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GENBAND Perspectives 2013 Live Blog

2013-04-30T13:06:04Z

Check out What's on Tap for the GENBAND Perspectives Summit? by TMCnet's Rich Steeves

See me live at 2:00 pm today here at GENBAND Perspectives 2013 where I speak on a panel "Harnessing the Power of Social Networking" in the Grand Cypress Ballroom here at the Hyatt Regecy Grand Cypress.

I am in Orlando for GENBAND Perspectives 2013 and the show is about to begin. last night there was a poolside reception which was rained out - but the venue was able to move about 1,000 people quickly indoors where the reception continued without a hitch. OK, a few of us had some wet clothes but other than that things have gone well so far.

Drummers kick off event

GENBAND Chairman David Walsh takes the stage. "Digital life is interactive. We are constantly interacting with it. None of it can happen without secure digital networks." Will companies, lead, follow or get run over? They have to decide he said.

General discussion about how many new domain names are registered... How many emails are sent - how much of it is spam (hint: almost all), how many people are on the Internet, etc.

He segued into a discussion of OpenTable and Uber - apps which don't use people but they facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers for restaurants and car services. 1 in 8 married couples met online he continued.

He made a funny telecom joke - if you got hear early, you could use SinglesAroundMe to find a date and then use Uber to get a car and OpenTable for a restaurant location - this is the new triple play.

He also discussed WhatsApp and Viber - he uses and loves both. He mentioned these OTT services are great but not ubiquitous. GENBAND is developing tech to allow these services to be federated.

Discussion moved to WiFi - he discussed the law of wireless gravity - bits will find their way to lowest cost infrastructure as fast as possible. "Spectrum is constrained and expensive. We can use math and science to make it more efficient but it isnt as effective as fiber which you can deploy more of to add capacity."

New York will become a carrier by converting phone booths to wireless hotspots - they will be able to become an ad agency and deliver content to various geographies and generate revenue. Hotels are also telecom carriers because networks are built where people gather and vice versa.

Discussion of how much heat is generated by data centers - they are power an water hogs (for cooling). Intertech is their partner and they provide more efficient cooling solutions.

We are beginning to see the start of cyber-warfare they also have an investment in Mandiant - the company finds and remediates problems. Also they are working with ISC8 to help find faults before they happen because quite often you find a threat 40 months after the intruder got into your network.

Devices are more valuable than ever. We want to help you [carriers] become a vital part of this evolution.

Charlie Vogt President and CEO takes stage

Discussion of the pace of change, GENBAND success - growth, speed of growth and forecasts of future growth. 80 of top 100 service providers are their customers. They are a hug part of Verizon FiOS, BT, Shaw, NTT, Telus and a number of other carriers. At CIBC and University of Texas at Austin - they are providing significant telecom infrastructure.

We are watching a video about how GENBAND empowers service providers and enterprises - by boosting scalability, efficiency and profitability - "Making Networks Smarter."

$100M annually in R&D is invested by the company. Small cells, WebRTC and cloud are a few areas of these investments.

Verizon CTO Tony Melone takes stage starts off - tech can build a better future... Together with partners we will take on societal challenges, healthcare, public safety, education, etc. Gave example of a wireless telepresence robot to allow remote students to learn. Also, "Make the world more sustainable and improve healthcare and remake entertainment with state of the art infrastructure which delivers superior experience consumers want."

Apps have to run on secure, reliable, available infrastructure - this is the vision at Verizon. We strive to deliver this day in and day out. 4 platforms.

4G/LTE - largest footprint in US and world... We achieve speeds faster than advertised today. US is ahead of world in 4G - thanks to our competitors trying to catch us.

IP - important in everything we do

FiOS - our Quntum services offers 300 mbps to consumers - soon we will offer 1 gbps if they need it. Reminds us we constantly underestimate tech needs/growth.

Cloud: Terremark: this is an important part of our portfolio.

