Indian Telcos post Record Earnings

The number one Telecom Service provider in India Bharti Airtel and number two telecom Reliance Communications have released their quarterly statements and the results have been mind boggling.

Reliance reported an increased quarterly profit of 34% and has promised further growth riding on DTH and IPTV solutions. Airtel has reported 58% increase in profits for this quarter and have indicated further growth for the next few quarters. These are phenomenal numbers and now Vodafone's acquisition of Hutch makes more sense. India, China seem to have the maximum growth potential for the coming years and we can see more international players ( I already hear that Verizon is trying to get some stake in an already existing service provide).

Good times ahead!!!

Is 2007 the year of Resignation?

Atleast that is what Thomas F. Anglero thinks. To prove his case he takes the recent departures of the respective CEOs of Orange and Siemens. And I believe he must have some inside information, since he is pretty confident that Telenor's CEO will join the bandwagon as well. Add Vonage's recent CEO departure to this as well, and Thomas kind of has a point here.

I have a strong feeling ( and I am sure lot of critics are going to be on my back for this) about another major CEO quitting by the end of this year. None other than Steve Jobs. The backdated stock option is going to get back to bite him and he would be forced to quit.

This might be a good time for him to quit voluntarily (rather than being pushed out)considering that Apple has announced phenomenal quarterly earnings and I am sure he would like to be remembered as a person who brought glory back to Apple, rather than as a person who lead them through a scandal. Now is the right time for him to quit. Though I think he would wait for iPhone's release and then quit to avoid the zing being taken off from the much awaited iPhone release.

Rendezvous in Chennai

Thanks to Vijay's initiative, some of us who are in the Telecom domain (VoIP, Wimax,IMS name it all) are going to meet to exchange and bounce off some ideas. We have planned it for next weekend (the 4th May weekend) but have not zeroed in on that.

The idea behind this meeting is to delve on the different perspectives each one of us bring to the table. It would be a good start to discuss how the Telecom industry is going to shape up in the future and where the opportunities lie.Hope is, that this will turn out to be a regular thing, and a good foundation for a strong telecom professionals group in Chennai. And trust me, some of the people who have confirmed their presence are quite remarkable people.

If you are passionate about Telecom and you are in Chennai ( or will be in Chennai next week) drop in a note here and we will exchange information as to when and where we plan to meet.

Cisco's Achilees heel

I have meaning to write about this for sometime now, but have been caught up in my day job.

After I had blogged about Nortel winning the Telmex deal, one of my regular visitors to this blog (whom I respect a lot for his insightful thoughts) was telling me that Cisco tried hard to get this account, but failed eventually because of the huge overhead that came with their proposed solution. The many servers approach (Call manager, Hosted Unified contact Center) is just one of the reasons killing Cisco in this space.

Cisco's hosted solutions have quite a few chinks in their armour. Most hosted services look at browser based agent desktops and though CAD ( Cisco Agent Desktop) is available in a browser based edition, there are a few shortcomings. It does not have support for call control, very limited integration touch points with external applications, agent state is not available, supervisory monitoring is not available and outbound ( Dialer) is not supported. It can easily be argued that these can be built using Cisco's CTIOS Toolkit, but the fact remains that the existing out of the Box CAD don't have the needed features. Add to this the fact that Supervisor Desktop (CSD) is not web based ( it's a thick client) and CAD cannot work with the traditional TDM ACDs, it pretty much closes a lot of doors for Cisco.

Now as I mentioned earlier, there is a whole lot of overhead cost that comes with this. There is no inhouse Voice Recording product and this feature has to bought from a certified third party. SQL Server licensing is high. IPCC Hosted requires 3 machines with processor licenses, 6 machines with Server and client licenses and Informix license is further needed for a CVP reporting server. Add to this, the huge number of servers that needs to be managed.

These will make any CIO nervous and that is what is happening. Cisco's hosted solution is little too complex and they need to build a single server solution ( say IPCC Hosted Express?) if they are going to have any kind of an impact. One thing is for sure. Any company which could help Cisco in this domain is a sure target for acquisition :) ( Will Webex fit this bill?)

