May 16th, 2008
Nortel Demos Virtual World Platform
Nortel demoed a virtual world prototype here in a Ottowa at a day long event. Dubbed Web Alive, the virtual world is the first project to come out of Nortel new research effort that imposes a VC-like model for funding research.
Like other virtual worlds, Web Alive allows avatars to interact with one another in a virtual landscape. Web Alive differentiates itself through the use of proximity based voice and a thin client.
I’ve written before about virtual worlds and the impact they’re going to have on enterprise. Nortel’s Web Alive project is a virtual world platform play that will compete in with similar offerings from the ActiveWorlds, 3DXPlorer, Multiverse, Forterra Systems, Proton Media, Croquet, and the OpenSimulator project.
All of these solutions are particularly interesting to the enterprise because they run on a server behind the firewall offering at least the perception of better control and security. This makes them well suited for internal collaboration or secured interaction with partners and customers. The Second Life Grid could be used in a similar capacity though as a service not as a server. IBM and Linden are working on an enterprise version of the SL that will live behind a firewall.
Web Alive distinguishes itself from these other players on three accounts:
Voice - With most enterprise virtual worlds, voice seems like it’s almost an after thought. The primary mode of communication is IM and voice, if supported at all, is pretty rudimentary. Nortel’s virtual world uses a 44Khz voice codec for amazing sound quality. It wasn’t just that the voice was clear, but that voice changed based on the avatar’s proximity to one another. Much like in real life, the closer avatars where to one another, the louder their voice. This enables cluster of individuals to have separate conversations over the same voice channel and still leave the voice understandable.
Nortel confirmed that it was licensing the technology, but wouldn’t say from whom. Rich Tehrani sees the technology being very similar to DiamondWare and wonders if the company might be an acquisition target for Nortel.
Client – Nortel showed a mock up of a virtual Dell store where people could browse and purchase Dell computers and products. The store looked remarkably like a SecondLife store with one major difference. Instead of launching a separate application Nortel requires just the use of a downloadable plug-in into the browser, similar to 3DXPlorer. As a result, many of the usability problems with installing an using the software are avoided. Organizations can use the software as a standard web page, something that’s not possible today with most other virtual worlds.
Unified Communications Integration – Expect Nortel to tie Web Alive into the rest of its UC play. This is still more concept than fact (but heck the whole project is more concept than product anyway) where you can expect Web Alive to become part of the broader portfolio of collaboration product and projects Nortel is offering with Microsoft, IBM and on its own. One simple example of this collaboration that was offered by the Nortel folk: change the presence status on an OCS or Sametime client, for example, and it would change the presence status of a user’s avatar within the virtual world.
Web Alive will be important for a number of reasons. Nortel continues to differentiate itself with its voice expertise. Yet through its relationship with Microsoft, PBXes are no longer a core message for the company. In fact, PBXs weren’t even discussed during the entire day at Ottawa. A virtual world platform allows Nortel to enter what’s expected to be a billion dollar plus market while leveraging its expertise in voice and UC. For enterprises, the Nortel play is significant because it introduces an established player with a long history of communication and collaboration expertise into the virtual world market.
No release date was announced for the technology, but the impression Nortel gave was that it would be within the year.
May 2nd, 2008
Dialcom: Web Conferencing that Works
I’ve complained about all of the things wrong with the way folk use Web conferencing. Now let me tell you about a web conference that went off well.
A few weeks ago I chatted with a Spanish company looking to launch in the US. Dialcom (not to be confused with the Dialcom that was acquired by then Alcatel a few years back) makes Spontania, Web conferencing software for the enterprise. Given that there are about a billion Web conferencing servers out there not the least of which are from small vendors, like Cisco/Webex and Microsoft, I was more than just slightly skeptical.
So we setup for a Web conference and me being the clever fellow that I am thought it would be great to use the product’s multiparty video-conferencing capabilities. Four-way video conferencing, fun. To make matters worse, I’m based in Israel and the video mixing was being done in Texas, if the service was going to work with me it’ll work with anyone.
