Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity for Thinking Inside and Outside The Telecom Box

Barry Nalebuff, author and professor. Much has been written about the need for service providers to innovate and delight customers with new features. Very often, however, innovation takes a back seat to tactical maneuvers and price-cutting. Best-selling author and Yale School of Management professor Barry Nalebuff will discuss how service providers can improve their ability to create innovative new features, services, and pricing options. He will explore some specific examples of intriguing new telecom services developed using the framework from his latest book, "'Why Not'? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small."

Sponsored by Gold Sponsor, Ericsson.

Fireside Chat with Verizon

In a special one-on-one interview, Paul Johnson, Conference Chair, talks candidly with a high-ranking Verizon visionary (to be announced) about Verizon's strategies and plans in the hosted voice space and their expected impact on the telecom industry structure and network designs of the future.

Sponsored by Gold Sponsor, Ericsson.

Winning the Enterprise Panel: The State of Hosted Voice
The panel will feature an interactive Q & A session moderated by Conference Chair, Paul Johnson.

Traditional barriers of reaching the enterprise are dropping, bringing many new players into the battle for the enterprise and reshaping the market. This panel of senior executives at leading service providers will explore the impact of these changes, how they are changing provider strategies in an increasingly competitive market including their successes in taking share from the IP PBX vendors.

Corporate Briefings

See 30-minute presentations from the Connections sponsors on their vision for hosted voice and latest offerings visit BroadSoft partners in the Solutions Showcase.

B01: Large Enterprise Feedback -- Hear Directly From End Users

Large enterprises are starting to deploy hosted voice services as an alternative to IP PBXs and as a preferred migration path from Centrex. Hear directly what they like about hosted voice and how they evaluated them vs. alternative solutions. Gain feedback and perspective from cutting-edge enterprise executives in the commercial, government, and higher education verticals.

T01: Simplifying Deployments & Avoiding Gotchas

Want to find out how to tackle some of the more vexing issues around hosted voice deployment? Attend this panel to learn from people who have been there and lived to talk about their survival in the trenches. This panel will address best practices for some of these issues including: CPE management and selection, remote survivability, delivering E911 solutions, and building out front office (e.g., portal) solutions.

B02: Winning the Enterprise: Lessons from the Field

There is no better lesson in life than experience. This panel will feature service provider executives on their real-life lessons and what (and what not) to do to win enterprise business. Topics to be covered include best practices for selling and marketing to end users; how to effectively compete with an IP PBX, delivering the right TCO, providing the right level of training, and selecting the right channel.

T02: PSTN-Free: How to Build A Global Offering With Someone Else's CAPEX

How can you offer national or even global hosted voice services when your footprint is regionally based, without breaking the bank? This panel will explore different approaches for service providers to offer end-users service on a global level without having to build it all themselves. These approaches include options for sourcing local resources (e.g., PSTN origination and termination, local numbers and access, emergency services, media services without backhaul, and strategies for keeping calls end-to-end IP).

Monday Dinner Event - Spirit of Arizona

As a conference attendee, you're invited to join us as we explore the beautiful culture and environment that make Arizona unique. All transportation, food, beverage, and entertainment is provided for this evening's activities.

Sponsored by Platinum Sponsor, Polycom.

Executive Panel: Residential Panel - Features vs. Price?
The panel will feature leading players in this emerging space and should spark lively debate led by moderator and Conference Chair, Paul Johnson.

Vonage and hosted voice services arguably lit a fire under the telecom industry, creating a free-for-all in the residential market. The combination of ubiquitous broadband and hosted voice has unleashed a flurry of competition from both new and existing players. Will this new level of competition create a wave of new revenue from new and exiting features enabled by hosted voice offerings or will it lead to a price war over ever-lower POTS prices? How can hosted voice compete with (or complement) the increasing consumer substitution to mobile calling? Do consumers want bundled offerings from a single provider or will they prefer to split their purchases up?

BroadWorks Vision: A Multimedia Future

BroadSoft co-founder and CTO, Scott Hoffpauir, offers a high level vision for the future of the BroadWorks platform. Scott will discuss his vision for how BroadWorks will fit into a multimedia world including how service providers can leverage advanced services to drive new demand and make previously niche services more mainstream (e.g., video, unified messaging). Additionally, Scott will describe how BroadWorks will enable providers to offer the ever-elusive "sticky" convergence services on the currently distinct wireless and wireline networks.

Locknote: What's It All Mean?

Paul Johnson, Founder, Nicusa Capital and Conference Chairman. With broadband mainstream, substitution to wireless, and the inevitable but massive migration from TDM to complete hosted voice, telecom is facing perhaps its most promising and tumultuous period all at the same time. Conference Chair, Paul Johnson, will provide his insight on the implications of these changes for service providers big and small, discuss what strategies they can employ to survive and thrive in these chaotic times, and explore opportunities to harness the market flux to their advantage. Additionally, Paul will consolidate some of the insights gained from previous sessions and provide his own lively perspective on where we go from here.

Corporate Briefings

See 30-minute presentations from the Connections sponsors on their vision for hosted voice and latest offerings visit BroadSoft partners in the Solutions Showcase.

B03: Show Me the Apps!

Live Demos of Cool Applications. Lively demonstrations show firsthand examples of applications from BroadSoft's strong third-party developer program that can help you differentiate your services. Demos include 3rd party clients, 802.11 integration, video conferencing, and more. This was our most popular session last year!

T03: Scaling up the Back Office

One of the biggest challenges with hosted voice is getting beyond initial deployments to reach massive scale. The back office is typically the weak link in the chain for providing this scale. Fortunately, there are some new approaches and technologies that will allow providers to scale their offerings while creating the foundation for rapidly adding new services to the mix. This panel will explore some of these approaches including the value of an integrated back office system vs. disintegrated, the emerging option of outsourcing some back office functions to 3rd party specialists, and how to use back office systems to create new, differentiated services. Additionally, this panel will explore some of the early experiences in the field and best practices for adding up subscribers swiftly and cost-effectively.

B04: Generating Revenue from Multimedia Applications

Now that the expected service sets are nearly complete, multimedia services are available to sell. The big questions are how to market and sell these applications and do it in a way that creates top line revenue and a competitive advantage from must-have services. This panel will look at strategies for marketing and selling multimedia services including messaging, instant messaging, and video while providing some insights into how these might be priced. The panelists will also explore the value of application integration and 3rd party applications that go beyond basic user requirements to create the telecom equivalent to delighting the customer (think the Amazon.com model)

T04: BroadWorks and Wireless-Wireline Convergence

BroadWorks is firmly established in the wireline space and wireless is the next big frontier. This panel will cover how BroadWorks will fit into the IMS/3GPP architectures, how services will work over wireless networks, and service examples derived from the convergence of both networks. Additionally, this panel will explore how wireline carriers can leverage wireless networks to add value to their wireline customers including how they could potentially exploit the mobile virtual network operator model (MVNO).

Tuesday Dinner Event - Scottsdale World's Fair 2004

Explore four corners of the world at this colorful and entertaining dinner event on the Westin Kierland terrace. Watch for a special guest late in the evening.

Sponsored by Gold Sponsor, Fujitsu.

User Forum
Attendance limited to existing customers only.

This exclusive customer event will provide the latest details on product roadmaps, interoperability updates, QuickStart go-to-market tools, and improved knowledge management systems designed to facilitate the flow of information between BroadSoft and its customers. The forum will also explore ideas for joint customer cooperation and feedback on how BroadSoft can further help accelerate the collective deployment of its installed base.