The Top 25 Innovations of 2007 and a partridge in a peartree

Well its been too long since I have posted something. I have been so busy with Galaxy Telecom that I haven't been able to update The VoIPBiz nor even look at it. Hopefully my faithful blog readers haven't cared too much.

Since 2008 is fast approaching I thought it would be good to follow in the footsteps of every TV station and countdown the Top 25 Technology Innovations of 2007. Although, people wouldn't call me the biggest Microsoft fan, they are of course number 1 in terms of what the product they have released this year.

1. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007: Though far from surprising, the official October launch of Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 was a huge step forward simply because it made real the possibility that voice will someday become just another application running on corporate networks. As such, the announcement forced enterprises and vendors alike to get serious about their responses to a game-changing question: whether stand-alone PBXes will even be necessary in the future.

2. A New Kind of Internet Calling Box: Ooma Inc.'s slick $399 appliance got a lot of free publicity by upsetting fans of PhoneGnome, who considered it a flashy copy of their favored Internet calling box, even though the two are only superficially similar. Ooma works by using the Internet to connect to Ooma boxes in other parts of the country and placing calls through those users' local phone lines. Oh, and spokesperson Ashton Kutcher added a bit of publicity as well.

3. Erasing the Line Between Hosted and Premise-Based IP PBXes: For SMBs (small- to medium-sized business), the choice is often between hosted VoIP services and premised-based PBXes. Switchvox decided to make its premise-based IP PBX software available for hosted services as well. Thus, when small companies outgrow the hosted solution, they can transfer all their settings, IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menus and messages to their own premised-based PBXes with no trouble.

4. Hosted VoIP Without Per-Extension Charges: Hosted VoIP at $50 per extension, per month is a great deal for small businesses until they grow large enough to have extensions in rooms where people rarely make outside calls. Then, each of those extensions wastes about $49 per month. Junction Networks charges a flat rate for the entire business — no matter how many extensions, plus the actual cost of calls.

5. Appliances to Make Open Source Easier: Open-source IP PBX software suppliers like Digium Inc., Fonality (trixbox) and Pingtel Corp. have been making it a lot easier to get their products up and running by selling low-cost, highly reliable "appliances" loaded with the software. It saves VARs (value-added resellers) and other customers the trouble of shopping for suitable servers. It also, of course, boosts the software suppliers' revenues.

6. Low-End Desk Phones Get GUIs: IP desk phones with GUIs aren't a new feature for 2007, but there has been a lot of progress in bringing high-end features to low-end phones. In March, for example, Polycom Inc. rolled out the SoundPoint IP 320, which features full duplex audio, echo cancellation, noise reduction, LCD readouts and an integrated PoE (power over Ethernet) port at a low $139 price.

7. Text-Message Control of Hosted IP PBXes: One of the nice things about IP PBXes, hosted or premise-based, is how users can do things like set up call forwarding, launch conference calls and manage their address books, all from remote locations. But if users are trying to do these things via a cell phone from overseas, for example, they need to either use high-end handsets running special client software working through an overseas data plan, or call in at several dollars per minute and go through a touch-tone menu. It would be a lot cheaper if they could use text messages instead. If they use VoIP Logic LLC's hosted VoIP, they now can.

8. Enterprise Fixed/Mobile Convergence Without Carriers' Help: Maintaining that crucial customer call during the all-important walk from the car to the office got easier this year with IP PBX vendors' introduction of features that hand off calls on dual-mode cellular/wifi handsets from cellular networks to enterprise wireless LANs. They work by establishing parallel calls on both networks and terminating the one that's no longer necessary. Siemens AG, Avaya Inc.and Divitas Networks all offer products that perform this service.

9. Taking the Worry Out of the VoIP Transition: One of the biggest factors keeping small businesses from moving to hosted VoIP is concern about Internet call quality. RingCentral Inc. overcame that barrier by using VoIP switching, with all of its features and functions, but delivering calls to and from its customers over traditional PSTN (public switched telephone network) lines. In early October, RingCentral added Internet call delivery under the name DigitalLine VoIP Service. That means that the company's customers can keep using PSTN delivery until they feel comfortable relying on Internet VoIP for all their telephony needs — if they ever do — and only then make the switch.

10. Banking Your Phone Number: A lot of companies will give you phone numbers as part of their service so you can have calls to those numbers forwarded to any landline or mobile numbers you wish. In July, Boston-based RNK Communications Inc. began a service that allows users to simply buy their existing phone number and keep it forever, enabling them to forwards calls wherever they want without having to buy any of the other voice-mail or calling plans that other services require. Logically enough, RNK Communications calls its service the Phone Number Bank.

11. Ads That Complement Your Conversation: It offers free Web calls, but Pudding Media Inc.'s real business is using sophisticated software to extract keywords from the conversations it carries, then delivering relevant ads to the callers' Web browsers. Mobile voice services are a future target.

12. Making Phone Calls Via Email: If you know someone's email address, you can call them. Enter the person's address in a form on Jangl Inc.'s Web site, and the service will immediately give you a number that you can use to call that individual. First, you leave a message, which Jangl emails to the person, along with a number that they can use to call you. The two of you can use those two numbers to talk to each other for free, forever, without ever knowing each other's real numbers. Jangl also gives both parties the ability to block each other, also forever, with a single click. Just the thing for calling people you're not sure you want to remain friends with. Jaxtr Inc. has a similarly anonymous service based on click-to-call widgets.

