Isn’t this intriguing… Hosted/cloud contact center provider Telax made an announcement about the release of an HTML5-based agent desktop software, Call Center Agent (CCA), with an emphasis on its ability to run on Apple Macs.

Of course, if it’s HTML5 then it can really run on any modern browser, including those found on mobile devices based on Google Android and Apple iOS. According to the press release, the technology behind CCA is Websocket which provides bidirectional full-duplex communications over one single socket. Users can enjoy this technological wonder on the latest browsers such as Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.

Has anyone seen this in action?

Traditionally, contact centers (and enterprises in general) have shun Macs because of unfamiliarity and cost, but recently IT has been more receptive to Macs, especially now that they’re all Intel-based and can run Windows natively or virtualized. The popularity of Web-based enterprise apps also makes moot the argument about operating systems.

Have a look at the press release:

Telax Hosted Call Center, a leader in cloud contact center solutions, announced the release of its HTML5-based Call Center Agent (CCA) today.  Key to the development of the browser-based CCA was Websocket, a component of HTML5 that provides a bi-directional, full-duplex communication channel over a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket. Websocket is currently supported by the latest versions of Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Firefox, making Telax’s new CCA compatible with the most popular browsers in Mac environments.

“We’re pleased that Mac infrastructures are growing so strongly in business environments. It allows us to develop contact center tools that have capabilities beyond what they’ve traditionally had,” said Vladimir Pereira chief architect at Telax. “The adoption of Websocket by most major browsers is a huge step towards scalable real-time web applications. Our ultimate goal is to provide reliable and scalable solutions that are both easy to use and easy to deploy. This one is as easy as pointing a Mac browser to a url.”

Before HTML5, real-time unified communication software was better served as a client because its browser-based counterparts were unable to deliver an acceptable user experience. Some browser-based clients use 3^rd party software such as Adobe Flash or Sliverlight to operate adequately, but both solutions require software installation and are not mobile friendly.

Telax Hosted Call Center for Mac OS contact centers is the first web-based application that allows contact center agents to work from any location without needing to install software or suffer with an application that provides only partial functionality and unstable connectivity. This advancement in contact center software gives IT staff in Mac environments the opportunity to concentrate core competencies while significantly improving the customer experience.

About Telax Hosted Call Center:

Telax Hosted Call Center is North America’s leader in hosted call center solutions. Based in Toronto, Canada, Telax has been providing cloud-based business solutions to prominent public and private sector organizations since 1999. The simplicity delivered by Telax services enables clients like Best Buy, Northrop Grumman, Johnson & Johnson, CI Investments, the Globalive Group of Companies, Health Canada and the GSA, to reduce costs and improve efficiency, so that they can do more with their most critical resource: people. For more information, visit http://www.telax.com. For the latest Telax news, visit http://www.telax.com/category/news

WARNING: Minor adult language contained in this post. If you are easily offended by vulgar slang then you may not have worked in the industry long enough… Look away now and hope for a better post in the next few days. My apologies.

It’s no surprise that I’m a Google fan. I log into Gmail daily, use Google Voice extensively, and actually dislike having to log into Facebook and Twitter separately to attain social media nirvana. Why didn’t Google buy Facebook and/or Twitter years back when these companies didn’t have astronomical valuations? Talk about having to deal with multichannel interactions…

Then Google throws in Google+ into the mix! Lovely, now it’s three social media outlets I have to spend time with. While most folks are still cautiously navigating the Streams, Circles, Huddles, and Hangouts, some brave adopters are already championing Google+ as the next frontier in customer service channels.

CEO Michael Dell (okay, should I link to Twitter or Google+?) pondered on July 17:

I am thinking about hangouts for business. Would you like to be able to connect with your Dell service and sale teams via video directly from Dell.com?

BOOM! Nearly 400 comments, +712, and 180 shares later, Mr. Dell lit up the blogosphere and got on customer service gurus’ radars. Most followers had positive feedback about the idea, and for a couple of days Mr. Dell was seen as the Customer Service Pioneer.

