Dave Michels
Telecom/VoIP/UC/Mobility enthusiast. Blogolyst, Consultant, and Analyst publishing independent telecom and UC research at TalkingPointz. Dave is CEO of Verge1 which offers independent analysis and interpretation of business communications systems and technologies. Dave works with the major vendors, end users, and media sources. His independent research is available for download at www.talkingpointz.com. Dave regularly contributes to this site and other major sites focused on communications. His blog PinDropSoup is one of the most popular independent telecom oriented blogs on the web.
Wanted: CIOs
Coming up at Enterprise Connect will be the 2nd Annual Innovation Showcase. Enterprise Connect is the biggest UC, Voice, VoIP, communications event each year for enterprise communications. In addition to all the major vendors – there’s lots of CIOs and buyers there too. Last year, fairly last minute, we created the Innovation Showcase, to identify [...]
Cord-cutting UC
Network World is confusing cord cutting with going mobile. We observed in our newsletter a week ago that the integration of business apps on mobile devices was very important to business, but we weren’t quite sure businesses were willing to “cut the cord” in favor of wireless substitution. However, based on results published this week in the BroadSoft 2011 [...]
Innovation at Enterprise Connect
We are ramping up for the SECOND ANNUAL INNOVATION SHOWCASE to take place at Enterprise Connect. I am so pleased to be a part of this and that it’s back. Last year, the event was a bit of a last minute idea so we had to scramble to make it happen. There was very little [...]
Mind Blown at Defrag
Defrag is an unusual conference. The simplest way to describe it as TED for geeks. Lots of these tech folks are really smart, and when given a forum to speak about whatever they want might result with interesting ideas. The conference creator, Eric Norlin, figured there is no shortage of cloud, social business, mobile, etc. events, but [...]
TalkingPointz Report:NEC Published
The first of several TalkingPointz reports on UC vendors is now available. NEC. Previously known as Nippon Electric Company, but NEC changed its name in 1983. I thought I knew NEC pretty well, but it’s amazing how much you learn when you really focus on a single vendor. I started at their Dallas Executive Briefing Center [...]
Digital Realities
When technology shifts occur slowly, dramatic changes in how we live take place. Electricity allowed us to work late at night as opposed to until sundown. But when technology changes are more rapid – we tend to force it to adapt to our defined norms – baby steps. [eventually this post will get to the [...]
Upcoming Conference: Defrag
Coming up next is Defrag – this is a pretty unique conference. Unlike most of my events that are focused on telecom, this one is a bit of a tangent. The content is phenomenal. The conference is 5 years old, and organizer Eric Norlin works to keep it intimate. Eric describes Defrag as the first [...]
Favorite Robots
All this talk about Siri – is Siri a robot? Personally, I don’t think so. Siri is an impressive voice recognition engine with some very clever programming associated with it. The break thru in Siri really isn’t in what it does or says, that’s just programmatic, but rather what it understands. I think robots should be [...]
Poor Retail
SaaS, or Shopping as a Service is killing retail. If there was one investment or model that I would have considered safe forever – say 20 years ago, it would be retail. If I had, I was sure wrong. The Internet and sales tax laws are conspiring to make retail a thing of the past. [...]
IBM Wants Bureaucrats to Socialize More
The IBM Federal Community Cloud just got a little bit more socialable. Last week, IBM introduced a new set of social collaboration tools for Obama’s cloud. President Obama has been pushing a “Cloud First” initiative for Government IT projects. The decree came last November in an effort to consolidate or reduce some 2,100 data centers. [...]
A Layer 3 Elevator
For years, I’ve used the metaphor of escalators and elevators to explain the difference between Asynchronous and Synchronous (TDM and VoIP). It’s not a perfect analogy, but people get it. It goes something like this: Escalators are a consistent speed – people get on in a certain order and their arrival time and order sequence [...]
Announcing TalkingPointz
Welcome to my new site: TalkingPointz.com – the new home for PinDropSoup. It was four years ago this month that I started PinDropSoup as a telecom blog. A lot has changed. It was initially just a hobby, but the page views consistently grew. The blog created numerous opportunities for me, regular writing opportunities at major [...]
QR Shopping
A fairly clever use of QR codes backed by financial results. QR codes are ugly, and IMO very limited, but they have a lot of potential to change the way we interact with data. I have a QR code on my business card and love it when people just scan it and hand it back. [...]
Proof of HP’s Financial Genius
The first hardware conceived and delivered under HP’s ever popular CEO Léo Apotheker is an absolutely incredible calculator – destined to be a classic. I already have three of them! I bought one in 1983, the other two I quite literally inherited. The HP12C (30th anniversary edition) will soon be available for $79.99 (includes fancy gift [...]
New From AT&T: A Fee For No Fees
When touch-tone dialing was new, the Bell System charged a small fee for the service. It was actually cheaper to provide touch-tone (the registers that hear dialing were freed-up much quicker). The Bell system figured out that customers liked the faster dialing, and were willing to pay a premium to get it. Extra fees are [...]
