Thoughts on IT Expo West

Last week I was in Austin for IT Expo West. My general impressions were that the event was busy: well-attended by exhibitors and attendees. There were lots of speaker/panelist sessions. What continues to be striking about IT Expo and the internet telephony industry in general is that the thought and market leaders are not billion-dollar corporations. Instead the leaders are inspired individuals and creative small companies.

As I walked around the exhibit hall and the breakout sessions I kept coming back to two main thoughts: this industry is converging around a handful of opportunities and each opportunity remains largely up for grabs.

• Consumers are not the main focus of most exhibitors at IT Expo but leading players like Skype and magicJack had a presence. The main questions in this space remain unanswered: What will home phone service become over the next five years? How completely will mobile phones take it over? Will it morph, through video, into a feature of TVs?
• Cloud-based unified communications service for small to medium-sized businesses seems to be the primary opportunity focus of exhibitors and attendees. As a general strategy this seems to make sense: SMBs are numerous, fragmented, and always looking for a competitive edge. But, again, some of the main questions remain unanswered: Who is going to cut through the clutter and develop a credible SMB solution-provider brand? Who is going to make it easiest for SMBs to gain real value from a new communications solution? Is anyone going to innovate a killer app/feature that will capture the imagination of SMBs?
• Enterprise and government markets are a focus of a number of exhibitors and attendees but, at least to this observer, with a couple exceptions there wasn’t much innovation or energy around this opportunity. Perhaps the infrastructure and scale expectations of enterprises and governments – and their typically-long sales cycles – scare off innovators looking to prove marketability in months instead of years.

I think that the door is now wide open for someone to do what Vonage and magicJack did for consumer VoIP – make it simple, accessible, and omnipresent – for SMB cloud-based unified communications. My guess (hope) is that the company that does it will, like Vonage and magicJack, be a new player rather than a well-known brand. They will approach businesses in their language – meaning the messaging will be about growing your business, retaining your customers, and making your team more productive rather than about the technology itself. They will offer a solution that is fully assembled and ready-to-use rather than something that requires upfront customization and plug-ins. And they will offer a mobile user experience that is as powerful, if not more, than what is available in the office. And if they can add a “secret sauce”, something their solution does which is different and cool, then they could break out from a dense pack of aspiring service providers.

I have an idea of who just might do it . . .

So What Haven’t You Heard Before?

Yesterday I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Gary Kim, serial technology entrepreneur, journalist, and Mensa member (according to the backgrounder on him I was sent). Gary is the Editor-in-Chief of both Fat Pipe and IP Business magazines. Today I was a panelist in a session moderated by Gary. I enjoyed both the one-on-one discussion and the group discussion. One theme the two discussions had in common was “the death of the demarc.”

For a generation the demarc was the division between the service provider’s stuff/responsibility and the customer’s stuff/responsibility. IP telephony has started to change that and SaaS practically obliterates it. Whether you consider the death of the demarc to be good or bad probably depends on who you are and how satisfied you are with the status quo. It will be interesting, though largely predictable, to see who embraces the death of the demarc and who resists it.

The topic of the panel today was “The Business Case for VoIP – Going Beyond ROI/TCO” and I think going beyond the demarc to understand the needs and ambitions within the homes and businesses of your customers is one of the keys. This is what the launch of our new joint product with Ringio is all about. The Ringio On InPhonex (ROI) application is all about radically improving the way a business connects with its customers, collaborates internally, and assures its competitive edge. The dialog necessary for a business to appreciate the true value of ROI will be focused on topics like: Why do customers call you? What do your employees need to know about the customer as they answer the call? How important is it for you to be reachable and responsive to your customers? What business tools and information do your employees need when they are outside the office? How do you measure your communication effectiveness?

The questions that will not dominate a successful discussion include: How many phone lines do you have today? How much do you pay your current provider? How many minutes of calling do you do? These are the old, service-provider-side-of-the-demarc-questions – certainly not irrelevant but no longer the entirety or even the core of the discussion. It will not be easy for many service providers or their salespeople to make the adjustment. Many customers may also be slow to appreciate the importance of shifting their buying process away from simple price comparisons to more detailed reviews of capabilities and interfaces.

Walking out of the session I had a chance to talk with Gary one-on-one. I asked him, “So all day every day you talk to people like me about our companies and our products. Do you get tired of it? Does it all start to sound the same?” He had an interesting reply: “There is one question I never get asked that I wish I would. And it is, ‘How much of what I’m telling you is really unique?’” So, bravely, I did. “Gary, so what that I’ve said to you in our conversations yesterday and today haven’t you heard before?”

His reply was direct: “Everything you’ve said about the power and flexibility of your platform I hear from several different people every day – whether it’s more or less true in your case is hard for me to evaluate. But what is different and exciting is your vision. You and InPhonex really seem to have your strategy figured out. Your clarity of vision is a powerful differentiator.”

It made me think back to the presentation by Simon Sinek at the SAP Executive Partner Summit in Cancun. I wrote about it in August. I think InPhonex has our Why figured out while nearly every other company Gary talks to is fixated on What and maybe How.

Discussions with people like Gary are really helpful – if a bit intimidating. What it reminds me most of is the months I spent writing my Philosophy thesis in college. I’d spend weeks reading and thinking and writing and then I would go into a meeting with my thesis advisor, a professor and, in my case, the Chairman of the department. This was the moment that the previous weeks of thinking and writing were tested. Was I making any sense? Was there anything original to my thinking? How close was I to proving my argument?

So, at least according to “Professor Gary Kim”, we’re on the right course. In college that kind of feedback would have sent me in search of too much beer. Today it will send me into the office tomorrow with even more enthusiasm.

Thoughts from IT Expo West

Today was a busy one at IT EXPO. I had the opportunity to address a group of potential resellers and participated on two panels. In addition I was interviewed for a podcast (http://www.telecomreseller.com/category/podcasts/).

As I reflect on the day, three thoughts stand out:

1. I am excited about the relationship with Ringio we announced today (press release). We are calling the joint offering ROI: Ringio On InPhonex. The opportunity to offer a uniquely powerful hosted business application – one that combines a PBX, IVR, and CRM – to distributors as a white-label product is receiving an enthusiastic response.
2. There is tremendous energy in the next-generation telecom space right now. The IT EXPO show is well-attended; all the sessions I was in were full; and the exhibit floor was busy this evening.
3. Cloud-based telephony services represent an opportunity that is without precedent in the recent history of telecom: widespread profitability. Never before has it been possible to launch a telecommunications service offering and deploy it to tens of thousands of customers without spending millions of dollars on infrastructure. In the past the huge upfront debt crushed most start-up service providers. Many that survived had to go through bankruptcy restructuring in order to do so.

The downside of lower barriers to entry is a crowded marketplace (hence a busy trade show). The key to success – as it nearly always is – remains execution. The companies that can market and sell their service and retain their customers will have the opportunity for rapid, profitable growth.

It seems to me that execution is about creativity and hard work (also known as “inspiration and perspiration”). The creativity I am focused on right now is thinking about the all the companies that have the right resources and relationships to sell ROI but aren’t currently selling telecom services at all. More to come on this thought . . .