If you participated in my session at Internet Telephony this January, you know how strongly I believe this is a big deal. History has shown over and over again that allowing the creative minds of application developers to fill market needs is the best way to expand the market and build new solutions. Imagine what life would be like If you limited application development to the AT&T and IBMs of the 70's? You'd still have plain-old-dialtone and IBM 3720 terminals on our desks. No Google, no Wikipedia, no Linux.
This is also why I think IMS is a huge mistake. IMS is based on the concept that the carriers will develop and deploy all the applications. The carriers should stick to managing the core of the network and delivering services over the last mile. Letting the Google, Microsoft and smaller developers of the world create applications is a far better way to great applications deployed quickly.
Still don't believe me? How long do you think it will take to create the equivalent of Google Maps for my Verizon phone? Years (if ever).
I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes next for the iPhone and family!
]]>Thankfully the battle is now over between the competing high-definition DVD formats and Sony's Blu-ray format is the victor. Fortunately, this played out a lot faster than the Beta/VHS battle that lasted through most of the 80's (BTW: to this day, I still have one of each in my AV cabinet) Settling the Blu-ray / HD-DVD battle will end much of the consumer confusion and let us get back to spending our "economic stimulus" checks when they arrive later this summer.
Now that this is behind us, what can we learn from this?
#1 - The first to market advantage does not necessarily create a victor. It's all about market positioning and market might. Sony and Panasonic out positioned Toshiba.
#2 - Better technology will not win the war. As with the Beta/VHS war, it's not clear that the better technology actually won the war. HD-DVD did have a number of features and capabilities that Blu-ray is just now introducing.
#3 - Customers don't always control who wins. In the end, the movie distribution houses made the choice, not the consumers. As bad as the video rental stores and NetFlix of the world didn't want two formats, the movie distributors hated the specter of two formats even more.
#4 Being stubborn costs $. The biggest mistake is that the Sony and Toshiba didn't sit down and come up with a compromise format from the beginning. Would the few months it would have taken to work out the details really have hurt the market? I doubt it. Did having two formats for the last two years hurt the market and cost millions of dollars? Absolutely.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program....
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The Antarctic Snow Cruiser in the Star Diner parking lot in Avon, NY during November 1939.
You may be wondering: "What does this have to do with SIP?" Once you know the whole story of the Antarctic Snow Cruiser, you'll understand that this monster of a machine is a classic case study in over engineering that never did work. After all the work that went into the design, construction and transport of the Snow Cruiser to Antarctica, it was a complete failure. The combination of the immense weight and large tires made the Snow Cruiser virtually useless in Antarctica. As a matter of fact, it was so incapable of moving in snow, that it got stuck during the process of unloading from the ship! You can read more about the folly of the Antarctic Snow Cruiser on both Wikipedia and Joel Dirnberger's web site on the topic.
I worry that we in the Telecommunications space are close to building our own Antarctic Snow Cruiser. Every time I sit through a session on IMS, I can see the Snow Cruiser spinning it's massive wheels in the snow. I worry that so much is being invested in building the "unified application platform" that we'll never actually see it in use.
Every day I work with customers that are developing applications, leveraging SIP to create powerful and useful applications, but without all the baggage that IMS carries. How do they do it? KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) They use the SIP architecture to connect basic building blocks like media servers and media gateways together with their application. This architecture gives the freedom to create applications and simplifies the effort to quickly deploy solutions - generating revenue.
The next time you start working on a new application - just ask yourself "will this just sit and spin it's wheels in the snow?"
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