I got a note from my good friend Pat Phelan, CEO at Cubic Telecom, yesterday afternoon while out running an errand about a new service called Twitterfone. You can see the press release down below. It isn't VoIP, but this is a really fascinating example of where voice services are heading.

Please bear in mind that I was out in mobile mode, with only my Blackberry, so all I'd actually seen initially was the flurry of chatter on Twitter about Twitterfone and the expected flurry of test posts as people try it out. Sheryl and I got invitations to join the beta, but weren't back at the office until last night to actually get that done. For those of you who follow me at all, you know I'm an avid Twitter user, and have been since it was Twttr, long before it caught the wave of popularity. Sheryl and I use Twitter as part of our work at Stardust Global Ventures, and it's an integral part of our daily life.

When I started using Twitter, it was SMS only, so it required a mobile phone to use. Now it seems to have come full circle, as Twitterfone enables people to use their mobile phone rather than the browser/ Huh? Yep/ The difference is that you can now phone in a message and have it post rather than key in an SMS text message. It also posts a short URL that links to your recorded audio.

Like a great many people, I use Twitter almost entirely via mobile on my Blackberry, and I like the raw simplicity of the SMS interface. I find many add-on tools make Twitter more complex and are something of a nuisance. The web interface enhancements seem to wipe out the simple elegance of Twitter with undue complexity. But adding voice to the mix is a very different enhancement and opens new vistas in human-to-network resource interaction.

I'm not sure the concept bedazzles me initially, but it's interesting. I've played with SpinVOX and Utterz in the past. Both can do a similar type of thing - variations on a theme. Both of those implementations work pretty poorly in my experience. Speech recognition software however is improving at a rapid rate and if Twitterfone can do speech to text conversion cleanly, there could be some real value. Given the global audience on Twitter, the language and pronunciation variations could prove challenging.

That challenge was on my mind while I out in mobile mode, only on my Blackberry. That's when I got this message via Twitter on my mobile -


To be fair, it's the only one of those I saw, but very few of the people I follow on Twitter are using Twitterfone so far. I know it's in invite-only beta mode, so I expect some glitches.

This morning I tried it out myself for the first time. Here's what Twitterfone posted. If you click the graphic, you can hear what I said.



Twitterfone did a reasonable, but not quite perfect job of speech-to-text conversion.

Given that both Twitter and Twitterfone are free services, and Twitter has proven time and again that it's not entirely reliable, they make an interesting match for social networking tools. Now it's pretty easy to make a phone call and post to Twitter. You can actually speak a three minute message and the beginning will post to Twitter (140 character limit). People who want to hear the whole message can click through on the web to do so. On my Blackberry, I can click through and read the transcribed text, but not play the audio.

Being able to post to Twitter via a phone call somewhat troubles me as much as it intrigues me. The stream of Twitter messages is filled with useless drivel as it is. I'm as guilty as the next of posting useless information that's only noise to the world at large. Now we all have an easier way to post as we drive or are otherwise occupied. That's a mixed blessing.

I know two of the founding investors, both friends I think highly of. I'm really curious what their long range plans are. Is this for publicity or do they envision a monetization scheme that enables monetization. So far Twitter doesn't have any monetization mechanism, so now we have another free service enhancing a free service. I'm not sure where the survivability might be. It seems potentially rather tenuous. But Pat and Florian are very bright guys with a great handle on the business, so I'm interested in what their vision is.

Pat and Florian, how about a podcast briefing on here?

Twitterfone inaugurates voice-to-Twitter service

• Allows anyone to send updates to Twitter by calling a number
• Voice is automatically transcribed to text

Twitterfone www.twitterfone.com - an Internationally backed voice to text message service launched today in the US, UK and Ireland.

Twitterfone voice-enables Twitter, a text message rebroadcast service and the hottest social networking service at the moment. With Twitterfone, people can dictate text messages via their mobile to be sent out to everyone on their Twitter social network.

Twitterfone investor and Cubic Telecom President Pat Phelan stated "Right now the million active users of Twitter use cell phones or computers to send and receive short bursts of texts to each other. Millions of messages each day are sent like this but while Twitter is one of the truly mobile social networks out there, there are times when users on the move cannot stop what they are doing to key in a message.

Twitterfone improves upon Twitter by allowing us to make a voice call which is turned into text and sent out to our network of friends. This only costs the price of a local call, no matter how many it is sent to. With hands-free kits common in cars it now means we can text each other without taking our eyes off the road and our hands off the wheel."

How Twitter works:
Once people sign up to Twitter, they can subscribe to receive updates of users and receive them via the web or a text message. Web gurus Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble have over 20,000 subscribers each and even the Los Angeles Fire Department and the English Government are now sending out text updates to people via their Twitter account.

An alliance of international high-tech and telecom companies provide the technology platform behind Twitterfone. Geneva-based VOX telecom provides calls routing, Redwood City, California-based Zong powers mobile enrollment and transactions, MAXroam powers the telephony intelligence system and Dublin firm Dial2Do supplies the core speech recognition which is at the heart of Twitterfone. Dial2Do CEO Ivan MacDonald stated

"We've been involved in the space where the phone system meets the web for a long time now, and naturally we've been fascinated by the rise of Twitter. Increasingly, we'll see "web 2.0" services that people use primarily from their phones. Projections are that mobiles will become the dominant way of accessing the Internet, and a lot of this will be done via voice interfaces. We are very pleased to see Dial2Do add even more value to an already extraordinary service."

