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Who's Afraid of the Coming White Backlash?
Askia Muhammad | 11/7/2012, 2:58 p.m.
All my adult life I have been reminded of impending "White backlash" as something to be feared. I don't fear White anger at my legitimate demands anymore.
A musician-actor named Marvin Lee Aday, whose genius is that he now goes by the moniker "Meat Loaf" - and others like him - have some quaking in their boots again because Meat Loaf has warned of a "storm cloud" over America, and we're not talking about Superstorm Sandy. He is talking about the re-election of President Barack Obama.
But after we laugh at all the joke lines about the etch-a-sketch, gaffe-filled, myth-a-minute campaign of Gov. Mitt Romney - who, with no shame at all, just last week purchased $5,000 worth of canned goods from a local Walmart store to give to his supporters at a rally so they could "donate" the supplies back to him at a rally in front of TV cameras to ostensibly help East Coast hurricane victims - when we pick ourselves up off the floor about all the stupid lies and tricks he and his sidekick Rep. Paul Ryan perpetrated in order to steal - not win fair and square - the election, there is this serious concern about the White backlash.
A number of "legitimate" White political thinkers are arguing that the Obama re-election will lead to White southern politicians once again advocating secession. They're delusional.
By the 1980s, the most vicious end game of the race-baiting Romney presidential campaign mindset - the Ku Klux Klan - had dwindled to around 600 chapters. After the election of President Obama in 2008, their numbers surged once again. Now, they are poised for an even greater comeback, this time, right out in the open and with the witting or unwitting blessing [or denial of their threat] from most of the GOP establishment.
The only problem is their antebellum vision is doomed for the trash heap of human history. The proverbial genie is out of the bottle. The toothpaste is out of the tube. They cannot be put back inside. Sorry race-hating White folks.
The secessionists tried this same, lame strategy in 1861. It didn't work for them then. It won't work now. The Confederate States of America [the original backlashers] was composed of millions of White traitors. They betrayed their country, and they failed in their rebellion. They had the most brilliant general in the U.S. military leading them and they were crushed by the Union with the help of the slaves.
They were crushed thanks in large measure to the very slaves whom they held in contempt. They didn't win then. Their successors cannot win now!
"Unconditional surrender." Those were the terms when Gen. Robert E. Lee gave his sword to Gen. U.S. Grant at the Appomattox, Virginia Courthouse in 1865 ending the Civil War. Unconditional surrender, Johnny Reb. Unconditional surrender, Tea Party, or whatever name by which you identify your racist crusade today. Yours is truly "The Lost Cause" for a reason.
Those who would embrace, or revive, those antiquated notions of American hegemony in the 21st century are badly mistaken. They think America - with strong White leadership again in charge - can impose its will on the rest of the non-White world and "win by winning" like they did before. It can't happen like that again.


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Former Chief Executive Of Chemung County Business Sentenced To Serve Two To Six Years In Prison For Grand Larceny
ALBANY, NY (January 11, 2007)—Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the sentencing of a former chief executive of a Horseheads, New York building company, after he pled guilty to stealing $210,000 from a resident of Wisconsin.
Richard J. O'Marra, 59, of Seneca Castle, New York, was formerly the head of Nu Castle Industries, a business that manufactured Fibrocrete wall panels for building construction. On June 13, 2006, O'Marra pled guilty to Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, a class D felony.
As part of his plea, O'Marra admitted that he stole $210,000 from Robert Nelson of Wisconsin. O'Marra had told Nelson that his money was going to be used for a real estate purchase in Livonia, New York. Instead, O'Marra used the money to buy out a founding partner of Nu Castle Industries, and for other Nu Castle expenses.
On January 3, 2007, the Honorable Joan Kohout in Livingston County Court sentenced O'Marra to serve two to six years in prison. The judge also directed O'Marra to pay $350,000 in restitution.
"This defendant broke the law by deceiving and stealing from his own investors," Cuomo said. "We will continue to hold businesses and their executives accountable for defrauding investors, and will seek restitution to compensate victims whenever possible."
The restitution will be distributed to Nelson and three other individuals who were similarly mislead by being told their investments would be used to purchase property. Since his plea, O'Marra has paid $10,000.
O'Marra was represented by Marcea Clark of the Livingston County Public Defender's Office.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant Attorney General Nancy D. Snyder of the Criminal Prosecutions Bureau under the supervision of Bureau Chief Janet Cohn and Deputy Bureau Chief Viola Abbitt. The investigation was led by Investigator Mark Spencer.

subset: commoncrawl


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Alice James
b. New York, 1850; d. London, 1892
Henry James wrote in a letter to his brother Robertson's daughter Mary James Vaux that "in our family group girls scarcely seem to have had a chance." Alice James was the one girl in the James family group, and her life bears witness to Henry's pronouncement. In 1853, three years after Alice's birth in New York, Henry James Sr. had written in an article on the "Woman's Movement": "The very virtue of woman... disqualifies her for all didactic dignity. Learning and wisdom do not become her." Alice's youth was marked by the same uprootedness as her brothers. In the family's travels between Europe and America, the boys attended a variety of schools -- the quality of which varied, but they received formal and organized education nonetheless. Alice's case was different. In America she attended several private schools for girls, but the education she received here was as much about female "accomplishments" as it was about academic study. In Europe, she attended no school at all, receiving instead desultory instruction in French and math from a series of governesses, but nothing consistent and nothing that would prepare Alice for an independent life away from her family.
The Affliction of Hysteria
The youngest of the five James children, Alice never married and lived with her parents until their deaths only months apart in 1882. After their deaths, Henry assumed much of the responsibility for his sister, seeing to her finances and health care. By this time, Alice had already suffered two major nervous and physical breakdowns, which would recur a number of times in the years following their deaths as well.
Alice James's medical history reads like a primer on Victorian psychiatric treatment. She traveled to New York for "therapeutic exercise" in 1866; she took the "rest cure" in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, in 1883; and she received electrical "massage" in New York from another doctor and in another clinic in 1884. In late 1884, Alice traveled to England with her companion, Katherine Peabody Loring, believing that a change of scene and circumstance would improve her health. For the next eight years, until her death from breast cancer, she suffered recurring bouts of what was diagnosed as hysteria, a systemic nervous and physical collapse occurring almost exclusively in leisured female patients (Not until World War I would "male hysteria" also be diagnosed, specifically in men returning from the horrors of battle. For a thoughtful exploration of the factors common to the experiences of both genders under such widely different circumstances, view the episode In Search of Ourselves from A Science Odyssey, available on PBS home video.
What Alice Knew
To identify the class and gender biases underlying the 19th-century diagnosis of hysteria in women is not to discount its reality or to dismiss the seriousness of its symptoms. As a number of feminist thinkers have argued in recent years, hysteria may well have resulted from the widespread suppression of women's energies and talents in the name of "femininity" and ladylike conduct. Alice James certainly recognized this, understanding her own collapses as the failure to control feelings of rage that were leveled primarily at the father who kept his daughter in the house, tied to him and removed from outside stimulation and outlets.
Alice did circulate to a small degree in the life of New England. As a young girl, she sewed bandages for the Newport Women's Aid Society during the first two years of the civil war. In 1868, she joined the Female Humane Society of Cambridge with her mother. Five years later, she embarked on a three-year engagement as a history teacher with the Society to Encourage Studies at Home, a national correspondence course for women based in Boston. But in her own correspondence, she tended to discount the importance of this work, focusing instead on her failure to marry or to have any prospects for marriage as the defining feature of these years.
A Posthumous Career
If Alice James during her lifetime lived a largely private and confined existence, she has become a feminist icon as a result of her posthumously published diary. For years, Alice had rejected (at least privately) her family's understanding -- or misunderstanding -- of her. Her breakdowns had only exacerbated this misunderstanding, giving her parents and brothers, especially the psychologist William, license to study her as a "collection of symptoms" rather than to view her as a human being. In 1889 in London, she began to keep a diary, in which she recorded her own understanding of herself. Seeking freedom through writing as her father and two of her brothers had done, Alice finally found her own words and her own voice in which to tell her own story.
Alice died in London of breast cancer in 1892. She entrusted the diary, for posthumous publication, to Katherine Loring. Henry James feared that the diary's gossip -- with recognizable names attached -- would endanger his own social standing and access if it were published. It was first published in 1934 (18 years after Henry's death) as a kind of tribute to Garth Wilkinson and Robertson James, the "lesser" of the James brothers, by Robertson's daughter, Mary James Vaux, who called it Alice James: Her Brothers -- Her Journal. The diary had been corrupted by a number of editorial excisions, and it was not until 1964 that Leon Edel, Henry James's biographer, published a restored version based on Katherine Loring's transcription of the original. Since then, Alice James has become a figure in her own right, viewed not only as a representative of Victorian womanhood and of the neuroses of her famous family but also as herself.
Susan Sontag's play about Alice James, called Alice in Bed, opened in New York in a new production in the autumn of 2000.


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We combed the archives, grilled readers, polled online users, and interrogated staff with one goal in mind: Find the all-time favorite Cooking Light dishes.
Crispy Fish with Lemon-Dill Sauce
First Featured in 2010
Crispy breaded fish is a weeknight favorite, and you can have it without reaching into the freezer case. What we love about this recipe is that you don't even need to pan-fry the fillets; they get breaded and go right under the broiler. Be sure to use a broiler pan; the air vents keep the fish from getting soggy. Our only change was to slightly decrease the amount of salt—it's still fantastic.


