Disruptive Telephony

Right now I looked at the bottom of my Skype window and saw that the count read 27,257,659 users online:

Not bad considering that the company just crossed over 25,000,000 back in late November and then had the massive outage at the end of December! In fact, I don't remember seeing Skype cross over the 26 million mark...

Congrats to Skype for hitting this milestone!

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UPDATE: After Hudson Barton mentioned that the previous high number for online users was under 26 million, Neil Lindsey pointed me to the online chart of Skype users over the past 7 days, which shows that the count flirted with 26 million but did not cross it yesterday:

The 40-hour chart shows the climb in greater detail:

So Skype crossed over the 26 million mark AND the 27 million mark today! Not a bad day for Skype!

P.S. And yes, since Skype is the only source for these numbers, they could be completely making them up. However, I know (and trust) enough folks there to assume the numbers are accurate.

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In 2011, I expect to be writing a good bit more about IPv6, in part because the reality is that we are getting closer to being out of IPv4 addresses, in part because I am doing more personal experimentation with IPv6, and in part because Voxeo is going to be releasing some new product versions that will work with IPv6... and yes, in part because the network geek in me just finds IPv6 interesting.

Anyway, to kick off my 2011 coverage of IPv6, here is a video of a tutorial given by a Voxeo engineer about the basics of IPv6... enjoy!

Do you use Asterisk as a PBX? Are you an administrator of an Asterisk system? Do you have a product based on Asterisk? Or that connects to Asterisk?

If so, the authors of the forthcoming book "Asterisk: The Definitive Guide" are looking for your help as they enter into the final production stage of the book. Now, the cool part about the book is that, like the first two versions, it will be released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States license and made available online for free usage and download. You also can naturally purchase it from O'Reilly... but the key item is that the content of the book will become part of the available body of online Asterisk documentation.

So it's in all of our interest that it is as accurate as possible!

If you have even just a few minutes to browse a section or two and provide feedback, the book is up in O'Reilly's "Open Feedback Publishing System" at:

http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9780596517342/index.html

You need to have a account on O'Reilly's system in order to comment... but those accounts are free and if you have ever bought anything from O'Reilly odds are that you already have one.

In today's VUC call, authors Leif Madsen and Russell Bryant asked for help from the community. They are at the stage where they can't really add large blocks of content or massively rearrange, but they can tweak text. So they are asking people for help in just checking it over... are there any errors found? Are there better ways to say something? Text that isn't quite right? Or any other comments...

THEY ARE LOOKING TO RECEIVE ALL COMMENTS BY MONDAY, JANUARY 17!

Leif and Russell stressed today that you don't need to read the whole book... if there is a chapter that interests you or that is applicable to something you work directly with, please take a look at that chapter and provide feedback. Even if you just have 10 or 15 minutes now and then to scan through some of the text, it would be a great help.

I'm going to try to read a bit of it (predictably the security chapter ;-) and would encourage you to take a peek, too!

Thanks!

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In light of the phenomenal success of the iPad, do "enterprise tablets" from Cisco and HP even remotely stand a chance? Particularly when: 1) Apple is targeting enterprises now; and 2) all signs are that Apple will soon be releasing a version 2 of the iPad with even more capabilities. Yesterday Greg Ferro took this question on in a post comparing the Cisco Cius versus HP WebOS tablets versus the iPad.

His post is definitely worth a read for his comparisons... I'll zoom in on what was for me the key point (my emphasis added at the end):

The problem with this lovely story is the Apple iPad. No doubt Cisco and HP have been working on their tablet stories for the last two or three years. I also have no doubt that the unexpected success of the iPad selling twenty or thirty million units in the first year has seriously upset their plans. But the thing really bothering them would be rise of the articles in the press about the iPad moving into the enterprise. Cisco and HP think that they own the enterprise, and it’s their right to make money out it. The idea that Apple can crossover a device from the consumer marketplace is going to kink them up. Users do NOT WANT to get a Cisco CIUS or HP Palm tablet, they want an Apple iPad.

