As 2008 comes to a close and I look forward to 2009, I am reminded of golf pro Harvey Penick. He once said, “Golf tips are like aspirin. One may do you good, but if you swallow the whole bottle you will be lucky to survive.” I think the same principle applies to IP communications and business in general. Focus is everything.

Over the past few years, we saw some great technological advances. The iPhone phenomenon, for instance, is an incredibly promising development for advanced mobile communications. The openness of the iPhone platform and the support for seamless multimedia capabilities is driving a host of innovative applications. The past year also represented a big step forward for Unified Communications, as established players like Microsoft, Cisco, and IBM gained significant traction in the enterprise communications space. Buy-in and competition from such heavy hitters can only mean that we can expect to see greater convergence among applications and devices. Finally, 2008 was a year in which video conferencing became legitimate. From full-fledged telepresence, to more flexible and accessible desktop video conferencing applications, vendors have overcome a host of technical and business issues to offer a wide range of video communications solutions.

I look forward to these trends to continuing in 2009, but am also excited about such emerging technology as real-time mobile video and flexible web applications. However, it is important to remember Penick’s lesson. Though there are sure to be new technological breakthroughs and innovative products coming to market, just because something looks good on paper doesn’t mean it will actually be successful. Focus is everything.  Successful companies focus on what they do well in combination with what the market is demanding, and execute accordingly.

Though I am a realist, I am also incredibly optimistic about the future of our industry, and believe GIPS is well positioned to take advantage of many of these emerging trends.  We will continue to focus on enabling ground-breaking voice and video processing technology and look forward to helping our customers remain successful in the coming year.

Focus in the New Year

Tags: iPhone, mobile, Unified Communications, Video Conferencing

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