But I urge executives such as Dell to slow down. Not every new social media channel should be considered for business immediately. In the case of Google+:

• It’s so new. There will be bugs. There will be privacy concerns. Have your service and sale teams figured it out already?
• According to Google, company accounts or team accounts are not yet available on Google+ although many have already created an account and started interacting as a business. In fact, Google is shutting down these “non-user entities” on its social network.
• For paid Google Apps subscribers, unfortunately Google+ isn’t available yet. It’s in the works, of course, but Google will definitely take its time in rolling this out to Apps customers. Google takes no chances with paid customers.
• Hangouts multi-party videoconference has value in collaboration and even sales meetings, but customer service? Remember the sensational Chatroulette? Too many dicks ruined it (literally), but we all know it only takes one dick to send a video meeting into a tailspin.
• Google has not published an API to suck data out of Google+. No API means no consistent method of third-party access. In turn this means the thousands of dollars you’d invested in social media monitoring tools won’t be able to pluck anything from Google+.

If your company still operates contact centers, just try to make them better. Believe me, you will find room for improvements. As I’ve written before, social media can become a distraction from keeping the fundamentals in check.

For now, Google+ has the cool “shiny toy” factor. Oh, and it’s already full of dicks. Execs beware!

On Tuesday the tech blogosphere had leak after leak about Google+ (“Google Plus” not “Google Add”), Big G’s offense against Facebook’s social media domination. Google has no qualms picking fights against other giants and has already entrenched in several fronts: enterprise apps (vs. Microsoft), mobile OS (vs. Apple), and communications (vs. mobile carriers).

Now it’s ready to take on Facebook. Although Google+ is not yet generally available to the masses, the lucky few (e.g. prominent journalists, bloggers, techies, etc.) that’s had the chance to take a sneak peek seemed to like it. Google, of course, is well aware of its past Wave launch blunder, and the company is definitely taking a more cautious path with Plus.

I think Google realizes that Plus will be a “now or never” project to compete with Facebook. If Plus fails to gain traction, Google might as well wave the white flag in the Great Social Media War.

But Google has some advantages: 1) It learned from the Wave lesson; 2) It has had time to learn from its competition, namely Facebook; 3) It has complete control over the user experience; and 4) It already has several enterprise customers.

Google+’s cool factor may or may not wow the typical user, but what about rolling it into the enterprise along with other Google services, specifically applied in unified communications?

Contact management, enhanced? Check (Google+ Circles feature).

Email management? Check (Gmail).

Document management? Check (Google Docs).

Voice (over IP) communications? Check (Google Voice).

Instant messenging? Check (Gtalk).

Videoconferencing, even with a group? Check (Google+ Hangouts feature).

Mobile chat? Check (Google+ Huddle feature).

Better yet, all of these products from Google are free or cost significantly less than getting your own servers.

Facebook may feel threatened by Google Plus, but what about all these UC vendors, especially those that are going after the burgeoning SMB market?

A few days ago Reuters reported that Facebook and Google are fighting to either buyout Skype or form some sort of joint venture with the ubiquitous VOIP company. In August 2010 Skype filed the papers to go public, but has since postponed the IPO until the second half of this year.

It seems that the longer Skype waits to IPO, the more momentum diminishes. Would FaceSkype or Google Skype even make sense?

To me it looks a bit far fetched. Neither of these Internet giants need Skype. Facebook and Google are the two largest Web companies on Earth, and both companies already offer voice (even video) capabilities. Facebook’s focus has always been turning itself into a platform, and has been fairly successful at that. Several third-party VOIP and videoconference apps currently exist on Facebook, and Facebook is just fine by that. How would developers of these VOIP/videoconference apps react if Skype is baked into Facebook? Facebook just wants people to come on the site for everything. It wants to be the Interweb, the place where those voice and video bits pass through. And all that personal data…

Google’s all about its search and online advertising. It has acquired a few communications-related companies in the past, notably GrandCentral and Gizmo, to in turn offer Google Voice to the masses. Furthermore, Google’s latest bedfellow is actually a traditional cell phone company, Sprint, in a deal to offer GV number portability to Sprint subscribers. But ultimately, Google is looking to flood the market with its free services to keep competitors at bay while increasing advertising channels and being able to reach out to greater numbers. While Skype is rushing to appear on smartphones everywhere, Google is aiming for deals with cell phone providers so that even “dumb phone” owners can enjoy Google Voice, just like an Android owner.

