Miss the call? Listen to the podcast here:

http://www.voipusersconference.org/2012/counterpath/

Here’s a taste of what you’ll hear:

VoIP / Real Time Communications Market Trends

Next Evolution of  VoIP / Real Time Communications Services

• Threats from a variety of players including over-the-top (OTT) providers and application providers (e.g. Apple) are driving the evolultion
• Operators have always been concerned with becoming a bit pipe; they are realizing that they need to disrupt themselves or be disrupted
• Operators are considering what approach is best: RCS vs. OTT and if OTT, which type: Full-Ott, Semi-OTT, Outside-in OTT
  • Full (or standalone) OTT are similar to today’s Internet-OTT services
  • Semi-OTT services extend existing in-house services
  • Outside-In OTT where operators host their own private on-net services on the web, rather than on their own infrastructure
• CounterPath sees immediate traction in OTT

Next Evolution of VoIP / Real Time Communications User Expectations

• BYOD – users want to bring their own device into the workplace; how can we facilitate this
• Nomadic Communications – users want to be able to communicate Anytime, Anyplace + on Any device
• It just works – users want it to be seamless, regardless of whether it’s mobile data vs. Wi-Fi

Next Evolution of VoIP / Real Time Communications User Behaviors

• Everything is social – communications start with a social queue
• Communications escalate – from presence to IM to voice call to video call

How about with our Bria iPad Edition which has been making a splash on the awards scene.

Back in January we shared that Bria iPad Edition was recognized as a 2011 INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year (along with Bria iPhone and Android Editions).

Since then, Bria iPad has gone on to win two more accolades:

ITSPA 2012 Most Innovative VoIP Product/Service Award

In March, we were honored by the Internet Telephony Service Providers’ Association with the ITSPA 2012 Most Innovative VoIP Product/Service award for Bria iPad Edition.

That’s our very own Peter Holland accepting the award on CounterPath’s behalf, on March 21st at the ITSPA Awards event in London.

The ITSPA is a trade association which represents UK-based network operators, service providers and other businesses involved with the supply of VoIP services to business and residential consumers within the United Kingdom and across the European Union. The ITSPA Awards celebrate innovation and best practice in the VoIP industry.

CTIA 2012 Emerging Technology Awards

And today, we learned our Bria iPad Edition is a finalist in the CTIA E-Tech Awards, in the Productivity category.

Read the press release here.

Very exciting! The CTIA E-Tech Awards also has a “Best Online Pick” category which YOU can help us win.

Cast your online vote for our products by following the links below:

Vote for Bria iPad Edition here:
http://ctiait.ctia.org/etech/2012/public/index.cfm/viewEntry/732

Vote for Bria iPhone Edition here:
http://ctiait.ctia.org/etech/2012/public/index.cfm/viewEntry/725

We’re delighted and honored that our technology is being recognized by these industry leaders. Thanks for all your support.

No, we are not talking about the Vancouver Canucks. But in the style of our beloved home hockey team, CounterPath scored a hat trick with the Bria mobile softphone suite this week.

TMC, a global, integrated media group, recently announced the winners of the 2011 Internet Telephony Product of the Year Awards. Recipients of the 14th Annual Product of the Year Awards represent the year’s most innovative new products. Not only was CounterPath announced as one of the prestigious winners in this hotly contested technology arena, but we came out on top with wins for all three of our mobile applications: Bria Android, Bria iPad and Bria iPhone Editions.

CounterPath has won numerous awards in the past for our Bria and eyeBeam desktop softphones, but this was the first year we were eligible in the mobile application category. Hence, it was quite the accolade to learn that that all three products are being recognized. The editors of INTERNET TELEPHONY select companies who have demonstrated the vision, leadership, and thoroughness associated with the Product of the Year Award and only honors the most deserving companies with this esteemed award.

“I am happy to grant CounterPath with three Product of the Year Awards. The editors of INTERNET TELEPHONY have verified that Bria Android, iPad and iPhone Editions have all displayed quality and innovation plus address real needs in the marketplace,” stated Rich Tehrani, CEO, TMC. “I would like to congratulate the entire team at CounterPath for their commitment to advancing IP communication technologies.”

The award honor comes on the eve of launching video calling on our Bria iPhone Edition mobile softphone app.

See video calling live in action at Showstoppers @CES

CounterPath is demoing live video calling across its range of Bria mobile softphone applications at this year’s ShowStoppers event (booth F17) on Tuesday evening Jan. 10 during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Come by and say hi!

In this video you’ll see how a communication that starts as one person seeing the other is online (Presence), turns into an Instant Message chat, then a voice call, and finally a video call, all within our Bria application.

IM and Presence are now available within Bria iPad Edition via an in-app purchase, and video will be available in early 2012.

