I had the privilege of getting a “first look’ at Fonality’s HUD 3 presence based call management soft client today at the trixbox live event in LA. I can’t say much about it right now except for the fact that it is very impressive. The Fonality team, lead by CEO/Product Manager/Janitor Chris Lyman have added some incredibly useful elements to HUD. If you are in the market for a piece of software to help your call center or for that matter your company, I suggest you wait a few weeks until it is formerly released. I guarantee you it is worth the wait.

If you spoke to enough industry executives, most would tell you that the true promise of VoIP or IP communications, lies in the idea of unified communications and the integration of voice with business systems and processes. To date, neither has been a huge driver for the technology and for the majority, voice remains just as siloed today as it was twenty years ago. With the majority of VoIP users only taking advantage of a fraction of the technologies overall capabilities, what is it, at the end of the day, that is the true promise of VoIP, for the plain old end user?

It very well may be High Definition call quality.

First coined by Polycom over a year ago, today’s release by snom about their new high definition wideband codec technology prompted a thought about what, for the average user, might be the difference maker that leads to rapid uptake by this new wave of adoptors. As voice continues to remain siloed by the masses and pricing hitting the bottom, what really is their that VoIP can offer that given these two current facts, would compels someone to make the switch?

A better call experience.

As bandwidth continues to increase and as more service providers begin to support high definition voice calling, a better calling experience, with crisp and clear two audio will be the “killer” that VoIP has been looking for. Much like HD television, the vast delta between regular and HD will be so large that once one hears the difference, there will, like HD TV, be no substitute. Funny how all this time people have been trying to drive VoIP by touting unified communications or chepa pricing, when all they real had to do was provide a better call experience.

If you didn’t, I’m sorry, because this is shaping up to be one heck of an event (hopefully you are one of the three hundred or so folks who will be there).

I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with the trixbox team as the put the final touches on their first ever live meet-up of trixbox community members. This isn’t just a networking event or an educational seminar; trixbox live is about making money.

Designed from the ground up to show the community how to sell trixbox, trixbox live features presentations from Kerry Garrison, Andrew Gillis, Chris Sherwood, Larry Augustin, Brad Pitt and Fonality CEO Chris Lyman. This jammed packed seven hour event put the focus solely on the biggest pain point for most value added resellers - how to sell and support the solutions they are offering their customers. This is something that very few vendors do in the open source telephony space, yet it is one of those “sure things” that almost guarantee success. After all, nothing happens until something gets sold.

Look for more on this tomorrow as I get a few blog posts up in between meetings, in hopes of giving you a flavor for the event.

For most, PSTN connectivity hardware is a yawn.

That’s why the recent acquisition of Paraxip, a company that focuses on IP telephony connectivity cards in the Windows space, has not gotten as much press as us hardware folks might have imagined. You see, Paraxip has developed proprietary, patent-pending software technology to solve complex enterprise network interconnection problems. The suite of products from Paraxip departs from its competitors in its use of an all-software approach, as opposed to an appliance model. The solution can thus be integrated and deployed more cost effectively and easily by OEM customers.

This means a hardware company focused on open source telephony, purchased a software company focused on the enterprise and call center  space.

Forget the obvious synergies here. Let’s talk about what this says about the Windows VoIP marketplace and the overall VoIP marketplace. For the last few years, Asterisk and it’s many varieties have dominated the IP telephony scene and companies like Sangoma have prospered because of it (just look at how their stock price has increased). However over the last six months, more and more focus has been placed on Microsoft’s push into VoIP and what that means for the market as a whole.

I know the folks over at Sangoma very well. They are incredibly smart business people and if they are willing to make an investment like this, into a space that while complimentary, is the complete opposite to their current business, then I would say that the dawn of Windows centric VoIP  becoming a major force is very closely upon us. Whether this is a good thing for the industry at large remains to be seen, but to Sangoma, it must be, otherwise they wouldn’t have shelled out 4.8 million.

I got an email last night from Guy Kawasaki, to inform me that I had been hand picked to be syndicated in AllTop.com’s new VoIP news section.

First off, I am a huge Guy Kawasaki fan, so I am honored that he and his team picked my site to be part of their VoIP section, right up there with the “big dogs” like TMCNet and Fierce VoIP. If you don’t know much about AllTop, is it a website, built for the less technologically savvy, that also one explore their passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web.

You can check out the VoIP section of the site here.

More than six months ago I pronounced that the phone call was dead.

I was wrong; it hasn’t died yet.

Now it seems that others are hopping off the voice 1.0 bandwagon and stating that the phone call’s little brother, voicemail, is dead. I don’t believe this to be true.

Voicemail is alive and doing well, actually quite well.

As of 10:30am this morning I have ten voicemail in my box (all from this morning). None of which I have listened to, nor do I know whom they are from.

The problem with proclamations such as the phone call is dead and that voicemail is dead is that these world views are so small and closed minded. What innovators and early adopters need to realize is that normal, regular, non-technology obsessed people (which makes up the bulk of the world) still think that the phone and voicemail is the coolest thing since sliced bread.

If you ask any VAR selling an IP based phone system what feature customers are most enamored with they will tell you, “voicemail to email.” If voicemail was really dead, this wouldn’t be true. For me personally, I prefer other, less disruptive forms of communication, but that doesn’t mean the masses does and at the end of the day, the masses dictate the vitality/death of a communications vehicle.

Maybe in the valley, or on the west coast voicemail is dead, but up here in the northeast and the other 90% of the world, the phone call is king and the voicemail is queen.