Broadband Developments

The music industry’s requests for more personal information regarding the identity of several accused file-sharers have been shot down by a federal judge. Judge Nancy Gertner quashed a subpoena this week in the infamous London-Sire v. Does 1-4 case, saying that the IP addresses of three anonymous Boston University students could not be handed over because the university had “adequately demonstrated that it is not able to identify the alleged infringers with a reasonable degree of technical certainty.”

The legal system has been chipping away at the London-Sire case all year, starting this spring when Judge Gertner said that making files available on a P2P network does not equal copyright infringement. At that time, she also noted that IP addresses can’t always be traced to a particular individual and that, if Boston University were compelled to turn over a list of possible infringers, it could give a green light to RIAA fishing expeditions.

More from ArsTechnica

A lot has played out in the UC world over the last couple months and I think it’s time to revisit the question of “What is UC?” and dive a little deeper. In this series of posts I’ll analyze what functional components make up a UC solution and examine offerings from IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and others.

Since the paragraph above is really just a tease on its own, I’ll dive right into an overview of Unified Communications. First, a disclaimer that UC seems to mean something different to each company. This is my opinion based on talking with a LOT of customers and doing a few dozen rollouts. It’s certainly not the only opinion however.

The 2007 Gartner report on UC states:

In a way, identifying who’s doing what in the UC industry is a little premature, because, until the new technologies are really finished or legacy technology is really ready to be replaced, UC has to be viewed as “a migratory work in progress.” However, it is important to track technology developments, products, and services so that IT will be ready to selectively deliver new UC capabilities whenever required.

I’ll start by saying there are two sides to unified communications; well at least two. First is functional, ie. what functions are included under the UC umbrella. The second is a business culture shift, ie. changing the way you to do business to take advantage of UC through communications enabled business processes (CEBP). In this post I’m going to speak more to the first. I’ve done a lot of research on the second only to conclude that the business case, and ROI plan, is vastly different for different companies and users. Thus, it needs to be addressed individually. Beyond recouping conferencing costs from bringing the function in house, the ROI model gets very complex.

Although I’m happy to discuss individual cases on a one-off basis I want to keep the topic of this post more generic. I’ll be focusing on the functional aspects of UC that apply to most, if not all, companies.

So, if we believe in the assumption that, from a functional perspective, UC is a platform not a product we must ask what are the parts of that platform? Here’s my take on what every UC platform needs:

Presence engine - A service or function that shows a person’s availability and willingness to communicate over multiple modes of communication. Features include:

· Contextual presence – willingness to communicate over multiple modes of communication (text, voice, video) depending on access and availability

· Integrated presence – Pulls information from other sources (calendar, phone) to automatically update states of presence

· Multi-tiered presence – user-defined levels of access for presence visibility

· Deep presence – More levels than online, offline, away

Instant Messaging - The ability to send text messages and files in one-to-one and many-to-many communication. The features include:

· IM in real-time with others

· Transfer files during a chat

· Escalate IM conversations to richer communication (voice, video, ad hoc web conference)

· IM in a group, more than one-to-one

Federation – The ability to search and communicate across security boundaries, like between partners, in a secure manner.

Public IM – The ability to communicate with popular public IM providers. I never thought this was an absolute requirement but it’s been in every requirements document I’ve seen lately. People are used to IMing and don’t want multiple clients regardless of who they’re communicating with, business or personal.

Audio and Video Conferencing from a desktop client – Normally 2 distinct requirements I never see one without the other so I’m bunching them together. I’m speaking purely PC-to-PC or PC-ConferenceRoom here, not yet into IP Telephony.

Web Conferencing - the ability to host scheduled and ad-hoc meetings including voice, video, data and shared desktop collaboration

· Ad hoc and scheduled web conferences including internal and external participants

· Shared documents and “handout” functionality

· Shared desktop for collaboration

· Support data, voice and video conferencing during meeting

· One-to-many live video streaming (ie. virtual company meeting)

Messaging Platform – A robust enterprise email and calendaring platform. Email has surpassed voice as communication mediums go so it needs to be scalable and reliable.

