Our community is noticing a growing trend.  A user’s ability to interact through the most convenient device interface, whether the interface is on a laptop computer, smartphone or tablet, in our view determines the success of a communications service.  At BroadSoft, we are dedicated to ensuring our service provider customers take to market a ubi...

Consumers have readily adopted hosted applications for unified communication.  We believe a mobile application marketplace is no longer considered a fad, but a must-have platform for providing marketing and services to, not only “on-the-go” individuals, but the majority of consumers[1].  Moving forward from Web 2.0, we believe enterprises have...

At the opening of BroadSoft Connections 2010, I laid out three challenges for our service provider partners.    I’d like to reflect on one of these today – my challenge to share success stories and go-to-market (GTM) best practices.

Our industry continues to move rapidly toward hosted and cloud services; we have watched UC implementation rates...

The days of questioning the availability, security and even the quality of VoIP (and all IP-based communication services) are over.  With the ubiquity of broadband connectivity and the proliferation of IP-powered devices, access to services from “the cloud” is now a part of our daily lives.  Whether viewing your finances in an online banking app (because after all isn’t logging into an account online accessing a “cloud” somewhere) or managing your critical customer information through a hosted CRM solution, we all have come to rely on “cloud” based services.

We have over 425 telecommunications service providers world-wide managing communication clouds to deliver IP-based services to their business and consumers customers, ensuring the immediate availability of every possible communication option …texting, IM, voice, video, web collaboration,  the options go on and on.  Our telecom service provider customers are also empowering their customers by allowing individuals and professionals to personalize their communication services and manage all of their communication devices from a single, web-based account.

But what is still an area of focus is the “readiness” of a SMB’s network for IP-based communications services.  Gartner predicted over 50% of SMBs are not ready for a VoIP deployment.  In need of a network assessment for a successful deployment, 60% of SMBs experienced monthly disruptions in their voice-data networks as reported by the Computing Technology Industry Association (read the PacketSmart whitepaper for full details).  With such a heavy reliance on “the cloud”, ensuring any network, whether an enterprise LAN or a consumer home network, is configured to optimize IP connections for a superior communication experience is essential to our customers.

As many of you know, BroadSoft purchased PacketSmart, a deep-packet assessment and monitoring service, in late 2010.  Our customers have quickly recognized the value in BroadSoft PacketSmart as the solution has continued to ensure the end-user experience is never sub-par and paired with the highest-quality service.   Don’t take our word for it.  Hear for yourself:

• Industry analyst details the value of BroadSoft PacketSmart as an essential QoS UC tool (No Jitter): http://bit.ly/dwTHXz

“PacketSmart has proved itself as invaluable tool in isolating issues, and to ensuring we are providing the best quality of service possible.”

-          Steve Francesco, CEO Chairman and President, Cohere Communications

“PacketSmart enables us to easily perform remote analysis of a customer network to determine if the network is ready for applications such as VoIP and maintain optimum performance post-deployment.   Since it is an affordable, hosted solution, PacketSmart eliminates the need to purchase and manage expensive network monitoring software and allows us to provide these network performance services much more cost effectively than other solutions.”

-          Bill Tomlinson, IT Solutions Director, Stewart and Associates.

“PacketSmart allows us to make certain that the customer network is truly IP ready prior to implementation, both voice and increasingly video.  This saves us not only time but more importantly ensures that everything is 100% optimized in the eyes of the customer.  IPFone is dedicated to delivering the most advanced IP services with the highest level of service quality. Utilizing PacketSmart is another important way that we differentiate ourselves from our competitors.”

-          Jonathan Lieberman, President/CEO, IPFone

“Packet Island’s technology has given us line of sight into areas of the customer’s own network that was virtually impossible to monitor previously, and at a price point that made the decision to partner with Packet Island easy. ENA prides itself on world class customer service, and Packet Island is a key component in that support strategy”

-          Simon Weller, Director of Product Design, ENA

“One of the biggest challenges in delivering VoIP products to the SMB market is ensuring the call quality.  Since businesses rely on their phone service for day-to-day operation, customers will not tolerate poor quality, dropped calls or even service outages.  The best management of quality is to identify problems before they have an impact and if the quality is compromised, quick diagnosis and resolution.  Packet Island provides the solution to this with their monitoring device backed by a very responsive and knowledgeable team.  The solution allows for rapid identification and possible remedies without the need to devote resources and time. ”

-          Pete Llewelyn, CTO, Vinculum Communications

Read for more about BroadSoft PacketSmart.

Authors: Shirish Andhare

There Is No Better Time to be a Developer!

 Everywhere you look, the barriers to revenue for developers are dropping.  Free developer sites, free tools, eCommerce ecosystems and willing, yet discriminating, end-users abound. This dramatic change has been brought about by three major drivers:  

1. Mobility and the new App economy...

Authors: Alex Doyle

I’d like to introduce BroadSoft Xcelerate, a program developed by BroadSoft to help our service provider customers increase the adoption rate for their hosted communication services.

I think BroadSoft has earned a reputation – a reputation we’re proud of – for having the best technology and product in our industry.  Certainly a tr...

