WorldCity Business Magazine

Brave new world

by Mary A. Dempsey

The lines are being drawn between those who are connected and those who are not.

For the past six months, Matt Michels has reported to work from his house. The convergence architect for Nortel’s southeast region is a virtual employee, linked to his company by Voice over Internet Protocol and video.

Jonathan Lieberman’s company, ISN Telecom, has 80 employees in Miami and 80 in Argentina. When the South Florida CEO wants to talk to a worker in South America, he picks up the phone and simply dials an extension.

Sherry Carani, the president of Transmobile, has used text messaging for the past three years to communicate with a key employee in the Ukraine. She only recently discovered that he writes in English but cannot speak it.

WiFi, smart chips, television transmission to cell phones, virtual classrooms with voice and video, phone calls through computers Communication systems for businesses have changed dramatically and span a number of forms, a panel of experts told participants at a recent DHL Connections breakfast brief, a monthly event organized by WorldCity.

“Information technology is a complex world,” said Carani. “It’s so complicated that it overwhelms enterprises.”

The panelists tried to demystify the technological possibilities, explaining that basic communication starts with the Internet and other wireless connections then builds on them.

“We have a wired world and we have Voice over Internet Protocol. Both will remain, but the world will have to figure out how to link all those different technologies and cultures together,” said Carani. “It will boil down to whether you’re on the grid or off the grid.

“And the Internet is the grid,” she added.

ISN Telecom provides managed voice, data and telephone sytem solutions, as well as wireless services, to small and medium-sized businesses. INS co-founder Lieberman said successful providers in this new business age will be companies that “take the best technology and integrate it so it works.” His telecommunications company debuted nine years ago to provide services to companies with international operations, principally in Latin America. “At the end of the day it’s all about simplicity and cost-effectiveness,” he said.

Michels agreed, but described VoIP as the testing ground. The Nortel executive, who says his fascination with how things work dates to kindergarten when he sculpted a washing machine agitator from clay, described his work as “making the world safe for Voice over IP.”

“I consider Voice over IP to be the coal miners’ canary. Voice over IP is the most sensitive thing you’re going to put on your network. If we can make the world safe for Voice over IP, it will be safe for anything,” he said.

Carani, who first jumped the technology fence when she started her own Internet company in the 1990s, described Transmobile as “an aggregator of technologies in wireless space.” The firm helps companies quilt together the pieces of technology that they need to make their businesses work.

“No enterprise today has one single system,” Carani said. “When you build a system, you have to build things that are layered. It’s about evolving without making other things go extinct. It’s about having a centuries-old church right next to a skyscraper and they both work.”

Enterprises today, even small companies, have become complex. Thanks to globalization, they’re trying to track their business all over the globe. For companies in this tech-savvy world, time and geography are irrelevant. Their businesses can operate around-the-clock from nearly any point on the planet.

“If I wake up at 3 a.m., I already have people working in the Ukraine,” Carani said. “By breakfast, employees are in place on the eastern U.S. seaboard. By afternoon they’re working with customers in New Zealand.

“I have employees in the Ukraine. I have resellers in Dubai and Latin America and Asia,” she continued.

The panelists discussed the growing requirements of companies. Those run the range from the needs of perishable-food traders who must track not only the location of their cargo containers but also the temperature of the containers and the shelf-life of the products to the South Florida companies that must devise ways to keep operating during hurricanes. Among other things, they cautioned that companies must not think they need all of the technology that’s available. Or if they do need to add to what they have, they may not need to do it right away.

“There’s always an economic issue of when you transition, when it makes sense. You need to take the application and the technology as you need them,” Michels said. “Keep the wireless open only for things that need to be mobile.”

The experts also discussed the downside of technology.

“I think the world is going to be one big WiFi, but the question is how you secure that.. And how do you integrate other types of devices into that?” Carani asked. She also said the three components to technology were “good, fast and cheap,” adding: “You can have one or two but you can’t have all three at the same time.”

Michels said he saw the biggest problems as those related to the security of data flying through these new communication channels.

Tech experts noted that wireless transmission began with radio and television. From there, the question is how far it will go.

“I’m a realist,” Michels said. “Vision is wonderful but at the end of the day, I need to make the solutions work. But even though I’m not much of a visionary as to where this is going, I think the sky’s the limit.

“I think we’re all in for a very fun ride,” he added.