Well, the biggest “cloud” company on the planet, Google, is defining Cloud Communications as being all about Mo, So and Lo. 

Mo is Short for Mobility.
People are living off their cell phones, not their landlines. Although PBX and hard line phones are still pervasive on the desks of most businesspeople, they still want to be able to have tight integration and FMC (fixed mobile convergence). In other words, they want their mobile phone to ring when their desk phone rings. They want one number to give out that is not their mobile or home phone, and just one voicemail to check for all of their messages. The promise of the cloud is to be able to work anywhere, anytime. People just wanna be mobile. 

So Stands for Social.
The social networks have been exploding. Mark Bennioff, CEO of Salesforce.com showed in his latest keynote at Dreamforce a picture of a building in Egypt with the words “Thank you Facebook” graffiti on it. Have you ever seen “Thank you Microsoft” written anywhere after a social uprising in a third world country? One out of eleven people on the entire planet now has a Facebook account. By 2015 Facebook predicts people will be using the social network to communicate more than they use email. We have become connected social beings, and the line between personal and business has become blurred. Ask your employees how much time they spend on Facebook each day and you’ll be surprised…it you are an employer you’ll want to prevent them from accessing the ubiquitous social network. Do that in this day and age and they will leave you as fast as it takes to find another job. By the way, in the pre-social media revolution if you got caught sending out your resume and you were currently employed it was considered unethical and you’d probably get fired. Guess what? Now ALL your employees are sending out their resumes every day. It’s called LinkedIn. The social networks have changed the workplace forever and must be respected. 

Lo is Location.
Eric Schmidt has announced that the Google Maps project is practically complete. They have virtualized the world. Every road has been mapped by Google and now they can say the world is a virtual place that can be referenced. Your position when on your mobile phone can be tracked to within 6 feet. Amazing. This brings home the saying “Google knows everything.” Controversial, maybe, unsettling to some, but nevertheless, a fact of life in our new Mo, So, Lo world!

Where does SimpleSignal fit in to all of this? When SimpleSignal was founded as a business hosted IP phone service, we knew VoIP was a disruptive technology, that it would forever change the way businesses communicated. What we honestly did not know at the time was how far reaching IP communications technology would go! What started out as providing dependable hosted PBX features without the capital investment in PBX equipment, has become an adventurous ride into a new world of mobility apps, social media and CRM integration, all available anywhere, anytime, on any device. While many “phone companies” are being commoditized, we are more excited than ever to be on the cutting edge of true unified communications and collaboration technology. The future is bright for SimpleSignal customers as we continue to roll out the latest “best of breed” communication, collaboration and cloud technologies for helping companies compete in this bold new world.

Dana Point, CA (May 23, 2011) — SimpleSignal Inc., a leading hosted PBX and Unified Communications service provider for business, today announced its mobile integrated suite of Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC&C) services, known as SimplyMobile, is now optimized for smartphones and tablet devices over high speed 4G and LTE data networks. The upgraded service will be branded as SimplyMobileX4G.

“The 4G wireless data pipe is emerging as the ‘new last mile,’” said SimpleSignal’s CEO, Dave Gilbert. “By leveraging this wireless connection, businesses are untethered from ethernet and can now seamlessly converge mobile devices with the fixed phones on their desks.”

SimplyMobileX4G’s mobile suite includes:

• Call Center capabilities, including video calling
• Instant Messaging and Presence, smartphone and tablet access to business contacts from an integrated corporate directory, as well as mobile presence & location indicators
• Web collaboration capabilities, including: desktop sharing; the ability to initiate, manage, control and participate in meetings from a smartphone or tablet; video-calling; and conferencing anytime, anywhere, from any mobile device

“The world of business communications is changing quickly,” continued Gilbert. “We’ve moved from one-to-one voice communication to multiple ways to communicate from anywhere, using any device. Businesses are turning to us to unify those methods, make them secure and embrace the social nature of business communication. We call that Unified Communication and Collaboration (UC&C). Now it can all be taking place in a wireless environment.”