13. Call-Through Instead of Callback: There are all kinds of callback services that let you enter two numbers on a Web site — yours and the one you're trying to call — for cheap overseas conversations. The service rings both numbers from local exchanges and connects the two calls via cut-rate international circuits. TalkPlus Inc., however, can also give you a temporary local number to call rather than insisting on calling you, in case you're on the road, stuck behind a hotel switchboard or using a client's office PBX that wouldn't know what to do with an incoming callback call. Client software on mobile phones can even make the initial local call for you.

14. End-to-End VoIP Quality Testing: A typical VoIP-quality testing service might measure the performance of an IP call in terms of jitter, latency and packet loss, then conclude that voice quality is perfect. But if the last-mile infrastructure between the customer's premises and the IP backbone is less than perfect, the network may be doing a perfect job of delivering hideously distorted sounds encapsulated in VoIP packets. In March, Keynote Systems Inc. announced a service that measures the quality of actual calls between apartments in key cities in order to provide real-world data about which VoIP sounds best.

15. Google Talk for Desk Phones: A lot of enterprise telephony systems let you click a name on your PC screen to call a contact, rather than forcing you to dial your phone manually. But Avaya added the ability to make the call via Google Talk, saving users all kinds of money by sending the call over the Internet rather than over the corporate phone system. So not only do users not need a handset the way they usually do with Web telephony, they can even use their speakerphone to let everyone in the office hear how good Internet phone calls sound.

16. Open-Source Community as Free-Calling Zone: When Fonality brought out three "Pro" versions of its trixbox open-source Asterisk IP PBX software, it saved users the need to sign up for Skype to cut their long-distance bills. All three versions come with a service called trixNet, which lets users call each other for free over the Internet. The users needn't belong to the same company or even know they're both using trixbox. The calls fall back to the PSTN when Internet conditions are not very voice-friendly.

17. Lower-End IP PBX/CRM Integration: More and more low-end IP PBX manufacturers boast of integration with CRM and (customer relationship management) applications such as Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. When calls come in, screens pop up with information like the last time the customer called, who they talked to, and what they bought or requested. But why should only big companies be able to pretend they remember all their customers? Switchvoxtrixbox come immediately to mind as vendors who extended CRM integration to lower-end IP PBXes, while Epygi Technologies Ltd. announced SugarCRM integration but doesn't focus on it in its product literature.

18. Click to Be Called: First, you embed a simple URL — www.phone-me-now/ plus your business phone number — in your Web site, email message or even a document you're sending someone. The viewer or recipient clicks the URL, enters their phone number and receives a call. This service comes from ifbyphone, which has also simultaneously called you and connected the two calls to make it seem that you have just called your potential customer. It's superior to click-to-call technology in a big way: The clickers needn't have a handset connected to their computers to talk but need merely be near their phones. No HTML coding is required. Here, too, there are similarities to jaxtr's widget-based "click-to-call-me-free" service.

19. Bringing Skype to the Office: Wouldn't it be nice if you could use a four-digit extension number to call a colleague on Skype halfway around the world? If you have an IP PBX, you now can. Stonevoice, an Italian company, introduced SkyStone, a software gateway that lets you make Skype calls through an IP PBX just like you would any other call. It can also route incoming Skype or SkypeIn calls through the PBX's IVR system.

20. Turnkey PBX-to-Skype Gateway: The other way to make Skype a part of your office is through a hardware gateway. VoSKY exchanges, comprising gateway software running on standard Windows servers, connect on one side to the Internet and the other to your IP PBX, providing a dial tone and other things necessary to make the PBX think it's talking to Ma Bell instead of Skype and the Internet. VoSKY introduced a turnkey rack-mount version in September.

21. Hosted Call Centers: capabilities, with features such as flexible routing to agents, call barging by supervisors, call recording, in-queue announcements, and integration with CRM packages and services. So it made sense that in August, Even low-end IP PBX vendors are touting their call-center8x8 Inc., the leading provider of VoIP services for small businesses, integrated its Packet8 hosted IP PBX with Contactual Inc.'s hosted call-center service. The move further expanded the range of big-company VoIP-based capabilities small businesses can use without having to install anything but IP phone equipment.

22. Skype Wifi Phone and Portable Hotspot: It's nice to have a Skype wifi phone, so you don't have to find a hotspot, crank up the laptop and plug in the headset every time you want to make a call while on the road; it's much better to have the phone come with a portable hotspot. Panasonic Corp.'s KX-WP1050 with "Executive Travel Kit" does just that. It plugs into your hotel room's Ethernet jack and lets you pace your suite while thrashing out tough problems just like you do via your speakerphone back in the office, but much cheaper than you could with that other pacing device — your cell phone.

23. Skype Office Desk Phone: If you’ve decided to run your entire business on Skype, IPEVO Inc.'s Solo will let you disguise that fact if you want to. With features such as color LCD, echo cancellation and a speakerphone, it holds its own against any good IP desk phone.

24. Cordless Phone for Skype and PSTN Calls: It's sure inconvenient to have one phone for PSTN calls, and another — whether software- or hardware-based — for Skype calls. The Philips VOIP841 combines both types into one DECT (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications) cordless handset. A base station plugs into both the Internet port and the phone wall jack, letting you choose which kind of call you want to make by simply pressing a button.

25. Unique Numbers for Cheap Calls: Here's another way to get away from receiving calls from callback services in order to make cheap, Web-activated overseas calls. Simply use the new JAJAH Direct service, which provides you with a unique local number that you can always dial to reach a specific overseas number. Just put the number in your address book under your friend's name and forget about international dialing prefixes, country codes, PINs, account numbers and pricey minutes.