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April 30, 2002
The Pulver Report - April 30, 2002
THE PULVER REPORT(TM)
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In this Issue:
- Heard on the Net
- People on the Move
- Companies on the Move
- Pulver Report Party: June 5th in Atlanta during Supercomm
- The Need to Bootstrap our Industry: The IP Comm Junk Bonds
- Announcing the pulver.com Purple Apps Contest
- IP Communications Industry: Starting again in Q2 2002
- VON Europe 2002: June 10-13 in Helsinki
- The IP Communications Industry needs a new name for IP Centrex
- Invitation to Connectivity 2002: May 21-23 in Boston
- Kids on the Net: Spring 2002 Update
- EAT'M 2002: May 29-31 in Las Vegas
- Call for Speakers: Fall 2002 VON
- pulver.com 2002 Conference Calendar
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Heard on the Net
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People on the Move:
- Dan Massiello left 3Com and joined Sonexis as CEO.
- Ed Wadbrook left 3Com and joined Sonexis as Senior Vice President
of Product Management and Strategy.
- Rick Schonbrun left Expanets and joined Sonexis as
Senior Vice President of Sales.
- Frank Madonna has joined ECI Conference Call Services
as Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing.
Companies on the Move:
- Syndeo recently closed US$ 75 million in funding.
Several companies are still working on closing their next rounds
of funding. I expect forthcoming announcements in the next few weeks.
(Please email: people@pulver.com to report a change in your
position. Please refer to: "People on the Move" in the subject)
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Pulver Report Party: June 5th in Atlanta during Supercomm
In celebration of the 6th year anniversary of the Pulver Report,
pulver.com is hosting a party at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, GA on
June 5th from 7:00 to 11:00 PM.
Readers of The Pulver Report who are over 21 are invited to attend
the party. Please RSVP by May 24th.
Drinks and Live Entertainment will be provided.
To RSVP, please visit:
( http://pulver.com/pr-party/rsvp.html )
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The need to Bootstrap our Industry: The IP Comm. Junk Bonds
While preparing my Industry Perspective for Spring 2002 VON, it hit me
that what our industry needs now more than ever is the opportunity to
bootstrap ourselves and give those with vision and the innovative ideas
access to the capital they have been denied over the past 18 months
due to the downturn in the telecom capital markets.
My solution? Junk bonds. Am I kidding? No.
Back in the 1980's I started a software company, Spreadsheet
Solutions, which was known for the analytical software we sold to
bond traders and to fixed-income portfolio managers. While I've been a
closet fixed-income securities guy for a long time, it wasn't until about
a month ago that my background and experience came in handy.
In fact, I recently did the math and if we as an industry were able
to raise 2 billion dollars, and of the 2 billion we allocated
1.35 billion into escrow to pay the interest for the first 7 years,
we would still have up to 650 million to invest in our future and have
the potential to provide yields to the investors for our junks bonds
which haven't been seen for many years. All we really would need to
do it hit one "home run" with our investments in the first 7 years.
After seeing some of our past successes, I have to believe this
is doable.
The cool part is that the bond rating we will be starting off with is
positioned as high yield junk and there can never be any real expectation
for the bonds to anything other than "junk". If our bootstrapping
efforts become a way for some entrepreneurs to bypass the venture captial
marketplace, so be it.
And for those of you who feel 2 billion might be a bit ambitious, if
we were able to find the right investment bankers at several of the top
investment banking firms, and if we could raise 400 million from their
high-yield desks, the same math works in proportion.
I would like to see these IP Communication Industry Junks Bonds become a
reality...and I would like to hear from the investment bankers who share
my
vision and with whom together we can help make this real. If you are
interested, please email me directly and use the words "Junk Bond" in
the subject of the email.
