Phone is the best.

Among all the current collaboration services available for us to get things done, phone is still the best for the world at large. Phone offers the best service due to:

1. Simple, standard user interface for ALL the end-points.
2. Well understood addressing for every end-point. (10 digit in North America)
3. Works all the time, i.e. meets the customer expectations.

The worlds largest businesses (AT&T, Verizon, ....BT, Telefonica, FT, Deutsche Telecom, KPN...VSNL,...NTT,...China Telecom...) are built by offering the phone service. Just in North America, the current total revenues for the carriers is in excess of $250B/- for calendar year 2006. The telecommunications giants have built their SS7 networks with the SLA's required and inter-operate. The user interface to using the telephone system has not changed, but the underlying technology, platform, service have all matured over several decades. In addition several creative marketing plans to sell the service minutes came and went.

However, in the last two decades we have seen the advent of 3 major innovations that are disrupting the communications business world-wide.

1. Computer as the end-point for collaboration.
2. IP Networks as the transport for data, voice and video.
3. Internet, the first open network for the planet.

In the next article, I will cover the array of collaboration technologies invented with the computer as end-point.

Opensource Web Conferencing...hmmmm....

Recently came across dimdim.com an OpenSource Web Conferencing product. The skeptic in me makes me question whether this really makes sense. I understand there's significant benefit around TCO for Opensource products...but I question if that really makes sense for Web conferencing.

As, an Opensource expert we met with the other day said...there are only 2 proven models with opensource:
(a) A popular commodity product (like operating system, database, app server) where the enterprises are looking to reduce TCO. Business model is based on providing high-touch support.
(b) Proliferate a billion copies and somehow hope that a % of them would want a supportable copy.

Somehow for Web conferencing the above theories do not seem to hold true:
1) The only model that has been successful with Web Conf. is an on-demand service model. So, I am skeptical how well an OpenSource product will be adopted.
2) Web conf. - even after 10 years - is a departmental solution with IT typically not getting involved in the purchase decision. Hence, I am skeptical if IT will really install and play around with an Opensource solution to see if it will work.

I guess time will tell what happens with this.

Also, wondering if there's really an opensource model for on-demand service...hmmmm.....

Real Time Communication Reality Check!

Real-time communication should be all about enabling people to communicate naturally both in the work environment and at home. However, the world of RTC as we know today has numerous roadblocks requiring consumers to significantly adjust their communication style based on which technology they are using, which device they are using, and who they are communicating with - especially if you need to communicate with someone outside your firewall.

The RTC technologies as we know it today is definitely not enabling people to communicate naturally. Why is that? Why are technology providers not focusing on providing a high quality of user experience? Why is this not embedded as a part of everyone's daily activities? Why does one have to use phrases like - "can you hear me now", "can you see me now", "can you see the next slide now"?

Broadband is pervasive nowadays. Capturing devices, like Webcams and cell phones, are now pervasive. Then why are the RTC technologies still far from providing a rich, natural communication experience?