Phelan added "We built this because we are all avid users of Twitter and have made some excellent business connections and friendships from it. We decided to see what we could contribute to the service and with our telecoms backgrounds the Twitterfone idea fitted perfectly".

Twitterfone is in invite beta at the moment meaning that only those that have been sent invites can join up. There will be regular releases of invites and Twitterfone says they have planned for a million sign-ups over the next year.

Twitterfone inc is a privately owned corporation

Twitterfone investors are Pat Phelan, David Marcus, Florian Seroussi, Sean O Sullivan and Ivan MacDonald.

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There are lots of acquisition talks in the news lately. Some make great sense and some just befuddle me. Here's one that makes great sense for both companies involved. Today, Sonus announced its acquisition of Atreus Systems, a Canadian-based company that delivers IP voice and advanced IP service provisioning software to consumer business and wholesale customers. Atreus Systems has been a Sonus partner for the last five years and by taking their proven technology and services under the Sonus umbrella, Sonus enhances its end-to-end solution to offer its customers the integration necessary to reach the value of their entire IP-solution.

The acquisition further strengthens Sonus' position as a trusted partner to the world's largest carriers, enabling the company to leverage its expertise to deliver enhanced customer services to the broadband industry. The combination of technology and services allows Sonus to best prepare for 4G, WiMAX and LTE as it will ease migration of carriers services to next generation networks. This one is a smart move!

SONUS NETWORKS EXPANDS ACCESS SERVICES PORTFOLIO WITH ACQUISITION OF ATREUS SYSTEMS

Acquisition Extends Company's Growing IP Services and Solutions with New Provisioning Services

Westford, MA., April 21, 2008 - Sonus Networks (Nasdaq: SONS), a market leader in IP communications infrastructure, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Atreus Systems, a supplier of IP voice and advanced IP service provisioning software. Atreus' expertise in the integration of operating support systems (OSS) and the provisioning of IP services for fixed-line and mobile operators' access networks fosters the evolution of IP architectures globally. The combination of Atreus' services and solutions with Sonus' leadership in IP infrastructure will enable carriers and network operators around the globe to rapidly deploy innovative communication services to their subscribers.

This acquisition demonstrates Sonus Networks' commitment to being a trusted partner for the world's largest carriers. With the Atreus solutions as part of the established Sonus Access portfolio, Sonus is able to provide comprehensive integration services for operators' growing IP-service portfolios, with the network management systems, billing and customer care systems providing a seamless consumer experience for the carrier subscriber.

"The combination of Sonus Networks and Atreus Systems provides the next step in creating a simple and integrated IP communications environment to manage next-generation communications services for consumers around the globe," said Hassan Ahmed, CEO at Sonus Networks. "The key to advancing complete IP networks for voice, data and multimedia services is to provide solutions that increase functionality and ease of use, allowing dependable and innovative environments that make IP services a reality. Our five-year relationship with Atreus convinced us that its technology will help accelerate the industry's growth and complement our access solution portfolio."

The IP provisioning software developed by Atreus Systems has been deployed with some of North America's largest carriers. The Atreus IP Service Provisioning Solution delivers pre-integrated, automated provisioning and configuration for a variety of devices, helping providers to deploy offerings quickly so that they can generate new revenue. Now as part of the Sonus Networks offering, operators will be able to leverage the dedicated expertise of the global Sonus team. Sonus has a heritage and deep understanding of IP infrastructure, applications and operators' operating systems, which are required to increase the speed of service delivery. Today, Sonus Networks' IP migration solutions offer one the most effective ways of getting new monetized services out to customers.

"Atreus Systems has built an award winning IP Service Provisioning Solution that helps providers deploy offerings quickly so that they can generate new revenue. The OSS in many of these large carriers is complex, so integration with their infrastructure is a key to the success of these deployments," said Andrea Baptiste, CEO at Atreus Systems. "With Atreus' joining Sonus Networks, customers will have access to the highest levels of IP integration expertise, and our technology will be available through a global organization to meet the growing demand for IP migrations and the necessary back office integration to deliver the mulitplay services required by business and home subscribers alike."

Founded in 1999, Atreus Systems is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. Atreus' provisioning platform is based on a robust and flexible industry-standard J2EE architecture that enables providers to provision new residential voice subscribers simply and rapidly using process automation, device- and vendor-specific adaptors, and wizard-driven self-service portals.

The financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

About Sonus Networks
Sonus Networks, Inc. is a market leader in IP communications infrastructure for wireline and wireless service providers. With its comprehensive IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) solution, Sonus addresses the full range of carrier applications, including residential and business voice services, wireless voice and multimedia, trunking and tandem switching, carrier interconnection and enhanced services. Sonus' voice infrastructure solutions are deployed in service provider networks worldwide. Founded in 1997, Sonus is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts. Additional information on Sonus is available at http://www.sonusnet.com.