Nobody really agrees on Skype’s valuation. EBay bought it for $2.6 billion (but later had written it down for $1.7 billion), then sold off for a valuation of $2.75 billion. Analysts offer valuations between $750 million to $1 billion in the low end, and some speculate as high as $3 billion. Maybe this leak is a ploy to drum up some more excitement about Skype?

Old telecom companies never die, they just end up as part of Web companies’ patent trust. After all, the distinction between telecom and web are fading fast…

Google is willing to shell out $900 million for about 6,000 patents covering all sorts of communications technologies. Why is this relatively young company interested in Nortel patents? Some may even liken it to Google digging up fossils (after all, Nortel is a dinosaur compared to Big G).

In short, Google is fed up with being sued, especially by patent trolls:

The tech world has recently seen an explosion in patent litigation, often involving low-quality software patents, which threatens to stifle innovation. Some of these lawsuits have been filed by people or companies that have never actually created anything; others are motivated by a desire to block competing products or profit from the success of a rival’s new technology. The patent system should reward those who create the most useful innovations for society, not those who stake bogus claims or file dubious lawsuits. It’s for these reasons that Google has long argued in favor of real patent reform, which we believe will benefit users and the U.S. economy as a whole.

This widens Google’s defense against its competitors as well as “dubious lawsuits.” Should Google indeed end up owning these Nortel patents, the company may even go on the offensive. Who would’ve ever thought that a Web giant like Google (incorporated in 1998) could potentially file a patent infringement suit against, say, AT&T (founded 1885)…

The patent acquisition also happened on co-founder Larry Page’s first day as Google CEO, replacing Eric Schmidt. Quite a tactical move for the first day on a job. Page means business, and he is definitely not afraid to spend money or pick up valuable scrap from the industry heap.

The official word from Nortel (lots of fine print):

April 4, 2011

• Enters into Stalking Horse Sale Agreement with Google Inc. for US$900 million in cash
• Planned sale includes approximately 6,000 patents and patent applications covering a broad range of wired, wireless and digital communication technologies
• Subject to Canadian and U.S. court approvals, auction expected in June 2011

TORONTO – Nortel Networks Corporation announced that it, its principal operating subsidiary Nortel Networks Limited (NNL) and certain of its other subsidiaries, including Nortel Networks Inc. and Nortel Networks UK Limited (in administration), have entered into a stalking horse asset sale agreement with Google Inc. for the sale of all of Nortelfs remaining patents and patent applications for a cash purchase price of US$900 million.

The agreement includes the planned sale of approximately 6,000 patents and patent applications spanning wireless, wireless 4G, data networking, optical, voice, internet, service provider, semiconductors and other patent portfolios. The extensive patent portfolio touches nearly every aspect of telecommunications and additional markets as well, including Internet search and social networking.

This agreement follows a confidential, multi-round bidding process involving several interested companies and consortia from around the world.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity to acquire one of the most extensive and compelling patent portfolios to ever come on the market”, said George Riedel, Chief Strategy Officer and President of Business Units, Nortel. “We look forward to what we hope will be a robust auction, following the requisite court approvals, currently expected to be held in June 2011″.

Details of Sale Process

Nortel will file the stalking horse asset sale agreement with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware along with a motion seeking the establishment of bidding procedures for an auction that allows other qualified bidders to submit higher or otherwise better offers, as required under Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. A similar motion for the approval of the bidding procedures will be filed with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. Following completion of the bidding process, final approval of the U.S. and Canadian courts will be required.

In addition to the processes and approvals outlined above, consummation of the transaction is subject to the satisfaction of regulatory and other customary conditions.

****************

As previously announced, Nortel does not expect that the Company’s common shareholders or the NNL preferred shareholders will receive any value from the creditor protection proceedings and expects that the proceedings will result in the cancellation of these equity interests.

About Nortel
For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com . For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news .

Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as “could”, “expects”, “may”, “should”, “will”, “anticipates”, “believes”, “intends”, “estimates”, “targets”, “plans”, “envisions”, “seeks” and other similar language and are considered forward-looking statements or information under applicable securities laws. These statements are based on Nortel’s current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important assumptions, risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict, and the actual outcome may be materially different. Nortel’s assumptions, although considered reasonable by Nortel at the date of this press release, may prove to be inaccurate and consequently Nortel’s actual results could differ materially from the expectations set out herein.

