I'm looking forward to participating in Robin Good's upcoming Kolabora Live along with Eugene Eric Kim. Hope you can join us this Thursday at 12:00 New York Time - 9:00 AM PST . Robin thank you for your invite and being so generous with your praise.

The Future Of Online Collaboration This Week At The Competitive Edge

The Competitive Edge is back for its second live event, bringing together two visionary scholars and researchers of online collaboration as it is effectively applied to real world situations inside and outside small and large organizations.

Stuart Henshall and Eugene Eric Kim are the expert thought-leaders that will be engaging our elite audience of industry experts, marketing VPs and industry CEOs in a live audio/video exchange this upcoming Thursday at 12 noon NY time.

The Future Of Online Collaboration This Week At The Competitive Edge - Online Collaboration and Web Conferencing Breaking News - Kolabora.com

For those of you that don't know Robin and have an interest in knowledge innovation, collaboration and conferencing tools subscribe to his latest news feeds. You will find a wealth of useful postings and references there. He's also developing with Kolabora an online network of expert leaders and thinkers across the collaboration space.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Skype is working with two carriers to enable dialing into the PSTN. It will be interesting to see the rate card when released.

The basic Skype service will remain free for Internet phone calls.

Zennstrom revealed agreements with two telecommunications carriers that by summer will allow Skype calls to be made to standard phones anywhere in the United States.....Zennstrom would not name his telecommunications partners in advance of an official announcement. Mercury News | 05/19/2004 |

a paid version called Skype Plus that will collect voice mail and allow people to call it from regular telephones.

That will be accompanied by another paid version, called SkypeOut, that will allow Skype computers to call regular phones and will be compatible with regular cordless and headset telephones. MLive.com

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

From the notes at VON Canada a debate I too would like to see.

I would personally like to see a public debate on SIP versus Skype with myself and Niklas on the panel and put the theories in front of the people. If nothing else it might educate a few people. SIPthat.com

via Boris Mann through Feedster.

...we've already travelled down the road of incompatible networks in the IM world, why would we want to do the same thing with Skype? B. Mann

A nice summary of day one learnings by Buzzcrash.

1. Convergence is back. And this time it's not going away. Thanks to penetration of broadband internet, convergence of voice, data, e-mail, text messaging, video, etc. on all kinds of IP devices (from computers to 'soft-phones') is taking off. Consumers are benefitting from more, bundled services and lower prices.
2. As a result, traditional 'telco' provider market is becoming almost unrecognizeable. Obvious new providers/competitors are cable companies with a broad range of IP services including voice, and new VoIP entrants like US-based Vonage.
3. Canadian telcos understand the game is changing and have done a better job than their US counterparts staking their claims. However, they're terrifed that regulators won't recognize the game change and will subject Telcos to regulation that will tip the playing field in favour of the cable companies and new entrants.
4. Government for their part, say they recognize the game has changed, want to encourage innovation, and recognize that the playing field must be level. However the CRTC has sent some signals that have the Telcos unnerved.
5. Analysts predicting that 'bundling will become the defacto pricing model', because voice telephony now clearly a commodity. Also, that innnovation will be the key to avoiding commoditization which isn't really a break through idea.
6. Everyone anticipating new business models arising arising from shift to IP based communications but not really obvious yet what those will be.
7. VC's cautioning not to mistake the technology for the opportunity and reinforcing desire for innovation and paradigm shifting business models. Some things never change.
voip at von canada (buzzcrash.blog-city.com)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 08:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I was doing a little Skyping today trying to get a line on the impending roll-out of the PSTN interconnect which for all I know was announced at VON Canada today.

Whenever Skype launches their PSTN interconnect which I assume will use a prepaid card format and proprietary interconnect agreement (for they have no advantage going to SIP directly) somethings will happen...

Five Million Softphones will be launched. Has anyone else ever achieved that sort of number? They are claiming 5 million registered users now. If their interconnect deal is sweet they will provide some cents worth of free calling with each upgrade. Then Skype will infect many more households. I'm calling you on Skype on my dime.... cost us nothing if you start Skyping....

Five Million people get their first PC softphones (most of these have never seen one before, or completely given up on earlier examples). At least 10% will buy a $10 prepaid card (say 500 minutes anywhere on earth) even if just for goodwill and support for Skype. If the ratio is right and they can protect multiple identities through the creditcard number then a $.50 free offer will come with every PSTN softphone upgrade. Sweeter would be options to incent Skypers to sign up new connections. PayPal did this at launch.

The SkypeSoftphone will likely look nothing like the other softphones out there. It's name driven. Simply key the number in and dial. Even if they add an addtional dialer tab, the message "click on the person" to dial will be clear.... never enter a number again.

"Skype isn't about making cheaper phone calls it's about communicating better. It's much more convenient, has superior voice quality, instant messaging and conference calling." Niklas Zennstrom Globetechnology

An that is potentially where this strategy has the biggest problem. Interconnects will result in lower sound quality. The question thus remains will Skype's sound quality remain distinctive enough in an interconnected world?

