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I've been wanting to post about this for a bit, and it's a good time now to do this.

Scott Wharton was the VP of Marketing at BroadSoft pretty much as long as I've been in this space, and he recently made a move to do his own thing. He's long been instrumental in BroadSoft's growth, and am sure they're sad to see him go. BroadSoft has evolved nicely into a strong company that I've been close to going back to my time at Frost & Sullivan. I think I even wrote my first white paper for them.

I've long considered Scott one of my go-to guys who I would always make a point of seeing at conferences. He's one of a handful of people I met when first starting out in this space who until a few weeks ago was with the same company. Not many of those around, and that counts for a lot in my books.

I'm not privy to the details, but Scott has been keen on the video telephony market for some time, and now he's taking the plunge. His new company is called Vidtel, and he's gone coastal, moving house and home from Maryland to Silicon Valley. That's quite a commitment, and he's convinced the time is right for a pureplay focused on consumer video calling. He's not alone in this space, so he must be seeing something most of us are not.

There's no doubt the market is more ready for this than ever before. Many flavors of video calling are gaining traction in the enterprise market, and I know of at least one BroadSoft customer who is doing very well with it in the consumer market. The technology is ready, the handsets are cheap enough, broadband is mainstream now, and mobile video calling is starting to happen. So, why not in the home? If anything, video calling can make landlines sexy again, and you can't tell me that's a message the telcos don't want to hear.

So, here's my shoutout to share the news about Scott's move and of course, to wish him all the success in the world. I haven't seen much about this on the blogs, and if you're looking for Scott, you need to know where to find him. For now, the Vidtel website is just a landing page, so that won't get you very far.

If you don't have his personal contact info, you can find him on LinkedIn. You can also find him in the blogosphere. He's been writing sporadically for some time, and it's all good, so you should try following him there. I'm glad I waited until today to post, actually, because Scott actually posted today. Lucky me - my post now has some up to the minute content! It's his first post since early February, but that's understandable given that he's probably been in stealth mode for a while.

Anyhow, he's not in stealth any more, so if video calling is on your radar, you should follow Scott's blog, and more importantly what he plans to do with Vidtel. I'll be watching.

Technorati tags: Scott Wharton, Jon Arnold, BroadSoft, Vidtel, video calling

Posted by jonarnold at April 28, 2008 09:02 PM