Actual results or events could differ materially from those contemplated in forward-looking statements as a result of the following: (i) risks and uncertainties relating to the Creditor Protection Proceedings including: (a) risks associated with Nortel’s ability to: stabilize the business and maximize the value of Nortel’s businesses; obtain required approvals and successfully consummate pending and future divestitures; ability to satisfy transition services agreement obligations in connection with divestiture of operations; successfully conclude ongoing discussions for the sale of Nortel’s other assets or businesses; develop, obtain required approvals for, and implement a court approved plan; allocation of the sale proceeds of our businesses among the various Nortel entities participating in these sales may take considerable time to resolve ongoing issues with creditors and other third parties whose interests may differ from Nortel’s; generate cash from operations and maintain adequate cash on hand in each of its jurisdictions to fund operations within the jurisdiction during the Creditor Protection Proceedings; continue to have cash management arrangements and obtain any further required approvals from the Canadian Monitor, the U.K. Administrators, the U.S. Principal Officer, the U.S. Creditors’ Committee, or other third parties; raise capital to satisfy claims, including Nortel’s ability to sell assets to satisfy claims against Nortel; realize full or fair value for any assets or business that are divested; utilize net operating loss carryforwards and certain other tax attributes in the future; avoid the substantive consolidation of NNI’s assets and liabilities with those of one or more other U.S. Debtors; operate Nortel’s business effectively under the new organizational structure, and in consultation with the Canadian Monitor, and the U.S. Creditors’ Committee and work effectively with the U.K. Administrators, French Administrator and Israeli Administrators in their respective administration of the EMEA businesses subject to the Creditor Protection Proceedings; continue as a going concern; actively and adequately communicate on and respond to events, media and rumors associated with the Creditor Protection Proceedings that could adversely affect Nortel’s relationships with customers, suppliers, partners and employees; retain and incentivize key employees as may be needed; retain, or if necessary, replace major suppliers on acceptable terms and avoid disruptions in Nortel’s supply chain regarding our remaining businesses and stranded contracts; obtain court orders or approvals with respect to motions filed from time to time; resolve claims made against Nortel in connection with the Creditor Protection Proceedings for amounts not exceeding Nortel’s recorded liabilities subject to compromise; prevent third parties from obtaining court orders or approvals that are contrary to Nortel’s interests; and (b) risks and uncertainties associated with: limitations on actions against any Debtor during the Creditor Protection Proceedings; the values, if any, that will be prescribed pursuant to any court approved plan to outstanding Nortel securities and, in particular, that Nortel does not expect that any value will be prescribed to the NNC common shares or the NNL preferred shares in any such plan; the delisting of NNC common shares from the NYSE; and the delisting of NNC common shares and NNL preferred shares from the TSX; and (ii) risks and uncertainties relating to Nortel’s business including fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; any requirement to make larger contributions to defined benefit plans in the future; a high level of debt, arduous or restrictive terms and conditions related to accessing certain sources of funding; the sufficiency of workforce and cost reduction initiatives; a failure to protect Nortel’s intellectual property rights; any adverse legal judgments, fines, penalties or settlements related to any significant pending or future litigation actions; failure to maintain integrity of Nortel’s information systems;; and Nortel’s potential inability to maintain an effective risk management strategy.

For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel’s Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

For the Companies listed below, The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales authorises A R Bloom, S Harris and C Hill to act as Insolvency Practitioners in the UK under section 390(2)(a) of the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountantsauthorises A M Hudson to act as an Insolvency Practitioner in the UK under section 390(2)(a) of the Insolvency Act 1986.

The affairs, business and property of the Companies are being managed by the Joint Administrators, A R Bloom, S Harris, AM Hudson and C Hill who act as agents of the Companies only and without personal liability.

The affairs, business and property of Nortel Networks ( Ireland ) Limited are being managed by the Joint Administrators, A R Bloom and D Hughes, who act as agents of Nortel Networks ( Ireland ) Limited only and without personal liability.

