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Fenway Photos
April 17, 2007
Enjoy:
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Fenway Park
April 17, 2007
I am at Fenway Park today at a Dialogic event for press and analysts. Here is a quick video from the tour. Hopefully no one will take a video of me later at batting practice. ;)
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click Play button above to play video
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Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite 8.0
April 17, 2007
One buzzword with legs is mobility. We hear the term everywhere these days. Moreover, it seems workforces are becoming more mobile by the day and knowledge workers are being created in segments previously not considered to be in this category. For example maintenance and housekeeping services in hotels are slowly becoming automated and have the latest mobile tools allowing their employers to be aware of their presence at all times.
Another buzzword we hear all the time is convergence. I had a recent conversation with Nokia executives about convergence and how it relates to their vision of mobility. Much of this discussion centered around the recently released Intellisync Mobile Suite 8.0 which is a set of full-featured mobility application solutions.
The company’s goal in this release is to allow an enterprise to take voice and data to mobile platforms
Release 8.0 addresses many of the challenges in any organization. For example it handles wireless e-mail such as push-based synchronization from OS vendors such as Novell and Microsoft and hosted e-mail platforms such as Hotmail and Yahoo as well as any IMAP server.
In addition the suite handles mobile device management which is decoupled from e-mail allowing a simple management interface to multiple mobile devices such as smart phones and laptops.
Furthermore you can use this solution to plug right into a systems management console such as Tivoli or HP OpenView. This allows MIS departments to see how mobile assets are connected with one another. In addition you can see the location of devices and set security policies. Another nice touch is the ability to install software remotely on devices. It also allows you to upgrade firmware and update security policies.
Perhaps one of the most useful features of this software family is the file synchronization capability allowing an army of devices to have the latest version of office documents. Files could be stored originally on an intranet or even on the internet.
End users can subscribe to the content most appropriate to them and the handheld computers will be kept up to date. Moreover, documents can be pushed to a salesforce. I am told sales documents are pushed to the Nokia salesforce in this manner.
While we are in the mood to synchronize, it should come as no surprise Nokia also allows application synchronization meaning a record can be updated on a mobile device and seamlessly updated in the corporate CRM system. The usual suspect standards are at work here – XML, SOAP and web services.
There is an FMC or fixed mobile convergence application as well allowing clients sitting on various devices to connect with the corporate PBX. You can also use WiFi telephony on a corporate campus or at Starbucks. Users can have business and personal personas allowing different call routing behavior.
The various modules in this bundle can be purchased together or individually. Be sure to contact Nokia directly for details or check out this page and by the way this suite of products works with or without Nokia devices.
I am told by company executives that many organizations are able to justify the expense of the entire software suite simply by purchasing the Call Connect product which offers the FMC solution. It is just another classic example of VoIP arbitrage being used to further MIS and telecom budgets.
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2 More Days To File Taxes
April 17, 2007
CNBC is reporting that if you were affected my the major storm just write March 16th storm on the return and you now have until this Thursday April 19, 2007 to file. Thank you IRS.
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A National Holiday For Virginia Tech Victims
April 17, 2007
I was reading about the Virgina Tech tragedy and was surprised and shocked at the same time. As you may know the worse shooting spree to ever take place on US soil happened yesterday.
This tragic event is horrible beyond description as 32 people were massacred. This explains why I was shocked.
Now let me explain why I was surprised. The shootings did not take place all at once and the university thought the gunman had fled the campus and/or the shooting was a result of a domestic disturbance.
I am surprised that a college with the word Tech in its name actually at one point relied on people knocking door to door to get the word out about the shooting. This according to an AP article.
The university said they did e-mail students but reports say the e-mails were two hours too late.
What blows me away is in a post 9-11 world, incidents like this can happen in what seems to be a vacuum.
Where were the cameras? Where were the emergency systems that students and professors could trigger in case of such problems?
It seems the college was not in the least bit prepared for such an incident. And to some degree who could blame them for not expecting the largest massacre on our soil. But still was there no warning system at all in place?
But still I keep thinking back to the past few years after 9-11. I thought we all learned a lot. Apparently not.
Technology exists to immediately notify tens of thousands of students of emergency situations. 10,000 messages could be sent in less than ten minutes with ease. This assumes the University had some sort of disaster preparedness program in place. Apparently they did not.
The excuse that students were in their cars and unreachable is as ridiculous as saying the dog ate my homework. SMS, predictive dialing technology and yes, even e-mail can be received and responded to while driving.
In the end, we cannot bring these poor students and teachers back to life and I don’t want to be too harsh on the school regarding this disaster.
I would like to make sure however that these students and teachers did not die in vain. I propose we dedicate a national holiday in their honor and moreover integrate this holiday into disaster preparedness awareness.
We need guidelines and regulations by which schools and enterprises handle such problems in the future. There needs to be ways to send photos of suspicious people to thousands by IP phone, cell phone and e-mail. This all needs to happen in a blink of an eye.
