Disruptive Telephony

Congratulations to Dean Elwood for joining Truphone as their Director of Platform Operations! I've known Dean for a couple of years now through Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast where he's commented from time to time and also provided us the SIP-based comment line (sip:[email protected]) through his involvement with the VoIPuser.org web site. We had a chance to meet a year or so ago at the first Blue Box dinner we had in London and Dean also hosted a dinner at VON Fall Boston a few weeks ago. He's a great guy with tremendous talent and I'm sure he'll be a great resource for Truphone. Speaking of Truphone, they are also a fascinating company to watch and I've come to know a good number of folks involved over time. I'm looking forward very much to seeing what comes out of their work and I wish Dean all the best in his new role.

Technorati Tags: dean elwood, truphone

Having been online now since the early 1980s and having watched/used the ever-increasing amounts of bandwidth we have available, it still made me pause to read that Verizon Business has launched 40Gbps connections on its backbone using Juniper Networks routers.

40 Gbps?

Pretty mind-blowing, considering where we have come from. I'll spare you all the tugging on my beard (that is now gray in spots) and reminiscing about how we all had to connect at 110 baud using acoustic couplers... I will say that back in the late 1990's when I wrote the Networking Essentials Exam Guide, I did cover the OC-n naming convention for connections, but I don't think we would ever have imagined that some day there would be "OC-768". Pretty cool!

Not that we as consumers will necessarily see that bandwidth anytime soon... but it is nice to know it is there in the backbone. (Also interesting that they note that the growth of their VoIP offerings is one of the reasons for being interested in this backbone.)

Technorati Tags: Internet, verizon

I haven't written much here about the state of VoIP-related regulations in the USA, but Jeff Pulver just did yesterday on his blog with his post, "VoIP in America: The State of VoIP". I would encourage you to give it a read, even if you don't live in the USA. It's great that we all are building useful technologies... but we also need to make sure that government regulations do allow us to use those technologies.

Technorati Tags: politics, regulation, voip

"It's about an open platform, stupid!" While I didn't include Google when I first wrote my post about how voice is really all about application platforms, I did note in the comments that I had intended to do so... and today's announcement really shows that they should be in anyone's list of telephony application platforms. As announced on the Google blog with "Where's my Gphone?", Google today announced the Open Handset Alliance and the associated set of forthcoming software called Android. The front page of the Open Handset Alliance provides a rather compelling (to me) statement:

What would it take to build a better mobile phone?

A commitment to openness, a shared vision for the future, and concrete plans to make the vision a reality.

Welcome to the Open Handset Alliance™, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. Together we have developed Android™, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.

We are committed to commercially deploy handsets and services using the Android Platform in the second half of 2008. An early look at the Android Software Development Kit (SDK) will be available on November 12th.

The list of partners in the Open Handset Alliance is quite interesting... handset manufacturers, semiconductor companies, software companies... but also cellular/mobile operators such as Sprint and T-Mobile as well as NTT DoCoMo and the giant China Telecom.

Also intriguing to note that eBay is listed as a partner. Would this be for eBay itself or could it perhaps be for Skype? Adding Skype into this mix could be interesting as well.

The Google blog page contains this text which gives some insight into Google's interest:

Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications -- all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. We have developed Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance, which consists of more than 30 technology and mobile leaders including Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile. Through deep partnerships with carriers, device manufacturers, developers, and others, we hope to enable an open ecosystem for the mobile world by creating a standard, open mobile software platform. We think the result will ultimately be a better and faster pace for innovation that will give mobile customers unforeseen applications and capabilities.

We see Android as an important part of our strategy of furthering Google's goal of providing access to information to users wherever they are. We recognize that many among the multitude of mobile users around the world do not and may never have an Android-based phone. Our goals must be independent of device or even platform. For this reason, Android will complement, but not replace, our longstanding mobile strategy of developing useful and compelling mobile services and driving adoption of these products through partnerships with handset manufacturers and mobile operators around the world.

In the end, Google wants a platform upon which they can offer their many services. With this plan, they are hoping to turn a zillion mobile phones into a platform which Google - and many others - can use.