This release may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Readers are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual future events or results. Readers are referred to Item 1A "Risk Factors" of Sonus' Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2007, filed with the SEC, which identifies important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Risk factors include among others: the impact of material weaknesses in our disclosure controls and procedures and our internal control over financial reporting on our ability to report our financial results timely and accurately; the unpredictability of our quarterly financial results; risks and uncertainties associated with the Company's restatement of its historical stock option granting practices and accounting including regulatory actions or litigation; risks associated with our international expansion and growth; consolidation in the telecommunications industry; and potential costs resulting from pending securities litigation against the Company. Any forward-looking statements represent Sonus' views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing Sonus' views as of any subsequent date. While Sonus may elect to update forward-looking statements at some point, Sonus specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, except as required by law.

Sonus is a registered trademark of Sonus Networks, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

Technorati Tags: Sonus Networks, Atreus, IP voice, service provisioning, unified communications

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In keeping with the work I've been doing on next month's eJournal here's another story on HD audio. Vapps, the leading provider of high-definition ad-hoc audio conferencing, will be announcing an upgrade to its Skype Extra plug-in tomorrow that will help Vapps users internationally. Those on Skype may click on the "Do More" menu, which will now appear and operate in Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish, in addition to English. This is bundled with other valuable features that appear in the press release below.

VAPPS UPDATES SKYPE EXTRA:
HIGH-DEFINITION CONFERENCING TOOL
LAUNCHES WITHIN SKYPE IN NINE LANGUAGES

With Skype's Contact List, a Click and a New Multilingual Interface,
Users Create Audioconferences in Which Two to 500 Sound Live and In-person

HOBOKEN, N.J.-April 22, 2008--Vapps, Inc., provider of affordable, flat-rate audioconferencing services with in-the-room sound quality, today announced an update of its Skype Extra, a plug-in that launches the full feature set of its High-Definition Conferencing (HD-C) service from within the globally adopted Skype™ internet communications application.

Vapps' added HD-C to Skype's Extras Gallery in October 2007, uniquely conferencing together public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Skype users for a value-priced flat monthly fee ranging from $25 for as many as 10 users to $200 for as many as 500. The convenience of Vapps' Skype plug-in--with 100,000 registered users to date--encourages frequent, ad-hoc use, and along with the flat-rate pricing makes it easier for growing companies with remote teleworkers to manage costs.

Those on Skype may click on the "Do More" menu option to open the HD-C plug-in, which will now appear and operate in Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish, in addition to English. From that interface, they can start meetings on the spot, inviting fellow Skype users by sending automated chat messages. (Should Skype contacts be caught with their headphones unplugged, the chat invite offers a telephone phone number for joining the conference as well.) They can also click on the interface's "schedule" button, auto-logging into the HD-C site, to schedule meetings of as many as 500 attendees and send e-mail invitations to others, as well as their Skype contacts.

Better-than-phone sound quality
Skype-connected participants enjoy unprecedented sound quality through the Vapps platform's wideband connectivity. The traditional phone system, with its century-old copper wiring, transmits a frequency range of only 3.5 kHz out of the 20 kHz or so the human ear can hear. With a range so clipped, "f" and "s" are indistinguishable, singing is tinny and people feel distant. Through the wideband data lines used by Skype and other VoIP providers, HD-C can fit a voice frequency range of 16KHz. Result: Attendees hear four times better, feel more "present" with more true-to-life sound and can better detect who is speaking. And as with any IP-to-IP voice call, they avoid local and international calling charges, a particular benefit to international phone conferences.

The expanded audio range also helps listeners understand speakers who have accents, and non-native speakers understand the conference language. In any language, it promotes comprehension and retention by alleviating the ear fatigue of long phone conferences, and transmits more of the speaker's inflection, nuance, attitude and even physical motion at a table or around the room.

Vapps' Skype Extra plug-in allows meeting coordinators to see who has joined or left, to mute and unmute participants and to record the conference. Attendees have their own HD-C browser-based controls with which to raise their hands, mute themselves and see who is on the conference.

To demonstrate high-definition voice quality to a conferencing public that has only known the phone, Vapps is offering a free, 10-day trial of its 25-user package. This provides unlimited conference calls for as many as 25 people on Skype and on the telephone. After ten days, users may sign up via credit card. Without sign-up, any further use of HD-C will be charged on a pay-as-you-go plan in cooperation with Skype, which will deduct four cents per minute of use from users' Skype Credits on Vapps' behalf.

"Millions of people have come to use and keep Skype running all day, every day," said Ben Lilienthal, Vapps CEO. "The update of our plug-in in the Skype Extras Gallery encourages more people to use High-Definition Conferencing to the fullest extent and as often as possible, for the same monthly price. It attaches in-person-quality, crystal-clear audioconferencing, scalability, recording and playback capability, and professional moderation controls to the Skype contact list at a time when more and more business people are using Skype."

About Vapps, Inc.
Vapps, Inc., based in Hoboken, N.J., provides managed audioconferencing solutions to the SMB, enterprise and service provider markets using its patent-pending, wide-band audioconferencing technology. Founded in 2003 by Ben Lilienthal and Jerry Norton, Vapps' flagship service is its High-Definition Conferencing (HD-C, www.highspeedconferencing.com), the first and only high-definition, flat-rate audioconference offering that can conference together a mixed participant group of PSTN phone and Skype users.

