As part of our continuing series on applications based on SIP, I've pulled together Mike Wilkinson of Broadsoft and Scott Firth of IBM to discuss the challenges and solutions that small communications operators can leverage SIP and VoIP to expand their business.   The objective of the event is to educate the smaller and rural telecos, internet service providers, cable companies on the opportunities and solutions available to add voice to their existing IP networks.

The story behind the story starts on my front lawn with the owner of a local fixed wireless ISP we have here in western NY.  His network uses fixed wireless repeaters around northern Allegany County, NY to service hundreds of homes, farms and businesses with broadband that the local ILEC won't service with DSL or other wired broadband technologies.  He was describing his challenges with building out the network and desire to add services to increase revenue.   The rest of the story will be covered in today's event.

Small Operator - Are you being left behind?

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 2:00pm ET / 11:00am PT

Small and mid-tier operators of cable systems, rural telcos, internet service providers, and regional wireless providers are constantly challenged with ways to improve customer retention and increase revenue.

VoIP and other bundled offerings are widely recognized as a means to achieve these goals. Market analyst AMI Partners Inc. agrees, noting in a forecast that SMB hosted VoIP spending will surpass $1.56 billion by 2010. However, the cost, technical complexity and financial risks involved with building a VoIP solution from scratch have been outside the means of many operators and as a result, kept them on the sidelines.

This situation has allowed the unbundled VoIP operators to draw away customers and revenue while draining resources from the operator's network.

The event will be available for on-demand view, just follow the same link to access.

I'm here at Astricon in sunny Glendale, AZ with the diverse Asterisk community talking about using SIP to improve the reliability and scalability of Asterisk.  

We had a full room this morning during our session sponsored by both ScanSource and AudioCodes, discussing different architecture tricks to improve reliability of Asterisk solutions and spread out the risk with the goal of avoiding a "career affecting" event.

A quick summary of our recommendations:

1. Use redundant and commercial grade servers to avoid simple power supply and fan failures from taking out the whole system.  
2. Use a distributed SIP architecture to separate the Asterisk server, media gateway and phone devices.
3. Implement a load-balancing scheme to spread the traffic over both Asterisk servers and dual media gateways.
4. Use Dundi to keep the dual Asterisk servers synchronized and allow them to cover for each other.
5. ...and many other helpful tips....

We had a number of interesting questions about how Asterisk handles routing the RTP streams around the application server, enabling mid-call fail-over in the case of an Asterisk crash.

For more details and/or a copy of the presentation, visit the AudioCodes micro-site on the ScanSource web site at: www.scansourcecommunications.com/audiocodes

 

I've been holding my tongue on this topic for since word first got out that PulverMedia had been shut down by it's investors.  I figured that like most rumors, they were only partially true.  In this case, it seems they were true.  The resumes are rolling into our marketing department - confirming what was reported.

Somehow the end of VON has hit me in a way I didn't expect.  Besides missing my annual treks to San Jose in the early Spring and Boston in the Fall, there is a community of people that I knew would always be there.  Knowing that we had a place where we could meet with our mid-tier customers was important.  It saved lots of travel to far flung locations and endless nights in another Marriott Courtyard.

This marks the end of one era and invariably the start of another.  Like after the end of  CTExpo in 2002, we'll surely all scatter our marketing budgets into new venues and locations, but invariably some people never resurface.  

Remember the special collection of Jeff's groupies with the Hawaiian Shirts and the industry captains dancing by themselves at the conference parties?  Sure, VoiceCon, Internet Telephony and other venues will fill the business void, but those truly unique "VONisms" will be the part that I'll miss the most.  

PS: I've got a closet full of VONware (shirts, bags, jackets, etc.) that just became collectors items.

This next week is going to be a busy one with the re-monikered "VON.x" (what was wrong with VON?), and Digium|Asterisk World all at the same time and under the same roof.  I've been invited to speak at five different sessions in both events, so you may see me running from one end of the building to the other during the week.

Where you can catch up with me during the show:

Tuesday, March 18th
1:30 pm: Digium|Asterisk World Theater – Building Reliable SIP Solutions using Digium|Asterisk (Part I)
2:30pm -3:00 pm: VONDEX Theater – Taking SIP from the Lab to the Bank
4:15 pm: Digium|Asterisk World Room A7 – The Strategic Purpose of Open Source (panel)

Wednesday, March 19th
2:00 pm: - Building Reliable SIP Solutions using Digium|Asterisk (Part II)

Thursday, March 20th
10:45 am – 12:00 pm: VON.x – Designing High Availability VoIP Solutions (panel)

If you'd like to catch me one-on-one, I'd highly recommend making an appointment by dropping me an email at:  alan.percy@audiocodes.com

Lastly, as a special treat to my readers and participants in past webinars: If you stop by the AudioCodes booth #827 and ask the questions "Show me how to Break Free?", we'll give you a FREE copy of SIP Beyond VoIP. 

This last week was very successful and action packed week for a number of our partners, AudioCodes staff and myself at the AudioCodes Global Channel Partner Meeting.   The event brought together 220 of the leading AudioCodes global channels, leading ISV partners and key AudioCodes executives for two days of introductions, information sharing and a little socializing beautiful and historical Jerusalem.

Shabtai Adlersberg, AudioCodes CEO during his opening keynote

 A key component of the agenda was presentations from our executives and product management teams, reviewing where we are and where we are going in the future.  The presentations included some fantastic vision on how AudioCodes sees the evolution of the communications infrastructure and a number of new products and services specifically designed to address this evolution.    

Scott Wharton from Broadsoft

We were fortunate to also hear from a number of leading industry thinkers, including Scott Wharton from Broadsoft and Haim Fried from Google who came to share their thoughts.   I was most impressed by the range of customers that came to present their case studies, showing how they put us to the test and won new business with AudioCodes.

A range of products and partners were highlighted in the Expo

 The conference Expo included a host of key partners, showing their software applications and services to the long list of channel partners and distributors that attended the event.  AudioCodes showed a number of enhanced intelligent media gateways, media server platforms with video and conferencing capabilities, plus a range of session border controller offerings.

One of the many great views during the walking tour of Jerusalem

 A highlight of the event was the Wednesday evening walking tour of Old Jerusalem.  For many, this was the first time to the city that the three major religions call home.  From the narrow streets filled with vendors, to the most holy sites, it was an awe inspiring opportunity to see and hear a very special place first hand.

From talking to many of the partners, the feedback was very positive and I'm sure they will join me in returning next year.

 

Today marks the first day of VON here in Boston.  As always, I'm looking forward to spending the week listening, learning and sharing about our industry. 

As I spend most of my time working with companies that build enterprise applications, an area I'm planning on paying particular attention to is SIP Trunking.  Using SIP to connect enterprise application to the outside world is getting a lot of attention from a pretty wide range of end-customers.  But I worry that we have not yet figured out all the security and deployment issues.  When I talk to the carriers, all they think about is their network security, not the enterprise customer's network.  They also seem to be bent on "one carrier" solutions that eliminate much of the choice that enterprises enjoy with today's TDM network.

I'll be listening carefully this week and sharing some of these thoughts on the topic during my speaking session:

Wednesday, October 31st, 3:00pm - 4:00pm
VON Show Theater.
Title: “Patrolling the Network Border”
The network is under attack!  When you look at the Internet, malicious activities are increasing. Viruses, spoofs. fraud, and DoS attacks being done by hackers and phreakers.
How do session controllers manage these issues?

For more information on the show and who will be there, visit:
http://www.von.com/2007/boston/web/confSchedule_gss21187013227.html#gss21187013227