As the only vendor in the industry singularly focused on developing core communications applications for delivery over IP networks, BroadSoft has a history of helping service providers bring to market innovative offers in a highly diverse and competitive market.  For more than a decade BroadSoft has aligned communication services with changing consumer behavior leveraging a broad and growing range of communication services and devices.  Leading into and beyond 2012’s MWC was and is of course, no exception.  For example, we believe three recent innovative service offerings will help to ensure BroadSoft mobile network operators continue to differentiate offerings and meet a redefined mobile landscape:

• The Commercial Availability of BroadTouch™ Business Communicator: enables service providers to transform the way individuals communicate by bringing together voice, video, instant messaging and presence on a single interface that spans a user’s mobile devices and platforms, including Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

• Enhanced Partnership with Acme Packet®: A pre-integrated, interoperable solution for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) deployments, the partnership brings together the power of Acme Packet’s Net-Net SIP Multimedia solution and BroadSoft’s BroadWorks® communications application solution.

• A Rich Enterprise User Experience for BYOD Mobility: The Divide™ platform from Enterproid™ delivers a dual-persona user experience with the work persona secured and cloud-managed by IT.  Through integration with BroadSoft’s communication platform, providers enable employees to use and manage their business communications services from their personal mobile device.

Building upon a core communications applications platform, which combines network software, cloud services and user experience applications, BroadSoft’s 500+ customers in over 65 countries are set to meet broad challenges and rely on innovative new services such as these to meet emerging demand.  Regardless of how the mobile future is forecasted, BroadSoft’s community will be found under the definition of success. 

Stay connected with BroadSoft as we continue to provide and share thoughts from the community on the shifting mobile landscape. 

Service providers must answer the call for an innovative solution to the growing struggle between human response and mechanical communication.  As an integral piece of any business’s customer service offering, we believe the move toward hosted call centers offers the flexibility, functionality and visibility required to move end-customers quickly to a live voice without wasting time or resources.  Today, service providers leverage hosted communication services to boost human communication through productivity features and on-going application integration, all while minimizing human and environmental risk with automatic maintenance and business continuity.

More and more, we see the end-customer seeking an intuitive call center solution that allows optimal, live customer service while taking advantage of hosted unified communication technology. Micah Solomon, entrepreneur and customer systems innovator, writes for Fast Company on the growing need for live support as organizations place more services in the hands of technology:

Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it’s easy to shortchange them emotionally…This lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection.

Following such demand, BroadSoft’s own BroadWorks® Call Center application recently released new enhancements allowing service providers the scalability to extend their hosted call center offering into enterprises with higher call volumes and more complex reporting requirements.  Taking full advantage of the benefits of a hosted solution, such as low-upfront cost and scalability, the BroadWorks® Call Center application opens new revenue streams from premise-based platforms.

To explore the benefits of hosted call center solutions, read on http://bit.ly/broadsoftcallcenter or request a sales representative contact you.

• #1 – We will innovative and deliver solutions that leverage the growing abundance of mobile broadband.

Quality broadband is a key enabler for real time communication in the cloud.  As we rapidly move from a world of scarce to abundant broadband, those in the market have the opportunity to build completely new value propositions surrounding visual communications and collaboration. While such movement will spur emerging industry players, BroadSoft will meet this challenge by continuing our innovative product development.  In the New Year, BroadSoft Service providers customers will have the opportunity to leverage the explosive growth of 4G and LTE deployments to fundamentally change the way we communicate. 

• #2 – We will introduce new, quick and easy to deploy, cloud services that deliver our unified communications solutions

Cloud services have evolved from simply placing enterprise applications in the cloud to true multi-tenant applications with open APIs.  For instance, the highest levels of security and management have allowed enterprises to customize and integrate services into their operating environment.  The growing adoption of cloud services by the enterprise has powered a growth in specialty cloud applications and a deprecation of cost in cloud deployments – two trends we expect to see continue through the New Year.  BroadSoft has harnessed the power of the cloud to rapidly deploy and innovate our BroadCloud implementations.  In 2012, BroadSoft Service providers will leverage value-added solutions resulting from BroadSoft’s continued investment in these applications and their open APIs, as well the integration of BroadSoft’s real time communications services into other applications.

