With M5 VoIP we connect our clients directly to our voice data center over a private point-to-point circuit, usually a T1.  Each client has their own dedicated primary and back up connectivity. This direct connection to us allows us to monitor and manage the circuits and guarantee high quality calls.

But as new internet options have become available some offices may be interested in using their own internet connections, either to save money, for smaller offices with fewer employees, or for remote workers located anywhere.

“People don’t even know you’re not in the office. We have phones all over the world and in every continent in the world (with the exception of Antarctica). Running on all sorts of bandwidth connections – from Gigabit Fiber to wireless mifi’s to 56k dialup…. We get compliments about how someone was able to do something in a faraway land they never could before.”   – Ray Lieu, VP of Service Development

This generally works great, but you are still at the mercy of the public internet. Some legwork has to be done to ensure your internet connection can handle VoIP calls. You have to look at things like available bandwidth, quality of connection and ways to prioritize or segment voice traffic (also known as Quality of Service). Ray continues on..

“Everyone will have a slightly different experience, and while I would say my experiences have all been positive – we certainly do get the occasional customer who has a bad network situation.”

This is related to available bandwidth and bandwidth quality.

Prior to making the switch to VoIP, you should calculate the total bandwidth needed to send and receive your calls. You can do this by multiplying the number of anticipated simultaneous calls times the bandwidth required for voice calls. This varies between approximately 30Kbits per second to 90Kbits per second and should be added on top of existing data needs.

New internet options are becoming available with more bandwidth than ever: Fios, Cable Wideband, Microwave, WiMax, you name it. But many of these are asynchronous connections, they have quite limited upload capacity in comparison to download. This can cause big problems with VoIP.

Franko Franicievich on the M5 technology team says that along with ensuring there is adequate bandwidth is ensuring that the bandwidth used is of high-quality. A few things to look at are latency, jitter, and packet loss.

Latency is caused by distance between the office and switching stations. It causes a delay on the voice, like old long distance phone calls. It can take half a second or more to hear the other side. If you get this, there’s usually not much that can be done except to switch internet providers.

Jitter is often caused by overused links, or heavy web downloads. Check to see if your standard office data usage is higher than expected; from big downloads, streaming, etc. Otherwise, it might be the ISP is oversubscribing the link or exchange you’re on – this is a common problem with cable and FIOS. You might have to upgrade your connection or switch ISP’s.

The network team at M5 can help you look at all these, and let you know if you should be okay, if you have to upgrade your connection or switch to a M5 dedicated line. Ray leaves us with this advice.. “I see dedicated connectivity as call quality insurance. Get it if you never want to have to think about call quality issues.” For most businesses it makes sense to have one less thing to worry about.

On Tuesday, Apple announced its new Magic Trackpad, a standalone version of the trackpad so familiar to users of Apple’s line of MacBook laptops. The Magic Trackpad is designed to be used with Mac desktops as a replacement for their mouse, and TechCrunch’s MG Siegler argues that its release indicates the beginning of the end of the mouse’s reign in personal computing.

The notion of the mouse’s disappearance apparently provoked quite a response. There was such controversy in the comment section that Siegler was prompted to write another article backing up his original argument. “I mean come on, it’s a mouse,” he exclaims in his follow up. “Does anyone really think it’s going to be the main way we interact with computers in the future? It’s a 50-year old technology for Chrissakes.”

I personally agree with Siegler. Computers will undoubtedly continue to evolve at their rapid pace, and with the proliferation of touch technology and other methods of input, the mouse could easily become a curiosity from the past within the next quarter-century. Personal computing will move further away from the desktop and into the more portable realms of tablets and beyond, and the mouse, which is a fully external and cumbersome device, will be too impractical to tag along. The Magic Trackpad is an early signal of the end of the mouse era.

Certainly, the mouse will continue to exist. There are some things that it does exceptionally well, and I could see it maturing into a specialized tool for designers, architects, etc. But the mouse will one day cease to be the input instrument of choice for the personal computing masses.

Apple’s Magic Trackpad Signals The End Of The Mouse Era

Easily the most interesting thing Apple unveiled today is the new Magic Trackpad. Essentially, it’s a larger version of the trackpads that ship with each MacBook and MacBook Pro. But it’s a stand-alone product, meant to be used with desktop computers. So why did Apple feel the need to make such a product? It’s about trends and the future.

“Looking at the big picture, more users are using our trackpad because there are more notebook users than desktop users,” an Apple representative told me today when discussing the Magic Trackpad. Laptops have been Apple’s best-selling computers for some time now. And as time goes on, despite some of the new desktop products unveiled today, we can likely expect the gap between laptops and desktops to increase. This will mean an increasing number of users who are accustomed to using their computers via these trackpads. So this new product makes sense for users who are interested in buying Apple desktops as well.

“People love the trackpad. People love those characteristics. So we wanted to bring that kind of design to our desktop users,” the Apple rep told me. So Apple designed the product (in conjunction with the wireless keyboard) to bring everything people like about the trackpads over to the desktop experience. Pinch-to-zoom, inertial scrolling, tap-to-click, it’s all there.

via Apple’s Magic Trackpad Signals The End Of The Mouse Era. Posted by MG Siegler.

Some great coverage for us showed up the other day on msnbc.com as part of a post on how to keep employees engaged and satisfied during tough times. Last year, we ran an employee engagement program called M5 Rock. We split up into ten cross-functional teams from all over our company that collaborated on everything from lighthearted scavenger hunts to enterprise issues, such as business plans for new products. The program ran for a full year, and led to a marked increase in both employee and customer satisfaction scores for us, as well as a terrific feeling of camaraderie around the office. It’s great to hear that M5 Rock is now being used as an example for other firms to follow!

Wanted: Fully Engaged Employees

How do you get your employees engaged in unsettled times?

Last year, when the economy was dragging and stress levels were soaring, New York-based telecommunications firm M5 Networks Inc. launched a year-long team growth program, “M5 Rock.” The company’s 100 employees were divided into 10 cross-functional teams from different parts of the organization, says president and CEO Dan Hoffman. In addition to competing in scavenger hunts and other teambuilding activities, the teams worked together on business issues such as developing new sales pitches and writing business plans for new products. Being asked for feedback and seeing that their ideas were valued led employees to become more invested in their jobs. After the program’s end, Hoffman saw a 10-point increase on customer satisfaction surveys, as well as increases in employee satisfaction surveys.

“When you ask employees for their input in solving business issues, it is absolutely amazing what they will come up with,” Durkin says.

via How to keep your employees engaged – msnbc.com. Posted by Nancy Mann Jackson.

Here at M5, we want to make the desk phone experience as useful and immersive as the modern smartphone experience. They may not be as sexy as their mobile counterparts, but as our CEO Dan Hoffman says, desk phones are always going to be an integral part of enterprise communications. “We see desk phones remaining in the future – they’ll just be one part of the mix [of many available communications tools]“. But as TJ Thinakaran writes in a post on ReadWriteWeb, applications for voice networks have been lagging behind the innovation in the smartphone market.

Thinakaran says that voice network applications are essential to allow businesses to interact meaningfully with their customers. Desk phone apps can find data from across different sources, and display it at the right time to make the conversation more relevant and more personal. The cloud can create “the illusion of simplicity,” says Thinakaran. “The tasks of setting up trunk groups, interacting with carriers, and so on are taken care of by the service provider, who in turn provides open, on-demand APIs to connect, create and execute calls.” The user has to focus only on the conversation at hand.

M5 has been working hard to develop such voice applications and integrate them into our own Smart Business Phone System. “We’re trying to create a comprehensive system you can access from anywhere,” Hoffman says. Just last week, we launched M5Connect, connecting web browsing directly to phone calls. All of the most utilized tools in the enterprise arsenal should be tied together. The desk phone needs to evolve along with the people who are using it.

Developers: Where Are Your Voice Network Apps?

In the race toward capitalizing on the smartphone boom, application developers are focused on creating apps for smartphones, but very little attention is being given to creating apps for the voice network.

The phone call is no longer considered sexy. However, just like the human need for conversation, the phone call is never going to go away. People will always talk, and that conversation will continue to be a perennial part of any communication strategy. Building apps for the smartphone may be cool, but building apps for the voice network is essential.

The nature of the phone call is rapidly evolving, especially as it relates to commerce. As businesses fight to stay relevant in the conversation – no pun intended – they see the value of using new data streams to access customers and utilizing existing streams effectively. They do this by using the telephone to send out a message that attracts customers.

There is a need to personalize the phone call. It’s a direct response to the fact that people have little patience for the generic phone message, especially in this microblogging age. Unless it’s apparent early on in the message that it was meant specifically for them, it’s going to take a lot more to get the customer’s attention. Not only does the phone call need to be personalized for each customer, but this personalization has to be able to scale with the business.

via Developers: Where Are Your Voice Network Apps?. Posted by TJ Thinakaran.

In the pre-internet era (yes, a very long time ago indeed), consumers often sought the advice of others before making a purchasing decision (“Hello Eli, any opinions on that seed drill you’ve just acquired?”). And nowadays, this practice hasn’t changed much. We still use this concept of social proof to make our buying choices, but social media is becoming an ever more popular source for such advice.

Research firm Gartner has released a new study which finds that 74% of the buying population uses social networks to help make purchasing decisions. Furthermore, the study says that this online buying advice comes from mainly from those classified as key influencers, which make up just twenty percent of the overall consumer population. For marketers, this means that swaying these key influencers is critical, as their opinions will shape the sentiment of the majority of the buying population.

Majority of Consumers Use Social Networks to Inform Buying Decisions, Says Study

Marketers take note: a new study from research firm Gartner has discovered that a majority of today’s consumers rely to some extent on social networks to help guide them in purchase decisions. Despite this fact, social networks (like Facebook, Twitter, etc.), though critical, are currently an underutilized aspect to the marketing process, the report says.

via Majority of Consumers Use Social Networks to Inform Buying Decisions, Says Study. Posted by Sarah Perez.

We’re in the middle of a dramatic shift for many areas of business; marketing, PR, customer service, HR, sales, web content, training, the list goes on and on. Where just five years ago these areas were completely separate, the fast growth of social media has caused them to converge in a meaningful way. Instead of the traditional ways of marketing, sales & PR – carefully crafted collateral, pitches, emails and press releases – social media necessitates an ongoing conversational dialogue.

Most Americans are now online at Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. This means that a company can use these channels to reach a variety of audiences; current customers, potential customers, potential employees, the press, business partners. A strategy can be made for engaging and keeping up to date audiences across multiple channels. For small startups this is easy – they live online and perform many of these functions on social networks out of necessity – they don’t have the staff or money to do otherwise. But for companies with established processes it can be a large cultural change to loosen the grip on the traditional ways of recruiting, marketing, customer service, and PR.