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Kim, Young Sung; Lee, Ho Min; Kim, Jong Pil; Lim, Chang Rack
The authors describe a case of simultaneous anterior dislocation of the radial head with plastic deformation of the ulna and an ipsilateral medial humeral condyle fracture in a 6-year-old boy after a fall on an outstretched hand. This rare combination of injuries has not been described previously in the literature. Closed reduction of the dislocated radial head and percutaneous K-wire fixation of the medial humeral condyle fracture achieved an excellent result with full function. This rare combination of injuries is considered to be an unusual subtype of the Bado type I Monteggia equivalent lesion. The case emphasizes that when a fracture is detected around an elbow, other injuries in the region should be suspected.
© 2014 by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Inc.
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Vermont-NEA goes all-in on single-payer
The states largest union is throwing its weight, and its money, behind the push for single-payer health care. And the move by the Vermont teachers union lends considerable strength to what will be the heaviest political lift of Gov. Peter Shumlins career.
Labor groups have had good reason to be skeptical of single-payer. Their members already tend to enjoy premium health insurance benefits. And many union members fear theyll be asked to pay more money for fewer benefits under Shumlins plan for a publicly financed system.
But as those organizations learn more about life under the Affordable Care Act, their strategic calculations are shifting. And the union that represents Vermont teachers is now going all-in on single-payer.
We know that the rest of the country is looking at Vermont to see how well it does, says Martha Allen, president of the Vermont-NEA. And if we dont make it work, I dont know where it will be able to work.
Allen heads a politically powerful union that has 12,000 members and covers more than 40,000 people through its insurance program, called the Vermont Education Health Initiative. The Vermont-NEA has long said it supports the move toward public financing in concept. But now its joining the push for single-payer in earnest.
With financial support from its national umbrella, the Vermont-NEA has committed $80,000 over the next six months to staff a single-payer advocacy organization based in Montpelier. The NEA spent another $35,000 on a poll that it says spotlights continuing support for single-payer among the Vermont electorate, even after the glitch-filled rollout of the states new online insurance exchange.
According to the poll, which was conducted by the Boston firm Kaley & Co., 51 percent of survey respondents say they support single-payer, even when told that it might result in the largest tax increase in state history. Forty-three percent said they opposed the plan. The poll was conducted between Jan. 14 and 16.
Peter Sterling will serve as the director of the new advocacy group, called Vermont Leads. Its neither the first time Sterling has served in this capacity nor the first go-round for Vermont Leads. In 2012, a chapter of the Service Employees International Union spent about $100,000 to create the group, which performed education and outreach in support of the single-payer mission. The organization went dormant when the SEIU lost its bid to represent home care workers in the state, and subsequently ended its financial support for the single-payer initiative.
The money from the NEA has resurrected the organization, which Sterling says will function in a similar fashion as it did under its previous iteration.
Sterling says the margin of support shown in the poll is even more impressive given that a plurality of respondents said they think theyll pay more for health insurance under the single-payer plan. Sterling says the results show that its the single-payer ethic that voters support, even if the program doesnt benefit them financially.
The most important conclusion from the poll I think is that consistently Vermonters support moving toward a universal, publicly funded health care system, even when its described as the largest tax increase in history, even when they realize they may not personally benefit, Sterling says.
The NEAs advocacy for single-payer will be critical in the State House, where the union exerts serious influence over the Democratic majority that Shumlin will need to approve his public financing plan. House Speaker Shap Smith says advocacy from the Vermont-NEA on this issue will help underscore the need for reform.
I think its a big deal for an organization that has health benefits now amongst its members to acknowledge that we need to have access for everyone, portability of benefits, and fairness for all Vermonters in access to health care, Smith says.
Vermont Leads is a nonprofit advocacy group that is prohibited from engaging in electioneering. But Allen says the Vermont-NEA could flex its political might on the single-payer issue as Vermont heads into the last election cycle before Shumlins public financing plan will be voted on by the Legislature.
We are in an election year, and so as the months go on and more work is done on Green Mountain Care, with Vermont Leads, thatll come into play a little bit more, Allen said.
The poll surveyed 502 Vermont voters. Tom Kiley, head of the firm that conducted the poll, said the survey methodology ensured representative samples for both counties and gender. The poll used random-digit dialing to reach land line users, in addition to calls to cellphones, according to Kiley.
Kiley & Co. is a Democratic polling firm that has done work nationally but is best known for its extensive work with Massachusetts candidates, including former Sen. Ted Kennedy and current U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Waren. Kiley said he served as lead pollster for John Kerrys 2004 presidential campaign.
The poll gauges support for single-payer in different ways, each time generating different results. At the outset of the survey respondents are asked, without prompting about what the plan entails, Are you inclined to favor or oppose a single-payer system for Vermont, or do you feel you dont know enough about it yet to have a firm opinion?
The question yielded favorable responses from 24 percent of respondents; 25 percent said they would be inclined to oppose the program; and 51 percent said they arent sure.
Public opinion shifts dramatically when the question includes varying descriptions of what single-payer would entail. Sterling said that even when the description includes warnings that some believe single-payer would result in the largest tax increase in state history, the plan nonetheless gets majority support from respondents.MORE IN Vermont NewsMONTPELIER Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt. Full StoryVermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell plans to join the U.S. Full StoryAs Rutland prepares to welcome Syrian refugees to its community, some are continuing to voice... Full Story
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The DigiSpark is an Attiny85 based microcontroller development board similar to the Arduino line, only cheaper, smaller, and a bit less powerful. With a whole host of shields to extend its functionality and the ability to use the familiar Arduino IDE the Digispark is a great way to jump into electronics, or perfect for when an Arduino is too big or too much.
The MOSFET Shield Kit connects a 60V 30A N-Channel MOSFET to the Digispark development board. This allows the Digispark to turn DC loads on and off and use PWM with larger loads. The MOSFET is rated for 30A, but should be used at a far lower amperage without additional cooling.
This is an unassembled kit and requires basic soldering. This is designed for use with the Digispark development board, which is not included.
Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader
Best price and arrived in a hurry! Would definitely order from again.


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Media Menu
Do you have hot showers?
In the Amazon rainforest, water heated to 30-33 degrees Centigrade will become a soup of mycobacteria. If aerosolized by a shower head the bacteria can be inhaled into the lungs and cause a serious, tubucular-like pulmonary infection. For this reason, like all other jungle lodges, we have only cold water showers


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What is in this article?:
• For decades, it's been known that hybrid catfish — a cross of the fast-growing channel catfish with its close relative, the slower growing and larger blue catfish — generally have better growth, higher survival, and better meat yield than either channel or blue catfish.
• But hybrids have been difficult to produce in large quantities.
• That's changing.
More About:
How is it done?
How to make a hybrid
"Our best chance for a quick impact on hybrid production was to help farmers learn how to make what we call the 'fry,' or baby fish, which was new to them," says geneticist Brian Bosworth.
Bosworth and geneticist Nagaraj Chatakondi are conducting workshops for farmers, in collaboration with MSU scientists, to demonstrate how to produce hybrid catfish fry in hatcheries. They also give on-site consultations at hatcheries.
To produce channel catfish, farmers typically place "spawning cans" in ponds containing mature males and females, Bosworth says. The females lay eggs inside the cans, and the males then fertilize the eggs.
The hybrid catfish, however, is a cross between two different species that do not mate with each other naturally.
Hybrid fry production involves hormone-assisted reproduction. The female channel catfish is given a hormone injection, which induces her to ovulate — release eggs. The fish is anesthetized, and eggs are "stripped," meaning gently pushed out. Sperm taken from blue catfish males is mixed onto the eggs.
Hands-on training involves teaching farmers the process, ensuring the hormone dosages and egg and sperm preparations are correct, and dealing with any other issues.
"Once eggs have hatched, production is pretty much the same as with regular channel catfish," Chatakondi says. "The only difference is that hybrid catfish generally grow much faster and are easier to harvest and process. Farmers can increase production 20 to 30 percent by using hybrids instead of channel catfish."
Still, many farmers prefer channel catfish because fry production costs are lower than those for hybrids, and more channel fingerlings (juvenile fish) are available.
Overcoming inefficiencies in hybrid production
Factors such as inconsistencies in egg quality and sub-optimal hatching conditions increase the cost of hybrid fry production. "We need to find ways to improve efficiency of hybrid embryo production in catfish hatcheries," Chatakondi says.


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Hi,

I posted earlier today in the wrong area of the site, and thank you to Justin for answering my initial query and pointing me here.
 Now that he established it's possible, I need help making this happen relatively soon. We have a small budget, but also not a really great sense of how much time/work it would take to implement this on our site. If the two aren't compatible let me know.
 Here is the initial query:

Is this header / primary menu style (the custom-colored tabs with the highlighter showing which page you're on) possible with Hybrid News? We particularly like that the tabs overlap (almost identical to Google Chrome tabs) and that they are aligned right vis a vis the main content column.

Please see the screenshot of my illustrator mock-up here (the text of this question is there too):
 http://opticliff.com/public/hybrid-news-question.png

I really appreciate any help, and if you know of someone who could do this for us relatively quickly/cheaply, we have a timeline, and learning to do this right now is not feasible for me given the time frame.

Thank you. Please email me at opticliff[at]gmail[dot]com.

-Zeke

Reply by:

Justin Tadlock (Administrator)
 Posted 7 hours ago | Permalink

Yes, that's possible with any list of links.

If you want to hire someone to design/code this for you, there's a jobs board here:
 http://themehybrid.com/community/forum/jobs
 Justin Tadlock on "Hybrid News - Navigation Menu widget not working" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-news-navigation-menu-widget-not-working#post-3746 Sat, 22 Oct 2011 23:22:41 +0000 Justin Tadlock 3746@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Please ask all support questions on the support forums:
 http://themehybrid.com/support
 gacutil on "Hybrid News - Navigation Menu widget not working" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-news-navigation-menu-widget-not-working#post-3744 Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:55:39 +0000 gacutil 3744@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Hi,

I have added a Navigation Menu widget to the Primary widget area and don't seem to be able set what menu to be shown. No matter what I select in the "Menu" drop-down, the primary menu is being displayed.

