Convergence Revolution.....
>>Novell is busy adding IP telephony capabilities to Netware. Almost every business has an Internet connection today, and one important thing about Internet connections is the bigger they are, the cheaper they get on a per-bit basis. So why not trade that T-1 for a fractional T-3 and throw phone calls onto your LAN? And that's exactly what will happen. But wait, there's more! Depending on who you ask, Novell has from 50-80 million seats, each of which also has a telephone. Novell is working with AT&T, which will provide back-end network services. Now here's an interesting question: If you look at Novell not as a network software company, but as a way of buying access to 50-80 million seats, how much is the company worth? Cable and cellular phone companies are valued at thousands of dollars per user while software companies - even Microsoft, much less Novell - are valued at far less per user. What's wrong with this picture?>>
Novell's technology is in the catbird seat on this one.
Why
?
Because convergence won't happen without a high bandwidth development platform which individuals and companies alike can build add/subtract and enhance their own IP-based voice/data driven apps.
I've been following this stuff for some time. The convergence tornado is all heading in one direction - unified messaging (voice, fax, video, email, data). Everyone is getting into this game.
But the question is.....how are they doing it? Who are they targeting? Where's the value-added? To the corporation or the individual. Who's providing the most hooks for value-added bells and whistles? Or is that like another early stage Internet story.
What I see going on is this mad rush by the box and hardware vendors - Cisco, Nortell, Lucent - to wrap/throw themselves into the arms of the corporations with this unified messaging mantra. It's another "early stage" high profit - sell them the dream and move on story.
Telogy controls 85% of the embedded VOIP software cards that corporations use for VOIP applications. And the box vendors are having a field day. The vast majority of corporate PBX systems out there are 10+ year old legacy elephants which have to be gutted and thrown away.
Enter Cisco, Nortell and others. I don't trust Nortell for despite there support of NDS, they recently signed a deal with Microsoft, Seimens et al. to come up with opportunity standards for this emerging market. And Cisco remains in bed with Microsoft.
I have heard horror stories about these box vendors going into large corporations and basically selling a bill of unified messaging VOIP goods which simply get plugged in and then they move on. Like the early adoptees of websites, these VOIP systems aren't well thought out, require additional bandwidth upgrades and budgets usually don't include the cost to maintain internally on an ongoing basis. Use NT and I'm sure the cost goes up that much higher. So you need to hire more specialists just to maintain these systems - and we aren't even talking about new app development, etc.
I've spoken with some of these VOIP companies that hold the software and patents and they tell me that nobody is selling customized solutions - i.e. that target specific verticle markets. It's hit and move on. The profits are just so huge. Why bother?
But somewhere lurking in the background of this convergence revolution are companies that actually lead by catering to the end users - individuals - within big and small companies alike. I follow many of these companies and am impressed by their ability to come up with some very exciting apps that keep getting better along with new ones that continue adding value.
How are these companies going to tap into the big corporate mamas? Answer: they don't have to, period.
What the unified messaging crowd is missing is that the end game is NOT the corporation: it's the individual. Individuals want total control, freedom and flexibility to manage their own convergence paradigms. The ONLY thing the corporations have is the control over the billing which brings savings from leveraging their T1/3 lines.
The problem is individuals need is to be able to cross over disparate systems - business lines at home, follow-me numbers to their cellphones, pagers, etc. No matter how hard corporations try to force patriarchical technology umbrellas over this game, their employees will need and demand a way - anyway around the system.
Enter Novell. A high bandwidth NDS driven NOS with cross platform object oriented linkages and connections WILL be the avenue of choice. Go to NT and you are entering into the closed world. What Microsoft is trying to do is squeeze the local PC and NT server into this equation - making their apps somehow connected to this game from home, work or on the road. But, again, here's a case where the boxes are defining limits on an equation with NO LIMITS.
I know this all sounds very confusing, but I regard VOIP apps as THE MOST IMPORTANT battleground for the right to claim the individual as the client.
I think the individual is too smart to be sucked into these corporate IT/IS pyramid games. Individuals want control, deserve control and WILL GET CONTROL of the convergence revolution.
Novell is in the best position to benefit because of the way their software remains more neutral in this dogfight. It's the individual, stupid.
From the U.S. News article.....
>>But 80 percent of Internet traffic passes through Cisco equipment at some point, and the company dominates the $50 billion market for creating corporate data networks. CEO John Chambers wants to exploit those strengths to grab more voice conversations, too. He says "old world" giants like Lucent and Northern Telecom, which build traditional circuit switches, are in serious trouble. Convergence, he says, "will be the next Industrial Revolution.">>
Chambers is throwing more arrogance into this mix than anything else. Let him make a short term fortune bilking these poor corporate giants.
The real money will be made on the VOIP apps that grow from the uninformed wreakage that this early stage stuff leaves behind.
VOIP developers, take note.
GO!
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