Happiness is generally something we give to ourselves. As Buddha reminds us, pain is a fact of life, but our suffering in response to it is optional. (Unless you happen to be Yankees fan, and in that case your suffering in response to the pain of seeing the Red Sox win the world series is deserved, and although still optional, necessary for the salvation of your soul. But I digress.) It is quite natural for us to seek things that make us happier, and in absence of a clear reason, some of us can make something up. One thing that causes suffering are our anxieties about the outcome of something we care about, and our natural inclination is to reach out to try to observe what’s happening with some hope of assuaging our fears, or controlling the outcome.

One issue with our interactions as consumers is a general lack of visibility. In general, and sometimes for good structural and organizational reasons, it’s hard to peer into the business process that is serving us. I love to see that Amazon shipped my book today; I hate when I don’t know how long I have to wait in an emergency room. You have your own examples, I’m certain. Not too long ago, technical barriers limited the amount of visibility a consumer had into the process of nearly all business transactions, and your best bet was to cozy on up to the receptionist and to hope she had an inside track.

Something that I should spend more time explaining is the wonderful way that voice mashups can make the business process more visible, particularly for those who are outside the firewall. Using the telephone as an interface, you can trigger queries into the back office software about your order, about inventory or into whatever piece of information you need to make your anxieties manageable. When is my car going to be ready? When is my next appointment? Voice mashups are the perfect way to increase the visibility into a business process for many reasons:

• It’s controllable from the standpoint of the business, and the IT manager can decide what information to allow
• It’s safe, as the telephone doesn’t carry viruses, and it’s nearly impossible to hack through a phone
• It’s inexpensive, as integration with the backend databases is straight-forward and it’s very rare that you need to replace existing equipment
• It’s on the demand of the customer, so it’s only used when the customer wants the information

We talk about enhancing the business process by making it faster or more efficient, but it’s possible that, by the end of the day, the happiness that it brings to customers will prevail.

Technorati Tags: happier, telco mashups, thomas howe

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 7:56 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Had a chance to stop by at the Skype Panel and grabbed a quick picture….

L to R - Helen Khais, Stephane Marceau, moderator Jon Arnold, James Body, and Samuel Li, ( uber-skype blogger Jim Courtney was there too, but missed the picture)

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 11:47 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Nearing the end of a long day at the first day of the innovator’s track, I think I can conclude two things:

1. The quality of people hanging around the innovator’s track and the unconference is excellent. These people probably represent the best in the business.
2. The majority of the VON show doesn’t attend or care about the innovator’s track.

Yes, high in quality if not mighty in numbers, approximately 60 of the 6000 VON attendees came today to talk about next generation services, SOA architectures, vertical services and Enterprise 2.0. Having a chance to spend serious time with Dan York, Bob Frankston, Alec Saunders, Jon Arnold, Andy Abramson, Jay Philips, Carl Ford and David Isenberg, as well as dozens I could list was a true pleasure and joy.

What did we cover?

• Dennis Peng from Ooma stopped by to sit on a panel with me and Jon Arnold, and we hashed out the Ooma business model and challenges. All in all, I think Dennis did a fine job in explaining how Ooma fits in tomorrow’s home. I was, frankly, unconvinced, but I acknowledge that I am sort of out of the norm on this.
• We had Jay Phillips work his adhearsion magic in real time, creating in twenty minutes what couldn’t be done in a month a few short years ago.
• We had a roundtable discussion with Shirish Andahare from Sylantro, David Jodin from Iperia and Kevin Nethercott from Lignup about new service creation environments. I was stunned about the agreement from each one in terms of how new services get deployed, yet all three had different business models that supported their vision.
• I saw my partner, Pat Murphy, work his magic in the room when he hosted the Enterprise 2.0 session. If there’s ever been a man who can bring people together, who can transform a crowd into a team, I swear it’s him.

Is it that we are so far ahead of the curve? Or is it that our heads are so deep into our curves? I suppose time will tell on that one, and I am just happy to have the chance to tell our story, and for the sixty people who shared their story with me.