Fascinating move... and one that is naturally getting a ton of coverage in the blogosphere. I've not had the time to read much of it, but did catch Scoble, the NY Times article and ZDNet's take. I'm sure we'll all be reading much more about it in the days ahead.

Right now, all we can really do is speculate until next Monday when the (apparently open source) SDK becomes available. We shall see... although the initial signs are certainly that this could indeed cause some disruption.

P.S. One of the commenters on Scoble's blog wondered why there wasn't equivalent attention being given to http://www.openmoko.com/ , especially since it is out already with a product. My quick reaction would be that from what I know of OpenMoko, it is about an open platform, but from a single vendor and on a single hardware platform. This Google announcement would appear to transcend both the vendors and the hardware platforms. It's also an announcement from Google and it has impressive backers.

Technorati Tags: android, apis, applications, google, openhandsetalliance, wireless

"Phone systems" are dead. PBXs are dead. IP-PBXs are dead.

Well, okay, not really... people will still be buying "PBXs" for quite some time. Just as there are certain communities out there who still buy horse-drawn wagons. But the reality is this:

"Phone systems", PBXs and IP-PBXs without easy application programming interfaces (APIs) are a dead branch on the evolutionary tree.

The future of communication belongs to mashups. To quick and easy ways to interconnect disparate systems. To integration of communication systems with business processes and other applications. In a world where voice is no longer always the primary mode of communication, we have to stop thinking about "phone systems" and take a larger look at how "communication" in general fits into our infrastructure. More than just how we use the system, we have to look at how we can get data in and out of the communication system. To borrow from the 1992 Clinton campaign:

It's the platform, stupid!

As you look at communication choices, the question is really about who has the "best" APIs... whose system is easiest to integrate with.... who lets you get data out of their system easily - and also lets the data back in... who lets you control the communication experience through an external application (and does so securely, naturally).

There's a good number of players out there who "get it", and either have or are in the process of developing a strong ecosystem of application partners, but let's take a quick spin down the list of some of them:

• Microsoft - Duh! Everything about Office Communication Server and all the other components is all a platform play. The goal is integration of communication into the rest of your IT infrastructure (which they would of course like to have you run entirely on Microsoft products).
• IBM - They don't usually get as much mention as Microsoft, but IBM's been back there making Sametime a communication platform play similar to OCS (only it has been out there for several years). With their latest move to OEM components from Siemens to make their Universal Telephony Server to allow interconnection with many different IP-PBXs, they very clearly see the value in integration.
• Digium/Asterisk - The name Asterisk also refers to the "*" wildcard character which in UNIX-land basically means it will match on everything. Asterisk has always been about being a platform for telephony/communication from its very beginnings.
• Skype - With its "Extras" gallery and the developer program they have been working to promote, Skype is trying to be an applications platform and currently does have many applications now available (use the "Do More" link to get to the Extras Gallery).
• Oracle - They don't get as much coverage, but I would watch what the folks at Oracle are doing, because they are building communication solutions that move around Oracle's database solutions.
• Social networking sites - Facebook and MySpace don't immediately come to mind as "communication" choices, but the reality is that they are becoming that - and they both understand the need and value in an API ecosystem. How well they will execute remains to the be seen.
• The IP-PBX vendors... to a degree - I hesitate on this one a bit. Some of the vendors get this. Avaya has been running around with their SOA toolkit. Siemens has been doing a good bit of work in this space (so much so that IBM OEM'd product from them). Cisco has been running around buying up companies. But at least to me it seems to be somewhat half-hearted. For the others I've listed, communication is a platform, while for the vendors it seems to be something else they need to do. It's a different mindset which, I think, reflects the IT focus of the ones I've listed previously.

There are certainly others out there ... and more will undoubtedly enter the space in the time ahead. The key question I think we all in general need to be asking:

How well does your communication system provide a platform for applications? (or for integration with applications?)