Obviously we need a system to educate more schools and companies about how to prepare for tragic scenarios such as these.
For a number of years TMC has been working with the ECA at our conferences and online to educate the world on disaster preparedness. The ECA’s Max Schroeder and I have even written articles on the topic in the past. When I think of disasters my mind immediately thinks of hurricanes and that is likely because weather-related calamities have been so prevalent these past years. Incidents like this remind us that it is difficult to predict what sort of disaster you need to be prepared for and as such, you need a well thought out communications policy before disaster strikes.
In the end it is better to have a great policy and not need it than to have a disaster and not be prepared.
It is my sincere hope that the world learns from this incident and that these poor people who died will live on in the disaster preparedness accomplishments towards safety and security we make in their honor.
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Blogs Took Down Imus
April 17, 2007
According to Tim Parry, the blogosphere played a big factor in taking down Imus. Tim wonders if there is a way to use the power of bloggers in a more positive way. To help market products.
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IMS Collaboration: Tekelec/HP
April 17, 2007
IMS is something many service providers need but the complexity of implementing IP multimedia subsystem solutions has certainly been a cause for operators to deploy such solutions more slowly than some would have hoped. Beyond complexity, another factor which needs to be overcome is interoperability between disparate vendor’s systems.
For this reason a number of organizations such as the IMS Forum have been focusing on plugfests to ensure IMS vendor A can interoperate seamlessly with vendor B and C.
The need for interoperability is not lost of companies like Tekelec and HP who began collaborating last year and more recently made an announcement that their respective platforms will work together.
Specifically the companies have aligned the roadmaps of the Tekelec TekCore Session Manager, a CSCF platform and HP OpenCall home subscriber server or HSS.
The solution includes IMS core network infrastructure, service enablers, operational and business support system linkages and application service offerings that enable the delivery of subscriber-centric services across wireless, wireline and broadband networks.
The IMS core network elements in the solution include the following:
· Call state control function (CSCF) and home subscriber server (HSS)
· Service enablers such as the media resource function (MRF), presence server, electronic numbering (ENUM), group list management and voice call continuity (VCC) platforms
· Multimedia applications such as enhanced voice services, instant messaging (IM) and multimedia content sharing (e.g., "see what I see")
· Integration with back-office and legacy systems.
The companies explain that convergence cannot happen in a vacuum but instead needs a convergence framework which requires a good deal of planning. In addition they feel such a framework needs to address:
1) A unified signaling and control infrastructure that unites signaling and control procedures across multiple network types. Furthermore, this is a prerequisite to enable uniform access to applications and services across heterogeneous networks.
2) Providing a real-time unified view of the customer. This view may include the users communication’s preferences, information regarding whether the subscriber is currently on a call, and a list of people engaged in a conference call with the subscriber. This real-time view of the customer is essential to enable subscribers to seamlessly access services and applications as they move across networks and device types. A consolidated awareness of the subscriber by the network is also necessary to enable the network to know how to deliver calls and further determine the willingness of the subscriber to accept the call.
3) The network needs to be able to deliver the necessary media or content to the subscriber across a variety of different access technologies and be capable of adapting the media to the access network and device.
The companies point out an instant cut over to an IMS-based network is often impractical and instead service providers need to consider migrating to IMS while still engaging their NGN and TDM networks.
Of course leveraging disparate networks is analogous to creating monstrous problems one may liken to Frankenstein.
For as a subscriber moves from network to network they likely experience different control procedures and applications. From a carrier perspective, similar, but different applications may need to be deployed in each environment creating complexity from a management and operations perspective.
Moreover each network type has its own control layer, its own applications, and its own subscriber data. To enable convergence this must change. However, in enabling convergence we must also realize that a greenfield approach, that moves us completely to IMS is often not a possibility given the investment that has been made in existing services, and constrained capital budgets.
The first step in moving towards convergence, is to implement a unified control layer according to the companies. Why? A unified control layer can facilitate access to applications and services regardless of the network type. The second step is to provide a unified view of subscriber data. These two steps will enable the development of converged applications and services.
The joint IMS solution is based on ATCA-based blade servers and service providers are trialing this solution at the moment. In addition the companies have a multiplayer game demo running in the lab.
My take on this news is it is good to see two major players in the service provider space coming together to make it easier for service providers to build next generation networks and applications. One benefit of this collaboration is faster time to market for service providers worldwide.
A wise approach here is the realization that service providers are not going to have Greenfield opportunities and as such a hybrid solution makes sense at the moment. Tekelec says they will be working with HP more closely in the future and furthermore they will work with other vendors more closely as well. This news is good for the market and likely signals a trend toward more vendor cooperation which is in the best interest of everyone involved and will help further the IMS market.
Be sure to attend the Communications Developer Conference next month in Santa Clara, CA where a number of service provider topics will be focused on such as IMS development and an Open Source Solutions Workshop for service providers sponsored by Pactolus.
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