8 Haz 2009

High Definition Voice telephony to come U.S. with VoIP

High Definition Voice telephony to come U.S. with VoIP

Optimum Lightpath this month becomes the first U.S. service provider to roll out High-Definition voice services as part of its hosted VoIP offering, and the Cablevision subsidiary is offering this new feature at no extra charge, beyond a one-time fee for the enhanced phone set required.


HD VoIP enables a higher sound quality by using uses voice energy that lies outside the 3 kilohertz frequency of traditional telephone calls, to create much richer voice quality based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology and the G.722 wideband codec standard. Optimum Lightpath already has G.722 wideband codes deployed in its network, said Glenn Calafati, director of Product Marketing at Optimum Lightpath, so the only upgrade required to offer the service is deployment of an HD phone set at the customers’ premises.


There is no one application driving HD voice deployment, other than the general demand for higher quality VoIP, said John Macario, senior vice president, Product Strategy and Management, for Optimum Lightpath.

“We have a significant number of high-end clients in our location – financial services companies, hospitals, educational institutions – and we have heard interest in this across the board,” Macario said. “If two traders are talking in a relatively noisy environment important they heard each other clearly and concisely. Doctors, same thing. The driving application is just voice. Our view here is that this is an advance in technology that is made possible by IP and in this case, hosted IP, and we want to offer it to our customers.”

Optimum Lightpath uses an all-fiber, all Ethernet infrastructure to deliver its data and hosted voice services. Optimum Lightpath chose not to charge for the additional quality because its standard approach to upgrades has been to offer them without additional cost, Macario said.

“We’ve added HD voice to the equation as just another feature, and we are not going to start charging people on another feature,” Macario said. “HD handsets are more expensive so there is a small non-reccuring charge that they will pay based on the number of the latest Cisco handsets they want to buy. That covers the cost differential between those handsets and the standard IP phones. That charge will vary depending on how many HD phones you want. That’s how we handle any upgrade to the phone.”

As part of the Optimum Lightpath Hosted Voice service, Optimum Lightpath handles all installation and upgrades, along with equipment maintenance and 24-7 customer support, Marcario said.

Gartner SaaS revenue projections, mega trends in 2009

SaaS revenue projections, mega trends in 2009

Software as a service (SaaS) is forecast to reach $8 billion in sales in 2009, a 21.9 percent increase from 2008 revenue of $6.6 billion, according to a recent report from Gartner, Inc., and will experience a 19.4 percent compound annual growth rate through 2013. In a challenging economy, SaaS represents a leaner alternative, but it will continue to change and evolve within Platform as a Service (PaaS) strategies that companies like Microsoft and IBM are developing. These strategies will invite developers and integrate SaaS with their software. And there may be a Cloud on the horizon.

SaaS adoption is strong in select markets, but it has limited potential in other markets and subsegments. Segments of the SaaS market that will drive growth for the next three years include procurement, human capital management, and customer relations management, Gartner reports. SaaS accounted for more than 18 percent of the customer relations management market overall in 2008.

Perception of SaaS has changed. Greater competition and focus by megavendors reinforce the legitimacy of on-demand solutions, according to Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. "Many enterprises are further encouraged by the fact that with SaaS, responsibility for continuous operation backups, updates and infrastructure maintenance shift risk and resource requirements from internal IT to vendors or service providers," she said.

Market researcher IDC projects an even higher rate of growth for SaaS - 40.5 percent over 2008 due in part to the cost advantage at least in the short run of Saas. "Buyers are more interested in the easy-to use subscription services which meter current use and vendors will look for new products and recurring revenue streams," IDC reports.

"SaaS services have benefited by the perception that they are tactical fixes, which allow for relatively easy expansions during hard times," according to Robert Mahowald, director of On-Demand and SaaS research at IDC in a recent report entitled Economic Crisis Response: Worldwide Software as a Service Forecast Update.

IDC says that SaaS growth could be constrained by the cash flow problems of potential clients who also have difficulty finding credit to scale up.

The Gartner report says that several factors that can impede adoption of SaaS, include: concerns about data security, a perceived lack of competitive differentiation, increasing concerns about scalability, questions about vendor longevity, and the fact that existing investments in applications capital and organizational expertise limit SaaS growth.

Platform as a Service

Intuit, which initiated its Platform as a Service (PaaS), the Intuit Partner Platform, just one year ago, is one example of the rapidly changing landscape for SaaS. Within weeks of its acquisition of PayCycle for $170 million, it announced on June 3 that the Partner Platform will support third party development.