Mobility – The platform needs to have a mobile client for syncing mail and calendaring as well as IM/presence and other UC modalities.

Collaboration – Some would argue that a collaboration platform should be its own topic. And well it could be, but I feel any UC solution needs to have a strong collaboration story. After all, UC is all about collaboration. Once you find a person and IM them, where are you going to work together?

Extensible API – As I mentioned above, UC means something different to everyone. An extensible API is an often overlooked requirement for extending UC functionality into other applications.

IP Telephony – Often just called VoIP, a UC solution needs basic IPT functions like single number reach, unified messaging (voicemail in email), and click to call. These functions need to be in the same UC client as other functions (IM, etc). No one wants 4-5 clients running to accomplish one communication task.

MLB just this week announced that it is switching from Silverlight to Flash for video streaming.  MLB is the most successful online video site with massive profits from baseball fans.  Also MLB is considered a “bellweather” in the online video space.  This is a big move and a major blow to Microsoft.

Many users were not happy with the installation process for Silverlight verses the seamless viewing of flash.

Streaming Media has a post that has them wondering about this deal.

Adobe got a big customer win this week when they announced that MLB.com would move from the Silverlight platform back to Flash for all their live and on-demand video. The two-year deal, which kicks off in 2009, will also see MLB providing a rich Internet application (RIA) built using Adobe AIR that will give viewers access for yet to be announced features outside of a browser. The new rich Internet application will not replace the current MLB TV Mosaic app and will be a completely new piece of software.

That being said, there are quite a few interesting questions one has to ask based on this new deal, which unfortunately MLB won’t answer at this time. For starters, since the majority of content delivery networks still charge more to deliver Flash streaming over Silverlight, is MLB’s cost to deliver video now going up? And if it does, will it have any real impact on the cost of MLB TV? Looking at the MLB.com website, I can’t find any pricing yet for the MLB TV service in 2009. Also, since the Flash Media Server can’t scale as well as Windows Media in a live environment, I think a real possibility exists that MLB could move to a dual-vendor strategy for their video delivery. While Akamai has all of MLB.com’s video business today, I would not be surprised if over time, some of MLB’s traffic was split between Akamai and another provider.

UC Strategies Group, the leading voice in Unified Communications, has a post up from cofounder Blair Pleasant that answers some additional questions from VoiceCon.

My question is “IsVoiceCon a viable conference?”  or should it be called “AppCon” - Voice is only a feature of Unified Communications.  In fact one of the most impressive things that I saw was IBM’s presence integration within Sametime to accomadate social networks.

Here is Blair’s post and some snips.

Regarding who are the key UC professional services firms, there are several types of organizations – the UC vendors themselves, system integrators, professional services organizations, and large management consultancies. Some of the key professional services providers are Dimension Data, INX, Touchbase, IBM Global Services, and of course the Accentures and companies like Avanade (IT consultancy dedicated to the Microsoft platform). Many vendors recognize the importance of professional services in UC implementations, and several are revving up their practices for UC. Aspect recently announced its foray into UC professional services and systems integration with a new practice designed to assist organizations with the planning, implementation and support of UC products across their enterprises and into their contact centers.

IBM Global Services (IGS) is an important part of IBM’s overall UC program, offering a comprehensive suite of strategy-and-assessment and architecture-and-design services, as well as integration, deployment and managed services. IBM is one of the few companies that really emphasizes its professional services organizations – as well it should. This group provides an important competitive edge to IBM, which recognizes the complexities of UC and how important it is to integrate with existing business processes and applications.

