No Jitter Weblog

WebMessenger - Bringing OCS to Mobile Devices

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:19:27 -0500

WebMessenger, announced WebMessenger Mobile for Microsoft OCS, enabling enterprises to extend their investments in the Microsoft UC platform out to BlackBerry and other mobile devices. WebMessenger provides mobile real-time presence, IM, VoIP, and collaboration products for enterprises and mobile professionals. It also targets persistent group chat users who have alerts set up so they can act on new information or requests quickly and efficiently, and it provides other communications management solutions. For example, the company developed Message Alerts Enterprise Edition in conjunction with a large and very well-known financial services firm, using rules to trigger alerts and notify users when they get an important message or messages with specific words, for example.

VisiCalc and Unified Communications

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:16:57 -0500

Individual user productivity is to Unified Communications as VisiCalc was to personal computing. VisiCalc, of course, was one the first software programs that enabled individuals to harness a PC to accomplish a task--to create and calculate spreadsheets. Everyone who needed to do these sorts of calculations immediately understood the benefit once they saw it in operation.

25 Things I Hate About Your Network

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:53:16 -0500

One of our favorite network troubleshooting gurus, Terry Slattery, has put together a very cool-looking network diagram showing the 25 Biggest Network Problems. Not surprisingly, virtually all of them are either directly or indirectly relevant to real-time/voice traffic. I talked with Terry about some of the high- (or low-) lights.

OCS, VoIP, Contact Centers, and the Camel�s Nose

Thu, 08 May 2008 14:47:06 -0500

One last observation to wrap up my musings on the Microsoft-Aspect alliance. Tucked into the press release announcing the whole shebang was this curious line:

LLDP-MED: Learning About the Endpoint

Thu, 08 May 2008 09:27:09 -0500

At Interop last week, I had a chance to sit down with Manfred Arndt, who's Distinguished Technologist with HP ProCurve Networking, which has been aggressively going after market share in the switch/routing business. Manfred is co-author of a standard that's going to be increasingly important as enterprises deploy IP telephony and unified communications: Link Layer Discovery Protocol-Media Endpoint Discovery, or LLDP-MED, which is standardized as ANSI/TIA-1057-2006.

Sprint, Clearwire Combine on WiMAX, and Hope Returns

Wed, 07 May 2008 09:38:33 -0500

The never-ending saga that is WiMAX has thrown us yet another surprise.This morning�s papers bring news that Sprint and Clearwire will be combining (or �re-combining�) their WiMAX offerings still using the name Xohm. The combined company will take Clearwire�s name , though it will be headed up by Sprint�s CTO and long-time WiMAX booster, Barry West. More importantly, Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable, Google, Bright House Networks, and Trilogy Equity Partners will jointly invest $3.2 billion in the new venture. The investments still falls far short of what will be needed to deploy ubiquitous nationwide coverage, and the target deployment date for the first major rollout has slipped from 2008 to 2010.

More from Interop on Power Savings

Wed, 07 May 2008 08:34:23 -0500

If you're in a conference session, and an Ethernet switch vendor tells you to use 10/100 instead of Gigabit wherever you can, you must be in a session on Green IT.

Bandwidth Reduction, WAN Optimizers and VoIP Performance

Wed, 07 May 2008 08:13:24 -0500

The WAN optimizer is hardware designed to reduce bandwidth consumption. WAN optimizers are designed for TCP traffic, which dominates the IP network. TCP traffic has a lot of redundancy and can be compressed; it does not have the network performance requirements of VoIP traffic.

Is Cisco Falling Behind in FMC?

Tue, 06 May 2008 13:36:08 -0500

During last week�s Interop convention in Las Vegas, Cisco and Nokia announced a number of trials for their mobile unified communications solution, but the news included little in the way of new capabilities. The problem is that while most of the other fixed mobile convergence (FMC) solutions on the market can deliver an automatic hand-off; Cisco still must depend on the user to manually transfer the call. That automatic hand-off function is critical, because without it, there is no way of ensuring the users� calls are being sent over the less costly WLAN option when they are within range.

Interoperability Emerges As The Key To UC

Tue, 06 May 2008 07:27:41 -0500

Over the last two months or so we�ve had the opportunity to interview about 100 IT executives from end-user organizations of varying size and scope about their organization�s approach to unified communications. We�re asking IT executives about their UC plans, experiences, business drivers, and concerns. In most interviews one key concern emerges: Interoperability.

Datacenters and Pollution

Mon, 05 May 2008 11:05:04 -0500

Here's a WSJ blog that says, among other things, that IT datacenters are responsible for half as much pollution as the airline industry. Green was a big topic at Interop last week, and I'll have more on it in tomorrow's VoiceCon eNews, which will be posted here as well. But for now, some random facts and comments.

More on the Evolving Communications Organization

Mon, 05 May 2008 08:43:52 -0500

At Interop last week, I heard a variation on Marty Parker's taxonomy of IT/communications organizational structures that I blogged about recently.

Microsoft�s Response Point, Good for the Enterprise?

Sun, 04 May 2008 22:48:41 -0500

Response Point is Microsoft�s software based IP PBX. Its initial offering is for the S in SMB. It does not fit the medium and large enterprise location, but could satisfy the requirement of the small office of 5 to 50 phones. The retail branch, insurance office and remote government offices are all candidates, if the organization does not plan to interconnect these offices by an IP or legacy T1 network. In some companies, the remote offices are locally managed and independent, making them candidates for a key system replacement. Response Point may satisfy these situations.

How Does Header Compression Help?

Sun, 04 May 2008 22:35:57 -0500

Header compression is always mentioned in the same breath as QoS when we discuss supporting voice on an IP network. But it is not about QoS, it is about reducing bandwidth consumption. Header compression is most important on the WAN because that is where bandwidth is constrained and expensive. Let�s take a look at why header compression helps for voice.

Managed Services: Offense or Defense?

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:44:28 -0500

Whenever economic issues threaten budgets, management looks at outsourcing to cover budget shortfalls. Networking in the US has long been dependent on in-house technology while in Europe, managed services have dominated. Given this, US executives are already looking harder at managed services, and network operators here are expanding their programs. The question is whether managed services are a good idea, and if so, where optimum value could be obtained.