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• SIP Survivability and Security Recording is Now Available - May 09, 2008
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• Webinar on leveraging SIP in the Contact Center and win a Garmin Navigator! - Sep 21, 2007
• Still getting ready... - Sep 06, 2007
• SIP Trunking - What Challenges Lie Ahead? - Aug 22, 2007
• SIP Strategy - Aug 02, 2007

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• SIP Survivability and Security - Q&A - May 13, 2008
• SIP Survivability and Security - May 06, 2008
• Webinar on leveraging SIP in the Contact Center and win a Garmin Navigator! - Sep 21, 2007
• Still getting ready... - Sep 06, 2007
• SIP Trunking - What Challenges Lie Ahead? - Aug 22, 2007
• SIP Strategy - Aug 02, 2007

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• Video Telephony or Video Services - Aug 03, 2007

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• SIP Survivability and Security - Q&A - May 13, 2008
• SIP Survivability and Security Recording is Now Available - May 09, 2008
• Webinar on leveraging SIP in the Contact Center and win a Garmin Navigator! - Sep 21, 2007
• Still getting ready... - Sep 06, 2007
• SIP Trunking - What Challenges Lie Ahead? - Aug 22, 2007
• SIP Strategy - Aug 02, 2007

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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!

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• Interview on VoIP Blog - Tehrani.com - Aug 13, 2007
• On the road to VON.x and Digium|Asterisk World - Mar 14, 2008
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• iPhone Shame? - Sep 07, 2007

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. 

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• VON - End of an era - May 08, 2008
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This last week has been particularly difficult for those of us who are frequent travelers out of the Buffalo Airport.  It's seems the perfect storm has hit the Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF) and it really messed up my travel plans earlier this week: 

#1 - This last weekend we received a good 12+ inches of fresh snow (the skiing was awesome), which even snow-hardened Buffalonians can find a pain-in-the-neck when it comes to getting around town.    Unfortunately, piled up snow takes up valuable parking spaces.

#2 - It marked the start of "Spring Break" weekend for most of the local colleges and public schools in Canada.

#3 - Our neighbors to the north who have new buying power, have figured out my little secret.

It seems that an article in the Toronto Star last summer tipped off my Canadian neighbors about the inexpensive flights and easy access in and out of the Buffalo Airport.  If you've ever flow out of Toronto's Pearson Airport, you know how expensive and difficult travel is for most Southern Ontario residents.  With Buffalo only 90 miles down the QEW, the lure of lower fares and access to JetBlue and Southwest Airlines has created a new North-to-South migration path.  The result?  Full parking lots, very long security lines, and jammed-to-the-gills flights.

While I appreciate the new travelers will bring with them their loonies to spend here in Western New York and wherever their destination takes them, I still miss my airport.  Parking close to the terminal and the predictability of normally short security lines are now distant memories.

I thought the "International" in Buffalo Niagara International Airport was referring to the occasional charter flights to Mexico, not the license plates in the parking lot.

Back to work....

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You can see in this photo looking across the street just one of the excavators, trucks and other heavy equipment the contractors are using to do the installation. 

What is amazing to me is how difficult this installation actually is to complete and the pace.  It took a crew of four guys and untold pieces of equipment to run a conduit under the street to the curb box on my side of the street.  In four day they have finished about six houses with many more to go before being done with just my one street. 

Oh, and if you wondered if our regular phone lines survived the digging - they dug those up within 15 minutes of unloading the equipment.  Thank god for cell phones.

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• Fios - $1,000 per household? - Feb 28, 2008
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Anyhow, now I understand why Verizon plans on spending an average of $1,000 per household to install Fios.  First all the utility companies (gas, water, telephone, cable...) all have to mark/flag their lines.  (Our front lawn looks like a miniature golf course)  Then the Verizon guys come out and....sit in the truck.  So far this truck has been parked in front of my house for two days with at least two guys sitting in it.  God knows what they are doing, but there they sit - idling the engine.

