For those on the business development side of any industry, following Seth Godin's work is always time well spent.

As we enter 2009, with a global economic recession staring us in the face, Godin's latest book The Dip should be required reading for the entire management team.

To summarize, The Dip describes how successful people and organizations make the right decisions to keep on fighting through the challenges or to quit and try something new.

To simplify, if you have the distinct opportunity, people, and resources to become a market leader or one of the world's best at whatever you are doing then it is in your best interest to power through the tough times and market downturns because being the best brings extraordinary benefits.

According to Godin, "You win when you become the best in the world however, "best" and "world" are defined by the market."

Malcolm Gladwell's newest book, Outliers, studies successful people and points to the external factors contributing to their success. Significant talent is needed but it must be combined with focused hard work, resources, timing, and a few lucky connections for this talent to manifest itself as world class success.

Bottom line, talented people or talented companies can and do miss the boat simply because of bad timing or a missed connection.

2009 promises to be an eventful year for Telco 2.0 companies. My bet is a few world class winners will be defined through high profile Exits or M&A activities over the next year.

A most recent example is Broadsoft's acquisition of Sylantro. Thus, from the Telcos perspective the build or buy decision is made less complex. The vendors selling the Telcos a build option for application development platforms are reduced to three primary competitors including Broadsoft, Sonus, and Metaswitch. An easy assumption reduces it to two vendors soon.

As we enter 2009, the fortunate companies, (Jaduka and NetworkIP included) will see success as a synergistic combination of recognized world class talent, market focus, financial resources, and industry timing will allow them to rise above the rest to be best in the world.

For those in a position to be counted as the winners in 2009, humility should be a primary virtue. The line between success and failure will be slim.

Happy New Year,
Patrick Murphy
Jaduka
VP, Business Development

After receiving complimentary feedback on my observations of business model evolution in our industry, this is the first of four posts to dive deeper into the topic. That's what you get for being nice.

The industry’s thought leader on Telco 2.0 business models is, in my view, Martin Geddes of TELCO 2.0.net. I’d add Thomas Howe and Alan Quayle and you have my top three list. Thomas and Alan are both humble guys who would admit that Martin offers a powerful new business model vision for Telco 2.0.

My sense is that Geddes' two-sided business model/vision will take perhaps 3-6 years or more on the evolutionary path to be fully realized. I believe there are several phases that need to be achieved before we get there. All phases are being pushed forward by various companies within the Telco 2.0 space. My steps along the Telco 2.0 evolutionary path include the following topics:

1. Empowering developer communities
2. Enriching go to market strategies for partners and clients.
3. Value based transactional pricing versus commodity pricing
4. Two-sided business model iterations

For me, it is helpful to reach back to the 1980's to review some helpful analogies related to the software revolution. (I'm more of a student of industry history rather than a survivor. So, I welcome input from those with direct experience.)

Initially, the software revolution required an evolution in tools (i.e operating systems, coding languages, etc.) to push innovation beyond the world of mainframe computers. It's hard to remember there was a world before Microsoft's total domination that saw real competition for developer mindshare.

The Telco industry is at a similar crossroads. Various companies are carving out their own niche within the development communities whether it be VXML, Adobe Flash, Ruby, Php, Java, .Net.... SOAP/REST. You get the picture.

In the world of personal computing, interoperability between operating systems caused some initial problems. That should not be too troublesome in our industry. The most important issue in Telco 2.0 interoperability is whether or not phones can connect around the world. I think we solved that one.

Within a year, among developers,we should know who are the winners and losers among the Telco 2.0 players in terms of adoption by members of various technical communities. For those closest to the industry, it may already be a moot point.

Patrick Murphy
Jaduka, VP Business Development

At the risk of being provocative, I believe there are only two relevant telecommunications conferences left in the world: ECOMM in San Francisco and TELCO 2.0 in London. These are the meetings where the best and brightest generate new ideas, industry networking, deals, and partnerships that drive the global telecommunications industry forward.

Jaduka is pleased to announce our sponsorship of ECOMM, March 3-5, 2009, in San Francisco.

Obviously, there are plenty of high quality expos, shows, educational seminars, publications, bloggers, training sessions and user meetings involving our industry and all its stakeholders and consumers. These shows and the communities of participants are absolutely vital to industry growth.

However, if you are focused on where the opportunity (and money) is flowing in telecom you really do need to pay attention to both Martin Geddes and Lee Drysburgh and their conferences. And, don't wait until next Spring; start following their blogs and communities now.

