Of the 8 companies I mentioned that were likely to be acquired 5 had either been acquired, merged or signed agreements to be acquired before the end of 2011.  One company split itself in to two pieces and I believe the other two are still in play to be acquired.  If you would have purchased this basket of stocks you would have scored a 21.3% gain easily beating the market in general by a wide margin.  If you could have somehow purchased shares of Skype or MySpace on the secondary market or simply avoided Sprint which was the real stinker of the group you could have done much better.  Take a look at how the M&A list performed below:

So to recap the highlights of last year’s forecasts M&A was definitely hot in 2011, the economy muddled along with uncertainty being a dominant theme, Apple did obtain the largest cap in the world shortly before the passing of Steve Jobs, smart phones and tablets continued to invade corporations at a rapid pace and Microsoft got it right with Lync being a breakout product for them.

So what about 2012?  Here we go beginning with M&A.

1)      M&A – I think M&A will cool down some after the blistering pace of 2011.  Most likely we will see smaller deals done as tuck-ins to round out the portfolios of larger entities.  The market is definitely ripe for IT service provider consolidation, security related entities, wireless players and for some more strategic cloud acquisitions where I expect the carriers to be active.

• IDCC – If you haven’t heard of InterDigital before don’t feel bad as they are not a household name, however, many of the brands you know and love have to utilize their patents.  With so many companies being taken off the board in 2011 including the acquisition of Motorola by Google the InterDigital wireless portfolio looks might impressive and the stock is trading just a little above its lows for the year.
• NOK – See a pattern beginning to emerge here?  Here is another undervalued wireless play.  This is also a major partner of Microsoft trying to compete with the market leaders Apple and Google.  This stock is trading close to or slightly below book value.  I think this stock could head lower first since Lumia has not done well but keep an eye on them.
• RIMM – I will not stoop to insulting die hard Blackberry users as I still have one or two friends that love them.  The problem for RIM is that one or two die hard customers here or there is not going to help them recover quickly enough.  But there is some good news.  Even though Apple and Google have been declared winners of the smartphone wars this will not stop Microsoft and others from continuing to try.  The market is just too big for them to walk away from.  Just look at HP’s ill-advised purchase of Palm not so long ago.  Sooner or later Microsoft, HP, Oracle, IBM, Amazon, Dell or someone else will decide that the market is just too big not to have a player in the game and with the market cap getting smaller by the day and no debt there is a good possibility that someone finally makes a play for the company this year.
• Here are a few more names that have good potential to be taken over in 2012:  InterNAP, Netflix, Sprint, Riverbed, Zix and Tekelec.

2)      Dot Com Implosion 2.0? – Though having real products, many of the Web 2.0 companies we know, love and hate have seen stratospheric growth and valuations.  While these are real companies unlike what we saw 10 years ago we now have some very big expectations to fill.  There are a number of high profile companies readying to come public and one has to wonder if the valuations that are being thrown around are realistic.   Just looking at the performance of recent IPOs in this space has to make one cautious at this point.  Perhaps the Facebook IPO will tell the story.

3)      Voice Recognition goes Mainstream – I know you have already heard more than enough about Siri but the bottom line is that everyone has been playing with this technology for years.  Microsoft has made huge investment along with a number of other companies and yet none of them has had the success that Apple has in such a short time.  This consumer driven technology will now find its way through every business.

4)      Windows 8 – Given that enterprises are still upgrading to Windows 7 the biggest impact of Windows 8 may be on either side of the desktop.

• Since it will enable PCs and Tablets to turn on instantly and potentially run all day, finally the Mac Air will have some legitimate competition.  I have also heard developer chatter about a number of Windows 8 powered tablets that have the power of a PC inside enabling a much wider range of applications than current tablets.  Look for Windows 8 to drive Ultrabook and sophisticated tablet sales.
• The Server side of the house will also benefit as Microsoft is boasting a greatly upgraded hypervisor.  While Hyper V3 will probably not match everything vmWare can do it should pressure pricing and provide end-users with more options.