$1,000 per household?  Verizon has spent that so far just in fueling this idling truck.

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• Fios - $1,000 per household - not even close! - Mar 04, 2008
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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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And more great questions:

Q: (Brian) a slide showed FAX machine - T.38 gateway - T.38 Gateway - FAX Machine.  I was under the impression that once a FAX was converted into T.38 It coudlnt be changed back into a audio FAX call.
A: Actually, a fax can be converted to T.38 and back no problem or loss of information.  This is what happens with virtually all fax calls that are transported over VoIP carriers.  It works fine.

Q: (Darren) Do your gateways support V.34 fax over T.38? Does your T.38 fax SDK? If not, where is this on your development roadmap? We have identified this as one of the major monetary objections to using T.38 instead of TDM.
A: Our T.38 Fax SDK does support V.34 transport, but at this time our gateways are limited to V.17 speeds when used with T.38.  We are working toward delivering V.34 with T.38 on our current gateways and hope to announce our formal plans soon.

Q: (Darren) Is your T.38 fax SDK available for Linux?
A: Our T.38 Fax SDK is for Windows, but there are many others on the market and do believe a few of them support Linux.  We've had many customers use T.38 SDKs from one vendor and our gateways with no interoperability issues.

Q: (Yaniv) When using an analog MediaPack gateway, can the DID/DNIS information be passed to the SIP application?
A: Absolutely - is appears in the SIP INVITE.

Q: (Roger) Will these slides/audio be available?
A: Yes, a previously recorded version of the webinar is available at: http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/audiocodes5/

Just as a reminder, the questions from the previous session can be found at:  http://blog.tmcnet.com/sip-invite/sip/fax-webinar-qa.asp

You can address your questions to me at:  alan.percy@audiocodes.com

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As noted on the webinar, we had run out of time and were unable to get to all the great questions posed by the attendees. Find below some of the Questions and Answers that we didn't have time to address:

Q: (from Scott) is T.37 being employed and deployed?
A: T.37 is used in some messaging applications, but it is quite different than T.38.  T.37 uses email technology to transport documents and thus is not real-time.  It's great for store and forward applications, but not widely used or supported by carriers. For more on T.37, visit wikipedia

Q: (from Scott) who offers T.38 SDK's for fax API's?
A: AudioCodes and a number of other manufacturers offer a T.38 SDKs.  AudioCodes has certified our gateways with a number of other other third-party manufacturer's T.38 software.

Q: (from Tim) I think T.38 was specified to use "UDPTL" or TCP - with RTP only added to the spec recently. What do people use in practice?
A: We are using UDPTL, TCP adds addional timing issues into the equation.

Q: (from Jayaprakash) Does Gateways always do the Fax tone detection? or it is Fax Application server responsibility?
A: Our gateways can detect the CNG fax tone, which makes fax detection much easier for application developers.  Detection can be done by the application servers, but it is much harder and less accurate.

Q: (from Oliver) Which SIP trunking carriers support T.38?
A: AT&T and Quest are two carriers which have been certified to work very well.  Others are in lab testing.

Q: (from Edward) How much bandwidth required for SIP+T.38 normally ?
A: T.38 with triple redundancy and operating with V.17 speeds would use roughly 48 kbps.  Less redundency on good networks would use even less.   In comparison, a fax over G.711 would require close to 80 kbps.

Q: (from Prashanth) Can T.38 fax be done using other codecs than G.711?
A: No, transporting fax via T.38 is done instead of using a voice coder (like G.711).  Other voice coders compress the audio and are even less reliable than G.711.

Q: (from Yossman) Is your media gateway compatible with other brand devices that also supports SIP+T.38 ?
A: Yes, AudioCodes media gateways are many times deployed in mixed network environments and have excellent compatibility and reliability.