Dialcom is still a small company at about 18 people. They’ve taken the conventional structure for foreign startups breaking into the US. Business and marketing are based in the US while engineering remains in Madrid. The company sells through VARs in Europe, but is selling directly within North America. Dialcom is in the middle of developing strategic alliances to resell their technology through ASPs as well as extend their connections with the enterprise 2.0 community.
The software sits on a server in the enterprise and works with the organization infrastructure. It will use the resident Active Directory implementation, leverage Tandberg or Polycom hardware and ties into Outlook or Notes calendars. Dialcom provides its own IM client with Spontania or a snap-in allowing tighter integration with LCS/OC Instant Messaging. The company does not currently offer comparable capabilities with Sametime. Jabber and SIP integration are expected this year.
Other modalities in Spontania are pretty much what you would expect from a Web conferencing system, namely chat, voice conferencing, video conferencing, screen sharing, and white boarding (of course). The video conferencing and audio conferencing stood out the most in our discussions. Even at six frames per second, the video quality was sufficient for a “talking head”.
The software is licensed by capacity of 25 concurrent users at a time. The base offering with base capabilities sells for $50,000 perpetual license.
For the most part the software performed as expected. Maybe that’s because the engineers were sure to tweak the system in advance to correct any potential issue, but then again even when we were getting the system setup it performed as expected. Adding video certainly helps and running audio conferencing over the Net that works was a nice change…and would help keep it a bit more change in the pocketbook.
May 2nd, 2008
Four Reasons To Skip Web Conferences
Remember when PowerPoints were first created how we were flooded with every special effect in the PowerPoint pail? Text would come swooping in from the right. Clip art would fade-in out of thin air. Sometimes, I would get downright dizzy watching the damn show.
The only thing worse that a supped-up PowerPoint is a supped-up PowerPoint run over a Web conference. As a long time journalist, I’ve sat through my share of one-on-one vendor presentations run as Web conferences and even when they’ve removed jazz in their PowerPoints I’ve found the technology to be more annoyance than anything else.
Logging into the darn conference can hiccup for all sorts of reasons. Did I get the right URL? Is the password accurate? Is Java enabled or not. Will it run in this particular browser? The list goes on.
Even once we get into the one-on-one, the organizer uses the technology to flip through a PowerPoint or PDF. It’s a pretty miserable use of the technology if you ask me. Pages can take forever to render. The lag between the presenter and myself interferes with the presentation as we wait for my screen to render.
You also can’t take notes on a presentation in a Web conference, so that means scribbling on a separate document or in a separate file. Some vendors have told me that they like it that way as they want a Web conference to protect their sensitive presentations from falling into the wrong hands.
Now that’s just plain dumb. If you can’t trust the person with the presenting, do you really think that a web conference will make a difference? I for one just end up printing my screens and taking notes on them for future reference
I suppose the reason for insisting on the Web conference is to give the presenter some control over the presentation. Heaven forbid that I the viewer should look ahead and see where we’re going.
At least, control better be the reason because presenters will rarely use the technology for one thing that would make sense, to cut costs. Web conference servers and service typically can provide audio conferencing over the Internet, which is normally cheaper than the PSTN equivalent. Of course, its over the Internet and folk are rightly worried about voice quality so rarely do those components get used in the one-on-ones web conferences.
In the end of the day, I usually tell vendors to just send me the presentation and then cue me through it. How 20th century, I know, but sometimes it looks like we just look for technology solutions where there’s no problem.
Don’t get me wrong. Web conferencing is a great tool for all sorts of uses. One-to-many presentations, such as quarterly earning calls or in education, are a great use of the technology. I’ve even sat in on some smaller Web conferences that made a LOT of sense (see my recent post about participating in a multi-way video/Web conference using Dialcom’s service)
And I know most of you also think that Web conferencing is worthwhile. Two reports I just completed – one for Osterman Research on messaging and collaboration and the other for InformationWeek on Unified Communications adoption — both ranked Web conferencing as the collaboration technology of greatest interest for IT buyers.