• #3 – We will super-charge our go-to-market program

Go-to-market programs in 2012 will focus on the new end user – the end user who wants to decide how, when, and where to communicate.  Individuals now expect a variety of optimized and integrated communications options, and they are focused on simplicity and efficiency.  BroadSoft’s go-to-market program, along with continued innovation and offerings in UC services, will focus on how people desire to communicate. Whether the real-time services include new innovations in video calling, chat, collaboration and conferencing, as well as non-real-time services such as email and social networking, 2012 service providers will bring to market and package an optimal experience around the user who expects more than just voice. 

• #4 – We will provide an industry leading consumer mobile solution that is scalable, reliable and is easy to operate

Some estimates assume that by 2020 there will be 50 billion connected devices.  The proliferation of smart devices brings subsequent connections to our global networks and the utilization of operating systems with open application development environments, such as iOS and Android.  In such an environment, we believe the most successful services, such as Apple iTunes, Blackberry email and the Skype service, combine an intuitive user experience with powerful cloud applications.  BroadSoft Service provider customers in the New Year will capture the power and proliferation of these devices through an intuitive user experience, specifically through leading user interface solutions.  By bringing the power of the cloud onto these devices, a focus on the end user will help make each experience personal. 

• #5 – We will continue to enhance our unified communications solution with an increased focus on the end user

Why do so many of us have to pick up our phones to send a text message when we are working on our laptops? Why must we use special devices for video calling? Why must we dial into retrieve voice mail? Users in the New Year will not only want, but expect, a unified experience across all of their real-time communication services. As an industry, we have been developing the standards and technology that supports a powerful shift in integrated communication services.  So what does this look like?

• Users install applications on their many devices and these devices then register with their cloud communication services.
• These applications ensure a seamless experience across the devices, so that users can establish service from that device.
• The applications provide access to a full range of services including video calling, conferencing, voice mail, text messaging, collaboration, chat and presence.

Service providers in the New Year have the unique opportunity to bring together a rich set of real-time communications services along with the power of social networks, providing a true unified communications experience. Service providers who can take advantage of seamless services will capture this market, while end users will benefit from the freedom to use the right device at the right time for work or pleasure.

To achieve our five objectives, BroadSoft’s community can plan on leveraging our robust set of communication services, including:

• BroadWorks
• BroadCloud
• BroadTouch
• Xtended &
• Xcelerate

In the New Year and beyond, these elements will continue to evolve and provide our community the tools to be successful and deliver even greater value to our customers.  Combined with BroadSoft’s leading services, we believe the industry trends support our vision for BroadSoft and sets up the environment for us all to be successful for many years to come.  BroadSoft would like to thank you for joining us the past 13 years and we look forward to enjoying a very spectacular New Year with you!

BroadTouch provides easy-to-use interfaces to access unified communications (UC) services across a users’ preferred communications device.  In addition to our newly enhanced call center agent and supervisor clients, BroadTouch also includes the Business Communicator.  Leveraging a single interface over both mobile and desktop platforms, the Business Communicator brings together voice, video and instant messaging and presence for a superior user experience.  At our annual users’ conference, BroadSoft Connections, we were excited to introduce the Business Communicator — you can see a quick demonstration from our show floor here:

Please feel free to share the demo: http://bit.ly/broadtouchdemo and look for more BroadTouch enhancements in the coming months.

Our newest services include:

• BroadWorks® BusinessLink - A fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) solution for SIP trunking that extends the features of a PBX to a mobile device, such as extension dialing, attendant console and call recording, without the need for a user to upgrade their handset or download a mobile client.
• BroadCloud™ Instant Messaging & Presence - A federated service across BroadWorks-enabled service provider networks that allows users to chat individually and in groups. This service integrates a subscriber’s desk and mobile phone status, allowing users to know if their colleagues are on the phone, in a meeting or away.*

• BroadWorks Meet-Me Audio Conferencing - A high-definition (HD), scalable and reliable conferencing application, that delivers a superior sound quality experience, supports hundreds of users on a single conference session and offers both reservation-less and scheduled conferencing capabilities.
• BroadCloud Text Messaging - Enables users to send or receive text messages using a fixed-line, work or home number, through an easy-to-use application on iPhone, iPad and Android devices. Text messages sent from the application will appear as messages originating from a user’s work or home phone number; giving users a single number for both voice and text.** (North America only)
• BroadCloud Web Collaboration - BroadCloud Web Collaboration offers service providers a cost-effective, feature-rich web collaboration service that tightly integrates with their UC capabilities, extending their brand value, increasing customer loyalty and reducing churn.  By leveraging web-based service management tools, service providers can efficiently provision and bill UC services.