Finally the guess is that you will be able to dial out or bridge a non Skyper into a conference call however this interconnect won't allow inbound calling at this time. Neither will you have any presence information for these out of network callers. That will only come later if / when integrated with SIP.

Time will tell if I am right.

On the competitive front Italk2U was relaunched in beta --- lousy sound quality does it get through all firewalls now. Don't bother. Then today I saw Peerio which wasn't downloadable when I visited. See Ted Sheldon's comments re the open source aspects.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (5)

This little clip out of this weeks Economist highlights the changing nature of conferencing. My feeling is the figures are low, tracing to corporate behaviors and traditional market definitions. The number of new products emerging in this space suggest many more see opportunities.

Then the number of informal and impromptu conferences I'm now finding myself in has increased dramatically and that traces almost entirely to free services (like Skype) that make it easier than the paid services to run small sessions of 3 to 4 people even on a whim.

Growing fastest is web conferencing, which usually combines a phone-based audio conference with a visual display (such as a slide presentation or software demonstration) delivered via a web browser. It grew by 40% last year, and hybrid web-audio conferences are now starting to displace audio-only conference calls. There is no need for fancy equipment, since most people already have a phone and a PC on their desks.

Economist.com | Virtual meetings

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 09:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jeff Pulver picks up on a theme that I'm now investing a lot of time in. I've bolded his statement where it counts and resonates from my perspective.

The time has come for the IP Communications Industry to start to move beyond the HYPE of VoIP and start to deliver some of the services which are only possible because of the advent of IP based communications. Some of these services start to become very visible only when we start to blur the line between instant messaging, presence, and voice communication. Throw in things like blogging, social networking and gaming and things just start to get interesting. (my bold)

The advent of a technology like SIP means that for the first time in the 127 year history of telephony, the same protocol can be used on an end-to-end basis between customers on two ends of a telephone call. This represents a total radical change in the engineering of communication networks and ways, which value added services, can be and will be introduced in the near future.
I look forward to reading about the next wave of companies, which truly will help redefine the future of the communications industry. My hope is that such services start to arrive in 2004. The Jeff Pulver Blog

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent a few hours at Networld Interop in Las Vegas over the last couple of days. I'm only going to report on two items after noting that this show will be at a smaller venue next year. I was also taking a look for future "stand" reference points and filled a couple of pages with what was good and bad. I saw too many "cloud diagrams" they all look the same, found few had a short elevator pitch and the presentations for the most part required free t-shirts to keep people interested.

As I said two things caught my interest. First for collaborative sharing Advanced Reality and second for some big company thinking Siemens Openscape product provides at least a reference for where "some" industry thinking is.

Brian Hoogendam President of Advanced Reality introduced me to their products. So far demo's are available for Excel and Powerpoint although according to Brian the same sharing technology can be applied to other applications using a simple plug-in creation formula. On Excel and Powerpoint it was pretty neat . I'm not quite sure why there were at this show. This screen sharing app enabled multiple parties to update concurrently.

The blurb from their website:

Presence-AR is the first real-time, peer-to-peer system and enablement platform for adding synchronous collaboration capabilities to existing and new software applications. Presence-AR uses a patent-pending data-centric architecture to provide a full range of collaborative features, and to eliminate the need to modify applications. Presence-AR is the only collaboration platform with support for fail-over and persistence that allows a session to continue uninterrupted when a host signs-off, or is inadvertently disconnected. This enables participants to join and leave a session at will, and supports both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. By providing collaboration on the data layer, Presence-AR:

Allows users to collaborate on the same data using different applications

Dynamically adapts views of the same data for the capabilities of any access device including PCs, handhelds, and mobile phones

Enables collaboration across firewalls, LANs, and dial-up connections

Provides secure collaboration through support of encryption, authentication, and access control systems

Advanced Reality - Products and Solutions

Separately take a look at Siemens OpenScape. I gather it is being used within Siemens currently. It does have a tie-in to WebEx to aid and facilitate conferences and similarly will connect to MS Messenger.

Siemens describes OpenScape as a multimodal communications application that provides presence-aware, real-time communications to quickly and easily synchronize people and information to facilitate action.

So what was notable? Looking at the laptop screens... It had a dialer, a more detailed "my contacts" (presence re phone, messaging and e-mail) and a list of conferences. Some of the conferences were effectively persistent. In many ways the interface for Convoc's Meeting ASAP provides similar details although more efficiently. On the Siemen's page link above scrolling down does provide a few white papers. They may provide some resouces and facts for the payback that can be achieved from "presence".

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Do you hate dialing with your cellphone internationally? Tends to cost a lot. Here's just another example of how personal VoIP exchanges will change the way we connect and get charged. This is another illustration of the power that is coming to consumers as we move to morphed personal IP PBX solutions.

Technology from i2 Telecom will let cell users dial their home phones and connect to a voice-over-IP network, then dial anywhere in the world for no extra charge--offering big savings on overseas calls. InformationWeek > Cell Phones and VOIP

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

If you are a startup with a little money in the bank and burning a hole in development costs for interconnects, porting to OSX, Palm and Symbian platforms you would probably be in a hurry to figure out how to generate more revenue.