While our friends on the high yield desks are thinking about who
they can turn to in order to help fund continued innovation in the
IP Communications Industry, I will be looking to put together a board
of advisors for these bonds which represents a team of serial
entrepreneurs and whose collective successes will give the necessary
"warm and fuzzy" to all of the risk takers. My goal is to complete
the paperwork and initial fundraising activities before the end of
2002 and try to get these bonds issued before the end of Q1 2003.
By working together we can help bootstrap the IP Communications
industry and collectively help make a difference.
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Announcing the pulver.com Purple Apps Contest
pulver.com is searching for IP Communication Applications which showcase
the vision of doing things which were never before possible or practical
without using IP...as contrasted by those applications which just
replicate things which are readily doable on the existing public
switched telephone network.
From May 1st thru June 30th pulver.com will be looking for
"Purple Minute" applications to be referred to us. Referencing your
own product/company/friend is fine so long as these products really
exist and we don't have to sign a NDA to see the product.
(Having a customer to vouch for your work would be cool too...).
To report a cool application, please email me at: jeff@pulver.com.
We will be reviewing the recommended "Purple Apps" from July 1st
thru August 31st. We will be inviting the developers of the
"Purple Apps" to visit our office in Melville, NY during the review
process. In September, pulver.com will be inviting the companies with
the coolest apps to demonstrate them as our guest in the
"Purple Minutes" Pavilion at Fall 2002 VON.
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IP Communications Industry: Starting again in Q2 2002
Back in February, I started to feel the IP Communications Industry was
in recovery mode. While the traditional Telecom industry still has
its own issues, our space is truly a hybrid space...connected
yet apart. While the IP Communications Industry still has some
business issues to settle, the space continues to provide a great
promise and opportunity for the future. People just need to remember
that the opportunity lies in seeking out and doing new things rather
than just replicating what we all had before.
At Spring VON there were a number of carriers which brought their
technology teams with them to Seattle. We had, for us, our first
significant attendance by senior technology executives from the
Fortune 1000. This in turn helped set the stage for what looks like
the start of a strong and sustainable 2002 sales cycle.
Also, as usual, SIP continued to happen at VON. By the way, we
have been trying to keep our SIP product pages
( http://pulver.com/products/sip ) up-to-date with the latest
SIP innovations and technologies. Please contact us if you have
any updates.
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VON Europe 2002: June 10-13 in Helsinki
2002 marks the fifth year that VON Europe will be taking place and it
is also our fifth year in Scandinavia. I originally chose to hold
the event in the Scandic countries as I was following the early
adaptor trends and looking at where the majority of the first European
delegates to the US VON conferences were coming from. Over the years I've
enjoyed spending one week during the month of June in Norway, Sweden or
Finland. I am looking forward to bringing the VON team again this year to
Helsinki and to continue to provide community for the European IP
Communications industry.
While I'm at VON Europe I will be available to meet with those who wish
to set up appointments to showcase their "Purple Minutes" applications.
At VON Europe 2002, we again will be will be taking a look at the
use of IP Communications at both the Carrier and Enterprise level.
I also took the liberty of co-locating the content of the pulver.com
2002 European Presence and Instant Messaging conference in Helsinki so I
can help provide a perspective on the emerging state of the Wireless
Internet space to the delegates attending VON Europe. The current
conference schedule is posted to:
( http://pulver.com/europe2002/schedule.html ).
Registration for the conference is open. To register, please
visit: ( http://pulver.com/europe2002/register.html ).
If you are planning on attending VON Europe and have not made your
hotel reservations yet, now would also be a great time to take care of
that. As of April 26th we only have a limited number of rooms available
for the event. Please visit: ( http://pulver.com/europe2002/hotel.html )
and make your reservation before May 17th which is when our room block
expires.
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The IP Communications Industry needs a new name for IP Centrex
For an industry which in the past has been creative, I'm surprised
to see that we are still using such ancient terminology as
"Centrex" when positioning and selling systems which today have become
known as "IP Centrex".
I think the time has come to come up with a new name for this class
of product and related services.