SimpleSignal, known as an early innovator in the Unified Communications space, has leaped ahead of their competitors by optimizing their network to work seamlessly with the emerging LTE (long-term evolution) networks.

“Business people want the freedom to use whatever device they deem best to communicate at that moment in both their personal and business lives,” said Michael Sterl, VP of SimpleSignal. “They also want the ability to use rich media like streaming video and video conferencing within their business communication solution whether they are at their desk or out and about. SimplyMobileX4G is the next major step in the evolution of fully-integrated mobile communications capabilities.”With SimplyMobileX4G fully integrated with SimpleSignal’s hosted PBX and cloud- based UC&C platform (featuring HD voice audio conferencing, multi-point video conferencing, call recording and more), enterprises can leverage the most advanced communications technology available at any price, all for an affordable monthly fee per user, and easily scale up or down as business needs change.

“Customers pay only for what they use rather than enduring large software costs for unneeded capacity and servers they have to maintain and upgrade,” said Gilbert. “This is the promise of the cloud. Own less, Do more.”

Connect with SimpleSignal online:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimpleSignal

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SimpleSignal

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/SimpleSignalInc

Blog: http://www.simplesignal.com/blog/

About SimpleSignal

SimpleSignal is a hosted PBX and cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration network service provider. SimpleSignal provides IP phone applications and services to tens of thousands of satisfied business users throughout the US and Canada, with a growing list of multi-office clients in many International locations. SimpleSignal has created some of the most innovative and advanced voice “mashups” in the communications industry, leveraging voice technology for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Salesforce.com, among others. SimpleSignal has offices in Englewood, CO, and Dana Point, CA. Find us on the web at http://www.simplesignal.com. For sales, call 866-434-4404.

In a world where cloud computing is changing the way business works and the bandwidth pipes are getting fatter and cheaper, businesses of every size are now working over IP. I saw this trend developing in 2004 and was so inspired I founded SimpleSignal to help businesses put their communications over IP.  Since then we’ve doubled our business nearly every year and are now on the cusp of the biggest sea change in the history of modern business. I’ll call it EoIP (everything over the Internet).

We live in a hosted world.  Applications business people use everyday are now being offered in a hosted environment. Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps, Facebook, Salesforce.com, Netsuite, and SAP are all “cloud based” hosted services. That simply means they are software applications that do not reside on your computer. They live in a secure data center somewhere else so you can reach them through the Internet. The beauty of this method over “shrink-wrapped software” is that you can access these programs from anywhere anytime.

This move to IP is changing business processes. Let’s cite a couple of examples.  Fax is better over IP.  No more paper to get lost, stolen, or moved from desk to desk.  Now faxes are email files that can easily be stored, accessed or printed if necessary. Workers log in instead of punch the clock, phone calls are managed better, phone devices and telephone numbers are unified and people IM each other instead of leaving voicemails. Workers love being unchained from their desks and free to work around their schedules rather than a 9 to 5 grind in a cube they have to commute to. Our businesses are better and faster and ultimately more productive when we avail ourselves to EoIP.

At SimpleSignal, we are committed to becoming a “sherpa to the cloud” for businesses of all types and sizes. Our cloud-based Unified Communication strategy for business considers all the ways you communicate. Because it’s not just about picking up the phone on your desk and calling someone. It’s text, email, IM, conferencing, video, and cellular. Someone has to make all this stuff simple. That’s what we do.

I’m calling you from my iPad at 30,000 feet. This could be how you start your next phone call.

Apple’s iPad doesn’t technically offer the ability to make phone calls, but SimpleSignal has figured out a way to make the iPad talk using our virtual PBX technology.  And now that Wi-Fi is being offered by most of the major airlines for longer flights you can do VoIP over Wi-Fi just about anywhere, on the ground or in the air.

