’s comments this week when Sprint announced that their SIP Trunking solution (BroadWorks-powered), now generally available to business customers, is certified with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2.
OCS by itself brings communications productivity to businesses – but that productivity is stymied if you’re running your business through a “dirt road” TDM circuit. By complementing OCS with BroadWorks-based SIP trunks, Sprint allows enterprises to reduce operational costs, and reduce and consolidate equipment across the organization.
But – those are really operational and cost benefits of SIP trunking. That’s certainly substantial and appealing – but it’s only half of the story. If you read past the release’s comments on cost savings, and note their focus on wireline/wireless integration, check out Sprint’s Seamless Enterprise blog, and their Convergence portal – it’s great to see that Sprint is focusing on the UC/functionality aspects of SIP Trunking, not just the cost savings.
This certainly resonates with us – one of the themes we keep coming back to at BroadSoft is that we’re seeing the industry shift to a second generation of SIP Trunking– initial releases of SIP Trunking were all about integrated access and cost reduction, without a lot of differentiation, which is a recipe for fast market commoditization. (I suppose that’s sort of like putting fancy streetlights on a dirt road. It may look a little nicer – but it’s still a dirt road.) But now we’re seeing service providers “UC-enable” their SIP Trunks – add network functionality like mobile integration, video, business process services – and it’s nice to see Sprint push this in the market.
And since we’re talking about customers who benefit from UC services, it’s worth noting that BroadSoft’s “UC in the Cloud” solutions are stronger than ever. For businesses who want UC, but don’t want, don’t need, or can’t handle the process, overhead, and maintenance of premises-based systems, BroadSoft’s “Hosted UC” solution with Microsoft just celebrated its first year on the market, and is deployed live in every region of the world. We remain extremely excited about this solution – for economic, technology, demographic, and business strategy reasons, Hosted UC and Cloud Communications in general is hotter than ever. (Even the US federal government is hot on cloud communications, a sure sign that this has hit the mainstream.)
So – to service providers – you’ll come across customers where you’ll provide UC in a fully hosted model, and you’ll come across customers with premises UC systems where you’ll provide additional UC functionality “in the cloud”. You’ll see both scenarios – but your BroadWorks system will let you attack and monetize both.
It’s easy to say you have high-quality anything – but how many companies can unequivocally back such a claim up with proof? Well, BroadSoft can. We recently earned the prestigious TL 9000 and ISO 9001:2000 certifications.
While this is a significant accomplishment we are proud of, the purpose of this post is more than chest-beating, it’s about why putting proof behind quality claims are important across the industry, beyond the issue of integrity.
Quality of Excellence for Suppliers of Telecommunications (QuEST) Forum’s TL 9000 defines measurements as an industry standard way of benchmarking various products. Results are sent monthly to QuEST and compiled along with all other companies in the same product category. Measurements include indicators for things such as the number of software defects in a product, the reliability of a product in terms of outages, quality of software fixes delivered for defects and on time delivery, and how fast product issues are resolved.
TL 9000 also means a company can CONSISTENTLY meet a set of quality expectations that parallel rapid technology changes and customer expectations. Consistency is so important here because it proves a long-term commitment to quality, not something that a company can adjust products or services to quickly achieve.
A committed team at BroadSoft, spearheaded by Vice President of Engineering Bob Weidenfeller, invested over a year in the certification process (although creating a culture of quality has been a company focus since inception). The investment paid off as the team reviewing the audit noted that our business practices went above and beyond the compliance requirements. An interesting thing to point out was that BroadSoft Engineering and our Technical Assistance Centers (TAC) already had most of the processes in place and documented and were following them in our day-to-day routine.
TL 9000 is not only important to telecommunications providers who demand products and services with ever increasing quality. It benefits the industry as a whole by enabling technology providers to be more efficient and deliver innovative products to market in a shorter time frame. This supports business growth and provides end users access to better, more reliable products sooner. In today’s need-it-yesterday society – these are values coveted by companies. However, very few can attest to this level of commitment, BroadSoft is one of only three U.S.-based, and ten worldwide to have been certified in the 1.2.7 application server category. So to use a cliché… quality really does count.
Quality. I know it when I see it.
Many years ago I read a book entitled I Know It When I See It: A Modern Fable About Quality that illustrates how difficult it is to identify and describe a quality product or service and that many times it is easier to describe poor quality.
Today we announced that we will acquire Packet Island, a leader in Quality of Service (QoS) assurance for both VoIP and Video services. Our rationale for this acquisition is simple; we feel that quality is critical for the evolution of our industry and that being able to deliver a cost effective way for our carriers to ensure quality is important. It might be hard to describe a high quality voice call, but we can all describe the attributes (and frustration) of a poor quality call. Clearly, one of the remaining obstacles to convincing customers to move to VoIP and Video communications is their concern about how well they will hear and see the other person.
When we witnessed Packet Island’s power to first qualify the ability of a customer’s network to run voice and video and then to monitor and identify possible problems in both the LAN and WAN, we knew we had to make it a part of the BroadSoft solution. This complete lifecycle assessment and monitoring approach will ensure that our customers can deliver superior, quality service to their customers.
The second exciting part of this acquisition is the service delivery method, which is a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. This approach does not require a major investment by our customers to get started, so we can quickly deliver the service to them and make an immediate, positive impact on our industry. This is a first for BroadSoft, expanding from our networked base BroadWorks solutions to a cloud- based service. This is an exciting new way for us to deliver value, and we will continue to explore other cloud-based services that will benefit our customers.
Finally, I want to personally welcome Praveen Kumar, Packet Island’s founder, and his team to BroadSoft. I know their expertise will quickly contribute to the growth of our business.
Michael Tessler
Scott Hoffpauir
Leslie Ferry
Alex Doyle
Curtis Hartmann
Shirish Andhare
Paul Adams
