Monday, April 03, 2006
Turn-key solution vs. flexibility
The last month I have spent scanning the market for SIP-application server providers. The trend seems to be either, no flexibility but full turn-key solutions with broad spectra of available services or, full flexibility but fewer full feathered services.
This is not an easy choice to make, as a provider there is great need to meet market demands with rapid development of differentiating services. Few providers have understood this.
For example Netcentrex, Broadsoft and Ericsson have a large number of services both for residential and enterprise markets but non of them give customers enough flexibility to let the operator change or create services themselves. Teligent, Bea and Hotsip offer the opposite, there is great flexibility to let the operator develop server side services without being depending on the vendor.
Competition on VoIP services are getting more fierce, what is there to compete with when all operators are lowering the prices?... value added services. Markets are changing rapidly, no one knows what services that are going to become a bit hit and what are going to be a total failure. Therefore there is a need to be able to develop services with a short time to market, try the service and if it fails the investment has not been enormous. Hopefully vendors will come to realize this.
This is not an easy choice to make, as a provider there is great need to meet market demands with rapid development of differentiating services. Few providers have understood this.
For example Netcentrex, Broadsoft and Ericsson have a large number of services both for residential and enterprise markets but non of them give customers enough flexibility to let the operator change or create services themselves. Teligent, Bea and Hotsip offer the opposite, there is great flexibility to let the operator develop server side services without being depending on the vendor.
Competition on VoIP services are getting more fierce, what is there to compete with when all operators are lowering the prices?... value added services. Markets are changing rapidly, no one knows what services that are going to become a bit hit and what are going to be a total failure. Therefore there is a need to be able to develop services with a short time to market, try the service and if it fails the investment has not been enormous. Hopefully vendors will come to realize this.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
How are you feeling?
Laying in my bed this week with a sore throat and fewer has got me thinking that systems are much like humans, when something go wrong or when it is not behaving as it should, you need ways to determine the cause of the problem. With us humans we go to the doc, he will start with a general exam, checking for a fewer, taking a blood test, checking for other symptoms. So to make a judgement of how badly sick we actually are.
IP-Telephony systems are much like us humans, very complex, with many features being executed in the ATA, with a complex core system divided in to many peaces such as registrar, proxies and application server and also an interconnect to the PSTN, it is very hard to know what parts of the system that is ill or if all parts of the service are functioning as they should.
When customers call in complaining about that the telephony is not working, it is hard for the support to take a "quick blood test" to get a first view of how sick the service is? Have all parts of the architecture been healthy at the exact same point that the customer was complaining about, did the modem flap? Restarted? Was the ATA registered? Was the call authorized by the proxy? Was the databases OK? Was the interconnect OK? And this is just the simple service, with a more complex service it becomes more and more difficult to actually set a diagnose.
This is something that has too be worked on by vendors of ATA, modems, proxy servers, gateways and so on, but not least by the operator to demand this functionality from the systems involved. With the human body it is hard to add more features... But with a system we can of course put as many health features as we wish. New standards are needed, how do we send health statistics, what information is sent are questions we need to answer.
I see even more complex services coming and for them to become successful and appreciated as a stable and reliably source of communication we need to be able to help the customer when they are experiencing problems and we need to help them immediately. Not solve the problem in a few months.
IP-Telephony systems are much like us humans, very complex, with many features being executed in the ATA, with a complex core system divided in to many peaces such as registrar, proxies and application server and also an interconnect to the PSTN, it is very hard to know what parts of the system that is ill or if all parts of the service are functioning as they should.
When customers call in complaining about that the telephony is not working, it is hard for the support to take a "quick blood test" to get a first view of how sick the service is? Have all parts of the architecture been healthy at the exact same point that the customer was complaining about, did the modem flap? Restarted? Was the ATA registered? Was the call authorized by the proxy? Was the databases OK? Was the interconnect OK? And this is just the simple service, with a more complex service it becomes more and more difficult to actually set a diagnose.
This is something that has too be worked on by vendors of ATA, modems, proxy servers, gateways and so on, but not least by the operator to demand this functionality from the systems involved. With the human body it is hard to add more features... But with a system we can of course put as many health features as we wish. New standards are needed, how do we send health statistics, what information is sent are questions we need to answer.
I see even more complex services coming and for them to become successful and appreciated as a stable and reliably source of communication we need to be able to help the customer when they are experiencing problems and we need to help them immediately. Not solve the problem in a few months.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Presence used for grieving
Community sites have become huge among teens, in Sweden the most popular site is Lunarstorm, people often have their own nook where they keep a diary, send and receive messages from friends and share their pictures and files with their friends.
The Tsunami in Thailand last Christmas took the life of over 500 Swedes, many of them where young people. After the disaster the community sites have become a place for friends to show their grief of the lost one, the classmates and friends write down their feelings in a belief that their beloved friend will get the messages and the sorrow feels easier to bear.
So there seems to be a genuine need for people to be able to send a last message to a diseased friend. This also is something one should think about when designing new applications. SIP Presence allows for people to see each others online status. Today only physical places a person can be are defined such as: train, office, car, school is defined, but maybe also this should be expanded to cover place such as: in heaven and left the earth. This seems like a really special case but it could be very helpful for people in their grieving to be able to send a last message goodbye.