5)      iTV – When was the last time you were really excited about a television?  I think there are legs to the iTV story in 2012.  Just look at Jobs own words on this the television experience as penned by Walter Isaacson in his biography of Steve Jobs.  Here’s what Jobs said: “I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synched with all of your devices and with iCloud. It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.”  I am willing to believe he cracked it and that the first product ships before year-end.

6)      M2M – While Machine 2 Machine (M2M) potential has been discussed for some time we are finally seeing a number of products begin to enter the market and fill a niche.  Even more interesting is that these offerings are beginning to be integrated with other multi-function devices meaning that this technology is about ready to go mainstream.  Look for a wide variety of products to deliver additional value to businesses across the marketplace but beginning with verticals.

7)      Smart Wallet – Mobile enabled payment solutions definitely have interest.  With both Android and iOS devices expected to come with Near Field Communications (NFC) chips built-in we could this technology gain momentum in the US very shortly.

8)      HTML 5 – With Flash biting the dust there will be a mad rush to HTML 5.  This will make many websites much more friendly to end-users.  The prediction is that the HTML 5 will cut down on the need to design customer downloadable apps.  This could make it easier for enterprises to deploy solutions but I don’t see the app store going away anytime soon.  There is too much profit motive and the benefit of control for it to disappear.

9)      Education – Will be greatly impacted  by the tablet explosion – look no further than our local librarians giving lessons on how to utilize your tablet with the public library system.   Even more amazing than the technology itself is the incredible amount of talent that can be pooled and captured on a single platform to make learning easier.  If you haven’t watched a Khan Academy lesson with your children or for your own benefit you just don’t know what you are missing.  http://www.khanacademy.org/ – They have topics on anything you could imagine including math, science, history and art with more lessons being added all of the time.

10)    Security – 2011 got us talking about custom malware attacks that seemed almost like something out of a spy thriller.  Expect even more custom attempts in 2012.  PII also will gain increased visibility as states, companies and consumers all become more concerned.

What do you see happening in 2012?

 As a consumer, it’s fairly easy to control “cramming” of third-party solutions onto your bill.  To do so, simply call your phone company and ask it to shut off “third-party billing.”  This should do the trick for most land lines. You can also have a similar conversation with your wireless provider.  It is far too easy to get charged for applications or additional services by texting or “accepting” an online agreement without clearly understanding the fine print.

 Unfortunately, this is not just an individual consumer issue.  Businesses of all sizes have been targeted for various kinds of fraud. At least the home consumer often knows what to expect when paying for service each month. If that relative constant changes from one month to the next, the person often becomes aware of the problem fairly quickly. With businesses, the problem is much more difficult to isolate as telecom bills can fluctuate dramatically from month to month. 

 The aforementioned article misses another common factor in billing errors. Other than cramming, there is a high incidence of “normal” billing errors to include lines that are still being billed after they were ordered to be disconnected, or coding errors and credits that were never properly applied. Companies often miss opportunities to reduce expenses not only because of their sheer size, but because multiple services ordered at different times make it extremely difficult to know what is really being utilized. It requires a lot of time, patience and understanding to complete a full audit to clean things up. Most IT and telecom staff members simply don’t have the time to go through every detail on the bill, nor do they have the depth of expertise to fully deal with all of these issues.      

 On the positive side, more attention has been given to these issues in the media and we see CFO’s, CIO’s and IT leadership in general much more aware, and often seeking assistance. Plus, most carriers now provide electronic billing information which can more readily feed a TEMS solution than in the past. Based on the issues our company has seen firsthand, I don’t think these problems have necessarily gotten any worse, but I don’t think they are any better, either. At least today there are superior tools and processes available to the industry to combat these problems.

I am not alone, am I?