For Skype-using participants, HD-C transmits a much richer, more "in-the-room" voice quality than can be achieved with traditional phones, dramatically improving the productivity of team collaboration. Vapps' fees for an unlimited number of conferences and conference minutes start at a fixed $25 per month for 10 attendees and scale with the number of participants. For more information, please visit Vapps at www.vapps.com.
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Technorati Tags: Vapps, Skype, HD audio, conferencing

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As I work on next month's eJournal for the Realtime Unified Communications Community, one of the subjects I've been reading a lot about it HD voice; another is voice conferencing. Here's an announcement of them both coming together along with video.

ZTE Licenses SPIRIT's Voice Solution for HD Video Conferencing

MOSCOW, Russia - April 21, 2008 - SPIRIT DSP, the world's leading provider of voice and video software engines, announced today that ZTE Corporation ("ZTE"), a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, has licensed SPIRIT's voice solution to empower ZTE's HD (High Definition) video conferencing systems with outstanding quality voice, giving end-users a rich communication experience.

ZTE is the second largest telecom equipment supplier in China, right after Huawei, another SPIRIT customer. ZTE's product range is the most complete in the world, reaching more than 500 operators across 120 countries and covering virtually every sector of the wireline, wireless, terminal and service markets. In 2007, ZTE topped the global CDMA market at 43 percent of the world's total CDMA shipments. With SPIRIT's solution built inside ZTE's HD conferencing systems, end-users will experience HD quality communication, offering enhanced realism from significantly improved picture and sound quality.

The high-end videoconferencing market is surging very fast. Research firm IDC expects sales to nearly triple this year to $169 million from just $64 million last year, and reach $1 billion by 2011.

"We found SPIRIT's solution to far exceed all known similar software products in terms of quality, scalability and reliability. With SPIRIT's solution, there is no delay, transcoding or noise aggregation on the server side - the quality is magnificent and the software's ability to scale is almost limitless. We're pleased to be working with SPIRIT," said Huang Qiang, Chief Engineer of Multimedia Terminals Network Division at ZTE.

"This relationship with ZTE marks another major milestone in SPIRIT's commitment to continue supplying the world's leading communications equipment providers with the most advanced, high-definition communication technologies," said Alex Kravchenko, VP Sales at SPIRIT. "ZTE is a global telecom equipment supplier, and we're excited to be working with such a global established player to deliver perfect quality voice to the world."

About ZTE
ZTE is a worldwide telecoms equipment supplier, and China's only listed telecoms manufacturer, with shares publicly traded on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. ZTE was the only Chinese IT and telecoms manufacturer listed in BusinessWeek's 2005 Top 100 Information Technology Companies. Founded in 1985, with global headquarters in Shenzhen China, and operations in more than 100 countries, ZTE is a leading global provider of fixed line and mobile telecommunications equipment and network solutions. In 2005, ZTE has sales revenue of RMB 21.5 billion and about 400,000 employees worldwide. Visit http://wwwen.zte.com.cn.

About SPIRIT
SPIRIT DSP (www.spiritDSP.com) employs 140 professionals, and has been in the international software licensing business since 1992. A bootstrap company, SPIRIT has been profitable for 15 years. For the last 10 years, SPIRIT's focus has been on voice and video communication software products. SPIRIT counts among its customers Adobe, Agere, Arima, ARM, Atmel, Blizzard Entertainment, BT plc., Cisco, Compal, deltathree, Flextronics, Ericsson, HP, HTC, Huawei, Importek, Korea Telecom, Kyocera, LG, MediaRing, Microsoft, NEC, Nortel Networks, NXP, Oracle, Paltalk, Polycom, Quanta, Radvision, Reigncom, Samsung, Siemens, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, Trinity Convergence and Veraz, and among 200+ other communication OEMs and software vendors. SPIRIT communication software is used in over 80 countries and powers more than 100 million embedded voice channels. SeeStorm is a SPIRIT affiliate for synthetic video conferencing.

TeamSpirit is a registered trademark and IP-MR is a trademark of SPIRIT DSP. All other trademarks and/or registered trademarks are registered to their respective owners.

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Technorati Tags: ZDE, SPIRIT DSP, video, conferencing

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Last week I had the chance to chat with Siemens about their new OpenScape Contact Center solution that's being announced today. While the individual piece part components for this solution are available to anyone ready to put them together today, this new packaging bundles the Siemens OpenScape UC Server and OpenScape Contact Center into two new bundles and portal offering that provide easy integration into the enterprise. The bundles are available June 30th.

The target business for this solution ranges from mid-sized to very large call centers. Very large, in this case, means the Siemens solution can support up to 7500 agents in a single contact center. That's larger than any that I know of. The largest in operation at companies like American Express, may range up to 4-5,000 agents

During our conversation, we took some time to really work through some of the highlights, and I thought I'd share my impressions here. The bundles are interesting, but they really are packaging of existing solutions that people can put together themselves to create the same functionality.