SimpleSignal is constantly looking for ways to increase its ability to offer our customers the opportunity to work and communicate anywhere, any time. Now mobile workers can manage work calls through the “cloud” so they can make and receive phone calls from anywhere in the world from the coolest mobile device to hit the market…Apple’s iPad.  As a matter of fact, you can use any Internet-connected device, including cell phones and computers, as if the call were going through your office line. You can also start a phone call on one device and seamlessly transfer it to another device mid-call. How does this work? Let’s say you are on a conference call at your desk. But it’s 6 PM and you have to go pick up the kids at soccer. Just press *11 on your SimpleSignal office phone system and you can transfer that call to your cell or iPad and you are off and running. Seamlessly the call is transferred from the office LAN onto the cellular network. That’s voice engineering magic!

The iPad has an excellent speaker microphone making the iPad perfect for conference calls. People can remotely dial into a meeting even if the room it is in doesn’t have a conference calling system.  The app is still in its early stages, but once iPads have the ability to perform multiple tasks at once, as Apple just started allowing on the iPhone, it could become an ideal device for looking at slides, or manipulating shared documents while simultaneously taking a call.

It’s all part of our effort to make our voice technology work for business. We say that we’ve developed a phone system that works for you. It “gets” you. It knows how you want to work. It knows who you want to let through to you and who you’d rather push to your voicemail and deal with later. It knows when you are available or when that call can go to your assistant or co-worker.

By enabling the iPad for voice, Simplesignal gives its clients yet another option for fielding their phone calls. Besides, it has a very high “cool factor”.  Amaze (or annoy) your friends on your next flight!

This past year or so will go down in history as some of the most economically challenging times in the history of America. And… we are not yet out of it. To survive, businesses of all types are trying to reduce expenses and strive for profitability. The ones that survive will be lean and strong. They will have learned to do more with less. They will have sought out every available tool to increase sales and decrease costs. However, many of these tools are capital-intensive and capital is expensive and hard to come by.

A “cloud” or “hosted” telephone system offers affordable, trusted, reliable and flexible cloud based telephone systems that deliver dramatic leaps in productivity and profitability. What is the “cloud”? In computer network diagrams, a cloud graphic is used to depict the “web” or the “internet”. Our telephone system has it’s core in our secure data centers, not in your office and is connected over the web not telephone wires. This relieves your enterprise from the capital investment and the burdens and risk of running your own communications equipment. Businesses that have partnered with the SimpleSignal cloud now have a game-changing, VoIP communication features that create an opportunity to grow sales, cut their telephone bill, and improve their voice quality. Businesses of all sizes are finding our value proposition to be compelling as evidenced by our rapid success and growing subscriber base.

In the past, to have features like ours at work in your business it meant you’d need to make a big upfront investment. Not today. Not in times like these. A cloud based telephone system provides an easy, scalable, and reliable way to provide business enhancing features without needing to make big and risky upfront investments.

Explore our features to maximize your benefits

Our platform of products & services helps thousands of businesses achieve greater productivity every day—without requiring costly new phone equipment or changes to business processes. Our full range of features is available to your business anytime, anywhere and from any phone. Our software integration means that you can click to call right out of the programs you work out of all day.

Grow your business from anywhere on one platform

Our cloud telephone system works with all your devices. You can be connected to your business network no matter if you or your co-workers are talking on an analog line, a cellular phone  or an IP softphone or land line. Even if they are separated by oceans and time zones they are all on the same telephone system and have access to the same feature set.

Cut your costs

Many business have experienced cost savings greater than 50% when changing over to our service. In addition, there is far less capital outlay when there is no system to buy, no PBX equipment to install or maintain, no dedicated electrical circuits, no risk of obsolescence and no risk of out growing the system as your business recovers and grows.

Flexible pricing

Our service is affordable with pay-as-you-go small monthly fees that can fit any budget. No long-term contracts required, and we give you a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee

Improve your voice quality

SimpleSignal’s Hosted telephone system is a HD voice, high capacity carrier-class computer platform.

