About VoIP Evolution

VoIP Evolution provides cutting-edge research and analysis about the innovative companies, services and technologies that are creating the future of voice and video communication. VoIP Evolution reports take a unique approach to analysis. It starts with the fact that a lot of markets today are far from consistent. Head-to-head competition between similar products and services – that is, apples-to-apples comparison – is rare. More often the clash is between very different types of players – equipment vendors versus service providers, for example. That means the most important competition is as much between business models as between products.

VoIP Evolution research focuses on this multiplicity of product types and business models, rather than trying to work around it. Its innovative approach treats this contrast in categories as a tool for comparison rather than a barrier to it. Furthermore, it identifies multiple other such contrasts that differentiate products and services. Taken together, these differentiators provide a far more complete picture of the relative strengths and weaknesses of different solutions than do conventional methods of market analysis. This approach is particularly suitable for markets that mix equipment and services, such as VoIP and video conferencing. It is also a perfect fit for an era in which cloud services have become a powerful presence in almost every high-tech market.

Robert Poe, Principal Analyst & Editor-in-Chief

Robert Poe has been covering technology as a writer and analyst, with an emphasis on telecommunications, in Asia and the U.S. for 25 years. He lived (and practiced karate) in Japan during the 1980s, writing about aircraft manufacturing, computers, semiconductors and telecommunications, among other things, while serving as Asia-Pacific bureau chief for two high-tech industry publications. He lived in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s, as a writer and editor-in-chief for electronics and telecommunications magazines. He has covered stories in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.

In the late 1990s he worked for an undersea cable startup, and early this century was a staff writer with Business 2.0 magazine. He has written technology articles for Upside, Wired News, Slate and Investors Business Daily. He has also written occasional political articles. In recent years he has particularly focused on the startling new technologies and business models resulting from the merging of the Internet and the traditional telephone network. Analyst reports he has written for Heavy Reading have covered topics including disruptive VoIP services, Ethernet backhaul testing, voice over LTE and HD voice codecs.