VoIP Commentary

I’m now back in the saddle (so to speak) after a less than pleasant red-eye home from the VON show and I realized that I didn’t get the chance to meet with any of the folks that I actually wanted to sit and chat with.

The show was a tremendous success for us as we had a dozen or so meetings that really helped push a number of initiatives along, but I failed to get the chance to speak with:

• Andy Abramson
• Alec Saunders
• Jeff Pulver
• Pat Phelan
• Ken Camp
• Sheryl Breuker
• Dameon Welch-Abernathy
• Jim Courtney
• Tom Keating

I apologize for not getting in touch with each of you to chat…I hope that was the case and not that you forgot about me because my posting frequency has been less than stellar over the last three months!

I’m still here! Although I have a lot less time to devote to blogging.

One positive is I finally got to chat (although briefly) with Luca Filigheddu. It was an interesting conversation to say the least and I look forward to working with in the near future on some new initiatives.

After walking the floor at VON I am left with one thought:

VoIP keeps getting easier and easier for the end user.

phone systems, network management software, bandwidth, business voice lines…all of it.

Kudos to the companies making it easy for the end user. Just remember to not make it to easy. Us resellers still have to eat!

For those of you who are regular followers, you might have noticed that I have not been posting much of late and that when I do it is usually thoughts about events that happened days or weeks before.

Unfortunately, that is the nature of the beast when it comes to blogging as a secondary effort.

I was catching up tonight with some industry news and I ran across this article about Jaxtr having 10 million subscribers, yet ZERO revenues.

ZERO revenues?

10 million subscribers?

You have to be kidding me.

Maybe it is the fact that I grew up in a “bootstrapping” entrepreneurial household or that I eventually settled down with a company that was started with and initial investment of $75,000, but as many times as you explain to me the “VC way” I refuse to believe that a company with 10 million subscribers and has no revenues has a solid future ahead of them.

Heck, even a donation button would result in something.

If your service is not valuable enough that you can’t charge people to use it from the start…then why would you expect to anyone to pay for it once you have 10 million users?

Unless you think that someone will buy it. But then again, who wants to buy a company whose customers don’t pay for their service?

Even though they always seem to be nipping at one another’s heels, at a recent FreePBX.org open source telephony training session, representatives from Digium, Sangoma and Rhino Equipment put down their guns to pose for a picture (and educate participants on the benefits of open source telephony).

Is there finally peace on planet Open Source? I’m doubtful.

Something tells me that although everyone looks chummy in this picture, each company is still looking for a way to oust the other.

What a difference a year makes.

Last year at this time of the year, I was lucky to see one or two 200+ seat phone system deals a month come across my desk. Now they are flowing in once or twice a day. Over the last two days I have seen three 200 seat plus deals close, a handful of 50 - 75 seat deals and a confirmation of a 26 location, 4,000+ seat deal.

Last year the deals were met with more opposition and tighter margins. This year, customers want to make the switch to an IP based phone system and are willing to pay for it.

If you are a voip phone system reseller and you are not “cranking-up” your marketing and advertising efforts, start doing so immediately. The phone system deals are getting larger, easier to close and the margins are the best they have been in years.

I am not sure what has caused this recent surge. Maybe it is that the technology is now trusted. Maybe business are better educated. Maybe we are simply doing a better job selling. Maybe it is all three. Whatever it is, the market is hot and I can’t wait to see just how hot it will get!

There is quite the discussion arising over Andy Abramson’s comments on a Ribbit Vs Lypp API comparison post that was authored by Erik Lagerway, Lypp’s CEO and Founder.

Let me preface my thoughts by saying that Erik is a highly talented, extremely gifted programmer and telephony entrepreneur who I respect (I have a feeling his post was not written to attack Ribbit in any manner and that his comparison may have been taken out of context). I am not a highly technical programmer. I understand the technology and the underlaying methods by which each service works, but I couldn’t exactly take either of their API’s and do much of anything with them, so I am taking each at face value.

In reading more and more about each service, I am of the belief that while they are similar, they are very much different. Different enough, that I feel comparing the two is not an apples to apples affair, but an exercise in the specifics of each company’s underlying technology and what each of them does well. As friend and fellow blogger, Moshe Maeir states,

“Both companies should be applauded for developing Voice 2.0 platforms. But they are different. Ribbit is a high profile VC funded company, while Lypp seems to be low profile and self funded (correct me if I am wrong). Ribbit bills itself as revolutionary while Lypp just gets the job done. You might compare the two to a flashy sports car and a Chevy pickup. If you are a handyman you may go for a night on the town with the sports car, but you still will drive your Chevy for your day job”

In furthering this, Lypp appears to be a solution for mobile professionals that aggregates AIM / AOL, Google Talk / Jabber, iChat MSN and Yahoo! Messenger contacts and allows for group or conference calling via your cellular handset. It also does not leverage the IP network, in favor of the wireless network and or PSTN.

Erik explains here,

“At Gaboogie we steered away from the softphone or using any VoIP at the edge of the network in our initial plans. We made that decision early on because we believe VoIP at the edge is still not ready for prime time. If you don’t believe you obviously have not tried a best efforts VoIP service in Canada. I have not found a single best efforts offering that does not drops calls, drop packets and well… just generally suck. “

On the other hand, Ribbit is billed as a web-based phone that is also accessible via your mobile phone built upon the Adobe Flex platform. It’s calls, however, are routed over the wireless data network or IP network, making it a VoIP service. In addition to just sending and receiving calls, Ribbit is packed full of interesting features such as the ability to see a social network like profile of the person calling you and voice mail eavesdropping with barrage.

The way I see it, these are two different technologies, with two different target markets and two totally different business models. Honestly, the only thing I see that is similar between the two is that they are both pushing the envelope of what is possible with Voice 2.0 services and doing a darn good job at it to boot!