I spent the weekend in one of my favorite food cites in the world, New Orleans. This was my first trip back since Katrina and it did not disappoint. I went to one of the classic places for a jazz buffet brunch, The Court of Two Sisters. The food was Creole, French and American. We sat outside in their courtyard and had a wonderful meal with a beautiful view. The remoulade sauce served with the crawfish and shrimp was the best thing I tasted. They also made eggs Benedict to order, which was a pleasant surprise. After the Court of Two Sisters, we had dinner at two newer venues, The Bourbon House, a Brennan's restaurant, and GW Fins. Both were good but GW Fins is not to be missed, the seafood combinations and flavors were excellent! We celebrated our 25^th wedding anniversary at GW Fins and the restaurant threw in dessert as a gift.

Put the Cell Phone Down

Obviously, Broadvox grows because people make phone calls. So, I am not against people making phones calls. And the future of IP Communications and our telecom ecosystem rest with mobile applications and cell phones. All of you that read this blog know that I recently proposed to our VARs that they should add mobility to their VoIP/SIP Trunking offerings. However, I was thoroughly annoyed by this woman in front of me in the buffet line at Court of Two Sister. With a plate in one hand, serving utensil in the other, she thought it appropriate to maintain a conversation on her phone delicately balanced between her cheek and shoulder. Moving slowly so as not to upset the balance of all she was holding, I could only stare and wish she would drop the phone in the caramelized apples prepares for the Bananas Foster.

Telephone etiquette has been lost, as cell phones have proliferated. It is now okay to stop a conversation mid-sentence if your phone rings. It is okay to speak as loudly as you can in an elevator because the signal is getting weaker. Well, I am here to say it is not okay. I carry my phone wherever I go. I am anxious if I leave the house without it. However, I do not maintain a call in the elevator.  Moreover, unless it is our CEO, Andre Temnorod,  or my wife, I will complete the sentence or thought.

New recipe next Monday and I promise something more studious on Wednesday.

I entered the weekend tired and anxious to cook. While I had been busy with the Broadvox Partner Summit and the new product announcements, relaxation comes from cooking. I had Sunday dinner planned; grilled lamb chops with Greek seasoning, a tomato, basil and sweet onion salad, and potato gruyere and bacon gratin. However, as we conducted our usual Saturday chores and shopping, my barbeque store finally had an ample supply of applewood.  Applewood is great for smoking bacon, ham, cheese, scallops and many other things. I have been looking for it for weeks. Finally, a store had as much as I wanted. We were on our way to a local pub for lunch but I instead bought 80 pounds of wood. I turned to my wife and said, "Let's go home and I'll make lunch." We bought some fresh tuna, hamburger and buns. I made a wasabi mayonnaise for the grilled tuna sandwich. It was for my wife and I wanted it to be special after all I had just canceled eating out. I had the burger. On Sunday, I made the menu I planned. While everything was good, the recipe of the week is Potato Gruyere and Bacon Gratin.  Enjoy!

What's a typewriter?

A colleague mentioned that his daughters asked him to describe a typewriter. The concept was unclear to them. I proudly identified that I owned an Underwood typewriter from the 1930's and would bring it into the office so he could show his daughters. He then told me he was surprised that I had an electric typewriter. When I explained that an Underwood did not use electricity, he was confused. "How did it type?" he asked. The conversation brought out this thought. Today when we think of phones, we do not dial a number and with cell phones, we do not listen for dial tone. Soon the idea of a phone not connected to your Internet service provider or cable company will be just as foreign as using a typewriter.

Moving on...what can we add to our IP communications solutions to make them more interesting using wireless? The first is to add a Wi-Fi base station to any solution offering. Wi-Fi has the bandwidth to offer clearer communications than a cell phone and reduces the need to wire all areas of the business infrastructure. Additionally, there are several wireless IP phones that have been certified with multiple IP PBXs. The UniData WPU 7700 wireless IP phone is one that comes to mind. In addition, there are several manufacturers of dual mode phones that support both Wi-Fi and GSM/cellular such as LG, Nokia, and Pirelli. On the DECT side of the house there are wireless solutions from Panasonic, snom and Aastra with each offering SIP compatible wireless phones.