The Companies are Nortel Networks UK Limited; Nortel Networks SA; Nortel GmbH; Nortel Networks France SAS; Nortel Networks NV; Nortel Networks SpA; Nortel Networks BV; Nortel Networks Polska SP Zoo; Nortel Networks Hispania SA; Nortel Networks (Austria) GmbH; Nortel Networks sro; Nortel Networks Engineering Service Kft; Nortel Networks Portugal SA; Nortel Networks Slovensko sro; Nortel Networks Oy; Nortel Networks Romania SRL; Nortel Networks AB; Nortel Networks International Finance & Holding BV

In addition on 28 May 2009, secondary proceedings were opened in relation to Nortel Networks SA pursuant to which the French Court authorized Nortel Networks SA to continue to operate the business owned and operated by Nortel Networks SA and appointed inter alia the French Office Holders as the administrators and liquidators of NNSA who act as agents of Nortel Networks SA and without personal liability.
*Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.

Contacts for Press and Analysts:

For more information:

Media Relations

MediaRelations@nortel.com

 

Additional Media & Analyst Contacts

 

Of course, if you’re a regular visitor of this blog, you’d know that this StartupCamp is unlike other startup camps. What I’m referring to here is StartupCamp Comms Edition, an event held alongside ITEXPO East in Miami. StartupCamp 3 welcomes early-stage entrepreneurs specializing in communications. The event will take place on February 3, 2011, and this year features prominent Googlers as keynote speakers: Craig Walker of GrandCentral (since evolved as the much-loved Google Voice post acquisition) and Wesley Chan, the father of Google Analytics.

Let me repeat that: Two big guys from Google Ventures are going to be at StartupCamp 3 this year.

Yes, Google hasn’t been shy about its plans to invade the communications space. After all, the company acquired GrandCentral and Gizmo handily. It began offering video on Google Chat. It fused Google Voice with Gmail. (And most of us love it!)

But enough about the Big G. StartupCamp is all about the comm newbies. According to StartupCamp 3′s website, these companies have already applied to be presenters:

Zingaya

Zingaya lets you put a “Call” button on your webpage to let your visitors call you in one click right from their browser. For free. In 1 minute. It’s as easy as embedding a youtube movie into your webpage. Zingaya offers this seamless voice calling capability to website operators – whether it’s a huge e-commerce enterprise or your personal blog. With Zingaya company gets instant bidirectional audio communication channel between visitors and sales/support what increases sales  and improves customer support.

VideoMost

VideoMost is an HD quality, massively multi-point web video conferencing software-only product for licensing to Internet service providers (ISPs, cable and telco operators) and hosting and cloud providers, enabling them to launch video conferencing services under their own brands and compete with Skype, WebEx, Google, etc.

VideoMost delivers a complete, market-disruptive software-only, massively multi-point web-based video conferencing product immediately available for licensing and re-labeling to service providers.  Unlike other video conferencing solutions, VideoMost allows service providers to offer their customers HD quality, high-performance, secure and scalable multi-party video conferencing, document sharing, IM and collaboration.

Call Loop

Call Loop is the Constant Contact for voice and text. We provide a self-serving mobile marketing platform that gives virtually any business an automated way to create a multi-modality marketing campaign using voice, text, and email.

Call Loop integrates with your current email platform like Constant Contact, soon to be CRM systems like SalesForce, and ecommerce platforms like Shopify to easily and automatically synchronize your prospects and customers information to create automated voice and/or SMS text messaging in your marketing campaign.

Impact Dialing

Impact Dialing is the world’s best predictive dialer. If you’re not familiar with predictive dialing, callers dial into Impact Dialing, which then calls out to a list of phone numbers. By monitoring how many people actually pick up, we dial multiple lines to ensure that someone will answer almost every call. Additionally, we track the length of each conversation, so we can deliver a new call shortly after you hang up the previous one.

Large call centers use hardware predictive dialers to keep their callers busy, but smaller businesses and political campaigns often do cyclical work that can’t justify an expensive hardware-based system. Until Impact Dialing, hosted predictive dialers were difficult to use, required special software, and had expensive up-front fees and contracts. Our advantages allowed us to make over 600,000 phone calls for the 2010 political cycle – in less than 4 months after writing our first line of code.

