As the programmers and testers racked up hundreds, then thousands of hours on IperiaVX - and consumed about as much in caffeinated drinks, no doubt - industry interest in IperiaVX continued to grow.

So before IperiaVX reaches general availability on June 26th, 2007, the only answer to growing demand is to show progress. And that’s what Iperia did, at Fall VON 2006 in Boston, and Spring VON 2007 in San Jose.

It wasn’t just the scent of hot dogs and the virtual batting cage that got people excited at Iperia’s Fall 2006 VON booth. It was the “Active Trader” demo, which showed how IperiaVX could help a financial services company integrate voice communications with CRM, news, and internal database applications. The result? Business moves faster, allowing the space and time for greater business development (and revenue).

And to top that at Spring VON 2007, Iperia got into the real estate business. Creating a fictitious company called “Ingrahm & Taylor,” the Iperia team demonstrated how calling one phone number, assigned to a single house, could lead to easily downloaded virtual tours, on-the-fly home showings, and automatically created prospecting lists for agents and brokers. And IperiaVX made it possible.

What’s on tap for Fall VON 2007 in Boston? It’s all very hush-hush at Iperia right now, but since it’ll be the first VON event after IperiaVX goes into general release, you can bet it’ll be a show-stopper.

The folks at Linux Magazine just released this article by Mary Shacklett about Linux use in the telecommunications industry. Yes, it’s a very smooth and well-researched read. And in full disclosure, Mary’s written a couple of very nice case studies for us.

But the only ties between Mary and Iperia on this article are a few quotes from Iperia COO Art Leondires, including this one about Linux-based IperiaVX:

“The Linux-based offering is a response to the service provider and enterprise markets, which wanted the option of being hardware independent and able to take advantage of lower hardware pricing,” said Art Leondires, Iperia’s Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Products. “This product runs on standard Linux platforms, and takes advantage of SOA. Enterprises or telecommunications service providers have the capability of rapid service creation through the use of ‘packaged’ Web services that come with the product and that allow sites to customize provisioning and other calling behavior. On the GUI end, we use portlet technology, which allows Iperia’s customers to custom-brand their Web portals.”

And later:

“We are seeing a strong market response to our Linux-based product … Our customers see that the reliability of Linux is right up there with the reliability of other proprietary systems, but Linux gives our customers freedom in their hardware purchase decisions.”

To get access to the full article, you’ll have to go through Linux Magazine’s very thorough registration process. If you’re at all interested in the topic of the article, though, it’ll be worth it.

In the entertainment business, there’s an old saying - “You’re only as good as your last effort.” Stephen King’s only as good as his last novel. Steven Spielberg’s only as good as his last movie. You get the idea.

So when you’ve got a hit on your hands, the powers that be like to say, “That’s great. What else have you got?” And that’s what happened with Iperia’s ActivEdge unified communications platform. In Iperia’s case, the people asking “What’s next?” included clients, investors, analysts, and media players, to name a few.

Soon after Iperia hired David Jodoin as CEO in December 2005, the answer became clear. The first hints at the promise of IperiaVX came with the introduction of an enterprise-class application server in March 2006. Later that month, Iperia debuted not just a new product idea, but a new look and brand strategy as well, at the Spring VON conference in San Jose, CA.

And VON events have continued to serve as significant markers in the progress of IperiaVX. More on that in another post…

Tuesday, June 26th, 2007. It’s a date that’s looming large in the minds of everyone at Iperia. After tens of thousands of hours in the making, IperiaVX is in the final stretch. The general availability date is official!

The thing is, since we’ve been showing demos hinting at the full potential of IperiaVX - the trader desktop at Fall VON 2006 and the real estate demo at Spring VON 2007 - our own excitement to release IperiaVX has grown by leaps and bounds. Now that the date’s set in stone, we’re getting ready to celebrate.

And to christen the new Iperia blog, during the month of June 2007 we’d like to share with you some of the highlights of the journey to IperiaVX. Yes, it’s like we’re indulging in a bit of navel-gazing. But we thought about our existing clients, who’ve invested a lot of their own time and energy working with various members of the Iperia team. And when we did, we thought it’d be important to capture this huge change in Iperia’s focus in one place, to help current and potential clients make sense of the evolution from unified communications to voice-enabled business processes.

First up, a blast from the past. Thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine, you can see what Iperia’s website used to look like (and what the focus of its business was) back in 1999. What a difference, compared to the new look and focus.

Who knew IperiaVX would be a future development of this company? At least one man…more about him in the next post.

I recently ran across an application which one of our customers was thinking about implementing. Now I know this customer well and they are adamant about not pushing out open source to their network. So this so called “commercial” application had a demo which I watched.

Darn did it look familiar… So I dug a little deeper. Come to find out they had taken and re-used open source from another application for a particular feature.

Using open source is becoming more prevelant in our industry, and as a result you really need to be careful of the products you use. Ask your vendor for position statements regarding their use of open source. Make sure you understand the GPL/LGPL that is relevant.

The last thing you want is an issue where someone comes back at you for liability due to intellectual property.

So watch out!