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December 2007 Archive
Ssssh...The Kids Are Trying to Work
Young adults still use libraries, according to a new study. While one study never gives you a complete picture of a complicated world, I think this is a useful corrective to much of what we hear about the hell that's supposedly going to break loose in enterprise communications once the Millenial generation gets to work.
Don't Underestimate Silver Lake - or Giancarlo
By Marty Parker
Last week's news of Charlie Giancarlo's move to Silver Lake created a flurry of comments about what Charlie might be doing with Avaya, Silver Lake's most recent private equity acquisition.
Yet, as Charlie's move sinks in, it seems to me that assuming Charlie Giancarlo made that move so as to "fix" Avaya would be a gross underestimation of both Charlie and Silver Lake.
Giancarlo at VoiceCon
Charlie Giancarlo delivered the Cisco message at VoiceCon Orlando this past year, and you can see the video here.
Alexander Graham Bell, Fraud?
Oh, now this is just depressing.
I simply refuse to believe that aggressive lawyers and corrupt government officials were behind Alexander Graham Bell's rise to prominence. It's so unlike what came after.
Today's Poll
Best of breed or one neck to choke?
iExperience From the Zealot's Perspective
(cross-posted at VOIPLoop.com)
For the past couple of years I’ve been planning and scheming to convert my office wares over to Apple. I read feedback in Information Week that gave me pause as the readers quipped about why businesses won’t buy Apple. One reader writes, "that with Windows you have a choice of PC manufacturers while with MAC OS X, your choice of computers is Apple, Apple, Apple." Another reader commented, "He wants selection" and "doesn’t want to risk leaving the Windows world."
Why Apple?
Who Pays the Power Bill?
Greater than 1.5% of the electrical power consumed in the US is for data center operation. This figure is expected to rise to 3% by 2010. This is the conclusion reported in the EPA report “EPA Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency” released in August, 2007. The report does not include the power consumed in the telecom and LAN closets. In many ways, the closet power consumption is hidden--in the office utility bill. The closet power is rarely analyzed nor is it considered in the purchase of the IT equipment located in the closet.
Telecom: No Country for Entrepreneurs
Here's a column about why public telecom is a bad business for entrepreneurs. Given the season, I hope nobody has made bold to mention to this author that there isn't really a you-know-who.
No More Talking Heads?
Christmas at the Krapfs':
Acutal comment about enterprise video after the jump:
Texting 'N Talking 2
I promoted this item from earlier in the blog's history because Phil Edholm's got another Bluetooth post, and it gives me an excuse to again post the Larry David video on the jump:
Giancarlo Reaction
Here's how an executive at a Cisco competitor reacted to the news of Charlie Giancarlo's departure from Cisco:
Giancarlo & Cisco's Future (and Avaya's)
By Fred Knight
I've known Charlie Giancarlo since the early '90s, when he was with ATM pioneer Adaptive Corporation and then at Kalpana, the company that brought Ethernet Switching to the marketplace. So, I'm pretty sure that Sheila McGee-Smith is right in her post earlier today that Charlie didn't come to his decision overnight; her conclusion that the recently announced reorg of the Cisco organization was in response to Charlie's plans to leave rings true.
Housekeeping
A couple of housekeeping points:
1. We've got our archive up, so now you can see everything that we've posted since No Jitter went live last week. Go down to the bottom of this column and click on "More Stories."
Avaya Beats Cisco
Be sure to follow the jump on Sheila's post below, because she gets the really juicy part of the Charlie Giancarlo story in her post below: He's going to Silver Lake Partners, which owns Avaya. Score one for the gang from New Jersey (kind of).
Charlie, We Hardly Knew Ye
It was always my intention to write my last blog post of the year about Cisco. Until about 9 PM last night, the subject was to have been a new emphasis on software that Cisco highlighted at its recent industry analyst event, C-Scape. While I will come back to that topic soon, the news of the day prompts me to write instead about Chief Development Officer Charlie Giancarlo’s departure, announced after the market close on December 20th.
Managing MACs
Matt Brunk, who's keeping the lights on over at VOIPLoop for the time being, has an interesting post about how moves, adds and changes can be a window into the bigger challenges of converging voice and data.
Contact Center Metrics: Image of the Day
Zack Taylor has an interesting visual on Avaya's blog. That CSR definitely doesn't know what she's in for.
Will Microsoft Buy A PBX Vendor?
