This week's masthead: Internet Telephony expo
I'm on holiday, but I'll post more from last week's Internet Telephony Conference and Expo. The photo in the masthead is of a mad rush into the exhibit hall's opening night.
It was bizarre for me, all VoIP but almost no Skype in the hall, and none in the official program. This conference brings VoIP resellers and enterprise buyers (seen above) to the exhibitors, corporate VoIP toolmakers. Skype, as far as these folks are concerned, is in another industry, consumer VoIP, and not their business. Mostly, the exhibitors and speakers don't even mention Skype because their clients haven't bought or sold millions of dollars of Skype products.
The funny part: a number of vendors are pitching Skype-like functionality. Centralized and well domesticated, of course, but some blend of presence, IM, voice, video, and other collaboration. But few in the room (or with checkbooks) seem to buy value-added-VoIP. Most see VoIP as long distance bypass and little more.
And most don't know that VoIM is being smuggled into their workplaces by team leaders and expatriots and the adventurous. By parents with kids and lovers who want privacy. Skype is spreading in typical disruptor style like faxes and personal computers. If this conference is any indication, this wave of new behavior is well below the radar of nearly all IT and telephony vendors.


Comments
is skype present on this fair. if not, that is maybe why nobody talks about skype as a viable business solution (yet).
Posted by: jan geirnaert | tropicaljantie | October 17, 2006 03:52 AM