Q: (from Shawn) do you need to have a t.38 media server on both sides (sending and receiving)?
A: For T.38 to work, both ends of the IP connection need to support T.38

Q: (from Anil) Does these Media Gateways also have similar issues like Denial of service and other attacks and how do we solve this?
A: (While not the topic of this thread, this is a good question) Security is always a big concern and media gateways do need to be hardened to protect against attack.  AudioCodes gateways have been hardened and passed stringent DoD certifications for deployment in DoD networks. 

There are many more questions and I'll post more in the next few days....

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I noticed this morning that USAtoday picked up on the issue and published a lengthy article about the issue.  It's good reading and expands on what I have been sensing would be an issue going forward.  Fortunately, it sounds like Facebook is adding functionality to their offering that will allow creation of "circles", providing some insulation between our social and profession lives.

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After yesterday's webinar on fax, I'm overwhelmed. 

When we were developing the plans and presentation materials for yesterdays webinar titled "Fax - SIP+T.38 to the Rescue", our expectations were that a few "fax gurus" would join in and we would have a small very focused 20 - 30 person session on a rather deep dark secret of the industry.  Can you imagine my surprise when during the first few minutes of the session the participant count kept climbing and climbing to over 160 people!  Talk about standing room only. 

After 45 minutes of presentation and another almost 30 minutes of Q/A, I was toast.  There were some fantastic questions that I was able to address, but because of time limitations, we were unable to get to dozens more great questions.

The session moderator, Erik Linask published a great summary of the webinar.

What does this mean?  It can mean only one thing - there is serious pain in the VoIP industry when it comes to delivering reliable fax services and people are looking for solutions.

So what can I do to help close the gap?  I've decided to use this forum to provide both a recap of the webinar and address the many questions you in the audience posed both during and after the session.  This concept of tying both the webinar and companion blog together is a new experiment, so let's give it a try.  If you have questions and didn't get a chance to pose them during the session, you can send them to me at: alan.percy@audiocodes.com

I'm starting to work on the whitepaper version of the presentation, posting pieces in this venue as they are ready.   Once the completed whitepaper is ready for download, we'll be posting it on the TMC whitepaper library.

In the mean time, the abstract for yesterday's webinar:

Fax continues to be a key communications medium for many enterprises and service providers alike. Financial institutions, real-estate, government, law offices, and many others still depend heavily on fax to transfer thousands of documents daily into and from business-critical document management and ERP systems. Many service providers and enterprises have only recently recognized the challenges associated with delivering reliable fax documents over IP networks. What are the reliability issues with fax over G.711 and how can SIP and T.38 improve the reliability? Is there a way to eliminate the expensive dedicated fax boards? How can legacy TDM fax systems connect to SIP trunking carriers? How is fax document security addressed? What is the future of fax? This session will address these questions and many others, showing how SIP and T.38 can be leveraged to create reliable and scalable fax solutions for both enterprises and service providers.

For those that missed the live event, you can listen to the on-demand version at any time.

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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.

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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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SIP Conferencing/Collaboration
Global organizations utilize conference calls as a very important business tool for collaboration. Multi-branch organizations were the first to recognize the value in voice and video conferencing services to economize on travel costs and to coordinate business activities. Other smaller organizations have also begun to recognize that having access to easy-to-use conferencing resources speed up collaboration efforts with clients and suppliers. Whether using a traditional TDM PBX, an IP-PBX or a hosted service provider, SIP is seen as a key technology going forward to help tie organizations together and dramatically reduce the costs of conferencing.

As voice is virtually ubiquitous in all conferencing applications, this whitepaper will focus on the voice component, whether from PSTN callers or from web-based conference clients. We'll save the other media types for future whitepapers

Click here to download your own copy.  Happy reading!

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AudioCodes' Break Free Campaign (see: www.audiocodes.com/breakfree) - way back in early summer, we were on a conference bridge discussing how to create some new activity with the application developer community, trying to show them how they could abandon their legacy APIs and make the move to SIP+MSCML for their new applications.  We devised a plan that included a combination of web-based advertising, webinars and live speaking slots to introduce the concept and show some specific example applications.  With the fantastic help of the Marcom team at AudioCodes, TMC, Paracon and Alliance Systems we blew the lid off our original plan, making by far the most successful community development program that I have ever experienced.  For those that have participated, there is much more to come next year!

