Last winter I wrapped up my engagement with Lavalife. I had been providing services to them in one way or another for 9 years; and it was the end of a very nice and mutually beneficial relationship. Lavalife needed their executive team to be in the same office; I couldn’t move to Toronto; and it just made best sense for us to disengage professionally (although we do remain in touch and still compare notes and discuss web strategies; and I have done a small piece or two of consulting for them).
I was excited to try something new, and promptly formed a new professional services company with a couple of ex-Lavalife Canadian colleagues. Our specialization was migration to VoIP, and we wanted to help others achieve the benefits we had from moving to IP architectures. We had big plans to build a larger practice; and we were going to capitalize on the lower cost of labor in Canadian markets. Doug came with me to this venture, and the idea was that we would transition Ampersand’s business base into the new company, which was called Voxaris.
Unfortunately, things didn’t work out too well for us, and we’re just completing wrapping things up. It was a combination of everything, from long lead times for developing new clients, to the strengthening Canadian dollar, to the challenges of doing a startup with all the founders in different locations, to the financial and accounting complexities of a cross-border enterprise. So, we’re transferring the company to one of the founders who wants to use it for his own professional services business, and I’m back focused on Ampersand as my main activity.
I’ve been quiet on Steve’s Tech Journal while all this was going on, and had actually started a blog or two for the new company. But now that I am back focused on building Ampersand’s business; you’ll likely see me writing here a bit more frequently again.
Ampersand is busy with a few clients: helping call centers plan a transition to VoIP; planning a Netsuite enterprise IT implementation; and coding a VUI design for a Voice 2.0 company. Doug Campell remains with me at Ampersand. The next 6 months will see more of the same; as Ampersand continues to do what it always has: provide quality software development and management consulting services to our customers. VoIP will be a big focus; it’s an area we know and it confers sigificant cost savings and strategic benefits to those who adopt it.
You’ll also see a couple of new things in the next 6 months. We’re a day or two away from releasing VoiceGlue, our first open source software package. Voiceglue links Asterisk to openVxi; allowing people to run VxML applications on Asterisk. We’re hoping that Voiceglue proves useful to people, and that the project gets traction. And, once I get back from summer vacation at the end of the summer I’ll be working with some friends to redesign the Ampersand website and rebrand the company.