A story out of Australia regarding some statements by two Gartner analysts and Cisco's John Chambers seems to point in the right direction for some 2.0 type companies, including some my agency represents.
In reading the Computerworld article this morning I couldn't help but feel overjoyed for the implied endorsement of client SightSpeed when the author quoted Cisco's John Chambers' remark about cost savings related to travel by using video conferencing. While only a few but the largest companies will be able to take advantage of the planned Telepresence platform Cisco is planning to roll out, any individual or company can immediately take advantage of Sightspeed today, for free.
I also see these comments helping to move iotum, another agency client's efforts along the right way. As more and more companies and people need to better manage where there attention is placed throughout the day, the iotum Relevance Engine squarely solves that problem allowing people to collaborate better and not be interrupted by untimely callers. This also bodes well for companies in the web conferencing space like WebDialogs, and their Unyte platform which makes web conferencing as easy as a click of the button, and just like SightSpeed does fosters better and easier collaboration.
This next comment really hit home especially as it applies to pals Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet's GrandCentral:
Finally, Fabbi and Hafner say ICT executives who save a big chunk of money on such things as bandwidth should use that money on technologies such as application acceleration, unified communications, mobility and voice over wireless LAN. “Don’t focus on a better network”, Hafner advises. “Focus on a better business.’’
Having used GrandCentral in beta I've found a few bugs, but Vincent and Craig are fixing them almost as fast as they are found, or at least know what's causing some of the issues. Those are minor compared to the convenience which Grand Central is bringing to the masses. The comments by Gartner also validates what guys like iotum's Alec Saunders, Yahoo's Jeff Bonforte (VP to Be I say) and Brad Garlinghouse, PhoneGnome inventor David Beckemeyer, AOL Senior VP Ragui Kamel (leader of the AIM PhoneLine project and Ecosystem) and Jeff Pulver have all been saying from the start, and which I have been saying from the earliest days of this blog, that the applications will be where the money is.
There comment about Mobility brings up the recent Georgia Tech announcement for their new 3G Lab. Many leading companies like Cingular and Siemens have jumped on to help make this lab possible, and applications like the BridgePort MobileVoIP solution, one I have been well informed about since it's very start that enables seamless automatic network selection and mid-call voice handovers between networks is another winner based on the analysts comments.
In essence the Gartner analyst team has done is said to business basically, use the 2.0 applications with your 1.0 phones and networks.
As I think about this point I have never heard a better long way around the barn compliment for PhoneGnome and David's vision of layering in more to what you already have in place (your PSTN phone line). Want proof, just realize that Alec Saunders' iotum already works with PhoneGnome. Want more. Look at how iotum will work later this year with AIM PhoneLine.
What this means is you don't need to throw away the old to have the new. With a little imagination the old and new can coexist and make for a better phone world. Now only if the incumbent carriers would realize that, wouldn't all this Voice 2.0 activity really become a reality!!
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