Another question I didn’t really get time to respond to was about mobile UC and the role of fixed mobile convergence (FMC) and UC. Mobile UC capabilities include the ability to transfer mobile calls to a landline phone and vice versa with the click of a mouse. Extending enterprise telephony features to the mobile environment generally involves integration with the corporate IP PBX. Some UC offerings make it possible to transfer mobile calls to your landline phone and vice versa with the click of a mouse. Mobile UC capabilities make it possible to extend the desktop communication environment to the mobile device when needed, giving mobile workers access to features like conferencing, unified messaging, integration with the calendar and enterprise directory, and other communication capabilities – so mobile workers can be just as productive when out of the office as when in the office.

The CTO of Amazon is blogging the new service from Amazon called CloudFront. I love this approach for obvious reasons but the question remains about reliability and security. In talking to Mendal Rosenblum this past weekend he and I both agreed that many are afraid of pushing information in the cloud. Mendal is the leader in pushing large scale computing and his observations ring true for many corporate enterprises. No doubt Amazon is great for startups but the open question remains for reliability and security.

When those two issues are lock solid then the era of cloud computing will be mainstream.

Here is the information on Amazon CloudFront.

Hello Amazon CloudFront, the new Amazon Web Service for content delivery. It integrates seamlessly with Amazon S3 to provide low-latency distribution of content with high data transfer speeds through a world-wide network of edge locations. It requires no upfront commitments and is a pay-as-you-go service in the same style as the other Amazon Web Services.

Amazon CloudFront has been designed to be fast; the service will cache copies of the content in edge locations close to the end-user’s location, significantly lowering the access latency to the content. High sustainable data transfer rates can be achieved with the service especially when distributing larger objects.

Amazon CloudFront will be useful for many different application scenarios such as giving your customers low-latency access to popular objects and protecting your site from popularity surges; other popular examples are low-cost delivery of rich media and sustainable fast transfer rates for software distributions.

See also the posting on the AWS Developer weblog and at Rightscale.

Amazon has seen success with the scalability, reliability and cost-effectiveness of Amazon S3 and now with the integration with Amazon EC2 it is easy to distribute Amazon S3 content world-wide. The combination of the two services is really powerful: Amazon S3 will give you durable storage of your data, and the network of edge locations on three continents used by the Amazon CloudFront will deliver the content with low latency from the most appropriate location.

The network of edge locations

To ensure low-latency delivery, Amazon CloudFront uses a network of edge locations world-wide:

• United States: Ashburn (VA), Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, Palo Alto, Seattle and St. Louis
• Europe: Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt and London
• Asia: Hong Kong and Tokyo

These edge locations work together to direct customers’ requests to the edge location that can provide the response with the lowest latency.

Simplicity

Because Amazon CloudFront follows the core principles of all Amazon Web Services it is a unique content delivery service. The simplicity in getting started has been described by many of our early customers as a very important feature.

Using Amazon CloudFront is dead simple:

1. Put your objects in an Amazon S3 bucket.
2. Call the CreateDistribution API with the name of the S3 bucket, which will return your distribution’s domain name.
3. Use the new domain name in urls on your web or in your application. Whenever these urls are accessed CloudFront will determine the optimal edge location from where to serve your content.

The second Amazon Web Services principle that sets Amazon CloudFront apart is that no upfront commitments are necessary and you only pay for what you have used. There are no upfront fees or high volume requirements and no negotiations are necessary because we have published low prices from the start. This brings content delivery in the hands of all businesses, and you can exploit the benefits of Amazon’s world-wide network of edge locations, regardless of whether you are a highly popular website, a small blog, a complex enterprise application or a developer doing some prototyping.

A core distributed systems component

It is not uncommon to think about a service for content delivery such as Amazon CloudFront only in the context of media distribution for web sites, but it actually plays a more fundamental role.

There are two main technology components to such a service; the first is intelligent request routing, which routes requests to the location that can best serve the user given a series of requirements and the status of the network. The second technology component is that of object caching, which is a fundamental building block in both operating systems and in distributed systems.

Caching is an essential technique that is used to make sure that components can operate at the fastest speed possible, to overcome the performance differences that exist in systems. For example CPU’s have caches that are much faster than memory, memory works as caches for disks, local disks can function as caches for remote disks, etc.