And, I think, users will simply bring in their own iPads and want them to run on the corporate network. Particularly when the cost of some of the "enterprise tablets" is higher than that of the iPad.

It's just an ongoing part of the "consumerization of enterprise IT". I've long said "consumer experiences drive enterprise expectations" and that is true in the tablet space, too, I believe.

There is a part of me that worries about a monoculture and hopes that for competition/innovation the tablets from Cisco and HP can thrive. But I wouldn't count on it... I really like my iPad! ;-)

What do you think? Will the "enterprise tablets" succeed? Or perhaps succeed only in some niches? Or will corporate users want to use their iPad or some of the impending Android tablets?

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The rumors started flying this morning... and continued for quite some time... and then were finally confirmed by a Skype blog post:

Skype to acquire Qik

Qik has been around since 2006 and first came on my radar a few years back when Robert Scoble was using it heavily (he hasn't recently). At the time, though, I still had an iPhone 3G and wasn't able to use the streaming video (it worked only with the 3GS and now of course the 4) so I didn't do much myself with Qik. I was, however, very impressed with what Steve Garfield was doing with it. In particular, I remember him bringing it to some Obama events in the Boston area in the run-up to the last US Presidential election and streaming them live from his phone.

The power of live streaming from a mobile device struck me then (and still does now) as quite a powerful content creation tool.

The acquisition of Qik by Skype is somewhat curious because of course Skype already has its own video technology, but the key seems to be in this part of their blog post:

... the acquisition of Qik will help to accelerate our leadership in video by adding recording, sharing and storing capabilities to our product portfolio.

Through this acquisition, we’ll also be able to take advantage of the engineering expertise that is behind Qik’s Smart Streaming technology, which optimizes video transmission over wireless networks.

Beyond the simple video calls we can make today, we'll now add the recording and storing capabilities. Plus, Qik's linkage out to many different social networks could help Skype connect out from within its walled garden to the many other social networks out there.

On many levels it's quite a shrewd move and I look forward to seeing what comes of the integration.

For those interested, here's the video of Skype CEO Tony Bates:

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Skype is promoting their live news conference tomorrow through a good number of channels... it will be at 10:30am PST (1:30pm US Eastern) at http://livestream.com/skype

I'm thinking it probably has something to do with... oh... video? ;-)

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Want to discuss the Skype outage? What happened? What we know about it? Supernodes? Mega-supernodes? Skype's architecture? and more?

On this Friday, January 7, 2011, I'll be joining the VoIP Users Conference (VUC) gang to talk about Skype's outage. As host Randy Resnick writes:

Mr. Dan York, CNN VoIP celebrity, will be with us for a more geeky explanation of what happened and hopefully what the full ramifications of this will be.

Skype has had a “monopoly” in this space for a long time. Can it continue? Are there contenders, and if so, who are they? Is the free model the key to Skype’s success? Will it always be free? Will it be passed up in quality by something different (like FaceTime (or a cross platform version of it) or Google Voice?

We'll be talking about my post about Skype supernodes and much more. It should be an enjoyable time.

If you'd like to listen live, there are regular, SIP and Skype contact phone numbers to dial into the VUC. You can also jump on #vuc on IRC to join in the text backchannel.

If you can't join live, a recording of the call will be posted to the episode's web page sometime in the next few days.

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The reaction to my last post explaining how Skype's supernodes work has been both amazing and amusing. Largely the reaction points out to me that Skype really needs to do a better job explaining their architecture... but in their absence, others of us will do so.

Anyway, one of the more fun outcomes was that I was asked to appear on a CNN UK show "Quest on Business" with host Richard Quest. Unfortunately the show was not streamed live nor was it available for viewing online later. Quite a FAIL on CNN's part, in my opinion, because the segment certainly would have been linked to by some of us. In any event, my friend James Enck in the UK captured the segment by the super high tech method of pointing his cell phone at the TV and recording the video. :-)

The irony, of course, is that we recorded the show entirely using Skype ;-)

For those who wish to view the segment, here it is:

It was fun to do and hopefully helped some more folks out there understand a bit more about Skype. (And thanks, James, for capturing it.)

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