Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com

I got back from Interop New York 2009 last night and was pretty excited to conduct a number of video interviews in the new TMC Newsroom set. One of the videos I was particularly excited to conduct was with Dr. Gaston Ormazabal, Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff, Verizon Labs. Gaston and the team he works with have found some SIP security flaws and are working hard to solve the problems. These discoveries leave SIP servers open to attacks which come in a number of forms such as malformed packets, out of state machine order packets and packet floods. Gaston is working on these projects with Henning Schulzrinne, the inventor of SIP at Columbia University and he is also working with researchers at NYU.

Some of the other key people working on this project are Verizon's Stu Elby, VP of Network Architecture at VZ Labs (Corporate Technology) and Flavio Bonomi, Head of Cisco Research. Cisco by the way is funding this project and is using the results of this research to develop hardware which stops attacks on SIP servers.

The video interview is below and here is a link which takes you to a page with all of the videos from Interop New York 2009. They are being added all the time so check back often.

I am on the train home from the show and I took this photo last night
when it wasn't drizzling. This is Times Square, one of my favorite
parts of New York. I will have more to report soon but for now check
out the TMC videos page for some of the Interop NY 2009 interviews TMC
Newsroom host Erik Linask and I conducted this week.

Some tech and political discussions from Day two of the show but really day one for me

I had a great set of meetings at Interop today and the energy at the show was quite inspiring. Talk of sales gains and the potential for acquisitions were common. In many of my discussions there was concern over the current administrations direction in terms of burdening small business owners. A repeated theme was doesn't the Obama team realize small businesses do most of the hiring n this country. Why are they trying to hurt them?

A few small business owners confided in me that they aren't growing as fast as they like because their financial people have told them to set money aside for increased taxes next year as well as potential increases in healthcare and energy costs due to cap and trade.

Trends which have been consistent as of late are cloud computing, virtualization, bandwidth increases, Ethernet, and a new one, solid-state storage - an area where a few new companies have entered into.

I won't mention specific companies in this post as I don't want to correctly or incorrectly link them to political comments they don't want on the record.

Still, with all the headwinds being created by politicians, the increasing need for technology by the marketplace coupled with massive amounts of mergers and acquisitions have led us to a point in tech where companies are performing better than they have in a long time because they could be the next to get acquired and "cash out" so to speak.

In addition, VC money is beginning to flow once again and the balance of power is now heading in the direction of the entrepreneur meaning more of them will hopefully come up with ideas and start new and innovative companies.

Based on what I have heard, I am optimistic about tech in 2010 but some of my major concerns are: Will the administration continue with policies that business owners consider hostile? Will there be a war with Iran (even if the US isn't involved in it)? And will the US government continue to spend/print money until the US dollar is worthless?

Here is a shot of an NYPD parking lot viewed from my train seat window
as I head to Manhattan to interview a number of industry players at
Interop NY 2009.

I just came across this web page with some important details on ITEXPO. I mentioned the keynoters in a recent post and I still think they are one of the best combinations of thought leaders in our space. Google Voice, Sprint, Digium, Polycom, Skype and Verizon Wireless are some of the companies you will hear from at the show.

In addition there are a full eight conference tracks you cannot find anywhere else:

• Business Communications Delivery Options
• Call Center
• Developer
• Enterprise
• HD Voice
• Service Provider
• Unified Communications
• Video Communications
• TMC University Microsoft OCS

As always, we poll the collective minds of the entire TMCeditorial team and industry when we put together the conference program for TMC events and I believe this is a major differentiator. It seems like just yesterday when TMC launched our first telecom event in Atlanta, GA but it was really 1986!

What I have learned in running communications and tech conferences for 20 years is that if you continue to give your customers unsurpassed value, they come back again and again for more conferences and bring others with them.

To all of you who have attended TMC events over the years - thanks.

I really think this next show in Miami - ITEXPO East 2010 will be our best to date and I am looking forward to welcoming you personally.

Here are more details on this can't miss conference.

It is obvious television viewing is merging with the web and as such, cable companies and other triple-play providers understand they are in increasing danger of becoming providers of dumb pipes. Of course the reason carriers are adverse to this distinction has to do with more than idle cocktail party conversation -- And what do you do? "Well, my company provides stupid data pipes." How nice - I think I'll go get a drink; it was nice talking to you.