But like every tool, Web conferencing can be over used and abused. in the wrong way. Let’s make sure that we use it in the right way.
April 21st, 2008
Siemens vs. Microsoft: Round Two
Siemens announced today two new UC-enabled Contact Center packages based on OpenScape UC Server, and a new Voice Portal solution. The products will be available June 30, 2008.
The products are being driven in part by trends in the contact center and in part by trends within the enterprise, but equally as significant are trends in the marketspace. With recent Microsoft partnerships, Siemens seems to be increasingly pushed into the Microsoft-lite camp of UC players.
In the contact center, Siemens says it has seen an increasing focus on First Contact Resolution. UC is essential to enabling First Contact Resolution. At the same time, speech-enabled customer self-service is enabling increasing amounts of self-service within the contact center, improving operational efficiencies.
Within the enterprise, software-based IT-led communications are gaining a bigger play. This mean an increasing emphasis on open standards and in particular SIP. The result has been greater flexibility, scalability, and availability of the telephony systems.
The new voice portal package uses the OpenScape UC Server and OpenScape Voice announced in March to provide speech-enabled applications and self-service capabilities to the contact center. Siemens says there’s integration with Contact Center routing for delivering phone calls to the right agents and support for VXML-, SIP-, and MRCP-based applications.
The two new UC application packages scale OpenScape for the contact center. The OpenScape Voice & Contact Center Package is suitable for 10 agents ($42,500). The OpenScape Contact Center package runs $117,500 for one UC server license, 100 OpenScape Voice and UC Personal Edition, and 60 contact center agents.
SIEMENS VS. MICROSOFT
The announcement comes on the heels of two other significant events and further signals Siemens separation from Microsoft. On the one end, Siemens rebranded and introduced its communications systems under the OpenScape brand last March. At the same time, Microsoft and Aspect, the contact center vendor, inked a relationship in the same time frame giving Aspect deeper access to the OCS code base, much akin to the Microsoft-Nortel relationship outside of the contact center.
At one time, Siemens was the darling of the Microsoft-LCS relationship. OpenScape was one of the first personal contact centers to be introduced into the market and the only one to aggregate individual presence information into group presence. With the Nortel relationship, however, the Microsoft-Siemens relationship has lots its prominence. So that in the OpenScape introduction last March, Siemens emphasized that its products were built around the OpenScape Unified Communications Server. LCS/OCS were given a passing mention at best.
At the same time, Siemens has pushed its relationship with IBM. IBM-Lotus for example, used OpenScape for the telephony capabilities within SameTime. In this most recent announcement, the OpenScape UC application will work with Microsoft, but IBM and Jabber as well. It’s significant that Microsoft’s Speech Server 2007 will not be supported by the OpenScape software at this time.
If the move continues the result could be good news for non-Microsoft users. OpenScape has long been a leading personal contact center. It’s offering of group-aggregated presence has yet to be replicated by competitors. Providing that capabilities on non-Microsoft offices would only be good for Siemens and IT managers everywhere.
April 18th, 2008
What Microsoft’s Been Missing from its Small Business Telephony Play
Microsoft announced today that it was teaming up with Cbeyond, Inc., and New Global Telecom, Inc. (NGT), to combine their digital voice services with Response Point, Microsoft’s specification for small offices PBXs.
ResponsePoint systems are distinguished by a blue button on the handset. Pressing the button allows the user to control the phone through voice. Phone numbers can be found and dialled without touching the keypad. Phones are made by Quanta (Syspine), D-Link, and soon Astra.
If all of that sounds awfully Apple-like, well, it’s no wonder. ResponsePoint is the brainchild of senior director Richard Sprague, a former Apple engineer.
In the release, ResponsePoint customer will be gain SIP trunking from Cbeyond and NGT. This will offload the gateway cost from the business. It also lets them gain richer services from their carrier than if they were using the PSTN. Superior voice quality through wideband CODECs, for example, becomes possible as does shared presence information across the provider’s infrastructure.