During 2007 I celebrated my 6th anniversary at AudioCodes - the longest I have worked for any one company - something must be going right.

If you know me, you know that outside work I'm deeply involved in Boy Scouts and a wide range of outdoor activities with my two sons.  This year, my oldest son David completed his Eagle Scout rank - the first ever in our family.  We're very proud of him and look forward to seeing him soar like an Eagle when he heads to college in 2008.

Looking ahead:

In January I'm headed to Jerusalem for the AudioCodes Global Channel Partner Conference.  We're bringing together some of our best channels, ISVs and VARs for three days of networking and collaboration.  I'm also looking forward to seeing many of my co-workers and partners face to face - it's been a while.   The old city has captivated me since my first visit a couple years ago.  The history found in Jerusalem is just incredible. 

Spring Trade show season - January to March - while sometimes I dread the time away from home, I always look forward to the "buzz" that comes from spending time around the rest of the industry.  I learn more and make more progress in this time than any other part of the year.  Internet Telephony, VON, VoiceCon... here I come.

My crystal ball

Social Networking will leave the universities - after spending some time on MySpace and Facebook, now I get it.  Social networking is to email and IM what the telephone was to postal mail.  Now the challenge is to make the application "fit" the adult world - too much of Facebook was designed around college kids and doesn't recognize the complex networks that adults work within.  College kids have a relatively "flat" network of friends and the applications need work before adults will be willing to expose themselves like young adults.

Video - going beyond YouTube?  Like many of you, I was a little caught off gaurd by the web-based video streaming application and it's popularity.  Beyond the goofly little humor skits and music videos, it's application in marketing, training and product demonstrations has shown real commercial value.  But will real-time video (not streaming) take off?  It looks like we still have some work to go on this front.

Blade Servers will finally take off in telecom - after spending the year working in this space, it's clear to me now that many of the applications for telecom are perfect fit for blade servers including IBM's BladeCenter and other offerings from HP, Dell...   Few carriers can afford nor need the expensive redundancy found in ATCA or proprietary hardware.  Look for MicroTCA to be successful, but for ATCA, I think the game is already over.

Broadband for all - as you read in last week's entry, I feel strongly that we need to do more to connect the rest of America to the internet, giving a range of business and social benefits for both sides.  Watch for further policy changes that will encourage the wireline and wireless service providers to make the investment.

Thanks

Thanks goes out to all of you that participate in my blog, the folks at TMC for hosting and encouraging its development, my coworkers at AudioCodes for a great year, and finally my wife and kids for their support and putting up with my crazy travel schedule.

Wishing you all have a great holiday season and look forward to next year!

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Those of us that live in urban or suburbia are lucky in that we have access to a range of choices for broadband internet service.  This allows us to choose between DSL, Cable and Fiber optic technologies needed to connect our homes and businesses to the internet.  It's gotten to the point where we expect this connectivity to do everything from shopping on-line, to banking, to preparing our taxes.  In our industry, this also provides the needed connectivity for VoIP service providers like Skype or Vonage.

Unfortunately, there is an un-documented line around the ring of suburbs that surround most cities - the broadband-free zone.  Beyond this line you have one choice - Satellite Internet which is very expensive.  Because of the distance above the earth that the geo-stationary satellites orbit, satellite broadband has terrible multi-second latency (due to the transit time up to the satellite and back).  Satellite internet is fine for surfing and email, but unusable for real-time voice or video conversations.  The result - if you live outside the "burb's", no VoIP for you!

