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BroadSoft is attending this week’s 2010 Mobile World Congress, where of course lots of new services are being announced. Microsoft’s unveiling of Windows Mobile 7 grabbed a lot of attention, as well as an array of new smart phones sporting the latest bells and whistles. Perhaps of course the most interesting topic to us at the event is the role of VoIP for wireless carriers, which is a tremendous opportunity.
BroadSoft unveiled today its newest mobile features for our BroadWorks Application Server, which we have appropriately named BroadWorks Mobility Suite . These new features bring a myriad of opportunities to wireless carriers, enabling them to expand their enterprise and consumer offerings and develop far deeper relationships with their customers.
For example, businesses today, with increasingly mobile and distributed workforces, are challenged by how to best manage their employees’ mobile devices. Our new mobile features overcome this challenge. Mobile operators can now enable enterprises to manage their communication costs and meet company objectives, from tracking mobile phone use in real-time, to extending corporate policies to mobile devices.
Employees benefit from our latest features as well. One great example is the improved “reach-a-bility” of employees, who can leverage a mobile operator’s ability to deliver any IP communication option to a single number, not just voice and SMS, but IM, presence and location-based applications.
For consumers, they are now in control. They can manage all of their communication services and devices from a single account on a secured network.
But our new BroadWorks Mobility Suite isn’t just about enabling mobile operators to take new, innovative communications services to market today. Our platform is designed to easily migrate these features when mobile operators move to LTE networks. And this is When with a capital W – not if. LTE is no doubt the future of wireless. Curtis outlined the numerous benefits of LTE, such as 10X the transmission speeds and lower costs per bit here. AT&T is planning field trials of its LTE roll-out later this year, according to a WSJ article last week. And China Mobile- the country’s largest wireless service — is rolling out its 4G service this May.
The core of our newest mobile features is a superior end-user experience – ensuring individuals can stay continuously connected, regardless of where they are and regardless of the way they want to communicate. So whether you are stuck in the midst of a blizzard or working from a trade show in beautiful Barcelona, it really makes no difference, you are connected….
How many of you are tired of hearing about the fact that Washington, DC and its surrounding suburbs are experiencing Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon, or whatever catchy name you want to use to describe the 30 inches of snow that fell within 24 hours and then another 8 inches 3 days later in our area? Well, let me personally say you are no more tired of hearing about it than those of us at BroadSoft’s corporate headquarters are of living through it.
But our snowstorm of the century is no reason to stop commerce. Those of us in corporate America have projects to complete, goals to accomplish and performance metrics to hit…..so even though most of us are snowed in, we are certainly not bored and looking for something to do. As a matter-of-fact, I have been extremely productive the last 4 business days working from home. I’ve gained an hour, and sometimes 2 depending on DC traffic, by not needing, or not being able, to commute to work each day.
Here is how a BroadSoft employee (me) has spent the last 4 business days…..and how I have leveraged our hosted communications solutions in order to keep moving our business forward (audience for that statement, my boss).
A couple of my days started at 7:00 am Eastern time, on conference calls with our European PR firm. Okay, on the surface, that is not overly interesting, but when I say I was on a video conference call using my Bria for BroadWorks softphone, then interest is piqued. It is not unusual for me to have video calls with my counterparts and partners at agencies around the world, but I typically use my Polycom VVX desk phone. This week, I have used my softphone, and each call has been equally as productive as if I had been in the office.
And thanks to BroadWorks Anywhere, I have not missed a call, even though my email signature and business card do not list my cell phone number. I simply set my home phone as the primary way to reach me through our BroadWorks web-based portal, and all my calls have found me. All my outbound calls show my BroadSoft office Calling Line ID, so my “office” has been extended to my home phone and my mobile phone.
Today was particularly great. Each quarter, our sales executives provide an update on their accounts, so the entire organization is aware of how we can contribute to ensuring our customers are satisfied. Our North American quarterly review was scheduled for today. Even though no one was in the office, because it was officially closed, we all attended the meeting, remotely, and leveraged our Unified Communication services. Many of us joined via video, we all used our collaboration tools to share documents online, and like any business person these days, most of us were multi-tasking, sending IM messages to get other work done.
