IP Communications and Beyond

Every now and then, one of the benefits I like to convey to readers of my blog is an advance peek at some important development or industry-related news of which I'm privy due to my various connections and relationships.

Here's a bunch of such news items -- all related to the goings on at the SIP Forum -- (and in the interest of Full Disclosure you should remember that I'm the President and Managing Director of same.)

The Forum will be issuing a number of announcements in the coming weeks, but because you're reading this, you're getting a nice advance notice on them.

First, the SIP Forum's membership has enjoyed a major surge in membership (both in dues- paying corporate Full Members and free individual "Participant" members) over the last few months. When I first joined the organization in late 2007, the Forum had 25 Full Member companies. Now, the count is up to 46. Check out the current Full Member list here.

The Forum has also experienced a doubling of general membership, which now hovers around 5,000 people from all around the world.


One of the main reasons for this growth is the expanding support and momentum behind the Forum's SIP trunking initiative called SIPconnect, which provides an industry-approved set of rules and guidelines for accomplishing trouble-free direct IP peering between SIP-enabled IP-PBXs and SIP-enabled VoIP service providers, and the growing realization within the industry that achieving interoperability is key to sustained and long-term growth. Here's a link to an analyst whitepaper I authored about SIPconnect.

Other Notable SIP Forum News includes:

Microsoft has Joined the SIP Forum and has committed to actively contributing to the SIPConnect work. Yes, the big gun from Redmond has formally joined the SIP Forum as a Full Member company, and has released, for general distribution, their view of how SIPconnect could be constructed for the upcoming version 1.1 of the specification. This is based on their own extensive experience with their OCS product and extensive discussions with Enterprises and Service Providers.

The SIP Forum has created a depository of SIPconnect 1.1 Scoping Documents, which currently includes the Microsoft document mentioned above, and will be the location of other member contributions as they are made available.

CableLabs -- the joint industry standards body of the North American Cable operators -- has also joined the SIP Forum as a Full Member and CableLabs and its member companies are also committed to contributing to the SIPconnect 1.1 effort.

Broadsoft is also contributing extensive documentation related to their SIP trunking experience, and has agreed to make available their extensive documentation of experience with SIP trunking and the current implementation of SIPconnect 1.0.

The blogosphere was certainly dealt a blow this past March with the death of prolific writer and blogger Russell Shaw. I didn't know Russell personally, but felt that I knew him through his writings, as did many of his readers. It is indeed a rare talent to be able to reach out and touch another person through the written word.

Recently, I caught up with the emails in my inbox and other required reading (I've been a traveling dervish for the past several weeks and likewise apologize for my dearth of blog postings in the interim), and a recent New York Times article by Matt Richtel caught my eye. In his article, "In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop," he relates the damage caused by the relentless urge by bloggers to "scoop" and be the first to cross the digital finish line.

This article got me thinking that it's not too farfetched that health insurance companies might just start lumping blogging with other high-risk occupations, such as timber loggers, ice truck drivers, and bomb squads -- and raise premiums accordingly.

I've run the full article below for your perusal -- it's definitely worth reading...

In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop

By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO - ­ They work long hours, often to exhaustion. Many are paid by the piece ­ not garments, but blog posts. This is the digital-era sweatshop. You may know it by a different name: home.

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere, and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly.

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.

The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves ­ and are being well-compensated for it.

"I haven't died yet," said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. "At some point, I'll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen."

"This is not sustainable," he said.

It is unclear how many people blog for pay, but there are surely several thousand and maybe even tens of thousands.

The emergence of this class of information worker has paralleled the development of the online economy. Publishing has expanded to the Internet, and advertising has followed.

Even at established companies, the Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing people to set up virtual offices and work from anywhere at any time. That flexibility has a downside, in that workers are always a click away from the burdens of the office. For obsessive information workers, that can mean never leaving the house.

Blogging has been lucrative for some, but those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post, and in some cases are paid on a sliding bonus scale that rewards success with a demand for even more work.

There are growing legions of online chroniclers, reporting on and reflecting about sports, politics, business, celebrities and every other conceivable niche. Some write for fun, but thousands write for Web publishers ­ as employees or as contractors ­ or have started their own online media outlets with profit in mind.

One of the most competitive categories is blogs about technology developments and news. They are in a vicious 24-hour competition to break company news, reveal new products and expose corporate gaffes.

To the victor go the ego points, and, potentially, the advertising. Bloggers for such sites are often paid for each post, though some are paid based on how many people read their material. They build that audience through scoops or volume or both.