Today I still eat PB&Js for breakfast on occasion, but have no way of getting my Toastettes back. I’ve described them to my daughter but can’t share one with her. It’s not like I haven’t tried. From what I can tell, Nabisco stopped making these in 2002. When I contacted the company sometime shortly thereafter to ask why, they told me it was part of brand consolidation due to the merger with Kraft. It is disappointing to see a favorite product disappear no matter the reason, but especially due to a merger. In any case, every once and a while I find myself in the aisle of a grocery store scanning the shelves where the toaster pastries reside hoping to see my Toastettes make a reappearance. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard anything about a big Toastettes comeback, nor I have had a response from Nabisco. But the other day I decided to Google Toastettes to see if anyone else missed the warm and crunchy magic, and I found I am not alone! Here’s what others have to say about this product:

http://www.inthe70s.com/food/toastettes0.shtml

Here’s what the box looked like and there is a picture of a Toastette on the front:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonliebigstuff/4984902865/

So what does this have to do with telecom?

Given that the merger with RJR/Kraft may have been a contributing factor to my beloved Toastettes going away, I wanted to step back and think about the true impact of all of the mergers going on telecom. Will it help or hurt the consumer? Will we end up with more and better choices or will some great products, teams and technologies go away? As many of you who know me and read the BLOG are aware, I’ve been thinking that these mergers would happen for years, and am actually surprised some of these companies are just getting around to finding a strategic fit. While most acquirers could have gotten better deals a couple of years ago on the acquisitions they are now attempting, they do have one thing going for them; the ability to obtain cheap money through the bond markets.

Who has made some of the best deals so far?

In no particular order, let’s take a looks at a few of these tie ups:

Level3 acquiring Global Crossing – Wow!!! This was a shocker. I kept thinking Global Crossing should have been taken off the board a couple of years ago. It made sense for a major CLEC or IXC that lacked an international footprint to pull the trigger on a deal like this. I was just surprised that Level3 was the one to acquire it, and that they could pull it off with the debt load they were already carrying. Several people have said that Level3 paid too much, but so far the market likes the deal, with Level3 stocks appreciating quite a bit from where the stock trading was before the deal was announced.

CenturyLink acquiring Savvis – After just recently completing the acquisition of Qwest, CenturyLink sent a major message to everyone in the industry that they intend to be a player. Many people I have talked with over the past year have questioned what CenturyLink would do with Qwest Business and whether or not they had a vision of how to compete in the business segment. I think this acquisition tells you how committed CenturyLink is to building value and revenue in their business segment. Hands down, Savvis was one of the best plays in this space left on the board.

AT&T acquiring T-Mobile – This acquisition probably has the biggest question mark next to it due to the regulatory issues facing the companies and a vehement opponent to the transaction in Sprint. It seems the crowd believes there is already very limited competition in the wireless space along with major barriers to entry, so there are quite a few people rooting against this. That said, the merger makes a ton of sense on paper for both companies as their size and scale should make it easier for them reduce costs, improve their network and to roll out LTE much more quickly. If this does go through, I am interested in finding out the terms and conditions of what the newly combined company might have to give up in order to get the deal to go through. While Sprint is protesting the loudest, I think the biggest long-term loser would be Verizon as it would make AT&T a much tougher competitor on almost every facet of the business.

I will monitor these mergers and comment on some of the others in an upcoming blog, in the meantime does anyone have any connections at Nabisco? I am craving a Toastette.

This year I will stick my neck out a bit further and get a little more specific with some additional themes and predictions.  I look forward to your feedback.

 1)      M&A Continues – Though I mentioned this last year, there are still some really interesting pieces on the board throughout technology in general and in the telecom space.  Most of the companies mentioned below will, in my opinion, either need to acquire someone or be acquired to stay viable. 

