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A couple of days ago I received a press release by my friends at Andy Abramson’s Comunicano in regards of a recent agreement by Junction Networks and edgeBOX. 

In a nutshell, according to this agreement, Junction Networks has been selected by edgeBOX to be the preferred voice provider for their “office-in-a-box” solution. edgeBOX is “an integrated device aimed at the SMB market and including a full-fledged IP-PBX, wireless access point, router, file, e-mail and VPN server”.

In this story what caught my attention is the following paragraph:

Calls between edgeBOX extensions, whether on-premise or around the world across Internet connections, will incur half-cent-per-minute charges. 

What? IP to IP voice calls are not FREE? Guys, I love this. Praises to Junction Networks and edgeBOX for this brave choice! While someone could see this as a downside of this service, I look at it as a great innovation and potentially the beginning of a new era for VoIP.

On-net VoIP calls have always been offered for free, without any charge. To my knowledge, every VoIP service out there doesn’t charge for IP to IP calls. This could work in the past, but in times where there is a new VoIP service coming out every day and when you offer SMB services to companies whose traffic is mainly on-premise, how can you make money and make your customers happy at the same time? 

This is a great way to lower monthly fees and avoiding long term contracts, something companies don’t always want to deal with. Small companies sometimes don’t trust on VoIP services completely, thinking quality could be an issue. With this approach they don’t feel to be bound to a certain service for a long time, so it definitely helps to shorten the sales cycle. And, we are not talking of a fortune, it’s half-cent per minute

For more information about this new collaboration, take a look at the official press release.

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Technorati Tags: Business, critical links, edgebox, junction networks, luca filigheddu, VoIP

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Yesterday I was talking with an american friend of mine who told me how Wal-Mart became the winner in the fight among low price stores in the US. In fights like this you just need to offer the lowest price in the market, there is no more space for competitors and no alternative ways to win.

Today I came across two new web based VoIP services (Freeringer and Voxofon) who are offering PC to phone/phone to phone calls with a lot of free calls to specific destinations.

To be honest, I didn’t loose much time to pay attention at their offering, for me this was just another YAWN. I learnt there is nothing free in our life, especially when it comes to business, someone has to pay at some point. Many different models have been tried out over time by different services in various parts of the world, but aside from some exceptions, most of them have been a complete failure.

How can they sustain a credible business model? How can they (these two and any new entrant) deal with competition? I’m sorry, but I do firmly believe the space for new VoIP players is over. Market is full of offerings and services, all of them mainly fighting just in terms of price. Where is the value? What’s the strategy to take full control of churn rate?

New services who want to survive, must offer something new and different, something which provides final users with a different perspective, users who are not looking for money saving only. From this standpoint, Ooma is an interesting example (unlike some premature signs of failure, it seems to be still alive and well).

If your new VoIP service you are proud of and that you are going to launch and make it compete in this tough market, is not offering something DIFFERENT, SPECIAL, UNIQUE to your target customers, please refrain from spending time and money, you’re gonna fail. Period.

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Technorati Tags: Business, freeringer, luca filigheddu, Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, voxofon

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This news this morning makes me really happy. Peter Csathy’s SightSpeed, a high quality video call/conferencing service, is going to be acquired by a very big name in the computer market, Logitech, very popular, among the other things, for their high quality webcams.

I blogged so many times about SightSpeed and I really love that service, reason why I’m very happy for Peter and his team in San Diego. This is a great deal for both, since Logitech can now provide an effective way to give more value to their webcams, for both the consumer and business market. And it seems that SightSpeed is the 3rd company Peter succesfully sold.

Moreover, I really would like to congratulate Andy “everything I touch becomes gold” Abramson, since SightSpeed is the Nth company he’s involved with in terms of PR or in terms of board of directors which has been sold recently. Wow.

Details of the deals are summarized below.

Logitech International (SIX: LOGN) (Nasdaq: LOGI) today announced that the company has agreed to acquire privately held SightSpeed Inc. of Berkeley, Calif. for approximately $30 million in cash. SightSpeed is an award-winning provider of high-quality Internet video communications services. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in early November.

The acquisition of SightSpeed will provide Logitech with video calling technology and a software and services development team that can be focused on future video calling initiatives that can enable cross-platform video communications with an intuitive, lifelike experience, for people sitting in front of a personal computer or with their family in a living room.

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Technorati Tags: andy abramson, Business, Logitech, luca filigheddu, peter csathy, sightspeed, Video

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In a period when everyone is talking about financial meltdown, crisis, layoffs and how to deal with the upcoming bad times, it’s very important not to forget that customers are the “food” for any company.