One possible way of handling these new functions is to have a traffic controller/content creator who can monitor social media channels and create content that will be appropriate. It could make sense to have someone with a journalism background in this position. They are used to sorting through large amounts of information and quickly distilling what’s important, helpful for drinking from the firehose of social media content. They create content on a deadline, to respond quickly to blog posts, tweets, forum posts, etc. And since they know how to interview they can work with employees across functions to respond to a multitude of requests – everything from customer complaints to interview requests.

John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing agrees, and talking to David Meerman Scott author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR had this to say;

Most every business these days is really a publishing business of some sort, whether they think that way or not. The need to produce lots and lots of educational content has become standard operating fare in today’s Internet search driven marketing world. But, publishing content in blog posts, ebooks and articles, while considered compulsory, is not the easiest thing to do for some. … If you think of your business as a publishing business, the need for journalists becomes obvious.

* An experienced journalist will usually look at content in the objective, source driven, and factual way they’ve been trained – precisely the way that marketing content must be viewed and communicated these days.

* An experienced journalist knows how to start with the kernel of an idea and develop an entire story quickly.

* An experienced journalist, particularly one that’s worked in your industry, may possess key contacts throughout your industry and with publications that cover your industry.

John goes onto to point out that with all the downsizing in traditional publishing experienced journalists are more available at a lower cost than before. Even if they aren’t full-time they can make a valuable contribution. But these social media journalists will need buy-in from all the departments they will be supporting. Access must be given to key executives across functions to ensure there isn’t turf wars. And businesses must be agile enough to follow-on and add resources where the most traction is achieved.

If companies can truly buy-in and add this position as a key member of the team then it can do much to accelerate many areas of a business.

M5 announced today the launch of Call Conductor browser plugins for Firefox and Internet Explorer. These plugins tap into M5’s hosted VoIP smart business phone platform and increase productivity to users who make frequent outbound calls. They allow users click-to-dial capability for any phone number on any web page.

For telesales or inside sales reps who often place calls using lists from web-based applications or databases, these plug-ins should increase efficiency while saving time and money.

Installation is quite simple. No local drivers or libraries are needed, Firefox users just need to drag-and-drop a single file onto the Firefox window, enter their M5 phone number and password and then they can start clicking and dialing. In addition, users can selectively block and unblock their caller ID by left-clicking on the click-to-dial number to show their caller ID, or right-clicking to block it.

If you’re an M5 customer try this new feature out and let us know how you like it!

These days if you don’t have an app store you really aren’t cool. Everyone wants to have an exchange as thriving as Apple’s.

One of Microsoft’s partners have announced that they are going to launch an app store just for MS Office Communications Server. This is interesting as it shows a maturation of the idea of the app exchange, and how it’s crossing over from the consumer to the corporate world. It will be interesting to see if this takes hold beyond just the apps from Evangelyze themselves, the sponsor of the exchange.

Google also launched a new app for Android development, and to hopefully make the Android exchange all the more thriving. The App Inventor is designed to allow anyone to easily create an app for the mobile operating system. Again, we’ll see how well this takes off, but it’s an interesting counterpoint to Apple who is trying to control their ecosystem in a tighter manner, not open it up to even more developers.

These exchanges really benefit everyone- buyer and seller alike, and I expect we’ll see even more announcements over the rest of 2010 as everyone hops on the appexchange bandwagon.

Coming Soon: Microsoft OCS 14 App Store

By the end of this year, expect to see an App Store for Microsoft Office Communications Server 14, Microsoft’s unified communications system. But here’s the twist: Microsoft isn’t developing the app store. This particular online store will be launched by a channel partner. Here’s the scoop.

Who’s behind the project? Evangelyze Communications, a two-year-old OCS channel partner that develops unified communications systems for schools. Joe Schurman, CEO of Evangelyze, says his company already is profitable, and some Evangelyze solutions generate 80-percent margins in the OCS market. How’s that? Instead of simply reselling OCS, Evangelyze is writing unified communications applications that wrap around OCS.

Next up, Evangelyze plans to launch some sort of App Store for OCS 14 software developers. Schurman says the App Store is expected to arrive before the close of 2010. Evangelyze is meeting with potential App Store partners at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2010 (WPC10) this week in Washington, D.C.

via The VAR Guy

App Inventor: Build Your Own Android Apps

What if you could easily build an app that does exactly what you want and fits your needs exactly? That’s what App Inventor, coming soon from Google, brings to the Android screen. What makes App Inventor unique is that it requires no programming skills to build your apps. You use the onscreen designer to build the app screen just like you want, and then add functionality to the various components using simple point and click.

via App Inventor: Build Your Own Android Apps. Posted by James Kendrick.

Do you ever find yourself inadvertently drifting to Facebook while at the office? You’re not alone. New statistics published by Trend Micro indicate that in the last two years, social media use in the workplace has increased globally by five percent – from 19 to 24 percent of employees reporting use of social media while at work.

However, the study does not distinguish between personal and work-related social networking. In this day and age, businesses are starting to recognize the great enterprise potential of social media, and are devoting considerable amounts of time to creating a social presence on the web. The increase in social networking at the workplace may well be explained by such efforts. Admittedly though, much of that 24 percent usage rate is probably due to employees succumbing to a degree of social media distraction and slacking off at work.

But remember, as Mashable’s post points out, “once upon a time, general Internet use at work was considered frivolous; now, most of us use at least some websites to do our work every day.” Perhaps, in the future, social media usage will become a fully accepted part of out work lives.

Social Media Use in the Workplace on the Rise

A new study from Trend Micro shows that more workers around the globe are using social networks while in the office and on the clock.

The survey took a look at the habits of 1,600 Internet users from the U.S., UK, Germany and Japan and found that over the past two years alone, social web use in the workplace has risen from 19% to 24%. In Germany specifically, social media use at work saw a 10% increase.

It’s still unclear whether this gradual but significant rise is being used to drive our businesses ahead, or if we’re instead wasting our companies’ time and money — a distinction that’s especially important to managers concerned with network security and productivity issues.

via Social Media Use in the Workplace on the Rise [STATS]. Posted by Jolie O’Dell.

In the past I have argued that Google is putting the pieces in place to make a big push into the enterprise – possibly in voice as well as email and other services. Well a new survey by Network World shows that many in the enterprise may be wary of utilizing Google for business critical functions. The two main reasons are the quality of support and data/security issues.

Quality of support is pretty obvious – there are many horror stories by those who bought a Nexus One or use Google Apps for their email about lack of support. But this is something that could be resolved with resources.

But the fear of Google having too much data is something that Google can’t easily fix. The more data that Google collects, the more pushback they are getting from those who don’t want Google to have this data (see: its issues with Street View cars nabbing data from WiFi networks). It is a frightening thought for many an IT manager to hand over the keys for email, document sharing, IM, and soon voice and videochat to one huge provider. Google starts to look like the vampire squid of the IT world – sucking data and dollars out of every conceivable source. Anyone remember this ancient (circa 2004) cheesy flash animation about Google’s quest for future world domination?

Where does Google fit in the UC&C Continuum?

Hardly a week goes by in which Google isn’t a topic of conversation with our clients. IT managers are often lured to Google applications on the promise of lower costs, simplified administration, and the ability to shed costly infrastructure (and support requirements) in exchange for a cloud-based solution.

Google has certainly started to stake a claim to the enterprise communication and collaboration market. It continues to improve Google Apps for messaging, calendaring, document creation and document sharing. It has added real-time capabilities such as instant messaging and desktop video, and now with Google Voice, it has finally opened up its unified messaging solution to all (though it continues to resist calls to deliver a true VOIP service). Given these efforts, it’s certainly not surprising that IT buyers are taking a long hard look at Google.

Over the last few months we’ve interviewed over 200 companies for our annual research benchmark. Around half are evaluating, using, or planning to deploy “office as a service” applications (not just Google, but also competing offerings such as Zoho, and Microsoft Office Live). But an equal percentage (50.2%), have strong reservations specifically about Google as a vendor.

Why? Security tops the list. Many companies, due to retention/governance or compliance concerns don’t trust Google with their data, afraid it could be compromised, or even indexed for searching (though Google clearly states that they don’t access private data). Some companies outside the U.S. are reluctant to store data on servers within the U.S. due to concerns about the Patriot Act.

The second biggest area of concern is support. Google doesn’t yet possess the ability to support large, global companies via a direct support model, though it has partnered with systems integrators such as CSC to deliver enterprise-class support. Other concerns we heard relate to custom developed applications and the need for local storage.

The bottom line: carefully evaluate Google as part of your collaboration strategy, but understand not only what you gain, but what you give up should you head down the Google path.

via Where does Google fit in the UC&C Continuum? | NetworkWorld.com Community by Irwin Lazar on Mon, 07/12/10 – 9:20am.

Well, one of the Wall Street Journal’s online blogs at least. A post in the WSJ’s Digits Blog today featured our CEO Dan Hoffman talking about M5’s beta app that allows calls to be made through an iPad, which we’ve previously mentioned here. Some great coverage for us, check it out below!

App Watch: Phoning From the iPad

Apple’s iPad doesn’t technically offer the ability to make phone calls, but New York-based voice over IP phone system provider M5 Networks has figured out a way to offer clients the capability through an app.

M5 offers mid-sized businesses and organizations including Amnesty International and Etsy the ability to manage work calls through the “cloud” — the tech term for the Internet — so employees can make and receive phone calls from anywhere in the world from any Internet-connected device, including cell phones and computers, as if they were going through their office line. Clients can also start a phone call on one device and seamlessly transfer it to another device mid-call.

Late last month, it added the ability to make and take calls through iPads. The app is still in the testing phase, but M5 Chief Executive Dan Hoffman says that it gives its clients yet another option for fielding their phone calls.

“The clearest reason (to take a call on an iPad) is the advantage of running this app on a Wi-Fi connection,” says Mr. Hoffman, adding that the iPad also has a better speaker microphone.

IPad owners are still figuring out how the device will fit into their lives, but Mr. Hoffman suggests that one possible way that an iPad phone could be useful is for conference calls. People can remotely dial into a meeting even if the room it is in doesn’t have a conference calling system.

Mr. Hoffman acknowledges that the app is still in its early stages, but once iPads have the ability to perform multiple tasks at once, as Apple just started allowing on the iPhone, it could become an ideal device for looking at slides, or manipulating shared documents while simultaneously taking a call.

via App Watch: Phoning From the iPad – Digits – WSJ. Posted by Yukari Iwatani Kane.

I came across this post over at Mashable the other day – ten gorgeous, colorful infographics about social media covering everything from demographics and usage to business involvement to mobile. And the image I’ve included here adds a little humor to the mix as well. Click the link below to check them out!

via 10 Beautiful Social Media Infographics.

As the office environment continues to evolve, one question that we will inevitably ask is “How much time do I really need to spend here?” With all of the accessible-anywhere web-connected technologies that we are constantly adopting, it would seem like physically spending time at the office is becoming less and less necessary. These technologies could potentially bridge the gap between colleagues working from remote locations, effectively making the office obsolete.

