Forrester Finds Most Enterprises Still Buy Phone Systems, Not Hosted IP Telephony

A recent Forrester Research survey of 567 enterprise and smaller business users that already have adopted IP telephony shows that most buyers so far have chosen premises-based solutions.

Just four percent of respondents say they have adopted a 'hosted' IP telephony service. Another four percent reported they had adopted a 'telephony as a service solution. About five percent said their IP telephony solution was outsourced. Taking all three as a group, just 13 percent of IP telephony solutions were hosted, cloud-based or outsourced.

That might make a great deal of sense. The economics of IP telephony tend to suggest that small users can benefit from hosted or cloud-based solutions, while enterprises often can justify owning their own solutions.

The study lends credence to the cable operator strategy of targeting businesses with 20 or fewer employees, as those are the venues where the economics of buying a service are best, compared to buying a premises-based solution.

About 71 percent said their IP telephony solutions were self maintained, while 16 percent said they owned their solution, but that it also was managed by a third party.

Forrester Finds Most Enterprises Still Buy Phone Systems, Not Hosted IP Telephony - Thoughts on Carrier Evolution - Carrier Evolution

Telepresence ROI Still an Issue, According to CDW Survey

Return on investment continues to be an issue information technology staffs struggle with when trying to justify new investments in videoconferencing or telepresence, a survey sponsored by CDW has found.

Just slightly more than half of medium and large businesses currently track ROI, the report has found. Some 56 percent of respondents said they track hard dollar ROI and 58 percent track soft (productivity) ROI.

Of the medium and large businesses that track hard ROI, the majority are looking at dollars saved from trips avoided. Nearly half of medium and large businesses that track soft ROI are looking at employee productivity.

Still, half of medium and large businesses use video conferencing today, while another quarter plan to implement the technology within the next two years. Some eight percent plan to adopt within a year, while 17 said they would adopt in one to two years."

ROI Still an Issue, According to CDW Survey

Tablets Used Like PCs, Canalys Says

Do users view tablets as functional replacements for PCs or e-readers? Is the tablet category a “new” consumer electronics product, or the latest form factor for PCs? The answers are more complicated than one might think.

A recent consumer survey by Canalys of consumers in Western Europe suggests that current tablet usage resembles that of a PC, rather than a media player or e-book reader. After web browsing, both tablet owners and non-owners in Western Europe said they viewed tablets as devices for email, messaging and social networking.

Of course, that set of applications also fits the smart phone usage profile as well, with the exception of voice apps, of course. And even email, messaging and social networking are likely relatively soon to become features of some e-readers. To the extent that tablets shifts consumption of some common PC apps, it is a “PC substitute."

Tablets Used Like PCs, Canalys Says

Dumb Pipe: Get Over It

Nothing bothers telecom or Internet access provider executives more than the fear of becoming a “dumb pipe” provider. The fear is that value, revenue and margin will migrate elsewhere in the value chain. So the big fear is the unstated set of assumptions that go with “dumb pipe,” more than the actual phrase.

What tends to be left unsaid in all discussions of “dumb pipe” are implied adjectives such as “low margin, commodity status, low value, low revenue or low price.” In other words, it is not “dumb pipe” in principle, but low value, low revenue, low margin, low price “dumb pipe” that drives the concern.

The problem is that there is fundamentally no way access and transport providers can actually avoid being suppliers of some key "dumb pipe" services. That isn't to say the only thing access providers can do is provide simple access, but neither can they escape that unique role in the applications ecosystem. In some ways, you have to play the cards you were dealt.

Dumb Pipe: Get Over It

OnSwipe: Web Content on Tablets That Behaves Like an App

Up to this point, content intended primarily for consumption on a tablet device would be created for the Apple iPad and use the App Store for distribution to end users. Self-executing apps such as games are ideal for that format. But such apps are less than ideal for content distribution, the founders of OnSwipe argue.

"With HTML5, however, content publishers can have the swipe features, the page movement, the rich graphics and all the other things that apps provide, and still be open and easily portable to other tablets or platforms," says co-founder Jason Baptiste.

OnSwipe gives content publishers the ability to mimic many of the user interface and features that apps provide, but on the open web. That promises a way of authoring that works for web, tablet and small-screen devices.

At first, the company figured it would just license its software platform to publishers who wanted to create a quick app-like experience for the iPad. “But that would just be a services business, not a really big company,” says Baptiste. “Not that that’s bad, but we wanted to do something really big — there’s so much potential there. So we decided to give the software away, and have as many people publish in an infinitely customizable way, and we would build a thread that pulls them all together.”

The idea now, Baptiste says, is to create a kind of networked layer on top of the OnSwipe publishing tools, to turn those tools into more of an ecosystem.

OnSwipe Wants to Reinvent Content for Tablets

PCs Getting Less Use at Small Businesses

A survey of 2,223 owners and managers at companies with less than 500 employees, most of them with between five and 499 workers, suggests that "PC" use is declining, while other digital devices, including tablets and smartphones are taking up the slack.

Beyond the finding that nine percent of business owners were using iPads (as of November 2010), the study found that 79 percent of small- and midsize-business owners used a desktop computer, down from 83 percent in 2010.

Some 16 percent used a netbook or notebook, down from 21 percent earlier in 2010.  About 60 percent used a laptop, down from 65 percent.

Note the trend: tablets up, desktop PCs, netbooks down, notebooks down.

About 37 percent used a smartphone or other personal digital assistant, up from 27 percent the prior year.

Fully 31 percent were using mobile applications, a category that wasn’t even measured the previous year, on smartphones, cell phones, or tablet computers.

What all of that might mean is that many business and work tasks really do not require much in the way of content creation, beyond replying to emails or social media messages.

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Rabobank’s iPhone App: Take a Picture, Pay a Bill

Rabobank’s iPhone app allows customers to pay bills by taking a picture of the bill.

About 30 percent of Dutch consumers pay their bills by using "acceptgiros," standard yellow payment forms that merchants sent to them together with their bills. These forms are prefilled with all relevant information that is required to make the payment. The customer can pay the bill by simply signing the acceptgiro and dropping it into the letterbox of his bank, or by paying it directly using online banking.

Dutch Rabobank has added a new functionality to its iPhone mobile banking app which it calls "acceptgiroscan." Users of the app can pay bills by simply taking a picture of the acceptgiro with the phone’s built-in camera.

Rabobank’s iPhone App Lets Customers Pay Bills By Simply Taking Pictures Of Them | Forrester Blogs