We built 4G on 700 mhz spectrum and will put AWS to use soon. We need more spectrum and will go out an get it as needed. He doesn't understand why some want to limit telco access to spectrum.Explained the company is using the spectrum it acquires - it doesn't shelve it. It is investing billions in spectrum build-out in-fact. Won't launch before it is ready- it is not trivial to build a nationwide VoLTE/wireless VoIP network.

Video is 50% of global traffic on backbone some estimate as high as 90% in not too distant future.

Gave shout out to GENBAND, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and others who allow them to provide more cost-effective services.

Moved to smart-home discusion - FiOS - PON - 18M homes, mid-30% penetration roughly. 150 HD channels and reminded us up to 300 mbps to the home. They will migrate the backbone from 2.5 Gbps to 40 gbps and when this happens, they can provide 1 gbps to home.

In their broadband home router - they want to add intelligence so new devices can connect quickly and then connect to the cloud without user set up. They want to mak it easier for consumers to get access to the latest technology.

They see FiOS more as a business play - allows them to enhance their investment in the asset. They are being aggressive in moving from copper to fiber. Will accelerate this move based on what they learned in Hurricane Sandy.

"Cloud is real and growth continues... Means different things to different people." They focus on enterprises - secure connections to cloud with a breadth of services. Managed apps and services...

Thinks their platform will be ideal for partners to build upon. This is how they want to help solve the challenges in the world.

He then showed a video - some of it is below:

We enable so much of what is possible with innovation - we shouldn't forget how important we are - we need to continue building trust with customers - provide reliable networks etc.

M2M 40% growth - 50B devices by 2020 to be connected - partnership with QUALCOMM, Mphase - make it easy to take non-traditional devices - connect to Verizon Wireless network.

How can we make tech make the lives of our customers better and improve societal issues like healthcare.

Tim Wagner of Samsung takes the stage to discuss the company's transformation of the last three years - how the company has become a smartphone leader from a feature phone leader... Said no other company has done this. Largest electronics company in world... $200B organization. Selling 1,500 devices per minute.

Talked about how their commercials made their competition seem like the device was for old people - basically talking about Apple and the ads where Samsung users wet to the lines where Apple customers were waiting to buy.

Now discussed how much their social media presence has grown. Also - discussed hoe 500+ customers launched the Galaxy S4 phone at once. Around 120-125M Galaxy devices have been deployed. This doesn't count TVs appliances, feature-phones and other devices.

Discussed Samsung SAFE for enterprise - connects device to MS Exchange and ActiveSync, on device encryption, VPN support, MDM support from AirWatch etc.

Says they have systematically defragmented Android - makes the devices consistent across carriers and form factors and price points. IT manager can test one device and add SAFE - not each device.

26 devices run SAFE today.

Gave case study examples of successes.

AA has 16,800 Galaxy Note devices - allows American Airlines to provide same level of service to top First or Business Class. Their business is transformed - no more manuals or paper tickets.

Helping customers with tech implants - heart issues - allows them to know if they have heart problems through app on phone. First tablet approved for cockpits in US. DISH Networks - reducing four-hour window, use Galaxy Note to track installers and reroute them based on success at install. Allows them to check reception from top of ladder - don't need to go back down to test repeatedly. Can upsell and gt an electronic signature. Takes a four-hour window to potentially a 90-minute window - changes their business.

65,000 unit Galaxy win at HP.

Moved to discuss Samsung Knox - starts from metal of device to software... Allows work/life balance - keeps you from losing personal photos when enterprise wipes your device.

When turned on - looks for Samsung OS - if it doesn't find one, it will not boot up. Worked with NSA on this - security enhanced Android. Any unapproved apps are deleted/killed. General Dynamics is selling these to the government. They decided to focus on Government realizing that other regulated industries will follow.

Also have a container for business and personal use.

We have the most number of smart devices that are out there he said.
education, healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality and other vertical solutions are their focus going forward.

Samsung and GENBAND collaboration - enhance productivity, anytime, anywhere access to data - creating "Smarter Office." Discussed better business value.