You see, carriers want to continue selling enhanced or smart services so they can charge more for each. DVR? That's $10/month. Pay-per-view that's $6.95 per movie. Applications? That's $1.99 each, etc.

But we all know this model as it applies to TV is doomed and within five years we will probably see 20-30% of television watched in the US streamed over the net. This by the way assumes there is no major catalyzing event. I for one think there will be a catalyst which will likely be Apple and/or Google rolling out some new product and/or service which makes watching TVoIP a no brainer. If this happens in the next 18 months or so, expect 30-40% of US TV to be streamed over the net in five years.

In Google's case, picture an Android-powered set-top box with YouTube HD integration which in turn is connected to all major network programming and movies. In Apple's case, their unappreciated TV product gets a major upgrade in features and functions and perhaps links with their much-rumored tablet which like the iPod and iPhone can act as a smart remote control allowing previewing of other channels before viewing them on your main screen.

If you work for a carrier providing video with a business model which doesn't take the above into account, please stop reading, take a deep breath, update your resume and post it quickly on Monster.com. While you wait for the phone to ring, let's consider how to modify your business model to take advantage of this trend.

• You can hire lobbyists to limit net neutrality legislation which you will argue will reduce your investment in broadband which is so essential to our future. Then you slow every video packet you can find on your network. Let's face it, as much as consumers think things should be free and there should be no early termination fees on networks, in reality -- banks and companies don't invest money unless they think they are going to see a return on their investments. I have taken both sides of the argument regarding net neutrality and for the record; I am concerned that carriers have a tremendous amount of control over our networks. But at the same time we should all recognize the massive investments operators are making to provide us wired and wireless broadband. We need these carriers to make a nice return on these investments so they can continue to invest.
• You can try to strike up a deal with Google, Microsoft and/or Apple to see if you can somehow get a partnership going to ensure you can still generate revenue as consumers start streaming more and more TV.
• You can buy content. Take a look at what Comcast is doing with NBC - they will be entering a JV which gives them a 51% stake of NBC Universal which is valued by the two parties at around $30 billion.
• You can attempt to insert yourself as a middleman between web viewers and content. This in my opinion is toughest route but I hope I am wrong in thinking that carriers are not good at building entertainment portals people will gravitate towards. AT&T recently rolled out a portal called AT&T Entertainment and after being live for a few weeks Quantcast says it has roughly 46,000 US unique visitors while Alexa says it doesn't register at all. Then again, AT&T.com has a rank of 500, mostly due to webmail and this means it gets massive traffic levels as it is ranked in the top 500 sites in the world. It is subsequently tough for any sub-site of AT&T to make a major contribution to traffic generation in a few weeks.

Every time the web has become a major resource for providing a service such as shopping, auctions or music, a new player emerges to be dominant and traditional players struggle. Look at how Craigslist, Amazon, eBay and Apple have taken massive amounts of share in the spaces they now play.

TV is the next frontier and Microsoft has been in the space for years with its IPTV offering but Apple and Google are better positioned for the future based on a model which leverages the very fast and dumb pipes today's carriers provide.

How service providers adapt to this changing world of video content delivery will determine their profitability for years to come. The one certainty is this transformation is happening and rapidly. If there are acquisitions to be made to shore up carrier positions, now is probably the best time to do so as valuations in the TVoIP space are likely to only go up.

Hopefully this article has helped your company form a solid TVoIP strategy which means you can just let that phone keep ringing.

The netbook craze continues and as the devices proliferate, they can be found in places like superstores and perhaps even some local supermarkets in high tech areas of the country. San Jose, I'm looking in your direction. But does it make sense to take a computer which is really designed for thrifty consumers and stick it in an office? My vote is probably not because for a little more money you can go out and get a full-fledged laptop and in many cases this will give you more performance or as we like to say in the tech world, increased bang for the buck.

But if saving money today is paramount and you aren't as concerned about having to upgrade more quickly tomorrow, check out this article from Lance Whitney, one of the latest additions to the TMCnet team of writers. Lance describes some of the things to consider before plunging into the world of corporate netbooks.

Two other items worth mentioning are the fact I know a few people using netbooks in their offices and they are all satisfied. Furthermore, TMCnet writer Doug Mohney is a huge fan of netbooks and TLNs. Did we seriously need YAA or Yet another Acronym? What does it stand for? Why Thin and Light Notebooks of course. By the way, when I first spotted Doug with a netbook about a year ago he mentioned to me the devices are almost disposable in nature. Of course he was referring to the fact you could just pick one up at the local electronics store if yours breaks.