In the past, I’ve argued that even with the advantages brought by new technology, the office will continue to be just as important as the center of business life. Although it may be used less by individual employees, I see the office persisting as the collaborative hub of the enterprise. Here at M5, our office is arranged with a very open floor plan that helps induce a cooperative and convivial atmosphere. No one has offices; instead we all work together out on the floor. The intern (that’s me) sits across the row from our CEO, Dan Hoffman.

Mark Suster, on his blog Both Sides of the Table, recently wrote a great post backing up my view, which I’ve posted an excerpt of below. Suster talks about the natural human connectedness that “no amount of technology can replace” – the interactions that breed a true company culture and vision. He makes the best case for the survival of the office that I’ve ever read; there is a magic in human connections that technology can never replace. Check it out, or read the full post here.

The Power of “In Person” – Why Distributed Teams are Less Effective

In the era of Skype, web conferencing tools and collaboration software conventional wisdom says that distributed startup teams can be just as effective as those that are in person.

Conventional wisdom is wrong. Or more precisely the people espousing the benefits of distributed startups teams are often distributed and therefore self rationalizing it.  Been there.

The reality is that a certain magic that happens when you’re in person is critical in a startup. You attend five customer meetings together over a two-week period and after each meeting you replay the results in the office about what it meant. The CEO weighs in with his perspectives, the head of product management disputes his conclusions and the marketing VP has a different take.

We spend hours of seemingly “wasted” time just in these informal chats simply shooting the shit. With all the recent obsessions about “pivots” most people don’t realize that the more powerful pivots are the unnoticeable ones we make every day through these exchanges. The conversations bleed into the sales messages the next time, they wend their way into software designs and form the plan of attack against competition.

And it doesn’t stop there. The best companies are built on common beliefs and culture – a common sense of purpose. Those cultural normals are established through human connections: the night we all stayed late to get that release out the door, the day we celebrated our funding round or the day we landed our first big account. The culture is forged through office parties, poker, paintball or film nights. And slowly, over the years, those crazy stories about Danny passed out in the company bathroom after the Summer party get replaced by weddings, births and family picnics. We become more than dispassionate colleagues – we’ve been in the trenches together and survived.

I’ve seen it go full cycle. There is a core that exists in human connectedness that no amount of technology can replace. Just watch companies that grow rapidly in even a single physical address and start to span multiple floors and you’ll know what I mean. The culture starts to change and companies need to work harder to keep up the physical connections – even within the same building.

via The Power of “In Person” – Why Distributed Teams are Less Effective | Both Sides of the Table. Posted by Mark Suster.

Google has long considered many of its offerings to be superior alternatives to ingrained enterprise applications – Google Docs instead of Microsoft Office, Gmail instead of Outlook, and soon perhaps Google Voice in the place of UC systems. And Cisco’s new Cius tablet is the first business-centric device running the company’s Android mobile operating system, promising to bring Google’s creations further into the boardroom. As Mike Dolan of FierceVoIP points out below, Google and its suite of cloud-based services have been focusing more and more towards the enterprise of late.

The key to Google’s potential success in the business field is integration across its ever wider range of commercially viable products. Effortless linkups between Gmail and Docs, for example, or Voice and Maps, will lead to increased enterprise adoptions of its ensemble of products. As its resources are adopted by innovating office workers, it will make a progressively more sense for entire firms to utilize all of Google’s cooperating solutions. Smart, rational integration will give Google serious headway into the enterprise market.

However, Google is not the only company with great integration expertise. Apple has always been a brilliant purveyor of consumer electronics with a fully integrated user experience. Their unique position as a component manufacturer, a hardware and software vendor, and a retailer allows them to create an unparalleled level of customer engagement, all because Apple has complete control over their value chain. Such integration has been a major reason for Apple’s massive success with consumers in the last decade. And enormous popularity in the consumer arena will inevitably lead to some level of enterprise adoption, as we’ve seen with the iPhone and iPad.

Google hopes that integration can make them the new Apple of the enterprise realm.

The rise of Google’s enterprise empire

We already know that Google’s main mission is to capture all the information in the world and make it easily accessible. More recently it seems that their mission–at least in the short term–is to dominate the communications landscape and take over the enterprise. Just in the last few months, Google has made some huge strides in the direction of this domination.

Google has been slowly amassing the necessary pieces to launch their own IP communications system. Google’s Gmail has long been marketed to companies as a replacement for their old corporated email accounts. The system already has built in IM features, including a video chat feature between Gmail users. The system can also be tied into a type of presence system when combined with Google’s Latitude which offers a GPS-tied location awareness for mobile phone users. If Gmail is Google’s answer to Microsoft’s Outlook, then its cloud based MS Office competitor is its Apps. Google provides word processing, spreadsheets and presentations all online with instant collaboration and sharing abilities with co-workers.

With all their bits of software already planting seeds in the minds of executives everywhere, perhaps this future play for enterprise users is already set up for success.

via The rise of Google’s enterprise empire – FierceVoIP. Posted by Mike Dolan.

HP and Avaya Collaborate to Advance UC Solutions

Less than a year ago, HP announced the acquisition of 3Com to the tune of $2.7B (that is a B).  Now, HP is bragging about a 3 year strategic agreement with Avaya.  Does this mean after $2.7 Billion, HP has realized that voice isn’t so easy?

Maybe they should heed Mr. Sulkin’s advice on “dematerialization.” Oh wait, HP is in the materialization business.  I guess they are thinking Avaya will help them materialize more than 3Com would…

On Tuesday, Cisco unveiled its first entry into the burgeoning tablet computer market: the Cius (pronounced “see-us,” pun intended). The Cius is a Google Android-based “mobile collaboration tablet” aimed firmly at enterprise early adopters, and likely to be priced accordingly around $900-1000.

The Cius is fully interoperable with Cisco’s business telecommunications products, including Cisco Quad, Show and Share, WebEx, Presence and Unified Communications Manager. In addition to the standard email, messaging, and browsing tools, it has one big feature that the iPad has been criticized for lacking; not just one, but two cameras for full HD video streaming and multi-party conferencing. With a 7 inch touchscreen, the device is an ultra-portable tablet that’s targeted at business users that can benefit from real-time, video-based collaboration. Connectivity is through either a 3G network (no carrier partnerships have been announced yet) or Wi-Fi, with 4G support coming “at a later date.”

The Cius can also be plugged into a desk phone-like dock that contains a handset and speakerphone capabilities. With the Cius, “Cisco is trying to bring relevance back to the desktop handset after getting the spotlight stolen by the smartphones in our pockets – something that Verizon and others have tried to do with multimedia stations for their phone service with limited success,” says Demetri Costoyiannis, a Senior  Engineer here at M5. “Cisco’s XML on-phone web apps on the 79xx series were a start but they are pretty limited. With the Android platform this is a whole new ballgame.”

Cisco has been diversifying its product line beyond its networking equipment in recent years, and the Cius tablet complements the firm’s cloud computing, collaboration and videoconferencing initiatives. Such a business will nicely drive demand for new specialized video-capable products as well as higher-bandwidth networking routers and switches that generate much of its revenue. In fact, Cisco CEO John Chambers has said, “Our whole structure was built around collaboration combined with video.” Cisco entered the video market with its Flip acquisition from last year, but the Cius is the first time the company has offered a video-enabled computing device.

Is this how Cisco sees the future of the desk phone?

“This is a big deal for the Android OS,” Costoyiannis continues. “It reinforces the fact that they want to make their business offerings as smart as the mobile devices out there.” Here at M5, we share that common goal. We want to create a business communication system that can do more than be just a phone. We’ve built apps for the iPad, are currently testing several Android-based devices- and can’t wait to get our hands on a Cius.

“This is a glimpse of the future,” M5’s National Sales Executive Pat Duffy says. “People will have an iPad or a device like the Cius cradled at their desk that they will use as their phone, but they will also use it for other things like notes and collaboration. It will no longer be appropriate for a device to serve a single purpose. It would be like having one laptop for Word and a separate one for Excel. It’s all coming together, and it’s going to be awesome.”

Apple’s iPad has undoubtedly set off a tablet computer frenzy in the marketplace, with many new competitors set to be released over the next few months. Cisco hopes to differentiate the Cius from such competitors by targeting it specifically at businesses and businesspeople who value quick, easy face-to-face video collaboration. As a device designed expressly for enterprise, the Cius has an inherent leg up on products designed for mainstream consumers – the iPad’s exclusion of a camera for videoconferencing is a major disadvantage. The iPad seems to be dominating Silicon Valley’s boardrooms, but Cisco hopes that the Cius can quickly replace it as the enterprise tablet of choice.

Allan Sulkin is the most respected voice writer in the telecom industry. I have been following him since 1991 (that is before some M5 interns were born). He had dismissed CaaS (Communications as a Service) as “not for the enterprise.”

His latest article sounds a little different:

Dematerialization is also realized by the IP telephony option to implement a single “virtual” system housed at a centralized customer data center to service multiple geo-distributed facilities previously supported by a network of local PBXs: one system, with shared and optimized resources, replacing many. Customers also have the option to implement a Cloud-based third party Communications as a Service (CaaS) solution, minimizing their own premises-based hardware requirements. Service providers can leverage a single partitioned system to support the communications requirements of many customers across many locations. The customer data center and the hosted CaaS solutions each offer significant reductions in overall hardware requirements without loss of feature or performance capabilities.

Allan explains earlier that “dematerialization” is a fancy, European word for doing more with less physical “stuff.” This could mean virtualizing a data center or using a cloud service instead of a local server (or PBX phone system). This is a big change for Allan, and a vote of confidence for providers like M5.

via No Jitter | blog.

According to the FCC, there are now 21 million VoIP subscription in the United States, representing 13% of all the nation’s wired voice connections. Notably, only 1% of these VoIP lines serve businesses – the remaining 99% of all VoIP connections are for residential accounts. On the other hand, 39% of all types of wired voice connections are business-owned copper wire accounts. With that many businesses still using copper-wire lines instead of VoIP, it looks like M5 has an enormous potential market of businesses looking to upgrade to tap!

Over 20 million VoIP subscribers in the United States

VoIP users take note—you now command a noticeable share of wireline telephone service in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission reports 21 million subscriptions to Voice over Internet Protocol accounts provided by companies like Vonage, as well as the telcos and cable providers.

These represented 13 percent of the nation’s 162 million wired connections as of December 31, 2008. The overwhelming majority were residential. Only one percent of those VoIP lines served businesses.

But VoIP still represents a relatively small percentage of the total number of landline phone subscriptions. The majority are still of the traditional switched access variety, carried over copper wire systems—141 million of these, all told. They count for 87 percent of all the lines (48% residential; 39% business accounts).

Has VoIP use significantly expanded over the last few years? “Interconnected VoIP service represents an important and rapidly growing part of the U.S. voice service market,” the agency’s report says.

