Ok, so that's a bold title for a post. But I'm writing this post to acknowledge and point to some bold people. Innovators and pioneers who quietly whisper that they're bring us Voice 2.0. I'm not one of them, but I see them. I study what they do. I watch what they say. And I see firsthand how they partner. This isn't Voice 2.0 at all. This is Voice 2.5 with a glimmer of where Voice 3.0 will lead when everyone else gets on board and catches up.

Got your attention?  Good.

Two companies working together, each toward a shared vision of next generation communications services. Each with unique insights and an independent vision of how to make it happen. Synergy is an oft-abused word, but the symmetry of synergy in the partnership between iotum and TelEvolution (PhoneGnome) is something you can only fully appreciate by experiencing firsthand.

This isn't a sweeping change that we repaint the face of corporate life. It's a view of what services will be like in the next generation. It's a killer set of solutions, tools and ideas that will make the SOHO, small business, independent contractor, teleworker so powerful, that we get to see a vision come to fruition. The vision I see is Alvin Toffler's "electronic cottage", first alluded to in The Third Wave back in the 80s. For many of us, since then we've watched and waited for the smart home and the electronic cottage from whence we could run our own business empire. Well, thanks to Alec Saunders and David Beckemeyer (and their colleagues, partners and staff), we now have the makings of a viable electronic cottage, complete with tools that take us beyond mere Voice 2.0. Don't let their humble words kids you. These guys are delivering something visionary right now.

iotum
You can click the link and see the corporate site. I'd encourage you to read my Realtime Interview with Alec Saunders posted March 14th, but here's a nutshell -


How It Works
The IOTUM service is based on the patent-pending IOTUM Relevance Engine™ – a network-based communications platform that understands who is calling and knows what to do with the call based on the user's preferences, priorities, behaviors, and other contextual information. IOTUM intelligently filters and routes calls - offering an enhanced user experience and enabling the quick deployment of innovative, value-added services.




TelEvolution
To be honest, I haven't had the opportunity to interview or meet David yet. We've traded an email or two over the past couple of yeras, but that's about it. I can tell you from reading his Mr Blog personal site for a very long time, that David's an eclectic merging of consummate technical engineer and creative artist. Those two rarely meet in one person, but when they do, some very cool things happen. Very.

I'd explain the how it works, but this is where the future comes in. For, now, keep in mind that it just works. More on why that's important in a minute. but this is really important.

VoIP services are daunting to many people. Implementing VoIP services in a corporate network can reduce a seasoned professional network administrator to quivering, gunshy recluse. QoS?!? 2\4X4 monitoring?!? SLAs!?! Gateways!?! But enterprise business always embraces the tools needed to get the job done. And they leverage their buying power with the Ciscos, Avayas, and Nortels of the world to make their task easier.

VoIP for SOHO, SMB, home offices and the like has been another story. Set up Asterisk for your 3 person office? Sure you can. But it's really a pretty daunting task to the uninitiated. It's overkill for many.

Sure there's Vonage or Packet8, but if you look really closely, they look like repackaged dial tone. Because that's what they are.

I'm sharing these steps from the PhoneGnome site because it's important that you hear for yourself that these really are the steps.

1. Buy PhoneGnome

Your purchase includes the high-quality hardware you need to get started and essentially a "lifetime subscription" to the PhoneGnome services.

2. Setup is a snap

Connect PhoneGnome to your home network router, plug into an existing wall jack, and plug in any standard or cordless phone.

3. Use PhoneGnome

PhoneGnome automatically configures itself and you're ready to place and receive FREE calls, using ordinary phone numbers.

It just works. Out of the box, basic simple steps, it just works.

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Why on earth am I on a tirade? I'm sure you're asking. So let me explain.

For those of you who haven't read my interview with Alec, or seen the comments in other places on the net, iotum's Relevance Engine is a groundbreaking innovation that provides something business people need. I've reduced the analogy to one that many business people relate to - David Allen's Getting Things Done approach to time and task management. If you dig through all the bells, whistles, fine point and nuance of GTD, the one crucial step is to put things in context. To accomplish a task, you must be in the context to work on that particular task.

But we information professionals, and many others have a problem. We are interrupt driven.All it takes is a phone call to change our context. Let that Blackberry tweedle or that Treo vibrate and we are instantaneously transported from productivity to a phone call we wish had gone to voice mail.

iotum's Relevance Engine is to people what Getting Things Done is to tasks. It's a tool for managing personal context. I find it to be once of the most innovative concepts ever, yet also quite an intutive approach to managing myself in the continuum of time and space. But isn't that often the case? The most innovative and productive tools that give us exponential increases often seem so intuitive that we ask ourselves - why didn't we think of that sooner?

If there was a drawback to iotum's fabulous tools, it was that I really had to have an Asterisk system to leverage it to the best advantage. How many businesses or solo consultants and entreprenuers really need at Asterisk system of their own?

Enter a partnership with TelEvolution, and now you've got instant, painless VoIP services, leveraged in partnership to provide complete VoIP services with full personal context management. And with PhoneGnome, you get other tools. You get a wondrous Telemarketing Screening feature. Voice mail. Call blocking options if you wish. MobileGnome access so you can call your own system and use VoIP to place outbound calls is in beta right now.

Put a PhoneGnome at the ingress to your house, coupled with broadband Internet, and you've enabled your own electronic cottage
, replete with business services.

There have been numerous posts and stories about the efforts Alec and David are undertaking between iotum and TelEvolution. Here are a few:
iotum and TelEvolution Announce that PhoneGnome will Integrate iotum's Relevance Engine
‘Bumping Uglies’ with PhoneGnome
It’s Official! Phonegnome and iotum Together
Here's a Google search that gets plenty ot references
Here's a Technorati tag seach

I think Alec and David are quietly and humbly grateful for the visibility they've been getting, but this is grassroots, groundbreaking change.

I haven't yet tried using an ATA VoIP phone line as the dial tone for PhoneGnome. I suspect if I did, or if I set it up on an analog line in my corporate office, I'd find an enterprise model for self-enabling context management that could shake the foundations of how some enterprise organizations manage voice services.

I haven't taken PhoneGnome on the road yet, but having spent years as a road warrior, the potential is mind boggling.

If you're a corporate telcom manager, you may not be interested. If your focus is enterprise networks, this apprach may not be ready for your environment just yet. If you're an entrepreneur, SOHO, small business manager, consultant, road warrior, or home users looking to VoIP enable your home (think PhoneGnome as a VoIP gateway in tandem with yout broadband service connection), this is something you really need to investigate. Really.

And if this isn't far enough beyong Voice 2.0 to convince you that the old Bell system legacy is dead, read a little about what BridgePort Networks has been doing lately. Let BridgePort and Siemens bring a Fixed Mobile Convergence solution to bear on the IMS environment of the corporate network, and enterprise business will catch up to the rest of us - just as we start seriously thinking about how to kick Voice 3.0 into gear.


Technorati Tags: VoIP, Voice 2.0, iotum, Relevance Engine, TelEvolution, PhoneGnome, Voice 3.0, IMS, next generation voice