When the small teams are the only ones who can make the elephants run.

2011 is a very important year for our company, RCS-e is launching, and we are in a good position with 2 ready to market platforms, opening RCS-e and making RCS-e ubiquitous; both interoperated with most core and client vendors, and recognized with the RCS DevChallenge Award as the most innovative RCS solutons.

On the other hand, we are a small team, with limited funding, and facing what the carriers consider "your problem is your size". Obviously it is and egg-and-chicken issue, if customers or potential customers are delaying orders or keeping under NDA the initial references and the company is based in Spain, waiting for VC rounds is basically expect a miracle, and we also gave up trying to actively raise funding (but of course, new business angels or VC's are welcomed on board).

We understood that the "risk avoidance" way of thinking from decision takers is still present coming from decades of inertia, but the timing has changed. The established telecom giant vendors have failed to move the telco elephants but the elephants need to move in the new scenario where they have the OTT's as competitors.

Most of the alternative OTT's are also small team, working fast and with offerings tested and used everyday by zillions of individuals ... their technologies work, are proven to be scalable and their vision is accepted by the users. Of course, Skype is now a relatively big company, but what about WhatsApp? great messaging product by a small focused team.

If telcos need to make feasible their own alternative OTT vision, they need to rely on small companies: motivated teams to help them moving to the next stage. Reluctance to work with small companies means missing opportunities, stay stopped while things happens around you, and new scenarios and business communication models are apearing every day. We are eager to cooperate with telcos & the telco business need some fresh blood, take us in count and elephants will run faster than the Road Runner :-)

Review of IMS World Forum 2011

Last week in Barcelona took place the 8th IMS World Forum (by Informa Telecom&Media). It was quite impressive how the number of delegates, speakers and sponsors were up from previous editions and most important, now optimism regarding IMS future was present.
All keynotes and panels were very interesting, and both carriers and suppliers took about present and future strategies and current deployments. Also the analysts have a leading role trying to get the most of possible info to be discussed. As a summary, the key points that in our opinion are the key takeaways are:

• Finally IMS "is happening".
• LTE and RCS-e seem to be the key enablers
• There are appearing simplified IMS "cores" to make easy and affordable the IMS.
• The business models are converging and at the same way that OTT's are being in some way "telcos", telcos must become soon in some ways "OTT's".  IMS should be the technological base of a Telco-OTT style. This was our point in the 2 panels we participated.
• Carriers are starting to test some OTT models, Telefonica acquisition of local social network Tuenti, and launching an associated MVNO could be a good example. Still to see how to integrate telco technology to make better the OTT delivery.
• Very interesting strategies explained by Verizon Wireless (US) & Rogers (Canada).

The exhibitors booths showcase their IMS architecture, and yes, it seems now it is happening. Particulary interesting the SMX product by Acme Packet, a cost-effective IMS architecture to allow whatever type of service provider to enable IMS services as VoIP & RCS-e. RCS-e could be enabled with SMX without the need of Instant Messaging server if the carrier prefers to launch without chat 1-to-many and store&forward features. A good trade off then.

And last, we hope to see IMS and their key enablers launchs very soon in many places, and of course we are eager to participate, remember our RCS Open&Ubiquitous trial as a Service :-)

GSMA video featuring RCS DevChallenge Winning products.

The GSMA just uploaded to their RCS Channel in Youtube a video filmed during the past MWC with the winners of RCS DevChallenge Competition. You can see there the products of Jibe Mobile (best RCS mobile client) , Movial (best RCS pc client)  and Solaiemes (best RCS innovation). In our demo you can see how interacting using chat with services based on RCS Solution Gateway, and also our RCS Web Client based on RCS Thin Client Server including the History feature.



Kudos to GSMA for pushing RCS ahead.
regards :-)

Proposal to telcos, Try RCS/RCS-e Open & Ubiquitous as a Service!

2011 is going to be the year of the first launchs of Rich Communication Suite, and the year when all the carriers might explore the RCS ways of monetization further the personal messaging service. Solaiemes RCS portfolio has been envisioned to help carriers to overcome the "app store" model where they are mainly "supporting role" and move to the "service contact store" or "network based solutions" with a very simple, powerful and common enabler, the enhanced phonebook.

We can interoperate easily with leading IMS, messaging& SBC  vendors, we can prove that, and once did that, the idea is helping telcos to develope their own cases on top of RCS and their own RCS thin client to make RCS ubiquitous. As our approach is UNI (user to network interface) our platforms can be safely placed in the cloud, as they behave as clients. Then we can offer a test enviroment for creating use cases for your own market research, user experience surveys, & creating automatic procedures to test terminal clients, defining particular needs to offer the API's to developers once the service will be launch.

