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Technology Stocks : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1168)	8/25/1998 1:02:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 3178

Tech Data raises its voice -- Distributor Adds About 30 SKUs To Voice-Over-IP Catalog August 25, 1998 COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS via NewsEdge Corporation : Clearwater, Fla. -- Recognizing the emergence of the voice-over IP market, Tech Data Corp.has ramped up its vendor and service offerings to resellers. The distributor, based here, has added 10 manufacturers and publishers in the past year and has put together a catalog of nearly 30 single-SKU voice-over bundles. "Our goal is to take the guesswork out of telephony solutions," said Joe Serra, director of Tech Data's computer telephony division. "Resellers come to us and say, 'My customer needs a network fax system that supports 31 users. What do I need?' We can say, you need this SKU. That's it." The bundles include servers, gateways, operating systems and software applications with local call distribution systems, bulk and structured cabling and telephone handset equipment. Serra said voice-over IP, the combination of voice, data and video through one switched Internet protocol network, is a fast-growing market segment for Tech Data and compared it today to where routers were three years ago. Tech Data's voice-over IP business has grown 150 percent in the last year, and Frost & Sullivan, Mountain View, Calif., predicts a $2 billion market within three years. "Network fax and unified messaging or voice-mail we see as high-growth areas," said Serra. "Videoconferencing is a bit slow right now, primarily because there is no standard." Pickering & Associates Inc., a Seattle-based reseller, has been implementing voice-over IP solutions for about eight months, and recently completed work in a 37-branch credit union with the help of Tech Data. "We did everything from the cabling. It's a complex sale, but the customer is more loyal because you understand their network better. Anybody can sell a computer," said Jim Rohrbach, director of consulting services at Pickering. Because voice-over IP networks handle all phone calls between branches on the network, customers can drastically save on their call charges, said Rohrbach. "A company can expect to cut its intracompany cost by 50 [percent] to 80 percent. And that's something you can put on paper and show them this is how they're going to save money." Rohrbach said the credit union was being charged more for calls in the metro Seattle area than it was for calls to New York. He said the customer will save enough to pay for its voice-over IP solution within 12 to 14 months. "In the corporate landscape, it's important to do more with less. The simple way to say it is to piggyback voice and fax on one network. To do that over regular lines costs a lot of money," said Rohrbach. Serra said price points are dropping and that small to midsize-business resellers are expanding into voice-over IP. "This isn't something you're going to do for a couple of hundred dollars, but the products are being scaled down to that level," he said. " Small business doesn't need all the bells and whistles of big companies and the manufacturers are making the products for them." Copyright - 1998 CMP Media Inc. By Scott Campbell <<COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS -- 08-24-98, p. PG84>> [Copyright 1998, CMP Publications]

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1168)	8/25/1998 1:14:00 PM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3178

IP convergence and your telecom contract August 25, 1998 Network World via NewsEdge Corporation : IP voice/data convergence naysayers have it easy. On the surface, the phenomenon seems easy to debunk. The popular press spent the first half of this year glorifying the new IP telephony providers because they could carry phone calls f or "only" 7.5 cents per minute. But everyone in the trenches realizes most corporations are already getting regular telephony for less. Besides, I've yet to hear of a network manager handing a card to his CEO and saying, "Punch in these 31 numbers to reach our new Int ernet carrier, and then talk slowly and loudly to the other CEO so he knows we're offering $10 million, not $10 billion, in that tak eover deal." So can you sit back and let convergence hype just roll over you until it goes away? Not by a long shot. There's real action in voice over IP today. And the real action has nothing to do with numbers like 7.5 cents per minute. Move the decimal point over and it's m ore like making calls for 0.75 cents per minute by avoiding the tolls of the legacy carriers and the newbies. Users are finding that it doesn't take an announcement of voice-over-frame relay services from AT&T, MCI and Sprint to get the convergence market going. For you, the real hang-up could be in something much closer to home: your telecom contract. For years carriers have promised to shave rates just a little more if you sign a long-term voice contract with a rising minimum expe nditure each year of the contract. But go to move your voice traffic to frame relay or ATM and you may suddenly find you've violated the contract because your telephony spending will have shrunk. So if you have any interest at all in voice/data convergence, here are some talking points for your next carrier negotiation, which I hope is coming up soon: 1. The major carriers now all want to be your voice and data carrier. Fine. Tell them the key to your business is the data network. Any carrier that prevents you from adding features to your enterprise data network because the contract obligates you to spend X bazillion dollars on voice tolls could be replaced. 2. Watch for extra costs such as premiums for souped-up, voice-enabled frame relay virtual circuits that supposedly get priority ove r other circuits. Those fancy virtual circuits are all well and good, but many experts believe the key is prioritization schemes in customer premise equipment. Don't default your WAN design and traffic modeling to the carrier. 3. Finally, tell carriers that preset minimum annual expenditures that rise each year of a multiyear contract don't make much sense anymore - even without IP convergence. Here's the long-distance carriers' dirty little secret: By federal mandate, every July 1, the access charges they pay the local exchange carriers go down. So quite possibly you ought to be paying less, not more, even if your voice traffic never migrates. Rohde is a senior editor with Network World. He can be reached at drohde@ nww.com. <<Network World -- 08-24-98, p. 26>>

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (1168)	9/13/1998 3:58:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3178

Hello Frank, I know that this is a late response to your post, but I just got back from a "disconnected" vacation ... I'm hoping to have Iridium for next years trip to Alaska! ;-) > It was inconceivable to me at the time (but not any more, since > everyone, including the top tier IXCs, is now doing it) how many > networks have gone forward and been deployed using UDP-based voice > and TCP/IP-based fax traffic on the open Internet without regard > for guarding against interceptors, hackers and other threats which > are lurking to compromise users' traffic streams. What do you > think? It's funny how the corporations trying to move into the 'net are just starting to experience and think about the things that hackers have been doing for years ... John Walker has a wonderful web site that is at fourmilab.ch He was a founder of Autodesk and has since moved on to a variety of other projects and software ... one of which is SpeakFreely ... a completely encrypted VoIP solution ... PC to PC. fourmilab.ch You can go download it (and the full source code) and enjoy encrypted phone calls ... today. Done. ;-) There is a fairly large group of people using the product and it's been around for years! So the solutions can be built quickly ... unless burdened by corporate red tape and paperwork ... ;-) Scott C. Lemon (P.S. Anyone else going to Telecosm?)