Bright Side of the Road: Key Industry Players Mostly Upbeat about 2011, the Year Ahead

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Bright Side of the Road: Key Industry Players Mostly Upbeat about 2011, the Year Ahead

By Paula Bernier, Executive Editor, TMC  |  January 01, 2012

This article originally appeared in the January issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine.

The economy at large didn’t make for a very pretty picture in 2011, and most folks don’t expect it to improve significantly in the year ahead. But while much of the world continues to grabble with high (although slightly improving) unemployment and foreclosure rates, depressed home values, and the sovereign debt crisis, a fair share of businesses have been remarkably resilient and, in their communications with INTERNET TELEPHONY, many communications industry players offered upbeat assessments both of the year past and 2012.

Here’s what we’re hearing, and you may be surprised to hear that it’s mostly good news.

Lisa: I’d like you to slightly overlap all of the below items, so it’s just a bunch of boxes or different size/different font blurbs [box or different size/font so readers can tell one from another]. These can be different colors as well. Do whatever it takes to make it interesting.Might be fun to bleed some of these into the margin, too.

The Economy & Prospects for Growth

“The future has never looked brighter for business and governments to employ technology to generate growth, solve industry challenges, and enrich lives and our global society.” – Mike Palmer, vice president of enterprise strategy & marketing, Verizon’s global enterprise unit

 “In the 10 years from 2005 to 2015, telecom service provider revenue has shown and will continue to show year-over-year growth every year except in 2009.” -- Infonetics Research

“I believe the economy is going to remain tough and possibly worsen due to inflation and pressure on the dollar. This will obviously make the overall business climate increasingly difficult as we move into 2012 and possibly even into 2013. For those special companies that truly respect their customers and solve problems, however, opportunities will remain. That's what Interop does, and we expect to have a strong 2012.” -- John A. Dwyer, president and CEO of Interop Technologies

“The [federal] stimulus has helped spark an 82 percent gain in the stocks of 11 health care technology companies since President Obama took office and a 263 percent gain in the three public companies that took $7.8 billion of federal financing to build next-generation vehicle factories. It contributed to a 79 percent jump in stocks of the four leading energy-efficiency companies identified by IDC, including diversified companies such as Johnson Controls and Honeywell. Companies involved in developing smart electric grids, nine big tech firms that are also in many other businesses, have risen 54 percent. All these match or exceed the 51 percent gain in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, and beat the 4.9 percent average annual gain in venture funds raised in 2008, according to Cambridge Associates.” -- USA Today (Nov. 21, 2011)

“Fiscal year 2011 was a break-out year for Clearfield, with revenues and gross profit both up 44 percent and 60 percent respectively.” -- Cheri Beranek, CEO of fiber management product outfit Clearfield Inc.

“For overall global business, economics and civilization I’m not optimistic that 2012 will be great for most…. For our business and industry, I am very optimistic, as we believe that we are doing the right things to support the global changes, improve ourselves and grow our business.” -- Benjamin Sayers, CEO of VoIP Supply, which grew its business year-over-year by 15-20 percent in 2011

“Our business thrives in hard overall financial hard times. Small businesses will continue to look for more value in all their systems. We will continue to be the lowest overall price, and highest overall quality, virtual PBX and phone service company in the world today.” --Gary J. Johnson, president and CEO of Voice Carrier

“What I find amazing is that even during globally difficult economic environments, we’re one of the few companies to drive profitability. In 2012, we’re aiming to drive even stronger financial success.” --Brian Protiva, CEO at ADVA Optical Networking

“From a global perspective, the world economy in 2012 has a somewhat worrying outlook. However, for the last eight years, Telio has been doing quite well. People need to communicate during the tough times and cost effectiveness is even more important than usual.” -- Alan Duric, CTO and co-founder at Telio

“The telecom industry continues to sustain growth thanks to new devices and applications, and we expect this to continue through 2012. Recently, we have witnessed some amount of discretionary spending undertaken by telcos, and we look forward to further monitoring this in 2012.” -- Vivek Kalra, senior vice president of Tech Mahindra Americas

“I’m optimistic that the general economy will get better in 2012, but even if it remains unsettled, I believe videoconferencing will continue to grow.” --Bob Romano, vice president of corporate marketing at RADVISION

“2011 was a strong year for Speedflow, and we are excited about the momentum we are generating across our business.... Businesses are very likely to spend more on automation in 2012 since it is a key to success in a fast-evolving business environment.” --Vlad Ellis, CEO at Speedflow Communications Ltd.