These solutions can be positioned in automobile dealerships, warehouses, real estate offices and hospitals. They will improve productivity and communications wherever there is a need for mobility and immediate communications.

Often times I am asked to provide advice to our partners on how they can increase their sales. In addition to the basic blocking and tackling that must be done to develop a sales force and educate our prospects, we need to evolve our solution offering as well. So, if a VAR has trained his personnel, developed collateral, has a successful lead generation program and is protecting the integrity of his pricing, then he is blocking and tackling well. Given that, I have asked them about their web efforts. Do they have an effective website? Have they practiced either Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? Normally, the VARs do not see improving these things as driving new revenue. I beg to differ but I understand their desire to perform a more concrete action to move a sale along. As I sat working at the Cleveland airport yesterday using my wireless 3G card, I considered the progress that I have seen in wireless over the last 25 years. I remember the early days of cellular when carrying a cell phone required a shoulder bag and the idea of connecting a computer to it was unimaginable. I stopped working to consider how many of our VARs now include a wireless strategy as part of their TDM to IP transition sales effort and I developed an actionable answer.

With the advent of nationwide 4G, Android, the iPhone and the ever-reliable BlackBerry, what wireless products and services are the natural complement to selling VoIP/SIP Trunking? How do we position the value proposition behind these products? By developing a wireless strategy to complement your current IP offering, I believe you will see an improvement in closing new business. Unified communications as a term does little to motivate SMBs to purchase new equipment or upgrade existing infrastructure. However, augmenting the cost savings of VoIP/SIP Trunking with the added mobility of phones that can move from the office, to the car, to the prospect's site delivers the productivity benefits to potential buyers.

As an industry, our focus has been on IADs, media gateways, IP PBXs and, of course, the service offering provided by Broadvox and other ITSPs. Now we need to evolve and understand that the emphasis on the technology of IP communications must change to the improvement in productivity. Mobility has been identified by AT&T, Verizon and Sprint as the cornerstone of their future business strategies. It is also viewed by Google, Apple and I assume RIM as a major revenue growth area. At Broadvox, we have tested several wireless implementations both in our R&D labs and in the field.

I'll discuss some of the potential equipment and application areas for leveraging wireless and IP communications in my next blog.

The three-hour SIP Trunking session at VoiceCon drew over three hundred participants. That is SIPnormous. It demonstrates the growing interest in SIP by enterprises as they begin to supplement their intranet VoIP implementations with extranet SIP. While Broadvox was not invited to participate in those sessions, we did speak at a smaller breakout sponsored by AudioCodes. The message of that particular breakout was to understand some of the FUD associated with SIP Trunking and risk mitigation in transitioning to SIP.

Too often, when we discuss transitioning to SIP, we insinuate that the SMB or enterprise must go out and purchase an IP PBX or make drastic changes to their networking infrastructure. This is not necessary and in many cases would be the wrong thing to do. The transition can be done using a media gateway that preserves or extends the TDM based investment. AudioCodes refers to this as "Come as You Are". We even highlighted this message in an IP Man episode "SIP Trunking as You Are" where IP Man and Metoo save a distraught IT manager when he is at a loss in making the transition from TDM to IP communications. Using gateway technology can be the best way to address remote and branch offices allowing them to benefit from the new features associated with SIP and perhaps a new corporate IP PBX. This is a key risk mitigation approach.