Could you give me a hand?
 Thanks.
 Lisa
 Justin Tadlock on "Hybrid 1.0 hybrid_page_nav replaced?" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-10-hybrid_page_nav-replaced#post-3696 Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:13:54 +0000 Justin Tadlock 3696@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Please post all support questions on the support forums:
 http://themehybrid.com/support
 jmarkle on "Hybrid 1.0 hybrid_page_nav replaced?" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-10-hybrid_page_nav-replaced#post-3695 Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:36:34 +0000 jmarkle 3695@http://themehybrid.com/community/
In Hybrid, go to Theme Functions (functions.php) and just do a control+f or command+f and search for "hybrid_page_nav" and replace all instances with "hybrid_navigation_links". This restores the sites content without the main page navigation (unless working with custom menus). I'll continue working on the issue but please feel free to contribute until the issue is solved.

Thanks!
 jmarkle on "Hybrid 1.0 hybrid_page_nav replaced?" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-10-hybrid_page_nav-replaced#post-3694 Mon, 19 Sep 2011 15:18:25 +0000 jmarkle 3694@http://themehybrid.com/community/
So I'm getting a small div in the header of my site saying "hybrid_page_nav — This function has been removed or replaced by another function."

Anyone know what function either replaced this or what's going on with the new update? This just happened when I updated to the newest version of hybrid (which I always keep up-to-date), so I'm a little surprised since I've never had an issue in the past when updating.

Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

Thanks!
 Justin Tadlock on "Trouble installing Hybrid News 0.3" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/trouble-installing-hybrid-news-03#post-3439 Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:38:16 +0000 Justin Tadlock 3439@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Please ask all support questions on the support forums, which you can find here:
 http://themehybrid.com/support

This is a forum for posting custom child themes.
 pykko on "Trouble installing Hybrid News 0.3" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/trouble-installing-hybrid-news-03#post-3438 Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:36:13 +0000 pykko 3438@http://themehybrid.com/community/
I had Hybrid News 0.2 installed, and tried to install version 0.3 now.
 I've set the "Home" page as front page, let all settings like in version 0.2, but I can't get the categories menu and subsequently the drop-down menus to show.

What can I do ?
 christinesawyer on "Hybrid News: Excerpts posts - side by side" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-news-excerpts-posts-side-by-side#post-3420 Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:47:47 +0000 christinesawyer 3420@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Hello,
 I am wondering how difficult it would be to actually set up the excerpts posts side by side in Hybrid News, like on that website: http://www.themagazineantiques.com/articles/
 Is it easy? Can you give me a lead where I could go to make the change? I am thinking a float left on the appropriate class could work? What do you think?
 five40 on "Konisto - Hybrid News Customization" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/konisto-hybrid-news-customization#post-3359 Wed, 17 Nov 2010 19:23:30 +0000 five40 3359@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Nice, easy flowing layout. Good luck on the Rich Snippet showcase!
 five40 on "Hybrid News / Ecommerce Site Mashup" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-news-ecommerce-site-mashup#post-3358 Wed, 17 Nov 2010 19:15:58 +0000 five40 3358@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Skate shop and blog mashup.

http://secure.rollerwarehouse.com/orstore/default.aspx
 http://blog.rollerwarehouse.com

We have minimum interaction points between the two sites at this time but will be adding many more internal links between the two.

Would love all feedback on how to improve and your ideas for better integration.

Thanks!
 Justin Tadlock on "Hybrid News Setup - How the heck" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-news-setup-how-the-heck#post-3357 Wed, 17 Nov 2010 09:02:33 +0000 Justin Tadlock 3357@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Closing down this topic since this is the community forum.

If you have support questions, hop on over to the support forums:
 http://themehybrid.com/support
 Craig on "Hybrid News Setup - How the heck" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-news-setup-how-the-heck#post-3356 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:56:32 +0000 Craig 3356@http://themehybrid.com/community/
It's pretty easy really, there are 1000's of posts...

Try the docs and post over in the support forum, most everything is controlled in the theme options panel.

http://themehybrid.com/themes/hybrid-news/front-page
 http://themehybrid.com/themes/hybrid-news

O I just noticed your from Upstate, I'm down in the woods in the Catskills...
 samanthalee on "Konisto - Hybrid News Customization" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/konisto-hybrid-news-customization#post-3355 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 14:02:16 +0000 samanthalee 3355@http://themehybrid.com/community/
I love your site. I do not understand anything..really. I have been trying to read books and the tutorials and am not getting anywhere. This is not....fair...lol. How do I make my site like yours? I need help...very bad. What are your suggestions? I am in real estate and well, I have been spending way too much time on this wordpress blog..and not getting anywhere. Any suggestions on learning how to do this or even hiring someone to make it for me, ofcouse I add my own content but to just get the framework done.
 samanthalee on "Hybrid News Setup - How the heck" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-news-setup-how-the-heck#post-3354 Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:55:37 +0000 samanthalee 3354@http://themehybrid.com/community/
I need help too...I want the demo page too, I like you have been reading for two hours. I hope I have not choosen the wrong theme to work with , I never knew it was going to be this hard. Is there anyone who can help us? Please..pretty please with sugar on top. :o)
 Mike McKoy on "Twin Pixels - Hybrid News with lots of CSS3 and redone slideshow" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/twin-pixels-hybrid-news-with-lots-of-css3-and-redone-slideshow#post-3331 Thu, 14 Oct 2010 08:26:57 +0000 Mike McKoy 3331@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Fire!
 CGBackspace on "Remove « Page 1 » option?" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/remove-%c2%ab-page-1-%c2%bb-option#post-3327 Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:18:21 +0000 CGBackspace 3327@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Hi,

We won't need to do this afterall. I'd delete the the post/question if I could.

Thanks!

CG
 Demyster on "Hybrid News Setup - How the heck" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hybrid-news-setup-how-the-heck#post-3318 Wed, 06 Oct 2010 03:22:22 +0000 Demyster 3318@http://themehybrid.com/community/
How do I simply get Hybrid News to look like the demo. I've been reading for two hours now and have no idea. Do you have a sample layout of the HN demo or Child or template or whatever you call it when someone arrives at my blog front page that I can learn from or copy?

The Demo looks sharp. My front page looks worse than Hello World.

Thanks

Mike
 CGBackspace on "Remove « Page 1 » option?" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/remove-%c2%ab-page-1-%c2%bb-option#post-3309 Fri, 01 Oct 2010 15:47:47 +0000 CGBackspace 3309@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Is it possible to remove the '« Page 1 »' option from the bottom of a post?
 Justin Tadlock on "Help integrating custom post type into Hybrid News theme" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/help-integrating-custom-post-type-into-hybrid-news-theme#post-3305 Thu, 30 Sep 2010 02:06:26 +0000 Justin Tadlock 3305@http://themehybrid.com/community/
This is the community forum for posting custom child themes. If you need help with something, please post in the support forums:
 http://themehybrid.com/support
 Brian Krogsgard on "Twin Pixels - Hybrid News with lots of CSS3 and redone slideshow" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/twin-pixels-hybrid-news-with-lots-of-css3-and-redone-slideshow#post-3259 Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:21:53 +0000 Brian Krogsgard 3259@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Love it. And thanks to your mention of CSS3 I discovered a whole bunch of other stuff I love.
 Charles on "Help integrating custom post type into Hybrid News theme" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/help-integrating-custom-post-type-into-hybrid-news-theme#post-3257 Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:40:32 +0000 Charles 3257@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Creating custom post types is the way to go. As for Posts vs. Articles, they are the same thing. you should have a look at this plugin:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/

It lets you create custom post types without you having to dig into the functions.php file. Also manages taxonomies, etc. Pretty slick.
 Justin Tadlock on "Twin Pixels - Hybrid News with lots of CSS3 and redone slideshow" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/twin-pixels-hybrid-news-with-lots-of-css3-and-redone-slideshow#post-3248 Fri, 27 Aug 2010 04:10:17 +0000 Justin Tadlock 3248@http://themehybrid.com/community/
The CSS3 techniques are definitely cool.
 saulyz on "Twin Pixels - Hybrid News with lots of CSS3 and redone slideshow" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/twin-pixels-hybrid-news-with-lots-of-css3-and-redone-slideshow#post-3247 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:28:53 +0000 saulyz 3247@http://themehybrid.com/community/
would be better if you add more whitespace to breath your content.
 gaspy on "Twin Pixels - Hybrid News with lots of CSS3 and redone slideshow" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/twin-pixels-hybrid-news-with-lots-of-css3-and-redone-slideshow#post-3246 Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:51:22 +0000 gaspy 3246@http://themehybrid.com/community/
I redesiged http://www.twin-pixels.com to get as much performance as possible from it. As such, apart from one background image, all graphics are done via CSS3 - shadows, gradients, elliptical corners, icons and everything else.