We’re sure that’s true, but the Commission’s next survey will offer more details on this growth, because 2008 was the first year that the FCC required carriers to report detailed data on the service (the previous report hardly mentioned VoIP at all).

via Over 20 million VoIP subscribers in the United States. Posted by Matthew Lasar.

“shoretel or avaya? Time for a new phone system very soon,” the Tweet read.

“In less than maybe 15 minutes, we had seen it and figured out what the heck to say to this guy,” Paul Dunay said in an interview with Social Media Examiner back in November. Paul is the manager of customer service and social media at Avaya. The company was quick to respond to the original tweet with “We have some highly trained techs who can help you understand your needs best and help you make an objective decision. Give me a call.’”

The interview continues that Dunay referred the gentleman to a business partner, and 13 days later, they closed a $250,000 sale. At the same time, the new customer’s follow-up Tweet went out: “…we have selected AVAYA as our new phone system. Excited by the technology and benefits…”

Avaya utilizes their own product for social media listening and response, the Avaya Social Media Manager. As we covered yesterday it will intelligently assign tweets, blog articles and forum posts for speedy response to anyone on the social media team within minutes of posting. That team is currently 50 employees who volunteered to work on social media in addition to their current jobs, but Dunay would like to see all 15,000 Avaya employees involved.

Avaya’s social media initiative started as customer support- finding tweets, posts and mentions which were mostly questions that were forwarded to support reps. “The old 1.0 way was a call center or inputting tickets on the web,” Dunay said. “2.0 is we’ll try to reach out to Avaya support which is, by the way, me on Twitter.”

But soon he saw more and more mentions from people researching phone systems and in the early stages of buying. “92% of B2B technology buyers consider themselves engaging in some form of social media,” Dunay says.

Now they are using social media for customer support, sales, and PR. “Our goals are to have deeper, more interesting and more pervasive conversations with as many people as we possibly can,” he added. “Why wouldn’t you take every opportunity for your brand to build better and deeper relations with every customer you can?”

via It Pays to Listen: Avaya’s $250K Twitter Sale | Social Media Examiner.

These days, social media is becoming a bigger and bigger part of customer interaction and brand monitoring. Both Cisco and Avaya recognize this trend, and are looking to incorporate social media tools into their unified communications solutions. Avaya has released two social media solutions, Social Media Manager and FacePhone, and Cisco is currently in the process of developing its equivalent application.

Avaya’s Social Media Manager is an instrument that uses advanced text processing techniques to search for references to keywords, such as company or brand names or products. Once relevant mentions are found, it determines if any action should be taken and notifies those best qualified to respond, using a skills-based routing system.

FacePhone, on the other hand, is a Facebook app that loads directly onto the Facebook interface and is designed connect onto the social network, for both a business-to-business basis and a business-to-consumer basis. FacePhone enables voice and video contact options, as well as the stock Facebook wall posts and chat functionalities.

Cisco’s as yet unnamed application works much like Avaya’s Social Media Manager by connecting to various social media sites and scanning them for relevant information, then prioritizing, organizing, and assigning it. The company’s solution is expected to become available this November.

With social media becoming an ever-greater part of conducting business, firms should find the innovative efforts made by Cisco and Avaya to be more and more useful in managing social media presences as time goes on. Check out the post below from No Jitter for more information on the two company’s solutions.

Avaya, Cisco, Social Media and Contact Centers

Following up on Sheila McGee-Smith’s overviews on the separate contact center briefings Cisco and Avaya held for industry analysts, I wanted to dig a little deeper on a common theme at both events: social media integration. Both companies detailed the appliances they are developing to better tie in social media communications with contact center operations.

Avaya’s solution centers around a pair of social networking solutions, part of an Avaya Labs project called Customer Connections. One is FacePhone, a Facebook widget demonstrated before and with plenty of information already available. The other is Social Media Manager, a solution that is by no means secret but which has had less attention paid to it to date. The software resides in a gateway (yes, the Avaya Social Media Gateway) connected to the Avaya Aura communications environment. Initially focused on Twitter, it uses advanced text processing techniques to search for references to one’s company or products or other relevant keywords. It determines if the use of the keyword is relevant (for example, if a reference to “united” refers to United Airlines or United Freight or something else), then determines if action should be taken by a contact center agent or other personnel responsible for social media interactions. If actionable, the tweet is treated as an inbound customer communication, entering the contact center engine which uses skills-based routing to determine those best qualified to respond.

Cisco, meanwhile, has what it calls a social media customer care deliverable in the works. As yet unnamed, it is based on an appliance that can be set up either on-premise or in the cloud. The server searches and captures information from Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, and other public social media sites, then analyzes and prioritizes what to do with it, such as creating a workflow on what response is required and who in the contact center or elsewhere in the company is to be involved. The appliance can also aggregate profile information from LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. to create a mash-up profile of the customer having problems. If the customer’s location can be determined (and if applicable with the customer support situation) the software can mash up a map showing nearby store locations where more help can be found.

The Cisco social media appliance is expected to be made available this November, while the Avaya gateway can be ordered now for custom, professional services-related projects, with productization to follow around this time next year.

via No Jitter | blog. Posted by Brian Riggs.

Today, Skype is known as the web’s leading communications company, connecting hundreds of millions of customers around the globe with voice calls, video calls, and instant messaging. The service has over 521 million users and incredibly carries 13% of the world’s total international calling minutes, enough to make it the world’s largest voice carrier. But Skype wants to be known for much more than that.

Last Tuesday, the company announced the beta version of the SkypeKit Software Development Kit, which will allow consumer electronics device manufacturers and desktop application developers to build Skype-powered voice and video calls into just about any internet-connected device. The SDK is Skype’s bid to expand its business far beyond it’s current personal computer to personal computer stronghold. It will enable the service to be integrated with the many devices that were once strictly offline but are now becoming linked to the internet. The possibilities are abundant and far-reaching: Television manufacturers could build Skype video chatting into the next generation of internet-connected televisions, automakers which are already beginning to build connected cars could integrate Skype for in-car calling, and so on and so forth.

SkypeKit is the company’s latest effort to try to turn Skype’s enormous user-base into larger revenue streams. For all of its hundreds of millions of users, Skype’s latest reported quarterly revenues (from Q3 2009) were a relatively small $185 million, which averages out to just over $1.42 in revenues per user annually. In fact, many people have thought recently that Skype would never be able to fully monetize its large userbase, and that the business was bound to fail. But now, with these new integration possibilities, it is starting to look like Skype may succeed after all. Let’s take a look back at how Skype has gotten to where it is now:

August 2003: Skype is first released to the public, created by the same group of Estonian developers behind the popular and controversial peer-to-peer file sharing service Kazaa. At this point, the service is simply Skype to Skype audio calls and instant messaging.

July 2004: SkypeOut launches, allowing users to call external landlines anywhere in the world via Skype at highly competitive local rates.

April 2005: SkypeIn launches, offering users the ability to receive calls from external landlines with Skype with a monthly subscription. Combined with SkypeOut, SkypeIn gives users the option to use Skype as a fully-capable internet softphone.     

October 2005: eBay purchases Skype for approximately $2.5 billion.

December 2005: Skype incorporates video capabilities into its Skype to Skype service. Videotelephony is a major update to Skype’s product, attracting many new users and changing the way customers use the service.

April 2006: Skype reaches 100 million users.

2006-2009: Many feel that Skype languishes under eBay’s ownership. Aside from the introduction of Skype for SIP and video capabilities, which surely must have been developed and prepared before the eBay purchase, Skype’s product remains largely the same, with no major changes to the way the application is utilized by most consumers.

March 2009: Skype launches Skype for SIP, allowing companies with SIP-enabled phone systems to receive calls from Skype users directly as Skype-to-Skype calls, and to make calls over Skype using Skype’s low international rates. Skype for SIP represents a bid to enter the business VoIP market as a low-cost alternative to higher-end VoIP systems.

September 2009: eBay sells Skype to an investor group in a deal valuing the company at $2.75 billion, just barely more than eBay purchased it for in 2005. Over that time, eBay reportedly wrote down nearly $1 billion of the deal’s value after realizing that supposed synergies weren’t going to work out as anticipated.

Also in September 2009, Skype for SIP becomes more viable as Skype announces interoperability with Cisco and Avaya UC equipment.

And, after a series of interviews with Skype exec Jonathan Christensen, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington predicts that Skype will eventually release a software development kit that “allows developers to integrate deep into Skype and make calls over the Skype service without opening the Skype client. In other words, people may start to think of Skype (voice, video, chat) as a service rather than a client that must be installed and used to communicate.” Which sounds exactly like the SkypeKit SDK that we’re seeing now. Very prescient, Mr. Arrington.

November 2009:  Om Malik of GigaOm interviews Skype CEO Josh Silverman about the company’s platform plans. Silverman confirms: “We want Skype to be embedded in more and more devices, and we want to offer our APIs for developers to embed into their applications.”

January-March 2010: Skype announces platform support on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Symbian smartphones, as well as on compatible Verizon Wireless smartphones through an agreement with the mobile carrier. This is a major step towards moving Skype off the personal computer and onto other consumer devices.

June 2010: Skype announces SkypeKit SDK, and hopes that a widespread adoption will see Skype moving into a wide variety of internet-connected products as a prevalent communication tool. Integrating with Apple’s new FaceTime, with its open standards, may be just one of many interesting possibilities.

However, Skype has tried this sort of thing before. Way back in November 2004, before eBay came into the picture, Skype announced the Skype API Beta, which allowed developers to incorporate Skype into their applications. However, the API clearly never really took off and was criticized as being limited, and Skype as being developer un-friendly.

Skype certainly hopes that the new SkypeKit SDK will be far more successful. The last 3 years have brought a change in developer mindset that has made many more open to utilize others platforms (see iPhone, Android, Salesforce) for development of their apps. This bodes well for Skype’s new initiatives, and hopefully for our new universally connected devices.

Increasingly, businesses are realizing that integrating their phone system with their customer database helps to make both systems more powerful. M5 has been integrating voice with systems like Salesforce for several years.

New startups like Ringio are now helping small companies (<10 employees) that may not be ready for a full-featured monitored solution like M5 realize some of the benefit from integrating their systems.

Ringio taps into a companies contacts and keeps a shared call log of all calls made and received with accompanying notes. Like M5, Ringio is also trying to bring these features across platforms- working not just on the desk phone but also on cell phones and PCs.

But right now the Ringio system only works with Google contacts, meaning that most businesses with more than a few employees won’t be able to integrate with their existing system. Their chairman says that integration with Saleforce and others will come soon.

A bigger problem is that as a new company it’s hard to say how reliable Ringio’s service is. Without testimonials from clients who have been using the service for a few years it may be a leap of faith. Since the phones are based on SIP without dedicated circuits or MPLS it means that phone calls are routed over the public internet with all the potential for dropped calls and bad quality that brings. This could be okay for a very early startup who is willing to tradeoff decreased price for these potential problems. But as those companies grow I suspect they’ll grow into a more reliable system like M5.