Today's poll: Now with fewer ads:
Cisco Widens Market Share Lead
I was talking with Allan Sulkin this morning about IP-PBX market shares, and he was kind enough to send me his latest chart, which is an eye-opener:
Glimpsing Communications Nirvana
As an industry analyst tracking the business comms sector I am often treated to glimpses into what’s coming down the ol’ pike communications-wise. SOA architectures creating building blocks that embed multimodal communications into otherwise non-comms oriented apps. Business applications that initiate communication sessions when inventory is low. The ability to initiate a phone call from links in most any office productivity application.
Pizza Boxes and Power
Yesterday, we had a couple of posts, one by Gary Audin and one by me, that relate to power consumption and form factor. Today, at his blog, Om Malik addresses the issue of power consumption by "pizza box" servers.
Sprint Nextel Gets Its New Boss
Sprint Nextel has announced that industry veteran Dan Hesse will take over as CEO. Hesse will replace Gary Forsee who left in October; CFO Paul Saleh has been serving as interim CEO since then. The 54-year-old Hesse is leaving the CEO post at Embarq Corp, the local telecommunications division that Sprint had spun off in 2006. Prior to that he spent 23 years at AT&T, and was CEO of AT&T Wireless from 1997 to 2000.
Which Vendor Will End Up Dominating Enterprise Voice?
Take the poll:
Power and the VoIP Server
You can reduce your power charges by buying the better VoIP server and associated storage system, saving as much as 25%. I discuss the issues surrounding VoIP server power usage in the December 2007 issue of Business Communications Review, in an article titled, “The Greening of VOIP.”
Shoretel Promotes Green
I got hit with the "Green IT" message in the convergence area for the first time, when getting a briefing from Steve Timmerman, Shoretel's VP of marketing, about Shoretel's newest product release . One of the big product improvements is the downsizing of Shoretel's ShoreGear voice switch, from 1U to just half a rack unit, while at the same time the switch can serve double the capacity of the previous 1U version. The smaller unit uses 20 percent less power, so on a per-user basis, it cuts your power usage by 60 percent.
Outsourcing Voice
Om Malik writes about Ribbit, which appears to be creating essentially a carrier-grade IP-PBX (Om uses the term "Class 5 softswitch") that a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company like Salesforce can bolt onto its application to add communications to the service. It's a compelling idea, but ultimately I don't think it'll work for enterprises. Either that or it'll kill enterprise-based telephony altogether. More after the jump:
Unified Communications Value Can be Measured Using Non Financial Metrics
One of the biggest barriers to VoIP and unified communications (UC) deployments is that many organizations struggle to justify the cost of network, voice system upgrades and new applications. There are some things that companies can measure such as long distance costs, the cost of moving users, local telephony charges, etc, and these are reduced when VoIP is deployed. However, if these are the only metrics being used to calculate the value of VoIP and UC, the only value proposition for deploying is costs savings, which is just a small piece of the value a company can get from deploying UC. If the sole goal of deploying next generation communications infrastructure is to simply lower the overall TCO, the deploying enterprise is not seeing the big picture at all and they’re better off just renegotiating their long distance contract.
Defining UC
There's been a surprising amount of heat generated around a question that I assumed would be one of those dry techno-marketing issues: How do you define UC? Definitions abound. On her blog, Nancy Jamison has done a good job rounding up some of the key players' definitions.
Can You Have Too Much Redundancy?
Terry Slattery, who's CTO at NetCordia, has a nice hard-core tech blog about network management, configuration and troubleshooting, and he recently did a couple of posts on the issue of redundancy. Interestingly, he writes that one problem that some enterprises encounter is that they build too much redundancy into their networks.
T.G.I. UC Friday
Here on No Jitter, we're going to devote much of Friday's blogging to Unified Communications. Of course, the entire No Jitter community will be covering UC and blogging on it consistently throughout the week. But on Fridays, UC will be a regular area of focus. Various other bloggers and I will post on the topic, but the lion's share of our UC Friday contributions will be provided by our friends at UC Strategies, to whom I'll provide the introductions after the jump:
UC Friday: IBM UC&C – Up in the Wild Blue Yonder!