P.S. And yes, my new employer is one of those who understands this... although ironically I wrote the draft of this entry about 3 weeks ago before I'd even heard of them... but more on that later today. :-)

Boy, did I choose the wrong week to go dark! Way too many amazing things going on out there this week... here is a quick view of some of the disruptions with relevant links:

• Microsoft formally announces release of Office Communication Server - tons of coverage out there but I recommend the analysis by the UC Strategies team.
• Skype will be providing voice to MySpace IM - again tons of coverage - Skype Journal has more info and a screenshot. See also the Skype blog.
• Per Business Week this morning, Skype will be rolling out its own mobile phone, starting in Europe.
• MySpace
• Apple, meanwhile, announces an upcoming developer kit for the iPhone via a note from Steve Jobs (some reactions here and here).
• And finally MySpace says it will open up to application developers in a similar manner to Facebook.

All in all a rather busy week! (And it's not over yet...)

Technorati Tags: apple, applications, facebook, iphone, myspace, microsoft, ocs, unifiedcommunications, skype, voip

The SMB VoIP game is changing. Fundamentally. And in a pattern we've seen before in other industries. In the news release out today, Digium and 3Com announced that:

Under the terms of the agreement, 3Com will offer Digium’s award-winning Asterisk Appliance™ to small businesses that need a reliable, easy-to-deploy voice solution based on open standards. 3Com Asterisk will be available through the company’s proven channel of partners worldwide.

Let's think about that for a minute. 3Com will make Digium's Asterisk appliance available through "the company's proven channel of partner's worldwide", which some reports are putting at around 60,000 resellers. Digium just wound up with a large global sales channel. Yet to be seen is whether there will be any channel conflict with existing Digium Partners/VARs, but regardless, Digium just wound up with a way to deploy Asterisk-based solutions globally. It does, however, get one step better (my emphasis added):

“3Com is focused on delivering products and solutions for converged secure networks, in which voice is an application that can be readily integrated with many others,” said Bob Dechant, senior vice president and general manager for 3Com Corporation. “We’ve announced a complete voice strategy and new product offerings for small businesses, including the 3Com Asterisk Appliance. We also offer innovative enterprise-caliber 3Com Global Services for customers who purchase the 3Com Asterisk. We chose to partner with Digium because of the company’s position as the Asterisk leader, its commitment to open standards and the ease-of-use of the appliance.”

Yes, indeed, Digium winds up with a global support organization behind Asterisk. Powerful announcement. Global sales and support - for an open source PBX... According to information from Digium, the "3Com Asterisk", priced at $1,595, will include a 3Com-co-branded interface and easy configuration/provisioning of 3Com SIP phones (as can be done today with Polycom phones). Given last weeks' announcement of the SwitchVox acquisition, I would think that rolling some of that GUI/functionality into the offering would be another logical step longer-term. The implications of this announcement, though, go far beyond the commercial relationship between Digium and 3Com. Those of us who remember Linux in the late 1990s and early 2000s remember that Linux took a trajectory like this:

1. Techies/geeks/early-adopters started to install Linux into their businesses to solve specific needs. Often it was installed without corporate permission as a DNS server, web, server, etc.
2. A range of small, specialized vendors started to ship servers with Linux pre-installed. Very often these companies were founded by people within the Linux community (ex. VA Linux, Penguin Computing)
3. Larger, more mainstream but still lower-tier manufacturers started to ship servers with Linux. (I forget the first one I saw doing this.)
4. Tier 1 manufacturers (ex. IBM, HP, Dell) started to ship servers with Linux.

Asterisk just moved to step #3 (after already moving through #1 and #2). While 3Com does not have the same market status as Cisco, Avaya and Nortel (or Mitel in SMB), 3Com definitely has a presence out there and to me their endorsement of Asterisk certainly brings a level of credibility to Asterisk-based software and hardware. It's good for Asterisk. It's good for Asterisk-based products and services (including those of Digium's competitors). It's good for open source. Ultimately, in my opinion, it's good for all of us.

