By David Byrd

After a train trip to conduct business with TMC in Connecticut, I thought I may as well have pre-dinner appetizers at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station. After 16 oysters from all over North America and sea urchin, my appetizer kind of wiped out my desire for an entrée. Tuesday was better with two new locations found. Lunch was at a small takeout eatery called Porchetta. Chef Sara Jenkins wraps pork loins in pork bellies, seasoned with a salty paste of wild-fennel pollen, thyme, sage, rosemary, garlic, and pepper. These logs of pork are tied and oven-roasted for hours until tender inside and crispy outside. Although this is a take-out location, there are six seats inside which served us well. It is worth the taxi ride to the East Side to eat this well known and loved Italian dish. For dinner we went with French at LAtelier de Joël Robuchon inside the Four Seasons Hotel. LAtelier loosely translated would be Studio” of Joël Robuchon and food is just that good, incredible little tastings of simple but well done items. We enjoyed foie gras foam, scallops, duck, sweet breads, crab and Chilean sea bass. Each was a delight. Go understanding the cost and the evening will be a delight.

Interop 2010

I attended Interop 2010 to see what is of most interest to IT directors and managers. After all, they now control the IT infrastructure and communications budget in most companies. The show floor was adequate if not a bit small. I suppose this is due to the continued cutbacks in travel. Aside from the basic hardware needed to hold, power and run servers, several notables themes were present. Cloud computing, security and managed/hosted services did their best to suck the air out of the exhibit hall but there were four very interesting video/telepresence conferencing vendors where I spent most of my time. Curiously, the only SIP vendor was AT&T and their booth was fairly quiet compared to Dell, HP and others. The most interesting item was the private rocket in the Xirrus booth courtesy of their CEO, Dirk Gates, who practices the art of rocketry.

Ill attend one of the Interop venues in 2011 anxious to see when the IT directors and managers demand more on the subject of VoIP, SIP Trunking and hosted virtual IP PBXs.

David Byrd is vice president of marketing and sales for Broadvox, and is responsible for marketing and channel sales programs to SMBs, enterprises and carriers as well as defining the product offering. Prior to joining Broadvox, David was the Vice President of Channels and Alliances for Eftia and Telcordia. As Director of eBusiness Development with i2 Technologies, he developed major partnerships with many of the leaders in Internet eCommerce and supply chain management. As CEO of Planet Hollywood Online he was a pioneer in using early internet technologies to build a branded entertainment and eCommerce website company partnered with Planet Hollywood. Having over twenty years of Telecom sales and marketing experience, he has held executive positions with Hewlett-Packard, Sprint and Ericsson.