Blogs

— by Rick Koenders, VP of Business Development and Marketing, bluArc Communications

Many years ago, while employed by an international phone system manufacturer, I attended a quarterly company pep rally where our CEO exhorted: “The wave is here.” He was referring to the new wave in wireline telecommunications—the wave of IP based phone systems.

When I was first asked to write a blog about what goes on behind the scenes in the Operations area of bluArc, my first thought was "who'd want to know?" followed shortly thereafter by "do we really want our customers to know?" :-). When I think about the relationships that we've developed with the vast majority of our customers over the years, it doesn't take long to get comfortable with the idea of sharing with you some of the challenges and triumphs that take place "under the hood".

Many years ago at a Press technology Trade Show I was asked about what the future prospects were for VoIP as a technology to replace the TDM technology of the time. My response was that ‘it was a slam dunk.’ By this, I meant that there was no doubt that the Internet Protocol would eventually overtake and then replace TDM as the primary protocol connecting phones to our office phone systems, the PBX, within the customers’ premise. There is much evidence that this technology replacement has indeed occurred. In fact, the vast majority of vendors of traditional office phone technology now use Internet Protocol as the primary protocol for connecting phones to their PBX’s. So while my brief stint as a technology prognosticator was successful, what I didn’t anticipate was the explosive growth of technologies like bluArc’s – a hosted service that connects phones through Internet Protocol both internal and external to the customers’ premise. But that’s the problem with trying to predict the future – you typically get just part of it right.