Authors: Leslie Ferry

A modern day Thomas Edison.  The Jack Welch of the telecommunications industry.  If you have not yet heard of Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi, his biography does not make for light reading (http://bit.ly/gAFnmn).  Well known for his revolutionary role with AT&T as President of Bell Laboratories, CIO and CTO until 2006, Business ...

Authors: Michael Tessler

If you did not know already, I am very excited to share that last Wednesday, June 16, 2010, BroadSoft became a public company with the completion of our IPO.  Our stock is trading under the symbol BSFT on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Since founding BroadSoft, Scott Hoffpauir and I have always been so proud of

Last week Mike Dolan of FierceVoIP wrote a fantastic editorial about the state of the industry and where we’re – or rather, where our industry should be right now. It was so good in fact I decided to write a post about it.

Reflecting on Fierce’s recent IT Expo post, Mike wrote about how the move to 4G will be the inflection point that brings VoIP and broadband to mobile and enabling video calls on the move  – now THAT would be revolutionary. The constricted 3G pipe, due primarily to continued problems with legacy T-1 lines providing backhaul to towers, is holding back exciting innovations in mobile communications. When 4G finally arrives in the form of LTE, every mobile voice call will become a VoIP call.  BroadSoft supports the One Voice consortium that will enable the migration of voice to 4G.

On the wired side, we were excited to see SIP Trunking called out as a critical catalyst for really cool stuff reaching mass adoption. SIP Trunking allows for IP conversion and the delivery of innovative communications services, not available with a PBX.   But, we believe if a carrier uses trunking only to replace switched voice with VoIP connectivity, they will see their revenues erode.  The big upside is using trunking to deliver new communications services in demand by the enterprise market. There are several market trends driving this move by enterprises. Over the next five years, it is believed:

• Enterprise workforces will become increasingly mobile

• Video calling will be widely adopted

• High-definition voice will be the new standard for voice communications

• PBXs will migrate to hosted unified communications

• Enterprises will continue demanding comprehensive business continuity capabilities

Finally, Mike notes that once our industry does migrate to the all-IP networks of the future, suddenly “best effort” isn’t a good enough effort at all, not by a long shot. What has also hindered innovation is the need to ensure the utmost reliability for these advanced services. That’s where BroadSoft’s PacketSmart line of business comes in. PacketSmart allows service providers to remotely manage the end-to-end delivery of VoIP-powered services. To go even a step farther, BroadSoft is working with customer premises equipment (CPE) manufacturers to embed VoIP management agents into devices designed for the SOHO and SMB markets.

So we’re excited to help move our industry through this next revolution of innovation.

How many of you are tired of hearing about the fact that Washington, DC and its surrounding suburbs are experiencing Snowpocalypse, Snowmageddon, or whatever catchy name you want to use to describe the 30 inches of snow that fell within 24 hours and then another 8 inches 3 days later in our area?  Well, let me personally say you are no more tired of hearing about it than those of us at BroadSoft’s corporate headquarters are of living through it.

But our snowstorm of the century is no reason to stop commerce.  Those of us in corporate America have projects to complete, goals to accomplish and performance metrics to hit…..so even though most of us are snowed in, we are certainly not bored and looking for something to do.  As a matter-of-fact, I have been extremely productive the last 4 business days working from home.  I’ve gained an hour, and sometimes 2 depending on DC traffic, by not needing, or not being able, to commute to work each day.

Here is how a BroadSoft employee (me) has spent the last 4 business days…..and how I have leveraged our hosted communications solutions in order to keep moving our business forward (audience for that statement, my boss).

A couple of my days started at 7:00 am Eastern time, on conference calls with our European PR firm.  Okay, on the surface, that is not overly interesting, but when I say I was on a video conference call using my Bria for BroadWorks softphone, then interest is piqued.  It is not unusual for me to have video calls with my counterparts and partners at agencies around the world, but I typically use my Polycom VVX desk phone.  This week, I have used my softphone, and each call has been equally as productive as if I had been in the office.

And thanks to BroadWorks Anywhere, I have not missed a call, even though my email signature and business card do not list my cell phone number. I simply set my home phone as the primary way to reach me through our BroadWorks web-based portal, and all my calls have found me.     All my outbound calls show my BroadSoft office Calling Line ID, so my “office” has been extended to my home phone and my mobile phone.

Today was particularly great.   Each quarter, our sales executives provide an update on their accounts, so the entire organization is aware of how we can contribute to ensuring our customers are satisfied.  Our North American quarterly review was scheduled for today.  Even though no one was in the office, because it was officially closed, we all attended the meeting, remotely, and leveraged our Unified Communication services.  Many of us joined via video, we all used our collaboration tools to share documents online, and like any business person these days, most of us were multi-tasking, sending IM messages to get other work done.

So, we in the DC area are persevering and pushing on, but even with these great IP-based communication options, many BroadSoft faithful are actually looking forward to when we will be able to dig ourselves out and drive to the office, after so many days with the kids….

And for our service provider customers, we now have 110 personal case studies we can share on how hosted communications solutions are priceless to ensuring business continuity…..

Checkout our other real-life example by clicking here.