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August 2008 | Volume 27 / Number 3
From the TMCnet Blogs

From the TMCnet Blogs

In his VoIP blog, Rich Tehrani writes:

I came across an article [published by The Street.com] which shows how a small company can use the methods Obama utilized in the election to help them compete with big players in the market. Some of the examples include how a small hardware store can compete on service not price.

Sadly the local hardware store near TMC was wiped away by Home Depot and they did provide superior service. Nevertheless, the ideas in the piece do make sense and it is worth a read.

Visit Rich’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/


In his VoIP and Gadgets Blog, TMC CTO Tom Keating writes:

Many click-to-call (c2c) solutions require connecting two legs of a call, which adds additional cost. TringMe has just launched enhanced click-to-call solves this multi-leg cost issue by making it a single leg call and instead using a notification method such as SMS to notify the called party of the caller’s phone details.

TringMe’s blog explains, “Instead of originating multiple calls (call-legs), TringMe intelligently notifies the called entity about the caller. Notified entity then automatically initiates a call back to the original Caller. The method of notification can be of any type, including sending an SMS containing the caller details OR using the data network.”

For example, a website visitor can click on a click-2-call link which will notify the caller’s phone by a special message using SMS or data network. The caller’s phone receives the message and then it will automatically initiate the call to the caller using Tringme’s lost cost termination rates.

Tringme states, “The call can be either cellular or using our MobileVoIP or a combination of both depending on the cheapest method to the caller’s destination. For example, a local call could be cheaper by cellular, and long distance by VoIP (a typical scenario in markets like China & India) and hence be routed accordingly.”

Of course, if you have a SIP softphone client on your mobile phone, along with a SIP-based service provider, you can also have a 1-leg inexpensive click-to-call solution. Or if you have a SIP-based IP-PBX such as Asterisk, you can also configure SIP softphone clients on mobile phones. However, except for some Nokia phones, and some other brands, it’s rare to see SIP-based softphone clients on mobile phones. And often they are limited to the WiFi connection only - 2.5G, 3G, CDMA, etc. need not apply. Damn it, there’s always a catch!

Visit Tom’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/


In his VoIP Authority blog, Internet Telephony’s Greg Galitzine writes:

According to a report on the UK’s Daily Express, customers of Amazon’s UK Web site took advantage of a pricing error.

The site reported that for two hours, the entertainment giant was advertising massive discounts on several DVD box sets including a 44-disc set of hit US drama West Wing for just £17.97. Amazon customers who were lucky enough to stumble across the amazing offers went into a buying frenzy, snapping up multiple purchases of West Wing, Family Guy, Sopranos, Desperate Housewives and Will and Grace.

Sales of Family Guy reportedly shot up over 200,000%, according to the Movers & Shakers chart on Amazon.

Some customers reported that traffic caused the site to slow down considerably.

Visit Tony’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/the-hyperconnected-enterprise/

In TMCnet’s “Green Blog,” Mae Kowalke writes:

In the data center market, the need for green technology solutions to reduce energy consumption is rapidly becoming imperative. That’s according to executives who gathered for a panel recently during Computerworld’s Storage Networking World conference.

Going green is no longer just a matter of moral rightness or social responsibility, Computerworld reported. It is now becoming a business necessity for data center operations to know how much energy each device consumes and to find ways of reducing that energy consumption. It simply costs too much to not do so.

“If you use more energy [than presently] and it’s more expensive, expect your costs to go up,” said Andrew Fanara, team leader for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star Product Specifications Development Group. “These problems will intensify.”

Last month, Computerworld reported, the EPA said it is working on a benchmark to help IT managers compare their own energy usage with that of other data center operations. A server specification should be complete by year’s end, with a green storage benchmark (in development by the Storage Networking Industry Association) expected even sooner.

Visit Greg’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/greg-galitzine/


In his Hyperconnected Enterprise Blog, Tony Rybczynski, Director of Strategic Enterprise Technologies for Nortel writes:

Tom Hughes, CIO of SSA, had a keynote at the Nortel User Conference, on his perspectives on VoIP and UC. SSA recently signed the largest single VoIP contract valued at $300M, across 64000 employees, 1600 field offices, and a massive contact center; all over 10 years. Tom sees this as putting SSA on the road to UC, a transformational opportunity.

When asked what his big challenges are, he responded: security and helping execs understand the business benefits of UC.

He lamented a common situation that “Lots of execs don’t quite get it”. He held an informal poll of the audience and observed that only a third indicated that IT was at the business strategy table.

Getting attention of the C suite requires IT to show quantifiable top and bottom-line benefits. That was also the view expressed by Bob Hafner of Gartner, who was on a panel after the keynote. In the case of SSA, they are targeting hundreds of millions of dollars in savings.

My sense from listening to Tom speak, is that ‘he’s the man’ with the right blend of technology and business savvy to move SSA forward.

This is good news for Americans on their own road to retirement (someday!).

Visit Tony’s blog at http://blog.tmcnet.com/the-hyperconnected-enterprise/business-aspects/ssa-on-the-road-to-transformation.asp/

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