For the homepage, I replaced the slideshow script (JQuery+JQuery Cycle+ some more code, 3 calls, about 100Kb) with a javascript made by me, less than 1Kb.
 rogierdejong on "Help integrating custom post type into Hybrid News theme" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/help-integrating-custom-post-type-into-hybrid-news-theme#post-3245 Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:03:56 +0000 rogierdejong 3245@http://themehybrid.com/community/
good idea! would love to see the result ;)
 Zak on "Help integrating custom post type into Hybrid News theme" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/help-integrating-custom-post-type-into-hybrid-news-theme#post-3243 Sun, 22 Aug 2010 03:18:25 +0000 Zak 3243@http://themehybrid.com/community/
I am designing a new site for my college newspaper. After trying many other approaches I decided to try out Hybrid and Hybrid News. One of my major problems though is that I really don't want to use posts and categories, I would instead like to use the post type "Articles" and also include the taxonomies "section" and "issue". This way would (in my opinion) make more sense, look better, and make archiving much easier.
 My issue though is that everything is made to work with "posts". Would there be a relatively easy way to make the whole theme use articles instead of posts? I know it might seem like I am making it harder for myself (and I probably am to be honest) but for the sake of all of the future users such as writers and editors I need to make the site as idiot-proof as possible. I have attempted all sorts of different approaches, usually ending up in me loading a backup or even reinstalling wordpress and my theme and just moving my style sheet and such over, so I thought that I would get some advice before fiddling with the theme this time.
 re_phil on "Konisto - Hybrid News Customization" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/konisto-hybrid-news-customization#post-3225 Thu, 05 Aug 2010 05:25:56 +0000 re_phil 3225@http://themehybrid.com/community/
We've now marked it up so that the site works with Google's Rich Snippet Markup. We'll see if they accept us for their next show case ;)

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
 rroethof on "Customize Hybrid news sidebar positions" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/customize-hybrid-news-sidebar-positions#post-3224 Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:32:48 +0000 rroethof 3224@http://themehybrid.com/community/
Hi all,

I realy love the hybrid framework and the Hybrid news theme :)
 I am looking into customizing the hybrid news for a local radio station, but I need to have a 3 colom layout like :

menu 1 - content - menu 2

Does anyone have any hints where to start ?

Kind regards,

Ronny Roethof
 steupz on "Hot Like Sauce Hybrid News" http://themehybrid.com/community/topic/hot-like-sauce-hybrid-news#post-3215 Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:28:07 +0000 steupz 3215@http://themehybrid.com/community/
That's a nice find... I'd love that design to fall into my lap


text:
11 Best Resale Sites You've Never Heard Of
- Next1 of 12Courtesy of PoshMark
- Previous Next2 of 12Glo
- Previous Next3 of 12Courtesy of Vaunte
- Previous Next4 of 12Courtesy of Shop Hers
- Previous Next5 of 12Courtesy of Tradesy
- Previous Next6 of 12Glo
- Previous Next7 of 12Courtesy of Walk In My Closet
- Previous Next8 of 12Courtesy of Twice
- Previous Next9 of 12Courtesy of Threadflip
- Previous Next10 of 12Courtesy of The RealReal
- Previous Next11 of 12Courtesy of PoshMark
- Previous Next12 of 12Courtesy of 99dresses
- 11 Best Resale Sites You've Never Heard OfCeleb Fashion Face-Off: Moms vs. daughters
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Sell & Trade1 of 12
By Tiffany Tse
When you look into your closet, do you see a purse you once loved but no longer wear, or the pair of jeans you don't quite fit into anymore? If so, your closet could use a good clearing out. Here are 11 resale sites where you can get rid of unwanted clothes in exchange for cash or credit—plus shop gently used designer finds at a serious discount.
Bib + Tuck2 of 12
Instead of earning cash for clothes you post on Bib + Tuck, you earn currency on the site to buy other people's high-quality cast-offs. The selection of budget-friendly clothing runs the gamut from indie brands to well-known labels. Also, you're in great company: Other sellers include designers like Yigal Azrouel and Mara Hoffman.
SHOP NOW: Vintage abstract print pants, $50, bibandtuck.com
Vaunte3 of 12
Already over that expensive purse you bought last fall? Head to Vaunte, the luxury marketplace co-founded by Gilt Groupe's former vice president of creative. Your gently worn items—including home goods—will be sold alongside those of stylists, editors, and other fashion insiders.
SHOP NOW: 3.1 Phillip Lim cross-body purse, $475 (originally $650), vaunte.com
Shop Hers4 of 12
This site only accepts items in excellent condition from a curated list of luxury labels, including Chanel, Lanvin and Prabal Gurung. Their unique Style Soul Mates program places buyers and sellers into communities based on similarities in taste and size, making it easier to shop other people's closets.
SHOP NOW: Halston Heritage dress, $125 (originally $495), shop-hers.com
Tradesy5 of 12
User-friendly site Tradesy promises that you can list your first item in about 60 seconds. Once your item sells, you'll get a shipping kit to send your item to the buyer and receive payment via PayPal. The site's open to all brands, but consider selling pre-owned items from Burberry, Free People and Kate Spade, a few of their most popular labels.
SHOP NOW: Burberry coat, $396, tradesy.com
Klury6 of 12
Designer shoes are one of the best-selling categories on Klury, so if you bought one too many pairs, they'll sell well here. If you accept Klury's quote for your unwanted clothes and accessories (including menswear), mail everything over to them. They'll send you a check or issue store credit within 48 hours of authenticating everything.
SHOP NOW: Valentino black microstud pumps, $389 (originally $995), klury.com
Walk In My Closet7 of 12
Walk In My Closet lets you sell pre-loved high-end and vintage designer pieces to international customers. Buyers and sellers can receive and ship between the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain—and the site's expanding to other countries soon.
SHOP NOW: Ludevine cat-eye ring, $99, walkinmycloset.com
Twice8 of 12
Twice makes it easy for you to clean out your closet. Just download a free shipping label and send everything to them. After they review, measure and professionally photograph your pieces, they'll pay you upfront. A word to the wise: Their top-selling brands include J.Crew, Anthropologie and Ann Taylor.
SHOP NOW: Catherine Malandrino strapless dress, $64 (originally $338), liketwice.com
Threadflip9 of 12
Threadflip encourages sellers to "flip" their items quickly, offering helpful tips on how to properly list, promote and mail out purchases. Sell everything from an old J.Crew sweater to that gently worn pair of J Brand jeans, and gain followers who share similar style sensibilities.
SHOP NOW: Oasap slim coat, $52, threadflip.com
The RealReal10 of 12
If you want to get rid of designer clothing, accessories or even fine art, head to The RealReal, a designer consignment and flash sale site. You can send unwanted goods to the site's team of experts, including gemologists and art curators, who authenticate all your pieces and post them for sale.
SHOP NOW: Alaia sandals, $395 (originally $1,315), therealreal.com
PoshMark11 of 12
Poshmark gives you a variety of ways to promote and sell your unwanted items. You can use Instagram-like filters on your photos, and even attend Posh Parties, which are virtual buying and selling parties within Poshmark's mobile application.
SHOP NOW: Tory Burch wallet, $100, poshmark.com
99dresses12 of 12
Download 99dresses, which is only available as a mobile application, and directly upload photos from your cell phone. You'll earn "buttons" from your sales to spend on other people's gently worn items. Once you get tired of those, you're encouraged to swap them again through the app.
SHOP NOW: French Connection dress, $19 (originally $178), 99dresses.com


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text: "After Christmas, I went on vacation with some friends to Antigua. On New Year's Eve day, we decided to make a mermaid that was half-sand, half-human, with a little Rio Carnaval thrown in. We searched the island for props—like the palm frond, flowers, and starfish bra. And then I was perfectly still for 40 minutes while they made it. My ultimate dream is to be a mermaid, so I didn't want to move! I had a cigarette and a drink while lying there, but then it was time for lunch."