While keeping the legacy term "Centrex" in a name might have been
recommended by someone's old marketing team, there may be a reason
why these people are no longer employed. Last time I checked,
"IP Centrex" represented a possible plethora of hosted IP Communication
Applications, some of which replicated the old Centrex services but in
many cases did so much more than before. My point is that calling
something that does so much more than before by the same name as its
predecessor is doing everyone involved a disservice and is in fact
misleading.
For someone who cares about the positioning of our industry and
the products and services which support it, I think we collectively
could do a lot better than call IP Centrex, "IP Centrex".
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Invitation to Connectivity 2002: May 21-23 in Boston
Readers of the Pulver Report are invited to join us at
Connectivity 2002 ( http://pulver.com/connectivity2002 ) taking
place May 21-23 at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel in Boston.
As the website states: "You missed Woodstock. You weren't there for the
invention of the Internet. Don't miss Connectivity 2002 as the owners of
the Internet (you) assemble to restart the Internet revolution and
set the stage for a 21st century Internet renaissance!"
Connectivity 2002 presents the Internet visionaries leading the charge to
keep the Internet safe for innovation. Meet the technical guru's that
invented TCP/IP, DNS, Visicalc, MBone, IP Telephony and other cool
applications. Meet the policy guru's that brought us Stupid Networks,
Digital Tornado, Info Anarchy and The Cluetrain Manifesto.
New Internet applications increasingly get litigated or regulated out of
existence by the time they make it out of beta. Early Internet
applications like email and the world wide web disrupted business models
as much as later applications like peer-to-peer file sharing,
IP Telephony, and streaming, but the incumbent players have become much
more aggressive about blocking innovative uses of the Internet.
Lead by our Program Chair, Bob Frankston, Connectivity 2002 includes the
people working to make sure simple end-to-end connectivity remains the
underlying principle of the Internet and the driver of communications
in the 21st century, including: David Reed, Dave Farber, Dave Burstein,
David Isenberg, Kevin Werbach, Erik Moeller, Chris Herot,
Ray Everett-Church, David Weinberger, Allison Mankin, Robert Cannon
and Paul Mockapetris.
I've reserved twenty free seats at Connectivity 2002 for readers of
The Pulver Report. To register, please visit:
( http://pulver.com/connectivity2002/standard.html ) and select the
"guest of panel lead" as the payment option. The first twenty people to
register will be able to attend the conference with the registration fee
waived. I hope this provides an opportunity to meet some of the people who
have been long-time readers of The Pulver Report. :-)
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Kids on the Net: Spring 2002 Update
My kids recently celebrated their 8th birthday and I'm convinced that
they now have the innate web navigation skills which my friends,
co-workers and relatives may never have. The cool part is that they are
only 8 and they are part of a new generation of internet users which are
growing up with the net and have learned to take some web resources for
granted.
There was a time when I remember I might look up something in the family
Encyclopedia. Dylan and Jake? They just go to Google, try to spell
whatever it is they are looking for as correctly as they need do, and then
they let look to the net for their results. My kids love to bookmark
just about everything, although I question whether or not they ever
go back to what they found. Sometimes the bookmark represents the
souvenirs of their activities more than a reference to a page to
get back to.
Their technique of relying on Google for almost everything hasn't
let them down yet and it has provided a great way for them to
learn about the culture of "Yu-Gi-Oh!" during the past few
months. For the time being anyway, my kids have focused their attention
away from Pokemon to Yu-Gi-Oh!. The web has been a great resource
for them to learn about how to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! video
games available for Gameboy and PlayStation2.
Some of their new favorite web resources include:
Cardhaus - http://www.cardhaus.com
Toywiz - http://www.toywiz.com
My kids have also started working on their own web pages which reflect
their voice and their tastes which I can honestly say are different
than mine. :-)
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EAT'M 2002: May 29-31 in Las Vegas
Emerging Artists and Technology in Music "EAT'M" ( http://www.eat-m.com )
will be taking place May 29th to 31st at the MGM Grand Hotel in
Las Vegas.