But bringing terrestrial broadband to rural users is more than access to on-line shopping and VoIP, it's about access to government, libraries, educational content and on....  The internet is quickly going from a luxury to becoming a necessity, much like electricity did in the 1930's.  For those of you that study history, you'll remember the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, that created a means to bring electricity to rural farmers and others that live outside the urban centers.  If you travel to other countries (like Mexico), you'll find that to this day, few people that live outside the urban centers have utility-supplied electricity, which puts those people and businesses at a tremendous disadvantage.

It's good to see that our elected officials have woken up on this issue and are starting to develop a strategy for helping rural farmers and others have access to broadband internet.  This could give my home state of New York a huge advantage over the long-run - making rural businesses more competitive.

Whether it be stringing more cable, EVDO or WiMax wireless technologies, bringing the internet to the rest of the population will help our industry cut the cord on the legacy TDM infrastructure.

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• What happened to Skype? - Aug 23, 2007

While I'm a huge proponent of creating space for new services and giving opportunities for new business to capture this unique opportunity, I worry about how this is working financially.  Follow me just for a second:

-The FCC decides to cut the cord on analog television
-This requires that most of the the US spend $ to buy a new TV or a converter box
-Then the FCC auctions off the airwaves to wireless carriers (the FCC puts the $ in the General Fund)
-Then the wireless carriers charge us $ to use those airwaves?

Google to bid for U.S. mobile airwaves - Yahoo! News

It sure sounds like a bit of a financial shell game to me - how about you??

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First, a couple observations / predictions:

#1 - SIP Trunking is really a misnomer - it really should be "Media Gateway Service Provider".  Think about it - if you really distill it down, the concept of SIP trunking is just about where the media gateway resides and who owns it.  For the foreseeable future, the vast majority of calls from your home/office will terminate on a PSTN phone somewhere.  I'd guess that 98% or more calls still terminate on PSTN circuits.  This means that virtually all calls must go through a media gateway somewhere to get to the PSTN - so it's really about who owns the equipment.

#2 - SIP Trunking is about consolidation - much like many other business models, the opportunity is in consolidation of traffic, sharing common media gateway infrastructure across a number of subscribers.  So instead of each business owning their own media gateway and PSTN lines, if you can get businesses to share a larger media gateway, you make money while they save money. 

#3 - "Security" Dare I say it? - very few SIP trunking service providers have really nailed the security puzzle of SIP trunking correctly.  Most push the problem to someone else or depend on ineffective SIP firewall products.  IMHO - this is like TJ Max depending on WEP to secure their credit card transactions -  a corporate disaster waiting to happen.  Any CIO worth their salt will make sure to have a Session Border Controller (SBC) protecting their organization from outside attack.

#4 - Tragedy of the Commons - by building a business model that depends on consolidating customer's traffic together through a common resource, someone eventually pulls out their Erlang calculator to figure out the usage factor and number of ports available for all the subscribers/customers.  This may be fine for some customers, but most of the customers that are really enticed by cost reductions don't want or can't share resources with others.  Think call centers or financial services - applications that push thousands of calls per hour into the network. 

#5 - The numbers may not add up - for many organizations, the cost of securing their SIP trunks and the service levels required of their SIP trunking service provider will wipe out any potential savings.  I've sat with customers and helped them do the math - it doesn't work in many cases.  However, for others, it does work - their needs are different and the model does work, even with the costs of security and dedicated bandwidth.

#6 - SIP Trunking is just a stepping stone - In the end, peer-to-peer SIP is where we are all headed.  We don't need a middle man to deliver our email, why do we need one for real-time voice and video conversations? I can easily envision enterprises using similar techniques we use today with email to call from enterprise to enterprise - all via SIP.  In the end, SIP trunking will be a transitional technology to reach those on "the old PSTN".  Think SkypeOut. 

I'd love to hear your comments, feel free to post them.