text:
When asked if this wasn't just a wrapper around Broadsoft's UC-One or other packages, Nextiva replied, "NextOS was completely imagined and developed in-house."
This follows Broadsoft's own announcements about Hub, Team-One and CC-One. This is BSFT's response to Slack, a real-time messaging and collaboration app now at 4 million users.
"BroadSoft Business includes three core applications: UC-One, Team-One, CC-One, with BroadSoft Hub providing contextual intelligence across the entire platform so users can access the information and apps they need in one place," press release states. "Built into BroadSoft Business are bOpen, bMobile and bSecure capabilities that can enable service providers to deliver carrier-class security and reliability; the openness for businesses to be able to integrate their favorite business apps (CRM, email, calendars, Twitter, etc.); and full mobility to connect advanced unified communication and collaboration (UCC) capabilities to a user`s mobile devices." I'm not certain if this is BroadWorks add-ons or if you can only get this via BroadCloud. The difference being that BroadWorks is run by the VoIP Provider and BroadCloud is the white-label service that Broadsoft operates for the provider.
Frost & Sullivan analyst Elka Popova wrote, ""BroadSoft's share of the global hosted IP telephony and UCC services market is 41 percent, which confirms BroadSoft's market leadership." With 15 million cloud lines, "BroadSoft cloud PBX/UCaaS installed base 3x greater than closest competitor Cisco and 10x greater than RingCentral." The "cloud line" is defined by Popova as "The BroadSoft installed base is hosted IP telephony seats, fully-loaded UCaaS seats and business VoIP lines." Still don't know if they include SIP trunks in that number because 3 million of those would be WIND and XO trunks then. And that woould skew UCaaS/HPBX penetration. It does look impressive in a graph:
Microsoft previewed Teams, which is its answer to Slack. It is currently only available to subscribers of Office 365 Enterprise or Business plans.
Meanwhile Cisco introduced a "flex plan" for Spark that lets businesses choose cloud, on-premises or hybrid services in a single contract. That includes Spark Meetings, which is also a Slack competitor.
Slack is attracting its own ecosystem that allows companies to integrate other functions to Slack beyond comms. Slingr turns Slack into a task manager. Other scripts can turn Slack into a CRM with Slack's user interface. IDEA2 and other companies like the user interface and the open API on which they can add functionality to an app people already like and use on desks and on phones.
Interesting that these folks are rolling out more complex platforms at a time when Verizon is rolling out One Talk which simplifies the whole UCaaS thing for small business. It's my experience that most businesses don't want complicated (hence, Slack!) and most users want simple (think Facetime). Without user adoption, this is wasted expense.
Want another example? Salesforce CRM at $99 per user per month but only a couple of people on the sales team use it actively. There will be managers who don't utilize the dashboard or coach to the activity in the system. Despite how integrated the SF ecosystem can be, it isn't worthwhile unless the users -- your employees -- are using it and benefiting from it! Same goes for any software, especially UCaaS (which is morphing again from Hosted PBX to UCaaS to UC&C and WC&C).]]>
New ReportsWeb Global UC&C study:
"The global market is gradually experiencing the transition from legacy telephony services and messaging platforms to new UC&C services and platforms. We expect more number of global deployments of UC&C in coming years, driven by growing popularity of applications, such as rich collaboration, mobility, video conferencing, and telepresence." Key word is gradually.
"Business process integration and social media communications have become the primary focus of enterprises. Companies seek low-cost solutions, such as BYOD and web real-time communications (WebRTC) to deploy UC&C solutions." BPI or BPaaS - it isn't stand alone products. It will be an integrated platform to run business process that happen to include comms. (At least at the enterprise level)
And of course the growth guess: "Global unified communication and collaboration market expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.3% from 2016-2020," says a report by Technavio.
The news seems to miss that the different sectors of the marketplace are migrating from legacy for different reasons - like cheap dial-tone replacement, simul ring, etc.
The market is buzzing with Skype Integration news from RingCentral, MegaPath, BitTitan, even Yealink and others.
Master agencies are seeing a way to grab the attention of Cisco partners. First, AVANT teamed with Cisco to accelerate sales for Cisco Powered Providers.
Next, MicroCorp amped up its "relationship with IntelePeer, in order that certified Cisco partners can earn monthly recurring commissions on voice services for those selling the Spark and Meraki MC platforms." Cisco wants partners to get used to selling cloud and voice, because Spark, ya know.
RingCentral teamed up with Google for Work to chase enterprise. Having also integrated with Skype, RC is hedging bets or wants to be all things to all people, which never works.
Windstream, after showcasing Mitel and Avaya, teams with BroadSoft to bring customized Virtual PBX to the hospitality market. So WIND has Mitel, Avaya, BSFT, Allworx and Metaswitch. Yeah, that is cost effective.
As if there weren't a large number of service providers in the space of UC&C - from Fuze, RC, the Cloud Comm Alliance members to the LECs to the other numerous ITSPs. Now softswitch vendors have decided to become service providers, too. Broadsoft BroadCloud; GenBand Nuvia; Alianza Cloud Voice Platform; and Metaswitch MetaSphere Cloud Services are all competing with their customers and making it easier for new entrants into the already bloody ocean of Hosted VoIP. (Now even enterprises can be an ITSP).
Not to be left now. Cisco and Microsoft have jumped into the fray to compete for UC&C customers with Spark, HCS, Office365+Skype4B. The PBX vendors like NEC, Unify, Avaya and Mitel are in the mix and feeling the pinch to have a cloud component. Not only a cloud component but contact center too. Oh, how complex we must make it.
Everyone is pushing up-market, but Cisco recently did a study on small businesses. The study found "on the IT front, a majority of small companies (86 percent) are considering the use of cloud-based unified communications (UC) systems as a possible solution to their communications needs, replacing their more traditional premises-based counterparts."
Yealink has phones for Skype4B. One of the reasons that you see Jabra, Plantronics and Sennheiser at VoIP shows is because bluetooth headsets are becoming common in the call center space and more UC&C users are choosing to dispatch the deskphone.
"Yet unified communications as a packaged service, despite its relative maturity, remains far less than universally adopted, particularly outside of larger enterprise accounts. A recent survey of more than 400 enterprise and SMB IT decision-makers, performed by UBM Tech for XO Communications, found that only one-third of organizations had fully embraced UC. On the other side of the spectrum, a separate survey performed by Osterman Research for ConnectSolutions found that about as many IT decision-makers (26 percent) and business deci-sion makers (39 percent) are either "somewhat" or "very fearful" of migrating to UC. Nearly half of those surveyed admitted that they don't fully understand the full impact UC would have on their organizations. These fears and trepidations come despite the fact that 71 percent of those surveyed by Osterman believe there are "significant" or even "enormous" benefits that can be realized from the deployment of UC." This is a part of a nice piece that Martin Vilaboy at Channel Vision magazine wrote on UCaaS demand and adoption.
The role of SD-WAN in UCaaS HERE.
Good read on Churn from a former BSFT exec on LINKEDIN.
A look at UCaaS service delivery by AVNET.]]>
We went from TDM to VoIP to Hosted PBX to UCaaS to UC&C.
We went from T1 to cable broadband to Gigabit.
The consolidation of cable will tighten the market in 15 to 18 months. (It takes that long for integrations to take hold.) Now if the integrations are not a big fail, then cable - New Charter/Spectrum, Comcast, Altice - will ratchet up the competition in the small business market for triple play.
"Cable/MSOs are the fastest growing providers in the business services market, with much of their recent success in the mid-size business space," reported MarketResearch. Think about that: the mid-sized space - not just the small business segment of the market.
Of the $104 Billion total businesses spent on telecom services in the US in 2014, AT&T had the largest share (33%), followed by Verizon (22%) and the rest of the LEC band of brothers (Level3, CenturyLink, Sprint, Windstream). MSOs have more than $12 Billion of that pie, with the lion share - $5B - going to Comcast coffers alone.
SIP anyone? 54% of business cable subscribers also use cable for voice, the report states. That means less than half the businesses using cable are buying voice from another provider. That is a shrinking opportunity for the 2000 Hosted VoIP players in the US.
"Last year the Cable/MSO share of businesses with 100+ employees rose to 17%, reports TNS. "The main driver behind this growth was a heavier reliance on internet service and the need for greater bandwidth; two areas where larger cable providers excel."
Telco broadband has not kept pace with cable in speed and price. Egged on by Google Fiber - and a declining market share of businesses - ILECs have started tentatively rolling out faster fiber based broadband - 100MB to 1Gigabit depending on the ILEC (Windstream versus CenturyLink or AT&T).
UPDATE: Google just rolled out Gigabit Fiber to small business starting in Charlotte in July of 2016.
The ILECs have made a tremendous CAPEX investment in TV - just as OTT TV is hitting its stride. They spent big to supply triple-play, when they could have spent the money on FTTx projects for faster bandwidth. That was just uncreative thinking. [More of that Me-too mentality ingrained in telco.]
All of this will stress ILECs, some CLECs and even some OTT VoIP players. When cable takes about 35% of the SMB market, there won't be much room left for anyone else.
In March of 2016, "During the fourth quarter, Verizon reported that total broadband connections dropped to 2.1 million as it lost more DSL subscribers after losing 94,000 DSL customers," according to Fierce media.
Verizon is transitioning. Verizon is now betting on mobile ads (AOL acquisition and Yahoo bid); 5G fixed wireless broadband replacement for wireline services; and IoT (including connected cars) to add to its coffers.
A point I make often is that the debt that the ILECs carry is crippling with flat revenues.
Think about this: Vonage has taken $800M worth of voice revenue. Twilio gets $240 million in voice revenue. This is revenue that typically would go to Level3, Verizon and AT&T (and it probably does terminate to them eventually for a smaller percentage of that money).
WebRTC is being used in so many apps to allow for video and voice calls - bypassing the traditional voice network. [And bypassing the cellco text system and dollars.]
Then, we have Cable beating Telco in broadband bandwidth. Always has in fact. Gigabit fiber will be the real winner if the telcos decide to pursue that route for real (versus in just press releases).
We have telco getting in the data center - and now we have telcos looking to get out of that business without embarrassment.
There is a Talent problem, too. There are too many musical chairs. Not only can't you set a strategy when you shift personnel that much, you can't execute on a strategy either if the cogs are constantly being replaced. (And I don't mean cogs in a bad way. It takes a lot of talent to keep the wheels spinning.) The talent drain has also resulted in a domain knowledge drain as well. Quite frankly that means they don't where things are and how things have been done to keep things working. It isn't all documented, especially fiber maps!
