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Opinion
Pieces:
Written
for Comms Businesses,
a UK trade magazine
Mobiles as the preferred device
(October
2007)
Mobiles for business professionals have powerful computing resources,
open operating systems, a Wi-Fi interface and decent sized displays.
They can be configured as PBX extensions, enable VoIP calls in hot spots and do seamless
handover to and from cellular networks. There are issues but it’s definitely do-able.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 35 Kb)
Change as a constant (September
2007)
Bob Emmerson says change can be incremental and logical.
Routers, for example, have become multi-service business gateways that
incorporate security and QoS, but change can also come from left field
and threaten a behemoth industry.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 190 Kb)
SIX MONTHS IS A long time in IPC (August
2007)
It’s interesting and exciting to write about IP Communications (IPC),
but being in a business that moves this fast must be scary. In the last six months
I’ve witnessed some amazing developments, particularly in the hosted voice space for SMBs.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 72 Kb)
Kicking in an Open Door (March
2006)
According to Bob Emmerson; it used to be
IP Centrex, then it was hosted voice, but now there are
new solutions and a new term that makes marketing sense:
managed communications services.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 59 Kb)
Whither WiMax? (May 2005)
Hype it, then trash it. That’s the way most
of the media cover high-tech and wireless used to be the
worst offender: remember WAP? Bob Emmerson thinks it’s time
to make a WiMax reality check.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 44 Kb)
Alcatel Forum 2005 (March
2005)
8000 were pre-registered to attend, a third
up from last year: over 400 from the UK. Yet another sign
that we’ve passed the tipping point, but Bob Emmerson thinks
the best is yet to come and Alcatel is showing the way.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 49 Kb)
Breaking a Resolution (February
2005)
I don’t have guru-type pretensions so I don’t
make predictions. But resolutions are made to be broken
so that’s what I’m going to do. And if I’m right the channel
is about to get a deafening wake up call this year/early
next.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 32 Kb)
Phones that serve themselves (December
2004)
PBXs, IP PBXs and Hosted Voice (aka Centrex)
are client-server models. Bob Emmerson checks out a 21st
century alternative based on a distributed architecture
and embedded call-processing software. Don’t confuse it
with Skype - and don’t ignore it.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 49 Kb)
Watch Your Wireless Back (October
2004)
Wireless is the preferred way of communicating.
Rates, reach, services and apps are almost on a roll. There’s
even an unspoken ‘vision thing’. Bob Emmerson looks at a
prosaic term and gets a déjà vu feeling.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 432 Kb)
Is WLAN a Misnomer? (August
2004)
Access is wireless but traffic is routed
over the wireline LAN. It works, but elegant engineering
it is not. Bob Emmerson went to Sophia Antipolis and saw
the meshed networking in action.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 362 Kb)
Presence and Muddied Waters (July
2004)
Presence makes sense. Cultural changes aren’t
needed because availability is managed. Your boss can’t
‘see’ what you’re doing. Big Brother is not at work 20 years
on. Bob Emmerson is tired of commentary that confuses the
market.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 35 Kb)
Playing in the wireless IP sandbox (June
2004)
Open standards and unregulated spectrum have
ignited the wireless space for two reasons. One, it lets
the computing guys into the act, and two, the services and
applications are what the market wants. Bob Emmerson considers
the longer-term implications.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 308 Kb)
Centile: Quelle Surprise! (April
2004)
Bob Emmerson went to Cannes to check out
the wireless action at the GSM World Conference. The W3C
consortium was hosting a modest event across the road where
a tired correspondent discovered Centile, an innovative
IP telephony outfit.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 31 Kb)
IPC is a typo; it should have been ICT.
Not a great headline but an amusing article, at least that's
what the writer thinks.
Room 102: Facing the Drop IPC Candidates
(March 2004)
Room 102, next door to the more famous repository,
is for IT candidates but who will be chosen for the big
drop? There’s one obvious candidate but Bob Emmerson isn’t
about to take on Sir Bill’s lawyers. Instead he’s going
for incumbent carriers, GSM in the late ‘90s, market statistics
and IT managers.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 30 Kb)
Security: is the issue getting out of hand?
(February 2004)
Security is an important issue and every
reasonable effort should be made to minimize intrusion,
but there is a law of diminishing returns. Bob Emmerson
also thinks that the on-line media is playing to the gallery
and that there are too many point solutions. Fix what you
can but step back and take a holistic view is Bob’s advice.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 31 Kb)
IP Centrex Good, Wireless IP Centrex Better
(January 2004)
Centrex never took off in Europe. IP Centrex
came at the wrong time. Things are looking up on that particular
service front, but Bob Emmerson really likes the look of
a wireless service. It’s what SMBs have always wanted.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 26 Kb)
Looking Backwards and Forwards (December
2003)
The timing of the ITU's mammoth bash is ironic.
