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Microcap & Penny Stocks : DGIV-A-HOLICS...FAMILY CHIT CHAT ONLY!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: woody who wrote (35748)	1/12/1999 10:42:00 AM
From: Dolfan	Respond to of 50264

Hello everybody!, Looks like some nice buys coming in. I took advantage of a promotion I just got to average down a bit ;-) Anyway, I have mentioned before a magazine published called soundingboard magazine.com. It is an IP Telephony printed and online magazine that offers a free subscription to the trade. Here is the address soundingboardmag.com. I am copying a very interesting article that I believe pertains to Digitcom... Enjoy and heres to great days ahead! ()3 IP Telephony Small Fish Hit the Big Pond By Brandy Pfalmer A couple years ago the Internet protocol (IP) telephony vendor universe consisted of a handful of small vendors that focused specifically on this communications niche. But all that's changed as the attention of carriers, analysts and in some cases corporate communications departments has turned to IP telephony. Now these small fry have to deal with the likes of big fish such as Lucent Technologies Inc. (www.lucent.com) and Cisco Systems Inc.(www.cisco.com) in their fight to win contracts. How are the little guys positioned to compete? Dan MacDonald, vice president of marketing at Vienna Systems Corp. (www.viennasys.com), explains that there are competitors who have their roots in IP telephony, people who have roots in voice and people who have roots in data. "[Because we have our roots in IP telephony] we have a head start in the IP telephony marketplace. We are 100 percent focused on IP telephony, which allows us to be experts in IP telephony as opposed to 'generalists,'" he says. MacDonald adds that smaller vendors can give carriers the attention and expertise that IP telephony requires. "Like most markets, the sale is about relationships, understanding the real problems the customers have and being responsive by providing solutions," he says. "We feel the larger companies will not be able to provide that type of attention and expertise." Of course, Vienna recently lost a contract with VIP Calling Inc. (www.vipcalling.com), which elected to use Cisco equipment in its network going forward. Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of VIP Calling, explains that there are simply more choices of equipment and vendors than there were when the IP telephony services wholesaler was launching its business several months ago. "When you looked two years ago, you couldn't really buy a gateway from a bigger company--none of them made gateways," Gneezy says about VIP Calling's recent switch from Vienna Systems to Cisco. "Our decision was to go with the best that existed at that time, and now we just have more options." But Scott Wharton, director of marketing for VocalTec Inc., the North American-based subsidiary of VocalTec Communications Ltd. (www.vocaltec.com), believes smaller companies will find their niche in the marketplace. "If you look at the telecom market today, it looks very much like the mainframe market of the early '80s for computers," Wharton says. "You had four basic PC (personal computer) manufacturers that did everything until they found a horizontal niche. "I think you are seeing something similar happening in the telecom industry," he says. "It pays to specialize." Specializing is not the only factor that may play a key role in the survival of these smaller companies. Interoperability also is key, and smaller vendors are partnering with larger ones to tweak their respective products to be interoperable. For example, VocalTec recently announced its equipment is, or will be, interoperable with equipment from Ascend Communications Inc. (www.ascend.com), Cisco and Lucent. "Partnerships with big [vendors] can help us level the playing field," Wharton says. Of course, interoperability means carriers and corporations aren't locked into a particular vendor. It also protects customers, to a certain extent, from having stranded investment in case a particular vendor goes bankrupt. "I think it is not just a question of going under, it's a question of how much [money] can the smaller vendor put into [their product] to develop and expand it," Gneezy says. Expanding the product to provide greater scalability is crucial. "It might be that the smaller guys do not have a platform that scales as large as the bigger carriers can provide," says Christopher Nicoll, senior analyst for Current Analysis (www.currentanalysis.com). "It might just be a scalability issue." But voice over IP (VoIP) faces far more complex issues than mere scalability. "Doing VoIP is not like buying a VCR and plugging it into your TV and watching a movie," Gneezy says. "It's true anybody can go and buy a gateway, but generating high-quality, commercial carrier-grade traffic requires a lot of engineering, network engineering and monitoring. There is a lot more than just buying gateways."