Hoot.me

Hoot is a collaborative educational network designed to connect many learners and educators together, thereby bridging geographic, time, and connectivity gaps.  Built on Facebook’s application platform, Hoot creates a virtual study environment.  Hoot’s Facebook application enables users to place Facebook in study mode, which provides users access to an interactive medium of other users also in study mode.  In this environment, Hoot users can collaborate with other friends via screen swap, whiteboard technology, symbol chat, and video/voice conferencing.  Hoot is already the first to provide video conferencing on Facebook via the Open Tok API, which means Hoot is delivering unparalleled technologies on a platform already driven by students.

A marketplace will also soon be established to allow students to find tutors who are auctioning off their time.  The integrity and legitimacy of the marketplace will be upheld through crowed sourcing.  Overall, Hoot strives to place academia in the twenty-first century while encouraging scholastic integrity.

Zenofon

Proven scalable system for attracting and retaining customers to innovative telecom product.

We turned our customers into loyal sales people by generating continuous micro-payments to reward past, and stimulate future, customer referrals. Revenue comes from our international dial-around product, which is unique in the marketplace because of its ease of use and because it gives customers multiple price or quality options to route their call, which also gives us the ability to under-price our competitors.

Zenofon takes new customers by referral only. Allows customers to see graphically everyone they refer, and everyone those people refer.  Zenofon sends back small credits to customer accounts to motivate additional referrals.

Doddle

Doddle, a new internet telephone innovation, allows users to make VoIP calls anywhere in the world via Doddle’s web based Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone directly from their webpages. With Doddle’s free online phone service, no registration is required and VoIP is as easy as accessing a webpage. Users just begin using.

Doddle’s webphone improves channels between online visitors and sales and support teams by allowing online visitors to talk to a representative directly from their browser via the company’s website, making the distance between online visitors and contacting the company just a click away. Doddle also makes IVR menu navigation easier.

Regroup Therapy

Regroup therapy helps people tackle issues that limit their satisfaction and improve their quality of life through multiparty video support groups, mediated by licensed professionals. We are a brand new company that has received angel funding from one of the Deans of IE Business School in Madrid. Our pilot program will give support to Postpartum Depression women in 7 US States.

Mental Health patients suffering from a number of conditions often find themselves outside the reach of traditional, in-person mental health services for various reasons. Some are limited by the condition itself; others by their rural location or the fact that they cannot leave their new born babies to seek treatment. We are the first company in our space that aims to bring many therapists and patients together – which when brought to scale means a patient can enter sessions on a rolling basis instead of waiting. This is so important with mental health conditions.

That’s a pretty good list of startups and a great list of speakers! The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the area of communications, and what better time to have folks from Google Ventures being part of it.

The Consumer Electronics Show is soon to begin in Las Vegas, and the break-out product this year appears to be tablet devices. There has to be at least 100 new tablets being announced by the usual suspects (Dell, Acer, Samsung, etc.), but now even television-maker Vizio is entering this market with its VIA Tablet and VIA Smartphone. Most of these are based on Google’s Android, but there are others like HP’s WebOS-based PalmPad, a few Windows 7 tablets, and RIM’s PlayBook.

(Wait — RIM? At a consumer electronics show? Whatever happened to the “business” oriented device?)

The simple truth is, there hasn’t been an enterprise tablet market. When Avaya, Cisco, and RIM announced their tablet plans and showed off the fancy demos, they’re trying to ride the wave created by Apple with its iPad. They’re attempting to do in the enterprise market what Apple had done in the consumer market. Apple now enjoys tremendous first-mover advantage in the overall tablet market share, but the invading Android army is encroaching.

What’s likely to happen is that tablets from Avaya, Cisco, RIM, and maybe even HP, may end up as casualties in the crossfire between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Companies like Avaya, Cisco, and RIM make their profits on licenses, hardware, and professional services. The telephony servers and data routers are what sells in the enterprise. If they’re trying to sell an “enterprise tablet” priced at near or above $1,000 each, with all the bells and whistles, but partially or fully proprietary, then they better be ready to hear a lot of rejection. Because the iPad and competing Android tablets are gaining traction in the enterprise market already. There’s no stopping the flood of Android tablets at cheaper (consumer- and enterprise-friendly) prices.

Just look back at history as it’s often our best teacher. The automobile industry was once dominated by American automakers like Ford and GM. They’re the first movers. Then came the flood of cheaper, affordable Japanese imported cars. What happened to the American car companies?

