Disruptive Telephony

In a few short hours, I will be catching a plane heading out to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to swim in an alphabet soup of very different acronyms and jargon than my normal work - the "OSD-Sponsored, JITC-Hosted DOD Telecommunications Services Information Conference".  As noted on the page:

The purpose of the conference is to provide an open forum where DOD and vendor representatives can discuss issues related to interoperability of systems providing DOD Telecommunications Switched Services.

The conference will present the current program and discuss ongoing developments to the interoperability certification and information assurance procedures and test documentation. Other topics for discussion include emerging technologies, standards and their integration into the systems providing DOD Telecommunications Services.

I attended last year as well and it's definitely an interesting experience.  The US DoD is really doing some intriguing things with how they make use of VoIP / IP Telephony.  Obviously security is rather important.  They are also driving IPv6 adoption into their infrastructure and so, with the June 2008 mandate only a year away, it will be quite interesting to hear where they are with regard to IPv6 adoption.  Obviously, their huge size and buying power is of strong interest, so the number of vendors will no doubt be high.  Also, and I would think "obviously", I won't exactly be writing about things that I hear or learn there.

If any of you reading this happen to be out there at the conference, do drop me a note as I'm always interested in meeting readers or listeners.