One of the major drivers in releasing improved contact center solutions is to aid in resolving calls on first contact. First contact resolution is a key metric for any call center environment, and typically 25% or more of calls have to be escalated outside the contact center to other enterprise resources and personnel for resolution. To increase the odds of first call resolution, Siemens is working to streamline the process. They clearly recognize the value of speedy recognition of problems.

Siemens UC server is a software only solution that will run on many hardware platforms.

The visual above shows how everythings stacks together. in terms of the OpenScape Applications, with the new addition of the Contact Center in the yellow box on the far right. The other pieces already exist. I'ts really important to note the very top row of boxes - CEBP integration. Siemens really "gets it" when it comes to the importance of Communications Enhance Business Process (CEBP), and this detail shows just how committed they are to supporting the next generation of integration between network services and enterprise business applications.


In this visual, we get a sense of the packaging that enables the SIP-based Contact Center. There's also a softphone client, so hardware phones aren't required.

Not, in yellow, the presence and collaboration view. I think this is one of the most important pieces of this bundling and Siemens' approach. Agents can see each others' presence and status information. While this is simply leveraging earlioer call center supervisor functionality that began four years ago with their Agile product, it's a powerfula contact center tool.

Not only can the contact center agents see one another, they can be set up to see presence and status of resources throughout the entire enterprise. If 25% of calls require outreach to other parts of the business, this provides a powerful tool to increase the chances of first call problem resolution. And the presence view fully supports Jabber and Sametime, making it highly interoperable.



This visual simply providers a view of the bundling packages that will be available.



This last slide shows a couple of peeks at how things work. The top graphic is the existing desktop. On the right, we get a glimpse of the presence view. It's a common IM client look and feel, making ease of learning and use a minimal impact on work processes,

Collaboration happens today between the contact center and the rest of the enterprise, but it happens in a very non-structured form. Siemens OpenScape Contact Center solution brings structure, manageability and reporting capabilities to improve contact center efficiencies.

Here's the actual press release.
NOTE: Reposted on 4/22 as a revision to the press release. Pricing in the version I'd posted had changed.

Siemens Announces New OpenScape® Contact Center Solution for the OpenScape Unified Communications Server

Software-based offering provides Voice, UC and Contact Center capabilities in one integrated package

BOCA RATON, Fla. — April 21, 2008 — Siemens Communications, Inc. today introduced the OpenScape® Contact Center, a comprehensive voice, unified communications and customer interaction software solution designed to work with virtually any existing telephony environment. It is based on Siemens’ innovative new unified communications software foundation, OpenScape Unified Communications (UC) Server, which removes the artificial legacy barriers between today’s traditionally separate voice, video and unified communications systems to enable a comprehensive suite of UC applications.

The OpenScape Contact Center offering builds on the presence-enabled HiPath® ProCenter Enterprise contact center application to provide a platform to enhance customer interactions across multiple segments of an enterprise, on virtually any existing communication or network infrastructure. Coupled with the OpenScape Voice Application, this robust solution supports environments of up to 7,500 active agents and includes optional voice and contact center server redundancy with automated fail-over to help ensure availability of mission critical customer interaction systems.

Leveraging the OpenScape UC Server foundation, it can provide agents with an aggregated, unified desktop client view of all contact center personnel and enterprise users’ presence and availability. This enables agents to specifically address urgent, complex, or sensitive customer interactions requiring escalation beyond the contact center and drives up first contact resolution by tapping the knowledge and expertise across the enterprise in real-time.

The OpenScape Contact Center also addresses the traditional limitations of the hardware intensive site-based contact center by migrating to SIP and providing the new OpenScape UC Application, Personal Edition, soft phone and productivity desktop for each agent. This SIP-based contact center virtualization capability makes every agent a UC user, while enabling agents to work in any location equipped with just headsets and minimally configured desktops. This easy, software-based expansion of ‘on-demand’ agents offers enterprises dramatic opportunities to leverage their distributed resources across multiple sites, branch offices, remote or home-based locations with secure IP network access.

Also announced today, the new IP-based Voice Portal application complements the OpenScape UC Server and adds to Siemens’ already robust offering by delivering a comprehensive, natural speech enabled self-service solution. The open standards-based Voice Portal solution can help enhance the experience of customers calling in to a contact center by providing enhanced self-service options as well as more seamless integration with the contact center routing engine and virtual agents. It can help improve the opportunity to resolve issues on the first call while optimizing the use of agents and technology.

“The OpenScape Contact Center solution is further evidence of Siemens’ ongoing transformation into a software-oriented company and is an important piece of the OpenScape UC Server platform,” said Dana Rasmussen, President of Siemens Communications, Inc. “This solution rounds out Siemens’ suite of UC applications by delivering a comprehensive, robust offering that demonstrates the value of Open Communications in customer interactions.”

Computacenter, an IT service and solution provider that recently migrated its contact center service to the OpenScape Contact Center, saw the new solution as a means to help achieve their stated goals as a multi-national service provider. “We saw this as a way to increase our scalability, flexibility and resiliency. We are invigorating operations across multiple European and offshore locations using a highly scalable and more cost effective software deployment model. We are looking to expand our presence and collaboration capabilities into the virtualized enterprise,” said Gavin McLachlan, UK IS director at Computacenter.