The Tsunami in Thailand last Christmas took the life of over 500 Swedes, many of them where young people. After the disaster the community sites have become a place for friends to show their grief of the lost one, the classmates and friends write down their feelings in a belief that their beloved friend will get the messages and the sorrow feels easier to bear.
So there seems to be a genuine need for people to be able to send a last message to a diseased friend. This also is something one should think about when designing new applications. SIP Presence allows for people to see each others online status. Today only physical places a person can be are defined such as: train, office, car, school is defined, but maybe also this should be expanded to cover place such as: in heaven and left the earth. This seems like a really special case but it could be very helpful for people in their grieving to be able to send a last message goodbye.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Is DSL-forum taking the lead on sip-device specifications?
SIP-forum SIP phone group was created earlier this year to create recommendations for SIP-phone requirements, auto configuration, service interoperability and other issues for SIP phones. But has the SIP-phone group been created too late? Already there are many different implementations for remote configuration, remote management, statistics, logging and with different packaging when it comes to services. IADs make things more complex since DSL, Voip, and TV set-top box could be integrated in the same device. The DSL-forum has noticed this and started working on a few documents regarding SIP devices:
TR-069 CPE WAN management protocol https://webmail.bredband.com/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.dslforum.org/aboutdsl/Technical_Reports/TR-069.pdf
WT-111 (in development; not in public domain) Applying TR-069 to Remote Management of Home Networking Devices
TR-104 Provisioning Parameters for VoIP CPE http://www.dslforum.org/techwork/tr/TR-104.pdf
WT-122: Base Requirements for a Consumer Oriented ATA (an older version is in the public domain identified below)http://ftp.tiaonline.org/tr-41/tr41.1.1/Public/2005-05-Portland/TR41.1.1-05-05-015-DSLForum-WT-122v1-ATA-Document.pdf
Does the SIP-forum really want the DSL-forum to set the rules of the game? If not they better start working or vendors will start implementing after the recommendations that are available.
Monday, October 03, 2005
"My internet is not working"
A call to technical support.
"My cable goes through a doorway, sometimes I have to push really hard to close the door, but it has been working for a long time. My little son drives around with his tricycle indoor but the cable is so flat that it is not a problem. My dog chews on the cable, I have tried to make him stop be he doesn't. The problem started when I nailed the cable to the wall, but I was really careful, so you can't say that this was the cause.... "
(it is really authentic)
"My cable goes through a doorway, sometimes I have to push really hard to close the door, but it has been working for a long time. My little son drives around with his tricycle indoor but the cable is so flat that it is not a problem. My dog chews on the cable, I have tried to make him stop be he doesn't. The problem started when I nailed the cable to the wall, but I was really careful, so you can't say that this was the cause.... "
(it is really authentic)
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Test of SunComm WiFi SIP phone
A package came to the office with this SIP WiFi phone. This seemed interesting. After struggling a bit to configure it I managed to get it to work. It found that it was amazingly difficult to enter the correct information such as user names, proxy server and passwords via the GUI on the phone, even erasing characters was really difficult, I had to use the on/off button to erase, who came up with that idea?
The phone configuration website can be accessed via a computer on the same router as the phone is connected to. When I discovered that, configuring the device became much more straightforward.
SunComm Wifi SIP phone
Some features on the phone: phonebook, NAT traversal with STUN, Wireless mode is 802_11_b, WEP 128 bits cryptation, Voice Codecs G.711a, G.711u, G.729 and web interfaces for administrator and users.
So my opinion after using the phone a bit is that it is a nice WiFi phone, the stand-by time for the battery is far to low, I will last for a day before you have to charge it again, the phone does not come with a charging station so it is easy to forget to charge it. The sound quality is pretty good, and it is possible to set jitter buffers and voice frames per packet.
The phone configuration website can be accessed via a computer on the same router as the phone is connected to. When I discovered that, configuring the device became much more straightforward.
SunComm Wifi SIP phone
Some features on the phone: phonebook, NAT traversal with STUN, Wireless mode is 802_11_b, WEP 128 bits cryptation, Voice Codecs G.711a, G.711u, G.729 and web interfaces for administrator and users.
So my opinion after using the phone a bit is that it is a nice WiFi phone, the stand-by time for the battery is far to low, I will last for a day before you have to charge it again, the phone does not come with a charging station so it is easy to forget to charge it. The sound quality is pretty good, and it is possible to set jitter buffers and voice frames per packet.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
SIP Forum Phone Task Group
I have seen that SIP Forum has started a SIP phone task group. The group will "produce one or more SIP Forum recommendations that define a common set of implementation rules for SIP phone makers. " quote from the announcement of the task group.
I have great hopes that this will lead to the possibility to let customers have a greater choice of the SIP products they can use in their homes and at work. I hope it will also lead to more user friendly products that are easy to configure and extendable with new features. All this leading to happier customers and less calls to customer support.
I have great hopes that this will lead to the possibility to let customers have a greater choice of the SIP products they can use in their homes and at work. I hope it will also lead to more user friendly products that are easy to configure and extendable with new features. All this leading to happier customers and less calls to customer support.
