christopherdmackey

[christopherdmackey]

GoGo In The Air With Satellite Connectivity

No, I didn't make a VoIP call. But I did stream Amazon Prime on a flight today where GoGo is the provider and instead of beaming down to ground stations, the connection was via satellite.  Compared to my ground station based experience yesterday, what a difference.

Streaming video was awesome. Webpages load fast. And most of all the experience is as good as my JetBlue Exceed experiences in the past. And unlike my experience with .Air on a recent BA flight from London, the payment platform worked perfectly.

Staying connected in the air is nothing new for me. I remember using Boeing's Connexxion service when it was first deployed on a few Lufthansa flights and knew how game changing in-flight connectivity via WiFi would be. Now some years later we're really seeing and experiencing what WiFi in the Sky is all about. 

As someone who has been critical of GoGo in the past, I'm very happy to say they have done it right…

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[christopherdmackey]

The Return of The Shadow Number and TalkPlus’ Idea

Back in the day there was GrandCentral, TalkPlus, PhoneGnome, Iotum and even Jangl. The first four were all clients of Comunicano, with Iotum and GrandCentral still enjoying life under different names and different ownership. The four all had various ideas on calling, totally in line with Jeff Pulver's Purple Minutes idea that IP calling would be game changing.

When I read about the planned Verizon My Number, I could only think of Jeff Black and his team from TalkPlus and the idea of a second number on a mobile phone. Back when we released news about TalkPlus the idea was very simple. Make it possible for a second line to ring a mobile phone, and more importantly, to present the second number when you made an outbound call.

The was back in mid 2000's. Jangl had a similar idea on instant numbers. Both TalkPlus and Jangl were great for dating, or for having a work and home line on a single device. Back then there weren't smartphone like we see today. TalkPlus had the multi-number concept working on Motorola Razr and Nokia phones with lots of fans. As we see too often, the VC's had different ideas because Vonage was a big hit, and they wanted TalkPlus to be in the minutes business, something a few of us disagreed with, feeling it was a race to the bottom. 

Sadly, TalkPlus didn't survive, but others like Line2 came along and filled the same void. Now over a dozen years later Verizon is bringing the concept to life.

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[christopherdmackey]

Phone Verification-Not Being Done Right

Over the past few years I've seen corporate America, especially banks and now even Amazon, begin to use SMS as a mode of verification that you are you. Unfortunately, the current approach, using mobile numbers tied to a mobile operator is both antquated and very faulty.

For many years VoIP companies have had access to text messaging capabilities. Dialpad, whom I use for most of my calling, recently expanded SMS to be global and those of us who use GoogleVoice have also had that capability for years. Unfortunately, the companies providing verification to the banks and others are stereotyping people with Google Voice and Skype In numbers, treating everyone with one of those numbers in a higher risk strata despite some having tied their accounts and numbers to paid accounts with either Google or Microsoft. While SkypeIn numbers can be used for call forwarding, as can a Google Voice number, some can be tied to a paid Microsoft-Skype ID, or G Suite account, and that's far different from free accounts, as Google has business history of the account, payment information, etc. In many ways their verification is no less, and likely more rigid than the some telcos.

The second issue revolves around migrating a landline number to a mobile phone. If the number started out as a landline, there's a good chance it won't be verified, even if you can send receive text messages. So even despite number portability, the suppliers, usually companies like Experian will reject the verification. Much like address verification, the Phone Validator relies on information from hundreds of phone companies. Usually they are the mobile operators or the legay local telcos. Chances are your VoIP provider, or Google or Skype isn't contributing to the data pool.

The bigger issue though is the lack of an alternative method of verification to prove you are using an SMS capable phone-regardless of it being a mobile phone or a softphone. This lack of alternative method to prove you are you, such as a utility bill or lease often gets in the way of account establishment, or updates. 

Why this Matters

If you've heard about SIM swap theft, the use of a mobile device to be your verification tool lends itself to too much theft risk. Using a non-SIM based number, where you get notified if there are any changes to your account instantly, is a far better way to be verified.  By not having any means to get around the verifying who you are we all now run the risk of getting locked out of our own accounts, or losing valuable time when we are at risk.

