Telepocalypse

Your horseless carriage awaits, Sir

This rather nice summary of the impact of VoIP on call centers reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest.

I’d just like to say some rude things about the concept of an “IP PBX”. (For the acronymically challenged, this is a packet-based teeny weeny local phone exchange you stick in your enterprise and lets you dial Sharon in accounts by just entering her extension number.)

What an utterly cretinous concept. Does anyone believe this market has any future whatsoever? At worst it will be crushed as SIP call routing becomes a minor feature of Microsoft’s Real-Time Communications Server (at a tenth of the cost). At best, you’re left with a routing directory with the profit potential of a domain name server (i.e. none).

There must be some good money to be made shorting the stock of suppliers of dead-end technologies like this.