The Intuit Partner Web site gets right to the point. Through the Platform, SaaS providers and developers will be able to sell to millions of businesses already using Intuit's Quickbooks program and "Federate" existing SaaS applications. The Platform will permit users to:
• Rapidly build and deploy rich SaaS applications capable of seamless integration with QuickBooks data.
• Federate existing SaaS applications.
• Reach a potential market of nearly 25 million users within the 4 million small businesses using QuickBooks.
And Tim Berry, writing for smallbusiness.com, sees SaaS developers, large and small, everywhere. "Not just big companies in India working with big companies in the U.S., but individual programmers all over the world contracting with companies of every size, also all over the world."

SaaS and Cloud Computing

Bloggers debate whether SaaS applications will evolve on their own or whether new development will "leapfrog" SaaS into the new world of PaaS/Cloud computing. One view, expressed by Chris Morace, Jive Software's senior vice president, is that, "Multi tenancy SaaS is too limited. The idea of a federated hybrid cloud approach will enable flexibility in the deployment.... I think the enterprise will adopt around virtualized clouds."

Andre Conry-Murray disagrees. In an informationweek.com post, he writes that Salesforce.com, Workday, and others have demonstrated that enterprises will adopt SaaS, despite concerns over security and privacy. He asks "whether the architectural differences between SaaS and the Cloud will affect SaaS vendors in the future if private/public federation catches on," but questions if they will catch on.

Intel Invests $43 Million in Japanese WiMax Carrier

Intel Invests $43 Million in Japanese WiMax Carrier

by Martyn Williams

Intel's venture capital arm is investing US$43 million in a Tokyo-based WiMax operator that plans to launch the world's fastest WiMax service in July. The investment, from Intel Capital, will help UQ Communications to build-out its network, which is now under test in Tokyo. The service offers download speeds of up to 40Mbps and uploads at up to 10Mbps. It will be formally launched on July 1. The network currently covers Tokyo and the nearby cities of Kawasaki and Yokohama and will expand to cover additional cities later this year. UQ plans to offer coverage of over 90 percent of the population by 2012. Intel has backed the company from the time it applied to the Japanese government to launch service. UQ Communications is also backed by KDDI, Japan's number two cellular carrier, JR East, the major railway operator in Eastern Japan, Kyocera, Daiwa Securities and Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank.

UQ enters the Japanese market at a time of increased competition in the data transmission market. While Japanese cellular carriers were ahead of the world in offering mobile Internet service to cell phone users, they lagged in providing similar services to PC users. That market was kicked off by the emergence of E-Mobile, a data-focused carrier that offered the country's first flat-rate HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) service. Other cellular carriers are now offering their own competing services and NTT DoCoMo, Japan's leading cellular carrier, plans to offer an HSUPA service with uploads as fast as 5.7Mbps later this year. Download speeds are also due to be increased to 14Mbps later this year. While slower than UQ's data offering, the service is more widely available.

Turkcell Chairman Worried About Shareholding - Turkcell to Start Mobile Wallet Trials

Turkcell Chairman Worried About Shareholding - Turkcell to Start Mobile Wallet Trials

Turkcell's Chairman Mehmet Emin Karamehmet has warned that his shareholding in the company has fallen to a "critical level" which could result in a change of ownership control. His Cukurova Group owns about 14 percent of Turkcell after recent sales of shares to fund debt repayments.

TeliaSonera has been in a long legal fight with Cukurova over control of Turkcell. In January 2007, the International Chamber of Commerce issued an award finding that a binding share purchase agreement was concluded between TeliaSonera and Cukurova in 2005, calling for Cukurova to sell all its shares in Turkcell Holding to TeliaSonera. The award results from an arbitration proceeding in Geneva that TeliaSonera commenced in May 2005 against Cukurova, after Cukurova withdrew from the transaction and entered into another transaction with Russia's Alfa.

As at last July, Turkcell's shareholder structure was as follows: 51% held by Turkcell Holding, 4.15% by Cukurova Holding, 13.07% by Sonera Holding, 2.32% by MV Holding and the free float is 29.38%. Cukurova Group controls the company despite holding only 18% of the share capital, due to a complicated shareholding/voting structure.

TeliaSonera owns 47 percent of the shares in Turkcell Holding. TeliaSonera also owns 13 percent of the shares in Turkcell, giving TeliaSonera a direct and indirect ownership of 37 percent in Turkcell.

In related news, Turkey's Turkcell is planning to launch a Mobile Wallet service before the end of next year, said Altuğ Acar, Turkcell's head of business development.

"We are currently working on a new system that will transfer the functions of credit cards along with an integrated municipal toll and transit application," he told Today's Zaman, noting that the system has passed the tests so far.
"If a user loses their smart card or if it is stolen, then they will easily be able to cancel their accounts and open a new one via our call centers," he added. As for the new cell phones that will use the Mobile Wallet system, Acar said they have been conducting infrastructure studies to design a new generation of phones.