Thoughts About Clouds
September 11, 2009 2:33 pm Leave your thoughtsMy thoughts about the evolution of cloud computing and cloud telephony.
Author Archives for Irv Shapiro
About Irv Shapiro
Irv Shapiro is the Founder and Executive Chairman of DialogTech, focused on building strategic relationships and positioning DialogTech for its next stage of growth. DialogTech is his third successful business and second on the INC 500. Voted into the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, his awards span Halls of Fame, Innovation, TechWeek 100, Best of Biz, and KPMG Illinois High Tech.
The Evolution of the Telecommunications Industry
June 30, 2009 5:20 pm Leave your thoughtsThe Telecom Industry Evolves: From "Old" and "New", to App-Focused Telcos
Over the past 20 years the telecommunications industry has undergone two fundamental transitions: first, from "old telco" to "new telco" and now, to application-focused telcos.
As Martin Fransman, Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh wrote:
The Telephone Technology Pendulum and AnyPhone Technologies
June 5, 2009 10:15 am Leave your thoughtsArthur Schopenhauer a German Philosopher, wrote an often misstated quotation, "Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom". We can apply this quotation in general to technology and specifically to telephony. Telephony technology swings between complacency and advancement. In these exciting times, when telephone technologies are rapidly advancing, we are often faced with the pain of innovation.
The Great CLEC Squeeze
April 23, 2009 7:35 am Leave your thoughtsAs a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the number of CLECs providing telephone services exploded. A CLEC (competitive exchange carrier) provides telephone services by leasing local loops (phone lines) and interconnecting those local loops to their own or sub-contracted long distance services. For most of the past 23 years, CLECs have primarily competed with the incumbent telephone carriers (ILECs) on price. Those days are over.
CLEC SIP Application Warehouse White Paper
April 20, 2009 4:05 pm Leave your thoughtsWe are very excited to announce the availability of our partnership program between the telephone carrier community and DialogTech. To better understand this initiative lets look together at the evolution of the world wide web and how SIP signaling is following a similar evolution.
What Telco Can Learn From Salesforce.com
March 31, 2009 4:28 pm Leave your thoughtsIt seems that a popular business model today is to deploy some telephone softswitches or Asterisk servers into a data center, contract for call termination services, and anounce that you are in the telephone API business. Unfortunately this business approach ignores the lessons learned by following the grand daddy of cloud computing, Salesforce.com.
Why Skype for Asterisk is more important than Skype for SIP
March 23, 2009 12:30 pm Leave your thoughtsBack in September of 2008 and now today, Skype has announced initiatives to open the Skype network to SIP users. These two solutions; Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP are very different and offer significantly different capabilities.
Google Floats all Boats
March 22, 2009 11:54 am Leave your thoughtsOver the past week and a half, Google Voice has prompted an exciting increase in the volume of discussions about Voice 2.0 and the evolution of telephony from a facility based to an Internet based service. This evolution will free millions of businesses from the limited features provided by their local telephone company.
Why You Need 2 Telephone Companies
March 15, 2009 9:00 am Leave your thoughtsHistorically telephone companies provided both dial tone and telephone features to business users. For example: when purchasing a telephone service for your business you would specify the number of lines and the features; such as voice mail, call forwarding, call waiting, three way calling, per line. Businesses with multiple lines would often terminate their phone lines into key or PBX systems that support line sharing across multiple extensions and supplement the available features. Your PBX might provide call center queuing, music on hold and enhanced voice mail.
The Impact of Low Cost Telephone Transport
April 30, 2008 6:05 am Leave your thoughtsThe integration of Jajah's network into the Yahoo Messenger platform signals a continuation of the movement of telephone transport from traditional PSTN networks to open VOIP transport. These new voice and data networks allow the user to bring their own device and access the world of telephony from new and exciting places.
What is a Phone Mashup?
January 30, 2008 12:42 pm Leave your thoughtsEvery minute of every day, somewhere, someone is pounding on their keyboard, or screaming at their computer, "How do I contact the people behind this web site, or this blog?" Too many web sites make it difficult for viewers to connect.
eComm 2008, DialogTech Becomes a Silver Sponsor
January 30, 2008 10:11 am Leave your thoughtsWhile there are many telephone technology conferences each year, two stand out. VON and eComm. VON is where the business professionals in the voice and telephony industries go to make deals. eComm is where the technologists go to innovate.
Why Does My VOIP Connection Sound So Bad?
December 28, 2007 1:48 pm Leave your thoughtsMany new telephone services, such as Click to Call, Virtual Call Centers, Hosted IVR and Voice Broadcast, rely on voice over IP (VOIP) telephone connections to deliver services at the lowest possible cost. While some of these services sound great, others deliver voice quality no better than the walkie talkies your child recently received for Christmas. This blog entry will attempt to present, for a non technical audience, the basics behind VOIP communications that determine the quality of a phone call.
Voice Broadcasting as an Email Alternative
November 20, 2007 12:19 pm Leave your thoughtsVoice Broadcasting used properly is an effective and reliable alternative to email. DialogTech's services are ideally suited for delivery of customer service information, customer notifications and employee communications. All information valuable to the recipient. For example, let's say you own a heating and air conditioning company. You used to send emails to your customers in the spring and fall to recommend they schedule a tune up of their air conditioner or furnace.
Is Google good for Small and Medium Sized Business (SMB)?
November 8, 2007 8:13 am Leave your thoughts
Only if it gets them a phone call. Why? Because the majority of SMBs will never have a website with a shopping cart. Not because they're behind the times, but because they aren't selling things that can go in a shopping cart. Think about plumbers, lawyers and chiropractors. Now, think about that phone call.
Twenty years ago, when you needed a plumber, let's say in Chicago, you looked in the Yellow Pages. The number of listings was manageable and they were all local. You picked one, called and spoke with a human being.