Here we are at Day 2. Today was technically the first day of the conference. At least it was the first day of the floor show. Instead of one really focused presentation, I have a bit of expo ADHD to share.
Keynote Speakers
- Jeff Pulver, Mr. VON, if you will, was the first speaker today. His keynote focused heavily upon the need of the telecomm industry to start waking up to the notion of social network applications. He spoke a bit about Facebook, and called for those companies do more than make a PBX for Facebook. It's time to do more than voice on the internet.
- Embarq's Chairman and CEO, Dan Hesse, detailed his company's plans to converge mobile business with the landline services. This service is quite similar to what Verizon offers and is not really that innovative.
- The final speaker was Jeff Weber, the VP of Product Strategy for AT&T. His talk was quite similar to that of Dan Hesse. These older telecomm companies are going to have to wake up to the difference between telecomm and internet services. Telecomm doesn't have the growth or scale of the internet.
There is opportunity here, and the internet is no good without connectivity. Until we break free from the carrier only service model though, we won't necessarily get the innovative solutions we deserve.
Video Conferencing
Polycom was the biggest vendor to make an appearance. This was fortunate because we have been discussing the possibility of introducing HD video conferencing to the network, but until now there have been a few key items missing. I would have preferred to meet with Tandberg and Lifesize, but Radvision was present with their Scopia products that also support HD.
There hasn't been a reasonably priced HD codec that compares with the current Polycom VSX series in use at Penn State. Also, the ITS multi-point control unit is not currently capable of bridging high-definition calls. There is a new 8000 series codec from Polycom that has become more affordable for us to consider. It is still more expensive than standard definition though. Tell me what you think community, is there a need for High Definition Video Conferencing in your business?
E-911 (Enhanced 911) Solutions
- The first company that I spoke with regarding some possible emergency calling solutions was called 911 Enable. This company provides a hosted E-911 service that would if necessary be able to track VoIP end points at the MAC address level.
- The other E-911 provider at the show was HBF who was offering i-911 for VoIP. HBF also hosts the service for the customer.
Given the recent events at Virginia Tech, there are numerous university efforts ongoing to improve Penn State's emergency responses. Perhaps an E-911 solution could be one tool especially as communications become more mobile within the university.
Penn State Case Study
We have been experimenting with open-source SIP telephony solutions that will be used to create additional VoIP offerings for Penn State outside the traditional systems built by Cisco and Avaya. We have been testing a few Session Border Controllers (SBCs) made by Ingate. Ingate is a relatively small engineering company that makes devices that help protect the network from malicious traffic. Their size is not really a factor as their product is quite good.
I was lucky enough to meet the Swedish CEO of Ingate, Olle Westerberg, and the president of their American office, Steve Johnson today. We had a great conversation about the devices. I had to be up front with them that I was not the primary engineer assigned to the testing of their SIParator products. Olle explained to me how they have been wrestling internally with the method of configuration. If they want to target the SOHO and SMB markets, then they cannot rely on the typically overworked IT administrator to learn the complex rule sets that are available in these devices.
Olle was also very curious to learn why specifically we chose the Ingate products for our pilot project. There are many SBC vendors, but the Ingate was relatively inexpensive as well as both flexible and scalable for our current needs. I described some of our tentative ideas for deploying the SoftPhone project in a way that would enable each of Penn State's 23 locations to participate. Both Steve and Olle were interested in perhaps forming some level of partnership to create a case study. I hope to be involved in that case study, but if not, I am still glad for the glad for the chance to bring that opportunity to the university.
That is enough for today. When this gets posted Wednesday morning, I will be eagerly awaiting Digium CTO, Mark Spencer's keynote. You will likely hear about that tomorrow.
So if you are heading to Boston next week, have other recommendations for offline blogging tools, or if you happen to have any Game 6 or 7 World Series tickets that you just might not be using, let me know. ;-) More to follow on VON in Boston.