What I especially love about the thoughts emerging from these communities are the coherent, creative discussions that bridge the gap between technical innovation and effective business models. As we all know, innovation dies a slow death without powerful and creative go-to-market strategies.

The world of Telco 2.0, or more specifically the transformations emerging in global telecommunications, require big thoughts and big bets. What I know for sure, is the thought leadership driving the future of the world's telecommunications carriers will be flowing through these conferences in 2009. We will be there and encourage your involvement too.

Patrick Murphy
Jaduka
VP, Business Development

"As with all things in life, there are building blocks. From those early stages, the future is built. Not many can explain how it all works, but most can benefit from what has been created without even knowing what really went in to it." These thoughts came from a recent article by Hunter Newby, one of the thought leaders in the telecommunications industry.

As Hunter's article lays out, the opportunity we have at Jaduka and NetworkIP is to be intimately involved in providing these building blocks.

When one thinks about the holiday season in the US, we have this paradox of intense consumerism intertwined with trying to connect family,friends, and colleagues. Everyone admits that a healthy balance can be hard to achieve.

Using two distinct methods, Jaduka and Network IP are trying to help our partners and their customers invent a future that provides a healthy balance between commerce and communication.

Adding voice to a business process provides tone, detail, emotion, context, or urgency cues frequently lost in email exchanges.

Providing a transactional infrastructure to tie the world's phone users with the bricks and clicks of commerce finally eliminates location as a constraint for consumers.

Thank you Hunter Newby for reminding us at Jaduka and NetworkIP to be truly thankful for the opportunity to help create the future.

Patrick Murphy
Jaduka
VP, Business Development

As Jaduka moves telephony integration into the world of enterprise software, we are surprised by one common question that continues to come up. Are these Voice Mashups, Voice 2.0, Telco 2.0, or CEBP solutions specific to a particular device or operating system?

The answer is NO.

The downside of the recent mobile phone application surge is the consumer and application developer can lose sight of the truly awesome power of the global telephone network (PSTN). With a few digits we are all interconnected, yet still empowered with the ability to personalize our message. That unique combination of scale with user personalization can get overlooked by any of us who are easily amused by our newest iPhone AppStore download.

Of course, the advertising industry grasps and craves this powerful combination of global scale and ability to communicate 1:1 with consumers. One of our early success stories comes from the world of Interactive Media. Harnessing Jaduka's technology and our partners’ creative work have contributed to highly successful, award winning ad campaigns over the past couple of years. Here is one campaign.

Honestly, I admit to underestimating the size and scope of this industry until I learned a bit more about our own work as well as the work done by Nokia Interactive. Our collaboration with Enpocket on a particular project (their pre-Nokia name) brought home the understanding that global brands and major advertising agencies, especially digital shops, are always looking for the most direct path to consumers and fresh, unique ways to engage them. The global voice and SMS networks provide a direct path to reach consumers through their mobile devices.

Enabling brands to reach today’s ever more distracted consumer wherever they happen to be via mobile is arguably one of the most relevant conversations brand managers and agency strategists alike are discussing today.

Patrick Murphy
Jaduka, VP Business Development

I've recently re-introduced myself to the work of two of the better analysts in the Telco 2.0 world, Martin Geddes and Alan Quayle. Martin Geddes of STL Partners is running the Telco 2.0 conference in London this week. While, Alan Quayle just did a terrific webinar on this topic that can be found at his site.

One of the truisms in the technology industry has always been that waves of technology innovation are followed by waves of business model changes.

What I've seen in the Telco 2.0 world over the past few years is that most of the bigger questions about the shape and direction of the technical innovation wave are being answered in the same way. IP and Web services tools aren't going away. When Telcos now think about innovation what comes out of their mouth are themes, standards, and technical lessons learned from Google and Apple.

Obviously there is still plenty of work to be done but from a technical perspective global telcos now have true buy or build options placed in front of them. They know what needs to be done. For most telcos, it comes down to how best to make it happen.

Now, the business model waves of questions that are following the technical innovations are something quite a bit different. Telcos can't easily follow the Google advertising model or Apple's design and brand advantage to build a new, high margin business.

So, that is why I am impressed with the work of analysts like Geddes and Quayle who are working to offer Telcos the vision and strategic insight required to evolve their business models.

Most importantly, when I hear Geddes talk about leveraging telco assets with two sided business models or Quayle highlight the unmet sweet spot in B to B work, my confidence in the quiet evolution taking place at Jaduka and NetworkIP grows and grows.

