Voice Mashups Disruptive or Not?

Iotum recently shifted gears and decided to take advantage of Facebook APIs to create a conference call app inside Facebook. Many of you know what Skype has been doing in the area of encouraging third party development around its client. And of course Microsoft has made clear its intention to place communications within the context of every expression of its desktop productivity suite.

Some people would argue this move to voice as an attribute of every application spells the death of traditional "communications as a service." So far, of course, there is no evidence of this, though there is plenty of movement within the service industry. Neither is there any evidence that people communicate less when they have the new tools; the reverse typically being the case.

So far, at any rate, one would have to say that the advent of voice as an application, as an inherent attribute of other experiences and activities, simply is creating incremental revenue opportunities and end user utility. To the extent that it negatively affects the "service" business, providers of services already are transitioning away from reliance on "voice" revenues in any case.

Enterprise phone system providers hope to do the same, and speak only of "unified communications" these days. It isn't the calling, they seem to say; it's the integration. Not an unwise choice given the fact that Microsoft Office Communication Server provides a complete alternative.

But maybe this time around we shouldn't worry so much about disruption. Choice will do nicely. Human beings are starting to have lots more choices, and that's a good thing. Companies will do well providing those choices. It will be enough.

Voice and communications increasingly are available to users as discrete services and integrated applications. This trend isn't going away. But the explosion of choices and richness do not inevitably spell doom, or automatic success, for any contestant. Calling entities "dinosaurs" doesn't hobble them. Nor does "disruption" always succeed. Quite the opposite seems to be true at this point.

Mitel Inter-Tel Merger: Dan York is Available

Maybe LinkedIn or Plaxo is useful for such things, though I prefer Facebook. So if you can help Dan, contact him at Facebook. His last day at Mitel is September 21. Here's what he's thinking:

"What's next? I'm not sure, to be honest, as there are several pathways. I'd love to run back up to the crow's nest and perform that kind of analysis, investigation, exploration/communication or evangelism for a company in the IP telephony and unified communications space, especially with a focus on social networking and social media.

I think its a great fit with my technical, strategic, marketing and communication skills - and I think sites like Facebook will have a profound effect on our communication. I'd love to help explore and guide people through that space. Having said that, I definitely recognize that those roles are few and far between. I may look into something focused in the VOIP security space, where I've obviously got some great depth and experience, or something related to IETF standards, another strong interest of mine. I've considered some form of strategic consulting, or joining the analyst ranks. There are a couple of books I'd like to write. There's a startup idea I'm pondering. As is obvious, I completely enjoy blogging, podcasting, etc. and may pursue a role focused in those areas - or in community development, another strength. And then there's always returning to my open source roots in the Linux space...

Whatever the case, my aim is to be with of an organization that is part of the disruption in this space (or at the very least chronicling the disruption).

Right now I'd love to hear from folks who have openings in any of those various areas (or know of such openings). Please do email me - or contact me via Facebook or Skype. For folks in the IT telephony/unified communication's space, I'll be out at the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo next week in Los Angeles and would be delighted to speak with folks there. (As I mentioned previously, I'll be speaking there.) Information about my background can be obtained at LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/danyork )

In my ideal world, I'd love to find a role that lets me continue to live in Burlington, VT, (with some amount of travel) since we're nicely settled in here and love the area."

NEC Acquires Sphere Communications

NEC is acquiring Sphere Communications, the latest in a series of consolidations affecting the business phone system market. Mitel and Inter-Tel, as well as Lucent and Alcatel earlier announced mergers. One has to expect more mergers involving companies specializing in small and mid-sized business phone systems, as Cisco and Microsoft are going to muscle their way into the SME segment of the market.

Though managed and hosted services are growing, SMEs still overwhelmingly seem to prefer premises-based solutions, say researchers at Infonetics.

As more voice features and applications are integrated with existing business processes, and as unified communications starts to be seen as the "function" voice is a part of, we can expect similar sorts of ripples throughout the current ecosystem supporting voice services for the SME segment. The ability to design and support a network running voice and communications applications as well as other business apps will become more important in the value added reseller space, as an obvious example.

Channel partners who can handle the "desktop" side of the premises demarc will gain at the expense of partners who only can work on the trunk side of an interface. And more of the value will derive from applications support rather than infrastructure support.