Ringio Combines PBX and CRM Functions in Hosted “Rich Calling” Service

One big problem for companies in handling customer calls is uninformed answers. That is, the person answering the call has no idea who is calling or why. Large companies solve the problem by using call centers, which integrate high-end CRM (customer relationship management) systems with sophisticated call-handling systems. For smaller companies, integration of hosted or premises-based IP PBXes with hosted CRM services is a good solution, eliminating the need for premises-based CRM systems. And a new “rich calling” service launched by Ringio simplifies things even further.

via Ringio Combines PBX and CRM Functions in Hosted “Rich Calling” Service – VoIP Evolution.

Amazon’s Kindle has a major problem on its hands. Simply put, the new iPad is a far superior device – the Kindle can’t possibly hope to compete on a feature to feature basis. Amazon has already dropped the price of the Kindle to $189 in the face of increased competition from other e-readers and the iPad (and coming imitators), which is quite a bit less than the $399 it cost when it was first launched. But Dennis Kneale of CNBC thinks that Amazon should cut the price of the Kindle even more – to nothing.

Amazon’s strength has always been in distribution and customer service, not hardware. That’s how it became the largest online retailer. By giving the Kindle away for free, Amazon can shift the focus back to what it does best: content retailing. Just as cell phone carriers give phones away for free to in order to lock customers into lucrative long-term contracts, a free Kindle would attract an absolutely enormous market of potential content purchasers and give Amazon an unshakable grip on the e-book market. Content, rather than hardware, is where the real profit potential is for Amazon.

I definitely agree with Kneale’s logic here, going free may be the only way for Amazon to save the Kindle. Granted, Amazon could get much the same effect by pricing the Kindle in a much lower range, say sub-$40 perhaps, while allowing it to maintain some semblance of a profit margin. But free, being the more drastic action, would generate far more marketing buzz. How else can the Kindle be expected to succeed in the midst of the iPad?

Why Amazon Should Give Away Kindle Free

From the moment the splashy elegance of the iPad first adorned the de rigueur giant video wall behind the Orwellian figure of Steve Jobs a few months ago, you just knew the Kindle was dead.

You can see it regularly on that most democratic of institutions, the New York City subway. An assiduously bookish young guy sits there with his Kindle, a hipster talisman less than a year ago. Soon as some slinky, black-clad tech temptress sits near him with her iPad, he’s suddenly so dated. He dare not even speak to her.

Amazon cut its Kindle price 27 percent yesterday, to $189 from $259. Barnes & Noble cut its same-price Nook reader to $199. And in the immortal words of Wallace Shawn’s irrepressible mensch on TV’s “Gossip Girl”: “It’s not enough!” Amazon should cut Kindle pricing even more: to zero.

That’s right—Jeff Bezos should give away the Kindle free of charge, to spur more sales of higher-profit online books.

via Why Amazon Should Give Away Kindle Free – CNBC. Posted by Dennis Kneale.

Here is a great example of the social web being used for absolute societal good. The New Orleans Musician’s Relief Fund (NOMRF), a grass-roots charity founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, uses social media and other web technologies to reach out to music fans and garner support for displaced New Orleans musicians and their families. Katrina devastated the entertainment industry in the city, which is renowned for its legendary jazz traditions, and many musicians are just starting to gain footholds once again. Now, however, the worst ecological disaster in history is once again imperiling their way of life by threatening the fragile but recuperating New Orleans economy. NOMRF is using the tools of the social web, from blogging to Twitter to podcasts, to try to aid the musicians of New Orleans and save the music that is so integral to the cultural makeup of the city.

Web Makes the Difference for New Orleans Musicians

“It’s almost impossible to describe how important the Web was for getting the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund off the ground,” said co-founder Karen Dalton-Beninato. Karen and her husband Jeff, who grew up playing music in the Ninth Ward, used Web technologies and social media to reach out to music fans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Now, almost exactly five years later, another crisis is hitting the shore, the Gulf oil spill.

“With the current state of the economy, we get more used instrument donations than anything else these days, but it’s been an amazing ride. New Orleans is going to have a rough summer with Gulf Coast tourism dropping already after the oil spill. Hopefully people will keep the city and its music in their hearts.”

Karen and Jeff started the fund in a Chicago FEMA room when it became clear that many musicians and others wouldn’t be able to return to New Orleans for weeks if not months. Jeff, who grew up playing in the Ninth Ward and was a member of the 80s pop band the dBs, as well as playing with roots and jazz outfits, turned to the Internet. He and Karen put together a Website with an online donation function.

And now what promises to become the single largest ecological catastrophe in the nation’s history, the Gulf oil spill, is bearing down on the city. The travelers and the money they bring are starting to dry up again. The resource economy, fishing, shrimping and crabbing, that all funnels into the city, is faltering. The need to plug in to this newest of technologies – the Web – to save the oldest – music – is pressing, again. There is some truth to the notion that this technology we cover levels and democratizes. NOMRF is using it to make the process of helping the men and women who provide the soundtrack to your hopes and dreams more egalitarian and more direct.

via Web Makes the Difference for New Orleans Musicians. Posted by Curt Hopkins.

Today, GigaOm posted an awesome infographic on a topic that we’ve recently been devoting some coverage to: the coming rise of cloud computing. The infographic includes further stats on cloud computing job growth, investment growth, the expansion (in terms of data size) of the digital universe, and other facts and figures. Click on the graphic to check out a full-size version.

via The Rise of the Cloud | GigaOm.

For B2B companies in the cloud, associating with channel partners can be a great way to get your product through to customers. As Derrick Harris argues in a recent post over at GigaOm, these collaborations appear to be a win-win for everyone involved. Resellers can get involved in a hot and sought-after industry without making a huge investment in cloud computing, cloud companies can greatly increase the visibility and attractiveness of their offerings, and end customers can get great cloud products from trusted sources without having to familiarize themselves with the many intricacies of developing or managing cloud-based applications.

Here at M5, we recognize the importance of our channel partners and greatly appreciate the work they do for us. Accordingly, we continue to work hard to expand and maintain our partner program. In fact, just last week we announced a new partnership with Entel Systems, a premier distributor of innovative, practical and cost effective communications networking solutions for small to medium-size companies. As Dave from a couple rows over says, Entel’s “reputation for outstanding service and customer relations make them an ideal fit with M5. Entel has a very strong presence in the market and their customers will now have even more options for business phones.” Our relationship with Entel is a great example of the outstanding benefits that cloud companies and channel vendors can gain through partnerships.

Why Everyone Wins When Cloud Computing Meets the Channel

Selling cloud computing –- especially of the externally hosted variety -– to established businesses is no easy feat. They understand the potential benefits, but they’ve just spent years and possibly large sums of money on virtualization efforts, and they have their own specific problems that aren’t easily addressed by one-size-fits-all cloud offerings. In order to remedy such sales obstacles, many cloud companies are turning to channel partners — systems integrators, resources, telcos and the like. As trusted faces for many businesses, they can offer personalized service that many cloud providers cannot.

via Why Everyone Wins When Cloud Computing Meets the Channel. Posted by Derrick Harris.

Some nice attention about the gangbusters M5 tenth anniversary party last month. Thanks again to our great PR & event partners, The Wakeman Agency.

How to Throw a Killer Company Party

One company celebrated their anniversary by incorporating their clients

A month ago I stopped by M5’s 10th Anniversary Party. The first thing that struck me was this huge wall with all of their client’s logos. What I like about this is it allows their clients to “do the bragging” for them. They also had food and drinks from their clients. I think they had about 500 people including staff, partners and clients. There was even a performance of the M5 band.

After I noticed that a few of M5’s investors were in attendance, I asked Dan Hoffman, CEO of M5, how they felt about the company spending all this money on a party. He said:

“Our whole mission is about delivering phones, service, and applications that clients love. So we’ve filled the company with staff that thrive on client’s appreciation,” Dan said. “The best celebration for the staff   - the best way to feel how ten years of hard work has paid off – is seeing face-to-face just how grateful our clients are. Letting a few prospects and the press in on this love-fest is just smart marketing and a good way to pay for a good party.”

It wasn’t all fun and games (and beer). Before the fondue fountain and frozen phone ice sculpture, M5 debuted their new phone features.

via How to Throw a Killer Company Party | NY Report By Robert S. Levin,  June 17, 2010

Seth Godin, ever the innovative business thinker, reckons that working in an office will soon become a distant memory. We no longer have the need to gather in one place to do our work, he argues. I definitely agree with his rationale and I think he makes a very good point, but I’m not sure the office will – or should – become completely extinct. Certainly, I do believe that time spent working in the office will see a substantial decline in the coming times, and that we will instead spend more and more time working from elsewhere. The ever more mobile and accessible progress of technology will make that all but inevitable.

But I think that the office environment will still be crucial to enterprise. Sometimes, there is simply no substitute for face-to-face collaboration. It naturally breeds teamwork, productivity, kinship, and innovation – factors that are all critical to a successful company. Even if we all work from outside the office 75% of the time, the other 25% will remain vital to the operation of any business. No matter how far technology takes us, there will always be a need for people to come together and work cooperatively, and that’s how I see the office evolving. It will become the collaborative hub of work life; perhaps less used than it is today, but just as important.

via Seth’s Blog | Goodbye to the Office.

Cloud computing has been a major buzz word in the tech industry for quite some time now, but experts agree that this hot topic might actually have some significance behind it. A survey jointly published by Elon University and the Pew Research Center found that the general consensus among tech experts is that by the year 2020, most of our computing will be done in the cloud. Instead of primarily working with software installed on our own desktops, the experts assert that we will increasing our use of web-based and mobile applications, which is a sentiment that I certainly agree with.

The study specifically found that 71% of internet and tech experts agree with the following statement: “By 2020, most people won’t do their work with software running on a general-purpose PC. Instead, they will work in Internet-based applications such as Google Docs, and in applications run from smartphones. Aspiring application developers will develop for smartphone vendors and companies that provide Internet-based applications, because most innovative work will be done in that domain, instead of designing applications that run on a PC operating system.” It’s definitely hard to argue with that – from my vantage point the future of software definitely lies predominantly in hosted services.

The transition has already begun. For evidence, look no further than iOS, one of the most successful platforms for cloud-based apps. So far, there are over 225,000 applications available in Apple’s App Store, with 5 billion individual downloads and over $1 billion paid to developers. Other platforms such as Android offer similar potential as markets for cloud-based applications that work over the internet. People no longer want their data stored on a single PC – running applications in the cloud allows information to travel nearly anywhere with them.

