Skype is one great product. It transformed the web and now it has the possibility to be a lot more. What that is ? Time will tell. Skype has a big opportunity in front of it.
Josh Silverman the CEO of Skype foreshadows some of what his going on with Skype now and in the future. Click here to read what Om Malik has to say and view his interview with Josh.
Here (below) is the video interview from Om Malik.
Last week at Hyperconnectivity.com I talked about the DNS vulnerability as a business case for unified communications, today I want to dive into the parallel security issue the DNS vulnerability causes with unified communications. It’s non-trivial to redirect PSTN calls however DNS controls the endpoint of most SIP/VoIP calls.
There are two baseline risks at play, internal a external. Let’s look at internal first before jumping to the external issues.
There’s the old statistic that 86% of security breaches happen from the inside. I’m not sure if I buy that, but there are still significant risks. To make matters worse when was the last time you saw an audit control for “ensure DNS cache records aren’t poisoned”? I’d guess never. A admin could easily replicate the existing VoIP infrastructure but instruct all calls from executives to be recorded and played back at a later time. The cache poisoning vulnerability could be used to redirect calls to the “new” gateway/PBX without anyone knowing unless they were specifically looking for it. This exploit could be removed with minimal impact, and calls redirected back to the old location. I’m not saying “do it”, but come on, it wouldn’t be that difficult.
Next, there’s the external issue. An internal employee causing mischief is one thing, but an unknown and uncontrolled malicious force on the Internet is something else entirely! Following the same process above an attacker could reroute or record SIP calls travelling on the Internet. Best case is a VoIP denial-of-service attack, worst case is invalubale IP leaving the company to the hands of an unknown attacker. This assumes, of course the transport is SIP over UDP or TCP. SIP over TLS (over TCP) would make the attack considerably more difficult. Maybe Microsoft had something when they forced TLS for Office Communications Server, eh?
All the more reason to patch your DNS servers NOW! As if you needed another reason…
I ran into this blog post by Ken Camp today that talks about what is happening in Unified Communications.
Unified Communications seems to be a hot buzzword for a new and improved VoIP sector or is it?
Ken writes.. “Unified communications is a buzz phrase like convergence. It means different things to different people. In today’s business environment, VoIP is prevalent. Jon asked is it really happening, but I’m often hard pressed to find places where it isn’t happening.
Unified Communitations is everywhere. Think about it. Voice services, video services and voice mail have converged onto a single unified platform - an IP network and our computers or other devices. Without unified communications, you have no social media - no Facebook, no Twitter, no comprehensive integration. Without unified communications, the web as we know it is a pipe dream. It had email and static web pages.
Web 2.0, the phrase we’ve all heard a million times is unified communications. Without UC, there could have been no Web 2.0. Unified communications, like VoIP, isn’t a product you write a check for and buy. It’s not a single product you implement and move on. It’s not as complex as vendors make it sound.
Unified communications in a foundation mindset of a single, integrated platform for doing business. Simple.”
Another blogger Alex Doyle at BroadSoft (not to be confused with BroadDev - this blog) weights in with a good analysis from my blog post on web 2.0 and Unified Communications.
This is a good conversation. I am suggesting that UC shouldn’t be a closed solution from one vendor. In fact I see it that the hosting piece is critical for the customers to define their service modules. Having a bolted on fully integrated services isn’t the future. The hosting side is very exciting.
Web 2.0 is not fully understood but from a practical perspective the ‘lock-in’ in UC isn’t viable long term.
BroadDev blog picked the categories to cover UC, Virtualization, Security, and Web 2.0 because to me UC cuts across all those areas. We are so beyond PBX solutions in this arena.
Companies shouldn’t be forced into a choice they should choose the best for their environment.
So Cisco is looking to partner with IBM, according to Jim Duffy in a Network World article posted today. According to the article, IBM has been resistant thus far. John Chambers is scheduled to deliver a keynote at Cisco Live! today.
It will be interesting to see if anything else gets revealed. My feeling is that we are seeing some tactical comments and we may get some more before the day is through. Note that Cisco’s approach to Unified Communications is very much a network model and a partnership with IBM would somehow put them in line with IBM’s Lotus-based software model. In Duffy’s article it is mentioned that Cisco is looking at EMC and VMWare for deeper relationships. Cisco Systems is clearly looking at some heavyweights here and trying to break away with the lead.
Cisco has been in the business of delivering VOIP and Unified Communications for a while now. This is an interesting battle brewing here. I believe that Microsoft’s product will eventually come out on top as some of its main advantages include leveraging interoperability with existing PBX hardware, in addition to their existing desktop and enterprise presence. This integration allows for flexibility in adoption of Unified Communications technologies, so we will likely see more alliances with Microsoft as well from many sectors.
However, there is no doubt Cisco is a big player in the game so keep watching out for news.
When I read this story from Joe O’Halloran at computerworld (Unified Communications benefits threatened by skills gap), I was thinking that maybe he was still celebrating (drinking) from Celtics parade 
Then I realized that he was on to something here with his post. I thought no way how can there be a skill gap. Technology skills are becoming more standard around IP, cloud computing, web services, ..etc. Plus the market on the mobile side is crazy with Nokia buying Symbian.
There’s tons of talent out there that can deploy the technology involved in UC. Then I realized that Joe was on to something. It’s not how to deploy skill set, but instead a what to deploy skill that is in need.
In talking to many resellers, consultants, and vendors the problem seems to be in the competing platforms for the vendors. Each one competing for the implementation architecture. Even worse add new types of web 2.0 functionality and you have more confusion.
Joe points to a survey by Psytechnics, a provider of voice and video performance management solutions for IP operations. Nearly three quarters believe that UC requires an IT operations workforce that is knowledgeable in both networks and voice and video applications. However, 60% of UC specialists do not believe that there are enough skilled technical staff to deal with the expected demand in UC deployments.
Just over a quarter of the survey (26%) was split as to whether technical expertise in networks or applications is more relevant.
Commenting on the results Psytechnics CEO Anthony Finbow said, “The results of our survey should act as a wake-up call for those in the industry and enterprises who are relying more and more on IP-based communications. Many have found VoIP performance management to be more difficult than expected, but voice is just the tip of the iceberg and with more applications like video conferencing coming into play towards a full UC rollout, it is vitally important that the quality of the user experience is managed. Employing the right experience management tools will help to offset staff costs and skills shortages, but it’s up to the communications industry to ensure enterprises are fully equipped to reliably operate what will be a multi vendor unified communications environment.”
Here we go again more VoIP centric thinking. VoIP is only one piece of the Unified Communications market.
I see many vendors pushing why to many silo’s solutions. Skill gap? No way. We have a train wreck on the vendor side. If a vendor has good solution then the tactical skills will acquired in a NY minute. We need a solution that motivates customers and gets people excited.
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