Pricing and Availability
The OpenScape Contact Center packaged offering, which includes the OpenScape UC Server, OpenScape Voice, HiPath ProCenter Enterprise, and OpenScape UC Application, Personal Editions, will be generally available June 30, 2008. The package starts at $42,500 for 100 voice users, 10 agents and 1 manager. The new Voice Portal solution is currently available, with pricing based on customer configuration starting at $31,150 based a 48-port configuration.

About Siemens
Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is one of the largest global electronics and engineering companies with reported worldwide sales of $107.4 billion in 2006. Founded 160 years ago, the company is a leader in the areas of Medical, Power, Automation and Control, Transportation, Information and Communications, Lighting, Building Technologies, Water Technologies and Services and Home Appliances. With its U.S. corporate headquarters in New York City, Siemens in the USA has sales of $21.4 billion and employs approximately 70,000 people throughout all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Eleven of Siemens' worldwide businesses are based in the United States. With its global headquarters in Munich, Siemens AG and its subsidiaries employ 480,000 people in 190 countries. For more information on Siemens in the United States: www.usa.siemens.com.

About Siemens Communications, Inc.
Siemens Communications, Inc. is an affiliate of Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG, one of the world's leading suppliers of Unified Communications technologies. The company's unique Open Communications approach to providing software, solutions and services for enterprises of all sizes enables business processes to be more productive, faster and more secure - with any device, network or information technology infrastructure. Siemens Communications, Inc. and Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG are wholly owned subsidiaries of Siemens AG, which has its global headquarters in Munich, Germany.

Note: Siemens, OpenScape and HiPath are registered trademarks of Siemens AG or its subsidiaries and affiliates. All other company, brand, product and service names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

This release contains forward-looking statements based on beliefs of Siemens management. The words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "forecast," "expect," "intend," "plan," "should," and "project" are used to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the company's current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause the actual results to be materially different, including, among others, changes in general economic and business conditions, changes in currency exchange rates and interest rates, introduction of competing products, lack of acceptance of new products or services and changes in business strategy. Actual results may vary materially from those projected here. Siemens does not intend or assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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Technorati Tags: Siemens, contact center, call center, unified communications

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Big congratulations to friends James Body and Dean Elwood and the entire Truphone team. They've been working hard for some time now and showing continual success and improvement. Truphone's recent acquisition of SIM4travel opened a whole new universe of potential for Truphone, and this investment shows that the VC community sees just how solid Truphone's approach is.

TRUPHONE RAISES £16.5M [$32.7M] IN SERIES B ROUND
New round to fund ongoing development of world's first global mobile operator

London, UK - 17^th April 2008 - Mobile internet network operator Truphone has raised £16.5m ($32.7m) of Series B venture capital funding.

The round was led by private investors, with all of Truphone's existing backers - Burda Digital Ventures, Eden Ventures, Independent News & Media and Wellington Partners - also participating.

Truphone is a global, mobile operator that enables free and low-cost mobile phone calls via the internet, offering dramatic value to customers. Through the recent purchase of SIM4travel, Truphone has also completed its GSM core network, which will enable it to offer low-cost GSM calls worldwide via a travel SIM.

With the additional funding available from the new round, Truphone plans to deliver on its vision of providing a killer combination of mobile cost and mobile convenience: a single, global SIM card that offers not only low call charges both domestically and abroad, but also internet calls at free and ultra-low prices.

"We aim to provide ultimate price and convenience, wherever you are. One world, one SIM," commented James Tagg, Truphone's CEO. "Beyond that, as a 'Voice 2.0' company we can start to develop and introduce new internet-based features and applications that give customers a richer mobile experience."

"The additional funding reflects the investors' belief in and understanding of this vision. The capital will enable us to structure and focus our business to ensure that everything we do contributes towards the achievement of our aims," he said.

John McMonigall, chairman of Truphone's Board of Directors, said: "As we enter the next phase of the Truphone revolution, the success of this financing round makes it clear that our investors recognise the business opportunity from convergence and disruption in the mobile space."

In December 2006, Truphone raised £12.5m ($24.5m) in Series A funding, believed to be the European technology sector's largest Series A venture funding of 2006.

The company has developed a carrier-grade, global operator infrastructure including a global network of SIP gateways, a Nokia Siemens Networks mobile network Home Location Register (HLR) and a GSM identifier. The infrastructure is capable of supporting 40 million customers worldwide.

This is all enabled by a series of global agreements with PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) providers.

For additional information, visit www.truphonepressoffice.com.

Technorati Tags: Truphone, mobility

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Congratulations to Agito Networks for being named as one of the finalists in the Red Herring awards. It's a huge honor for any company to make it into this list recognizing private technology innovators.

Agito's solutions look really interesting and I need to get back in coordination mode with Dan Spalding, their Director of Marketing, to do a podcast briefing and see if I can get my hands on some evaluation gear to test and write about.

AGITO NETWORKS NAMED FINALIST FOR RED HERRING NORTH AMERICA 100 AWARD OUT OF MORE THAN 800 COMPANIES
Agito Networks Wins Finalist Honor for Award Recognizing the Most Promising Companies Driving the Future of Technology

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - April 16, 2008 - Agito Networks, Inc.Ô, the award-winning company delivering new technology in enterprise mobility, today announced that it has been named a finalist for the Red Herring 100 Award, an award recognizing the most innovative private technology companies based in North America.