He gave an example of allowing you to tap a phone to a tablet and being able to transfer a all from your office to your mobile device so you can listen to your conference call on the way home and spend more time with your family. Then explained they think GENBAND is the ideal partner to help them provide all this value to the market.

Samsung has an Oprah Moment - everyone in the audience gets a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 - now that is amazing!

This concludes the live blog for now - I am about to prepare for my talk in a few hours - right after the lunch break.

Momentum Continues in WebRTC Space

2013-04-12T21:09:47Z

Last year, TMC and its partners launched the first WebRTC conference in the world and the market reacted enthusiastically with a sold out exhibit hall and a standing room only crowd. I tell you this because I haven’t seen so much interest in a new technology in over a decade. It reminds me of the early days of VoIP and SIP and the Internet all rolled up in one.

Interestingly the market that WebRTC plays in is a hybrid of all of the above and more. It is the first technology which allows the browser to do a virtually unlimited number of things. Its more than voice, more than video, more than p2p data communications – it represents with HTML5, the transformation of the browser.

The next WebRTC Conference & Expo which takes place June 25-27 in Atlanta, GA is a veritable melting pot of old and new companies – from telecom, datacom and the web.

The diamond sponsors for example consist of Google, Ericsson, tokbox and Apidaze. Google is the company we associate with the internet and Ericsson with telecom and wireless infrastructure.

Platinum Sponsors are as follows: Alcatel-Lucent, Crocodile RCS, Dialogic, Mavenir, Sansay, Symbee, Vonage, WebRTC Consultants (a Temasys Communications Company), Xirsys. Alcatel-Lucent is the world’s original phone company turned equipment provider to carriers – then we have Sansay who is a next-gen communications infrastructure company making SBCs. Dialogic is the company perhaps most responsible for allowing the telecom and computer worlds to merge and Vonage is the company which really popularized VoIP in the US and elsewhere.

Gold Sponsors are as follows: AudioCodes, Bistri, Digium, GENBAND, Ingate, Oracle, Quobis, StarPound, Teledini, Weemo while silver Sponsors are Apex Voice Communications, Avaya, Exario Networks, Priologic and Symonics. AudioCodes does a number of things but is certainly a major player in the VoIP enablement market… Digium is a major player in open-source communications, Ingate is a huge player in the SIP space, GENBAND is for all practical purposes a smaller version of Alcatel-Lucent but fast-growing, Avaya is a major enterprise and SMB voice provider, Oracle/Acme Packet is the leading SBC player, Apex Voice is a long-running player in the telephony applications space and has been around for decades.

Many of the other companies are new – some of them were started as a result of the first WebRTC show in Santa Clara, last year where people saw how immense the opportunity is in this market.

My point here is obviously to not only thank the sponsors for participating but highlight how different they all are. This diverse group shows us how important WebRTC is. It truly connects the old world of telecom to the new world of interconnected computing and in doing so will enable a massive shift in the way communications and computers work.

It could potentially eliminate the need for Skype if Microsoft doesn’t adapt. It could eliminate the need for phone numbers if the telcos don’t adapt. It could allow new p2p business models to be created overnight like file sharing, computer to computer payments and a slew of other ideas no one has devised as of yet.

We expect all sponsorships to be sold out soon and we will likely run out of room for attendees at the show so please register as soon as you feel comfortable doing so to avoid disappointment and we look forward to hosting you in Atlanta.

IPgallery Helps Carriers Become Social Hub and More

2013-03-01T19:57:11Z

Communications service providers once the center of the customer's world have awoken to the new reality - social and apps are the new hub. In fact, Facebook, Twitter and a wave of other social networks have fully overtaken the telephone number as the primary method of communicating among many - especially younger users. Then there are the the OTT VoIP and video vendors such as Skype. The telephone number has gone from being a protected client relationship to an afterthought. Even the bright spot related to phone numbers - massive texting revenue has recently been eroded by OTT apps like WhatsApp and even iOS messaging which seamlessly takes text messages off the operator network.