Learn more about the features of Bria iPad Edition here

Buy Bria iPad Edition on iTunes for $14.99

So why would CounterPath add Skype’s SILK codec to our Bria mobile products? Simple – the performance of the codec. What function does the codec perform? Simply put, the codec encodes and decodes the audio within the endpoint. It captures our analog voice and turns it into digital bits that are moved over the Internet to another endpoint or PSTN gateway (voice gateway). On the other end of the call the exact opposite happens (digital to analog). Some codecs perform better than others. More importantly, some are free and others are royalty bearing. The SILK codec is free and also performs very well compared to other similar codecs that are royalty bearing. I should point out that because Bria supports SILK does not mean Bria can interoperate with the Skype service directly. Of course Bria users can call Skype users via the PSTN.

Adding SILK to Bria increases our codec support and gives our customers a wider choice for their go-to-market plans.

I am writing this post 25,000 feet above the earth on the way to BroadSoft Connections 2011.  We are a Gold sponsor of the event due to the many customers we have on the BroadWorks platform.  You probably saw our previous announcements regarding our partnership (http://bit.ly/psdcFQ & http://bit.ly/qwaNy8) which is driven via the number of mutual customers we share. This past week BroadSoft made two announcements around their softphone strategy.  One was the acquisition of Movial and the other was regarding a reseller relationship with Audio Codes and their VMAS. Although these two announcements had some in the industry scratching their heads I was not surprised by BroadSoft acquiring a softphone vendor.  Further, the BroadSoft partnering strategy on softphones – partner agnostic -  was clear to me prior to these announcements and nothing in the current actions of BroadSoft has changed my understanding. Bottom line is, CounterPath is the market leader in what we do and our mutual customers are helping to drive the deployment opportunities through the confidence in our offerings.

What’s more important, it seems there is a shift going on in the market that is being missed by many between the relationship of softphones and application servers. And more important the shift in thinking from softphones to endpoints.  Let me explain.

What we have found is communications has revolutionized itself through the hands of end users driven by technologies and innovations not in the plans of the legacy care takers of the telecommunications sector.  Here is a summary:

Social Networking. During the launch the of social networking sites many turned their backs and thought the sites were an outlet for the narcissistic few. However it was much more that.  It was a way for individuals to express themselves and paint their social story on a world-wide canvas that was never available before.  In other uses, it was a way for professionals to stay connected with industry experts to share news, ideas and lively debates for the world to see.  The true success is in the numbers.  My research shows the follow user bases: Facebook (~800M users), LinkedIn (~115M users), Google+ (~40M users), Google e-mail/Talk/Voice (~200M), Twitter (~200M users); Foursquare (~10M users).  The numbers are impressive.  Facebook alone is bigger than the Internet was in 2004.  In other terms, Facebook users spent 53.5 billion minutes on the service last May.  It’s unbelievable. Users have driven the growth by their need and desire to communicate 1:1 with their contacts that is bigger than SMS, IM, voice and video as stand alone applications.  The next step in the evolution is to mashup typical communication methods into social networking so that users can escalate their communications to the application that best suits that moment in time.  In the context of Facebook it could start with a Facebook status update that leads a user to IM and then move the conversation to a voice call that final escalates up to a video call–all based on the same conversation context.  The communications method is simply embedded in the conversation context.  CounterPath offers this today through its endpoints and FMC server offerings.

“Skype”. This past week Microsoft closed its acquisition of Skype.  But this is just a chapter in the saga of Skype. For me Skype’s impact is not the company itself.  It’s about what it did to ever change the telecommunications sector.  Now representing over 20% of ALL international traffic, its impact is undeniable.  Even more important, Skype did not only arbitrage revenue from the telecommunications sector, it destroyed it.  In the tune of billions of dollars.  Just take a look at these graphics from Telegeography:

The chart above shows the rise of VoIP and the relative fall of TDM.  It also shows the growth of minutes.  At first glance it’s confusing as growth is decreasing yet VoIP + TDM together is growing.  How can this be?   In a word Skype:

Skype is representing the gap in total growth minutes. Interesting for sure.  But what Skype started is, again, the most important takeaway from the company’s existence.  It started a cold war with the traditional operators within the telecommunications sector that has turned hot over the past few years with Skype competitors like Rebtel, Viber and others.  It’s only recently that the traditional operators have organized themselves outside of their lagging standards bodies to attempt and answer to the “Skype effect”.  This past week Telefónica’s O2 announced a VoIP service over Wi-Fi.  They had to purchase VoIP company Jajah for $207 million in 2009 to make it happen.  Where is IMS / RCS in all this?  Nowhere, at least for now.  Skype and its competitors proved how a provider can develop rich services by just doing it.  I do want to make it clear that IMS is happening–after all LTE is a significant part of the release plans for IMS.  However it is my opinion that it’s all about providing services that enable users to uplift or escalate communications based on the conversation context. FaceTime from Apple is another example. Users typically start with a phone call, then, based on the conversation context, easily escalate the call to video. CounterPath implemented the same approach in our clients for years but have really fine tuned the experience in Bria.  Communications are easily escalated based on the user interaction.  The next step and current plan of record for CounterPath is take Bria’s communication escalation features and apply them to device shifting technologies.  This is based on CounterPath’s NCG and key partners application platforms (you will see announcements in the new year on this topic).