The Red Herring editorial board diligently surveyed the entrepreneurial scene throughout the North American region and identified the top 200 finalists out of more than 800 closely evaluated companies that are leading the next wave of innovation. Agito Networks has been recognized by Red Herring due to its innovative RoamAnywhere Mobility Router, which uniquely fuses 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs), enterprise IP telephony, the carrier cellular network and location technology, improving mobile worker accessibility and responsiveness to increase mobile worker productivity (http://www.agitonetworks.com/products/).

"We can see the exciting evolution of the technology sector reflected in the quality and variety of exceptional companies that we had to choose from in putting our list together," said Joel Dreyfuss, editor-in-chief of Red Herring. "It was tough to choose just 200 finalists from such a large list of excellent contenders, and we are very happy with the quality of the companies we selected as finalists."

"Red Herring is a leading publication for business decision makers and technology investors, and we are pleased to receive this honor from them," said Rob Markovich, Agito Networks Chief Executive Officer. "This recognition is one of a growing list of honors Agito Networks has received in 2008. Improving mobile worker productivity and reducing cellular expenses are clear pain points for enterprises, and Agito is differentiated by its unique WiFi-integrated, location-aware approach to enterprise mobility, and its ability to scale and meet the complex mobile convergence needs of medium and large enterprises."

Agito's innovative, patent-pending location-aware technology allows enterprises to mobilize voice by taking full advantage of their 802.11 WLAN deployments as a low-cost alternative to cellular networks for in-building enterprise mobility. Leveraging voice over WLAN (VoWLAN) and enterprise grade dual mode (cellular and WiFi) mobile phones enables enterprises to reduce cellular expenses by as much as 60 percent, and avoid deploying costly, carrier-specific equipment to address poor cellular coverage. To ensure a seamless user experience, the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router provides the industry's fastest <100ms, automatic handover between the enterprise WLAN networks and any carrier cellular network.

The 100 winning companies will be announced at the Red Herring North America event. The CEOs of the winning startups will present their innovative ideas and technologies to an audience of leading entrepreneurs, financiers, and corporate strategists at the event in San Jose, Calif., on May 12-14 at the Fairmont Hotel. This year's Red Herring 100 North America event marks the 11th anniversary of the Red Herring 100 Awards. In celebration, the event will feature keynote addresses from legendary VC investors and CEOs of leading Internet, information, and communications companies. Register at: http://herringevents.com/northamerica08/index.html

The RoamAnywhere Mobility Router is unlike any enterprise mobility solution seen to date. The patent-pending, RF-based location aware technology ensures that in-building calls stay on the enterprise WLAN (using VoWLAN), to reduce cellular expenses and provide low-cost in-building coverage to eliminate dropped or poor quality calls. As part of an enterprise's mobile Unified Communications strategy, RoamAnywhere increases accessibility and productivity of today's workforce by delivering voice applications to mobile devices. Agito's patent pending sub-second, automatic handover of calls between WiFi and cellular is transparent to users. Agito's solution gives IT administrators the confidence to roll out VoWLAN across their enterprise, knowing the user experience will be as good as their wired phones, and that they can significantly reduce cellular expenses.

About Red Herring
Red Herring is a global media company which unites the world's best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider's access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available at www.redherring.com.

About Agito Networks
Agito Networks is the award-winning technology leader in enterprise mobility. Its product, the RoamAnywhere Mobility Router, is an innovative enterprise fixed mobile convergence (eFMC) platform enabling enterprises to extend voice and Unified Communications to cell phones. RoamAnywhere is the first and only network appliance that fuses enterprise wireless LANs, carrier cellular networks, IP telephony and location technology to mobilize voice and data applications, while remaining agnostic to customers' choices of carrier and equipment vendors. Agito enables low-cost in-building voice coverage, reduced cellular costs, improved enterprise visibility and control over cellular usage, and better accessibility and responsiveness for mobile workers. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., the company is venture backed, led by Battery Ventures. Go to http://www.agitonetworks.com for more information.

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Technorati Tags: Agioto Networks, Red Herring, innovators

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Catching up on the news today, and there's quite a bit to see. Here's an announcement that caught my eye from my friends at Sigma Systems. They've shown some real leadership in a couple of key areas in the past year, and that's paying off as they cross the 1000 million threshold in service fulfillment. That's a significant number. Congrats to Sigma Systems.

Sigma Systems surpasses 100 million managed Quad-Play IP services globally, extending its market leadership position

Toronto, ON - April 16, 2008 - Sigma Systems (www.sigma-systems.com) today announced that its IP service fulfilment solution has surpassed managing over 100 million bundled IP services for communications service providers globally. The company's award-winning advanced IP service fulfilment solutions, which enable efficient delivery of new services such as VoIP, IPTV, mobile and broadband data services over any network technology to any device, continue to drive Sigma's success in well over 50 deployments worldwide.