Time is gold, and all the actors may cooperate reducing bureaucracy, and start working in what really matters, making RCS happen and becoming the telco alternative to apps. We designed a package (it could be customized) to be contracted from 3 months terms and with a nice discount for full year contracts.

Package (contract based on quarters or just 1 year with discount)

• 1 RCS Solution Gateway dedicated in the cloud
• 1 RCS Thin Client Server dedicated in the cloud
• Interoperation Service with Carrier RCS System (IMS+IM+SBC Server or just using IMS+SBC at all). Carrier can choose RCS-e or RCS release 2 spec.
• 1 Webinar
• Initial customization of 2 thin (Web) clients
• 8x5 support
• 1 Full documentation of RCS Solution API's
• 9 engineer days/quarter to prepare or help to prepare on demand demos.
• 3 days/month of 24/7 support to be used on important demos or events.

Special discounts for additional profesional services, on site training and future "on premise" licenses.

And the price ? Ask us, but just a clue, less than 6 figures for a full year !!!

Yes, our RCS portfolio is supporting new RCS-e spec!

After the past Mobile World Congress we were asked about future alignment of our RCS portfolio including RCS Solution Gateway and RCS Thin Client Server with the RCS-e spec promoted by leading carriers and just announced with comitted launch dates during the past MWC.
We just posted our views about this new scenario and now we are pleased to announce our platforms will be working as dual RCS release 2 and RCS-e after implementing the dynamic discovery capabilities based on SIP OPTIONS and will be adding all the feature set described in further specs of coming RCS-e.
As one of the argued reasons for new RCS-e is the need of early launch, and Solaiemes considers the real value of RCS-e will be as key enabler not only for personal messaging but alternative access to rich solutions/use cases (our open/ubiquitous RCS vision), from whatever device, it is mandatory to be on time to have our platforms at the launch dates :-)

Solaiemes to exhibit at CTIA WIRELESS 2011.

Solaiemes will participate as exhibitor in the coming CTIA Wireless 2011 show to be celebrated in Orlando (US) the next 22-24th of March.
Our stand will be the 1440-B inside the Spanish Pavillion area.
We will showcase our compelling RCS/RCS-e portfolio including the RCS Solution Gateway, Winner of GSMA RCS DevChallenge Innovation Category.
We are looking forward to meet there:

• Telco infrastructure vendors to partner.
• Carriers aiming to deploy RCS open to services/solutions and ubiquitous.
• VC's, yes, time for a proper round :-)

Send as an email or a Twitter DM to schedule a meeting and know more about us.

Just took out from the oven, our MWC 2011 Highlights video

This Mobile World Congress has been amazing for us, with very good news. We edited a video with our highlights, "the discloseable ones" ;-), to share with all of you.



the Solaiemes team

Solaiemes, GSMA RCS DevChallenge Innovation Category Winner.

We are happy, very happy, 15 months ago we deciced to focus on RCS, being a very risky decision, and now, finally carriers seem to be deploying RCS-e as announced yesterday and today, just one day after, we won the GSMA RCS DevChallenge competition in the Innovation Category.

The Solaiemes team thanks all the people supporting us, providing good feedback, customers, partners, analysts, and our VC, Eurecan.
We hope this could be a new start, having from now on to have more opportunities to work together with carriers "to deliver the next big thing in communications to the masses" :-)

Some pics from this journey here, in our Facebook page.

It is official, RCS launches in 2011 in major markets. RCS-e new approach, our views

This afternoon during the GSMA RCS Seminar at Mobile World Congress, 5 of the biggest carriers: Telefonica, Vodafone, Orange, TIM, T-Mobile announced their full commitment to RCS and announced the launch of fully interoperated RCS services between second half of 2011 and first quarter of 2012. These leading service providers took the lead and presented a previously agreed subset of RCS 2.0 branded as RCS-e as their alternative.
For us, Solaiemes, it is a good move, stop thinking about new releases 3.0. 4.0 and so on and deciding finally to walk the walk and stop talking the talk :-). More important, this new spec is open for adoption to all carriers interested and open to ecosystem.
RCS-e changes the approach for presence, moving from presence server to a dynamic capabilities discovering based on "SIP OPTIONS". From our point of view it is a minor change in our platforms, we scheduled 3-4 weeks to adapt Solaiemes RCS Thin Client Server and RCS Solution Gateway. Solaiemes first product, LiveServe, an IMS VideoShare application server is already supporting "SIP OPTIONS" for discovering capabilities.
We hope this big move from carriers will be reflected in their budgets for RCS, and start investing to match the tentative launch dates they announced today.

