JAA'S Analyst Blog - Current Posts

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Wanted to comment about some interesting things that VoIP Supply is doing lately. Aside from being based in nearby Buffalo, they're a great success story in terms of finding a niche as a leading re-seller of all things VoIP. They're doing a booming business in open source VoIP solutions and you don't need to look far on their websites or blog pages to see evidence of their growth.

I've got two items to mention here as good examples of how they are growing and actively engaging with the IP communications community. The first is their recent addition of IP cameras as a product line. It's not something you may think about every day for purchase, but as you can see from their dedicated website - IPCameraSupply.com - there's a lot to choose from out there. These cameras are for video - not still photography - and range from desktop video to mounted security and surveillance digital video cameras. The site is a great resource and goes well beyond cameras to include video recorders - both analog and digital, video servers and closed circuit monitoring systems. You know that IP is coming of age when you can add these types of products to your online shopping cart.

What I really like is how they're supporting this site with other resources to educate and engage the market for these products. In addition to the regular website, there is a blog, which has some resources to better explain the products and terminology around digital video. And for the Facebook crowd, you can find them there too. If you need any help finding this, just let me know.

Since we're on the VoIP Supply bandwagon here, I might as well add their latest outreach for the Asterisk community. Today they launched a new contest - 101 Things you can do with Asterisk. The idea is to solicit 101 unique ideas from this community, and one will win a $1,500 VoIP Supply shopping spree.

Sounds like a good idea to me. The winner gets picked at random, which may not be very fair, but it's probably just a practical decision in terms of the work involved to review all of them and actually decide which one is the best. Anyhow, it's a fun way to generate a lot of good ideas and feed the innovation machine for Asterisk. Even if there's just one great idea, it's well worth the prize value, and adds a lot of goodwill to the VoIP Supply brand. As of this writing, it seems to be working as they already have 187 ideas, and the post only went up at 11am this morning. Asterisk may not be everyone's cup of tea, but you gotta give credit to VoIP Supply for trying fun things and engaging the community beyond just re-selling other people's products. It's not the norm, and if you ask me, they get it in terms of what an online reseller should be all about.

Technorati tags:

VoIP Supply, Jon Arnold, IP cameras