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VOIP News writes…

Plantronics (NYSE: PLT) Tuesday reported lower profit in its third quarter than a year ago, but still beat Wall Street’s expectations, setting UC revenue records along the way.

Net income for the quarter was $30.9 million, or 71 cents a share, down slightly from $31.6 million, or 64 cents a share a year ago. Adjusted net income was 75 cents per share, topping analyst’s forecasts of 68 cents per share, and topping last year’s adjusted income of 66 cents per share. The lower profits were primarily due to Plantronic buying back some 2.1 million shares.

Revenue, meanwhile was $183.2 million, up slightly from $181.6 million during the same period a year ago.

Plantronics said it expected a strong fourth quarter, forecasting revenue of between $175 million and $180 million for the quarter, with net income of 63-68 cents per share. Analysts expected revenue of $1877.6 million and adjusted earnings per share of 67 cents.

During yesterday’s earnings call, Ken Kannappan, Plantronics’ president and chief executive, said the company set a record in the quarter for UC revenue, which saw 90 percent growth due to rapid adoption of UC globally. The company also saw 8 percent growth in office and contact center revenue.

“We continue to see broad adoption of UC across all size of enterprises in all major geographies,” he said. “Our investments in UC continued to yield solid results. And in the first nine months of fiscal 2012, we made good progress in differentiating our product line, as well as making huge strides in our corporate marketing and brand positioning.”

For more:
– see this release
– see this earnings call transcript from Seeking Alpha

Related articles:
Plantronics app allows one-touch access to conference calls
Plantronics pushing deeper into UC market with new products
Study: UC adoption rejuvenating headset market revenues
Plantronics CEO talks to Forbes about UC

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VOIP News writes…

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VOIP News writes…

Citrix Systems (Nasdaq: CTXS) reported strong earnings this week, but the company plans to increase acquisitions in the coming year and to reorganize its sales force, which prompted the company to issue a lackluster forecast for the coming year.

Revenue across the board saw a steep increase, with the company reporting net revenues of $619.4 million in the quarter, a 17 percent increase from the $530 million it reported a year ago. GAAP net income was $108.7 million, 58 cent per share, up from $94.4 million, 49 cents per share, a year ago. The 66 cents quarterly adjusted EPS beat Wall Street estimated of 65 cents.

“Greater diversity in our products and channel, combined with a compelling vision, is driving more C-level engagement as well as more up-sell and cross-sell opportunities,” said Mark Templeton, president and chief executive officer for Citrix. “As a result, we are seeing more strategic deals, more use of our products as an end-to-end system, and deeper engagement with our customers through services.”

Citrix has worked to roll out more robust mobile, cloud and desktop solutions, and it has begun to pay off.

For the year, Citrix reported record revenue of $2.2 billion. Its desktop solution revenue accounted for $1.3 billion of that, 12.5 percent higher than a year ago, and included 14 percent y-o-y growth in the fourth quarter, with revenue of $369 million. Data center and cloud solutions revenue increased 29.1 percent to $385.5 million, online services revenue rose 18.6 percent to $427.7 million and revenue from other products increase 46.4 percent to $114.3 million.

Citrix said revenue increased in the America’s region by 16 percent, rose in the EMEA region by 12 percent and increased in the Pacific region by 37 percent.

For 2012, Citrix said revenue should be in the range of $2.49 billion to $2.51 billion; GAAP diluted earnings per share is targeted to be in the range of $1.88 to $1.97.

For the first quarter, expect revenue to be in the range of $555 million to $565 million with GAAP diluted earnings per share in the range of 30-31 cents.

The thin first quarter results, said CFO David Henshall, come from the company’s plans to look to make acquisitions, but those deals should become accretive later in the year.

For more:
– see this release
– see this Motley Fool article

Special Report: Enterprise Communications earnings in the fourth quarter 2011

Related articles:
Citrix opens ‘Developer Center’ for GoTo line
The changing face of videoconferencing: It’s getting cheaper and better
Citrix rolls out Android app for GoToMeeting users
Citrix launches GoToMeeting with no-charge HD videoconference add-on
Citrix’s Cloud.com purchase adds to its core strength; Microsoft gets top ranking from ABI

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VOIP News writes…

If you haven’t read pal Martin Geddes latest post on the Future of Communications entitled Peak Telecom, you are missing something that is likely either something you have likely said, thought, heard someone say in private or really wished you had. It’s a stunningly brilliant piece of writing that leads you to wonder, “what is Martin going to say next” as you read through it.