It has been fascinating to see the same technical themes and strategic directions being launched this year by the best and brightest companies in technology.

If I had a car for every time I heard a large company compare their new strategy to ITUNES, my garage would be as crowded as any Hip Hop star.

For those not in tune with ITUNES, this strategy basically means delivering a market place of IT solutions within a SaaS platform to business and IT users.

Of course, many of these "strategic" announcements are worthless. The execution of this "ITUNES for IT" strategy has many moving parts and requires a customer base and partner ecosystem that only the most mature and larger vendors can truly deliver.

From my perspective and quite a few analysts, the future of enterprise class IT is being created and will be delivered through the new strategies laid out by SERENA and IBM. Their versions of the ITUNES strategy combine new technology and new ecosystem tactics leveraged by their world class client base.

Jaduka announced our relationship with Serena this summer. For an update on what we are working on together please sign up to attend this CEBP and Voice Mashup webinar on Nov. 13th.

Jaduka's parent company NETWORKIP.net has a long and successful relationship with IBM. Leveraging our award winning relationship within IBM's recently announced SMART MARKET and BLUEHOUSE initiatives is a potential next step.

Given the nearly absolute market rejection of on premise CEBP solutions and the painfully slow uptake of on premise UC, Jaduka's ability to blend into enterprise class SaaS solutions looks to be the hottest tune for these times.

Patrick Murphy
Jaduka
VP, Business Development

There has been a common theme across industry conferences this Fall. It is SaaS; also known as Software as a Service or Cloud Computing if talking about the infrastructure.

What I find fascinating is that companies like IBM and Serena are pushing this view point. These are companies with core parts of their business in the mainframe world. I am always impressed by companies willing to push a technical future that in many ways could cannibalize their legacy business.

Many enterprise technology vendors have been telling customers for years to keep everything behind their own walls. Suddenly these walls are being ripped down. So, we do appreciate the challenge of bringing their customers along to the new SaaS environment.

However, my colleagues and I at Jaduka and NetworkIP also look at what we do every day and month and wonder why is SaaS scary?

During the month of September, we had 20 million API hits! 20 million times our clients (and their customers) went outside their walls to access the services we offer!

Now, I understand there is a clear difference between storing the company jewels on some vendor’s hosted environment and leveraging a telephony or database infrastructure. However, at the same time, the ROI in SaaS functionality can be stunning. Many business processes have to be under consideration for SaaS enhancements given the resource limitations so many of us will be facing. Just as importantly, the SaaS strategy can also create dialogue about new business opportunities since paying by “the use” means not having any depreciating asset or maintenance costs.

Bottom-line, businesses of all sizes have been outsourcing their telephony infrastructure forever. Thus, enterprise solutions that include embedded communications applications should be viewed as the most comfortable first step for companies who are nervous about entering the world of SaaS and Cloud Computing.

Very simply, Jaduka brings Voice to SaaS.

Patrick Murphy
Jaduka
Vice President, Business Development

Lots of business traveling has me thinking about logistics and, of course, how voice mashups can improve these business processes. I tend to equate logistics with FedEx and delivering packages. For the most part the global package delivery industry provides best practices for how to integrate the phone and web in ways that give customers visibility into logistics. When traveling,however, I am the package and my phone is the equivalent of my own personal RFID tag.

Yet, I am blown away by how few other industries have adopted similar best practices when it comes to logistics and using the phone. Pulling out the laptop, finding a hot spot, and logging on to a website for updates isn't the right solution for travelers.

Just over the past few weeks I've seen tremendous potential use cases for voice mashups.

Airlines: These voice mashups could include confirmation of flight times, schedules, gate changes, and passenger reminders about new travel policies. I don't have a printer when traveling so make confirmation available over the phone. Send me confirmation numbers by speech to text or SMS. Of course, lost luggage demands the ability to give people insight into what is happening and when delivery is going to happen. At best, airlines hand out credits /coupons when mistakes happen. The $80 in airline "credits" that I received over the past few weeks certainly would pay for a lot of logistics communications.

Hotels: Simply call me, ask me if and when I expect to check in on the day of my arrival. You are going to make me feel very good that my reservation hasn't been lost. Hotel staffing/rooms can be scheduled based upon estimated times and numbers of arrivals. It's OK to tell me to eat at the hotel restaurant too!

