Well, don’t look too hard. I won’t be there. It’s not a reflection on the quality of the show, but rather the timing. It’s March, which is spring break time, and I have kids. But you can still find my partner Howard Thaw wandering the show, and if you need to contact him, you can give Kristen at the iotum offices a call at 613-482-9099.
As for me, we had planned to ski, but the weather has turned and rain is busily scrubbing the snow off the hills. Perhaps we’ll have to head farther away to find snow.
2006-03-12 1:51 pm | No Comments »
Tags: Tech & Business, Spring Break, VON
I’m doing a little catch-up on reading, and I’ve just come across the Skype For Business announcement that went out last week. It’s part re-positioning (yes, we’ve learned that 30% of our users are business users), and part partnering (with sales force, a couple of conferencing companies, and some hardware companies, including one that provides a Skype to PBX gateway). The technology announced (a system for grouping Skype-Out accounts to share minutes) was underwhelming. Net Net: the promise of a peer-to-peer business voice system is still being realized by Peerio, not Skype.
Ted Wallingford took the opportunity to have a jab at Skype over its proprietary protocols, while BusinessWeek published an extensive write-up about the size of the opportunity. It is a huge opportunity, no doubt. And it is true that Centrex is a rip-off.
The real question not being asked, in my opinion, is whether or not the Skype offering can be competitive. If 10% of small businesses today buy Centrex (as the Business Week article stated), then isn’t a premises solution like Asterisk, or the Epygi Quadro, more likely to dominate small business? Is the anemic adoption of Centrex a pricing issue, or is there some other reason why take-up is so poor?
What’s your opinion?
| 2 Comments »
Tags: Tech & Business, Centrex, Skype, Skype for Business, VoIP