So easy to use

Our phones are shipped to you pre-configured. Plug them into the ethernet and in just minutes you’re talking on net. Our unique business communication solution allows you to update settings on the fly. Need help? We are always just a phone call away, ready to support you.

Bottom line? A telephone system that is controlled in the cloud can make your phone system do more.

Contact us and tell us about your business—chances are that our sales consultants have worked with someone in your industry in the past and we can help you use our technology to design a better business process using today’s communications technology.

• HD Voice
• Easy FMC access on smartphone
• Easy transfer to/from mobile/desktop (Call Swap)
• Video capability
• Email to Voicemail mailbox
• Voicemail to text
• UM (unified messaging)
• Simultaneous ring
• User portal
• Click to call
• and more business changing features

Alex thinks that VoIP service providers are getting better at delivering IP PBX phone systems. I think that most still suck at it and it is costing them a fortune because of their high acquisition cost and failed installations. Add to that a fortune more in brand deterioration when people get frustrated with the experience.

There are very few “Purple Cows” (Seth Godin’s book about truly remarkable products) in our industry. And if you think you are one, I suggest you talk to your customers. Why? Because while you may think you deliver a great service, your competitors are taking your customers and winning them over.

You’re absolutely right Alex – there are very few value-add hosted voip provider that are delivering dial-tone to the enterprise and voice as a feature rather than the traditional voice as a service. Discover true voice 2.0 at simplesignal.com. Please feel free to contact me directly at dave@simplesignal.com

Can choosing the right small business phone system really save me time? With the growing pressure to accomplish more tasks in the same amount of time, an overflowing voicemail and email inbox, endless meetings and family obligations after work, the average employee feels like they are losing control of their work schedules and the ever growing to-do list. Most people haven’t considered how handling their small business communications more efficiently can save literally hours in every week and therefore decrease their level of stress. SimpleSignal has many life changing features that can allow you to make more efficient use of your day by using our technology. Here are a few that will save you at least an hour a day:

Simultaneous ring: One number rings all your phones. You’ll never miss another call…unless you want to.  Everyone I’ve spoken with who has tried Simultaneous Ring tells me it’s one of the the biggest improvements to their time management and accessibility of any strategy they’ve implemented.  It sounds so simple, yet it’s so profound.  No more forwarding and un-forwarding of phone calls, no more missed opportunities, and a new sense of complete control of their day.

Voicemail to email: All your messages are in one place. No more checking multiple voicemail numbers to retrieve your voicemail messages from your office phone, your cell phone and your home phone. Your voicemail will be converted to email and automatically placed in your email inbox. There you can save your messages for life, forward them to friends or associates, and prioritize or search for them with ease.

Voice 2 Text: Because you can read faster than you can listen!  This feature utilizes cutting edge voice recognition technology to convert your voicemail messages into text and put them in your email for you to read. Never listen to a slow talking or rambling voicemail again.  This is another one of those “can’t live without it” stories we hear all the time from customers that can now quickly visually scan their voicemails while in the middle of meetings or on a conference call, saving time and improving productivity.

Fax to Email

Receive your faxes right into your email inbox, no phone line, no fax machine, no paper and no ink cartridges. The ultimate mobile solution.

Call Swap

Change phones in the middle of a call. Are you stuck on a conference call but have to leave your desk to run to a meeting? Just press the star button on your desk phone and transfer the call to your cell. Your caller won’t hear the switch. It works the other way too. Started a call on the way to work? When you are seated at your desk you can transfer the call from your cell phone to a landline.

Click-to-Call

Makes returning voice mail calls, calling numbers on a web page or contacts in Outlook simple. From any screen on your computer, just highlight the number and click. Your desk phone starts ringing and you’re connected.

Check out these and other life altering features on our web site http://www.simplesignal.com/hosted_pbx_features.php#Sim%20Ring.

I believe my job as CEO of SimpleSignal is to not only deal with the day to day tactical issues that we encounter but to make sure we are focused on what our customers will need in six months.

