No Jitter Weblog

Skills-based Dialing

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:25:20 -0500

The term skills-based routing entered the contact center lexicon some 10 years ago. In June, as part of its announcement of release 3.0 of Interaction Dialer, Interactive Intelligence coined a new term, skills-based dialing. Understanding what the term means and if the capability was unique to Interactive Intelligence required discussions with both Interactive Intelligence and some key competitors.

Too Much Heat and Not Enough �Grid� Power

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:24:37 -0500

A study from the Uptime Institute reveals that most data centers would max out electrical capacity and cooling capabilities during the next 12-60 months. According to the Uptime Institute, 1U server space costs $1,600 per year in facilities costs, and $700 of that cost is just for electricity.

Digium Update

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:34:23 -0500

Fred Knight and I had the opportunity to travel down to Huntsville, AL, last week to visit with the folks at Digium, the company founded by Mark Spencer, creator of the Asterisk open source PBX. What we found was a company that appears to be making the familiar tech industry passage from a young startup focused on breaking new ground, to VC-funded company on the IPO track, focused on execution and building its market.

Cool App: The Service Guy

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:11:05 -0500

Via Abner Germanow of IDC, here's a cool application that shows something of the potential of Asterisk, Unified Communications and social computing. The application is called The Service Guy, and it lets people call a single referral number and get connected to services they need right away.

A Report of UC Beef from a UC SI

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:52:33 -0500

Yesterday, Tim Bakke, Microsoft UC Practice Manager at Avtex, sent some interesting comments on the continuing dialogue over the adoption of UC, beginning with Fred Knight�s �Where�s the Beef� and continuing to yesterday�s �The UC Debate: Forrester Weighs In.�

Tim had some great observations:

Quality of Service (QoS) Design for Telepresence

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 08:39:36 -0500

Telepresence is an interactive real-time application, which means it is delay sensitive, loss sensitive and jitter sensitive. This sounds familiar: it is just like VoIP, with the one difference being that it has huge bandwidth requirements. VoIP is treated as the highest priority application in the QoS hierarchy, but it uses relatively small amounts of bandwidth. How do we deal with an application that requires very high priority and might be consuming half or more of the bandwidth on a link?

The UC Debate: Forrester Weighs In

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:00:48 -0500

There's been quite a bit of back-and-forth here (and here and here and here) about customer attitudes regarding Unified Communications. The root for all of this discussion was a Forrester Research study. Henry Dewing, Principal Analyst at Forrester, wanted to weigh in on the way our bloggers have looked at his company's study, and to offer his perspective. Here's what he had to say:

VoIP: VPLS vs. MPLS

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:54:54 -0500

I always wanted to create a headline without words. This is my chance. You have heard of Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS), but Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) may be new to you. MPLS has been available for a few years. VPLS was announced by Verizon in March 2007. AT&T and Qwest are also beginning to offer VPLS, which is a new service for both the service provider and enterprise, so the experience level is low. It is now possible to consider either or both of these services for VoIP calls among sites.

When Will the Cellular Carriers Support Open Mobile Devices?

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:39:10 -0500

There has been a lot of talk of late regarding developments in mobile operating systems. The most recent event was Nokia�s announcement that they will acquire the remaining stake in the Symbian mobile operating system and create the open source Symbian Foundation. That will put Symbian, the most widely deployed mobile O/S, in the open camp along with Google's developing Android and Linux Mobile (LiMo). The former is supported by the Open Handset Alliance and the latter by the LiMo Foundation.

Some Light on the UC Confusion Debate

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:53:32 -0500

So, as Eric Krapf noted yesterday with, �What�s Really Hot in UC�, we have a debate going on whether customers are confused or not about Unified Communications.

The UC Land Grab is About to Begin

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:40:51 -0500

The evolving Unified Communications industry is reshaping the communications marketplace. The changes create challenges for some vendors and opportunities for others. The legacy vendors are scrambling to revise their business models, and all of the major vendors, both legacy and emerging, are looking at how to flesh out their UC product portfolios.

More Cisco, Avaya, Nortel Vulnerabilities Named

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:22:58 -0500

VOIPShield has released a new raft of vulnerabilities that it found in IP telephony systems from Cisco, Avaya and Nortel (announcement here; vulnerability details here). Unlike its previous such announcement, VOIPShield has this time coordinated the release with the affected vendors, avoiding the criticism it faced the last time, when VOIPShield went public with the vulnerabilities before the affected vendors could address all of them.

New Feature: Mobile Unified Communications

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:14:23 -0500

We've got a new feature in the right-hand column by Bob Emmerson, our Europe-based correspondent, on Mobile UC. Bob's Euro-centric perspective is useful when it comes to this issue, because, as he notes, European 3G celllular networks are more broadly deployed than their U.S. counterparts, and so we therefore have a little better idea of how they can support Unified Communications.

Hospitality Via Wired Phones

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:53:26 -0500

One area where IP telephony has the potential to make a clear impact is in the hospitality industry; most vendors have a solution or set of solutions for this market. One example is Avaya�s new SIP iPhones from Teledex, which let hotel guests experience visuals, which hoteliers should appreciate. Adding the visual to the phone isn�t just cool, but it provides interlinks to the hotel�s services, moving hotels beyond selling rooms at rack rates, beyond just staying competitive, and to potentially greater profitability by adding all the trimmings offered by the hotel and surrounding area of interest to their guests.

What's Really Hot in UC

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:42:14 -0500

Marty Parker and Fred Knight have had an interesting back-and-forth on the issue of whether users are confused about the value of Unified Communications, whether they're deploying UC, and generally how big a deal UC is *today*. Marty is bullish; Fred more skeptical.