However, the group surveyed doesn’t expect desktop applications to disappear altogether. Rather, they predict that we will continue to use a combination of desktop and cloud-based applications, with the cloud steadily increasing its role and scope as the technology continues to develop. The major advantage of applications based in the cloud is the ability to access them from any location with an internet connection, including our ever-improving mobile devices. As Jolie O’Dell writes, “Who wouldn’t find that kind of postmodern fluidity appealing? We’re no longer tied to offices for work, nor are our social activities locked away at home.” A cloud-based future sounds very enticing indeed.

Furthermore, according to Peter Coffee of Salesforce.com, “absolutely nobody” will manage to create the same dominance in the cloud that Microsoft has enjoyed in desktop computing for the last couple decades. Although Google certainly holds an impressive position with regards to cloud-based applications (Gmail, Youtube, Google Docs, etc.) and has massive amounts of resources and intelligence to continue developing such tools, the potential market is so wide and varied that innovation will inevitably come from a multitude of sources from all corners of the web. There are simply too many specific purposes of different types of applications for one firm to dominate all of the rest.

A recent report by Morgan Stanley shows the extent to which major corporations are adopting cloud-based solutions. The CIOs surveyed say they expect email, CRM, and human resources applications to be the first to be moved to cloud-based environments, and express enthusiasm at the potential for reduced computing costs that the cloud offers. The report shows that cloud-computing is definitely moving into the mainstream for enterprises, proving that the technology is here to stay.

The one consideration hindering cloud-based applications is a continuing concern about security. Some maintain that the cloud cannot offer a reliable level of information privacy. “Trust not the cloud for reliability, security, privacy,” says Barry Wellman, a professor of sociology and Netlab director at the University of Toronto. But my view is that these hurdles will be overcome as the creators of cloud-based applications develop better and better security measures. Eventually, the inherent advantages of the cloud will make the technology impossible to pass up.

Last week, a bit of a debate unfolded on the pages of the New York Times about whether the proliferation of data on the real-time web is actually making us more unintelligent. The initial volley was fired here in a feature article detailing some scientific findings about how multitasking may be rewiring our brains. The article argues that constantly being connected to a wide-range of information sources is fragmenting our attention spans and corrupting our life experiences.

But I agree the counterpoint made here by Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard. The technology that we are plugged into helps us manage and digest the vast amount of knowledge and intellectual output that the human race is capable of creating. Without it, we would surely be worse off. The information stream is the only thing that will keep us smart.

Mind Over Mass Media

New forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber.

So too with electronic technologies. PowerPoint, we’re told, is reducing discourse to bullet points. Search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge rather than dive to its depths. Twitter is shrinking our attention spans.

But such panics often fail basic reality checks. When comic books were accused of turning juveniles into delinquents in the 1950s, crime was falling to record lows, just as the denunciations of video games in the 1990s coincided with the great American crime decline. The decades of television, transistor radios and rock videos were also decades in which I.Q. scores rose continuously.

Yes, the constant arrival of information packets can be distracting or addictive, especially to people with attention deficit disorder. But distraction is not a new phenomenon. The solution is not to bemoan technology but to develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life. Turn off e-mail or Twitter when you work, put away your Blackberry at dinner time, ask your spouse to call you to bed at a designated hour.

The new media have caught on for a reason. Knowledge is increasing exponentially; human brainpower and waking hours are not. Fortunately, the Internet and information technologies are helping us manage, search and retrieve our collective intellectual output at different scales, from Twitter and previews to e-books and online encyclopedias. Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart.

via Op-Ed Contributor – Mind Over Mass Media – NYTimes.com. By Steven Pinker.

We routinely hear politicians preach about how devoted they are to being open and contactable, but how often do we see them actually follow through on such promises? It looks like social media may prove to be one way for politicians to do just that. I am a firm believer in the usefulness of social media for use in business applications, but as this piece I found at Mashable points out, the same great qualities that make social media tools attractive to businesses also have great potential for utilization in politics.

Such applications could include everything from the potential for political openness and transparency using services such as Facebook and Twitter, to creating virtual gathering points on the social web for groups of political supporters. Campaigns could also use social media to create highly relevant and targeted advertisements reaching only the people who care about certain issues. With social media, public figures and organizations can reach their constituents like never before, and this could be a huge step forward for political involvement in our democracy.

How Political Campaigns Are Using Social Media for Real Results

Just as social media has opened a dialogue between businesses and consumers, its value is apparent to those in political office, whose work and very professional survival hinges on the needs and perceptions of their constituents.

But when was the last time a local politician garnered the same social media buzz as a hip startup, or a savvy online retailer?

As it stands, the social web is ripe with opportunities for candidates and office holders alike to connect with voters, foster transparency, and even spar with opponents in the same ways they have been in the traditional media for hundreds of years. We spoke with some innovators who have been tapping into the political power of social media. If their work is any indication, expect the future of elected government to be measured in fans and followers, as well as votes.

via How Political Campaigns Are Using Social Media for Real Results. Posted by Matt Silverman.

There’s quite a lot of clamoring in the tech world today about Apple’s purported blocking of major competitors, such as Google’s AdMob, from advertising in apps for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. Evidently, this would be a step to ensure the widespread adoption of Apple’s new iAds mobile advertising platform. Blocking out AdMob from the lucrative markets offered by Apple’s devices would be a huge loss for Google, which paid $750 million for the mobile advertising company back in November of 2009. Here is the offending text, from section 3.3.9 of the new iOS developer agreement:

• “The collection, use or disclosure is for the purpose of serving advertising to Your Application; is provided to an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads (for example, an advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent); and the disclosure is limited to UDID, user location data, and other data specifically designated by Apple as available for advertising purposes.”

Some are treating this as a direct declaration of war by Apple against Google, while others are taking it as proof that Apple is totally terrified of them. But I tend to agree most with Ben Parr’s column over at Mashable that what Apple is doing, rather than outright banning AdMob and others from advertising on iOS, is seizing control over the analytics and data that mobile advertisers can collect, and the way in which they can collect them. With this power, Apple can make AdMob just a little more difficult for developers to work with, giving iAds a subtle yet definite advantage. An all-out blockade of third-party advertisers would likely amount to a monopoly in the government’s eyes – in fact, the FTC is already looking into Apple’s actions. Google, for its part, says that without access to this data, AdMob is effectively crippled because it can’t properly target its ads.

My take on the matter is that the government will force Apple to modify the developer agreement to allow AdMob and other competitors access to the data they require to function, but that Apple will still find a way to give iAds an advantage over its rivals without drawing the wrath of the FTC. In my mind, it is inevitable that iAds will eventually become the mobile advertising platform of choice on iOS devices (and thus, perhaps, all the mobile landscape). Apple inescapably has that power, because it is the developer and creator of these wildly popular machines.

Some nice attention on Foxbusiness.com. We have several market-leading partners helping to make M5 hosted VOIP a part of their service offering and are excited to welcome Firm Tech to the fold. Firm Tech is an IT company servicing legal and professional in the southeastern US.

M5 Networks Teams With Firm Tech for Expanded Legal Sector Support in the Southeast

M5 Networks, has entered a partnership with Firm Tech, Inc. to deliver voice service to corporations and legal firms in the Southeast US.

Firm Tech, Inc. is an Information Technology consulting firm servicing the Southeastern United States of America. Their specialized vertical markets include legal and professional services firms, not for profit and hospitality companies.

“Teaming with Firm Tech adds a new dimension to the M5 offering and provides an expanded synergy for all the legal firms we are servicing in the region. With the resources of Firm Tech we can now offer a turnkey solution that is designed specifically for legal offices regardless of size or technical sophistication,” says Jim Kanir, M5’s Chief Revenue Officer.

Firm Tech President, David Boughter Jr., believes, “With the addition of M5’s smart business VoIP system to our offering we now have a total solution that extends beyond just the network infrastructure.”

via M5 Networks Teams With Firm Tech for Expanded Legal Sector Support in the Southeast – FOXBusiness.com.

I had a chance to attend a great event yesterday on technology strategies for associations and non-profits.

I have never been surer after talking to some CIO/CTO who have adopted cloud computing that this is the only way to provide smart business phone systems. Here’s why they are doing it (these are all quotes from executives).

1. Cloud computing lets you buy it from the experts. Your team is good but not as good as the people who do this 24 hours a day.

2. People still matter. If your internal IT people are better then their people, run! If you have to explain your business to the supplier that is not someone you should be doing business with. They should be bringing information to the table that YOU don’t know about your own business.

3. Integrating applications unlocks the true power of the cloud. Make sure whatever cloud you choose can talk to everyone’s else’s cloud. Private clouds are better for voice for sure.

4. Help Desk – Do they answer the phone when you call or are you on hold for 10 minutes?  Can they prove they have good service like Salesforce does? Can they measure customer satisfaction like Harley Davidson who uses Net Promoter?

Last month, Microsoft announced that it would be discontinuing Response Point, its software-based on-premises phone system for small businesses, on August 31 of this year. Frankly, this wasn’t much of a surprise, as the service has been in “engineering maintenance status” (all development activities suspended) for over a year, so it was clear that Microsoft was no longer intent on continuing to compete in the PBX market.

John Frederiksen, general manager in Microsoft’s Startup Business Group, has stated that Microsoft did not anticipate the advances in the telecommunications industry as hosted VoIP has become much more ubiquitous. “The change in telecom technology came upon us much faster than we predicted. It’s gone hosted and mobile.” Frederiksen went on to say that Response Point would need immense amounts of investment and development to compete with hosted VoIP systems, and it seems like Microsoft is simply not interested in pursuing such a fight. Such news indicates a definite shift away from premise-based systems towards the type of hosted VoIP we have here at M5 – the unabating march of technology continues!

Response Point Is Dead, Long Live Hosted IP-PBX

There are more signs that premise-license based-IP small biz phone systems are lunging into tech oblivion, joining PSTN and hardware PBXs, IVRs, dialers and answering machines, replaced by simplified cloud/hosted IP-PBXes.

One of the biggest to die is Microsoft’s Response Point VoIP PBX. Microsoft announced in a post on its website that it would end sales, development and support for Response Point: on August 31, 2010.

via Response Point Is Dead, Long Live Hosted IP-PBX. Posted by Brendan B. Read.

Lately, there’s been a lot of focus on how business interactions will evolve as technology makes communication more and more mobile. People want to be able to work from anywhere they happen to be in the world, be it homes, parks, or coffee shops. Recently, Matt and I sat down with Dan Hoffman, our CEO, to hear his thoughts on the future of the office phone system.

“There is a drive for people to work from wherever, whenever,” Hoffman says. “We are fighting a losing battle to tie people to a desk.” For decades, offices have been the fundamental core of business activity, the one place where company work can get done. But technology is undoubtedly changing that.

“Companies are still all about coordinating people. The role of the phone system must be reinvented. This is what we’re trying to do. Instead of being a simple switchboard system, we’re trying to create a comprehensive system you can access from anywhere.” Here at M5, we’re trying to construct a system that a variety of devices can be a part of and can be seamlessly switched between. Case in point – the iPad app we currently have in beta can effortlessly transfer a conversation to a desk phone unit, and vice versa.

