In February, Sangoma announced that NetBorder Express (NBE) Gateway 2.0 was in Beta. Well...it took a bit more time than expected, but we will be ready later this week to release the General Availability version.
The product has received significant attention from customers during the Beta phase, and is highly anticipated by application partners and resellers alike. With a ubiquitous SIP interface, NBE enables low-cost, inside-the-server connectivity to software-based communication applications. The IP-PBX market is right on target for this important new release, with the following main additions to the product line:
- Support for analog cards. There are a lot of small and mediuam businesses out there that need a few analog lines for deployments of their corporate communication systems. Previous versions of NBE enabled T1/E1 configurations (up to 960 ports per system). But now, with configurations as low as 4 FXO analog ports, the solution scales down to address one of the widest market segment. We have seen very strong interest from the Windows-based PBX vendors and their resellers for such configurations. For any vendor that targets the SME market for PBX systems, analog support is a must, so everyone is very eager to get this launched...
- Installation wizard and enhanced management interface. We heard customer feedback from the previous release, load and clear. Customers wanted a simpler and more straightforward interface to get the solution installed, configured and maintained. We delivered. Beta customer feedback has been terrific. Customers really like the smooth configuration process and the ease-of-use. Further, the interface provides even more capabilities for tight integration between the application and the gateway. This allows our partners to design PBX systems that look like one complete, unified system.
- A series of improvements in tone processing. This includes better international tone support, processing of pre-connect tones, custom tone definition template, etc. This allows to catch more real-life deployment conditions in a reliable and deterministic fashion.
Some of our partners have created custom integrations to NBE 2.0, so they will be fully ready to embrace the GA release later this week. We also have key distributors and resellers implementing special promotions specifically around this product launch. With all this ground work already in place, we hope for immediate success from this product release.
Of course, I'll make sure to keep everyone informed...
Friday, May 22, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
A virtual job...
Could it be the end of tradeshows as we know it? Tomorrow, May 12, Sangoma will participate in its first ever virtual tradeshow. We have been invited by Intel to have a "booth" in their virtual tradeshow called the Intel Embedded eVent (http://intelembeddedevent.com/). It's a pretty cool concept that mimics real life, and that is starting to become adopted by a lot of tradeshow organizations. You can attend keynote sessions, network with peers and 'walk' the virtual tardeshow floor. At companies' booths, you can see product demonstrations and collateral, and even chat online with booth staff. So I'll be on my very first virtual booth duty all day tomorrow.
At the 'show', Sangoma will present how our product line, together with Intel platforms, make ideal building blocks for software-based PBX systems. I stronly encourage everyone to go in during the day and 'drop by the booth' for an online chat.
The virtual tradeshow approach, I find, presents a lot of interesting aspects:
- A lot more people can attend the events due to 'zero cost' of attendance and perhaps even more importanly, the fact that people don't have to loose a few days of work to attend
- The event stays online for a long time, so you don't have to put in all the work in your marketing organization for only 2-3 days of show
- You can present more stuff since you don't have to physically ship all your demos
- You never get a 'bad location' for your booth.
- Booth 'teardown' consists of logging out
- I can perform my booth duty at home, sitting down, unshaven and in my pyjamas if I want ;)
What will be interesting is to see how the event is attended and if booth 'traffic' is good. I am also eager to see the dynamics. Will people engage with booth staff? I promise to report on our experience.
Of course, nothing beats a face-to-face meeting and a hand-shake. I suspect real-life tradeshows will still live for a long time. But in a tough economic and full flu season, going virtual will be very popular I think.
At the 'show', Sangoma will present how our product line, together with Intel platforms, make ideal building blocks for software-based PBX systems. I stronly encourage everyone to go in during the day and 'drop by the booth' for an online chat.
The virtual tradeshow approach, I find, presents a lot of interesting aspects:
- A lot more people can attend the events due to 'zero cost' of attendance and perhaps even more importanly, the fact that people don't have to loose a few days of work to attend
- The event stays online for a long time, so you don't have to put in all the work in your marketing organization for only 2-3 days of show
- You can present more stuff since you don't have to physically ship all your demos
- You never get a 'bad location' for your booth.
- Booth 'teardown' consists of logging out
- I can perform my booth duty at home, sitting down, unshaven and in my pyjamas if I want ;)
What will be interesting is to see how the event is attended and if booth 'traffic' is good. I am also eager to see the dynamics. Will people engage with booth staff? I promise to report on our experience.
Of course, nothing beats a face-to-face meeting and a hand-shake. I suspect real-life tradeshows will still live for a long time. But in a tough economic and full flu season, going virtual will be very popular I think.
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