We've only been live at our new home here for a couple of days, but I've just posted the first Realtime Unified Communications podcast interview. We'll be doing more and more podcasts as we settle in here, and they'll all be available from the podcast tab right on our main page.

Yesterday morning I had the chance to spend a few minutes on the phone with Walter Snell, CEO at Pandora Networks. I've been watching Pandora closely for 2-3 months now as they've been getting some great positive review of the Worksmart solutions.

I have a bit of a personal bias against hosted or managed solutions. I know that bias is based on two driving factors. I've got some pretty detailed insight into the Centrex service of the past, and some very strong feelings that most Centrex services took advantage of customers in the worst predatory manner. But also, most of my work has been with large enterprise businesses, and thye typically have fairly robust IT and telecom groups to manage and support their own services.

The SMB business segment faces a different set of resource constraints and commonly just doesn't have the resources to focus on  IT support. In the SMB segment, companies really have to focus every bit of energy on their core business. For these folks, managed services offer an incredible value when properly managed.

Pandora's relationship with Salesforce.com, strategic partners, and Worksmart solutions bring real value to their customers, and the value's increasing as Pandora Networks continue to grow and widen their service offerings.

Plus, I really like a company with a solid mission statement that's easy to find. Pandora Networks put theirs online for everyone to see.

To help our customers achieve success with a reliable, on-demand IP communications service that improves communication, enables collaboration, and offers the best value proposition in the industry. We are committed to delivering a service that is easy to customize, integrate and use regardless of a customer's size, industry or geography; fitting the needs of each individual customer - as opposed to traditional cookie-cutter solutions.

I really like their focus on something other than traditional cookie-cutter solutions. To me that shows a forward-thinking vision to the real world of unified communications.

I'm not sure the podcast feed to iTunes and all is working right just yet, so for those of you who pick the podcasts up that way, I'd really appreciate a note to let me know if you pick it up there.

Technorati Tags: Pandora Networks, Walter Snell, Ken Camp, podcast, unified communications