So the next time you are in that local grocery store in San Jose and looking for a way to save money on IT and getting rid of that five o'clock shadow, just pick up a few netbooks to go with those razor blades you just threw in the carriage.

There has been a premature rush to declare fax dead and the reality is fax is alive and while it is declining, it is still a strong business for companies helping the transition from fax to fax over IP and especially T.38. Yes, just as IP is transforming communications, the newspaper and television businesses, it is changing the way companies fax. And as you probably know, one of the primary reasons companies use this medium is to send legally binding documents quickly and efficiently.

One of the companies who have chosen partners wisely in the past is Sagem-Interstar, the Montreal based provider of fax solutions has had deep integration with Cisco's products for a number of years and this relationship has obviously been good for the company.

More recently the company has announced it is supporting Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and filling in a vital void in this new software's unified communications capabilities. You see the next version of Exchange will not support fax natively so companies looking to upgrade must have a way to integrate fax to maximize productivity and of course take advantage of integrated communications. According to Sagem-Interstar, Microsoft contacted them in 2008 to address the challenge of adding IP fax to their new solution.

So yes, there is now MS Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging across all of the company's XMediusFAX editions - SP, EE and X. There is inbound and outbound support and expect SIP TCP,TLS and SMTP TLS support. The company explains further that they have added what they call high value-added functions previously not available in Exchange 2007 UM server which consist of outbound faxing, process automation and fax archiving among others.

A typical configuration of XMediusFAX would behave as follows when receiving an inbound call:

A fax comes in over the PSTN and is translated to IP via the Media Gateway where it then reaches the Exchange 2010 UM server where a query is directed to Active Directory in order to determine if the user is provisioned for fax calls and moreover to determine the proper SIP address for call termination. At this point the call is established between the IP Media Gateway and XMediusFAX which receives the fax and archives it. It then sends an email with a TIF image and X-headers to the fax recipient via SMTP.

For complete details be sure to check out this PDF file from the company.

An outbound fax would be sent as follows based on the configuration above:

A user initiates a fax via Microsoft Outlook and Exchange server relays this message to XMediusFAX which does an Active Directory query to retrieve account information such as name, department and fax number. This is done to associate the user to a site and further validate the person's credentials. XMediusFAX then converts the documents from attachments to TIF format, applies a cover page and proceeds to initiate an IP call via the Media Gateway. When the fax is sent, an email is sent to the user letting them know if the fax was sent or not.

While there are other companies looking to add full-featured fax solutions to Microsoft's unified messaging/communications solutions, Sagem-Interstar has done an admirable job of working closely with both Cisco and Microsoft in an effort to continue its leadership position in T.38 IP fax.

You really don't want to be texting while driving if you command the $1.73 million Bugatti Veyron. You may have heard a man recently drove his into a salt water marsh. Oh, by the way, supercars and salt water don't mix. As it happens, other than coral, seaweed, sand and marine life, really not much mixes with saltwater and lasts to talk about it.

By the way, the driver said he was looking at a low flying pelican which is not pictured in this video - I believe this is slang in some areas for checking email on my iPhone.

The car was purchased for $1.25 million last month and has over 1,000 horsepower. After seeing this live video footage below (there is some understandable profanity included in the clip) I have to wonder - is there anything in the world these days which is not being filmed.

Perhaps more importantly, I wonder if paying so much money for your transportation makes sense when people like the cameraman above think you actually purchased a Lamborghini which you can get for about a fifth the money. I guess these are some things to ponder when you cash in your insurance check and go back to the local exotic car dealership.

Did I mention, Bugattis make great gifts for your favorite blogger this holiday season? 

If you don't think the Google business model of giving away as much as possible and subsidizing it through ad revenue is striking fear in the hearts of the tech world, you would be wrong. Even Steve Jobs seems afraid; you may be surprised to learn that Apple has filed a patent which has to do with showing ads in exchange for free entertainment. The patent specifically has Steve Job's name on it and specifies that users must respond to verify they are paying attention. It moreover details increasing levels of difficulty (a smaller and smaller box to click on, etc) of ad verification for the user, meaning you have an incentive to respond in order to show you are paying attention when you get a prompt to do so. Obviously this patent filing describes a user experiance which is very un-Apple like but perhaps the company realizes as I do that showing ads in exchange for entertainment, software and hardware is the natural conclusion of competition from Google.