And I am so tired.. what I wouldn’t do for my own house, my wife and cup of tea.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 6:59 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that next year’s ETel show has been cancelled. I couldn’t describe the situation any better than the always smart David Beckemeyer:

O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony conference was by far the most fun of any VoIP conference for me. It was the place to find the most cutting edge telephony developments and always was attended by the most interesting audience and speakers. I really enjoyed working with Surj Patel and all the O’Reilly folks.

It’s sad to see this conference and related website winding down so soon, after just a couple of iterations. It will be a blow to the VoIP industry.

O’Reilly cutting back so sharply on their coverage of the VoIP space speaks to my recent assertion that VoIP is stagnant. An outfit as cutting edge as O’Reilly has decided VoIP isn’t newsworthy or interesting enough to their constituency. That is pretty telling.

As David might not know, the VON organization is taking serious steps to step into the gap, and whatever ball they happen to miss - we all know that Lee Dryburgh and the family-formally-known-as-etel (of which I am a willing and proud member) will catch it. For our part, we are extremely happy to stand between the serious telephony credibility of VON, and the Web savvy of the e-tel community, and we are going to do our best to bridge those worlds as they collide. We are running the innovator’s track at VON this week, and you can catch us there. Anywhere there’s a gathering of the sort of insane intelligence of the e-tel crew, you’ll find us begging to participate.

Which gets me to my shock. How could an organization as smart as O’Reilly get it so wrong? (As an aside, I am happy, happy, happy with the VON crew because they learned to stand their ground and defend their territory, and serve as an example of the benefits of long term focus). Apparently, they think voice isn’t sexy, and there’s not a lot of innovation there. David, Garrett Smith, and others have been discussing wether or not VoIP is stagnant - if it’s played - if it’s done.

As for me, I’m registering my vote, right here and now… stick a fork in it baby, VoIP’s done.

Which is the shocking part. I think that anyone who deeply thinks about this stuff knows that voice, in and of itself, is pretty stagnant and boring. But, if you only consider voice by itself, and voice services as only being about voice, then you’re really at a dead end. But, as Martin Geddes would say, if you see the transformation from horizontal voice into vertical services, where voice stops becoming the important part, and starts supporting the other applications around it… then you see we at the beginning of true, massive and ubiquitous voice enabled applications. I can’t believe that true Internet guys would miss this obvious architectural (in both business and bits) opportunity, but apparently… they have. To the VON boys, and the people that call Lee family, today you seem to be a bit smarter than O’Reilly - which is saying a lot.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 9:48 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | 1 Comment

Looks like Erik and the boys from Vancouver are getting serious about Lypp, Ruby and Voice Over IP. Today Lypp announced the API for their telephony service. With this API, you can create conferences on the fly from your mashup. I’ve had a chance to review it, and it’s gorgeous. It’s the first, true REST style API for Voice Over IP deployments that I’ve seen, and it’s sure not to be the last. Erik also talked about a mashup contest for it - and I’m going to announce that I’m stepping up to the plate again to compete.

Congratulations, all.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 1:59 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Seven days from now, the VON show kicks off in Boston, and with it, the first VON unconference. Over the weekend, the Wiki went up, and Alec and Brough have already started to add their value. I expect to see a lot of people there, but honestly, just having the chance to spend some quality time with these two visionaries is enough for me. I know that Jon Arnold and Jay Phillips are showing up, and Erik Lagerway promised that he’d be hanging around with us, travel schedule permitting.

Unfamiliar with un-conferences? Brough did a good job at describing how we’re doing it at VON :

The Innovators Forum is a series of sessions that show case companies in our more traditional format. However dialogue in these sessions is encouraged. The VONCamp Unconference is harder to describe, because it gives people a chance to self identify as a speaker. At the present time there are 12 speaking slots. If you’ve got something you want to discuss that’s outside the formal program, VONCamp Unconference is the place to do it. We also have a SpeedDating session.

Here are the rules:

There are no rules.
Everyone is equal. Everyone is a rockstar.
Give back to the conference by participating actively. “Active participation” might mean giving a presentation, helping with a presentation, blogging or podcasting the event, or whatever other creative ways. While everyone is encouraged to lead a session, there are only twelve slots available.
All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet - if you’re not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. Hopefully you will walk the show floor!