“Our outlook is great, but the overall economy is in trouble without major changes in Washington.” -- John Horn of machine-to-machine solutions provider RACO Wireless

“A fire needs to be started to get the economy going, and it can't be done if the Fed is putting out all of the sparks by protecting the industry incumbents.” – Mike Ross, president of cloud telephony outfit 4PSA

“While the economy is clearly challenging in the U.S. and globally as well, our outlook for 2012 is very promising…. By enabling service providers to leverage the same platform for both analytics and to offer a security service, they can generate new revenues with value-added services and reduce churn among their subscriber base. Together these make for a compelling business case that easily justifies the investment.” -- Brendan Ziolo (News - Alert), vice president at Kindsight

“I think just as governments around the world are looking at ways to jumpstart their economies, businesses should be, too. Maybe we all need to stop worrying about the next quarter’s results and focus more on long-term goals and the benefits they may bring us all down the road.” -- Tanveer Sharif, founder at mobile calling platform company Vopium

The Channel

“We expect another flat year in IT/telecom spending and continued consolidation within the channel.” --Rick Hirsh, CEO of Transcend United Technologies

“2011 yielded some surprising momentum for the channel. With the cable industry, cloud providers and more making more commitments to the channel. In 2012, we are going to see more education, structure, consolidation and certification hit the channel. M&A isn't done, and companies with solid channel relationships will be acquired. It brings revenue, relationships anda sales force in one grab.” --Peter Radizeski, head of telecom consulting agency RAD-INFO Inc.

Cloud & Data Center

“The economy is still tender; however, the convergence of mobile and cloud-based technologies will lead the way towards new business models and efficiencies that will drive growth.”  – Ray Greenan, marketing director of communication service provider industry at Symantec

“In 2012, cloud services will become even more important to SMBs. Our State of SMB IT survey of 1,295 IT professionals, which we conducted in the fall of 2011 through the Spiceworks (News - Alert) Voice of IT Market Research Program, found that 46 percent of SMBs now use cloud services, which is up significantly from the 28 percent that reported using cloud services in the first half of 2011.” --Nicole Tanzillo, IT marketing manager at Spiceworks Inc.

“In this economy, cable companies are finding that the cloud is faster and cheaper, therefore the industry is transforming from the traditional cable TV platform into a connected technology platform.” --John Dahlquist, vice president of marketing at Aurora Networks

“While in 2011, cloud hype reached a fever pitch and the BYOD phenomenon at times left IT departments scratching their heads on issues of reliable and secure mobility, 2012 will mark the beginning of cloud realism.” --Adrian Brookes, vice president of strategy and technology office for Siemens Enterprise Communications

“The cloud and tablets are just getting started.” --Alex Quilici (News - Alert) of YouMail

Network Infrastructure

“Two major milestones stand out in 2011. First, GENBAND successfully completed the integration of Nortel’s IP Switching assets, which was the company’s largest acquisition in its history. The acquisition not only changed GENBAND but also changed the global telecom landscape.” --Mehmet Balos, chief marketing officer at GENBAND

"We maintain our view that the sovereign debt crisis that is paralyzing Europe continues to have little impact on our telecom capex forecast. As long as credit remains available to telecoms at a fair price, the ongoing sovereign debt crisis should have little impact on telecommunications equipment spending. Investment plans across world regions suggest mobile broadband and FTTx is the name of the game going forward." --Stéphane Téral of Infonetics Research

“The perspective that this is a commodity business that is just about capacity at the lowest price per bit needs to be overturned in favor of the reality that although price per bit is important for basic connectivity services, differentiated services offerings which are value-based, not price-per-bit based are equally – or even more – valuable to end users and are also fundamentally important to the economics of network capacity expansion. A vital part of this realization I think is that application developers and web service providers come together with network operators to create this future, rather than staying at arms’ length from each other and politicking in front of the media and regulators.” --Alcatel-Lucent CTO Marcus Weldon

“Federal regulation and a new breed of over-the-top competition continue to push our U.S. customer base to finalize the building of all-IP networks that meet the demand for compelling applications and new methods of interconnect. U.S. wireless operators are leading the world, finally, with 4G VoLTE deployments. European and Asian mobile operators are fully committed to RCS or RCSe. Operators worldwide are seeing how the explosive, but non-linear growth of application signaling and its associated media is driving the need for a new breed of session border controller.” – Kevin DeNuccio, CEO of Metaswitch Networks

“Many carriers are letting emotions get in the way of fundamentals regarding the economy. Carriers need to understand that volatility in markets is normal, and they must understand what is driving the volatility in order to make sound investment decision for expansion of networks or development of new services.” -- Ray Mota, managing partner for ACG Research

“The adoption of SIP trunking continues at a torrid pace, as enterprises continue to realize the cost and productivity benefits from end-to-end IP communications. In 2012, we see this trend becoming even broader, with enterprises looking to leverage their investments in service delivery networks to enhance customer experience and drive new business opportunities.”