While many startups don’t have customers yet so they face other types of problems, well extablished businesses can face a significant contraction of their sales because of a general feeling of “fear” by their customers. This feeling is due to different reasons: will your company be alive tomorrow? is your product essential for my life or is it better to save money to pass the winter?

One of the most important (and priority) ways to handle this situation is to create a direct line with your customers in order to make them comfortable while buying from you. This is essential and strategic for the future of any company because customers need to hear you, need to hear your voice and to be reassured they can trust you and keep buying your products and services.

Companies which undervalue this aspect and  keep thinking of making their websites more and more self-service oriented are likely to fail and this is even more true in times like this. Giving the right answer at the right time is crucial for any business, in order to take customers and prospects and guide them straight to the end of the purchase process, preventing them to quit as soon as they face a problem.

All that said, don’t hesitate and act now: engage your customers, make them feel your are there, ready to help them to take decisions faster and to make them happy buyers. Your customers are your life: in difficult times, do everything you can to prevent them from going away.

In conclusion, I’d like to share a quote from Sitofono’s website (disclosure: Sitofono is a service from my company):

e-commerce companies have constantly to deal with this paradox: a growing number of contacts, low conversion rates and an high abandonment rate.

The lack of real time interaction between the customer and the vendor, besides being a cause of dissatisfaction of the potential customer, is, for sure, one of the main reasons of missed opportunities to close a deal in a big number of online transactions.

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Technorati Tags: Business, customer engagement, luca filigheddu, sales, Service

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After six months since my last visit (I had to come in June, but my second son was just arriving…), I’m spending a couple of weeks in Silicon Valley again. I’m writing this while on a flight to San Francisco and we should land in about four hours now. UPDATE: arrived at my hotel on time

My schedule is pretty tight but if you want to catch up, please drop me a line and I’ll try to rearrange my schedule accordingly (I’ll do my best!).

Approximately, my schedule looks like this:

• Sept 14th (Sunday): Jet Lag recovery time
• Sept 15th - 17th (morning): Los Angeles at the ITExpo. I’m going to moderate a panel about Open Source VoIP.
• Sept 18th: in San Francisco for Mobilize, the conference organized by GigaOM (meetings there). In the late evening, meetings in Palo Alto
• Sept 19th: stuck in meetings
• Sept 22th: meetings (some time slots still available here)
• Sept 23rd: in San Francisco: meetings + SF Beta in San Francisco
• Sept 24th: San Jose: Streaming Media West + meetings
• Sept 25th: Plug & Play Tech Center EXPO Fall + Meetings
• Sept 27th: (Saturday): Macintosh Computer Expo
• Sept 29th: last day there, still open

I’ll be leaving on the 30th in the evening, so I should have some time in the morning too. I bet the available slots will be filled up after a few days spent there, as it usually happens.

The best part of spending some time in Silicon Valley is that you never have time to rest (apart from weekends of course), every single day there is definitely profitable, I love that. The number of events you can potentially attend is impressive and any event means networking, meetings and, hopefully, new business opportunities.

Again, I still have some time available for meetings, so just drop me a line or leave a comment if you want to catch up.

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Technorati Tags: Business, networking, palo alto, San Francisco California, San Francisco Bay Area, San Jose California, Silicon Valley

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Jim Courtney at Skype Journal promptly posted three alternatives to the demised Skypecast service.

I recommend to take a look at his post, Calliflower, HiDef Conferencing and Skype itself are all great alternatives.

Check it out:

Skype Journal: Alternatives to Skypecasts.

Technorati Tags: Business, community, jim courtney, luca filigheddu, skype, Skype Journal, Skypecast

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According to Gartner, SaaS (Software as a Service) will be a key element for the ecommerce market by 2013.

According to Gartner, at least 90% of eCommerce sites will leverage SaaS (Software as a Service) by 2013.  As Gene Alvarez, research vice president for Gartner, says, “The trend toward SaaS applications has affected customer relationship management (CRM) and other applications, and e-commerce isn’t exempt from this trend.”

Sitofono, my company’s click to engage SaaS, empowers eCommerce by providing a quick and effective way to engage potential customers while they came across your website looking for something to buy.

Gartner is just confirming our view and strategy for Sitofono, but it’s important that this message could quickly reach the people in charge of making ecommerce websites more and more effective. Many marketing and sales directors got it already but many others haven’t got it yet.

Technorati Tags: Business, customer engagement, Customer service, Electronic commerce, Gartner, luca filigheddu, Marketing, sitofono, Software as a service