It’s the dog days of summer in telecom. Just what are the dog days? According to Wikipedia “The phrase Dog Days or "the dog days of summer", refers to the hottest, most sultry days of summer. They are a phenomenon of the northern hemisphere that usually falls between July and early September but the actual dates vary greatly from region to region, depending on latitude and climate. Dog Days can also define a time period or event that is very hot or stagnant.” It’s no only hot in here, since I dropped the kids off at camp and came home to my closed up house and an air conditioner that wasn’t working – and tomorrow is when the heat wave is supposed to start, it’s also that stagnant time of year in telecom.
Besides the heat, the reason I think about the dog days of summer each year is because it’s about this time that I realize, being the truly obsessed sports fan that I am, that my beloved Stanford Cardinal are no longer playing any sport including lawn bowling (even though they blessedly extended baseball by a month by going to the College World Series), and that I am left with just my much-loved SF Giants. But that darn All-Star break is coming up, and then where will I be? This, and the heat, to me are the dog days of summer. But I digress.
So, my sports are stagnant and so is the industry. There are very few announcements of any import during the summer months, no big trade shows (until SpeechTek 2008/destinationCRM in August), and everyone is on vacation. This is good for catching up, but boring for the blogosphere.
However, for the most part it’s pretty quiet. While I was pondering this I was also reminded that this whole year has been rather quiet on two other fronts too – IPOs and acquisitions. The first because of the economy, as I read last week that June was the first month in something like 30 years that there hasn’t been an IPO. The second I can only guess is in part the economy and in part less attractive acquisition targets compared to earlier years.
Although I keep a list of acquisitions going back years, but I certainly don’t have all of them on. So looking at that list, the only acquisitions this year that I have noted in UC/contact center/speech technology, and related areas this year have been – Oracle buying BEA Systems in January, Nuance acquiring eScription in April, FrontRange Solutions acquiring Centennial Software in April, Syntellect acquiring Fluency Voice in June, and OnMobile acquiring Telisma last week. That is peanuts compared to previous years. For example, in 2007 when money was still flowing, we had 34 acquisitions that I recorded for the year.
Don’t think I’m complaining. I relish the opportunity to catch up and the breather before fall hits and kids go back to school and the industry starts dancing again. It was just an observation. Oh, and there are only 52 days until football season too.