So, we in the DC area are persevering and pushing on, but even with these great IP-based communication options, many BroadSoft faithful are actually looking forward to when we will be able to dig ourselves out and drive to the office, after so many days with the kids….
And for our service provider customers, we now have 110 personal case studies we can share on how hosted communications solutions are priceless to ensuring business continuity…..
Last week Mike Dolan of FierceVoIP wrote a fantastic editorial about the state of the industry and where we’re – or rather, where our industry should be right now. It was so good in fact I decided to write a post about it.
Reflecting on Fierce’s recent IT Expo post, Mike wrote about how the move to 4G will be the inflection point that brings VoIP and broadband to mobile and enabling video calls on the move – now THAT would be revolutionary. The constricted 3G pipe, due primarily to continued problems with legacy T-1 lines providing backhaul to towers, is holding back exciting innovations in mobile communications. When 4G finally arrives in the form of LTE, every mobile voice call will become a VoIP call. BroadSoft supports the One Voice consortium that will enable the migration of voice to 4G.
On the wired side, we were excited to see SIP Trunking called out as a critical catalyst for really cool stuff reaching mass adoption. SIP Trunking allows for IP conversion and the delivery of innovative communications services, not available with a PBX. But, we believe if a carrier uses trunking only to replace switched voice with VoIP connectivity, they will see their revenues erode. The big upside is using trunking to deliver new communications services in demand by the enterprise market. There are several market trends driving this move by enterprises. Over the next five years, it is believed:
- Enterprise workforces will become increasingly mobile
- Video calling will be widely adopted
- High-definition voice will be the new standard for voice communications
- PBXs will migrate to hosted unified communications
- Enterprises will continue demanding comprehensive business continuity capabilities
Finally, Mike notes that once our industry does migrate to the all-IP networks of the future, suddenly “best effort” isn’t a good enough effort at all, not by a long shot. What has also hindered innovation is the need to ensure the utmost reliability for these advanced services. That’s where BroadSoft’s PacketSmart line of business comes in. PacketSmart allows service providers to remotely manage the end-to-end delivery of VoIP-powered services. To go even a step farther, BroadSoft is working with customer premises equipment (CPE) manufacturers to embed VoIP management agents into devices designed for the SOHO and SMB markets.
So we’re excited to help move our industry through this next revolution of innovation.
The recent news of Polycom’s (Nasdaq: PLCM) partnership with Juniper (NYSE: JNPR)—which GigaOm suggests is in response to Cisco’s acquisition of Tandberg—got me thinking of the playing together in the sandbox analogy. Making room for everyone to play well in the same space is more important than ever with the rapid advancements in communications technologies. It’s all about making sure that customers – businesses and consumers – have access to the networks and devices that best suit their needs and that the different technologies can be integrated easily.
I believe that this partnership, along with a slew of others recently announced (see here), will foster greater flexibility and more options for businesses and consumers.
That is why BroadSoft has established partnerships with Tandberg, IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) to name a few. And this week we announced an extension of our partnership with Polycom to provide an integrated voice and video solution. This new offering builds upon our long-term relationship with Polycom and brings video and voice together for businesses in a way that has not been readily available before. More often than not, video and voice live in separate silos at businesses, making it difficult for employees to leverage these tools simultaneously for the next generation of telepresence. Through our new solution, V2Connect, we bring video and voice together in one infrastructure so workers can take advantage of these tools easily and seamlessly and businesses – including SMBs –can potentially save money and increase productivity.
At the core of all these partnerships is Unified Communications, enabling employees to communicate through various channels, at any time, from any location and in an integrated, streamlined way. For example, through our collaboration with Polycom, businesses have access to unified voice and video solutions delivered as a hosted service. Our integrated UC solution with Microsoft facilitates integrated voice, presence, instant messaging and web conferencing as a hosted solution, so that employees can work virtually, from any location and at any time.
Moving forward, we expect to see rapid expansion in the hosted UC market. As more businesses shift to a hosted model, the need for plug and play technologies will likely increase.
Michael Tessler
Scott Hoffpauir
Leslie Ferry
Alex Doyle
Curtis Hartmann
Shirish Andhare
Paul Adams
