GOC

The fast-moving evolution of communications technologies, coupled with a competitive marketplace and the move toward on-demand (think Web-based, software-as-service) and wireless offerings presents service providers with an uphill battle to success. The flip side is that competitive and changing technologies breeds innovation, which ultimately is good for consumers and professionals.

 

That’s the stance of James Rafferty (News - Alert), director of gateway product management at Dialogic, who thinks that online multimedia communications tools, such as social networks, are increasingly appealing to businesspeople rather than just consumers.

 

I caught up with Rafferty to get his perspective on how the iPhone (News - Alert), open source, unified communication and Web 2.0 are affecting developers of communications solutions. He also touched on the evolution of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), how it relates to SIP,  and how these technologies are influencing the service provider community.

 

Rafferty will be continuing the discussion about the IMS architecture next month at Communications Developer Conference (co-located with INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO West 2008), during his “IMS & ATCA” session on September 16. As its title suggests, the session will focus on how ATCA can play a significant role in deploying IMS solutions. He’s also presenting a session titled “Signaling: SIP, SS7 & Integrating your Network with the Legacy Infrastructure” on September 18.

 

JR: We will continue to work with our partners to help drive innovation in areas like video and communications on the edge of the network.  

 

JR: The implementation of 3G in the iPhone is an important endorsement that will drive sales of additional 3G services in many countries and help to drive the implementation of more wireless infrastructure of various types, including competitive technologies such as WiMAX.

   

JR: It has not had much impact on media gateways to date. There are media servers based on open source, but they tend not to scale in the same manner as commercial offerings targeted toward service providers.  

 

JR: It will drive competition in the evolution of mobile phones and computing devices. It will be interesting to see if it also pushes mobile carriers toward a more open model for connecting and running applications on their network.  

 

JR: It is already having an impact in terms of raising the bar for the user interface and applications available on a mobile phone and computing device.  

JR: The consumer should win, by having more choices available for a mobile communications and computing platform. The iPhone has already raised the bar for a graphical user interface (GUI) on a mobile phone and the user community has been demanding more applications, forcing changes on the vendor side toward a more open application environment.  

 

JR: I view UC as a re-branding of various trends which were already well underway. The biggest change is that the endorsement of bigger players like Cisco and Microsoft (News - Alert) provides further validation for this market direction and results in a “safer” decision for buyers.  

 

JR: On the whole, I’d say yes. They are big advocates for SIP and will help to drive more interoperability among vendors that develop SIP devices, who will to claim compliance with the Microsoft OCS profile of SIP.  

 

JR: The increasing availability of broadband, both wireless and wireline, will cause more users to make always-on access part of their lives. In turn, this will help communications development, as demands increase for applications and services that meet the needs of both business users and consumers. These include more subtle needs like presence that is customizable based on time of day and ways to partition between work and personal lives.  

 

JR: Web 2.0 tools such as blogging, wikis and social networks are having an ever increasing impact on the way that people in our industry communicate. To date, most of this communication has been text based, but sites like YouTube are driving higher demand for user generated video and audio content, which is likely to move beyond consumer uses to business uses as well. The increased use of multimedia is changing the way we (the business people and consumers) use the Internet and I expect this evolution to continue accelerating.  

 

JR: I am talking about the evolution of IMS as a reference architecture that will influence buying decisions in the service provider community. IMS will reinforce the move toward the use of open protocols, notably SIP, and also toward adoption of form factors such as ATCA and rack mounted servers that are well suited to a standards-based communications architecture. The presentation should be informative for all and help service providers and vendors gain greater awareness of the alternatives for realizing a more media-rich communications architecture.  

 

JR: I believe there will be a continuing crossover effect as business people take tools like social networks and blogging that they are using in their personal lives and make more use of these tools in a business setting. A difference I’d expect is that business people will expect and get more bandwidth in both a campus and remote environment, and will want to finally realize the potential for richer collaboration that involves audio communications, data sharing and selective use of video, regardless of their location.