We continue to extend our UC capabilities to ensure end-users can communicate using the service that best meets their situation, whether voice, text messaging or conferencing, keeping them connected from anywhere.

* Commercially available December 2011
** Commercially available November 2011

Attendance Records:

Last year, BroadSoft Connections 2010 attracted more than half of BroadSoft’s 450 global customers.  This year, the conference continued its track record of growth, with early statistics indicating over 935 attendees, from over 30 countries, service providers individuals, sponsors and partners, network equipment providers, web developers and IP device manufacturers.

The Agenda in Action:

Each year, BroadSoft has attempted to fit even more industry leaders, emerging technologies and ideas into roughly three days and one space.  How it played out this year:

• Educational Insight:  We believe BroadSoft Connections has earned a reputation for attracting the leading innovators in the industry.  Led by BroadSoft’s own thought-leaders, 2011’s session breakouts worked through strategies to crush key solution provisions, technical services, and go-to-market strategy.  Showcasing the expected all-star cast of entrepreneurs, the agenda also included insight from BroadSoft leadership, a keynote from Gary Hamel, author of The Ultimate Competitive Advantage, as well as a Locknote presented by Guy Kawasaki, entitled Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions. 
• Showcase Technologies:   Attendees had access to a dynamic Solution Showcase demonstrating the newest offerings from over 60 exhibitors.  Customers and partners released first-ever services and initiatives and reported them live via the Connection’s news room and through the 2011 Connections LinkedIn group (registered attendees only).  Events such as IP:Live and the Industry Experience Pavilion catered demonstrations to specific business needs on in-demand niche offerings.
• Fun & Networking:  BroadSoft Connections has become famous for sneaking memorable activities into the traditional conference agenda.  2011’s events included: a networking pool party, trap and skeet shooting, mountain bike riding, while also drawing inspiration from global cultures to offer attendees impressive social events, cuisine and entertainment.

How We Will Keep Crushing It!

BroadSoft leaves the event optimistic both our returning and new attendees have come away with a renewed and focused vision on the key trends and insight invaluable to sustaining momentum along with the platforms and services needed to do so.

Finally, thank you for all those who attended!  We look forward to seeing you again next year.

CIO.com’s Todd R. Weiss aptly names his new blog “Deciphering Enterprise Apps”.  Rather than covering confirmed application adoption trends, Weiss seeks to examine “the successes, the failures, the trials and the experiences” of “installing, configuring, running and maintaining the critical applications that run your enterprises”.  The critical question then, it seems to us, is not whether services offer to and use hosted applications for both businesses and consumers, but how best to do so.

As one of the first to offer custom hosted application services through the BroadSoft Xtended^TM program, BroadSoft’s customers have leveraged a competitive edge through custom-branded Application Storefronts and in-demand applications through annual programs such as the Xtended Incubator Program.

What have we seen thus far?

• Increased availability of hosted Xtended Marketplace applications, with expectations for significant growth in the portfolio of available applications by mid-2012.
• Continued custom application innovation for customers and end-users through annual developer incentives  and a growing base of 4,600+ Xtended developers who continue to contribute new long-tail application services[4].
• The launch of our first four pilot Marketplace service providers in 2011.  Read customer quotes and application descriptions here: http://bit.ly/pM0wC7, http://bit.ly/p4BD1T.

Web applications, such as the Sales Force Connector and the Mobiso Speech Enabled Dialer, have garnered strong interest from the start of Xtended.  As one example, our customers have related the success of the Salesforce Connector to its ability to transform CRM usability in communication services.  By allowing businesses to quickly access advanced voice and call control features from within their Salesforce.com account, enterprises organize and communicate with internal and external contacts more efficiently.  Through the desktop, the Salesforce Connector has allowed enterprise customers to:

• Display an incoming caller’s contact record information
• Find the appropriate user to forward a contact to
• Retrieve call and communication history for key prospects
• And more: see the Sales Force Connector in the Xtended Marketplace

We believe applications such as these continue to drive demand for hosted services offerings.