What's more, if you travel internationally, why pay roaming, just so the bank or Amazon can verify you when the app based softphone or texting app works anywhere in the world. In essence those who need to be verified, beyond carrying RSA keys or using authenticators (like Microsoft, Facebook and Google all do now) is a much stronger way to be verified than the SIM card,

Banks have apps, and Visa now owns Mobile Location Confirmation technology, which banks can use to verify where a person is with their mobile phone when a transaction takes place. Unfortunately, not enough of the banks are using it, and VISA has yet to make the service available to others who could use it, like Amazon.

While it's great banks and Amazon want to verify you're you, they need to get up to date with methods that recognize that our own security and privacy is paramount to their risk management approaches, and they need to change with the times.

  from VoIPWatch https://ift.tt/2Fua0Q0 via Andy Abramson

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[christopherdmackey]

Phone Verification-Not Being Done Right

Over the past few years I've seen corporate America, especially banks and now even Amazon, begin to use SMS as a mode of verification that you are you. Unfortunately, the current approach, using mobile numbers tied to a mobile operator is both antquated and very faulty.

For many years VoIP companies have had access to text messaging capabilities. Dialpad, whom I use for most of my calling, recently expanded SMS to be global and those of us who use GoogleVoice have also had that capability for years. Unfortunately, the companies providing verification to the banks and others are stereotyping people with Google Voice and Skype In numbers, treating everyone with one of those numbers in a higher risk strata despite some having tied their accounts and numbers to paid accounts with either Google or Microsoft. While SkypeIn numbers likely to be used for call forwarding, a Google Voice number tied to a paid G Suite account is far different, as Google has business history of the account, payment information, etc. In many ways their verification is no less, and likely more rigid than the some telcos.

The second issue revolves around migrating a landline number to a mobile phone. If the number started out as a landline, there's a good chance it won't be verified, even if you can send receive text messages. So even despite number portability, the suppliers, usually companies like Experian will reject the verification. Much like address verification, the Phone Validator relies on information from hundreds of phone companies. Usually they are the mobile operators or the legay local telcos. Chances are your VoIP provider, or Google or Skype isn't contributing to the data pool.

The bigger issue though is the lack of an alternative method of verification to prove you are using an SMS capable phone-regardless of it being a mobile phone or a softphone. This lack of alternative method to prove you are you, such as a utility bill or lease often gets in the way of account establishment, or updates. 

Why this Matters

If you've heard about SIM swap theft, the use of a mobile device to be your verification tool lends itself to too much theft risk. Using a non-SIM based number, where you get notified if there are any changes to your account instantly, is a far better way to be verified.  By not having any means to get around the verifying who you are we all now run the risk of getting locked out of our own accounts, or losing valuable time when we are at risk.

What's more, if you travel internationally, why pay roaming, just so the bank or Amazon can verify you when the app based softphone or texting app works anywhere in the world. In essence those who need to be verified, beyond carrying RSA keys or using authenticators (like Microsoft, Facebook and Google all do now) is a much stronger way to be verified than the SIM card,

Banks have apps, and Visa now owns Mobile Location Confirmation technology, which banks can use to verify where a person is with their mobile phone when a transaction takes place. Unfortunately, not enough of the banks are using it, and VISA has yet to make the service available to others who could use it, like Amazon.

While it's great banks and Amazon want to verify you're you, they need to get up to date with methods that recognize that our own security and privacy is paramount to their risk management approaches, and they need to change with the times.

  from VoIPWatch https://ift.tt/2FtLG0M via Andy Abramson

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[christopherdmackey]

Panasonic’s Smartphone App is Very Private

I came across a note letting me know about a new mobile app from Panisonic that ties into their business phone system. When I read the note, it was full of just enough information to encourage me to look through the web site about the smartphone app.

What I found was more than interesting and a more than smart approach to business communication. What stood out most of all was the ability to keep the calls only between team members, and the ability to reject non-Panasonic originating calls from even reaching the customer. This helps kill off spoofed calls, outside calls and unwanted calls. For internal teams who need to stay in touch, in many ways, this is how I've used Skype for years with my agency team members.  The difference here is this is a business communication's system, and a feature not often shared or even available from other VoIP providers.

To me the feature set combines privacy seeking businesses who have turned to apps like Telegram or Signal, but provides the business the right level of controls and capabilities. Panasonic has been steadily building their own phone platform, while previously having worked with Broadsoft. This solution appears to work with both, and clearly needs more exploration.

