Visionary Quadrant Raises Some Eyebrows

As I said in my last post, I'd focus on some new messaging and today kicks it off with some Microsoft thoughts. Digium, Microsoft and Shoretel are the ONLY 3 companies in Gartner Group's magic quadrant for Enterprise IP Telephony. This appears to be an honorary position for the three companies and what's interesting is the blog on nojitter - http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2008/08/what_is_visiona.html - where Marty Parker (ex Avaya executive and now a UC consultant) is questioning why Microsoft OCS gets this placement with such basic UC features.

I am not sure where Marty is parked on Digium's placement in this visionary quadrant but he sure provides some food for thought. He mentions in his point #2 so many companies that may or may not have places in today's world all trying to find their new place in UC/VoIP world, but Digium is a no-show meaning he is already underestimating open source's capability. Why do I believe this?

This is easy to answer: Open source by nature is a global phenomena ignored by some traditional TDM folks (i.e. Avaya); the shared delivery ecosystem today exists for open source telephony; it is software-based already today; the acquisition cost model is compelling and the ongoing support of open source is building infrastructure for traditional 24/7 based support; companies who are early adopters are well on their way to customize their UC systems as they grow.

Yes, companies like Digium are focused today on SMB, opportunistically penetrating Enterprise, but worldwide there are emerging Asterisk-based applications that build this shared delivery system that UC lends itself to and its all software based.

So Marty, don't underestimate the open source global ecosystem and its place in your UC model. I think we will be in for some healthy debates over the next few years as major traditional players consolidate, go by the wayside, and consolidate, while open source continues to be a major disruptor for UC and PBX.

I can't end this blog post yet until I comment on Microsoft. I love their marketing budgets for educating the world about UC, IP Telephony and VoIP. They do some nice PowerPoints. It will take gazillions of dollars to train systems builders, server and Windows resellers and it will take years to get their feature set correct since they have this baggage that has generated all this revenue already. But the purchasers and buying criteria are changing for them now. I for one, look forward to each event such as VoiceCon - http://www.voicecon.com/sanfrancisco/ - when Microsoft spends budget dollars and many of their employees visit our booth!

Note: I am still evaluating blog name changes. Stay tuned.

Blog Change

Over the next few weeks I will be changing the name and focus of my blog. Since this is a personal blog, not our corporate blog, we will be focusing on the corporate blog on blogs.digium.com and I will begin blogging here about trends and challenges facing Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and others as well as web changes for business but from a different perspective than today's bloggers who copy and reference others, write about how to leverage social networking, and various other topics that are now starting to appear to be repetitive and overlap quite a bit. There are a few that are cool.

Expect me to draw on my 25+ years experience to share changes today and how it impacts both traditional companies and emerging companies. I may do some comparisons of old vs. new and share how people tend to deal with these changes. As a member of the "old" way of doing things that works in a younger and newer open source company, I have made the transition to today's company and want to share this with others.

I am considering new names for the new blog focus. With all the wacko blog names and web site names it will be a fun challenge to find a catchy name.

See you soon in new skins!

Growing Up!

We are experiencing growing pains. Offices are filling. people are being promoted inside to new positions supporting "growth from within" plus outside hiring brings in new blood and thinking. You can see them roaming here!
















As we grow, our event grows: Astricon. Weekly calls. Expansion of keynoters outside of Digium folks. Less Digium speakers. Check it out here: www.astricon.net

Meetings. We strive to keep short, focused, and over with.

We strive for rapid decisions....but with all the facts.

Documentation for commercial products!

We hope to see you in Phoenix!

Shorts

This summer, our VPs are wearing shorts to work, including me. It used to be Mark Spencer and just engineers. Now, several executives. Glad to see this "Flip Flop" type culture.

Does anyone think a loose summer dress code increases productivity?

Has anyone done a study?

I'd think this would be a huge plus for most people. Comfort. Relaxing.

What do you think?

iPhone Day at Digium

Friday we had a short staff at the office. A fairly large contingent were in line at both ATT stores and the Apple store in the local new Bridge Street shopping district. The Digium folks started lining up early like 5 AM. By noon the first one showed up at the office, and by 2 PM the rest returned. As far as I know, all employees who waited received them. The Apple store had more of course than ATT did.

All were either waiting for syncing of the new units or it had just been completed so they could now twitter, text, email or surf. I don't have one as my entire family is on Verizon service, but ATT has done a tremendous job locking Apple and iPhone users into their service.

The unit is nice, nearly the exact size and weight of my Moto Q and of course both are color. But they are far from similar. My Q is great for conference calls as it has a terrific speaker phone, I have very nice Internet access, email and I like the size and weight. The iPhone however is beloved by those who buy them. I don't know a Moto Q user who can say that.

Reminds me of Asterisk - it is beloved by passionate Asterisk Community, users and developers. Can't say that about the big boys of IP Telephony!

I read one blog post today already that Asterisk download for the iPhone will be done sometime today. A Day in the life of Digium moves on!

For the Asterisk Community

We have a new initiative that has been under way for a few weeks now. It will appear in more detail soon on both this and the Digium blog. The series of events will be a nice lift for the Asterisk Community. As in any project, we have to weigh priorities as we have so many items on our plates. A Digium day is like no other in my long career. Yes, I make typical decisions for products, features, roadmaps, people, etc. But, having a community that broadens Asterisk's reach - now that is both a challenge and a huge part of Digium heritage and culture.

Stay tuned.

Another from the book, "You can't make this stuff up!"

Russell is co-maintainer of open source Asterisk and he was busy doing something physical today. Although this is a link to Russell's blog, there is no other way to do it justice:


http://www.russellbryant.net/blog/index.php/2008/07/02/this-post-brought-to-you-by-dr-pepper/"