Enter IPgallery, a company playing in the IP communications carrier space for over a decade who wants to help service providers become the focal point of this brave new world of social and apps. Their suggestion is to provide customers with a social communications and hosted-PBX solution which integrates so seamlessly with popular web-based servies that users will rarely need to leave the comfort of the environment. An HTML5 interface allows a cloud-based service to tap into APIs of a slew of other companies to provide social, mapping and just about anything else a user can think of.

Just like a person might use HootSuite as a central hub to interface with numerous social networks, IPgallery helps carriers provide customized user interfaces which they believe are captivating enough to keep consumers living inside them.

Consumers for their part have shown a willingness to spend huge amounts off time interfacing with specific services such as Facebook. In fact, companies are tripping over themselves to have users interact with them on the world's most-popular social network. Carriers have a shot to get control back by providing customers with a user interface worth "living in."

In addition, they can add services such as shopping and entertainment and even combine location information to provide compelling applications which rival those of the OTT world. As carrier information is even richer than what is available to typical smart phone applications, they can actually provide better services than consumers can get elsewhere.

At Mobile World Congress in 2013 the Israeli company showed me an app they wrote which accesses Facebook and Maps and provides the photos of friends on their actual locations on a map. A user can select one or more friends and start a group communication, complete with file sharing and collaboration.

There is a great deal more - such as integrated e-learning, a hosted PBX with separate skins and functionality broken out by department such as accounting or sales. Finally, operators can add functionality by providing cloud-storage which could be used to hold content which is shared between users on the system.

IPgallery functions as part software/integration vendor and part systems-integrator, working with carriers the world-over to develop solutions which they need in their particular markets. This allows carriers to focus on their core competency while taking advantage of best-practices being developed by other service providers.

We often hear of discussion revolving around whether carriers are ok just being "dumb pipe" providers and regardless of the answer, there is definite value in owning the home page of the customer's world. Amazon has used this prime real estate to successfully push Kindle devices and Google uses it to push its Chrome OS, tablets and other devices.

Perhaps the better question is - what are the benefits from being the gateway to your customer's online activities including social, commerce and shopping? The answer of course is increased revenue and flexibility. And as service providers grapple with stagnant to lower ARPU and increasing network costs as they upgrade to 4G and beyond, exploring new revenue opportunities which could also reduce churn seems to make a lot of sense.

WebRTC Advisory Board Announced

2013-02-20T20:02:08Z

One of the more exciting bits of news this week has to do with TMC and partners choosing the Inaugural WebRTC advisory board. After the huge success of the first WebRTC World show in Santa Clara, California, we wanted to make sure we worked with the absolute top minds in the communications, technology and WebRTC fields to ensure our conferences have the best content possible.

The next show takes place June 25-27, 2013 in Atlanta, GA. Here is a list of the new board members with Twitter handles for easy-following purposes.

Update: Jim Donovan's correct Twitter handle is now listed below.

Name/Company	Member Handle	Company Handle
Jim Donovan Acme Packet	@jdrtc	@Acme_Packet
Tsahi Levent-Levi Amdocs	@tsahil	@Amdocs
Alan Johnston Avaya	@alanbjohnston	@Avaya
Chris McGugan Avaya	@cmcgugan	@Avaya
Arnaud Budkiewicz Bistri	@arnaudbud	@Bistri
Cullen Jennings Cisco	@cfluffy	@CiscoSystems
Steven Sokol Digium	@ssokol	@digium
David Duffett Asterisk	@dduffett	‏ @asteriskpbx
Dean Bubley Distruptive Analysis	@disruptivedean	@DApremium
Geoff Hollingworth Ericsson	@geoffworth	@ericsson
Craig Walker Fierspotter Labs	@cwalker123	N/A
Jan Linden Google	@jtlinden	@google
Justin Uberti Google	@juberti	@google
Stephen Brown Mitel	@mitelcloudchief	@mitel
Boris Selitser Oracle	N/A	@Oracle
Joe Burton Plantronics	@JoeBurtonCTO	@Plantronics
Goncalo Morais Siemens	@gnclmorais	@SiemensEnt
Mohan Palat Sonus	@mpalat	@sonusnet
Mark Weidick TenHands	@markweidick	@TenHandsInc
David Jodoin ThruPoint	@david_jodoin	@Thrupoint
Dan Burnett Voxeo	@voxeodanburnett	@voxeo
Alexey Aylarov Zingaya	@aylarov	@Zingaya_Service