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[christopherdmackey]

Amazon Is Trying to Prevent Deja Vu With the Echo

Back in the early days of VoIP, there was a horrific incident involving a death, a baby and Vonage. This led to regulatory oversight of VoIP by the FCC. This was something that then fellow VoIPWatcher, Om Malik, had pretty much predicted while my archives show that there were efforts being taken earlier by Vonage and others. So when I read the Wall Street Journal's piece about Alexa and E911, I could only think back to what was a PR nightmare then for Vonage, but more, a tragic situation for the family.

Let's face it. 911 in general sucks. Call it from a mobile phone, and you have a 50/50 chance that the call goes to the right dispatch center. In some cases, wait times are minutes, not seconds. Moreover, with VoIP, the location information that's to be provided is more of a voluntary effort, even though in theory it's required.

There is a solution. First Amazon can enable Alexa to call 911. Since they know your address for deliveries, chances are linking the device to deliveries would make it easy to connect the two. The problem is you can take your Echo elsewhere, and it will still work, but something we learned with the former AT&T VoIP service, CallVantage, if your ATA was offline for more than a certain amount of hours, you had to validate the device's address if you changed locations or not. That could be done between the Echo and the mobile phone deployed Alexa apps using location technology the same way credit cards are able to be validated using similar technology.

Another way to make this work is with IP address validation with the Internet Service Provider. Granted the latter suggestion requires permission not to violate privacy, but when it comes to safety, privacy rules should go hand in hand and technology can be used to make it all work together.

For now, Amazon is playing it safe, but as people start to use their Echo's like phones, and that day is here for some already, the prospect of Deja Vu from what happened with Vonage can't be far away unless E911 calling comes to your Echo.

    from VoIPWatch https://ift.tt/2Pd28qF via Andy Abramson

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[christopherdmackey]

Amazon Is Trying to Prevent Deja Vu With the Echo

Back in the early days of VoIP, there was a horrific incident involving a death, a baby and Vonage. This led to regulatory oversight of VoIP by the FCC. This was something that then fellow VoIPWatcher, Om Malik, had pretty much predicted while my archives show that there were efforts being taken earlier by Vonage and others. So when I read the Wall Street Journal's piece about Alexa and E911, I could only think back to what was a PR nightmare then for Vonage, but more, a tragic situation for the family.

Let's face it. 911 in general sucks. Call it from a mobile phone, and you have a 50/50 chance that the call goes to the right dispatch center. In some cases, wait times are minutes, not seconds. Moreover, with VoIP, the location information that's to be provided is more of a voluntary effort, even though in theory it's required.

There is a solution. First Amazon can enable Alexa to call 911. Since they know your address for deliveries, chances are linking the device to deliveries would make it easy to connect the two. The problem is you can take your Echo elsewhere, and it will still work, but something we learned with the former AT&T VoIP service, CallVantage, if your ATA was offline for more than a certain amount of hours, you had to validate the device's address if you changed locations or not. That could be done between the Echo and the mobile phone deployed Alexa apps using location technology the same way credit cards are able to be validated using similar technology.

Another way to make this work is with IP address validation with the Internet Service Provider. Granted the latter suggestion requires permission not to violate privacy, but when it comes to safety, privacy rules should go hand in hand and technology can be used to make it all work together.

For now, Amazon is playing it safe, but as people start to use their Echo's like phones, and that day is here for some already, the prospect of Deja Vu from what happened with Vonage can't be far away unless E911 calling comes to your Echo.

    from VoIPWatch https://ift.tt/2ASEib7 via Andy Abramson

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[christopherdmackey]

Kill The Deskphone

The Wall Street Journal has a great story about the decline or if you believer, the continuation of the use of the deskphone. As someone who has not had a home or office phone for so many years the story is mostly old hat.

Given how voice over IP use and acceptance has steadily grown, there's less and less need for the old-school deskphone, especially in what is rapidly becoming a mobile first society. Apps, and cloud services, simply work better in software based endpoints like a smartphone or tablet vs. an endpoint which now have so many buttons and hard to program screens that they become almost useless.

As the story points out, without saying it directly, the digital generation that has grown up with mobile phones. That group are not really comfortable with the old desk phone. Despite attempts to market Android OS based , or bases and speakers for iPads and iPhones, the idea of the desk phone is really a thing of the past.