Andy Ory, co-founder, CEO and president at Acme Packet

“2011 was an eventful year for Comptel. We got a new CEO (me), we closed a number of significant deals (most notably with Australia’s NBN Co, beating 80 competitors), and we sold some of our fulfillment software assets (AXIOSS) to Cisco, which enables us to accelerate the development of our next-generation fulfillment platform – due out the first half of 2012. We also secured a few new policy control and charging deals, confirming our view that policy control is becoming more of a business, as opposed to a network-only, function.” --Juhani Hintikka, CEO of Comptel Corp.

Open Source

“Even with an industry-wide reputation for some of the highest quality products available on the market, Sangoma’s evolution as a company had slowed, and we had experienced flat sales for a couple of years. The new leadership team has re-ignited the growth engine, and we are 100 percent focused on delivering more value to our customers and to our distribution partners around the world. We have already begun to see results. In just our first three quarters together as an executive team under Bill’s leadership, our quarterly sales are already up 30 percent. We have dramatically expanded our product roadmap, launched aggressive new marketing programs, and hired key new sales executives in all the global regions closer to our customers. We also acquired VegaStream, expanding our addressable market beyond our traditional telephony interface boards into gateway appliances.” --Jeff Dworkin, director of marketing at Sangoma Technologies

Security

 

“The connection between web application security and the security of consumer devices and data should not be overlooked. Looking ahead to 2012, it is almost certainly the case that the cycle will gain even more traction as organizations adopt HTML5 as the standard for web application development. The standard’s expanded capabilities to communicate with both devices and sites provide new opportunities for attackers to exploit both traditional vulnerabilities as well as newly discovered ones. The expansion of the client environment opens up more opportunity for attackers to take advantage of consumers and use their resources and reach to execute attacks of various designs.” – Lori MacVittie, senior technical marketing manager with F5 Networks

“Emerging trends such as near field communications, machine-to-machine communications and mobile wallet solutions will drive demand for better, more trusted mobile security. As part of this security trend, device authentication will be augmented by session-based security, ensuring that not just the devices being used to communicate are secure, but also the content of the conversation or data exchange.” -- Timothy J. Lorello, senior vice president and CMO of TeleCommunication Systems

Unified Communications

“Augmented reality technologies have already started to allow us to more naturally interface with electronic devices. The video game community has introduced devices that watch our every move – taking away the need for any type or joystick of controller. Apple's recent release of Siri has made use of natural language recognition that allows us to have a conversation with our mobile phones rather than type away on them. We see 2012 as the year when these types of technologies will become mainstream.” --Frank Paterno, vice president of marketing at Intelliverse

“I expect to see UC&M dominate the discussions at most of the industry events this year. I know from our own experience at AudioCodes, it has completely changed the way we work, communicate and collaborate. Like when e-mail was first introduced into businesses in the 1980s, unified communications will transform the way businesses communicate. Businesses will either adopt UC&M or be put out of business by their competitors that have adopted it.”-- Alan Percy, director of market development at AudioCodes

Small and medium businesses are projected to spend around $12 billion on unified telecoms components in the next three years. Today more than half of SMBs are using at least one individual UC component rather than a complete solution.  -- AMI-Partners

“The scale of unified communications deployments continues to rapidly expand.  Add to that, the introduction of tablets, cloud communications, social collaboration and lots of video traffic.  Businesses are depending on reliable communications infrastructure and endpoints like never before. All these factors lead to the need for holistic automated testing and monitoring solutions –  hence the bullish outlook by Clarus Systems for 2012.” -- Gurmeet S. Lamba, senior vice president of product development at Clarus Systems

“Our customers that offer hosted IVR, PBX and collaboration services, such as Voxeo, phone.com and Powwownow.com, have grown a lot in 2011. Industry giants, such as Microsoft, have invested massively in cloud communication services and have announced their first major customer wins. Big corporations will offer PBX services from their internal clouds. This often cross-country centralization of enterprise telephony infrastructure will create major demand in wholesale VoIP services. We are the technological bridge between cloud communication networks and traditional PSTN and mobile networks, so Voxbone should have a great 2012.” – Rod Ullens, CEO of Voxbone