In distributed systems caching is primarily used to provide fast access to popular objects that are located in remote storage servers. These systems of caching servers often cooperate to create massive aggregate world-wide capacity to provide low latency access. And by using globally decentralized cache servers for distribution, very high data transfer speed can be achieved.

Caching technology has long been the center piece of computer systems research and in Amazon CloudFront we use the type of highly advanced algorithms for reliability and scale that you have come to expect from our Amazon services.

Novafora Inc., a startup developer of video processors, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Transmeta Corp. for $255.6 million in cash. Novafora is developing video technology on a chip.  Word on the street is that the technology is very ‘hot’.  The video market is in the need for faster processing at the chip level.  Right now video adoption is huge and the capabilities for moving video online is stunted by the capabilities in processing power.

Innovation coming from startups again and getting assets from Transmeta will help Novafora.

The acquisition agreement provides, among other things, that Transmeta may not enter into any future licensing transaction prior to closing of the merger without Novafora’s consent. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2009. After the closing of the merger, Transmeta’s common stock will cease to trade.

Formed in 2004, Novafora is a video processor company enabling OEMs to deliver on the promise of the digital video revolution.  Zaki Rakib is CEO and co-founder of the startup. Before Novafora, Zaki co-founded Terayon Communication Systems in 1993.

Shlomo Rakib is chairman, CTO and co-founder of the firm. He also co-founded Terayon and served as its chairman and CTO. At Terayon, he is said to have invented the S-CDMA technology that fueled Terayon’s initial success and which was incorporated into the widely-adopted DOCSIS 2.0 cable data standard.

Microsoft had a blogger session today as part of their big Sharepoint launch.   I was invited at the last minute but had a commitment here at Mashup Camp.  Sounds like it didn’t go good.  No on from the Broadband Developments Unified Communications editorial staff made it up to SF for this.

My good friend and VP and GM of Newsgator Jeff Nolan had live notes.

Here is the official Microsoft release on Online Exchange and SharePoint - Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Out of Beta and Ready for Purchase.

Microsoft announces new customers, partners, and online services.

SAN FRANCISCO — Nov. 17, 2008 — Today, at a launch event in San Francisco, Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division at Microsoft Corp., was joined by customers and partners to announce the availability of Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online for businesses of all sizes in the United States. These subscription services offer businesses a new way to purchase, deploy and manage the industry-leading e-mail and calendaring solution, and the industry-leading solution for portals and collaboration.

“Customers are embracing Microsoft’s software and services strategy en masse because of the choice and flexibility it gives them,” Elop said. “Today, we bring business-class communications and collaboration technologies to the cloud, and we are committed to delivering more capabilities in the months ahead. No one has done what we are doing at this scale, and I’m certain that our customers will continue to take on these solutions as our offerings grow.”

Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division, speaking about the new Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online to business customers and industry partners. San Francisco, Nov 17, 2008. Click for high-res version.

Businesses can buy or try the new services at http://www.microsoft.com/online. As part of the Microsoft Online Services product family, Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are available separately or as a suite together with Office Live Meeting for conferencing, Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services and Microsoft Office Communications Online for instant messaging and presence.

Customers Embrace Microsoft Online Services

A growing number of companies, from small businesses to large enterprises, are adopting Microsoft Online Services. In just the past year, Microsoft has sold more than a half million seats for Microsoft Online Services, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Office Communications Online. New customers include Pitney Bowes Inc.; CG Healthcare Solutions LLC, an affiliate of Cowan, Gunteski & Co., P.A.; Clean Power Research LLC; Corefino Inc.; and Fair Isaac Corp. To help businesses plan, deploy and operate the services, Microsoft is releasing new Microsoft Solution Accelerators for Microsoft Online Services. These include new automated tools and guidance, such as the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide and the Microsoft Operations Framework Companion Guide. More information about Microsoft Solution Accelerators for Microsoft Online Services is online at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd277934.aspx.