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Building Applications with SIP - Conferencing / Collaboration Solutions

Thursday, November 8, 2007, 2:00pm ET 11:00am PT

Global organizations utilize conference calls as a very important business tool for collaboration. Multi-branch organizations were the first to recognize the value in voice and video conferencing services to economize on travel costs and to coordinate business activities. Other smaller organizations have also begun to recognize that having access to easy-to-use conferencing resources speeds collaboration efforts with clients and suppliers. Whether using a tradition TDM PBX, an IP-PBX or a hosted service provider, SIP is seen as a key technology going forward to help tie organizations together and dramatically reduce the costs of conferencing.

By attending this webinar you will learn how SIP can be leveraged as a key enabling technology for conferencing and collaboration applications - delivering scalable and cost effective solutions while avoiding restrictive and expensive API development.

If you'd like to participate in the webinar, click here to register.

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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

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Getting started with Facebook was great, but it seemed a little out of touch for a 45 year old adult.  What were my favorite bands seemed more important than my professional credentials of past positions and educational experiences.  Oh well - forge ahead.

One of the first people I "friended" was Jeff Pulver along with some other friends of his that I knew well and interacted with periodically.  It seemed I had a good start on connecting my professional network on Facebook and we were able to share thoughts and observations about our industry and the work we were undertaking.

Then I ran into my 18 year old son, who too had a Facebook profile.  So I friended him...and all his friends.  You see they are over at my house virtually every weekend anyhow, so we are "friends".  Not adult-to-adult friends, but instead the relationship is more of a parent-to-teenager kind of friendship.   They come to us with their successes and hopes and occasional problems - but adult-friends are not the same as teenager-friends.  It's been great because I can see what social events the kids have planned and can connect the faces with names as they scurry through the house.  I've even been able to put the kibosh on a couple unauthorized social events that were planned at my house. 

But not all is perfect in the land of Facebook.  You see, because the way Facebook works, now my professional friends can see all of my son's friends - not something I had really planned on.  They are all pretty good kids, but do I really want my co-workers to see them?

In hind-site - I wish I had just kept a separation between my work world and my personal world.  I know the lines blur all the time, but life was a whole lot easier when I was able to keep them apart.

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Personally having had the Slingbox mobile client on my Motorola Q for the last year, I have to admit - TV on demand on a mobile device is pretty handy.  Besides killing time in line at the airport or DMV, it's been a great way to stay connected with the local newscasts while traveling.  When the Sabres were making their playoff run last year, I could draw a small crowd around my tiny screen to see the game live.

I've also had a Video-capable iPod for the last year and did spend some money on a few videos for long flights last summer.  In my mind I could justify the expense as "part of the vacation cost", but having to pre-meditate the purchase and download was a drag.  I'm not sure how many times I'll be doing that in the future.

The challenge is figuring out how mobile TV can make money here in the US.  After experiencing it for a while, I think it will happen outside the phone operator's domain.  Frankly - they make money on transport, not content.  The mobile operators will use mobile TV as justification for an expensive data plan that is required to use YouTube or other content providers, not on the content itself.

Will mobile TV change everything? Yes, but I think it will drive data traffic to ever increasingly capable mobile devices.  That's where the money is.

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Building Applications with SIP - the IP Contact Center
The legacy call center has gone through a metamorphosis, emerging as the IP Contact Center which replaces the PBX and separate IVR and ACD systems and merges email and instant messaging into a new architecture that integrates these functions, leveraging Voice over IP technologies. Whether the goal is to reduce costs in the existing call center, leverage inexpensive overseas labor or add Work At Home Agents (WAHA), IP Contact Centers provide tremendous flexibility to adapt to changing markets and labor resources.

By attending this webinar, you will learn how SIP can be leveraged as a key enabling technology for the IP Contact Center - delivering scalable and cost effective solutions while avoiding restrictive and expensive API development.

Wednesday September 26th at 2 PM EDT (11 AM PDT)

Sound interesting?  Well, we're going to sweeten the pot by giving away a Garmin navigator to one of the attendees of the live webinar, so be sure to participate in the live event!

Link to more information and registration page:
http://www.tmcnet.com/webinar/audiocodes2/building-applications-with-sip.htm

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