Over the next few years I think we'll begin to see the following:
1. Brand erosion in VoIP-Less brands selling to business, consumers
2. Greater consolidation-It's already started with Smoothstone and M5 getting purchased
3. More services from bigger suppliers-Companies like SalesForce, CA, SAP, Oracle will begin pushing out more services that support VoIP providers, especially in billing and apps/services
4. Voice, Video and Collaboration all blur-You won't be able keep a customer long if you don't have all of these, along with an SMS/Presence component.
5. Quality-HD audio, video becomes standard-who wants to suffer through sucky sound, bad video.
6. Communication won't stay balkanized and Interoperability is someone elses problem-SBCs, "any to any" and transcoding on the fly has to happen. We can't be disconnected. A person using Skype wants to see and talk to someone using GTalk or Tango.
7. The tabley is your communications hub-forget the phone and PC-faster processors, sharper lenses, better audio and vido devices, Airplay and others like it make connecting easier, sound and look better.
8. HTML5 changes how we look at the browser in real time communications.
Got any other ideas?
Enjoyed reading this post, thanks for sharing your thoughts! It just goes to show that the majority of VoIP providers still have a lot to learn in terms of being flexible and open standards, ready to collaborate and integrate.
Enjoyed reading your thoughts, thanks for sharing this post. It just goes to show that the majority of VoIP providers still have a lot to learn in terms of being flexible and open standards for greater collaboration and integration. Hopefully that’s where they’re headed!
Andy, I think you are spot on especially when it comes to the interoperability of video across various networks. I don’t know how many iPhone users who have to switch between FaceTime and Skype depending on who they wish to talk to and what kind of device the other end is using.