HP's Enterprise Server and Storage Bootcamp

HP is organizing a two day Bootcamp to showcase their enterprise server and storage capabilities. It is going to be held on the 26th and 27th of this month in Neemrana Fort Palace in Rajasthan ( close to Delhi).

You can register for this event here. The agenda for the bootcamp is as follows.

Day 1: 26th
April 04:30 pm : Assemble at HP Gurgaonoffice - 6th Floor, Tower D, Global Business Park, Gurgaon**
05:00 pm : Departure from Delhito Neemrana via coaches (3 hours drive)
08:30 pm : Dinner at DARBAR MAHAL

Day 2: 27th April (Session at DARBAR MAHAL)
09:00 - 09:30 am : Key Note by Pankaj Mathur, Country Sales Manager, CME
09:30 - 11:15 am : ISS Track - Proliant & Blade Servers, Proliant essentials, Demo
11:15 - 11:30 am : Tea Break
11:30 - 01:00 pm : Software Session - HP OpenCall Voice Signaling and Video , HPBTO/BIO Products
01:00 - 02:00 pm : Lunch at DARBAR MAHAL
02:00 - 03:15 pm : BCS Track : Itanium 9000 dual core CPU based HPIntegrity Server Family, Architecture, Product Roadmap & Features, HP-UX Version 3 Features, AOTP Blade Servers
03:15 - 03:30 pm : Tea
03:30 - 04:45 pm : Storage track : Storage Product positioning , Architecture,Why HP ? Product Roadmap, Key Features
04:45 - 06:00 pm : Break away Sessions - 3 tracks to explore GTM initiatives
07:00 pm onwards : Entertainment followed by Cocktail & Dinner at DARBAR MAHAL

Day 3: 28th April'07
08:00 - 08:45 am : Breakfast at DARBAR MAHAL
08:45 - 09:00 am : Assemble at lobby for departure to Delhi via coaches

Soundbite files for IPO

One of my acquaintances pointed me to Soundbites's official filing for IPO. Soundbite is a very interesting company and I have been following them for sometime now. They have been innovating in a big way in the call center space and have come out with some very cool products.

Soundbite has an extensive suite of products when it comes to automated customer contact solutions and can enable automated voice messaging campaigns. Some of the features of SoundBite’s automated voice messages includes one-way messaging, alert-based messaging or even better; direct interaction to a contact center or an IVR for agentless transactions. Soundbite's solutions enables notifications, reminders and alerts to help customers better manage their time and prepare for unexpected events.

Needless to say, Soundbite is SIP enabled ( you can't survive otherwise these days :) ) which in turn helps in quick turn around time for developing multi-modal applications. They provide solutions for hosted contact center, hosted presence management, best-time to call, best debt to collect, best alert to send etc.

They have a very impressive clientele in almost every vertical boasting of names like Wall Street Journal, Nationwide Credit etc. From what I hear, they will be going IPO sometime this summer and this would be a good yard-stick for companies in the VoIP/Call Center space who are looking to go IPO later this year or early next year.

Content rights is a two way street

Some parts of the recent Virginia Technology massacre was captured by a student on his cell phone and posted on Youtube. I am not giving a link to this video since I think it is deplorable that a person actually videoed this to get his 15 minutes of fame.

What was curious is some of the news channels showed this (Disclaimer* : I did not see it, but heard this from a friend of mine) video from Youtube. My question is, if Youtube is reprimanded for having videos whose content is owned by the traditional broadcasters, can Youtube get back at these guys for using their videos on their channels. Right to content is a two way street and Youtube should get back at these guys.

But if Youtube wants to be more dignified, it needs to remove the video that has been posted. Now that would be a class act.

Attack of the 's'

I was having a light conversation with some people during the weekend and one of them had a very interesting observation. The last names of leading top executives end with an 'S'. Example: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, John Chambers. So I might be changing my name to Gokuls :)

Btw, if this trend continues our good friend Alec Saunders will make it to the top pretty soon :)

Cisco - For the Cool Dudes.