By Marty Parker, UniComm Consulting and UCStrategies.com
It’s been a great year for Unified Communications! For a recap of the UC themes for 2007, take a look the VoiceCon UC eWeekly, Issue 47. You will see forward UC progress from all directions. One player, that deserves some special note is IBM – Big Blue. Historically, most would think of Lotus Notes as IBM’s stake in the communications game. But, whoa, a whole new IBM portfolio has emerged this year, with more to come in 2008.
UC Friday: Enterprises Need To Look At All the Options
By Jim Burton
Earlier this week I posted an article (the 1st part of a 3 part series) on the UCStrategies.com website -- If Microsoft Acquires a PBX Vendor. Part 2 appeared in this week’s VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly – Vendors Should Reevaluate Their Options.
Big Plans for Video
In this week's VoiceCon Webinar (which you can get to for viewing here), we asked a polling question about what services besides VOIP our audience members planned to deploy across their enterprise WANs. The surprise winner: Video.
The Long, Long Road to CEBP
The theme of communications-enabled business processes has generated a lot of recent discussion among my fellow bloggers. Blair Pleasant explores the differences between the individual-initiated communications sessions of unified communications and event-initiated comms sessions of CEBP implementations. Irwin Lazar pokes a bit of fun at PBX vendors whose bread and butter come from sales of much the same sort of voice systems they’ve always sold, but whose marketing presents their firms as selling business transformation, business process improvement, SOA environments … anything but PBXs.
Genesys Acquires Informiam, Adding a Third Leg to the Stool
Yesterday Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, an Alcatel-Lucent company, announced that it has acquired a reporting and analytics firm. Informiam is a 45 employee business headquartered in Atlanta with R&D facilities in Toronto.
Planning for VOIP Traffic Loads
Josh Stevens, self-described Head Geek at a company called Solar Winds, has a really great, practical blog. Recently, he tackled the issue of how and when to do your capacity planning for wide area links as part of a VOIP rollout.
And the Walls Come Tumbling Down (Maybe)
Well, 2008 may be the year when the cellular industry finally ends their quest to be the new Bell System. Verizon's announcement of their ‘Any Apps, Any Device’ option signals a least an initial attempt to break the link between cellular network services and equipment. The carrier's establishment of a program to certify third-party devices to operate on their network will result in a much richer range of equipment options for Verizon's customers, and a ripple effect that results in this same type of open handset plans throughout the US cellular industry.
Meet the No Jitter Contributors
I can't write everything on this site myself, and fortunately, I don't have to. We've managed to bring just about all of the key contributors from Business Communications Review magazine and VoiceCon (as well as the old VOIPLoop site) over to the new digs with us. Details are in the jump.
Is Verizon Really Opening its Wireless Network? And What Will That Mean for Enterprise Customers?
By Hank Levine & Jim Blaszak
Verizon Wireless’s late November announcement that it will open its network to third party devices and applications in 2008, closely followed by Google’s announcement that it would bid in the next FCC wireless spectrum auction, could be very good news for enterprise customers.
WiMAX Dangling
The optimists continue to pump WiMAX, but reality holds a cold truth
VOIP on the (Sort of) Fast Track
The story so far: IP-telephony is growing at a healthy but not scorching pace. The typical large enterprise is deploying it in limited scale, only adding IP-PBXs and stations when there's a need to either replace very old equipment or build a new site.
That's Right--Networking's Hot
Via the WSJ blog, here's an interesting and very welcome bit of news for those of us who have been hearing about the decline/commoditization/de-emphasis of networking: The hottest job category in IT is, according to CIOs surveyed:
Stepping Into Unified Communications
That was the title of our December 5 webinar, and it also describes the approach that Roganne West and Adena Health Care are taking to the whole issue. Roganne was gave an amazingly detailed, specific and frank talk about the whole IPT/UC experience with Adena, which is based in Chillicothe, OH. (You can access the webinar here).
Nortel Splits Conferencing Out of MCS5100
Nortel's recent announcement that it was splitting its conference-bridge functionality out of the MCS5100, into a dedicated product called the MMC 5.0 (press release) provides a good snapshot of where I think we are today with Unified Communications.
The Non-Technologist CIO
The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article (the full thing is subscription-only; WSJ blogs on it here highlighting the purported success of companies that put non-technologists in charge of the IT department, the idea being that these individuals can sit at the table with the company's other business leaders and speak their language, thus aligning technology with business goals more effectively.
Hacking Cisco Phones
Lending some credence to the idea that VOIP hacking will increase in 2008 is the hacking of Cisco phones that occurred on a hotel network earlier this year (the exploit is described here. Cisco has now confirmed that this exploit is possible (Cisco's response is here.
