IT Expo in LA - Hosted VoIP is still new

I gave a seminar at the ITExpo in LA last week and it shed some interesting light on the VoIP scene and what's happening with it in the business space. The main thrust behind the seminar (titled "How to sell hosted VoIP to the micro enterprise") was to get the reseller market - and the industry come to that - to look at the small business market in a more intelligent way. In terms of strategies it's important to cut and dice the market and break it down it smaller chunks. Our focus at Vocalocity (www.vocalocity.com) is on the Micro Enterprise - offices of less than 20 people - and it's clear that these businesses have different personality traits and behaviors than businesses of above 20 people. Hosted deployments are a very efficient way to service this market because they deliver the best ROI and fit best from the perspective of ongoing management (this especially applies to VoIP). There is definitely a rising under swell of activity in the SMB market for VoIP and it was very encouraging to have the seminar and exhibition floor so well attended (compared to our attendance of the show last year, there's definitely been a change). It is encouraging the way the channel seems to be eager to learn and is hungry to know how to develop the SMB landscape. Feedback was good and it seems that the Micro Enterprise approach hit a chord - Phil Hill

Manic Mobile
Remember, no phone service is iron clad. VoIP can often get a bad rap for its quality - sometimes justified, many times not - but lets not forget how unreliable good old cell service can be. Why does t-Mobile always drop calls at the same precise spot on the downtown connector in Hotlanta and why do 1 in 5 calls find me pressing redial because i get that annoying 'call ended' beep beep? So here you go Sprint - put a nice big bill board message on the Atlanta downtown connector, right by that nice big Olympic torch, proclaiming "Dear T-mobile customer, I bet you've just lost your call, come join Sprint and talk clearly from this very spot”. Go make yourself be heard. Here's a good Google mash up where you can make your good-signal bad-signal posts http://www.signalmap.com/ - Phil Hill