As enterprises rely more on mobility services, hosted mobile applications, such as the “RemoteOffice” application, quickly begin to pick up the popularity we saw with early web applications.  Mobile hosted applications incubated through the Xtended Incubator program in 2011 (for example the iPad Front Office Assistant, iPad Receptionist, and BuzzMe, an iPhone based group notification app) will offer a full-range of advanced hosted communication services to the mobile business and consumer end-customers.  BroadSoft is excited to watch hosted applications take full advantage of hosted voice features not available through traditional phone services.  You can view an early prototype of a receptionist tablet application here: http://www.youtube.com/broadsoftclips#p/u/31/kec_R54uqfo.

Those involved in the Xtended program from the early stages have benefited from educational and awareness driven initiatives that have generated visibility and demand for both web and mobile hosted applications.  Moving forward, we believe the BroadSoft ecosystem will benefit from the expected increase in hosted web and mobile enterprise applications, the entrance of additional BroadSoft hosted marketplaces, and the resulting drive of additional niche applications and services.  As hosted enterprise applications continue to replace IT services, BroadSoft will likewise continue to report best-practice trends and innovations in marketplace and application offerings for our service providers and their end customers.  Success, however, is constrained by your willingness to become a part of the project.  Offering benefits such as hosted store fronts with minimal capex, BroadSoft Xtended ensures service providers can now expand with us without the growing pains.  Learn more here: http://bit.ly/xtendedmarketplaceserviceprovider.

Our industry continues to move rapidly toward hosted and cloud services; we have watched UC implementation rates double year-over-year as reported by the CDW in its third annual Unified Communications Tracking Poll.  In the same report, the CDW found 20 percent of medium and large businesses have fully implemented their UC solution, compared to just two percent one year ago, while they predict mobility needs are further driving on-the-go access features of UC adoption.  Infonetics Research likewise predicted increased VoIP infiltration – specifically through the business market – predicting a $74.5 billion VoIP services market by 2015.

However, we believe having a successful service requires more than just great technology and a willing market. Our service provider partners need to excel in all aspects of GTM to ensure they have a compelling offer, a winning sales team, excellent fulfillment and support, and great demand generation.

BroadSoft is doing our part to assist – we increased our investment in GTM support resources, we built the BroadSoft Xcelerate^SM website to help our partners succeed with GTM, and we built an increasing number of tools such as the Top Ten Keys to Success.   As a supplement to working with your BroadSoft account manager and our internal teams, we urge you to use these BroadSoft Xcelerate resources to build a great GTM strategy.

Our industry is growing fast, and when we help each other we continue to drive the market away from premise-based solutions and towards hosted and cloud services.  Help us all win – share your success stories and share your keys to success.

Over this summer, look for BroadSoft to share more information and case studies and tools as part of our Xcelerate program and look for this to be a focus of our BroadSoft Connections event in October.

Remember my challenge from Connections 2010 – we want you to be a part of the go-to-market solution and drive value from collaboration.  Visit our LinkedIn Group at http://linkd.in/jGU8ST and share your success stories here!

Having spent those agonizing minutes watching a mobile web page load, we have all been victim to the soon-to-be prehistoric speed of an overloaded 3G network (see: http://bit.ly/fgnF5a).  As such, we have also realized our dependency, as well as the need for, the high speed capabilities, reliability and services we experience from our grounded technologies.  As LTE networks continue to launch, and even faster and more reliable networks are continually pushed to market, we believe these networks and services will continue to drive a shift toward an even deeper reliance on our mobile devices and the range of services and applications which will now be possible.  Welcome to a new true mobility.

Already, only nine percent of adult Americans are “gadget-less” (AFP, 2011).  We believe those in the communications industry now have to meet this new range of needs for a truly mobile consumer and workforce – one with more devices, faster speeds and a demand for a broader range of mobile services.  In response to this demand, BroadSoft recently announced its BroadWorks® telephony application server (TAS) to meet the requirements of the GSM Association’s (GSMA) IR.92 specifications for delivering Voice over LTE (VoLTE).  To further enable the seamless expansion of mobile communication offerings, BroadSoft additionally announced the availability of MobileMxD™ – an integrated suite of consumer and Unified Communications (UC) services optimized for 4G networks.