Selling prepaid calling plans might just be the thing. Having already adapted to making international calls for free, connecting and convincing other friends and family to Skype may just get a boost from those that use it. "I'm calling you via Skype" costing me a couple of cents.... of course if you get it this call would be free. Apart from that... A $10 calling card might just be the thing. How many could Skype sell? Buy a prepaid card and support Skype. Now that looks like applying the Dell financial model to telcoms. Collect the cash first, then provide the service. It's worked before.

Now my questions. Will Skype do this with one carrier providing the interconnect or adopt SIP? My guess is start with one carrier and then provide SIP connectivity later. SIP connectivity will tie to the enterprise products.

Mr Zennstrom said the paid service would allow access to standard telephony.

"We allow people to make free phone calls because we don't have the same costs as the phone companies," he said.

"We will make money by upselling value-added services. Shortly, we will allow people to make landline calls.

"We have a small percentage of users who will subscribe."

Mr Zennstrom said he was not keen to take on advertising.

"We had lots of advertising with KaZaA, and one of the things we decided with Skype was to do the opposite," he said.

"One of the reasons Skype has grown is because people like the product, and if we have advertising maybe people won't like the product as much."

a title="Australian IT - KaZaA chiefs tackle VoIP (Simon Hayes, MAY 11, 2004)" href="http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,9524843%5E15322%5E%5Enbv%5E15306,00.html">Australian IT - KaZaA chiefs tackle VoIP (Simon Hayes, MAY 11, 2004)

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Rafe Needleman posts a guide to Internet Phone services.

INTERNET PHONE SERVICES
Consumers and businesses alike will come to appreciate the low monthly rates, useful features, and clear voice quality of an Internet phone service. We reviewed five such services and found one clear winner.
Internet phones: CNET Editors' guide to VoIP - CNET reviews

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I received this from Ed Prentice. He's one of the guys that really gets it. I just wonder if these guys are going to print my "Skype Business Plans" post on the enterprise next. I've added a few comments to their note for I think they have the shades down.

From the Network World Newsletter. Today's focus: Who's afraid of the Big Bad Skype?

By Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick

The Skype Web site has a quote from the Feb. 16 issue of Fortune Magazine, where FCC Chairman Michael Powell says, "I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype. When the inventors of KaZaA are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it's free - it's over. The world will change now inevitably."

We're not sure we'll go quite that far, but we do see some issues being raised that can no longer be avoided in several circles. In particular, corporate networks, service providers, and PBX manufacturers will all have to deal with the issue of peer-to-peer applications sooner or later. Let's take them in inverse order.

From the perspective of the PBX manufacturers, what we see here
is a softphone application that will perform a few of the functions of the IP PBX. The on-screen app does a bit of presence management, and you certainly have the ability to have a conversation. This bolsters our argument that the IP PBX has to be viewed as a lot more than just cheap telephony, and the integration of applications into the IP PBX infrastructure is key to the adoption of these devices.

Is this a centralized view or a view of the personal IP PBX on my desktop? The personal IP PBX may require some backup and there are certain advantages to knowledge sharing and networking that can be accelerated by some centralization. Still how well are the traditional PBX suppliers positioned to help with this transition? The IP PBX of tomorrow may not cost very much. The value will be in the services. Particularly, presence, collaboration, real-time adaptation. Perhaps IBM or Microsoft have some advantages in this area?

We're also not sure there's a great threat to the incumbent service providers. Long-distance revenue from individuals who have not shopped aggressively are threatened the most. For instance, if residential users are already paying around three cents per minute for long distance, then moving to "free" long distance isn't a great incentive unless you're on the phone for hours at a time. The incentive is even less for large corporate users, where the domestic long distance rate is starting to creep under a penny a minute. Also, in it's current PC-client format, you're not likely to want to be tied to your PC as opposed to being able to roam around the house with a traditional phone. Then there are the issues like E-911 that clearly point to having at least one "real" phone around.
Think we are missing the point here. This is not cost driven. It is presence and mobility that is creating a tomorrow phone that is WiFi enabled Smart PDA Cell Phone, that may or maynot require your PC to be on. This roaming with the home phone metaphor is a real barrier to considering how it will be. Finally the nail in the coffin is sound quality. Each new friend I turn on to Skype makes the same comment the sound quality potential is way beyond Skype's current delivery.

The biggest threat (and opportunity) that we see is in the control of corporate networks where Skype, as yet another peer-to-peer application, can have a major impact. That's the subject of our next newsletter.

Yep in the Enterprise all these buddy lists, presence capabilities, impromptu conferencing, and collaboration tools can really have an impact. In the corporate environment seeing your buddies buddies will be commonplace. Still Skype's model suggests that Enterprise Skype will aggregate the local P2P activity and manage log-ins for the group. Thus corporate P2P clouds will use the efficiency of all the dispersed computing power and yet retain control of the cloud and provide the supernode functionality providing an additional level of security. Is this still a good guess? Will it help with WiFi security when the PDA becomes the corporate campus phone? Guess I can read next weeks edition.

Posted by Stuart Henshall at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)