WebRTC Expo 2012 Winding Down

2012-11-29T23:53:29Z

Sorry for the delayed post - accidentally posted as "draft."

Thanks to all of you who came to WebRTC Expo 2012 in South San Francisco – the show was amazingly successful thanks to many of you who took time from your “day jobs” to learn about what many are calling a once-in-a-lifetime transformational communications opportunity. I happened to take a shot and video of a SIP to WebRTC session just now which you can see below. Here are more event photos as well.

WebRTC is much more than a PSTN replacement as Ericsson mentioned on stage but it is still interesting to see the evolution from PSTN and digital PBXs to IP-PBXs to IP-PBXs using SIP to now WebRTC and whatever additional software or equipment this transformation may entail.

There seems to be good interest in this topic as it's the last breakout session of the third day of the conference and the room is quite full. WebRTC Conference & Expo will take place again in New York in May and in November back in Northern California. See you there.

Acme Packet Getting Ready for WebRTC's Second Wave

2012-11-28T23:12:01Z

At the inaugural WebRTC Conference & Expo in San Francisco, much of the crowd was focused on demos of WebRTC working in a production environment. In one example at a luncheon keynote Mozilla showed how WebRTC communications could take place between two browsers on the same laptop. This one of the first demonstrations of the technology much of the audience had ever seen.

The event has brought together a wide swath of technology companies like Google, Plantronics, Oracle, Sangoma and Ericsson who are all very optimistic about the potential for WebRTC to be as some describe it, “A once in a lifetime opportunity in telecom.”

One speaker at a standards panel today mentioned perhaps the biggest challenge to WebRTC is overhyping. And he is partially correct. A bigger challenge to this emerging new space may be security.

Patrick McNeil and Chad Hart of Acme Packet

This is where a player like session border control maker Acme Packet comes in. I spoke at length with Chad Hart, Director of Product Marketing and Patrick McNeil, Senior Security Engineer, CISP from the company earlier today at the show and the takeaway is they are getting ready for the second wave of WebRTC… When it gets deployed in the real-world, across network borders.

The point is that past technologies like VoIP and SIP had to deal with major regulatory issues once the technologies reached critical mass. The FCC for example put onerous 911 regulations on the VoIP market as a result of a death related to a VoIP line which didn’t support E911.

Hart says you need to get ahead of these situations as we leave phase one of adoption and head to phase 2.

Moreover, he pointed out that call centers will be some of the earliest adopters of WebRTC and will benefit from the technology a great deal and as a result they need to be ready to deal with recording and compliance issues which will have to now apply to WebRTC customer interactions.

This is where an SBC company shines and explains why the company was here and moreover, why there was so much interest in their booth.

As you might imagine, the company is evangelizing WebRTC as they stand to benefit greatly if the technology fulfills its role as a major enabler of the communications of the future. A simple way to think of WebRTC is basically open Skype which lives in the browser and doesn’t require a plugin. In other words, WebRTC could easily eliminate the need for Skype over time. I am not saying it will – after all, Skype provides many useful services such as acting an address book but you get the idea.

Acme showed an interesting demo called a “happy button” which allows a user on a website to click an icon to immediately connect with an agent while in context. Coincidentally, I recently was in the market for an SUV and none of the automobile websites allowed me to calculate my precise lease payments online. In each case I had to wait for the dealer to reach out to me. It seems they wanted me to speak with someone directly before I got a quote. As it turns out, I made a purchase before half of the dealers responded.