“With Microsoft Online Services, Eddie Bauer was able to improve associate productivity in a cost-effective manner — and that translates to a high return on our IT investment,” said Rich Mozack, chief information officer at Eddie Bauer Inc. “The online aspect of the solution enabled us to transition from our old environment to the Microsoft tools very quickly and smoothly. On a Friday, 1,400 of Eddie Bauer’s associates went home as Lotus Notes users, and on Monday they came to work as Outlook users with Microsoft Online Services.”

Partners See Opportunity in Microsoft Online Services

Since July 2008, more than 1,500 companies have enrolled in the Microsoft Partner Program for Microsoft Online Services, with 100 more joining every week. These companies are realizing a wide range of revenue opportunity that spans reselling, migration, customization, consulting, training, support and application development, and integration services.

Many partners are delivering customized capabilities for Microsoft Online Services. To increase awareness of these solutions, Microsoft today announced the Partner Solutions Showcase Program for Microsoft Online Services, and a Partner Solutions Showcase Program Award that is given to two partners annually. This award is designed to recognize outstanding application and integration work on the part of partners. Microsoft presented the first Partner Solutions Showcase Program Award to ThoughtBridge, which has built a human resources application on top of SharePoint Online. Partners can learn more about the showcase and award at http://www.microsoft.com/online/partner/solutions-showcase.mspx.

“ThoughtBridge recognized an immediate opportunity for building unique, vertical capabilities on top of Microsoft SharePoint Online, and we see tremendous opportunity to grow our business around this model,” said Tim Tisdale, chief technology officer and co-founder of ThoughtBridge. “Already, we’re seeing strong customer demand for migration, customization and integration services. Microsoft Online Services give us the agility to address this demand with fewer resources. We think this opportunity will bring us the bulk of our revenue moving forward.”

New Products in the Microsoft Online Services Family

Microsoft also outlined its plans to offer new solutions as a part of Microsoft Online Services in the next year. In addition to Office Communications Online, Microsoft is planning to offer a Microsoft Online Services solution that will provide IT management and security capabilities for businesses, enabling IT managers to secure and manage desktops using a Web-based subscription service. These online services will be based on components from existing systems management, identity and security offerings, and will complement Microsoft’s on-premise solutions, as customers begin to adopt cloud-based computing to address specific needs.

More information on Microsoft Online Services is available at http://www.microsoft.com/online and in the new software plus services virtual pressroom for the Microsoft Business Division at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/Officesoftwareplusservices/default.mspx. In addition, a webcast of today’s event can be viewed at http://wm.istreamplanet.com/customers/ms/300_ms_usosl_081117.asx.

Ok I am very excited by this move by Obama recent appointment for the FCC transition team. Two good friends of mine who I’ve known for many years were just appointed to the Obama FCC transition team.

Meet the new guard - Kevin Werbach and Susan Crawford. Both are industry experts in the area of policy, technology, and innovation. More importantly they both have a global view. Both Kevin and Susan have long been proponents of ‘broadband everywhere’ and the impact to innovation and global leadership.

I’m excited to see this announcement and throw my hat in as a volunteer to the efforts of Kevin and Susan. This is a fresh change and a big day for broadband and all the innovation behind what broadband offers.

Crawford is a professor of law at the University of Michigan, teaching communications law and Internet law. She was a partner with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale) until the end of 2002, when she left to become a legal academic. Crawford recently ended her term as a member of the board of directors of ICANN.

Werbach is an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the organizer of the annual Supernova technology conference. His research explores the legal and business dynamics of information and communications technologies. During the Clinton administration, he served as counsel for new technology policy at the FCC.

“The teams will begin their efforts today, and will ensure that senior appointees have the information necessary to complete the confirmation process, lead their departments, and begin implementing signature policy initiatives immediately after they are sworn in,” the Obama transition office said.

Bruce Morse is giving the keynote at VoiceCon San Francisco. He started with a video about how IBM can do Unified Communications without ripping and replacing all the existing products. I blogged yesterday about the number 1 hallway conversation which is a pending announcement tomorrow with a deal with Microsoft.

