Softphones - but where's the value?
Andy Abramson posts pretty convincingly on the benefit of Softphones. All well and good so far. Then I have to link to this not quite outstandingly good post on GigaOm from Aswath Rao - an Open Letter to Steve Jobs. If the connection has to be pointed out Andy Abramson is praising the ease of configuring a piece of pure software rather than messing with a piece of hardware and software. Aswath is saying the technology exists - package it with a GUI and make it a universal communication device.
All of which I'll buy never having owned an ATA and clogging up my PC with softphone clients - my all time winner if you can get past the engineer's interface is SJ Labs. Native SIP and H.323 stacks make a real difference.
However, where is the value in engineering a great softphone? An OEM deal with Apple would be nice, but as an investment strategy is a little on the risky side.
I've seen plenty of soft-PBX's on PC's (all with engineer GUI/MMI's) so theoretically all of us could have all the "intelligence" we would ever need at the end point. Somehow feel that someone called David Isenberg got here before me.
I struggle to see the value in the engineering though. There will be some in hosting the always-on services (voice-mail etc) but if I can co-ordinate multiple sessions on my end point (PDA, laptop, etc) and the cost of my connection to mobile/PSTN reverts to the absolute cost of that service then there is little value in being a service provider.
I can see the IBMGS making $'s out of this at the enterprise level....
Thank goodness an all IP world is so far away and interoperability will maintain the ability to make $.
Andy Abramson posts pretty convincingly on the benefit of Softphones. All well and good so far. Then I have to link to this not quite outstandingly good post on GigaOm from Aswath Rao - an Open Letter to Steve Jobs. If the connection has to be pointed out Andy Abramson is praising the ease of configuring a piece of pure software rather than messing with a piece of hardware and software. Aswath is saying the technology exists - package it with a GUI and make it a universal communication device.
All of which I'll buy never having owned an ATA and clogging up my PC with softphone clients - my all time winner if you can get past the engineer's interface is SJ Labs. Native SIP and H.323 stacks make a real difference.
However, where is the value in engineering a great softphone? An OEM deal with Apple would be nice, but as an investment strategy is a little on the risky side.
I've seen plenty of soft-PBX's on PC's (all with engineer GUI/MMI's) so theoretically all of us could have all the "intelligence" we would ever need at the end point. Somehow feel that someone called David Isenberg got here before me.
I struggle to see the value in the engineering though. There will be some in hosting the always-on services (voice-mail etc) but if I can co-ordinate multiple sessions on my end point (PDA, laptop, etc) and the cost of my connection to mobile/PSTN reverts to the absolute cost of that service then there is little value in being a service provider.
I can see the IBMGS making $'s out of this at the enterprise level....
Thank goodness an all IP world is so far away and interoperability will maintain the ability to make $.
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