• XO –  Icahn tried to take it private a while back and does have majority control. They have some nice assets especially in some of their fiber-rich markets.  The question is what does Icahn want to do with this? 
• Global Crossing – Some of the best international assets and routes are held inside this company.  Keep in mind they have had a ton of financial issues in the past but have had the benefit of bankruptcy to clean some of this up.  On the downside, this company is still losing money and sports a negative book value.  Global Crossing would be a great asset for a number of companies trying to move upstream in the Global Enterprise space.
• Sprint – After completing what is perhaps one of the worst mergers of all time, the acquisition of Nextel wiped out billions of dollars of equity, added to debt, brought on a string of losses, caused additional customer support problems, destroyed employee morale, diverted investment from other key aspects of their business, and I could go on.  However, you can see that there are improvements being made and even with the $15 billion in debt (if you subtract cash on the books) this company still trades at less than book value.  Given that they are one of the major wireless players, would it really be surprising for the company to be reunited with Embarq at CenturyLink at some point or perhaps acquired by Google (which has been floated a couple of times)?
• Here are a few more names that I think are likely plays due to growth in the cloud, fiber assets or just ripe for consolidation:  Blue Coat Systems, Tekelec, NTELOS, Skype and MySpace.

 2)      Continued Uncertainty – As the recession rolls on (or at least its close cousin, the jobless recovery), it will begin to alter purchasing and business decisions differently even than previous years.  Companies will begin taking gambles they would not have even considered three to five years ago.  As companies are already operating very lean due to the recession, IT and other leadership will be pressed to continue to find ways to cut cost.  This will lead to opportunity for some but also cause many businesses to make risky choices that may not have been thoroughly vetted.

 3)      Microsoft Goes Three for Four –  After scoring hits with Kinect and Windows 7 in 2010, Microsoft finally makes inroads on the Telecom side. Though Windows 7 Mobile may be a bust, some studies have shown that up to 30 percent of Enterprises plan to deploy Lync server in some form or fashion.  There are still issues to be addressed but Microsoft appears to have finally gotten many things right.

• Virtualization supported in Lync Server
• Requires fewer physical servers (many configurations will need only one server compared to four in OCS 2007)
• Lync will provide single client instant messaging, web conferencing, presence, voice, voice mail, etc. vs. having separate clients in OCS 2007

 4)      Smartphones and Tablets Outsell Notebooks and Desktops – This isn’t the demise  of the desktop as we happen to be in a major upgrade cycle due to Windows 7.  However, phone upgrades are happening at a much more rapid pace than desktops and laptop replacements.  Pricing and ease of use makes smartphones and tablets available to a huge audience.  Almost every manufacturer has added some form of a smartphone to their line ups and there are very few plain phones left that can even be purchased today.  In talking with several customers, I have noted that many executives are planning to purchase large numbers of tablets for their organizations in 2011.  This makes me believe that we will see a slew of mobile computing applications for business on tablets by the end of 2011.  I don’t think there is any doubt why RIM and others are rushing to get their tablets out.  The question is whether they are too late with Apple already having first-mover advantage.

 5)      Security – Security will continue to be move up the IT agenda as general socioeconomic strains expose additional needs and requirements.  Mobile security breaches and management will become a major focus. 

 6)      Compliance – Look for compliance and standards to be a major cloud driver in 2011.  Many players are working as hard as they can to achieve multiple levels as quickly as possible. 

 7)      New addictions and ailments will be linked to high social media and mobile device usage.

 8)      Apple obtains largest market cap of any company in the world during 2011.  How does this happen, even with Exxon potentially having much higher oil as a tailwind?  We’ll see iPad momentum with new models, Verizon and potentially other carriers get the iPhone soon, a continued Mac-Halo Effect and the sleek Mac Air.  You never can discount what Apple might have coming down the pipeline.  Even from a valuation standpoint, when you subtract Apple’s cash from the stock price, you get a very low PEG ratio.

 9)      Mobile Photo Sharing – Social media photo sharing gains momentum in 2011 with almost every device coming with a camera. Timing couldn’t be better for applications like Instagram http://instagr.am/.

