Welcome to the first post in our Telnexus Blog! Since it is New Years Eve, we have put together a bit of a retrospective and prospective look at the trends in IT and Telecom. Hopefully this will give you some insights into what is going on in Technology, and also what the Telnexus elves are thinking!
Thanks for reading, and please have a happy and prosperous 2014!
— Vernon Keenan, CEO of Telnexus
Highlights for Telnexus in 2013
- Opened for business with our Class 4 Softswitch in March.
- Opened our office on June 1st.
- Ending 2014 with over 10 employees.
- Transitioned from in-house PBX technology to a partnership with 2600hz for technology and marketing.
- Merged Berkeley Logic MSP into Telnexus operations while maintaining BL brand and keeping the customers happy.
- Our new back office is working and we have a go-to-market IT strategy with Salesforce.com.
- Fax solution in hand and working
- Contracted with Tax and Regulatory Compliance services firm; made a commitment to become a CLEC in 2014.
- Registered the TELNEXUS trademark with the USPTO.
Highlights for Telecom and IT in 2013
- NSA surveillance puts a lot of question marks over cloud computing and how that impacts the services that US-based companies deliver to international customers.
- Handsets grew in size, and tablets shrunk. iPad Mini was a surprise hit. iOS 7 refreshes the iPhone and gives it more life.
- Wearables fail in their first incarnations as extensions to smartphones. Google Glass still perceived as a technorati accessory.
- VoIP is in demand, but service is not good and prices are stable; the $30 Cloud PBX seat price is holding.
- Windows RT failed, but Windows 8 does deliver a touch interface for Windows users. Jury is still out whether the hybrid designs will sell.
- Business VoIP is mainstream, and the RingCentral IPO shows that investors are interested. With only 11% market penetration, there is plenty of room to grow.
- Lots of research efforts on remote and rural Internet access, including Carlson Wireless, Google Loon and Telnexus Zepnet.
- Cloud Computing has made its mark, and it is now questionable whether a midsized enterprise needs onsite servers anymore.
Predictions for IT and Telecom 2014
- The mobile handset industry will downshift into maintenance mode as vendors see users shift from Android back to iOS because their handset got obsoleted or was preloaded with too much junk by Samsung. Users don’t want features, they want simple functionality.
- Various OTT (over the top) applications will continue to make cable companies and wireless companies envious, especially Google Hangouts, Skype and Telnexus-type telephony applications. Big telcos will continue to acquire smaller cloud-based service providers to add OTT services.
- Driverless cars will debut, with pricing and availability announced. Driverless busses will make an appearance. Commercial aerial drones will also be shipping by the end of 2014.
- Bitcoins will gain footing as a viable currency, and dozens of additional cryptocurrency platforms will proliferate. More US banks will accept and process cryptocurrencies.
- Personal device consolidation will continue, allowing some consumers to not need the laptop or desktop at home.
- Net neutrality as a political movement will die off because the big OTT content providers will pay, putting smaller content providers into a digital ghetto.
- Personal assistant services will become more intelligent and comprehensive. Google Now and Apple Siri will expand and do more proactive searching and information retrieval based on behind-the-scenes information collation.
- Several Big Data trends will continue, including M2M (machine to machine) communication, sensor data collection, new forms of malware protection for all those sensors, and Big Data techniques to analyze all that data. Some of the sectors in sensors and big data:
- Home monitoring and automation
- Health and athletic performance monitoring
- Traffic and weather predictions will be improved
- U.S. tech companies will go to war in the courts with the U.S. security agencies because of the international blowback on the NSA snooping and data collection.
- Windows 8 won’t self-destruct, but Apple and Google will continue to encroach on Redmond’s dominance, especially in the home. Microsoft will listen more to users and continue to back off of the strategy of having IT force the Modern UI (aka Metro) upon enterprise users.
- Microsoft won’t be in business trouble because they will continue to sell A LOT of Office 365 licenses, Azure will be a hit, and their Enterprise business will continue to thrive.
- Software Defined Networking (SDN) will start delivering services to the SME segment through the use of fiber-based Metro Area Networks. This will give well-positioned MSPs the ability to dramatically lower costs.
- By 2015 some ITSPs will develop true cloud-based PBX technology that will enable them to offer $7.50 per user per month pricing.