While the need of the day is to save businesses money there is a limit as to how far down a price can be compressed before the quality of that service is degraded. The magic of VoIP is not that we can deliver voice services cheaper than the incumbent phone “Baby Bell” companies but that we can deliver it better and cheaper. By using the internet as our primary backbone and not having to rely on a connection that is based on wires that are hung on telephone poles we can deliver voice communications more efficiently. Not only can we deliver the service cheaper we can now add features to the voice that make it better.

We’ve invested the last four years and millions of dollars into our voice network to make sure we can deliver outstanding voice quality to businesses of any size and who are located anywhere in the world. That’s our foundation. A business needs to be able to trust that they can pick up their phone 24/7 and make a clear call.

However, that’s not all business wants to do with their communications.  It’s surprising to some that our voice quality is superior to traditional land lines and made even better sounding by adding HD voice. We can make voice communication even more engaging by adding video. In business face time counts. Now you don’t have to waste time traveling to have the impact of being face to face.

We believe that businesses are going to find efficiencies in building the voice right into the software apps the live and work out of everyday. As business learns the value of better connecting their workers no matter where they are VoIP will need to be integrated into everything a business does. Their CRM, their email, their IM, their text all should be voice enabled.

For example, Yesterday I was talking to a potential vendor when he said, “Hmmm, nice pictures, Do you live near the beach?” I said, “how’d you guess that?” He said he used an application called XOBNI (in box spelled backward) that managed his Outlook so when he pulled my contact information it did an Internet search and found my Facebook page where he noticed my photos.

By Q3, SimpleSignal will have the ability to use the caller ID  to know who’s calling and learn what they’re doing, what they’re blogging, and other living online information while you talk to them. Since the SimpleSignal system is connected to the Internet, when a call comes in, our system knows how to identify the caller and go out to the internet to find recent information about the caller, such as local and company news, latest blog, twitter, flickrs, birthday, and other information you might be interested in. SimpleSignal users can, in an instant, gather customizable “rich, living, current information” that contributes to your relationship with the caller.

That’s life in a Voice 2.0 world. Kind of cool eh?

What would the telecom world look like if all our communication was over the Internet and was totally free? What if a voice call was treated like an email or an instant message?

Does this mean telco as we know it is soon to be dead?

Yes, That is what I’m predicting.

Let’s look at how people communicate today. It’s not just voice anymore. As a matter of fact, traditional voice is the most inefficient of all the ways we communicate. It’s real time and usually involves just one other person. Email, IM, text messaging, and now Twitter and Facebook have become viable means of efficient communication. There are many times I instant message or text someone before I call to see if now is a convenient time to have a phone conversation.

In addition, the traditional telco system of area codes is no longer relevant. The geographical location of a voice user is no longer a concern. Most people have cellular plans where they are billed by the minute rather than distance. Landline plans are quickly following suit, and in many cases the minute charges are unlimited in favor of a flat rate. In fact,the latest research shows that if you are under 20 years of age you may never even own a landline.

Voice will be just another form of communication that comes alongside other forms of communication we use every day and the cost of voice communication will essentially be free. It’s already here. Skype now has 405 million users that can connect to each other and have video and voice conversations for free. Yesterday I was on a Skype call and could see that 16 million other calls were in use at that moment over the Skype network. Each of these were going on for free!

The way people communicate is changing and the business models must change with it.

The telco company that will win in the brave new world in which we live will be the one that can continue to create unique ways that allow you to talk like you’ve never “talked” before. It will not be limited by the boundries and paradigms developed for the “Public Switched Telephone Network”. We don’t need a phone anymore. We just need to communicate.  Watch my future posts for some of the groundbreaking new ways SimpleSignal and our partners are changing voice communication…as we speak.

That’s why we need to talk. Contact me on my “one number for life” that can reach me anywhere 949-429-5929 or email, facebook, or IM me at dave@simplesignal.com