“We believe we can help service providers and businesses overcome the problems associated with communicating across modalities, devices and platforms. As we solve that problem, we would love to see our customers improve collaboration between colleagues, partners and customers.  This will unleash a new wave of productivity.” – Charles Studt, vice president of product management at IntelePeer

Video

 

 “…2012 could very well prove to be the breakout year for videoconferencing.” --Benjamin Sayers, CEO of VoIP Supply

“Polycom is anticipating a terrific year in 2012, but what excites us most are the goals that we're setting for the industry.  One meaningful enabler of industry acceleration is the newly announced Open Visual Communications Consortium, a major consortium which was launched [in 2011] by Polycom and 14 global service providers. The OVCC will bring a range of video as a service, or VaaS, offerings to fruition in 2012, and this will be a huge benefit to users, vendors, and service providers across the industry.” --Jeff Rodman, co-founder, fellow and chief evangelist of Polycom

“2011 has seen the start of the video revolution, in which video starts to become easier to use and deploy and will form an integral, natural, expected part of future communications.” --Eli Katz, CEO of XConnect

“Envivio has a positive outlook for business and the economy for 2012. The multi-screen video industry is very dynamic, which keeps it fresh and interesting. We are helping our customers meet the demands to deliver exceptional services to their customers, the viewers. So, despite an overall very weak global economy, Envivio continues to grow aggressively.” -- Julien Signès, CEO of Envivio

“The health of the economy continues to suffer. In some ways, our service is a countervailing trend in that we can provide cost-effective alternatives to traditional business videoconferencing or business travel.”  -- Scott Wharton, CEO of Vidtel

“The explosive growth of the telepresence market means many companies new to the technology will soon be making large purchasing decisions.”

Ovum (News - Alert), which says the enterprise-grade telepresence market will boom, with spending hitting $1.1 billion in 2016, growing a CAGR of 19.5 percent from 2011 to 2016

Wireless

“The new world of work is increasingly social and mobile, and to best leverage the benefits of social business software, the most innovative companies will increasingly need to re-tool their management practices.” -- Milind Pansare, senior director of product marketing at Saba

“The near-6 percent increase in global telecom carrier capex we expect in 2011 over 2010 is due in large part to AT&T’s ramping LTE deployments, HSPA+ upgrades, and investments in Wi-Fi hotspots for traffic offload. This offsets Verizon Wireless' slowing mobile spending since their LTE rollout peaked earlier this year.” -- Stéphane Téral of Infonetics Research

“We added dozens of new applications to our portfolio in 2011 and simultaneously expanded our roster of experts – industry specialists to design custom solutions and mobility application consultants to implement and support those solutions. For AMS, 2011 was a year of rapid growth in our product offerings, our expertise and our ability to serve the mobile application needs of businesses in all industries.” – Mobeen Khan, executive director, advanced mobility solutions for AT&T Business Solutions

“I really believe in 2012 we will see a significant shift of health care delivery from the institutional setting to the home environment.” -- Kian Saneii, CEO of Independa

“Despite the fact that we expect mobile VoIP subscribers to grow nearly 10-fold from 2010 to 2015, there is relatively little money to be made from it in the near term." -- Diane Myers of Infonetics Research

“At Nukona we are extremely bullish about the growth sectors in the technology market, which obviously includes enterprise mobility where we play.” -- Brad Murdoch, CMO of Nukona

“Globecomm predicts that 2012 will be the year that rural carriers begin to benefit from and leverage growth across the wireless M2M Market.” -- Andy Silberstein, vice president and general manager of Globecomm Network Services

 “If 2011 was the year of cloud and/or the year of the tablet, 2012 will be the year of LTE networks.” -- Amir Makleff, CEO at BridgeWave

“As operators deploy advanced traffic management solutions that allow them to monitor, meter, and charge for subscriber consumption of over-the-top applications and content, early movers are already transitioning into the next phase of the mobile charging evolution.” --Jonathon Gordon, director of marketing at Allot Communications (News - Alert)

“ip.access is at the heart of a fundamental shift in the way that networks are deployed to deal with the massive explosion in mobile data traffic.  A recent report predicted a 3000 percent rise in small-cell deployments, so we see a lot of growth in our sector of the mobile infrastructure market.” --Andy Tiller, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing at ip.access

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Top 10 Technology Trends for Business in 2012   

The High-IQ Network Effect -- With each new smart device or software application added to a network, all endpoints and devices will become inherently smarter – each benefitting exponentially from additional connections. Whether the connections are people-to-people, machine-to-people or machine-to-machine, new opportunities will be created to solve societal challenges such as employing IT to address the rising cost of health care or deliver smart energy solutions. Because of the network’s importance, any interruption of service will have a profound impact. As a result, there will be an even greater demand for carefully designed and well-managed services at the core of the global IP backbone and high-speed wireless networks.