The desk phone remains a major part of that communication network. “At a desk, the desk phone will still be your first choice for conversation, no matter what you’re other options are. It simply provides the best experience.” Even with the advances in softphones and mobile technology, the desk phone will continue to be the simplest, highest quality, most reliable way to make a phone call, because it is the only tool uniquely dedicated to the task. “If you’re a candidate for a job interview, you don’t want to use a cell phone to talk with your prospective employers, you’re going to want to go with a desk phone,” says Hoffman. “Same if you’re a salesperson making an important call. We see desk phones remaining in the future- they’ll just be one part of the mix.”

Here at M5, “we want to surf the mobility wave.” But it brings opportunities as well as challenges. It is not easy to coordinate business when everyone is all over the place. “The phone system needs to grow and change along with the workforce that’s using it.”

photo by RaeA

The first thing that came into my mind while I was watching Steve Jobs amaze us at the unveiling of the new iPhone 4 yesterday was “but what about all the wireless data usage?” AT&T is already having hugely well-documented troubles with too much 3G traffic on its network – much of it from current iPhone users – and to that effect recently eliminated its all-you-can-eat wireless data plan for new customers. Many of the features on the new iPhone promise to only increase data usage. In fact, at least one of the features on the iPhone 4 has already suffered. FaceTime, the much-anticipated iPhone to iPhone videochatting feature, has been limited to work on wi-fi connections only. Surely we would prefer to be able to use FaceTime anywhere, anytime, but at some point it was decided that this would use far too much bandwidth. Unfortunately, right now it seems like network issues are limiting the awesome potential of mobile technology.

What Does the New iPhone Mean for Wireless Data Caps?

At the WWDC keynote, Steve Jobs demonstrated not only the new iPhone 4 but also lots of new applications and features that are part of iOS 4. These apps, which included Netflix for the iPhone, FarmVille and Guitar Hero look really fantastic, but they also look pretty bandwidth intensive.

While that might not be a problem provided users are connected via WiFi or on a network that can provide these theoretically awesome HSDPA/HSUPA speeds, what does this mean for iPhone users who might have data limits imposed on them by their carriers?

AT&T made waves last week when it announced new changes to its smartphone data plans. While these new plans might mean substantial savings for customers who don’t use a lot of 3G data on their iPhones, it also imposes a set data cap for usage. With more and more data-intensive apps and services on the way, this may make those new limits disappear more quickly for more users.

via What Does the New iPhone Mean for Wireless Data Caps?. Posted by Christina Warren.

These days, reaching customers isn’t about just mass advertising campaigns and preaching your virtues to consumers. It’s about actively listening to and communicating with customers through social media. Customers now more than ever have the ability, and the desire, to share their experiences and interact with other like-minded people, and it is up to companies to be there to respond and keep the conversation going. Not only can we take actions to manage reputations, but more importantly we can connect with consumers and build meaningful, valuable relationships.

B2B Companies Must Keep Pace with the Customer 2.0

Social media has become the go-to resource for B2B customers – both to share feedback about companies they are doing business, with as well as to monitor discussions about products and services they are considering. The control of a B2B company’s brand is rapidly transitioning from corporate marketing departments to the customer-to-customer conversations taking place via social media. Just as shared positive experiences can drive new prospects to your business, unmanaged negative commentaries can spread like wildfire, incinerating your organization’s hard earned reputation. Not surprisingly, customers recognize their growing influence and realize the impact of their praise, or more importantly, their criticism.

This is the era of Customer 2.0. Businesses of all sizes are learning the importance of listening, rather than preaching, in order to acquire and retain their customers. Customer 2.0 is not interested in vague and impersonalized advertising and sales pitches. They are socially savvy and active, know how to connect with one another to talk about your company (more than half of active US Twitter users follow at least one company, brand or product) and possess little desire to maintain loyalty for a company who does not care for and accommodate their needs.

This new environment creates big challenges but also incredible opportunities for B2B sales. Sales professionals can no longer completely rely on traditional email and cold calling campaigns. The good news is social media is leveling the playing field for selling to Customer 2.0. Sales professionals can now gain timely and relevant insights about their customers as well as engage at a very deep and personal level – two huge boons to the B2B sales process. Thanks to social media monitoring and conversation, individuals within the organization have the ability (along with the responsibility!) of championing the identity of their corporate brand and uphold public reputations. The wall between the corporation and the end-user has been torn down; and sales professionals are on the front lines.

via B2B Companies Must Keep Pace with the Customer 2.0 | Social Media B2B. Posted by Umberto Milleti.

Last week, Verizon announced that it’s popular Digital Voice consumer phone service is becoming a completely VoIP-based connection. Instead of employing old copper telephone lines, Digital Voice will use Verizon’s fiber optic cables. Verizon has been testing the VoIP service over FiOS since 2008, and the company’s offering has been hotly anticipated. Looks like Verizon recognizes that old phone technology is on it’s way out – the future of telecommunications is all in VoIP and mobile!

Verizon’s Digital Voice Goes All-VoIP

Verizon is maturing its current Digital Voice product — available in 11 states and the District of Columbia — with a total Voice over Internet Protocol solution. The service transitions away from the analog switches used previously, leverages Verizon’s existing and future investment in fiber optics, and reduces costs while improving the quality of service.

via Verizon’s Digital Voice Goes All-VoIP. Posted by Kevin C. Tofel.

M5 stacks up well against Covad, Smoothstone, etc, in this cost/feature comparison guide from Focus.

The bullet point we are most proud of is support/customer service. While the other providers say yes  printed, online and call-in service is included, only M5 can say sure maintenance, support, changes and upgrades are included. And 95% of support requests are resolved within 24 hours. And 95% of customers would confidently refer M5 to other businesses.

For us that’s really what matters.

Comparison Guide: Hosted VoIP PBX

Some telecom news out of Albany- it should be interesting to see if Charles Schumer’s proposal to tax calls transferred to overseas call centers becomes law. If so, it could easily turn into a trend across the country as states try to come up with creative new taxes to shrink budget shortfalls.

M5’s world-class customer service team is located in Rochester, NY. They’re a perfect example of a highly-trained expert call center right here in New York State. If Schumer is able to grow the number of call centers like ours across New York maybe the tax won’t be such a terrible thing. The downside could be if the tax affects the many M5 customers who have remote employees located overseas. It remains to be seen how the bill will be written and how they’ll be able to legislate this gray area.

Call center ‘tax’ proposal targets customer service off-shoring

At this points it’s a bit of a local politico story, but New York Sen. Charles Schumer is proposing legislation to tax companies 25 cents each time a call is transferred to a foreign country. While call center off-shoring and outsourcing is prevalent in many industries, larger U.S. service providers and cable MSOs have leaned on the practice at times to help keep customer support costs low.

via Call center ‘tax’ proposal targets customer service off-shoring | Unfiltered by Susana Schwartz June 1st, 2010

Getting coverage in the news and media can be one of the best ways to advertise your company. You get great exposure to the publication’s audience and often it further legitimizes your company in the eyes of consumers. But, as Keith Trivett contends here, a company must have a distinctive and idiosyncratic story in order for it to get noticed. There will always be throngs of competitors all vying for the media’s attention, and to get coverage, you must stand out above them. Anyone can say that they are innovative, the challenge is to truly be innovative and prove it.

If Your Company Doesn’t Have A Unique Story, You’re Not Going To Get Noticed

One of the most frequent questions I am asked as a public relations practitioner and as someone who talks frequently with entrepreneurs and small business owners is: “Why should a start-up like mine use PR?” Or: “What value would PR give a small business like mine?”

Before answering that question, though, I like to ask the CEO: “Well, what is your business’ story? What’s unique about you and your company/service/product?”

This is when it starts to get fun. That’s usually about the time I hear something along the lines of: “We’re revolutionary in this… We are doing something no one has ever done before! We’re just three guys (or girls) who went to college together, had an idea we loved and are trying to make it happen.”

That’s all great, but as I often tell potential clients, it’s not likely to build your business, get you investors, reach a mass audience or provide any sustainability to your company. The reason being: All of that is what Every. Company. Says. All the time. And there is a pretty good chance your main competitor, or all eight of them, have already said it before.

via If Your Company Doesn’t Have A Unique Story, You’re Not Going To Get Noticed. Posted by Keith Trivitt.

Crain’s New York published an awesome profile and video on us here at M5, and we couldn’t be happier with the write-up. The report includes another superb interview with our CEO, Dan Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman was honored as one of Crain’s Top Entrepreneurs for 2010. Check out the video and the full article published below to see what we’ve been up to and where we’re going, and kudos to all for a great job so far!

Tech firm’s calls are connecting

Six years into its existence, M5 Networks Inc. had become a respectable Internet-based telecom provider to businesses, but its CEO was feeling underwhelmed.

“We could have kept going as we were, and been a nice, profitable company,” says Dan Hoffman, who helped found the company in 2000. “But we decided to make a bold leap.”

To provide its customers with better reliability, a better user experience and more powerful applications, M5 decided to build its own core technology, taking over the job from an outside software company.

That shift was no small undertaking: It meant opening the door to venture investors, including Greycroft Partners and Milestone Venture Partners, for $10 million to buy a software-development company and fund research and development. Moreover, it meant changing the firm’s business model from being a telecom company to what’s known as a software-as-service provider. In other words, M5 went from offering fairly standard phone service to offering phone service that is a tool to grow those businesses. It lets businesses track sales and service activity.

“The conventional wisdom in the phone industry was that you either deliver service or write software, but you can’t do both well,” says Mr. Hoffman. “But the emerging ’cloud’ model, led by Google and Salesforce.com, showed that you had to do both to win in the Internet world.”

So far, so good. The company’s 2009 revenues were $26 million. It’s on track to reach $32 million in 2010.

Mr. Hoffman’s accomplishment is all the more impressive considering that technology was not his first love. As a Harvard undergrad, he studied Slavic languages and literature. “I was attracted to anything that was falling apart or in chaos, and at that time, the Berlin Wall had just come down,” he explains. “All the professors had no idea what was going on, and I kind of liked that.”

Mr. Hoffman’s dream of working in Russia never materialized, because of the political upheaval there. But within a few years, the Internet revolution did materialize, and the uncertainty and possibility that it heralded drew him in as if another wall had fallen.

M5 — whose 1,200 customers range from Amnesty International to Isaac Mizrahi to crafty e-commerce site Etsy (whose founder, Rob Kalin, was a 2009 Crain’s top entrepreneur) — is succeeding in part because of its rock-solid voice-over-Internet service and its great technology. But its success also rests on the fact that M5 tailors its technology to meet clients’ needs, rather than expecting clients to adapt to its technology.