Let's face it, for many companies that started with an A Team, they are now running with a B or C team. Why? As Steve Jobs said, "A Players hire A Players, B players hire C players. Get it?"
People move from company to company in teams. The same routine and team may work once, but it is not often a repeatable experience. There's a reason the Cavaliers recruited LeBron back to Cleveland - and didn't hire the whole Miami Heat starting line up.
The telco organizations harbor stifling factors: monopoly mindset, legacy systems, federal accounting and regulations, departmental silos and competing internal interests. These factors do not lend themselves to attracting more A Players.
There is also a surprising lack of talent for the new services and skills needed for omni-channel marketing; omni-channel customer service; cloud, managed services, migration and integration. This lack of skill will choke growth and brands.
We see outages and hacks every day. The worry is only about getting a customer. There is little concern for retaining that customer; data security; or a resilient network (4 Nines is good enough).
Many people are choosing smaller organizations to work for. The reasons are numerous but I would think that impact and voice play a major part. In smaller businesses, any one person can have a voice and can see the impact that they are having on customers, culture, and the company. That isn't the case in larger organizations.
Flat organizations (and smaller companies) have less meetings, fewer silos, maybe more transparent governance.
Most financial experts are predicting an economic slump in 2017. It won't matter which candidate wins the Presidential election, a slump is coming. We have under-employment; increasing number of freelancers; and a stagnant wage. None of these components inspire an economic engine that is fueled by consumer spending.
ARPU for cellular, cable and VoIP segments have been fairly constant over the last 4 years worth of data I could find. Bandwidth and voice revenues are actually shrinking. Total telecom spending from 2013 to 2014 shrunk $6 Billion dollars according to MarketResearch.
Growth will be hard to find. We are seeing a price war in cellular accompanied by escalating customer acquisition costs.
Hosted VoIP is experiencing a similar battle for customers that is increasing the cost of customer acquisition. Rising SPIFFs and other compensation are being used to grab both market share and channel partner attention.
PBX vendors are NOT crashing and burning as many had predicted. Premise PBXs are still being sold and installed by a robust band of vendors - Mitel, Shortel, Avaya, 3CX, Fonality, Zultys, Panasonic, NEC, Siemens and more.
We are half way through 2016. No big winners. The Twilio IPO was a surprise. Vonage spending all of its acquisition money for the year on Nexmo, Twilio's competitor, seemed strange, since there were Broadsoft clients they could have picked off instead to take a big step forward in the race. Slack and all the Skype4B hype are little surprises.
2016 is half over - and so many companies have either done M&A or played musical chairs that I expect nothing magical to happen in the rest of 2016. And I look at all of this and wonder what 2017 holds.
ASIDE: telco versus cable consumer data.]]>
The cloud phone service is a good fit for selling domains, hosting and email to VSB (very small business with 1-5 employees).
This line in the press release cracks me up: "GoDaddy has 14 million customers and many of them have struggled to find affordable and simple telephony solutions," said Steven Aldrich, Chief Product Officer, GoDaddy. Really? There are approximately 2000 Hosted VoIP providers in the US. You can't get away from the adds from 8x8, RC, Vonage, MegaPath and others, so if GoDaddy's customers are struggling, well, that says something about the perception GoDaddy has of their customers.
GoDaddy hired a General Manager and Senior Vice President, Telephony. They must see it as a strategic product line. Or they figure since Intermedia.net bought 2 VoIP companies - Telanetix and AccessLine - that they should too.
One channel company thought this would position GoDaddy against Microsoft. Clearly, that editor has no idea. GoDaddy, other domian merchants and Vistaprint use upsell techniques to raise ARPU. Have you tried to buy a simple $10 business card product? Or a single domain? How many screens did you have to go through? Now one screen will offer a vanity toll-free number. Another will offer a cloud phone service. That isn't a position against Skype.
Also, GoDaddy acquired Apptix cloud business last year for $22.5M. "GoDaddy is one of Microsoft's largest Office 365 resellers".
Tucows, another domain merchant, launched Ting, an MVNO, in 2012. Ting is now in the fiber to the premise business as well in VA and NC.
Domains are a commodity business. GoDaddy went public in 2015, which means money is easy to get to buy some revenue. So here you go. They don't get a SIP Trunking business with FV, which means they won't be enabling Skype for a while. The Hosted Phone system platform was being re-worked when I last saw it in early 2013.
The PR says, "FreedomVoice products will continue to be available online and through partners. GoDaddy and FreedomVoice plan to deliver new cloud-based voice products in the near future." With changes like this, partners usually get wary. Acquisitions mean layoffs -- there is no other way to squeeze that $42M out of this VoIP business.
In other news, a company that just crossed my radar screen - Better Voice - was acquired by Inteliquent. Inteliquent used to be called Neutral Tandem, before they bought Tinet's network assets, re-branded, then later sold those very assets to GTT to re-focus on tandem switching. Now it is buying a cloud communications platform with an API to add to its Omni portfolio.
More M&A to come. Too many players and not enough market share for Hosted VoIP - probably because of the way it is sold, implemented and deployed.]]>
The VoIP services market is up 5% to $73Bn in 2015, says IHS. Residential makes up 62% of that. UCaaS grew just 6%.
Meanwhile, 8x8 grew 29% YoY for 2 years. ARPU is $369.
Vonage Business grew because of acquisitions. It is yet to be seen how the 4 acquisitions, 3 platforms and large target market work together. From selling to very small business (VSB) with a sub-$200 ARPU to acquiring a company with $4400 ARPU is a wide range. Three of the acquisitions were all about Hosted PBX, but iCore, founded in 2004, was offering their 85K seats Microsoft SfB, IAAS and Broadsoft.
The sales avenues are different too. Telesphere and Simple Signal drove sales primarily through the indirect Channel. That is different than Vocalocity and Vonage, which were focused on inside sales and online sales to generate business. iCore was all direct sales. A lot of different engines. Channel Conflict abounds.
Most startup success, according to Bill Gross, is about Timing. Broadsoft had a long run- 12 years or so - of having to compete against just premise PBX and open source Hosted PBX offerings. Broadsoft and its client providers had ten-plus years to ramp up the market and create demand.
Unfortunately that wasnot enough time to make the market move to where they needed it to go. Selling Change is very hard. Most people buy replacement products. Telecom is a toothache that they don't want to deal with. They stick to what they know.
Salespeople - indirect and direct sales channels - have spent years selling replacement services in a transactional manner. Getting those channels to shift to selling change (cloud) has been slow and is still in-process.
There isn't enough Demand yet. There isn't a Brand driving the market.
Seth Godin writes about Awareness, trust and action. While the awareness for UCaaS may be increasing, the action piece hasn't. Probably because of the Trust piece. And actual awareness of UC, HPBX, UCaaS, CCaaS, ECaaS and other meaningless terms bantered about by the providers probably causes more confusion than awareness. Confusion does not foster Trust. See the dilemma?
Hardware PBX is still selling. Now it sits in a data center instead of on-premise (within easy reach), but still selling. Ask any of these companies if boxes are still moving:
People are staying safe. The Trust Thing Again.
Microsoft and Cisco have what I call Demand. People want to buy it. They distribute through VADs quite frankly because they don't want to deal with distribution to what amounted to 125K resellers in years past. Far easier to let a VAD like Ingram handle it.
Today, we see ITSPs knocking on the door of VADs hoping that it will increase sales. I don't see how that model works, since the ITSP has yet to create DEMAND or Awareness for its BRAND.
A VAD is an online catalog of SKUs. It is not something that you can browse. You have to know what you are looking for. Even searching for a category like a UPS or a switch needs to be narrowed down to size or brand or model. So searching for something that doesn't even lend itself to SKU would be irksome. (Irksome doesn't work. Frictionless works.)
While it, a VoIP SKU, is a billable entity, it has to be consumable like a software license or a piece of hardware. And the reseller has to understand the SKU and how it fits into the solution (what other SKUs are needed to build the solution.) It is more complex than I can describe until you have searched for a SPLA from Microsoft for your specific use case. Now imagine scrolling through that to order a UCaaS solution for a company of 20 employees plus porting numbers and toll-free. Yeah.
[Another visual on this concept, remember how many USOC codes were needed to create a PRI? It was the channel, the PRI card, the loop, and the DID. VoIP is similar. So what SKUs will you need for a seat, a voicemail, an efax, etc.?]
That doesn't even consider how a reseller would know to order your stuff through Ingram - and why he would do that as opposed to going to a master agency or going direct.
Demand and Brand are just 2 key components. Timing, which is required for startups, is starting to slip away. Microsoft and Cisco and other entrenched vendors are tying up the Enterprise space. Lots of room to sell to under 100 seats - a majority of the market - but no one wants the hassle. Cost of sale is high. Cost of support is high. Churn is high. No upside, except that market size they keep quoting in investor prezos consists of mainly the sub 100 seat company. It should be interesting.]]>
ANPI's model is more like Momentum (pre-acquisition of Alteva) but in reverse, because Momentum was delivering white-label VoIP to tier 2 and tier 3 cable companies. With the TDM transition, there has to be RLECs and cablecos who are unprepared to deliver VoIP - or at least ANPI is hoping so.
Fonality put out a press release that says it is valued at $45M. The exact wording I received from the 11-year old company was as follows: "The $45 million business phone system provider continues to see its growth accelerating into 2016 and beyond." If you take it as a valuation, that means that there is a for sale sign on Fonality. Possible buyers in my eyes: 8x8, Voxox and Digium. 8x8 would want them because both target Allstate insurance agencies and Fonality is "Surpassing 2,000 customers in the insurance sector, the company's largest vertical."
Other things from Fonality: "Fonality just announced the latest updates to its Heads Up Display (HUD), which include greater functionality for the company's existing Video Collaboration offering. ...The new features include instant screen share and the ability to schedule and manage recordings,among others, but the best part about Fonality's Video Collaboration is its seamless integration within HUD Web." The company also stated that in 2015 it sold 22,000 new seats.