Although I have the pleasure of leading the agenda bashing at the start, and will be there for the entire unconference to participate, it’s the audience that really brings this part of the show to life. If you’re going to VON, the unconference should be a place where you should spend some time.

Technorati Tags: Carl Ford, thomas howe, VON

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 7:04 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

With the recent demise of O’Reilly’s Emerging Telephony Web Site and Conference, it seems like the Pulver organization is now truly THE place for next generation communications. I’ve been asked by the Pulver organization to lead the innovator’s track at this year’s Fall VON, and I’m honored to give back to the organization that has personally given my customers and me such opportunities over the years.

So, what’s cool in the track this year? Lots of stuff:

1) First, the track itself is an innovation. The track has two aspects : a traditional, VON style executive summit full of really innovative companies that challenge the status quo and a complete un-conference. If you are un-familiar with an un-conference, the concept is very simple. The un-conference is run with an agenda that is set the day of the meeting, and not before. At the beginning of the un-conference, we ask the participants what they want to talk about, and they self organize into groups and sessions lead by people who volunteer. Sound disorganized? Amazingly, the un-conferences I’ve been involved with are productive, exciting and unfiltered. An un-conference is exactly what you get when you trust the audience. There’s obviously a place for the sponsors of a trade show to give speeches to the audience, but this isn’t it. At the un-conference, speak your mind - leave the hidden agenda at the door - wear it on your sleeve. I’ve got some ideas about two sessions I want to see at the un-conference…

2) The first session I want to have is a group voice mashup. I’m realizing that lots of people have never seen a voice mashup, never mind seen one written in real time. I’m inviting Jay Phillips, and maybe another geek, to sit down with me for an hour so we can write a mashup in real time in front of the audience, so they can see how we do it - and they can truly understand the power of this new approach to voice enabled applications. What are we writing? Gotta thank THC COO Pat Murphy for this little stroke of genius.

Shareideas.org is a charity funded by Vodafone and Nokia dedicated to combating social issues in the developing world using communications. We’ve asked them if they had a voice problem that they needed a solution to, and they’ve delivered for us. I won’t spill the beans on it yet, but it’s going to be very exciting to contribute to thousands of people in need, while helping our friends learn more about the technology we love. A real win-win.

3) The second session I want to have is an open debate about the future of voice services. Blogger pal, and fellow Red Sox Nation citizen Jon Arnold, has extended an invitation out to Andrew Frame, CEO of Ooma, to sit down with me and debate the future of voice innovation. As I’ve said before, I believe that Ooma is the poster child for the dead-end direction of telephony; Andrew obviously has a different opinion. I don’t mind people squirming in the seats, because it means that they are thinking - and thinking is good. Anyone want to watch?

4) Interested to see how telephony is growing and changing? You need to meet the leaders of the next wave of companies. Erik Lagerway is coming by to tell us all about the API enabled conferencing service from Lypp. Shirish from Sylantro will tell us how carriers can actually expose their services to developers in a Web services environment. I can write a voice mashup pretty fast, but I’m nowhere near as fast as Jay Phillips and his adhearsion library. And that’s just a start. I guarantee that you’ll see something you’ve never seen, and that you’ll meet somebody who knows something you need to learn at this year’s VON innovator’s track. You think IMS is the foundation for service innovation? Come meet some people who can’t even spell IMS, but still manage to deploy innovative services without million dollar price tags. If you’ll be at VON, you can find me there.

Technorati Tags: telco mashups, thomas howe, VON

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 11:38 pm | Filed Under Lead Stories | 2 Comments

Last week, we touched on a business template for voice mashups: extending process outside of the firewall. The phone is an effective tool that allows enterprise applications to interact with a human being when they are on the road, are in an insecure environment or when they don’t happen to work for you. Voice mashups provide a cost-effective technical approach that enables enterprise software to reach out across the firewall.

Here’s a second place where voice mashups shine: eliminating delays in the business process. The success of the Blackberry is directly attributable to the fact that it reduces the delay between when an e-mail is sent and when it is read. The elimination of this delay makes the executive, and therefore the process that he’s involved in, faster. Unfortunately for RIM, the blackberry is not universally deployed in the enterprise, never mind the general population. Adding voice and real time messaging into the business process has the same effect. Nothing is faster than picking up the phone and calling; voice mashups allow your enterprise software to harness this power. If anything, as businessmen, we probably fear the wide scale deployment of technology such as this, as it may quickly become our masters. Like all powerful technologies, good judgment must accompany good design.