“They are focused on those features and capabilities that are truly valuable to their specific users,” says Elka Popova, an analyst with research firm Frost & Sullivan. “And the way their marketing highlights business benefits rather than technical details shows they’re thinking about their customers.”

Mr. Hoffman’s company is just one of many that provides business-grade communications, of course. Most of its competitors offer large systems that businesses must buy, deploy and manage on their premises.

M5 is different: As a software-as-service business, it owns and manages the system. This allows small and midsize businesses, which are usually more strapped for cash than large ones, to pay predictable monthly fees rather than a big up-front sum, and to have experts from M5 run a high-end system for them.

Companies that use hosted solutions like M5 tend to get access to more frequent upgrades, better capabilities and more advanced features because of competition in the burgeoning new field.

Armed with its own development team, M5 has been able to introduce a variety of advanced features. A popular one allows managers to easily track how employees spend time. Managers get automatically generated reports showing who their employees have called and when, and the length of their conversations.

“This solves the problem of managers being in charge but not in control,” explains Mr. Hoffman.

Ms. Popova calls Mr. Hoffman an “amazing” entrepreneur. But not everything he and his partners have touched has turned to gold. They built a firm called Interport Communications Inc. and made $12.3 million selling it in 1998. But a subsequent effort, Asia Online Ltd., was a “dot-bomb,” admits Mr. Hoffman, in part because it paid too little attention to customer service.

Lesson learned, says Mr. Hoffman. “There is no great brand in telecom around service,” he says. “That is who we’re trying to be.”

via Dan Hoffman – M5 Networks Inc. – Top Entrepreneurs | Crain’s New York Business. Posted by Steve Garmhausen.

The iPad has enjoyed amazingly explosive levels of popularity over the past couple of months. In fact, a new iPad is purchased once every three seconds. Over 2 million have been units sold in the United States alone (international releases are just beginning now). For purposes of comparison, it took Apple four months to sell 2 million iPhones, while the iPod took two years to reach the same milestone. According to Steve Jobs, tablets are the future of computing and will be where Apple is focusing its efforts for the next decade. Does the iPad’s success spell the demise of computers as we know them?

Apple’s New Direction: Will the Tablet Replace the PC?

Yesterday at the D8 conference in Los Angeles, Steve Jobs laid out his vision of what’s to come. While Apple’s CEO went in-depth on a plethora of interesting subjects (e.g. Adobe Flash, the lost iPhone, iAds), he spent much of the stage time talking about the future of computing, specifically the PC.

Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg of AllThingsD asked Jobs whether the tablet is going to replace the laptop. Jobs’s response was an analogy:

“When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this is going to make some people uneasy.”

That short exchange says a lot about the direction Apple could take computing over the next decade.

via Apple’s New Direction: Will the Tablet Replace the PC?. Posted by Ben Parr.

Social media tools are a terrific way to better connect with and market to potential customers, thanks to their incredible degree of interactivity and responsiveness. Of course, these same traits also make social media a great way to communicate with people once they have already become your patron – by employing such tools in the field of customer service. Here, Lauren Vargas gives us five important steps to incorporating social media into your customer service platform:

1. Apply your current service strategy to social media
2. Put human relationships back into your service
3. Establish a knowledge base
4. Set expectations
5. Perform quality assurance

Follow the link below to see why.

5 Steps to Taking Customer Service Social

The debate over who owns the customer still looms in the shadows of company hallways and conference rooms. There is no one right answer because every department, team and employee owns the customer and takes part in shaping a positive customer experience.

Customer service is no longer an area to triage customer complaints. It’s about anticipating customer needs at the right time and place. Organizations must relearn how to interact with their community, shed some of the heavily automated barriers, and get back to the basics of customer service.

via 5 Steps to Taking Customer Service Social. Posted by Lauren Vargas.

A great interview with Dan Hoffman, our CEO, was published today over at The VAR Guy’s blog. Hoffman discusses his vision for how M5 can harness the power of the cloud and shows off an awesome iPad app we’re currently developing at the beta stage. The future looks bright indeed.

M5 Networks: Reinventing Telephony With the Cloud

Back in December 2009, I reported on enterprise VoIP services provider M5 Networks and their push to build smarter phone systems for SMBs. Now, fast forward to the present: I had the chance to catch up with M5 Networks CEO Dan Hoffman on where the company’s going, how the cloud is helping them get there, and how the Apple iPad fits into their vision for enterprise telephony. Here’s the scoop.

Hoffman says the PBX, the heart of the modern telephone system, is outdated at best and “broken” at worst. The core PBX technology has been in use for as long as companies have kept switchboards on-premises, and new features have been limited to whatever can be “bolted on” to it. But now, Hoffman says, the power of the cloud presents an opportunity to build something new – maybe something a little more intelligent.

A smart system, Hoffman says, doesn’t care about endpoints. Unlike a PBX, M5 Networks’ VoIP solution allows mobile devices to be put on an enterprise’s phone system. That’s a boon as Hoffman estimates that 30% of all business calls are now made on smartphones of one kind or another, and now administrators can manage them like anything else on their switchboard.

To drive that point home, Hoffman showed me the M5 Networks iPad app, currently in beta with no formal release date set as of yet. It worked, and worked well, as he was able to receive a call, seamlessly switch it over to his desk phone and back, and even dial me back. As far as M5’s cloud-powered phone system was concerned, Hoffman’s iPad was as much a phone as what was sitting on his desk.

M5 Networks isn’t the only one taking this approach to reinventing the phone system, but Hoffman says their differentiation is their focus on the entrepreneurial and midsize business markets who want to “buy, not build” a smart, cheap phone system out of the box.

“We’re trying to be great in this niche,” Hoffman says.

If you’re not sold on VoIP in the enterprise space, I doubt M5 Networks’ success is going to sway you. But if, like me, you’re a believer in the power of telephony-as-a-service, the idea of a smarter switchboard should have you intrigued.

via M5 Networks: Reinventing Telephony With the Cloud | The VAR Guy. Posted by Matthew Weinberger.

The story goes that Lehman Brothers was not rescued in a private bailout because Warren Buffett did not know how to access his voicemail.  How many jobs were lost because of this? What if Buffett had picked up his Blackberry and had an email with a transcript of the message? Would things have turned out differently?

M5 utilizes Simulscribe as an option to providing instant text transcriptions to email of any voicemails you receive. They are one of the best companies in the space, which with new entrants like Yap, is quickly growing. So many businesses can benefit from receiving email transcripts of all their calls- salespeople, lawyers, recruiters, CEOs, investors. Anyone for who a single message can mean thousand, millions, or maybe even billions of dollars.

I’ve been an Apple fan for 20 years (yes, since middle school) and it’s interesting to see how they are steps ahead of other dominant tech companies. Giants move slowly and have a vested interest in keeping to the status quo. The transition over the past 40 years (mainframes>minicomputers>PCs>mobile devices) has left companies behind at each step. Intel has been there through some of the transition, but it’s Apple who has been the more agile one of late and may leave Intel behind. The next 5 years will be interesting as more computing functions are moved away from the desktop/laptop, and Apple continues to utilize their owned/licensed chipsets for these devices instead of ones from Intel.

Apple iPad: Intel Outside

Intel made a couple of strategic gaffes along the way to being left out of the Apple iPad:

(1) exiting the ARM-based mobile CPU business entirely in 2006 (pre-iPhone)

(2) assuming that PC technology would continue to extend lower & lower into mobile devices

It’s become clear in the last few days that the iPad is a new class of devices. Not the tablet-of-old pushed by Microsoft, but a truly disruptive era of computing, one that bypasses Intel entirely. Intel simply couldn’t fathom that an iPhone class of computers would disrupt PCs from the bottom up, which is exactly what happened.

And it’s not just the iPad. Google Chrome OS tablets won’t run Intel either, because the divide between ARM and Intel is not narrowing. In fact, Netbooks may even ditch Atom in favor of ARM processors (Windows bloat may prevent this). Google wants this to happen with its cloud initiatives running on Chrome OS.

Intel is fighting back using massive R&D dollars to get back in. However, even though Intel Atom CPUs use more advanced process technology (45nm), they lag ARM processors (the Apple A4, nVidia Tegra 2, Qualcomm Snapdragon etc) from less advanced fabs in the area that matters most – performance per watt of power consumption. Simply speaking, this is performance for a given battery life.

Losing the iPad is symbolic of losing tomorrow’s computer, and it looks a lot like mobile computing will pass Intel by in classic disruptive fashion. Tablet computing – as dawned by the iPad – is the first real threat to Intel&apos;s hegemony, and you can bet they know that…

via Apple iPad: ‘Intel Outside’ – steve’s blog on Apr 5, 2010 at 6:18am

In the last decade, mobile technology has created an entirely new way in which we interact through telecommunications. We can now be connected everywhere we go – any place, any time. Tom Nolle has a very interesting post about the impacts and ramifications of this Third State, over at No Jitter.

Networking and The Third State

In 2000, CIMI Corporation found that people tended to recognize two communications behavioral states: “home” and “work/school”. Mobile ubiquity created a Third State, “Out”, and this Third State represents all the situations where we’re relatively free from obligation/supervision fetters. It’s this Third State that is creating the direct pressure for communications change. A service at its most flexible meets an audience at its most receptive in terms of new ideas, patterns of behavior, and possible directions of interest. The Third State will change everything.

via No Jitter | blog. Posted by Tom Nolle, CIMI Corp.

At the moment, e-mail holds the all-important status as the preeminent forum through which business communication flows. We’ve all heard stories of executives who simply cannot disconnect themselves from their Blackberries, lest they miss something important. But Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group argues that soon, social media will replace e-mail as the go to apparatus for communication in the business world. He argues that such a switch is inevitable, and I certainly can’t say I disagree. Social media is immensely versatile and customizable, and it is clearly the communication form of choice for younger workers. Businesses have already followed consumers into social media in an attempt to better connect with potential customers, and it is only a matter of time before they adopt such services to communicate among themselves as well.

Social Networking Will Supplement E-mail as the Primary Enterprise Communications Tool

Depending on how old you are, you might remember the days, years ago, when e-mail wasn’t our primary communications tool. Back in “the old days”, the first thing I would do when I got to the office was check voice mail. The first thing I would when getting off a plane was check voice mail. I would sneak away from my family on vacation to go use the payphone to call into our 800 number to check voice mail. I couldn’t get away from it.

Then somewhere along the line, e-mail came into our work lives and now I find myself doing the same thing. I check my Blackberry as soon as I get up, as soon as I get to the office, continually in boring internal meetings, and any other free moment I have. Like for so many others, e-mail dominates my professional life.

However, like the shift from the phone to e-mail, I believe we stand on the precipice of another change–this time to corporate social networking. Over time, more and more workers will shift their work habits so that the social networking interface will be the first place they go in the morning and the thing that’s continually checked all day long, and here’s why:

via No Jitter | blog. Posted by Zeus Kerravala, The Yankee Group