In the middle of the 1990s, the Internet and its associated IP protocols were like a huge wave that was off the shore of the business world, but poised to come in and cause massive disruption. At that time, I ran a consulting business for telecom clients (Human Communications) and was active on several fronts…
One of the best texts I’ve ever read about business models was written by Cory Doctorow, a famous writer and entrepreneur. His novel Makers was not only a great story, but virtually a doctoral thesis on how business models can change and have a radical impact on everything they touch. A couple years ago, I…
We live in a world where communication solutions can be hardware-based, run in a virtual machine on a local server or be situated in the Cloud. The paradigm for communications solutions has been shifting from hardware to software to virtualization as I’ve discussed in my recent posts. Once a solution is virtual, in principle, customers…
A number of years back, my product team engaged with a Tier 1 solution provider. They wanted to use our IMG media gateway as part of their solution, but with a condition. They had limited rack space, so they wanted to use an existing server to manage our device. Up until then, we required customers…
In my last few posts, I’ve described several factors which have encouraged communications solution providers to transition away from hardware and focus on software-based application solutions. Let’s consider two companies and how they adjusted the path of their technical and business models to address these directions. Avaya is an example of a company whose solutions…
This post is about a critical technical development in the history of Voice over IP which had a wide-reaching impact on the development of voice and related communications solutions. I’m referring to IP media, which was introduced early in the 2000s and has been ramping up every since. In my last two posts, we discussed…
This is the latest in a series of posts on how voice development has been moving from hardware to software centered models. In my last post, we reviewed the classic approach to developing voice-centered solutions, which typically utilized voice boards. In this post, I’ll review how media gateways helped change the model. In the classic…
During the past three years, I had product management responsibilities for products which covered the spectrum from hardware-centered to software-centered development. In telecom, there’s been an evolution in development models as solution providers have taken a series of steps to gradually move away from hardware. However, like many technical trends, there is a long tail…
Product managers are called upon to accomplish many tasks at different points in a product life cycle. One which can be important and potentially even a game changer is to develop a proof of concept for a product and then test the idea out. I’ll provide an example. In one case, my division wanted us…
One advantage I gained when I went independent for over a year was to consider how to be an effective Product Management leader with a fresh perspective. As a Product Line Manager, it’s very easy to get caught up in the product, the enhancement of various features and dig deep into the technical aspects. All…
