A little over a year ago the UCI Forum was created to improve interoperability within Unified Communications. UC interoperability is abysmal; a user's telephone number and email are about the only aspects of the communications suite that is completely vendor independent. SMS, IM, video, wideband audio, and other aspects of UC all represent vendor islands, and it is holding back the industry. Nearly every major vendor publicly states they are open and embrace standards, but clearly that isn't sufficient to assure interoperability.
The UCI Forum (Unified Communications Interoperability Forum) is not a standards organization. Its mission, as a vendor consortium, is to define implementation practices, and to create a verification program to ensure uniform compatibility with those practices. Because the UCI Forum leverages existing standards and profiles to achieve this, the work will often involve teaming with standards organizations and industry consortia.
The model has proven necessary in other sectors as compliance with standards does not ensure interoperability. Consider SIP: despite clear standards, vendors and carriers must still perform extensive testing to assure successful interconnection. On the other hand, USB and Wi-Fi are two technologies that experience a high degree of interoperability--largely as a result of the industry consortiums (USB-IF and Wi-Fi Alliance) that put forth best practices and compliance testing.
The UCI Forum was initiated by five companies (Microsoft, Polycom, Juniper, HP, and LifeSize/Logitech) and in its first year, membership expanded to 38 vendors. The membership roster is still missing a few notables including Avaya, Cisco, IBM, and Skype. Nor are many "traditional" telephone system vendors involved so far; Siemens Enterprise and Alcatel-Lucent appear to be the only "traditional" telephone system members.
Should the UCI Forum enjoy long-term success, its interoperability criteria and priorities will be set with light representation from voice and strong representation from video (Polycom, RADVISION, Logitech, Teliris, Vidyo) and networking (HP, Juniper, Edgewater, Brocade, Aruba) sectors. Cisco's importance in video, networking, and voice makes its absence particularly vexing. A Cisco spokesperson defended its decision not to join:
We do believe that interoperability is very important and agree with the intent of the UCIF. We seek to participate in forums that will advance existing standards, have a consensus-driven decision model, and include wide participation, including market leaders across the industry landscape, to ensure the right level of industry leadership.
Clearly something, perceived or actual, is convincing Cisco (and others?) that the UCI Forum does not represent exactly what it claims to be. Or is it simply that market share leaders have the most to lose with improved interoperability? Skype, for example, makes no claims whatsoever about interoperability, thus their absence isn’t so surprising.
But if not the UCI Forum, then what effort will address UC interoperability? Being "committed to standards" is not enough, nor are the standards organizations addressing the void. The Forum represents several companies conversing to improve UC interoperability; is there a better alternative?
There was initial concern that the Forum was controlled by its founders. Some of the founding board seats had extended terms, reportedly to ensure stability before elections. As that contributed to a "stacked" perception, the bylaws were updated putting all seats on equal terms. The fact remains full fledged competitors that have joined the UCIF are indeed investing time and money in the name of improved interoperability.
The current state of interoperability is requiring vendors, customers, and carriers to sort it out on their own. IM and presence are being addressed with one-off federations. SIP compatibility requires unique testing to verify supportable pairings. Wideband audio between systems is practically non-existent despite equipment capability on both ends, and the world of video (any-to-any between room, desk, and mobile) has very limited support between vendor solutions.
It has now been a year--a first year, but a year nonetheless. Let's take a look.
The UCI Forum is organized into three primary Work Groups; Test and Certification, Marketing, and Technical. Each group has a program manager. Alan Page of Microsoft heads the Test and Certification Group. Casey King of LifeSize heads the Technical Group. Robin Raulf-Sager of RADVISION chairs the Marketing Group. All of the initiatives of the UCI Forum fall into one or more of these groups.
The Test and Certification Work Group is responsible for defining and managing the compliance framework of the UCI Forum. One primary goal of the organization is to eliminate the burden of each vendor and customer certifying compatibility. Instead, the group seeks to create a set of compliance tests that each vendor complies with, with the verification testing performed by a third party testing lab. The working group intends to soon release an RFP to testing organizations that will test and certify vendor compliance.
As a new organization, basic communications and branding were the initial priorities of the Marketing Work Group. A new website was designed and implemented, new mailing lists created and in use, XMPP multi-user chat rooms were implemented, and a new web portal for members was created. The UCI Forum published a white paper and a feature on NoJitter: SIPv6: The Day of Reckoning. The UCIF also presented a session at Interop.
The Forum intends to convey certified UC compliance via a trademark logo similar in concept to the "CD" logo found on disc drives or the USB logo on USB devices. A logo and trademark filing is underway (as a result, the group's name changed from UCIF to UCI Forum).
More than 50 members are actively engaged in a number of efforts, conducted within the subgroups that perform most of the work of the Technical Work Group. Work currently in process includes USB Audio, H.264/SVC, IM and Presence, and Endpoint Provisioning, with additional investigation also tasked on Voice and IM/Presence.
The first UCI Forum major success came with the UCIF Webcam Task Group's recommendations being adopted by the USB-IF video working group. The recommendations propose how to extend the USB interface to support H.264 (AVC & SVC) real time encoding over USB. Now that the proposal has been adopted by a USB-IF, that UCI Forum task group is closed.
Another task group is defining H.264 AVC/SVC modes for Unified Communication. H.264 SVC (Annex G) imposes several challenges for interoperability. UCI Forum members identified this problem as one of the barriers for wide adoption of SVC, so set out to define specific combinations of modes (UC Config Modes) to be used for visual communication. So far, five different modes ranging up to full SVC have been defined. Very specific definitions are required to ensure interoperable development and conformance specifications.
Many of the problems UCI Forum is going after are not simple and will take time. The Voice Group is narrowing in on IPv6 issues, the Provisioning Group is collaborating with the SIP Forum on an expanded schema. The IM and Presence Group has surveyed the issues and completed its charter.
The all-volunteer UCI Forum has some external administrative support, but the heavy lifting comes from its vendor members typically as an additional job responsibility. Meeting frequencies vary, with some groups meeting weekly and others monthly or less. One member confided that progress in his group has slowed and communications are becoming less frequent.
Interoperability has never been glamorous, but its potential and return is significant. The UCI Forum has a chicken-and-egg problem. The UCI Forum needs vendor commitment to provide demonstrable progress, but without demonstrable progress it won't gain the commitment of all the vendors. That puts the pressure on its current members to solve the problems, build awareness, and foot the bills--while the entire industry (vendors and customers) laments interoperability.
The next UCI Forum general session is this Fall.
Dave Michels is a frequent contributor and blogs at www.pindropsoup.com