The “happy button” in contrast allows a user to click a button on a website during a transaction in order to be connected with an agent who is aware of the issue at hand based upon user’s browsing information. The alternative says Hart is to leave the screen, do a search for the company’s contact information, traverse an IVR tree, find an agent and potentially have to re-authenticate a second time.

All of this adds cost to the company providing the call center service when you consider the cost of the IVR, programming the IVR, the 800 number minutes and the time the agent needs to authenticate users.

Moreover, in my case at least – half the companies contacted, lost the opportunity for me to purchase from them because of spam filters or they called me back while I was busy. Keeping a buyer waiting to get a price is never a smart thing to do.

At this event Acme Packet also announced the first WebRTC to multivendor IMS interworking capability where they enabled a major tier one network operator to deploy what amounts to a WebRTC to IMS SIP gateway.

On a separate but related note, the company also discussed the release of their 6300 SBC which can scale to 200k sessions and 1M subscribers in a 3U chassis. They explain that as VoLTE rolls out and VoIP providers mature, the demand for higher capacity systems has grown. Moreover, this new platform can be 70% cheaper than purchasing multiple 4500s and supports simultaneous transcoding of 64k sessions and 32k sessions of simultaneous encryption.

McNeil will speak tomorrow on security in the world of WebRTC and it seems fairly obvious that corporations and carriers will need to be paying close attention to what he and others in the SBC space have to say about security. These companies have learned a great deal in the VoIP and SIP space and as WebRTC gets ready for its second wave, it will have to deal with some of these same issues as well.

WebRTC Conference & Expo Kicks Off

2012-11-28T16:48:33Z

I am at the WebRTC Conference & Expo here at the South San Francisco Conference Center and the mood at the show is positive. What I have heard over and over from telecom equipment vendors, call center vendors and software vendors is that WebRTC is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in the telecom space.

At a cocktail party sponsored by Google and Plantronics many people told me that the handset players are in trouble while the headset vendors have a great opportunity. This of course explains why Plantronics has taken such an active role at this conference and in this space.

I will update you with more as the event progresses - here are some photos of the show for your viewing pleasure - The person at the podium is Phil Edholm who has partnered with TMC and Crossfire Media to host this conference.

WebRTC Will Disrupt Telecom Big Time

2012-11-16T21:05:50Z

The Phone Finally Meets the Web

There are few technologies in telecom which seem to have generated as much excitement as WebRTC – VoIP and SIP come to mind as two others.

With WebRTC, every web browser becomes a communications server. It really is a fundamental shift in how communications systems work.

I apologize in advance for the self-promotion but I feel it is very important to share the following news with you. A few months back TMC co-launched an event in the space called WebRTC Conference & Expo and we have been happily surprised by the top sponsors and conferees who have signed up - very quickly.

Phil Edholm Founder and President PKE Consulting is a partner on this event and explains why WebRTC is a crucial technology you need to know about immediately.

Here is a partial list of sponsors:

Google, Plantronics, Thrupoint, Zingay, Addlive, Drum, Pubnub, Sangoma, Twilio, Ericsson, Tenhands, Bistri, Mozilla, Sansay, Tropo, Priologic Software, Crocodile RCS, Acme Packet, Drum, Bistri, Joyent, Tropo, Add Live, PrioLogic.

I expect the networking opportunities at this event to be huge as you will likely not have access to these players in virtually any other forum. Basically just about every company on the leading edge of tech and telecom.

Also don't miss these keynotes:

Plantronics	Joe Burton	CTO
Thrupoint	David Jodoin	CIO
Google	Hugh Finnan	Dir Prod Management
Mozilla	Todd Simpson	CIO
Ericsson	Martin Korling	Head of Silicon Valley Research

You need to know about WebRTC if you are a:

See you there at the South San Francisco Conference Center in California, November 27-29, 2012. Registration is open.