This post is every bit as important as Alec Saunders 2005 post entitled The Voice 2.0 Manifesto in my opinion as far as laying things out or the famed Pulver Purple Minutes post. It is worthy of your time as it may impact your work or livelihood.

So everyone knows it was Martin who first suggested me and my agency to Nokia back in 2005 to help them decipher “social media” long before many knew what “social media” and blogging was really all about. That led to my development of the Nokia Blogger Relations program, and in turn gave birth to Nokia’s Social Media efforts, something I’m now finally allowed to admit after getting permission recently.

It was Martin’s clear cut thinking back then that foresaw the changing landscape of how media would impact the mobile world. Now in his post he’s laid it all out pinpointing where the changes are coming from, and further pinning the operators into the dumb pipe corner.

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VOIP News writes…

Image via CrunchBase

Just as we’re seeing Over the Top (OTT) in voice and data service impacting the legacy mobile operators and telcos, there’s also a movement afoot thats going to challenge the legacy video conferencing providers like BT, Verizon, Glowpoint (I’m a shareholder) and the rest who have been in the business of white glove video conferncing services, operating exchanges or hosting bridging services.

Yesterday pal Larry Lisser, who is known in the telecom industry as the person to go to to revive sales, penned a post supportive of disruptive Silicon Valley startup, Vidtel (a Comunicano client) who are playing the channel game to open up the legacy room and desk based video conferncing system users of Polycom, Lifesize, Cisco/Tandberg gear to be able to go what founder and ex VP Marketing at Broadsoft Scott Wharton (who is now blogging) is doing with their “any to any’” video bridging service called MeetMe that is offered at downright disruptive prices that turns the whole market on its side. What Vidtel is doing is addressing the already turned on and tuned in video conferencing user base and making their rooms and desktop video systems easily accessible to CounterPath Bria and Bria mobile users, as well as those who are Skype or GoogleTalk centric.

In the post, that was aimed at getting channel oriented telecom resellers to understand why video is so important to them, Lisser points our reasons and rationale as to why the channel is now meaningful to the video conferencing market, a belief also echoed by client Telesphere who offers VideoConnect through their growing reseller partners to sell in to their enterprise customers. In the case of Telesphere they deliver Broadsoft/Polycom/Glowpoint powered video conferencing service that also offers point to point video calling on a range of devices and over the CounterPath powered Bria 3 for Broadworks softphone.

These are reseller channel sold solutions that show a deep understanding of the how to sell versus how to follow. CounterPath, Telesphere and Vidtel along with the established players in Cisco and Polycom, are all using the sales channel to sell through others, not only direct. This is not far different from how Logitech/Lifesize is taking the LifeSize Connections service, or what I call SightSpeed for Business on steroids, where they combined the best of both SightSpeed and Lifesize to bring a lightweight telepresence offering to market and are making it available through leading telecom vTailer (vertical etailer) VoIP Supply (also a Comunicano client) to reach into an already established customer base.

Larry’s premise is further underscored by ClearOne’s purchase today of Israel based VCon, thus showing the world that Polycom, long the audio turned video conferencing leader will have some new competition. ClearOne already sells through channel with companies like eBuyNow, operators of the Skype shop selling the ClearOne Chat 60, and VoIP Supply pushng both the Skype friendly consumer grade speakerphones and the more robust higher end models. Now they’ll take those same channels and follow LifeSize/Logitech’s lead and seek to propel sales through those vtailers like VoIPSupply and others.

All this leads to disruption. Skype started it, but they’re clearly not the end game any longer. Cisco and Polycom aren’t exactly sitting idle as Vidtel and Vidyo disrupt the market, nor are any executives rolling over and playing dead because of Google Hangouts. Companies like Citrix, with GoToMeeting/HD Faces are making great inroads, selling not so much through channel, but via a very strong direct marketing effort online.

What this all means is the traditional players have to change, adapt or die. It’s survival of not only the fittest any longer, but also of the fast and nimble.

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