Skype & LifeSize

If you were at CES, you might have seen:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/111110-skype-lifesize.html

This, of course, is very interesting as Skype and other like it could totally commoditize  address-book services and call control.  Honestly, its not that much of a loss to manufacturers and its a gigantic gain for not only customers, but also the whole industry.  While...Polycom might sell less CMA or Tandberg less VCS, in the long run they will both sell more endpoints as getting a endpoint hooked up and dialing someone will help considerably with wider spread adoption.   Something the industry should have pushed 6-7 years ago.

Notes of interest

James Altucher (not familiar with who he is) predicts that Dell could Polycom:


http://www.benzinga.com/general/80962/a-peek-into-the-takeover-market-in-2010-msft-goog-bbbb-orcl-vrsn-aol-java-dell-plcm

OMG....If Dell is smart...they wont go near this one.  Lifesize would have made sense..but not PLCM.  From an operational standpoint, I have to believe that would be an ugly merger.

But...one interesting tidbit I saw today was:

http://phoenix.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=112660&p=irol-SECText&TEXT=aHR0cDovL2NjYm4uMTBrd2l6YXJkLmNvbS94bWwvZmlsaW5nLnhtbD9yZXBvPXRlbmsmaXBhZ2U9NjY4OTE0NSZhdHRhY2g9T04mc1hCUkw9MQ%3d%3d

If you want to skip the read, it says that Blackrock now owns 14+% of the outstanding shares of Polycom.
So, what does that mean?  Does that mean that Blackrock is think of a PE deal to take PLCM private and then do something with them?  Or, are they just hedging their bets that they believe PLCM will be bought by someone and they'll make a big pay day?  Or?

Interesting...

Skype announced 720P support & my predictions for the decade

If you didnt see it already, Skype is now support HD in their latest beta code, supporting 720P resolution:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39967077,00.htm


This is not surprising.  With the advent of lots of cheap horsepower in x86 chipsets, why would one need a DSP based system...much less a single purpose codec.

So..here's my simple prediction for 2010...  this will be the decade of video conferencing switching off of single purpose DSP driven codec designs.  This seems like a turn of events...i.e.  at the start of the last decade Picturetel moved to Windows based systems...and then by 2004, PLCM was abandoning the iPower windows based systems in favor the VSX line.  But... now that x86 has lots of power, software has gotten a lot better, and most people expect lots of functionality..you just cant go with a single purpose system.

So...long with that... I also predict that a ton of cloud based services will come out for conferencing.  Why should customers buy and operate the infrastructure when they can have it sit in the cloud, saving them both bandwidth, capex, and opex.

Wow...really deep predictions I know ;-)   .. but they do have serious consequences for hardware mfgs like PLCM and TAA.

Bold changes going on at PLCM

Today started out with several people returning happy from the holiday break and finding a pink slip on their desk.  I only have preliminary info so far, but for certain many in video product marketing were let go.

And in a bold move..or maybe a strange move...or lets just call it unexpected... marketing is now under Andy Miller. While I get the logic... i.e. sales needs full control over marketing in this very heated battle going on against Tandberg...  if you look at most companies, its not typical for marketing to be under sales unless you're at a less than $100M company.  So be it... its their strategy and hopefully they dont get distracted by it... if you know what I mean.

My condolences to those laid off.  BTW... I do run a LinkedIn group called "Polycom Alumni"...if you're a past employee, please join our group!

Google vs Apple

Happy New Year!

I know this is off topic..but it struck me as weird when I saw the following google logo this morning:

If you go there today and watch..the logo is animated and an apple falls off the branch down to the bottom of the screen.

So..do you suppose this is a funny little jab that the apple is going to fall from the tree.  I.e.  Google is going to upsurp Apple in the mobile phone business?  I'm also guessing that since Apple is long waited to release a tablet style device that maybe Google is going to upstage them by releasing one too.  Heck...its quite obvious that with Chromium OS that Google is going to go directly after Apple by releasing very simple, very fast, very cheap, very full function devices that are dependent on the cloud.

Should be interesting to watch this playout.