Part of the rationale is functionality. Pioneers in softphone Counterpath pretty much defined the softphone space, allowing for advanced services being as simply as sliding a button. Skype came along and got millions of people comfortable with using their computer to make and receive calls. Then the iPhone arrived, and with the debut of the app store, so much changed in how we use and consume telephony services. The app from Truphone in 2008 was very forward in approach, while Vonage, 8×8 and others were initially nothing more than just a substitution for the deskphone, so while they were starts, none of them were what we see today. In the ten years that the App store has been around, we've seen so many advance between API's and cloud microservices, the debut of Apple's Callkit and similar efforts on Android, that mobile devices have become the endpoint of choice because they simply do more.

Take the long stalled GoogleVoice. This year's most recent updates adding long wanted VoIP calling, plus the ability to now take calls via the Web browser have made the service an easy way to totally eliminate deskphones. You get a number, and it can terminate anywhere. If you still want the number to ring the old fashioned landline, it can. In many ways GoogleVoice has caught up with 8×8, Vonage, RingCentral, Dialpad, Telzio  and all the rest.  Older, more legacy focused plays like Mitel are quickly moving to catch up to the cloud based solution providers with their own version of cloud, which is one of the main reasons they acquired Shortel.

That said, there remains a healthy market for deskphones largely for the desk only worker, but for the Anywhere Worker who moves around, the deskphone may be like the Model T. A think of the past.

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[christopherdmackey]

Amazon Is Trying to Prevent Deja Vu With the Echo

Back in the early days of VoIP, there was a horrific incident involving a death, a baby and Vonage. This led to regulatory oversight of VoIP by the FCC. This was something that then fellow VoIPWatcher, Om Malik, had pretty much predicted while my archives show that there were efforts being taken earlier by Vonage and others. So when I read the Wall Street Journal's piece about Alexa and E911, I could only think back to what was a PR nightmare then for Vonage, but more, a tragic situation for the family.

Let's face it. 911 in general sucks. Call it from a mobile phone, and you have a 50/50 chance that the call goes to the right dispatch center. In some cases, wait times are minutes, not seconds. Moreover, with VoIP, the location information that's to be provided is more of a voluntary effort, even though in theory it's required.

There is a solution. First Amazon can enable Alexa to call 911. Since they know your address for deliveries, chances are linking the device to deliveries would make it easy to connect the two. The problem is you can take your Echo elsewhere, and it will still work, but something we learned with the former AT&T VoIP service, CallVantage, if your ATA was offline for more than a certain amount of hours, you had to validate the device's address if you changed locations or not. That could be done between the Echo and the mobile phone deployed Alexa apps using location technology the same way credit cards are able to be validated using similar technology.

Another way to make this work is with IP address validation with the Internet Service Provider. Granted the latter suggestion requires permission not to violate privacy, but when it comes to safety, privacy rules should go hand in hand and technology can be used to make it all work together.

For now, Amazon is playing it safe, but as people start to use their Echo's like phones, and that day is here for some already, the prospect of Deja Vu from what happened with Vonage can't be far away unless E911 calling comes to your Echo.

    from VoIPWatch https://ift.tt/2Ow9FeO via Andy Abramson

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2qx1PIj via

[christopherdmackey]

Kill The Deskphone

The Wall Street Journal has a great story about the decline or if you believer, the continuation of the use of the deskphone. As someone who has not had a home or office phone for so many years the story is mostly old hat.

Given how voice over IP use and acceptance has steadily grown, there's less and less need for the old-school deskphone, especially in what is rapidly becoming a mobile first society. Apps, and cloud services, simply work better in software based endpoints like a smartphone or tablet vs. an endpoint which now have so many buttons and hard to program screens that they become almost useless.

As the story points out, without saying it directly, the digital generation that has grown up with mobile phones. That group are not really comfortable with the old desk phone. Despite attempts to market Android OS based , or bases and speakers for iPads and iPhones, the idea of the desk phone is really a thing of the past.