To the Enterprise Cloud and Back -- The enterprise cloud will finally come of age and deliver substantial benefits – dramatically reducing capital expenditures and creating business efficiencies and better economics. Cloud services will give companies powerful new options to move workloads easily between the corporate data center and the cloud of a company’s choice. Whether a public, private or hybrid cloud model, the enterprise cloud will play an essential role in mobilizing enterprise apps that enable both workforce mobility and new business paradigms.

Big Data Equals Big Insights – Big data (large data sets that can now be managed with the right tools) will drive innovation, helping to evolve the role of chief information officer to chief innovation office. These new thinkers will be responsible for determining the quality of data and strategic applications used to create new business opportunities while empowering evidence-based decision making for greater success. Predictive analytics, based on vast amounts of synthesized data, will become an increasingly important tool for the enterprise. Companies that harness the intelligence inherent in their data, secure it and act on it accordingly can expect to gain a significant competitive edge.

The Social Enterprise -- The already web-centric enterprise will become even more social, and the ability to tap intelligence at all levels of the organization will become the new norm. With the right tools – such as high-definition video for richer collaboration and intelligent crowdsourcing (large-scale collaboration) – enterprises can produce, find and convey information with much less effort and greater velocity and efficacy than ever before. This will foster innovation and enhance productivity with exponential benefits. A multi-generational workforce will employ technology to truly embrace a borderless workstyle, where work is an activity not a location.  

Video is The New Black – Video is on its way to becoming this year’s fashionable black, given its popularity with users and the ease in which it can be accessed on today’s tablets, mobile phones and laptops. Now, thanks to ultra-high-bandwidth capabilities and the combination of global IP networks and 4G LTE wireless, video is fast becoming the pervasive and preferred communication vehicle for many enterprise activities, from team meetings to quarterly employee communications to on-demand information about key projects. And with video-enabled contact centers being the latest business-to-consumer application, this business trend is here to stay.

Service Your Way -- Personalization will continue to be an inspiration for innovation, driving companies to reengineer their processes and business models. Increasingly, businesses will look for new opportunities and channels to meet customers on their terms. Multifunction kiosks located outside of traditional retail venues, contact center routing and click to chat windows will help companies better serve customers. In addition, the enterprise cloud will enable more application intelligence and the ability to integrate applications and physical environments, helping businesses personalize the customer service experience and enhance customer satisfaction. 

The Consumerization of IT – Just as personalization is driving a new approach to customer service, IT departments are increasingly being influenced by their users. Many companies are now trying to improve the user experience and enhance productivity by tailoring their enterprise IT policies to support employees who bring their own productivity tools – such as smartphones and tablets – to the workplace. Companies are looking to experts to help equip today’s mobile worker with cloud-based applications that work just as securely and reliably on portable devices and are integrated with traditional desktop applications. Enterprise apps also will become more widely available via enterprise app storefronts, just as they are in the consumer space. 

Machine-to-Machine-to-People -- Machine-to-machine communications will change the way people manage their world, whether in terms of energy consumption, product inventory or critical business-asset and fleet management. But the human factor – people – will play an important role in harnessing digital intelligence, inspiring innovation and creating the next big thing. For example, while portable monitors may keep round-the-clock tabs on a patient’s vital signs, health care providers will ultimately use that information to assess patients and provide treatment. 

Compliance Gets Increasingly Commercial – With increasing evidence that companies are less likely to be data breach victims if they comply with security standards, such as those promoted by the Payment Card Industry, compliance will become a pre-requisite for good business practice in 2012. In a difficult economic environment and with increasingly more stringent government regulations, the need for taking full advantage of business opportunities will increase interest in prudent, holistic security approaches. Companies and governments will change how they interact with their extended network of partners, increasingly choosing to do business with those that can demonstrate a comprehensive multiyear and standards-based approach to security. 

Energy Savings Power Better Business and the Greater Good – Energy efficiency, especially a reduction in CO2 emissions reductions, will be a key imperative for many companies – and just in time. In 2012, companies will take advantage of public-private partnerships to invest in everything from more efficient lighting to energy-efficient heating ventilation and air conditioning systems to installing energy-efficient technologies. And they will investigate flexible computing models that leverage on-demand capacity for peak loads, while powering down during periods of lesser demand. 

Source: Verizon Business

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Edited by Tammy Wolf

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