Solaiemes Team.

Trip to Silicon Valley.

Solaiemes participated during the past week in MadridTech, an initiative from PromoMadrid (promoting internationalization of Madrid firms) and CEIM (Madrid's general industry association), in partnership with Opinno, to introduce the "most promising startups the Madrid region has to offer" to San Francisco and Silicon Valley vibrant entrepreneur and investor communities.

Together with other 9 companies, we have spent five days participating in networking events, visiting companies big and small, meeting prospects, potential investors and exchanging ideas and point of views with fellow entrepreneurs.

Opinno team has done an excellent job in the previous weeks supporting us, understanding the different companies businesses, finding and setting up meetings with appropriate contacts, ... They have a truly great network of contacts that can only grow better as the time passes.

The visit has been far from a tourist trip: interesting, motivating, and inspiring, but also very useful, we have met and got closer to very interesting contacts, an embryonic network that hopefully we will capitalize in the next months, surely lots of hard work ahead, but also plenty of opportunities. PromoMadrid and CEIM have also setup an international trade advisor, working with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, it will surely help.

Ways and means are very different in San Francisco ... there are good and not so good aspects; plentiful money (at least from the Spanish perspective), positive energy and "can do" attitude by everybody (big and small, VP and just-out-of-the-college entrepreneur) are an integral part of the Silicon Valley culture. Difficult to transplant here to Spain, it would need a cultural change that we don't see happening soon.

Thanks to PromoMadrid and CEIM for inviting us to participate, congratulations and best luck to the participants, and kudos to Opinno for the excellent work !!!

Jose Recio

Solaiemes to exhibit at Mobile World Congress 2011

Hi, just to announce that we will be exhibiting at MWC 2011 in Barcelona, 14-17th February. Our main stand will be at Spanish Pavilion, CY22, Stand 3, Courtyard (Hall 3.0) and also will be exhibiting during some slots at GSMA RCS DevChallenge zone at AppGarage.
Please contact us if you want to setup a meeting, or just visit us at our booth. While counting the days prior to the event, you can see our video-spot announcing what Solaiemes will offer.



We are also competing in the RCS DevChallenge as shorlisted Finalist in the RCS Innovation category, wish us luck!
The Solaiemes team

GSMA video of the RCS DevChallenge Meet

Find below the video shooted during the RCS DevChallenge meet in London held the past december. You can see briefly some demos from several entrants, several entrants and jury members opinions about the Rich Communication Suite potential. Solaiemes co-founder Jose Recio is talking at point 1'10".

Glad to see GSMA pushing RCS awareness not only to the telco but also the ecosystem.

RCS History feature. All your communications wherever you go.

We are releasing a new feature of the RCS Thin Client Server, the RCS History. The RCS History enables the access from the RCS thin clients (web based), with the same look&feel based on CSS to you past communication history, ordered. Our aim is to help carriers to offer a more "OTT succesful approach" to boost the usage of their coming mass market enablers as RCS, combining cloud communications and cloud storage, where carriers can keep a leading role.

See the screenshots of RCS History in a smartphone & a tablet here

From 2010 to 2011, facts & dreams :-)

This post with "postcard" is just to summarize our year, introduce the next year goals, and wish a happy new year 2011 to all our customers, partners, fans and people who trust us.

Our 2010 was a challenging year. We faced some challenges and changes in our structure and new very talented people come on board, to our ship.
The "telco" sales cycle allowed "finally" to start monetizing our LiveServe product line and hope we can disclose some live deployments of video use cases for emergencies soon. We are comitted to the video and believe the RCS VideoShare will bring amazing possibilities from the live video from/to mobile.
Also, the 2010 was the year when we realize of the huge possibilities of RCS (Rich Communication Suite) to delight carriers customers and focus in help this technology to be more open and more ubiquitous, to help to succeed it with a win-win-win (carriers, developers, users). In just 12 months we got some intersting partnership in the messaging area, actively participated in the events to boost this technology and shorlisted finalist in the GSMA RCS DevChallenge in the innovation category and just we are crossing fingers and working hard to perfom well in the final during the Mobile World Congress.

Hope to find all of being lucky this coming 2011 as we will try to do :-)
The Solaiemes team.