Access to the vendor’s network will be available through Microsoft Response Point Service Pack 1 when it is released this summer.
ResponsePoint pricing runs $2,500 for groups of 4 to 5 phones and $5,500 for 20 phones. each phone is another $150. Businesses are also eligible for Microsoft financing at $12 per person, per month.
April 14th, 2008
HD-Telephony: Hip or Hype?
I recently interviewed Anthony Minessale, the author of FreeSwitch, the open source, class-5 switch. We 
got to speaking (actually, IMing) about high-definition telephony and how it fits into FreeSwitch. He had some pretty smart things to say about the area (no surprise) so I thought you might enjoy hearing about it as well. Ignore some of the FreeSwitch-promotion. The guy just can’t help himself :-) And when you’re done drop me a line and let me know what you think.
Take it away Tony…. Read the rest of this entry »
April 11th, 2008
The one thing Asterisk has been missing
If you’re like most folk, setting up a PBX is something you’d rather avoid, especially when its an open source PBX that isn’t known for its easy configuration and installation. ISPBX aims to solve the pain with its drag-and-drop configuration tool, Cogoblue.
Drag a few phone object over to a ‘viewing pane’, add a few trunks, sprinkle in a some voicemail boxes and auto-attendants and valla! You’ve got yourself a voice network. Creating an IVR tree is about the same and an infinite number of IVR trees can be nested, says John Signorello, a partner at ISPBX.
Currently Cogoblue will not autodetect the phone configurations attached to the network, but it comes darn close. The admin needs to enter the phone’s MAC address and model number into the GUI and Cogoblue generates the necessary scripts for configuring the device. Today, the following phones are supported:
· CISCO 7960 , 7940
· LINKSYS 94X (941,942,etc)
· SNOM 360,320,300
· POLYCOM 650,601,501,301,4000
· GRANDSTREAM GXP2000.
Cogoblue is delivered with ISPBX’s range of Asterisk appliances. The Model 500 is the low-end serving 12 concurrent users and priced at $1,199. The Model 12000 is the high end serving 65 concurrent users and priced at $2,100.
MY TAKE
Kudos to ISPBX for creating an interface that will simplify PBX configuration. Customer previously put off by Asterisk’s configuration should consider ISPBX. If they don’t mind a hosted solution then Fonality will be another alternative.
It’s a shame that right now the software is limited to configuring a single server. Forget about configuring multiple offices or anything like that which is probably a good thing, says Paul Tinsley CTO of Nexcom Technologies:
“It’s a product that would be a solution for a very small set of users, anything beyond the smallest branch office and this would become a major headache to manage. Trying to keep track of user extensions in a visual mapping tool goes against any modern interface design principles. It’s hard to beat tabular display for large data sets, it almost feels like this is a solution looking for a problem, wrote Paul in an IM. He created the Asterisk implementation sold by Dialcon.
April 8th, 2008
An Open Source Class-Five Switch
Open source projects have revolutionized operating systems, web servers, web browsers, and so why not carrier switches? The FreeSwitch open source project released its Release Candidate 1 (RC1) yesterday providing and by early accounts the software rocks.
“We replaced a cluster of 10 Asterisk servers with a single FreeSwitch server,” said Chris Parker, director of systems for a large publicly traded CLEC. Parker says he’s getting several hundred concurrent calls on a single, dual-core box that’s also doing all of the media processing, a computationally intensive task.
The software was first cooked up Anthony Minessale, an early Asterisk developer, who wanted to create an Asterisk 2.0 project back in 2005. When that didn’t gain acceptance he set off to build FreeSwitch. Today, the FreeSwich projects relies on the work of some 16 developers and testers.
The software is a high-speed call switching engine that telcos or businesses can use to switch calls, build a media gateway, or a media server to host IVR application. Commercial softswitches provide those features, but they run tens of thousands of dollars. FreeSwitch is a free download.
Aside from high-speed switching, the software provides built-in IVR, multilingual voicemail, conferencing, and presence. The software will handle SIP and wideband codecs for high-fidelity voice calls.