During the past several months we conducted a national talent search
and over 700 musicians submitted their applications. From this we chose
the 140+ artists which will be showcasing on our 11 stages during the
course of two nights. For those who enjoy watching talent become
discovered, EAT'M should be a lot of fun.
The core content at EAT'M provides a channel for music industry
insiders to share information and insights to those interested in
joining the industry. Many of the panels have music industry
executives who have "made it" in their space.
Most of the technology panels at EAT'M will include contributions from
people talking about the enabling and emerging technologies which have
been at the core of the current fight the RIAA has been battling. I'm
personally looking forward to watching the faces of the music industry
executives when they realize that despite the threat of legal actions,
regulations will not prevent the innovations which will eventually shift
the powerbase from the music companies to the music consumers.
Since many of the readers of the Pulver Report like to consider
themselves "artists" of one kind or another, I'm happy to offer
all readers to the Pulver Report the opportunity to attend
EAT'M and qualify for the special "artist" cost of $200 a person.
See you in Las Vegas!
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Call for Speakers: Fall 2002 VON Week
Fall 2002 VON Week ( http://pulver.com/von ) will be taking place
October 7-10 in Atlanta.
We are always looking for new speakers to join us at our
next VON conference. Generally speaking we give preference
to speaker candidates who have previously attended a VON
event.
There are several places where you can identify your interest
in speaking at Fall 2002 VON.
- Propose your own Breakout session at Fall 2002 VON
- Present at the PSTN/IP Gateway Workshop on October 7th
- Present at VON Demo! on October 7th
- Present at VON Enterprise Forum on October 7-8th
- Nominate someone for a future Industry Perspective.
The PSTN/IP Gateway Workshop is the only place where we
encourage companies to pitch their products.
VON Demo! is where I look for companies to showcase their
cool products in person without the need or use of any slide ware.
The VON Enterprise Forum has expanded to a two-day event.
At VON Enterprise Forum we again will be taking a hard look
at IP Communications in the Enterprise, both from the
perspective of the vendors supporting the marketplace as well
as from the eyes of the enterprise customers who have made the
commitment to implement these technologies. I am looking forward
to hearing the first hand accounts from Enterprise customers.
Please visit: ( http://www.pulver.com/von/speaking.html )
to submit your speaking proposal(s). The deadline for
speaking proposals is June 12th.
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pulver.com 2002 Conference Calendar
( http://pulver.com/conference )
"Events for the IP Communications Industry" (tm)
May 7-9 - Spring 2002 SIP Summit, Las Vegas, NV
( http://pulver.com/sipsummit )
May 21-23 - Connectivity 2002 - Boston, MA
( http://pulver.com/connetivity2002 )
May 29-31 - EAT'M 2002, Las Vegas, NV
( http://www.eat-m.com )
June 10-13 - VON Europe 2002, Helsinki, Finland
( http://pulver.com/europe2002 )
June 11-13 - Europe 2002 Presence and Instant Messaging
( http://pulver.com/pim )
July 22-24 - VON Asia 2002, Hong Kong, CHINA
( http://pulver.com/asia2002 )
October 7-10 - Fall 2002 VON Week
October 7-8 - Fall 2002 VON Enterprise Forum
October 8-10 - Fall 2002 VON
October 9-10 - Fall 2002 VON Developers Conference
( http://pulver.com/von )
October 7-9 - Fall 2002 Location Based Services Summit, Atlanta, GA
October 8-10 - Fall 2002 Presence and Instant Messaging, Atlanta, GA
November 19-21 - Fall 2002 SIP Summit, Las Vegas, NV
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The Pulver Report to: jeff@pulver.com.
Jeff Pulver Tel. +1.631.547.0800
The Pulver Report Fax. +1.631.396.3996
April 30, 2002 http://pulver.com/reports
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