In 1999 WAP was hot and wireless Internet services were
about to explode. This year there is cautious optimism about
a recovery. In between the industry almost flushed itself
away. Bob Emmerson looks back at the year and makes some
cautious predictions.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 25 Kb)
IM: Time to Stop Chatting (November
2003)
Forget messaging and think real-time communications
and collaboration. Add integration with back office apps
and trendy stuff like Web services and you see why this
medium is growing so fast. Bob Emmerson thinks it’s time
to get on the IM train.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 27 Kb)
SMBs Are Big Business (October
2003)
SMBs were big business when CTI was leading
edge (mid ‘90s) and they continue to drive the economy.
In Europe this sector makes up 50% of the GDP, but the industry
was unable to crack this tough nut. Bob Emmerson thinks
it’ll be different this time around.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 25 Kb)
Cisco under siege (again) (September
2003)
Last year Bob Emmerson thought migration
from TDM to IP would be Cisco’s Achilles heel. In
July this year Merrill Lynch made a dramatic swap in favour
of Avaya’s converged platforms, the main reason being
‘network outage issues’.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 24 Kb)
Blessed are the incumbents (August
2003)
SMBs represent a huge, largely untapped market,
which Bob Emmerson thinks is best served via added-value
services. However, incumbents only talk the talk, which
is good for kit vendors and the channel.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 25 Kb)
Siemens - The Software Co? (July
2003)
‘21 st Century Communications’
is the title of a book written by Andy Mattes, a Siemens
Board Member, and Bob Emmerson, a Comms Business columnist.
Ian Hunter has read it and was intrigued by the central
theme: information management and the resulting increasing
transaction costs are the point problem that point solutions
cannot address. What’s needed, the authors say, is
a pragmatic makeover.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 25 Kb)
The wireless office comes full circle (June
2003)
It used to be a management dream: mobile
offices that replicated the real thing. Now wireless is
the real thing, both inside and outside. Bob Emmerson considers
the implications.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 99 Kb)
An IP telephony makeover (May 2003)
Cisco was the pioneer and their agenda is
data centric. PBX vendors have caught up but they are restrained
by the need to protect legacy investments in PBXs and phones.
Bob Emmerson takes a look at company that started with a
clean sheet of paper.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 118 Kb)
Phones as docking stations (April
2003)
Great ideas can be disturbingly simple. Sometimes
they’re so simple they appear to be obvious. Using
IP Phones to dock and sync with PDAs is one such idea. Bob
Emmerson considers the implications.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 106 Kb)
How real is real time? (March 2003)
Businesses were ‘downsized’ and
‘re-engineered’; then the ‘e’ prefix
was added; now it’s the ‘real time enterprise’.
Bob Emmerson takes a second look at this apparently complex
concept.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 115 Kb)
IPT for a handful of dollars (February
2003)
Market research continues to show uncertainty
about the business case for IP Telephony. From a recent
survey of one hundred CIOs, over 40% saw no real need for
IPT and 28% said it was too expensive.
Full Opinion
Piece (PDF: 112 Kb)
VoIP:
but this time it's Video (December 2002)
Is video the icing on the IP communications cake or is
it set to play a pivotal role? Will the new VoIP become a pervasive medium
for consumers as well as businesses? Bob Emmerson went to Italy to find
out.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 94 Kb)
Cisco
under siege (December 2002)
Gartner issues warning about VoIP lock-ins. The Tolly Group says AVVID
is too complicated and too centralized. Bob Emmerson thinks legacy hardware
is more likely to be the Achilles heel.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 16 Kb)
Siemens
delivers the right stuff (November 2002)
Mix lots of applications with some real vision. Add flexible migration
and deals with other heavyweights. Thrown in some firewater and you've
got a powerful cocktail.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 80 Kb)
Wi-Fi
wins at the weigh in (October 2002)
Does Wi-Fi complement 3G? No, it's the other way around, as mobile network
operators are now realising. And 3G may not make it anyway.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 81 Kb)
What's
in a name? (September 2002)
IP Telephony needs an identity: badly. And some decent branding would
be nice. There's still a lot of confusion out there.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 59 Kb)
IP
Turf Wars (August 2002)
Are comms managers needed when telephony is a data app? How objective
are purchasing decisions now that solutions come from both sides of
the equation?
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 56 Kb)
Why
IP Telephony succeeded (July 2002)
Innovation has to disrupt competitors but not customers. It has to start
in an obscure niche. Then it needs to leverage an existing resource.
After that Bob Emmerson thinks it's easy.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 71 Kb)
W-LAN
confusion and concerns (June 2002)
Standards make markets but too many cause confusion. Security is a valid
concern but it's not a real issue.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 66 Kb)
Leveraging
the LAN (May 2002)
IP telephony should be a given; wireless access is. Both leverage the
LAN, but Hot Spots are igniting a revolution.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 67 Kb)
Written
for Byte
Wake-Up
Call (May 1996)
When it comes to digital telecommunications technology,
the U.S. should listen to Europe.
Full
Opinion Piece (PDF: 72 Kb)
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