Yet to be seen is how good it is for 3Com's own SMB offerings and that will be interesting to see. Right now it seems that they are all about "offering customers choice" between 3Com's own product and the Asterisk-based appliance. Will that last? Will 3Com continue to maintain its own SMB products long-term? Or will it cede that lower-end market to Asterisk and focus on apps that interoperate with Asterisk and/or phones for Asterisk (and 3Com's higher-end offerings)? Interesting questions to consider, particularly in light of 3Com's announcement on Friday that it is being acquired by Bain Capital and Chinese giant Huawei as well as their announcement today of new VCX systems targeted at the SMB market.

Nor is it clear to me how much of a short-term impact there will be on the SMB market. 3Com has been less of a presence in that space in recent years although its clear from their various announcements today that they are intent on playing a larger role in the space. Will Mitel, Avaya, Cisco, etc. lose any sales today as a result of 3Com selling Asterisk? Maybe. Maybe not.

Longer-term, though, I personally view this as a huge validation that open source telephony has a role in the business space. The cracks in the wall of proprietary telephony just got a whole lot larger today. Congrats to Digium and 3Com... and now the question is - who's the next vendor to get on board?

What do you think? Is this a validation of Asterisk? Or a flash in the pan? (Or as one more cynical person put it to me, "a desperate move by 3Com to stay relevant?") What do you see as the short-term and long-term impacts to the SMB market? Should the existing vendors be scared? Or just ignore it?

More coverage:

• Alec Saunders: Digium Scores with 3Com
• Greg Galtizine: 3Com to Offer Customers Asterisk Appliance
• VoIP-News: Digium Targets Mass Market Again With 3Com Deal
• ZD Net (Russell Shaw): 3Com fills SMB nices with new IP Telephony products
• eWeek Channel Insider: 3Com Preps VOIP Switches for SMBs

Technorati Tags: opensource, asterisk, digium, voip, 3Com, telephony

Does "voice" communication really matter as much today in business communications?

Think about it. When you need to reach someone today, what do you do? Do you call them on the phone? Or do you send them email? Or a text message? or IM?

I know personally that my normal communication flow usually goes something like this:

1. Instant Messaging - I check first to see if I can reach the person on some form of IM. For me, I usually use Skype, GoogleTalk or WLM/MSN, although I do have accounts on other services as well. I use IM because I can see the presence of the other person. If they are online and available, I'll shoot them a message. Sometimes the question may be dealt with entirely within an IM exchange. Other times I use the IM chat as the precursor to initiating a voice call, i.e. "Ping... do you have time for a call?"
2. SMS - If the matter is relatively important and I want to talk to someone, I might send an SMS next to their cell phone, again often to see
3. E-mail/Facebook/Twitter/other - Unless the matter is really urgent, the next mode I'll use is some form of "asynchronous" communication. Previously that would have just been email, but these days I find myself very often sending messages via Facebook or Twitter.
4. Phone Call - If I can't reach someone any other way I'll pick up the phone and call someone... and typically wind up leaving a voicemail message

Now, this flow changes if something is urgent. I believe voice is still critical when you have something to convey that might have emotional undertones (ex. negative feedback on a project that might be misconstrued in email) or when you really need answers right now on some matter. If I have to urgently get in touch with someone, the flow is usually more like:

1. IM - Check the person's presence and try to get in touch with them.
2. Phone call - Call the person via cell phone or a service like Skype.
3. SMS - If, as usual, I had to leave a message, I may send an SMS to the person's cell phone.
4. E-mail/Facebook/Twitter/other - I may followup with an email asking the person to call me.

Why don't I just start out using the phone? Really for the reason I mentioned above:

whenever I call someone I almost inevitably wind up leaving a voicemail message.

I don't remember the statistic from the messaging presentations I attended, but I seem to recall the stat being that something like 80% of phone calls wind up going to voicemail. The reality is that most of us aren't usually available to take phone calls.

Presence can help us with this. Many of the "unified communications" solutions out there have the ability to give you "telephony presence" information, i.e. is the person on the phone or not. This can help avoid the case of your phone call going to voicemail because the person is busy on the phone. (It does not help with case of the person sitting there at his/her desk not on the phone but not wanting to take the phone call.) So we can know not to initiate the call and to use some other mechanism. (such as IM'ing them "can you call me when you are done?")

