This morning I moderated a panel titled "Beyond Boxes: The Future of the PBX." My panelists were Dan York from Voxeo and Chris Thompson from Adtran. It was a great session. We actually ran out of time. One hour was not enough. The panelists were very interactive and made it a breeze to moderate.
First meeting was Standing Room Only.
The discussion centered around Hosted PBX (AKA Voice in the Cloud) vs. On-Premise PBX. Adtran manufacturers on-premise PBXs and was leaning that direction. Voxeo and Junction Networks with our OnSIP Hosted PBX were leaning toward Voice-in-the-cloud services. Both sides, however, admitted that there were times where one type of PBX rose above the other and even times when a hybrid solution was best.
The second session was called "What's in a Number The Future of Dialing and Identifiers in the Mobile Universe." Panelists included Rod Ullens de Schooten co-founder and CEO of Voxbone and Joel Fisher, VP of Marketing for Telcordia.
Second session grew to nearly full by the end. It started at about 3/4 full, but grew over the hour.
Personally, I would like nothing better than for phone numbers to disappear all together. If a phone number I want to dial is not on speed dial, I'm not calling it. There are just too many numbers. SIP addresses. That's the way to go. My wife's company recently started using Junction Networks. I no longer had to have her main number on speed dial and then dial her extension. Now, she had a SIP address. I type in her address and I'm calling directly phone to phone. I love it.
The consensus of the panel, however, was that phone numbers will be around for quite some time. 20+ years seemed to be the general thought. I've been hoping for the last five years that faxing would die a quick death, but no such luck. The same appears to be true for phone numbers. Junction Networks, however, will keep doing as much as we can to promote SIP addresses and SIP interoperability.
So far the show is doing well. The show floor just opened, so I'm back to work.