Part of the rationale is functionality. Pioneers in softphone Counterpath pretty much defined the softphone space, allowing for advanced services being as simply as sliding a button. Skype came along and got millions of people comfortable with using their computer to make and receive calls. Then the iPhone arrived, and with the debut of the app store, so much changed in how we use and consume telephony services. The app from Truphone in 2008 was very forward in approach, while Vonage, 8×8 and others were initially nothing more than just a substitution for the deskphone, so while they were starts, none of them were what we see today. In the ten years that the App store has been around, we've seen so many advance between API's and cloud microservices, the debut of Apple's Callkit and similar efforts on Android, that mobile devices have become the endpoint of choice because they simply do more.

Take the long stalled GoogleVoice. This year's most recent updates adding long wanted VoIP calling, plus the ability to now take calls via the Web browser have made the service an easy way to totally eliminate deskphones. You get a number, and it can terminate anywhere. If you still want the number to ring the old fashioned landline, it can. In many ways GoogleVoice has caught up with 8×8, Vonage, RingCentral, Dialpad, Telzio  and all the rest.  Older, more legacy focused plays like Mitel are quickly moving to catch up to the cloud based solution providers with their own version of cloud, which is one of the main reasons they acquired Shortel.

That said, there remains a healthy market for deskphones largely for the desk only worker, but for the Anywhere Worker who moves around, the deskphone may be like the Model T. A think of the past.

from VoIPWatch https://ift.tt/2yUkqCH via Andy Abramson

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[christopherdmackey]

Kill The Deskphone

The Wall Street Journal has a great story about the decline or if you believer, the continuation of the use of the deskphone. As someone who has not had a home or office phone for so many years the story is mostly old hat.

Given how voice over IP use and acceptance has steadily grown, there's less and less need for the old-school deskphone, especially in what is rapidly becoming a mobile first society. Apps, and cloud services, simply work better in software based endpoints like a smartphone or tablet vs. an endpoint which now have so many buttons and hard to program screens that they become almost useless.

As the story points out, without saying it directly, the digital generation that has grown up with mobile phones. That group are not really comfortable with the old desk phone. Despite attempts to market Android OS based , or bases and speakers for iPads and iPhones, the idea of the desk phone is really a thing of the past.

Part of the rationale is functionality. Pioneers in softphone Counterpath pretty much defined the softphone space, allowing for advanced services being as simply as sliding a button. Skype came along and got millions of people comfortable with using their computer to make and receive calls. Then the iPhone arrived, and with the debut of the app store, so much changed in how we use and consume telephony services. The app from Truphone in 2008 was very forward in approach, while Vonage, 8×8 and others were initially nothing more than just a substitution for the deskphone, so while they were starts, none of them were what we see today. In the ten years that the App store has been around, we've seen so many advance between API's and cloud microservices, the debut of Apple's Callkit and similar efforts on Android, that mobile devices have become the endpoint of choice because they simply do more.

Take the long stalled GoogleVoice. This year's most recent updates adding long wanted VoIP calling, plus the ability to now take calls via the Web browser have made the service an easy way to totally eliminate deskphones. You get a number, and it can terminate anywhere. If you still want the number to ring the old fashioned landline, it can. In many ways GoogleVoice has caught up with 8×8, Vonage, RingCentral, Dialpad, Telzio  and all the rest.  Older, more legacy focused plays like Mitel are quickly moving to catch up to the cloud based solution providers with their own version of cloud, which is one of the main reasons they acquired Shortel.

That said, there remains a healthy market for deskphones largely for the desk only worker, but for the Anywhere Worker who moves around, the deskphone may be like the Model T. A think of the past.

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[christopherdmackey]

8×8 Buys Jitsi

In what has to be more about intellectual property and gap filling, and a bit of an acquihire in nature, 8×8 has acquired Jitsi from Atlassian. You'll recall how HipChat was sold off to Slack a few months ago, so this seems to be the next step in trimming non-core assets by the Australian company as they focus.

It's a good move for 8×8 as it gives them a proven team and access to technology that is mostly built upon WebRTC for their Meetings product as this will help shore up the 8×8 Meetings product, and also provide some additional technology talent that is more web than telco centric to the company. With collaboration becoming so much a part of any telco's business model, and the need to integrate with third party cloud services, the pick up of Jitsi is a shrewd move.

This purchase also shows how open source technology can be used to build valuable assets as this marks the second time Jitsi has been acquired. Their status and life expectancy was one of my questions at ClueCon which I pondered with others when Slack picked up HipChat as I figured Jitsi's time was limited at Atlassian. I'm now as doubtful that this was an expensive acquisition, as the terms were not disclosed making it a non-material purchase by 8×8, and not subject to SEC reporting requirements. We call those kinds of sales, mercy sales, where the company's assets and team are placed in a good home, where the technology and team can be appreciated.