Or the boom of the PC industry when Apple reigned supreme until IBM and its clone PCs flooded the market.

The only way to survive is to innovate like crazy, as Apple does, or flood the market, as Google does. Neither has been or can be achieved, in my opinion, by Avaya, Cisco, and RIM.

In essence, it’s not wise for Avaya, Cisco, and RIM to pick fights with Apple and Google. Lose the desire to make an “enterprise tablet” and focus on delivering enterprise apps on existing tablets.

For more coverage of CES 2011, visit my gadget blog at gagagadget or follow @gagagadget on Twitter.

We’ve all interacted with “them” before — speech-enabled machines to help us navigate IVR menus or take us to a customer service representative. You probably spoke to these machines ten years ago, saying the same words or phrases, to achieve the same results. And today you’re still repeating those words, doing the same things.

In other words, what has speech technology brought us?

Thanks to the miniaturization of processing components, speech recognition software now fits in the palm of your hand such as a mobile phone. Both Android and iOS platforms have some built-in speech capabilities, albeit not very refined. Then there are third-party applications such as Dragon Dictation (made by Nuance) and Siri (acquired by Apple) that complements the operating system’s speech capabilities.

There may be renewed interest in speech tech especially in the mobile consumer space. Recently Apple has been recruiting for speech application engineers, speech recognition engineers, and speech research scientists. And they want people who are already familiar with products like Nuance Recognizer, IBM WebSphere Voice, and Google Voice Search.

Apple is known to propel certain technologies into the mainstream. Maybe 2011 will be the year of speech tech, and one day a business will be able to run a speech IVR on the Android platform.

Nortel may have fallen, but its intellectual properties still hold some good value, according to this Reuters report.

Bids are soon due for the patent portfolio of Nortel Networks and among those interested is Apple, propelled by the success of the iPhone to become a relatively new entrant in telecom:

The patents cover wireless handsets and infrastructure, as well as optical and data networking, Internet, Internet advertising, voice and personal computers.

The patents likely to draw the most attention relate to third- and fourth-generation wireless technology such as Long Term Evolution, with device-makers such as Research In Motion, Motorola, and Apple seen as likely bidders.

Of course, Google is in the bidding too. These Silicon Valley tech giants have become a major driving force in the convergence of computing and telecom. Both Google and Apple have enough cash on hand to start a bidding war as well, and we all know that these two companies have evolved from friends to competitors recently.

A bidding war between Google and Apple for Nortel patents — now that’s what I’d call entertainment!

Happy Labor Day weekend!

The surprising (or not?) news to come out earlier this week was TechCrunch reporting that Cisco is interested in Skype. The price? $5 billion. The rumor sent the blogosphere into a tizzy… Does it make sense? Does it not? What value does Skype add? Is Cisco admitting that it cannot beat Skype?

No, it doesn’t make sense. I want to see Skype go forth with its IPO. I want to see the market reaction to Skype’s valuation. What could Cisco possibly gain with Skype? Yes, there are millions more users, but most of them use Skype for free. Where’s the money in that? And if the plan is to make Skype into an enterprise communications tool, then the risk is alienating millions of everyday users. Google would be happy about that. Last time I checked, most folks don’t have expensive Cisco phones at their desks.

Come on, leave Skype alone, please.

As for something that’s less of a rumor, Alcaltel-Lucent bought another company. OpenPlug, a French company specializing in development tools for multiple mobile platforms, finds itself part of Big Telecom. What does it all mean to you? Well, if you’re not a Blackberry enterprise then you can rejoice. Yes, to me it’s just hard to believe that a mobile development tool wouldn’t support the Blackberry. But the bigger picture is that ALU continues to show that it is serious about newer Web and mobile technologies.

Google also rolled out telephony features within Gmail. It appears that Google Voice and Gmail have fused together — quite nicely, too. Now conducting a voice call is as simple as mouse clicks in the browser (Chrome, as Google hopes). Once rolled out Google saw a surge in voice usage, and that’s probably why for the past few days the quality has gone down significantly. To the point that my calls get disconnected all the time. Now I wish Google hadn’t opened up Voice for everybody to sign up…