Will iPhones Be Your Main Client?
The Wall Street Journal blogs about the large amount of Web access being done by iPhone users. The suggestion is that the age of the smartphone as a true ultra-small computer is at hand.
3Com Buyout In Question?
Via Barron's: the Washington Times reports that 3Com's buyout by a group that includes China's Huawei may be in jeopardy because U.S. intelligence agencies say the deal could be a "threat" to U.S. security.
More on VOIP Vulnerabilities: SANS
The SANS Institute has compiled its year-end list of security vulnerabilities, and there's quite a bit of detail on VOIP. Their suggestions for mitigation:
McAfee: More VOIP Security Woes for 2008
VOIP security makes McAfee's list of Top 10 Threat Predictions for 2008, taking the ninth spot based on McAfee's projection that VOIP attacks will increase 50% next year (link to the PDF is at VOIPSA).
Are Separate VLANs A Good Idea?
One of the gospel truths since the first IP voice packets were put on a data network is that you have to establish separate VLANs for voice and data traffic. But that piece of conventional wisdom may not be so wise.
VOIP for Audiophiles?
I ran across this article (registration required) a few Sundays back, and it got me thinking about the name of this website and the whole issue of what the changes in enterprise communications are all about. The article talks about the passing of the "audiophile," that hobbyist who always had the highest-fidelity sound system and who actually knew how to set all those levels and who handled their vinyl records like they were disks of plutonium.
How the BOCs Work Washington, And Why It Matters
By Hank Levine & Jim Blaszak
Enterprise user IT/telecom executives understand networks and technology, but they often don’t appreciate the influence of government oversight on the availability and prices of services. As a consequence, they often can’t distinguish a vendor telling the truth from a vendor “blowing smoke.”
SIP Constructs Applied To the Contact Center
SIP is an endpoint-oriented messaging standard defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It is a text-based protocol, similar to HTTP and SMTP, and is used to initiate interactive communication sessions between users. Sessions can consist of any mix of media, such as voice, video, instant messaging, text, etc.
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VOICECON AMSTERDAM
VoiceCon makes its European debut 14-16 October, 2008, with Johan Krebbers of Shell keynoting. More information HERE
FEATURE STORY
PBX Evolution: Where It Was, Where It Is, & Where It's Going
The PBX is not dead. But it is on an evolutionary path towards a new incarnation: Federated Communications System or FCS READ MORE »
SIPconnect and the Rationale for Widespread Adoption of SIP Trunking
SIP trunks could save money and deliver better feature/functionality to IP telephony. But there have been obstacles to overcome. READ MORE »
MORE FEATURES:
SMBs Take IP Telephony Spotlight from Large Enterprises
Mobile UC is "So European"
12 Forces Shaping the Future of Videoconferencing
Cabling the Campus
Interoperability in IP Telephony and Unified Communications
VoiceCon's Annual IP Telephony System RFP Workshop: Part 1
VoiceCon's Annual IP Telephony System RFP Workshop: Part 2
Are You Still On TDM? You Could Be On Death Row
ARCHIVE OF ALL FEATURES
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
VoiceCon San Francisco 2008
November 10-13, San Francisco, CAInterop New York 2008
September 15-19, 2008VoiceCon Webinars
No Jitter Podcasts
BCR Training: Introduction To Telecom: Voice, Data and Video
July 21-22, 2008 - San FranciscoManaging and Controlling the IT Power Bill
July 28-29, 2008 - San FranciscoBCR Training: Voice over IP and IP Telephony
August 4-5, 2008 - New YorkVOIP II: Deploying and Best Practices in the Enterprise
August 6-7, 2008 - New YorkIntroduction to Telecom: Voice, Data and Video
August 11-12, 2008 - New YorkPlanning and Implementing VOIP Unified Communications
August 11-12, 2008 - San Francisco
BLOGS WE LIKE
The VAR Guy
Enterprise 2.0 Blog
Nancy Jamison
Vanguard Communications
Terry Slattery
Webtorials (Steve Taylor)
Unified View (Art Rosenberg)
UCStrategies
Over The Air
Irwin Lazar
Disruptive Telephony (Dan York)
Thwack
Telecom Junkies
Phil Edholm
VOIP Security Alliance
Om Malik
Wall St. Journal
New York Times
Business Week
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