The pending deal has to do with an interoperability deal between Microsoft’s Office Communications and Sametime. Word has it that there will be a major customer implementation (one IBM UC large customers and one large Microsoft customers) to showcase this new partnership. Specifically I understand that IBM and Microsoft will federate their presence across platforms. I’ll let the two companies talk more about it tomorrow. Bottom Line the conversation was very positive yesterday on the Microsoft and IBM Unified Communications partnership.

Today’s business reality business challenges and current climate
- speed and agility verses cost cutting
- gorwth and innovation verses project freezing
- collaborative culture verses immediate ROI
- change management verses extract more value from current investments
- social responsibility verses green business

Talking about communications and collaboration overload. Instead of making life easier many Unified Communications solutions introduces more complexities. New sets of tools being used by new generation of users (e.g. blogging and twitter).

Bruce talks about a new challenge: instead of focusing on the back end focus on the front end - to make it easy and intuitive to find others and connecting with them. Goal: to share information among users. Key to success ease of use for users.

Find, Reach, and Collaborate = Unified User Experience

IBM is looking at new social tools and technologies to integrate into their UC platform. Integration social networking (not sure what he means by that). Critical to IBM is delivering a software platform. They (IBM) think of Unified Communications as a system not a product.

IBM’s platform is SameTime. Bruce is talking about Lotus and how this isn’t the old Lotus. I’ve said it before (and other agree) that Lotus is bad for the IBM Sametime brand. The data that Bruce is saying is that they have more implementations on non-Lotus environments. (my opinion: please rebrand this and get rid of the Lotus Brand).

IBM UC is Open - Bruce is touting the openness of their APIs and technologies. They are multiplatform. They support all environments in big and secure environments. I think this is the big story with IBM. They are being very humble on their technology leadership.

IBM is now giving a demo… Showing off the presence information in a fully loaded enterprise environment. In an email client they are are loading up presence information to do a real-tme chat but it’s not just chat - it has other features that leverages the chat and adds other UI features.. (I wonder how it works in non enterprise environments - how do they federate the presence??)

Konrad Lagarde is showing his prsence and how it can be manipulated for his needs. He is advertising one phone number that he sets up policy to redirect calls based upon rules. This speaks directly to the trend that the users are in charge of their environment. Very cool feature doesn’t sound sexy but very important. Just showed video support but the buddy list and presence is nice. I wonder what their XMPP support will be.

Demo of social features: Now IBM is showing social software support - can link into communities. Users can subscribe to communities a sort of “vertical twitter”. From a twitter like community a call can be initiated - a conference call - fully integrated. I really like this feature. Community tools are awesome. Not much more demo’d there. I wonder how communities can be constructed or do they leverage external communities like Twitter and Facebook among others. I wonder if they would be interested in OpenSocial or non-enterprise version of this system. I’ll see if I can get Bruce to talk about that.

Bruce is back to slides talking about the benefits (IBM pitch) - he is talking about cost reduction impact of IBM UC. Now he just referenced Facebook in how employees are using Facebook in sharing unsecured information but that is the preferred user experience for those users. Sametime has been used to integrate external Facebook apps into the enterprise rather than the “lock down” policy others have deployed.

Bruce is basically saying that IBM Sametime is being positioned and used as an integration fabric across multiple environments like IM and Facebook among other enterprise legacy systems and products.

Communications enables business process is the big buzzword that ties all this together. With collaboration tools as the focus on the front end and applications and business processes as the focus on the backend.

Ron Sebastian is now giving a demo around the real time capabilities to update data based upon the UI and presence information and integrating it into other system (databases, email, ..etc). Now demoing widget support that is the container for presenting other information within apps.

The keynote is being twittered by the elite twitter force here @blairplez @danyork @alexlewis @furrier @ccrowson @dnm54 @nora_freedman @VanessaAlvarez1