Google already gives away gobs and gobs of free hardware in the cloud, why is a smartphone or laptop any different than massive amounts of hard disk space and processor time?

And in this perfect world dominated by ads, every hardware vendor is in trouble as they are effectively competing with free or as some call it, less than free.

If you think this idea is far-fetched, consider that Apple seems to have met with Admob, the mobile advertising leader a few weeks before the company was purchased by Google. Whether it made an offer is unknown but you have to imagine the company realizes, like Microsoft that advertising is playing a crucial role in the way technology is being adopted and Google seems to change the rules of the game on a daily basis.

What is unclear is how any of the players in the market will be able to combat the sheer advertiser ecosystem Google has already developed. This head start does not seem like it can be duplicated but with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer all trying to figure out a way to compete, perhaps we will see more innovation in the ad market in the coming months and years. It makes one wonder if these three may be planning some sort of "we hate Google" ad summit with Rupert Murdoch and other newspaper heads in the near future.

You remember a while back I discussed how the real apple tax is the lack of Flash support from Apple? I further explained how virtually all websites with video have to create duplicate video formats for their content - Flash for most devices and H.264 for iPhones. It gets more complicated for a site like TMCnet which has a Flash-based media player which scrolls through article graphics when you visit the site. These graphics didn't show up at all on the iPhone and if we wanted anyone to see them on the world's fastest-growing smartphone platform we would be forced to reprogram the site.

Check out the red arrow for what I mean

Well we reprogrammed the site using jQuery/JavaScript and this allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to now see the feature graphics of the latest articles as TMC editors and designers intended. If you have any problems seeing the player on any devices/browsers please email our webmaster.

There is a wrinkle - my web team is also building some device-dependent mobile sites and at the moment, these mobile Safari browsers get redirected to a mobile site which is in the process of being  be improved.

To bypass being redirected to our mobile site just go to this URL - www.tmcnet.com/a.htm. The highlighted part is all you really need to remember. If you want the iPhone specific site without graphics and with rapid performance be sure to go to i.tmcnet.com and if you want our site dedicated to iPhone news not the device, go to iphone.tmcnet.com.

We are in the midst of a violent transformation of our communications networks which involves an immense amount of control being wrestled away from carriers and given to developers and end-users. Visit the iTunes App store or check out what is happening with free turn-by-turn GPS on an Android 2.0 device to get an idea of what I mean. The trend is not new by any means; the first time communications systems were allowed to interoperate with computer systems was in the eighties when the first Rockwell Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) systems started to communicate with IBM mainframes to give us CTI or computer telephony integration. This allowed screen pops which dipped into CRM databases allowing contact center agents to know who was calling and more than likely why. Moore's Law coupled with telephony hooks like TAPI and TSAPI from Microsoft and Novell respectively meant this capability went from costing around a million dollars to tens of thousands of a dollars just a decade later.

Enterprise communications systems have continued to open up and hosted IVR systems, application generators and APIs for DSP resource boards from companies like Dialogic and Aculab allowed greater and greater telephony transformation allowing migration from fixed-function communications systems to more open software-controlled components which could be mixed and matched in a best-of-breed fashion.

The Internet accelerated this trend with its ability to allow cloud-based solutions to be easily accessed and mashups has been a great catalyst - allowing complex data to be represented in new and more interesting ways. Today we can combine the power which we were given by companies like Dialogic and marry them with the cloud and this means anyone can now develop sophisticated applications which leverage all internet and corporate data.

And when you combine open APIs, mashups, communications and social networking in a well thought-out and integrated fashion you are able to provide levels of productivity and customer service heretofore not possible. Any corporate or government process which has friction due to communications delays between people can be lubricated by the effective use of communications technology as it intersects with APIs and rich information sets which can live anywhere.

Perhaps the most respected name in the business of voice mashups is Thomas Howe, CEO, Light and Electric. If you want to know the past, present and future of communications - especially as it pertains to the cloud, you want to speak with Thomas and get his thoughts. If you are a carrier, large enterprise, integrator or government organization, you need to pick his brain to position your organization to take advantage of the ongoing evolution of communications.