Red Herring's article on Cisco and its ambition to take over from Google as the innovative leader got me thinking as to why are they doing what they are doing.

Cisco was always at a disadvantage compared to Microsoft and Google when it came to interacting with the everyday Joes and Johns. That is one of the bane of being an infrastructure company. You don't interact with the masses and the 'word of mouth' marketing is not that relevant. So Microsoft/Google are known to more people than Cisco even though the irony is that there is no Google without Cisco's technology.

I assume Cisco got annoyed with this obscurity tag. So they made a conscious decision to invest in 'Human Networking'. Their whole Unified Communication solution revolves around it. Throw in some 'Wow' factor through Telepresence and they become the 'cool' company.

I guess in today's world you need that tag to attract smart talent in all parts of the world. 'I work for Google' has such a zing to it and Cisco is looking for something similar. And trust me, they are almost there. People associated with Cisco these days have a swag that probably was not there, say couple of years ago. Cisco will soon be THE place for the cool dudes.

Next-Gen Applications- My foot

I am sure by now you would have guessed that I am not in a great mood. Thanks to the awful customer experience I had at India's premier Telecommunications provider Airtel's showroom.

Airtel is my service provider for landline, mobile and broadband services. Now that is 'triple-play' :) I have been Airtel's most loyal customer for the last four years and so far I have never had any major complaints against them. Their services have been pretty good and even when any of the services had gone down in the past, they have always been quick to respond and resolve the matter within hours.

So, I went today to one of their outlets close to my house to pay my mobile and broadband bills. I don't do it online because I had an harrowing experience once when they charged me for a wrong amount and I ended up talking to their people atleast once a day for one month before it got resolved. So I always pay by a credit card in person so that I get a receipt that can be used in case of any issues.

The place was not too crowded, maybe three-four people before me in the line. But then it took the guy in the billing counter a lot of time to service even one customer. After an half hour wait by which time he had serviced like two people, he started to get the details from the guy before me in the line.

Only at that point were we made aware that there was some systems error and they could not connect to the central servers to get the customer records!!! So much for their capability to cater to the needs of one billion people!!! Anyway at this point, I was kind of furious that they had not informed the people in the line about this. I would have gladly walked away had I known about this earlier. The due date was at-least couple of weeks away. But since I had already waited in the line for so long, I decided to get done with this today and not go through a similar experience at a later time.

The guy before me had some kind of a speech defect and was having difficulty letting the guy in the counter know his phone number. Got to give it to the Airtel employee He was very considerate and was trying to help the person. Since the systems were down, as a stop-gap arrangement, they were actually giving out handwritten receipts. The employee relaized that he had ran out of such sheets and went to look for another book.

This is where it got really annoying. The guy was searching frantically for atleast fifteen minutes and could not find a single book. By that time another guy came to that counter and got the Landline systems up. So effectively they could cater the landline customers but not the mobile ones ( Oh god, please make IMS a reality so that our records will be in HSS). The new guy asked the guy before me again for the details and got impatient when the latter was not saying it coherently. He bluntly brushed him aside saying that his connection was disconnected and he had to go another showroom to get that fixed.

The speech-impaired dude obviously was pissed but just walked out since he didn't want to create a scene right there. So I was next in line and my landline bill was about to be settled. Exactly at that time, the previous Airtel employee finally found his 'book' and started to service customers behind me. The minute he opened up another counter, total pandemonium broke out and there was a mini-stampede with people rushing to the other counter.

Obviously the outlet's air-conditioning was not working. It got so hot and suffocating that a few of us just walked out of the place right then hoping never to set foot there again. But I wanted somebody to be held accountable for what happened. I called up Airtel's customer care to lodge a complaint. And guess what, the guy who talked to me patiently listened to my outbursts and then said, 'Sorry sir, we can't register your complaint since our systems our down!!!!'.

That is when I realized forget Next-gen applications. Just make right the present. Anyway, I am just going to pay my mobile bill online and hope they don't screw up.