Conferences/events: Conference have to be one of the most expensive activities that do not provide any attempt at personalized customer service. Bad/limited hot spot connectivity makes the suggestion of " Go to the Conference website for updates" a cruel hoax. Those self service check in kiosks are annoying especially when paying for the full cost of the conference. At minimum,a phone call that confirms my registration, arrival time, and schedules my badge pickup, or tells me not to miss a new keynote speaker would be well received.

Delivery services: We've discussed delivery services and logistics. It is getting to the point that I am surprised when automated phone notification is not used. With voice mashups, we can do much better than 3 or 4 hour delivery windows.

With voice mashups and logistics, getting the right message to go out at the right time, to the right person is only half the battle. The real added value is the feedback loop and real time managerial reporting that must be attached to this solution. Each contact is meaningful to the individual customer but it is the aggregate data that provides quantifiable return on investment for the business. Jaduka and Network IP's infrastructure give us the ability to provide time stamped, real time feedback for world wide voice mashup logistic solutions.

Patrick Murphy
Jaduka, Vice President Business Development

Jaduka's announcement that we have joined Serena's Mashup Exchange and sponsored the Serena User Conference is a clear indication to the future direction of Communications Enabled Business Processes and, of course, Voice Mashups.

Since analysts coined the phrase CEBP there has been some industry confusion about exactly how the "business process" integration of CEPM would be handled.

Whether selling a box or hosting a service the telco hardware vendors and service providers are strong on the communication enablement side of the equation. But, actually moving forward to improve the business process within an enterprise does require integration with internal processes and legacy systems. This is the 90% of the iceberg below water.

With CIO's continuing to rank business process improvement as a top priority the market opportunity was not going away. Enter the new world of enterprise mashups.

Serena, a vendor with deep roots in application life cycle management, has crafted powerful new mashup composer tools that push the development of lightweight business improvement applications out to the business analyst and web development skill sets readily available within their clients' organizations. In addition , Serena has been strategic about courting best of breed technology partners , take a bow Jaduka, to help Serena's global clients deploy solutions faster.

Although Serena's Mashup Exchange is by far the most aggressive initiative, there are more and more software vendors with worldwide client bases beginning to open up their offerings to attract new functionality and vertical expertise from preferred technology partners. The speed of the mashup culture is not waiting for traditional software release cycles.

Whether it is called CEBP, voice mashups, or mobile mashups the ability for traditional enterprise software, SAAS offerings, or web content management vendors to easily access the worldwide telephone network using APIs is rapidly becoming a required piece of functionality. Jaduka is positioned perfectly.

Patrick Murphy
Jaduka
Vice President, Business Development

I received a call from a ubiquitous, giant, drug store chain and I am delighted.
Although it wasn't perfect, this call provides a beautiful example of a voice mashup that works on so many levels.

My home phone rang about 2pm. Given that I work from home, I typically ignore this phone but walked by and noticed the caller id listed the name of the local pharmacy chain. I picked up the phone and said hello. Unfortunately, the first automated response stated "I don't understand what you said." However, immediately after that mistake, an automated voice asked me by name if I wanted to renew a prescription. I laughed, went over to my kitchen sink, shook the little bottle of tablets and noticed there were only 2 left. Within 30 seconds, I followed the phone prompts, ordered a refill, and was told that 24 hours later the refill would be ready to pick up.

This phone call probably saved me one car trip to the store and an hour or so worth of my time. This is good stuff. Multiply how this type of call can help busy families, senior citizens, or anyone with a chronic condition. It helps by saving money, saving time, and keeping people up to date on their prescriptions.

Yet, there are at least 4 ways the contact could have been better.

1. I rarely answer my home phone especially during the day. It needs to become standard business process to ask permission to use mobile numbers or texting for these type of calls. Personalize the call for me.
2. This call came from one of those drug store chains with thousands of stores. My first reaction after getting off the phone was do I know which of the three local stores has my prescription? Give me relevant local information. Remind me of the store location and the store hours. Localize the call for me.
3. Given the POS swipe card that is requested every time we buy something why not use my purchase history and prompt me to buy something with a mobile coupon. Give me a coupon code and save me money.
4. Before filling the order there was one, simple, security question prompt. My hope is that if a more powerful drug refill is being updated stronger security prompts are requested. I am not devious enough to think through how this type of call could go bad. However, the security question felt weak. Perception drives consumer acceptance.

From the pharmacy chain's perspective these 30 second calls easily improve work flow and staffing, make cash flow projections stronger, and delight customers.

Any store or vendor that I regularly frequent is encouraged to contact me by phone if they are going to save me time and money.