Interview with Rich Tehrani, President, TMCNet

When I first looked at VoIP I thought it was a great technology to reduce your ISD bill. What was the first thought that crossed your mind when you first stumbled upon VoIP technology?

Back in 1996, there were a handful of VoIP products in the market. It wasn’t really an industry. So you could not envision all the other pieces in the puzzle. But you got the sense that it was a new way of communications. By 1997 we had decided to start a magazine in this space called Internet Telephony that has been dedicated to VoIP only. So we thought this was going to be big.

Did you work with the first generation VoIP vendors?

Absolutely. We worked with companies like Vocaltec, Dialogic, Natural Microsystems and others. Strangely enough, Microrsoft also entered the market early with their Netmeeting. You would not expect them to enter the market that early. That further cemented the feeling that VoIP was going to change communications.

And then nothing happened in the area of Netmeeting for a long long time. In fact nothing in the area of VoIP from Microsoft up until the recent introduction of OCS.

The people that I spoke within Microsoft tell me that they shifted a lot of people from VoIP projects over to Internet services side. And they have become a leader on that front. Some three years back they realised that there was an opportunity in communications on the enterprise side. So they re-invested in the communications.

VoIP has been reasonably disruptive. But VoIP architecture itself has evolved quite a bit over the years: from monolithic boxes to softswitches to IMS and further onward to Voice 2.0. What do you envisage to be the impact of VoIP from here on? How can something evolve and yet be disruptive at the same time?I have never considered those questions to be mutually exclusive. A technology can have a measurable impact and yet evolve itself at the same time.

But it must be difficult to sell a migration story to carriers these days especially if the technology itself is changing fast.

Carriers accept that migration to IP is inevitable if they want to stay in business. So that issue is sorted out. The method they adopt in migrating to IP can vary in terms of pace and procedure. With Voice 2.0 and open devices like iPhone, service providers will have to lock in their customers and at the same time learn to co-exist with a lot of new generation application service providers.

With Voice 2.0 you see Web as the most common denominator across most new mashups. But Web is best accessed over a PC and not a phone handset. So in terms of ergonomics you are up against a hundred years of usage and familiarity with a hardphone. In that context how do you judge the prospects of Voice 2.0?

The devices will interact. They will work more closely. Even today some of the VoIP applications allow you to have simultaneous ring across PC, cellphone, and desk phone. Facebook is another example. You can log in from your PC as well as your mobile device and make changes or do things simultaneously across both devices. Over time cellphones are likely to be the primary way we communicate. Desk phone may not have long life. That is eventually going to transform into softphones etc.

Writing applications for cellphones … does cellphone-centric trend not compromise the functionalities of these applications?

It may. But these small devices will evolve. The browsing experience on iPhone is not bad. Keyboard is not great. But with iPhone you can do many things that you could with a PC. It is a bit cumbersome because the screen is smaller and you do not have a mouse. But that is going to improve.

In your events business have you come across customers that are able to achieve the same identity across various platforms including PC, mobile, TV etc?

I have seen demos. IMS is supposed to be the technology that makes this easier. Theoretically as IMS gets more traction, it will help service providers achieve those things.

You have been organising Internet Telephony show for over 10 years now. The events business is all about having the right sort of audience. How do you make sure that you get the right audience and do not repeat the same audience from one year to the next?

We have always positioned our events as a place where you come to buy products. So we position the event as a marketplace. By doing that we have been able to rotate the audience because you would not come again unless you wanted to buy something else. We also make sure that we are marketing to a new and a broader audience internationally each time.

There are potential buyers among the audience for sure. But a lot of them come to shows in order to learn about the technology and some attend in order to explore how best to design their products. I guess VoIP industry has passed that stage. Why should I travel all the way to California to see a media gateway if I have one in my network right here?

You said yourself that this market is evolving. And that is happening at a rapid pace. If you fail to keep up with the latest you risk being left far behind. The acquisition of Ribbit by BT is a perfect example of how fast this market is evolving. If you are not among your peers in the industry and if you are not talking to people involved you risk being left behind. And although the web and the magazines are great, the only time you can have face to face interaction is at the trade shows and conferences.

Your Internet Telephony show has been competing with VON until recently. You also have VoiceCon and perhaps on a smaller scale eComm as competitors now.

VoiceCon is a great show for large enterprise. They have old style telephony orientation though. It is not the IT oriented crowd that we target. The area where we compete successfully with VoiceCon is bringing in SMEs, resellers, and service providers. So we have the whole supply chain present at the show. eComm is an interesting event in that it focuses on the next generation of communications. But it is a conference driven event rather than a trade show. So we don’t see them as competitors.

How far do you think the webinars and virtual events will affect the conferences and trade show business?

I think it already has. Webinars are partly responsible for an event like VON going away. We organise about 200 webinars a year ourselves. The reality is that there are going to be less shows in technology in the coming years and the strongest of the events will survive. That is one of the reasons why we did not embark upon organising shows in many countries because you have to be careful not to spread the audience thin. There is always a need for some face to face meetings on a regular basis. The company that strikes the right balance between providing info online, through magazine, and through trade shows etc is the one that wins.

If you look at the new media blogs they have consumer orientation. They talk about technology but target end users as their audience. Given that sort of trend in the market, what do you think is the future of B2B media and publishing?

I mentioned iPhone a couple of times in this conversation. iPhone is primarily a consumer device but can potentially bring about a big change in the enterprise environment. Enterprises will have to make changes in their network to support the use of iPhone. We at TMC have always focussed on B2B but there are overlaps in situations such as iPhone. You have to be careful not to go too far over to consumer space because you are then doing injustice to your business audience. You have to find the right balance.

Your website is not exactly jazzed up. You seem to be happy with the simplicity of it.

We get that comment a lot. The challenge we have is that our site gets an audience of 2 to 3 million unique visitors and up to 200 advertisers each month worldwide. So each time we consider revamping the site we are faced with the issue of continuous growth in traffic which we do not want to jeopardize.