Through these offerings, mobile, fixed and converged operators can now capitalize on mobile communication applications across all major smartphone and tablet operating systems (iOS, Android, etc.) and 4G enabled devices. MobileMxD will initially feature several in-demand services, including:

• MxDFamilyCenter - A web-based application that enables individuals to personalize their communication services and will allow families to stay connected and informed
• MxDCallCenter - Call Center capabilities, including video calling, which will enhance the customer experience and improve customer satisfaction
• MxD Instant Messaging and Presence - Smartphone and tablet access to business contacts from an integrated corporate directory, as well as mobile presence & location indicators
• MxDMeeting - Web collaboration capabilities, including desktop sharing and the ability to initiate, manage and control and participate in meetings, from a smartphone or tablet
• MxDProVideo - Video-calling and conferencing anytime, anywhere and from any mobile device

Do you have an opinion on the future of mobile and unified communications?  Please let us know your thoughts below, on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.

Sources:

AFP. (2011, February 04). 85 percent of us adults own cellphone: survey. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i8G0TD-JN7TA8gWgRUIbI80eNwKQ?docId=CNG.f7e7d21b588872cfa9a0189c30680503.751

BroadSoft: As a renowned telecommunications strategist, you are known to help set the foundation on what’s next for the industry.  So, we have to ask – what’s next?

Eslambolchi: I have been pushing hard for the past 15 years that everything will be moving toward IP; and predicted by 2010 VoIP would be the primary source of all business communication and by 2015 would be the primary source of all consumer communications. We are not too far from it, as more and more businesses have transitioned to VoIP (due to cost, quality, scalability, flexibility, etc). And with FTTX & 4G – VoIP has started to reach out to consumers.

BroadSoft: You see a large market opportunity for VoIP and the end consumer?

Eslambolchi: VoIP is clearly a transformative, converged technology that offers significant benefits for corporation and consumers alike. By 2015 VoIP won’t be an option for voice telephony; it will be the standard – as ubiquitous as the copper wire has been in the past.

BroadSoft: You mention ubiquity.  How do you see IP, mobile, and the connected consumer moving forward?

Eslambolchi: Communications must be building around the user, instead of the user having to adapt to their devices.  IP convergence will allow you to plug one device into a broadband network to instantly meet all your communications needs.  We are reaching the era of the smart environment – smart homes and all of its appliances, smart cars which will integrate with all of our devices from GPS to ipad, iphone, Android, facebook, twitter, and of course smart offices.

Mobile phones will be able to move between VoIP networks, and wireless networks without the user ever noticing a change – a huge boost for reliability and range of use.  4G is the promise of the future for broadband as they fully and easily interconnect with wide range of individual devices, a capability that earlier wireless technologies lacked. It will support all sorts of converged services, including conferencing, training, entertainment, gaming, advertising, mobile banking, NFC, etc. SMS, MMS, pictures, gaming, video, and many other apps will be integrated with voice so that if you drop a call, or need to remain quite in a conference room or at home, you can continue your conversation and other apps.

BroadSoft: BroadSoft recently announced HD video conferencing service, BroadCloud Video.  What are your predictions for multimedia, video and IP?

Eslambolchi: Video will be the new voice.  IMS will be the springboard for seamless delivery of multimedia streams across mobile and wired devices. And IMS helps enable XoIP service and video services such as video conferencing, video training, video peering between multiple independent networks which will work similar to voice.

BroadSoft: What is the XoIP opportunity for video?

Eslambolchi: XoIP infrastructure allows the service to adjust and adapt to the access technologies the user has at his/her disposal. You record a video message, but the other party does not have access to the video device. The message will automatically covert to the service layer from audio-video format into an audio message or SMS.  These XoIP apps on all services will allow you to take your call at home, easily transfer to your car (hands-free), and once you are in the office to transfer it to a audio-video desk phone, and vice versa.

BroadSoft: Our service providers, partners, and end customers have played a critical role in the evolution of IP technology and services.  As such, how do you see this VoIP community evolving?

Eslambolchi: BroadSoft plays a key role in all of the above conversations; as they have been the pioneer of the XoIP feature and application services for past 12 years. While others had doubts about VoIP, IMS, FTTX, FMC, 4G; BroadSoft continued to push forward with their innovation.  The innovations from BroadSoft enabled so much for us during the past 12 years in wireline XoIP; that now we can take advantage of all of the experience, development, and applications as they all will be extended toward 4G.  These will also be the converged XB services of combined wired and wireless networks in a ubiquitous, always available, mobile broadband network.

I have personally invited many executives from our industry to stop by the BroadSoft booth in CTIA and encourage everyone to do the same.