Now I recognize that I'm often in the early-adopter/bright-shiny-object-chaser category, but in watching colleagues at work and how they communicated, I saw the same pattern play out. IM or Email ruled for most all communication, with IM taking an increasingly larger role. Voice was somewhere farther down in the list of communication modes.

So what does that mean for those of us in the world of telephony? I'll suggest the following:

1. Presence is critical. We want to know if we can reach someone and how: IM? voice? mobile/cell? video? Communication systems must have presence capability.
2. Multi-modal communication is key. Communication systems should let us seamlessly flow between modes of communication. I should be able to start off in IM, move to a voice call, continuing using IM to pass along URLs, files, etc., potentially add video or web/data collaboration, and then when the voice/video/datasharing call is over, the IM channel still lives on as a way to send any follow-ups. Naturally, we need to have presence information over all those modes.
3. Context is important. If I am in a meeting, I may only want to be reached via IM. Or may only want to be reached by certain people. I want to be able to specify who can reach me when and by which mode of communication. There are a whole number of companies playing in this space right now, trying to solve this particular beast.
4. The bar has been lowered for new entrants. If voice is now just one of many modes of communication, and an often lower-priority one at that, it follows that newer entrants into the communication space don't need to care as much about voice. They don't need the x-hundred features of traditional telephony solutions. Due to the degree to which mobile phones have lowered our expectations around audio quality, they don't even have to be as worried about that traditional concern. (Nor even reliability - look how quickly Skype recovered after their two-day outage!)

This last point is to me why I think we are seeing so much disruption happening within the world of telephony. The fact that voice is no longer quite as critical gives us the freedom to explore how it can be used in different ways. Plus, we need to answer the question - if voice isn't the most critical way to communicate, what is? How do we integrate it all together?

What do you think? What is your communication flow? What do you use as the first way to reach someone? Do you pick up the phone? Or do you IM? or email? Do you agree that voice is less important than it once was for regular communication? What lessons do you think we need to draw from that?

Technorati Tags: communication, IM, presence, telecommunications, telephony, voip

Just out on WebWire today, research firm iLocus indicated that 2.23 million IP-only PBX lines were sold in the second quarter of 2007, apparently generating revenues of over $208 million.  Cisco was the market leader and then, according to the news release, Mitel (my employer) was the leader of the non-Cisco shipments.  Mitel apparently had 42% market share (of non-Cisco shipments, I presume), followed by 3Com, ShoreTel and Inter-Tel (now part of Mitel).

Now the point of this news release is obviously to entice people to buy iLocus' research report, but I do find the data rather curious.  Mostly due to the fact that there is no mention of Avaya and Nortel, two of the other major competitors in the IP-PBX space.  Now perhaps this is due to this statement:

"iLocus has discontinued coverage of shipments related to legacy PBX upgrades or the hybrid systems. We focus on only the pure IP PBX shipments in the enterprise VoIP equipment quarterly tracking service."

I don't know.  I do just find it curious.  (Not that I'm complaining, mind you.)  In any event, this research is now out there and available to purchase.

It would be interesting to know how this 2.23 million licenses relates to the overall number of "lines" sold in the last quarter.  How many total IP and TDM lines were sold, and therefore what percentage of overall lines does this 2.23 million represent.  And is 2.23 million an increase or decrease over last quarter?  I want to see trends, charts... and I suppose in order to that I'd probably need to buy the report, eh?

Very good news here in Mitel-land today - at about 4pm the merger of Mitel and Inter-Tel was completed! At least, in the legal sense... obviously there will be more work to be done on the integration, but for now the celebrations can begin.  The company has now doubled in size, gained a very strong US organization and is all-around well-positioned for growth. As the news release stated:

The company will now be #1 in the North American SMB market¹, #2 in the Western European IP PBX market², the overall leader in the U.K. communications market³ and continues to grow its operations globally. With three trusted brands (Mitel, Inter-Tel and Lake), the company offers customers a broad choice of solutions from the very small to the very large, from IP enabled to pure IP unified communications, from standard solutions to tailored, from single site to multi-site and from outright capital purchase options through sophisticated managed services. 

It should be a fun ride to see where this all winds up!