Thomas and I have spoken over the past years about how TMC would love to partner to bring his visionary thoughts (all the good stuff locked up in his grey matter) to our audience of millions of global communications and technology decision-makers.

I am happy to announce that at the next ITEXPO which takes place January 20-22, 2010 in Miami, FL you will get a chance to come and hear Thomas speak. In addition you will soon be able to benefit from webinars and screencasts which our companies will jointly participate in.

I hope to see you at the show and as always, at TMC we are looking to provide you with the absolute best information on communications and technology - allowing you to quickly learn whatever you need to further your career and meet your organization's evolving needs.

• See how British Telecom is ahead of the curve as it relates to this transformation and bought Ribbit for over $100 million to make it so.
• Here is a past podcast I had with Thomas Howe for more on his ideas.

The pace of tech acquisitions is not slowing and one area worth watching is the testing market where Ixia has recently picked up Catapult Communications to further its wireless IP performance testing strategy - especially as the company positions itself to be a leader in the LTE space. In a meeting in Ixia headquarters in southern California the company explained to me that they continue to focus on a broad range of testing areas such as Ethernet, 40/100 Gb Ethernet, devices, fiber channel, storage area networks and virtualization. And don't forget about some of the other areas the company plays in such as voice, video and data.

One area discussed by Kelly is the fact that this acquisition allows Agilent's customers to purchase a suite of complimentary testing equipment and moreover, through this move - Ixia becomes a far more international company and furthermore has a much larger focus on the carrier space. Also, Ixia Fusion allows customers to use open APIs to access Agilent and Ixia testing solutions. This by the way is pretty similar to how Oracle is integrating many of the companies it acquires - they also call their middleware Fusion.

No sooner did I write my latest post on how Google could be in danger of the feds investigating them due to antitrust concerns does this entry turn up explaining how Rupert Murdoch and other newspapers could stop Google from indexing their content and force Bing to pay them for the right to do so. Murdoch has been threatening more and more loudly to take his content away from Google and most of us with any web savvy at all thought this would be similar in effectiveness to putting your head in sand when you are afraid.

But this Bing idea would shift the balance of power overnight. I am sure all websites would like to get paid by Bing for being included in their indexes. But if Bing became the only place you could find the most important news of the day, wouldn't the number two search company pick up at least another 5-10% marketshare?

But what about setting negative precedent? I am reminded of the good old days when I was in high school and Michael Jackson wanted to get MTV to pay for the Thriller video which cost a fortune. Instead, not wanting to set precedent, MTV decided to pay for the "Making of Thriller" video. Problem solved.

So perhaps Microsoft could instead buy a few million copies of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times? Or how about throwing in a newspaper subscription coupon in every copy of Windows 7? Hey wait, a minute - that could work.

Of course this doesn't eliminate Google as a search monopoly but if enough media companies jump on the bandwagon would the balance of power be distributed more evenly and would Google be forced to start paying media companies for the content they link to?

Warning - a bit of self-promotion ahead   and a discount - Guest Blog From Carl Ford

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the next generation of regulation- the one that will be focused on the Wireless device in your hands!

The FCC, in an effort to safeguard the free and open Internet, is looking to formalize and define the principles of network openness that would apply to all platforms that access the Internet as well as the carrier's role in enabling that access.

So now the question is "Can the concept of open be governed?" Does the FCC have a role in Apple's iPhone, even if AT&T is simply a transport partner?  Does Google have to consider itself a carrier because of the use of a phone number? 

Join us at 4GWE, January 20-22, 2010 as we discuss the very relevant topic of the next generation of net neutrality and the FCC's role in the companies, devices, networks and applications driving the 4G Evolution.

Todd Daubert of Kelley Drye, Rick Whitt of Google, Hank Hultquist of AT&T, and Glenn Richards, of Pillsbury Law join us as we discuss where the debate about Net Neutrality should end and what strategies companies should take to monetize 4G networks, applications and devices.

Register NOW For Early Bird Pricing

Don't miss this and other important discussions related to the communication industry's massive evolution to wireless broadband services. Register now for 4GWE and receive the price of $995 for a full three days of conference sessions, all meals and networking events.

Kind Regards,

Carl Ford

Co-Founder Crossfire Media

4G Wireless Evolution Community Developer