Day 1 of Communications Developer concluded with keynotes from two industry heavyweights, AudioCodes and Avaya.
Sharone Ben-Levi spoke first. Ben-Levi is vice president of marketing enterprise, enhanced services at AudioCodes Inc. He is responsible for setting strategic direction and marketing execution for enabling technology solutions.
He began his speech by saying he thinks that the attendees at the event were here because they want to win, and they want to win by developing the best solutions in the market.
Ben-Levi titled his speech Survival Of The Fittest, and he delved into his discussion about application architectures for the future of IP-based application development. Developers today must adapt to the maxim, ‘Adapt or Perish’ and that those who know how to design for change will win the game in the long run.
Ben-Levi pointed out the development opportunities that are driven by the industry-wide adoption of IP, citing three key factors:
- IP drives acceleration of app development;
- IP opens the door for new creative solutions to meet customer need; and
- IP allows renewed differentiation by offering new and specific capabilities to target markets.
Legacy architecture is lousy with proprietary elements and APIs, Ben-Levi explained, and added that “Even with the move to SIP, the proprietary architecture is still closed, and that means limitations.”
He listed a number of limitations, including:
- The slow pace of change;
- Every change you make to OS, you’re still beholden to your hardware manufacturer
- Multisite = multiple systems;
- Scalability means adding systems;
- Updating and maintenance often means forklift changes or the need to deploy an engineer onsite.
He told the assembled developers, “It’s time to break free from the limitations.”
Ben-Levi spoke of the future as being characterized by a distributed architecture of IP software-based applications in standard servers controlling hardware through SIP.
And, he outlined the benefits to the developers:
- Speeds development time – easier to develop when using standards no need to reinvent the wheel;
- Improvement to the application are less tightly coupled to the hardware;
- Can change the server if the new features demand it;
- Choose servers based on performance, not ports.
Ben-Levi’s speech resonated with the audience, as evidenced by the fact that a number of questions were asked of the keynoter before he could leave the stage.