"We are proud to be ensuring the highest levels of service fulfilment and satisfaction for our service provider customers who are, in turn, providing their own customers with an unprecedented service experience,"
said Tim Spencer, President and COO for Sigma Systems. "Our extensive market deployments in the IP service fulfilment space is bolstered by the strength of our solutions, the company's strong financial performance and our recognized expertise in IP service fulfilment. Sigma remains poised for continued and accelerating growth in the cable space and holds significant growth potential within the wireless, telco and satellite markets."

Sigma's customers include some of the largest service providers in the world, with more than 50 successful installations in North America, EMEA, CALA and AsiaPac. In addition, Sigma boasts the most widely deployed residential VoIP service management solution, with over six million lines of voice telephony deployed worldwide.

"The broadband IP services market will grow 18% CAGR through 2011 according to OSS Observer's Communications Service Provider Market Review, September 2007. Cable MSOs and telcos alike are increasing their investments in service fulfilment for both commercial and residential services," said Larry Goldman, Founder and Senior Analyst at OSS Observer. "With its triple play deployment history, Sigma Systems is well positioned to capitalise in these market segments."

"We see three key trends affecting the requirements for IP service fulfilment platforms within the service provider market," adds Sigma's Tim Spencer. "The number of services is exploding in this everything-on-demand (X-OD) application environment. People are accessing services and content with a wide range of devices. Thirdly, two-sided-business models and the supporting enablers that allow service providers and their partners the freedom to roll out a broad range of IP Services are paramount to their collective long-term success."

A privately held company, Sigma is debt-free, profitable and has achieved an annual growth rate averaging 46% for the past four consecutive years.

About Sigma Systems
Sigma Systems (www.sigma-systems.com) is the proven global leader in delivering advanced IP service fulfilment solutions. Sigma's powerful OSS solutions enable the world's Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to deliver any service, over any access technology to any device. The company's award-winning software solutions include products for the fulfilment of Triple, Quad and All-Play services - defined as "New Services...Delivered".

Sigma is a pioneer of Applications Enablement where new services and applications can be rapidly and efficiently enabled in a single system.

Enablement includes service orchestration - where subscriber policy management, authorisation and entitlement processes, and business rules are managed and openly available for real-time service fulfilment.

Sigma's heritage includes over 12 years of proven solution delivery experience in multi-service, multi-technology operating environments.

Today, Sigma manages 50 deployments for CSPs with a combined total of approximately 100 million IP services deployed worldwide.

Technorati Tags: Sigma Systems, IP services, VoIP, unified communications

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Recently I had the chance to look over a case study of a Junction Networks solution deployed with Brighter Planet. You can read that writeup here.



This morning I had the chance to chat with Michael Oeth from Junction Networks and Seamus Abshere from Brighter Planet about this implementation. Please join me and listen in to our conversation.

Posted by Ken Camp | Permalink | Comments (1) |

Unified communications isn't all about voice. It isn't even all about phones. The web, and its evolution come into play as a huge part of how we integrate all communications.

There's a news story this morning that's been getting a lot of buzz and discussion.

Is the Mobile Web Dead? Some Mobile Entrepreneurs Say Yes

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / April 14, 2008 5:29 PM

Former Yahoo! Mobile evangelist turned startup entrepreneur Russell Beattie announced today that he's calling it quits for his company Mowser because the market for mobile browsing is taking a fast turn for the worse. "The mobile traffic just isn't there," Beattie says, "It's not there now, and it won't be."

Beattie's announcement comes just two months after mobile blogger and consultant Michael Mace wrote a much discussed post titled Mobile Applications, RIP.

"The business of making native apps for mobile devices is dying, crushed by a fragmented market and restrictive business practices," Mace wrote.

[Read full post]

I was involved in conference call discussing this topinc this morning and found my own theory spilling out in a pretty ad hoc mode as I reacted to some of the conversation. Here are some of the thoughts that spilled out.

First, I don't think the Mobile Web was ever a viable concept. It was a window of opportunity that allowed carriers and providers a brief opportunity to give the illusion of real innovation by packaging browser content slightly differently.

The mobile web is dead because the web is mobile. Today people uses iPhones, Blackberries, smartphones, gaming consoles, and all manner of other devices to access the web.

Some folks on the call described the the iPhone browser as disruptive and a complete change to the browsing experience. I disagree. I expressed my view that the browser itself is rapidly dying.

With the rise in what we call cloud computing, and the increasing reliance on the browser to access web applications, I actually argued that Web 2.0 has been almost entirely about cosmetics. Web 2.0 sites get a new look, round the edges on the boxes, and present a facelift. But the underlying technology and capability certainly didn't change an evolutionary generation.

Web 2.0 has all been a cosmetic facelift illusion. And the browser is badly in need of a paradigm shift. (Yes I took a beating for using that phrase0.

I'd argue that the browser, still based on the old tired original browser interface, is old, tired, and dying. It's as obsolete as the ten-digit dial pad on a telephone. These are two interfaces, the two primary interfaces, into the unified communications world. We're using old user interfaces to do new things.

I think the next generation web (WebNG for the sake of argument), will bring new tools, new interfaces, new ways of itneracting with cloud computing resources. Yes, a paradigm shift in user behavior and interaction.

What form will that take? Voice recognition? Eye movement? A new way of using gestures to interact with devices? Perhaps some combination.

What do you think? Leave your thoughts in comments.

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