UPS provides excellent examples of how voice mashups make businesses run faster. We’ve already discussed how UPS calls residential customers the day before a package is delivered that requires a signature. UPS also checks to see if packages are addressed to a known address. (The StrikeIron marketplace provides this type of information as a web service today.) When a package doesn’t have a known address, it simply calls the phone number of the recipient to verify if the shipping address is valid. It can also call the sender for the same information. This kills two birds with one stone : packages get there more reliably, and both the sender and recipient can be notified more quickly when they don’t.

Voice mashups are the perfect architecture for this application. Sending a voice message to any PSTN phone is quite simple when it’s only a web services call that initiates it. The enterprise developers at UPS did not need to call the telephone guy to configure anything (although, for efficiency and cost, they could have.) It was a simple addition to an important enterprise application.

Voice has an immediacy that e-mail lacks. When applied to critical business processes, and especially when applied to the business process as outside the firewall or the payroll, it can speed up business.

Technorati Tags: telco mashups, voice

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 11:55 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

It is fascinating to see how quickly the world of mashup development and specifically telephony related mashups has moved from a “isn’t this cool” developer tool to “this is serious business.” From our view of the world, this has changed just within the last 6 months.

October looks to be an interesting month as relates to the business of APIs.
Our involvement with the Sylantro mashup contest last week showcased applications that can add millions in bottomline value to any Telco carrier in the world. To check out a new API launched recently demonstrating these new services see Evoca.

Next week, the folks from Mashery are running a show called the Business of APIs. The agenda is filled with examples of mashups and apis that benefit the bottomline.

Without getting into details, we are having great conversations with very large companies focused on business process management solutions. Whether the project requirement is ultimately a platform or a hosted solution, the ability to blend apis and telephony to quickly solve real business challenges is a winning solution easily understood by clients.

The client conversation is not so much a technology discussion but a business process brainstorm. If you can’t quickly, right now, think of a way to improve and extend the business process of any company using voice or sms then you need another cup of coffee. It becomes a matter of identifying which solution has the quickest or best ROI because all of the projects have justifiable ROIs.

The interesting dynamic still to be played out in the marketplace relates to the question of API mindshare. We are seeing many, many great tools becoming available to developers across the world. What APIs, what brands will dominate in attracting the best and brightest of the developer community? Google Maps versus Nokia Navteq is an interesting one to watch being played out in public.

Our sense is that every industry vertical will choose the APIs that work best for them. The developers, internal business process teams, and consulting groups will form alliances to make and drive these decisions deep into industries.

Given the serious value that can be added to Enterprise clients we expect these alliances and communities to begin forming within the next 6 months.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 11:24 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

Voice Mashup Could Result in Millions of New Dollars in Revenues for Carriers

SYLANTRO GLOBAL SUMMIT- LAS VEGAS (Oct. 3, 2007)—Sylantro Systems, the leading multiplay application feature server, and The Thomas Howe Company are proud to announce Infosys Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: INFY) as the winner of The Telephony Mashup Challenge, which took place at the Sylantro Global Summit 2007 in Las Vegas, Sept. 30 to Oct. 2.

Infosys Technologies Ltd. developed an innovative and intelligent mashup of a subscriber’s personal information management system (like Calendar, Contact address book,etc.) and Sylantro Synapps Call Web Services named “CallPal.” CallPal delivers the incoming call to a home, business or mobile phone based upon caller identity, time of call and availability. The caller identity is received from the contact address book and availability from their calendar. CallPal is capable of proactive and automatic scheduling of appointments, notification of availability and integrated messaging. In addition to providing a creative mashup of voice technology, the Infosys team identified how this new application service could add billions of dollars in revenue to carriers by improving the call completion success rate and providing new monthly revenues for value added services.

“Our goal in launching this contest was to demonstrate the power of our Synapps web services in enabling mashup applications with real business value for operators and end users,” said Shirish Andhare, vice president of product marketing at Sylantro Systems. “Infosys demonstrated a highly creative and business focused use of the Synapps platform in conjunction with other public APIs.”