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[christopherdmackey]

James Kendrick Rest in Peace

This is belated news and still sad. I just learned via the Kevin Tofel and Matt Miller's podcast that James Kendrick passed away. I will admit that after James departure from GigaOm that my interaction with James had been reduced. While we periodically exchanged some messages in social media, James and I hadn't really spoken in three years but he was one of the real pioneers in tech reporting, especially in the gadget realm.

James was one of the first of the "unknowns" who I pulled into the Nokia Blogger Relations Program back in 2005. We became online friends, would see each other at various conferences and trade shows and he became one of the bloggers I respected because like Matt Miller, Kevin Tofel and the many in the Nokia program, they all have an ethos of actually using, not just testing, but using the gadgets.  That was at the core of the Nokia program-actual use, not just review of the specs.

James put products through their paces, and he knew them inside and out as does Kevin. That work ethic was why I hooked up James and Kevin with Om Malik, and suggested the acquisition of JK on The Run to him when GigaOm was a growing force in tech coverage. Om wanted a product review team and James and Kevin were the team.  Along the way, James and GigaOm parted ways and James moved on to ZD Net before his declining health impacted him.

In a world of jerks and shameless self promoters, James wasn't one of them. He was always a gentleman, and a professional. In my dealings with him, we could just talk about the products and he would fairly, honestly and candidly share his thoughts.

Rest in peace James Kendrick.

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[christopherdmackey]

Uber Adds VoIP

In what has been a long time coming, Uber, the world's largest ride sharing service, has added VoIP to their mobile apps reports Engadget and RedmondPie.

There's a couple of benefits that come to mind almost immediately. First is the fact that those of us who have multiple phones and phone numbers will be more easily able to reach the driver and vice versa. Right now I use my Google Voice number but with changes to Google Voice it's not as easy to redirect the calls as it used to be to an international number (my GV number is enabled that way). Second, and more importantly, using WiFi to connect to a driver in some locations, like hotel lobbies, often has better connectivity than LTE or 3G or even 1xRTT depending on the carrier's coverage. Lastly is call quality. In most cases VoIP offers better audio. 

Expect to see more mobile apps incorporate VoIP inside, either as SIP based calling or using WebRTC.

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[christopherdmackey]

Twilio’s Signal-I was Expecting More

Given the meteoric rise of Twilio stock and all the noise they have been making I was looking forward to groundbreaking news out of their Signal conference in San Francisco this week. I didn't hear it or see it.

Instead what I saw was largely the ongoing management of the message, via the media, in order to demonstrate to Wall Street and investors that all is going as planned. And maybe it is. But underneath all this I'm concerned.

Let's look at why I'm concerned:

The IoT SIM news is largely a rehash of their ongoing efforts to automate and facilitate IoT information and actions. It's the kind of "product" news you expect to hear as a customer, not media or investment analysts. To me this is business as usual.

FLOW-this is Twilio's Build Your Own Contact Center. It has promise but the difference is you need your own developer to keep your Contact Center up to snuff while the Contact and Call Center providers that are cloud based do that for you so while this is a very useful tool for those who want to roll their own operations, and have the tech resources to do it, this approach is best for department level efforts, not company wide. Here again, this is business as usual type of news, not game changing.

PAY with Stripe. Interesting, but again, not groundbreaking. Stripe is a hot company in FinTech and FinTech is a sector that is growing as banks move from legacy systems that are premise based to the cloud. It's a hot market so what Twilio is doing is saying we want to be in that market too. It's directional, and soft news not earth shattering. 

Buying SendGrid-it adds revenue, market entry opportunity and a lot of integration. While this is two like minded companies hitching up, the timing, much like Cisco buying Broadsoft was announced at Connections, is more stock price affirmation and news attraction that game changing. They could have announced this at any time but chose Signal as this is all about signalling the market and sending information to the analysts.