 10)   Crowdsourcing – Continues and gains major momentum crimping traditional agencies and attracting considerable talent from a large talent pool of disenchanted and displaced workers.

Let me know what think will happen in 2011 or if there are any additional technologies that are especially interesting. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I do own shares in some of the companies mentioned in this BLOG.

Definitions:

SIP, in itself, refers to the Session Initiation Protocol, which was developed by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). SIP is a text-based protocol similar to HTTP and SMTP, which allows users to initiate interactive communications sessions. In this case, SIP is used to set up and terminate VOIP calls. The goal of this protocol is to be very simple and solve only a few problems while allowing other protocols to still do their thing. That means that SIP works well with HTTP, XML, VXML and even overlapping protocols with large market share such as H.323 and MGCP. SIP, though easy to work with, is not a magic bullet and still requires that the network be designed and implemented with proper QoS (quality of service) in order to achieve good voice quality.

What is SIP Trunk or SIP Trunking? The term “Trunk” has long been popularized by the TDM world as a circuit between telephone switching equipment which normally denoted a physical connection. In the SIP world, people use this term a little more loosely but normally it is meant to denote an interconnection to the PSTN, a SIP-based interconnection between IP PBXs (to replace tie lines), or a SIP port on an enterprise server (to support additional functionality such as voice mail).

Show Me the Money

Many customers have been promised large savings by migrating to SIP, and while this can be the case, it is not always a given. Personally, I am also interested in SIP due to the enhanced features and capabilities it affords, but the promise of cost savings often gets people more excited. The vendors know this, and often lead with this line of reasoning. One of the benefits of SIP is that you can move multiple data types including voice, video and data all down a single IP trunk. This often allows users to consolidate or eliminate traditional TDM connectivity. We have seen costs savings from 10 to well over 50 percent when customers properly implement this technology. Your overall savings will depend greatly on your need for redundancy, call traffic, number of locations, geographical footprint, hardware upgrades and the vendor integration required.

Is it for Everyone?

There are downsides to SIP such as limited vendor interoperability and testing. You will also find some carriers will only support hardware from a small number of manufacturers. Depending on how the solution is engineered, a company can inadvertently create a single point of failure which may not have existed with their previous TDM configuration. Companies with heavy regulatory considerations such as healthcare should also move cautiously to limit risk.

However, there are several reputable software developers and service providers in the TEMS space that have clearly built good reputations along with unique product sets. Yet even among this group, many have seen TEMS implementations fail. But why?

I conducted an unscientific poll questioning our peers, staff, industry experts and customers as to what they thought were the top reasons that TEMS implementations fail. Here are some of the best responses along with a few of my own observations:

1) Lack of executive sponsorship and/or internal champions.

2) Partner lacks expertise in implementation.

3) Misconception of needs and requirements.

4) Sold as a bill auditing solution with endless savings opportunities.

5) Process inflexibility.

6) Tools poorly matched to business needs.

7) Lack of appropriate baselines and associated metrics to measure progress.

Tool is implemented without evaluating existing processes.

9) Unclear business case/ROI resulting in inappropriate expectations.

10) The rapidly changing terms and ideas behind expense management create confusion.

One of my favorite comments is the confusion over terms and the ideas behind expense management. TEMS, for example, means many different things to many different people. To compound this illustration, we have a variety of services that could include a TEMS component such as Life-Cycle Management, ERP and BPO. Providers, in turn, have attempted to lump customers into “solution sets” rather than customizing the solution to the customer’s needs. This is typically driven by the functional components of the system that they have created. So, rather than designing a solution (let alone a complete solution) for the customer, they try to match up the functions of the system to the singular needs it fulfills thereby leaving many customer needs only partially met.

In an upcoming BLOG I’ll discuss how TEM Solutions, methodologies, and capabilities have morphed over the years and where they are headed.