“Our judging criteria were heavily weighted towards the impact these mashups could bring to the carrier’s bottom line,” said CEO Thomas Howe of The Thomas Howe Company. “These types of applications have been developed in various forms, but have never before been available to carriers on a mass scale and on multiple devices.”

Evoca and VoIP Logic came in second and third respectively. Evoca’s mashup used the Sylantro Synapps API to record a single or multiparty call, convert it to MP3 recordings and integrate these services with other web applications. This allows for user generated audio content using Evoca’s Phone-to-Web Media Services to attach audio content quickly and simply to any Web site. The recording and converting capabilities of this mashup help attract, retain and convert more visitors to a Web site by building community using the spoken word.

VoIP Logic’s mashup further ties its Cortex System Management Portal into the Sylantro API allowing a user to perform various aspects of phone management. Users can send commands to their phone system using SMS. These SMS messages enable any number of functions including call forwarding to landlines or mobile phones, forwarding all calls to voicemail or starting a conference call. This mashup provides value-added features to mobile users and world travelers looking to bypass roaming charges.

Seven finalists began development in early September and were judged with a 50/50 weight based on presentation of technology and a business use case. Contest entrants were required to use the Sylantro API. Use of other suggested APIs including Voxeo, Amazon Web Services, and OutboundMessaging.com were optional. Entrants were required to demonstrate that their application made businesses faster, more efficient or created happier customers.
Sylantro’s Synergy platform and Synapps Web Services provide a carrier-grade, feature-rich, web services-enabled common capability for creating new converged experiences for business and consumers. The Synapps Web Services enable mainstream web developers to leverage voice as a key enabler in their applications.

The Sylantro Global Summit is an annual gathering of service providers and communications executives from around the world focused on addressing carrier transformation. Attendees will hear the latest on hosted voice, mobility and Web services from service providers and Sylantro partners and see the latest in applications and listen to real world case studies all in an intimate, high touch atmosphere. For additional information on the Sylantro Global Summit, please go to http://www.sylantro.com/gs2007/ 

About Sylantro Systems Corp.

Sylantro Systems offers the leading multiplay application feature server enabling rich hosted IP communication services across fixed, mobile, and cable networks. Sylantro customers include AT&T, China Netcom, KT, Nuvox, QWEST, StarHub, Swisscom and others. Sylantro is headquartered in Campbell, CA. For more information on Sylantro please visit www.sylantro.com

Copyright © 2007 all rights reserved. Sylantro is a registered trademark of Sylantro Systems Corporation. Multiplay application feature server is a salesmark of Sylantro Systems Corporation. All other products and brands mentioned are trademarks and/or service marks of their respective owners.

About The Thomas Howe Company
The Thomas Howe Company (THC) is an application development company focused on creating communication solutions for clients in healthcare, financial services and other industries. Thomas Howe works closely with clients to give them thoughtful and honest third-party advice, and to show them how THC applications can be integrated into their business processes for exceptional payback.

The company offers custom software development and hosting services to exploit every possible benefit of Web 2.0, as well as consulting services to educate clients to the heightened potential and lowered costs of mashup application development.

Founded in 2007 by Thomas Howe, a veteran telephony software engineer, the privately held company is headquartered in Osterville, Mass. For more information on The Thomas Howe Company, please visit www.thomashowe.com.

About Infosys Technologies Ltd. 
Infosys Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: INFY) defines, designs and delivers IT-enabled business solutions that help Global 2000 companies win in a flat world. These solutions focus on providing strategic differentiation and operational superiority to clients. Infosys creates these solutions for its clients by leveraging its domain and business expertise along with a complete range of services. With Infosys, clients are assured of a transparent business partner, world-class processes, speed of execution and the power to stretch their IT budget by leveraging the Global Delivery Model that Infosys pioneered. Infosys has 75,000 employees in 44 offices worldwide. Infosys is part of the NASDAQ-100 Index. For more information visit www.infosys.com.

Posted by Thomas Howe @ 1:10 am | Filed Under Lead Stories | Leave a Comment

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