Smartphones and Tablets. The smartphone device category is growing and exceeding analysts’ projections. The worldwide penetration of smartphones of the current 5.8 billion mobile subsciber base is just over 20%.  Global smartphone shipments will soar to 1.03 B units  in 2015, more than double the 478 million in 2011. Further, with market penetration of smartphones expected to be over 50% by 2015 (iSuppli), and mobile video calling estimated to exceed 130 million users by 2016 (Juniper Research), service providers will be seeking video calling applications to offer their end users.  Combine this with the success of tablets and you have an incredible driver for mobile VoIP communications. Tablet shipments will reach 253 million by 2016, nearly a five-fold increase from the 55.2 million tablets that Juniper Research expects to reach the market in 2011.  Even more, over half of annual tablet shipments will have cellular connections by 2016.  The key point here is it’s all about mobility driven by mobiles and tablets with laptops (and PCs) playing a very strong supporting role.  As I mentioned, users will use different devices to answer their communications on any available device.  Similar to how we use wireless phones in our homes today tied to our fixed line number.  CounterPath and its partners are at the forefront in defining the experience for pre-IMS and IMS based networks.

VoIP is No Longer a Dirty Word. It wasn’t too long ago that many of us would have said VoIP failed.  In reality it was passing through the Gartner Hype Curve.  We are now in the Slope of Enlightenment:

The proof is in the industry numbers.  VoIP service market reached $49.8 billion in 2010, a 43 percent increase from $34.8 billion in 2008, and forecast the combined business and residential/SOHO VoIP services market to grow to $74.5 billion in 2015 (Infonetics).  The numbers are big.  More importantly, the numbers are only reflective of basic VoIP services or simple replacement services and do not consider the device shift or context based communications I discussed above.  In my opinion this is not only missing in the current numbers but is also not accounted for in the analysts’ forecasts.

So where does this leave us?  Keep an eye on CounterPath and its key partners. Metaswitch is one such partner who has worked very closely with CounterPath to build out an impressive solution based on Bria desktop, mobile and tablet.  Check out their Communicator offering.

Also, expect another significant partner to announce soon with CounterPath.  Both partners mentioned are driving operator transformation to meet the burgeoning needs and requirements of end users for contextual communications and device shifting.

It will be interesting to hear additional reaction this week at the BroadSoft Connections event.  We have back-to-back meetings with the largest operators on the planet that are looking to CounterPath for solutions as I outlined above for their endpoint strategy.  To that theme CounterPath is offering a special on its Bria for BroadWorks (by the way, the only phone authorized to use “BroadWorks” in the name). For only a few days starting today you can download Bria for BroadWorks for 20% off per license (as many as you need). Check the offer out here. Note this is only available via the CounterPath store and not through our direct sales team.  Enjoy the promotion and if you are at the BroadSoft Connections event and want to discuss this post or other related topics please ping me on Twitter (@tcarothers) or mobile: +1.408.459.8040.

Generally the word rancid doesn’t impart an idea of good things. The RANCID we’re talking about certainly doesn’t match the definition of the word. For those amongst us who appreciated a nicely manufactured acronym, Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ (RANCID), rates quite high on the creativity scale. For those running networks of any size RANCID is also a good thing. It does appear that from Google’s perspective the band Rancid rates higher than the networking tool RANCID.

Here at CounterPath, we’ve been using RANCID for a few years to monitor and backup the configuration of our network devices. Recently we built a new instance of RANCID and migrated all of our devices over. We had to spend some time re-remembering how all of the internals worked, but it didn’t take very long before we were up and running.

I’ll attempt a brief explanation of what RANCID is. RANCID watches all of your network devices by checking in on their configuration every hour (configurable). RANCID sends your team a email with the differences between the last known configuration and the updated configuration. This is brilliant. The team needs to know about changes that happen across the infrastructure, or minimally know that changes are happening. We’ve seen this as almost a e-learning tool. When someone sets up something new on a switch or router or firewall, the team is updated with exactly the changes are in place for that customer.

RANCID also creates a CVS/SVN archive of your network devices configurations. This means that you can look back in time to see what the configuration used to be 2 months ago. This often helps when you are troubleshooting a problem that has popped up. Often problems surfacing today have roots in the unintended consequences of a change a few days or weeks ago.

RANCID had a database of different vendors and types of equipments it supports. As we’re primarily a Cisco shop from a networking perspective it works flawlessly with our gear. As an example we have some Nortel gear we use for non-production services and and our mileage has varied with this solution.

For more details on RANCID, check out Shrubbery Networks homepage. A outstanding tutorial for RHEL/Centos/Fedora shops is available on the linux home networking website.