For the most part the SIM and Flow are ongoing projects that were announced in the past, and now are being fully commercialized. Yes, product development takes time, but at SIGNAL I would be expecting more of what Google does at I/O and Amazon does at Re:Invent which is really show the developer market what they can do next. Instead this feels more like Salesforce's DREAMFORCE-a show and tell by Twilio paid for by their partners and attendees. PAY is partner tied news. Coat-tailing or "borrowed interest" marketing. It shows what the platform can do, but this is more of what I expect from startups not two mature Silicon Valley darlings.  Had this been a voice driven platform for Visa or the MasterCard so it can be used by everyone, every bank, every company, well that would have been groundbreaking. But a single company…hmmm.

Another concern is the media, or lack of real media, that is highlighting Twilio. It is largely the Silicon Valley Echo Chamber. ZD- Net, TechCrunch, Venture Beat..they are in love with the local companies, especially when the CEO has been so forthcoming to them in the past. Even outlets like Cheddar, NoJitter and Fierce are finely tuned to cover these types of announcements, but there's a lack of critical analysis from them, as mostly they use the news release or a very tightly delivered interview from a briefing to compile their reports. While the Wall Street Journal covered the SendGrid news, they didn't spend any time on the rest of what Twilio had to say this week further underscoring the uncertainty I'm feeling.  

This very measured flow of what was new could also point to something else. A possible brain drain inside the company. Often when companies IPO and employee stock options fully vest, there's a loss of some of the core workers who are actually doing the work, vs. those selling the company to investors, VCs, partners. They cash out, rather than wait around. Or, if they're still around, the efforts are focused on shoring up what was built not building anything new.

But there's something more. At the heart of all this is the fact that Twilio is really facing stiffer competition in the CPaaS space as many a new entrant has arrived, often with as much horsepower and skills as Twilio or more. As these companies come to the forefront, the heat will be on to deliver more than pieces and parts to the telecommunications developer will be rising, which may be why I feel the way I do.

Perhaps I'm wrong…perhaps I need a full briefing from Twilio……..too.

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[christopherdmackey]

The Address Book On Your Phone Is Broken

Years back I had the ability to memorize just about anyone's phone number. Part of the skill was pure memory tricks. Associating the person to an area code reduced the need to memorize 10 digits. Then there was repetition. The more you called someone, the easier it was to remember their number. Next was we had a dialer, then touch tone buttons, All that created touch memory. 

But with the arrival of the smartphone, integrated address books on our PC's and more, we lost the need to keep the numbers in our head, as it became easier to just simply tap and call. Instead of remembering numbers, we simply assigned them to the devices or directories of our choice. That model was great in the era of one phone system to call them all, but today, people are on more than just the traditional phone number.

Today, people call each other using Skype, Facetime, WhatsApp, Facebook, WeChat, Telegram, Signal, Riot, Hangouts Meet, Duo and Google Voice. We use services like Dialpad, Telzio, 8×8, Vonage. We place calls using apps or through the web browser.  And, we use all these services to talk to others the same way we have used the phone to reach someone. But given the advances in technology, we no longer use the same mode of calling. But the result is the same. A conversation is held over the phone.

That's why it's time for the contact directory to start to include labeling and hooks to the apps that we use best. For example, I almost never use my mobile operator's number to make a call to someone in my directory. I use Dialpad or GoogleVoice. Sometimes I use Skype Out. They all allow me to present numbers that are known to the people I call, especially when I'm international, on a local SIM. 

So while Apple's iOS's CallKit was a major advancement, the next needed one is with or contact directories on our smartphones so the app or service we use can be called, so we can make the call without having to switch between apps. 

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[christopherdmackey]

SendGrid Sells to Twilio: What Does It Mean?

So late yesterday the news out of Twilio's Signal conference broke that Twilio was acquiring SendGrid. Most of the coverage is straight out of the news release, with very little critical analysis. From my perspective $2 billion for SendGrid, a company with a perceived market value of $1.4 billion is a nice premium, and a win for their shareholders. For Twilio it adds revenue to the books, and helps with sales and marketing efforts. 

Given Twilio has been developer focused until after their IPO while SendGrid is enterprise sales focused, the buy actually helps Twilio become more enterprise oriented, presuming that the SendGrid sales team sticks around, and that Twilio can move more deeply into the enterprise. As someone remarked here at APIdays in Amsterdam, changing direction after you go public (i.e. pivot) isn't something that easily happens. I don't see Twilio pivoting, but instead using SendGrid to blend the SMS/MMS customer more intimately with their email based communications base.

Time will tell.

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