Last month, a jury awarded GENBAND an $8M judgement against Metaswitch for infringing on 8 patents. This is far from over as Metaswitch is suing GENBAND on patent infringement as well. GENBAND is sitting on the old Nortel patents. Someone explained to me last week that this all started over merger talks that went sideways. Does Metaswitch have $8M in cash to pay a judgement?
There are so many patents out there for VoIP, everyone is likely infringing!
Anyone recall magicjack? Well, they are entering the SMB market next quarter via a subsidiary company. That should be fun to watch.
"In December, Windstream sent letters to 171 small-to-midsized business (SMB) customers and their partners explaining that negative or low-margin accounts would be subject to significant rate increases, or these customers were also given the option to move to another carrier without penalty. As part of an ongoing effort, more letters will be delivered to partners and customers in March."
Is it the customers' fault that WIND signed a contract to deliver services they couldn't afford to?
Windstream quoted an MPLS network for me a few years ago. The underlying carrier was TWT, but WIND came in at a good chunk lower. I asked how that was possible. The channel manager's reply was they WIND had great wholesale contract rates.
I just didn't see how they could provide that service at that rate AND pay me my commission AND provide any kind of service. I explained it to the customer and they agreed with me.
How awful it must be to sell something then have the customer be told mid-contract that rates are increasing. Deltacom/EarthLink has done that a couple of times to one client of mine. It never goes over well. It seems like fraud. The client can't walk away if he gets a better offer. Why does the carrier get to raise contracted rates? Seems lawyers will be involved.
According to the article, the SMB segment (under $1500 in monthly billing) is Windstream's Windows XP. About 2% of the accounts were underwater! As Windstream's CEO said, Cable owns the SMB space. CLECs can't compete on reselling network alone. Apparently if you don't understand margin, math and what good revenue is, you probably shouldn't be running a CLEC.
Will partners stick with WIND as they go upstream? I don't know. I am not even sure how they compete up-market. AT&T, Verizon, Level3, CenturyLink, TelePacific and even cable compete in the "Enterprise" space. Comcast just dropped $500M for an enterprise division. It will AGAIN be a price war for WIND - and a couple of years from now, these new customers will be getting a letter.
The only place that WIND can compete would be in-region as an ILEC or any location that they have fiber to the building (preferably fiber that they own). It would seem that Type II circuits for them will again become a problem.
What kind of bundling will they be offering the Enterprise?
There are are only 600K businesses with more than 20 employees in the US. There are over 5 million firms with less than 20 employees! [source]
Windstream sold off its data center business for cash. They abandoned the Hosted UC platform they were using in lieu of going with Avaya and MITEL for UC. Those names are familiar to the enterprise space - and maybe to the channel partners who stay with WIND, although I would think they have their own contracts with those manufacturers.
Lesson to be learned here for partners, customers and the industry.]]>
"As many of you already know, Windstream is eradicating their SMB Business (Customers billing under $1500) and sending them letters like the one I have attached. Go get your customers and find them a happy home (preferably Momentum) before someone else does. Let me know how I can assist."
Windstream has decided to go up-market. Everyone has. RC, 8x8, Comcast.
There are 27.5 million small businesses in the US according to 2012 data from the SBA and over 22 million are self employed with no additional payroll or employees (these are called non-employers). The SBA defines a small business as an enterprise having fewer than 500 employees. There are only 18,500 firms with 500 employees or more in the US. [infographic]
So the 22 million will be using cell phones or services like Grasshopper, RC, FreedomVoice or other Google Voice type auto-attendant in the cloud service. That leaves 5.5 million that can be targeted in the SMB category. [By the way, IDC says that there are 8 million business with under 100 employees to target.]
SBA data shows almost 1 million businesses with between 5-9 employees. However, a 5 employee business at $30 per seat is $150 per month. You need a lot of them to scale and move the revenue needle.
Or you need to be like an MSP, roll a bunch of services together to increase ARPU to $1000 per org. 8x8 ARPU is $369 now (up from $309 a year ago) as they went up-market, but those numbers get skewed with 2 large deals (one being 2400 seats). It only takes one 100 seat sale to match 20 smaller deals, right?
Something to ponder: Can you afford the cost of selling to them and supporting them?
There are more than 75,000 business with 50-74 employees and another 37K with 75-99 employees. Over 100K business in the sweet spot. And that is not mid-market. That is the top of the heap of small business pyramid. Not many CLECs or ITSPs have more than 40K customers. There is room there.
When businesses talk about going up-market, I wonder if they realize that the competition in the Enterprise market is blood red - to chase firms who are risk adverse in procurement. By that I mean that they will only purchase from brand names because no one is going to risk it by buying from an unknown brand. No one gets fired buying from IBM, Dell, AT&T.]]>
The data center space is hot right now. Deals are happening frequently including the WIND-Tierpoint deal yesterday and the Digital Realty-TELX deal. Rumor has it that Terremark is up for sale.
8x8 landed 2 big customers: Regus and NetSuite. Regus, the global, flexible workplace provider, will deploy 8x8's cloud communications platform to 140 sites at first. "Regus was unable to offer a business phone service with key features such as mobility, multi-channel communications and presence-enabled directories. By selecting 8x8, Regus has ensured its customers have access to the most advanced enterprise communications tools to increase their business flexibility and productivity." At least Regus sees the flexibility benefit of Cloud Comm. Too often, our industry forgets that cloud is about change.
"Following an extensive multi-vendor, technical review and proof of concept (POC) process, NetSuite selected 8x8 as its new cloud communications solutions provider and 8x8's flagship Virtual Office business telephony solution to address its evolving global communications requirements. With more than 4,500 employees worldwide, 8x8 worked with NetSuite to onboard the first 2,400 employees by the end of August across nine locations - delivering a record-breaking six-week deployment in the final seven sites. The initial deployment spans three countries, including large offices in the Philippines. The remaining offices are expected to be fully deployed by 2016." [source]
These are big wins that will raise both 8x8's ARPU and seat count (and revenue). Who says desk phones are disappearing?
Edgewater Networks, Metaswitch and Jon Arnold did a study of 1200+ SMBs and VoIP in North America. You can get a copy of the analysis here.
"SMBs remain entrenched in a legacy environment, with 70 to 80% of businesses currently using TDM." So VoIP really has only penetrated about 25% -- sad really but there are factors, like how to cost effectively deliver under 8 SIP trunks with quality of service. The Duopoly serve 75% of the SMB market. Lack of features is biggest reason to move to cloud comm (see Regus).
Equinox Info Systems became employee owned after 29 years, David West told me at the show today. Equinox re-signed a number of bigger customers, including Fairpoint. Equinox offers call analytics, FCC reporting, VoIP fraud monitoring and help with robocalls and toll fraud.
UNITEL offers many lines of insurance and risk management for service providers. It now offers OSHA training on-demand as well as other HR compliance webinars. UNITEL is pushing further into its customers with HR specialists that know specific state and federal laws. At some point, you have to go deeper into your clients instead of looking for more and more clients.]]>
Altice already is buying smaller cableco Suddenlink for $9B. That makes for a big stake in the US market.
Charter is buying Bright House and TWC to become the number 2 sized cableco.
Meanwhile Comcast -- who tried to buy TWC -- is making big waves in the business sector. They announced, "Comcast Business Announces New Unit Targeting Fortune 1000 Enterprises" (on a page with pop-ads?!)
Comcast already has a good sized chunk of the small business market. They already are a top 10 Metro Ethernet player. And they have a large share of the Hosted PBX market. Now they turn they whale towards the Enterprise, where, quite frankly, the competition is fierce. Level3, Windstream, AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink already compete heavily in that space. It will be interesting to see what happens next. Typically, that space buys the logo. No one every got fired for buying IBM or paying way too much for Verizon.
According to research firm TNS, Cable Large-Business Market Share Climbs to 17%. ""The rollout of advanced voice services by cable providers over the past few years has afforded them the opportunity to make significant progress at the high-end of the market," TNS VP Frank Perazzini was quoted as saying." [telecompetitor]
CLECs used to own this market space. Now they are weakly competing with cable on this space. Tough to compete with a $300 cable-voice bundle.
CLECs now chase multi-location deals. Cable has a hard time with that because of the territory structure. How will Comcast's Enterprise move affect that? Or the Charter consolidation? What will CLECs do next? (Move to the Cloud?)]]>
It is all me-too service today: some form of dial-tone either OTT (over the top riding on the existing Internet bandwidth) or on a dedicated circuit. Small business like the straight up POTS replacement, right? So do salespeople. It's easy. Save money with VoIP replacement service. Sign here.
But there are issues, especially with faxing. So why aren't their options for faxing? Plenty of ways to tackle that beast from efax to inter-operability with either a fax machine or an ATA. I realize T.38 end to end is a dream. And as long as we are on this, how about HD Voice off net? There are plenty of VoIP peering points to keep this traffic from doing the digital-to-analog conversion.
How about SMS enabled? Seriously! So many people just want to text, this would be a easy option for small business with a limited number of lines.
Find me follow me is a feature on Hosted PBX but it could be an option for a SIP trunk too. Alas, POTS lines have *72 for call forward, so why not FM/FM or simul ring? Grasshopper (now owned by Citrix) and other auto attendant in the sky services offered something like it.
Especially for small business, how about the option for a 4G failover router since most likely they will be on broadband. There are a number of routers that offer 3G/4G/LTE failover including ones from Netgear and Cradlepoint. CDW mentions how critical it is for retail locations since credit card processing is vital.
Switch.co by Craig Walker, of Grand Central/Google Voice fame, is offering a Hosted UC service for Google for Work users that Sprint is now reselling! In the Microsoft ecosystem, the Lync/Skype for Business service powers Office365 voice options.
If you don't get creative with your bundles, you are going to get your ass kicked. Or you are going to have to sell voice as cheap as you can at razor margins. And most of you can't get as low as cable voice.
I see companies fighting over quotes for virtual phone numbers at $1.50 to $5 each. Why?
Even an audio conferencing option isn't offered that I have seen. And let's not even consider Unifying these services into one bundle -
I see dial-tone going for free - or replaced entirely by cellular. Stave that off with a better bundled SIP Trunk.
I realized that some of this is being incorporated into Fone.do. So cheers to that.
