John Chambers Keynote at Oracle OpenWorld

Had the opportunity today to see and hear John Chambers at Oracle OpenWorld (recording and presentation available here - may need to scroll down a bit). It was great to hear him talk about Unified Communications / Telepresence and how that will impact business users and consumers.

This is the first time I had the opportunity to hear John Chambers live and I must say that he is a phenomenal speaker, engages his audience very very well and very inspiring. Even though he did raise a bunch of questions around how communications would change with Telepresence, Unified Communications...what I found fascinating was his concept around Enteprise 2.0 - which is Web 2.0 coming into the business world. This is simply great - as it goes beyond blurring functional department boundaries in enterprises to actually blurring the lines between a consumer and business user. This can have a great impact on adoption of tools, especially communication / collaboration tools, and also how these products are marketed and sold.

I am tempted to believe that consumer adoption of Web 2.0 collaboration/communication tools will fuel enterprise adoption as well...as I see the analogy of this in the IM world and how Enterprise IM never took off and got to the level of usage of business users using consumer IM products in their business.

Even though the presentation and demonstrations around the use of Telepresence, etc. in consumer markets was compelling - the skeptic in me wonders....if the consumer products reach a level of quality and reliability that is "good enough", will the costly Telepresence and UC systems see the fate similar to video conferencing systems, i.e. lie around in corners of large enterprises with no real usage?

Sony Mylo - concept seems to be cool

Has anyone tried the Sony Mylo? A phone that is not a phone...as it connects to the IP-network. The concept is pretty cool. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/technology/19pogue.html?ref=technology

Are we seeing the signs already....that only the Internet and IP-Networks will survive.

PC Magazine review of Video Chat tools

Recently, someone forward this article on PC Magazine on real-world testing of the various video chat tools. I am amazed by the quality of testing (or lack there of) done by this publisher. This was such a marketing baloney - that it was not even funny! It further bolsters my belief that these casual video chat tools have yet to evolve to deliver to the real-time video experience.

I tried their best rated tool - SightSpeed...and in my humble opinion it SUCKED!! While reading through the PCMag article the following caught my attention: "SightSpeed worked pretty well, though we saw several "network congestion" errors, and dropped frames were fairly common, too. That's Comcast's service, however, not SightSpeed. " Now...now....since when does a reviewer make excuses for the tool and point the finger to someone else for not being able to deliver a high quality experience. Shouldn't SightSpeed be able to adapt to the changing network conditions? It is always easy to blame the ISP or Internet in general for providing a degraded quality of experience.

This theme seemed to follow everywhere in the review. For Skype it mentions "the quality of the video wasn't ideal, and there was some lag time in the transmission of the video signal, but this is to be expected when calling overseas, where broadband quality and Internet connections can be spotty."

I expect better from reviewers!

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?