FreeSwitch will most likely shine on the backend. One application will be to help business reduce calling costs by directing calls to the cheapest carrier. Ken Rice, a voice consultant and owner of tollfreegateway.com, a voice termination service, says his FreeSwitch “cherry picks the rate centers” and chooses the least-expensive carrier for delivering 40-45 million minutes per month.
In theory, FreeSwitch could become the platform for a new carrier, but there’s far more to building a carrier than just purchasing a switch. Purchasing and integrating the proper billing and management systems are bigger changes. What’s more FreeSwitch lacks the huge range of features of commercial softswitches, such as Broadsoft, will offer to deploy consumer services.
That was one of the reasons why Parker chose to use FreeSwitch instead of Broadsoft, he says. The price didn’t hurt either.
April 3rd, 2008
IBM and Linden Partner on Enterprise-Class Second Life
IBM and Linden Labs are partnering to develop a version of Second Life that will live behind the corporate firewall.
As I mentioned in my previous post, Second Life is far too fat and clumsy to be taken seriously in the enterprise. Add to that concerns around administration, security and integration with corporate business applications and it’s easy to see why Linden would partner with IBM.
For itself, IBM has gone hog-wild over virtual worlds. “The 3-D Internet is a transformational opportunity that will change many industry processes, gather new revenue streams, and increase productivity and brand opportunity.” says Colin Parris, IBM’s vice president of digital convergence.
The company runs three v-world implementations already. It is working to create interoperability between the v-world providers. IBM’s commitment to SL is pretty extensive as well with more than 5,000 employees on SL and numerous sales training and collaboration exercises.
Putting SL behind a firewall will put the technology in direct competition with other enterprise-class v-world providers, namely Forterra Systems, Proton Media, and Qwaq, makers of the open source Croquet.
IBM can differentiate against these providers by supplying tight integrating between SL and back-end applications. This would allow groups to view and edit business data from with an SL conference room. Today that’s only possible on a more limited basis with HTML and Office applications .
April 2nd, 2008
Google to Buy Skype?
Rumors are out again that Ebay’s albatross. aka Skype, may soon be unloaded to Google. The deal could be valued at as much as $6 billion:
“Skype is booking about $400 million in revenue now, and it’s conceivable the company could command 10-times that. *A reader suggests Skype is on track to post $600mm of revenue in 2008. If so, Google might well pay $5-$6 billion.,”writes Henry Bloget at Silicon Alley Insider.
Complaints with Skype isn’t anything new. Rumors have been rife for sometime that Ebay had to do something with the P2P VoIP system. The company went from “cool and disruptive to a wildly over-priced acquisition” when it purchased Skype, writes Mark Evans., and took a $1.4 billion writedown on the deal.
While eBay may have come to hate the P2P VoIP system, TechCrunch’s Michael Arlington points out that Google has just started to think about dominating the voice space. The company has GTalk, it’s own peer-to-peer VoIP system, a free 411 service, and GrandCentral.
Adding Skype to that mix could pull those services together. Certainly pulling together Skype and Gmail are intriguing. The move would give Gmail the broadest reach of any P2P VoIP system today. Skype has done more than a 100 billion VoIP minutes and at any one time there are 10 million simultaneous users on Skype. That’s some marketplace for Google’s products.
The integration of Gmail and Skype could also help with third-party presence integration. Google uses XMPP in Gmail for presence information so a Skype integration could finally open up the network to sharing presence information with other IM systems.
As for business, Skype for Business could end up being bundled in with Google Apps as a starter. What might be more interesting is a tighter integration between Asterisk, which Gmail works with today, and Skype. I’m thinking native Skype trunking (available through third-parties today), using the Skype client as a client on the Asterisk server, and federating presence between Asterisk servers.
See David Greenfield's full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Recent Entries
- Nortel Demos Virtual World Platform
- Dialcom: Web Conferencing that Works
- Four Reasons To Skip Web Conferences
- Siemens vs. Microsoft: Round Two
- What Microsoft’s Been Missing from its Small Business Telephony Play
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