And one other feature is a better Caller Id system. I think caller ID should be hooked up to Google search so all those annoying robocalls and telemarketers would be identified. It would be great if there was a button to push to notify the carrier of a spoofed ID. The sooner we get big data and analytics working on caller ID, the sooner robocalls (and the telecom providers who power them) will die.
How about a caller ID that pops up and says not in your contact database, ignore?]]>
Vonage says only 15% of the SMB market has been penetrated by UCaaS. I will try to shy away from saying that maybe the majority of small business doesn't have a use for UCaaS. Under 10 employees may not have much use for it. In my experience, under 10 lines and the small business isn't looking for big changes -- just replacement voice.
Vonage's Masarek continues, "UCaaS today is only a 15 percent penetrated market so the sale that a cloud PBX provider makes is I am offering you no hardware, lower operating cost and infinite scalability." And that probably works for companies with more than 50 employees. 50-99 is the sweet spot. 20-49 is a segment that will lean towards replacement services -- cheap voice, if you will. And businesses with 100-499 employees are the white elephants.
Simultaneously, AT&T, CenturyLink and Verizon are forcing SMB off copper to fiber. Some of that is just SIP trunks over DIA -- primarily, OTT SIP. Studies indicate that many SMB are still on copper facilities. There is a lot left to transfer to all-IP.
Fierce reports that "CLECs and their small to medium business (SMB) customers are concerned whether ILECs will provide equivalently priced access to IP services. Also, will they provide enough notice when they want to retire copper?"
So despite 2000 Hosted VoIP providers plying their trade in the US since 2003, the penetration is somewhere between 7-36% depending on the size of the business. Good Job!!!!
There is a lot of heavy lifting left to do.]]>
Worldwide PBX revenue (TDM, hybrid and pure IP) totaled $1.6 billion in 1Q15. And PBX line shipments were up 3% in 1Q15 from 1Q14. Yet there is a headline of SMB: Is the PBX Dead? Most businesses in the world are small business (not really defined by the SBA, but I consider up to 250 employees, while others say up to 500 employees is SMB).
In the article, the question is why would a small business (under 25 employees) use cloud instead of premise. The math goes like this:
"The 20-station model for $600 monthly cost is $7,200 yearly. Most gear can assume a seven-year life, and I didn't add UPS, power protection or managed switches in either configuration. A 20-station IP-PBX at street price is $9,400, the factory extended warranty is $300, and that dealer package is $1,200 per year."
I would argue that legacy PBX running on proprietary gear lasted 7 years, but that most appliances are utilizing mass market components from the consumer PC industry which won't last 5 years.
"The hosted model is $50,400 over seven years, and the premises-based IP-PBX is $18,100. In less than two years, the cost of owning your own gear outweighs the hosted model. Throwing in the cost of SIP trunks for $60 monthly doesn't change the results, and neither does adding in the cost of a single POTS line for failover."
Straight up replacement for 20 seats is likely to be cheaper to go with the premise PBX IF you don't need enterprise level features and support. Conferencing, collaboration, software integration, presence, mobile apps and softphones on one platform are the benefits that defy calculations. You can piecemeal this together on the cheap, but it is the one, standard comms platform that allows a business to be flexible and productive. (the training, support and maintenance doesn't hurt either.)
Some premise gear is catching up to enterprise - like 3CX and FreePBX. However, you pay for maintenance and licensing on those platforms. 3CX runs on a standard Windows server. You think that will last 7 years? It will run out of patches. Plus who is securing a box running on Windows, an operating system that literally has an update every single day!
Are efax, voicemail to email, simul ring and SMS available on premise PBX gear?
The truth is on a sale about a straight replacement - PBX for key system - yeah, go with premise. And give them this phone:
If you don't want a cloud phone system, you likely don't want to change the way your business does business either.
And you are likely selling the same way you did in 1999. Good luck with that.
People want the latest cellphone - a mini-computer in their pocket. But because of the way phone systems are sold (and by whom), the mobile phone is a better communications tool than the desk phone. It doesn't have to be that way any more.]]>
AT&T made acquisitions in cellular in LATAM. CenturyLink has announced the opening of a data center in Singapore. "Notably, the company's public cloud platform is available in nations like Germany, United Sates, United Kingdom and Canada," writes Zacks.
Even the cloud comm players like RC and 8x8 have gone abroad. 8x8 made an acquisition in the UK. RC has carrier partners in Canada and the UK.
It is a smaller world, I know. However, if you can't crush it locally - in a national market that you were born into - what makes you think you have a shot to make it in a foreign market?
Zacks reports that "CenturyLink announced the availability of 1 Gbps (gigabit per second) fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections in 17 states to provide symmetrical gigabit services to nearly 490,000 small and mid-sized businesses (SMB). The SMB segment represents a massive growth opportunity for the telecom industry. Significant improvement in business data and video traffic is expected to act as a catalyst for the industry. Several industry researchers predict that the SMB segment holds a long-term market opportunity worth $20--$30 billion." The market isn't small. It is just that the cable giants are pretty much running over the telcos, who neglected the SMB space for better looking pastures in cloud, data center, enterprise and government. Oh, and acquisitions mucked up the vision and leadership, because bankers were pointing them toward bigger pay days. [Lesson 1: Bankers make lousy visionaries and business leaders. You need to measure more than the stock price.]
The ILECs have faced declining legacy voice and access revenues. Some of that is again due to neglect. When Frontier is the leader in how to capitalize on copper, Ma Bell should hang her head in shame.
Maybe everyone thought wireless substitution was the answer. Didn't turn out that way. Plus spectrum is hard to come by and at $10 Billion for just the spectrum, the other costs quickly add up to billions as well: radios, tower rental, backhaul, installation, small cell deployment, labor, etc.
Latest stats indicate that everyone has at least one cellphone and more likely 2 devices. Some households have between 7 and 25 Internet connected devices. I'd say that the market has flattened, because while more devices may be purchased, there aren't many more dollars available to be added to the ARPU.
While AT&T buys DirecTV and CenturyLink rolls out PRISM TV, cord cutting has finally been accepted as reality and worry for the MSO industry. Sling TV, HBO Now and VZ's re-bundling are all responses to not just cord-cutters, but folks who never paid for TV.
Price compression and price stagnation is causing problems for the telcos as well. It is an expensive prospect to chase cable for the SMB market after years of neglecting it. Labor, support and the technology upgrade cycle -- in cable, telco, cellular - is a risky balance for these public companies beholden to Wall Street. They may just be going abroad at Wall Street's request.]]>
Two studies out about SMB trends. One from Intermedia.Net late last year is around mobile trends. "68% of mobile device activations in 2014 supported iOS". The study speculates that secure apps is why it is so big. Did they forget how big the Apple fan-boy base is? Android was 26%; Windows at 3%; and Backberry 1%.
The other study was around SMB UC trends conducted by Hanover Research and sponsored by Windstream's Allworx company. The study "found that the top five phone features used most by SMBs are: 3-way calling (60 percent), intercom (42 percent), conference call bridges (41 percent), music on hold (40 percent) and calling other locations using extensions (37 percent)." [ChannelVision mag]
The most telling piece of data: "The vast majority of SMBs are unfamiliar with telecommunications terminology such as IP telephony, hosted PBX, IP PBX, virtual PBX, SIP trunks or Unified Communications." [cnn]
Another data set: Missing the mark with women buyers. "Who's really holding the purse strings?" (this sounds like Tom Peters!). "Women account for 85% of all consumer purchases in the US. And they're making the big decisions--choosing the cars, picking the cable providers, buying the technology, selecting the vacation destinations." [source: glg] [infographic on women buyers]
8x8 is moving upmarket. But then what ITSP doesn't want to sell over 50 seats per deal?
8x8 has invested in the indirect channel and an enterprise sales team to move upstream. It takes time and investment. It works slowly. 8x8 added some fuel to the fire with its latest announcement: 8x8 Helps Mid-Market and Enterprise Organizations Accelerate Their Migration to Cloud Communications With New 'Enterprise Suite' Package. It is a collection of new offerings that includes ""Elite Touch" customer on-boarding and support methodology through implementation" [professional installation] and "application of "Virtual Office Analytics" to improve business processes and outcomes" [analytics - the thing that Panterra added and a reason BSFT bought Leonid - the next buzzword for enterprise, replacing the very tired term, "Big Data".]
Microsoft launched Skype for Business at another show [EC]. It was supposed to scare everyone as Microsoft will now voice-enable their UC&C suite. Doug Mohney writes, "Everyone else in the UC world needs to start to worry if they aren't partnering with Microsoft, because the company is not fooling around."
Not everyone is a Microsoft shop. I have seen Microsoft implement Lync as a PBX; it often goes sideways. Who is going to install all of this SIP capability?
I saw how Skype tried to take over my laptop to Skype enable click-to-call - ick!! Memory suck too. Considering that VZ announced global expansion of its UC&C product - and it is powered by Cisco, I think it safe to say that like everything else this will be noise for a while and things will go back to normal. You still have dropped calls. VoLTE has Caller ID issues. SIP calls are still sketchy 10 years later. I am selling as much TDM as I sell SIP. Main reason for SIP: save money... still... 10 years later. Microsoft doesn't change that.
Doug continues, "Skype for Business means Microsoft is deploying the ability to provide all the IT and phone needs for businesses--a capability that Tier 1 phone providers haven't mastered for the SMB world, and only have done so begrudgingly for the enterprise world. ITSPs need to think long and hard about what happens to their SMB customers when Microsoft starts flooding the market with a one-bill option for services." What it really means: (1) every ITSP needs to have better Positioning (call me!); (2) Execution of implementation is Everything now; (3) Retention; and (4) what do Microsoft Partners do now? With MS billing everything? Again who will install and maintain this? OH! And who will patch all the security holes????????????
Now if they would promise me HD Voice everywhere and FoIP would work due to an truly inter-connected T38 network .... that would be something.
Pretty interesting quote from a struggling ILEC/CLEC: "Communication and collaboration are keys to success in today's always-connected business world. The focus is not only on connecting employees, but also on reaching customers through the most efficient platforms," said Joseph Harding, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Windstream. [source]]]>