Microsoft is on Collision Course - But not with Google

Much has been said about the rivalry that continues to grow between Microsoft and Google. Got to accept, it's quite a story when two of the greatest ( and flashy) innovators of all times are at loggerheads. But to me, this is just a passing phase. The real fight is between Microsoft and Cisco and this is what shall define enterprise VoIP.

Now John Chambers is not the person who runs his mouth without reason. When he talks trash, you better be listening. John Chambers said

“Microsoft has given us a three-year lead. And we’ve never lost a game when we’ve had a three-year lead… It’s a battle we fully intend to win.”

The growth of Cisco and Microsoft is quite a Kane and Abel story ( you decide who is who) that would put Jeffrey Archer to shame. Both of them are from two very different spectrum. One from the Data Networking side and the other from the software world. And now they are eyeing the same market . The enterprise telephony market to cater to these companies' unified communications" services. Cisco's acquisition of Webex makes a lot of sense in this context.

And to make things interesting there is an ever growing perception that software rules in enabling communications in offices and not hardware as traditionally believed ( If you have been sleeping for the last 15 years, software is where Microsoft kills the opposition!!). So it's a huge challenge for Cisco to compete in this space against Microsoft.

Microsoft has not been quiet either. It has strategically partnered with Nortel to enhance its unified communications portfolio. Though many see this partnership as Microsoft's action plan against Avaya-Google partnership, I believe this alliance's primary goal is to take down Cisco. Ofcourse, the recent acquistion of Tellme is a more direct poser to Cisco, since both Tellme and Cisco were competing in the same voice-enabled telephone services market.

Now Chambers' claim that they are three years ahead is absolutely right, but as Saunders pointed out in one of recent posts, Microsoft is never in the game to play, they are there to win. It is an interesting battle, no doubt and the winners will be the startups who will be gobbled up by either of these parties if they have the slightest role to play in the unified communication space!!!

And Thus It Began....

We were expecting it all along. Google and Microsoft are finally going to have a showdown ( or should I call it slugfest?) as to who is going to buy DoubleClick. It must be a great feeling to be the owner of DoubleClick right about now. Having Google and Microsoft fight over you is a once in a lifetime event :)

At the same time I have to agree with the brilliant observations of Phil Wainewright that the methodology of DoubleClick is pretty outdated and Pay per Action (PPA) is much better.

Anyway it is very evident Google just wants to annoy Microsoft and we can see more of these battles in the coming days.

Cisco Rules!!!!

The weekend has been pretty good to Cisco. A study reveals that Cisco shall rule the enterprise VoIP for few more years to come. The study titled “Converged Wireless VoIP Handsets and Equipment, 2007-2012” was initiated by Juniper Research ( so we can conveniently rule out any bias here :) )

The good news for the other guys ( like Aruba Networks, Trapeze Networks, Proxim Wireless and Meru Networks) is that they are also growing at a good pace and are pretty competitive between themselves. So even thought the No.1 spot is out of their reach, the No.2 spot is up for grabs. There are some very interesting numbers if you are a VoIP market analyst and I am furnishing the details as reported.

The VoIP Access Points market for enterprises is expected to soar over $5 billion in revenues by 2012, up from $930 million in 2007. North American revenues are expected to grow from $442 million 2007 to $1.75 billion in 2012. EMEA and Asia Pacific revenues are expected to reach $1.7 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively, by 2012.

VoIP WLAN Switch/ Mobility Controllers for enterprises are expected to reach almost $8 billion by 2012, growing from just under $1 billion in 2007. North American revenues are expected to grow from $0.5 billion this year to $2.7 billion in 2012, with EMEA and Asia Pac revenues reaching $2.7 billion and $1.4 billion respectively.

Sales of VoIP over Wi-Fi handsets (single mode) are predicted to hit $155 million in 2007, increasing to $1.5 billion by 2012. North American revenues are to grow from $93 million this year to $600 million in 2012. EMEA and Asia Pac is expected to touch $480 million and $324 million, respectively, by then.

There is still a lot of money to be made in this segment. Just don't eye for the top spot :)