The Broadvox message during the session was mostly on voice quality. I noted that while I have attacked the FUD put forth by some of the ILECs and CLECs regarding IP based voice quality and Bring Your Own Broadband (BYOB) strategies, I have neglected to share with you the study done on the subject. Broadvox is a BYOB ITSP because it has been shown that a proper broadband connection with minimal latency delivers exceptional voice quality. The G.711 codec Mean Opinion Score (MOS) is 4.4 on a scale where 5.0 is perfect. That compares with the same score, 4.4, for a toll call over a TDM network and 3.8 for a wireless or cellular network call. Interestingly even the use of compression with a G.729a codec does not marginalize the voice quality. That MOS score was an impressive 4.2.

You are probably wondering how a MOS score is established. I'll go over that on Friday.

Thanks to those of you that noticed I forgot to create the link to Monday's recipe. It has been corrected. You can now make Roasted Brussels Sprouts with my white seasoning mixture. Enjoy!

I have been added to a few new sites over the last couple of weeks and I think I should let the new readers know what the SIP and Serve blog is about. First, we will discuss what is happening in the world of SIP and IP communications. I will do this every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Second, I love to cook and outside of work, it is my passion. Every Monday, I will discuss with you what I cooked over the weekend and share one recipe that stood out. Every recipe will be original, not a copy from a book or the web. And every recipe will be something that you can fix and enjoy.

This weekend was a Philly Cheesesteak with the full range of toppings, sauté onions, mushrooms and bell peppers. However, the recipe of the week was Roast Duck with Duck Sauce. The recipe uses an over but I made it using a rotisserie that I have owned for over 25 years. With the rotisserie, I cooked the duck in 1 hour. It was well worth the hour. Cut into quarters and then into 1 inch wide chunks. Served with an ample covering of the duck sauce, it was excellent. The side dish consisted of an Asian vegetable stir-fry with noodles. As they say, "it was good eating". The recipe for the duck uses an oven, try it, you will enjoy it. Roast Duck with Duck Sauce.

Finally, I must note that I had two very good dinners in the last month. One at Nobu in Dallas and the other at RM Seafood owned by Rick Moonen. I recommend both but bring a full wallet.

...And on to SIP

Last month I had the pleasure of discussing with Alan Percy of AudioCodes some of the reasons that the adoption rate for SIP is not faster. The answer is somewhat paradoxical as Broadvox has experience very good growth in both its revenues and customer base for SIP Trunking over the last 15 months. However, as we look at where the decisions are being made it is clear that certain market segments are not making the switch. Medium and enterprise customers are delaying the switch for various reasons and Alan conducted a series of interviews to find out why. In calling Broadvox, he understood we have experienced significant growth but also face the need to grow more. Here are the eight reasons he found as significant barriers to growth:

The Economy-- It seems that in tight economies, employees are far less willing to "go out on a limb" and try new technologies, even if they could save the company significant money. Why? People think twice before taking significant risks at work when employment is so tenuous.

Existing Long-Term Contracts--Many of the incumbent carriers have their major customers on three, five or even ten year contracts that are very expensive to break. Early termination fees can be quite high.

Features--The features available to SIP Trunking services vary greatly and without careful examination, important functions like fax, network call transfers, and devices like alarm panels, postal meters, and HVAC systems often get overlooked.

Interoperability--SIP Trunking as a service is still working to overcome some interoperability issues--mostly due to the continued evolution of both the services and the applications that use those services.

Legacy Carriers Can And Will Price Match--With their long since paid-for Class 5 switches and plant, legacy TDM carriers have a lot of price flexibility to keep their customers.

Risk/Reward Factor--Like many big decisions, there is a risk vs. reward analysis at the enterprise buyer. Will moving to SIP Trunking save money? Will it put my business at additional risk? Are the savings worth the risk?

Alan and I will be addressing SIP Trunking for Enterprises and Risk Management in an AudioCodes and Broadvox-hosted coffee break and round-table on Monday from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM in the Emerald 2 Conference room during VoiceCon. See: http://www.audiocodes.com/events/audiocodes-connect for more information on this and other activities we have planned. Until then read SIP Trunking: What Is Holding It Back?

See you on Wednesday.