Some sites, like those owned by Gawker Media, give bloggers retainers and then bonuses for hitting benchmarks, like if the pages they write are viewed 100,000 times a month. Then the goal is raised, like a sales commission: write more, earn more.

Bloggers at some of the bigger sites say most writers earn about $30,000 a year starting out, and some can make as much as $70,000. A tireless few bloggers reach six figures, and some entrepreneurs in the field have built mini-empires on the Web that are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Others who are trying to turn blogging into a career say they can end up with just $1,000 a month.

Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else?s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.

"There's no time ever ­ including when you?re sleeping ­ when you're not worried about missing a story," Mr. Arrington said.

"Wouldn't it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific time and dawn? Then we could all take a break," he added. "But that's never going to happen."

All that competition puts a premium on staying awake. Matt Buchanan, 22, is the right man for the job. He works for clicks for Gizmodo, a popular Gawker Media site that publishes news about gadgets. Mr. Buchanan lives in a small apartment in Brooklyn, where his bedroom doubles as his office.

He says he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled ­ by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.

But make no mistake: Mr. Buchanan, a recent graduate of New York University, loves his job. He said he gets paid to write (he will not say how much) while interacting with readers in a global conversation about the latest and greatest products.

"The fact I have a few thousand people a day reading what I write ­ that's kind of cool," he said. And, yes, it is exhausting. Sometimes, he said, "I just want to lie down."

Sometimes he does rest, inadvertently, falling asleep at the computer.

"If I don't hear from him, I'll think: Matt's passed out again," said Brian Lam, the editor of Gizmodo. "It's happened four or five times."

Mr. Lam, who as a manager has a substantially larger income, works even harder. He is known to pull all-nighters at his own home office in San Francisco ­ hours spent trying to keep his site organized and competitive. He said he was well equipped for the torture; he used to be a Thai-style boxer.

"I've got a background getting punched in the face," he said. "That's why I'm good at this job."

Mr. Lam said he has worried his blogging staff might be burning out, and he urges them to take breaks, even vacations. But he said they face tremendous pressure ­ external, internal and financial. He said the evolution of the ?pay-per-click? economy has put the emphasis on reader traffic and financial return, not journalism.

In the case of Mr. Shaw, it is not clear what role stress played in his death. Ellen Green, who had been dating him for 13 months, said the pressure, though self-imposed, was severe. She said she and Mr. Shaw had been talking a lot about how he could create a healthier lifestyle, particularly after the death of his friend, Mr. Orchant.

"The blogger community is looking at this and saying: 'Oh no, it happened so fast to two really vital people in the field,' " she said. They are wondering, "What does that have to do with me?"

For his part, Mr. Shaw did not die at his desk. He died in a hotel in San Jose, Calif., where he had flown to cover a technology conference. He had written a last e-mail dispatch to his editor at ZDNet: "Have come down with something. Resting now posts to resume later today or tomorrow."

Well, I'm not the first to go "live" with news about PulverMedia this time, and frankly I'm perfectly aok with that :)

The other day, I saw a blog post with the title:

"Jeff Pulver Resigns from PulverMedia Board of Directors"

Today, I saw the following notice appear when surfing over to the VON website:

If this is indeed a sign of the demise of the organization, let's hope the many talented people that were responsible for the past success of the whole VON enterprise quickly land on their feet.

I think it's now almost a foregone conclusion that the cable MSOs have the telco's beat -- for the time being at least -- in the residential voice marketplace for most of urban America.

I recently switched over a second voice line at home to my Optimum Voice account -- Cablevision's brand of cable telephony service -- because to be brutally honest, the local telco, Verizon, just doesn't come close to providing the same deal.

From a smooth and incredibly fast turn-on, to an all-you can eat domestic calling plan with every enhanced service you could want for $24.95/mo for the first line, $14.95/mo for the second- including visual incoming caller ID on your television set no less -- it's probably -- in combination with Skype or similar web-based service -- one of the smartest choices in residential telephony.

The Wild Card: Verizon's new fiber-optic FIOS service isn't yet available in our area, or many others yet -- but it could represent a real threat to the cable-co triple-play "monopoly" with it's mix of IPTV, phone/video services and superfast Internet access -- which would ultimately be good for everyone since it will heat up the competitive juices and produce real benefits for the consumer.

Time will tell if the cable operators can maintain their lead.

Partner Jon Arnold was busy at January's Internet Telephony Conference and EXPO East In Miami, conducting a series of video interviews with a bunch of industry folk. The videos are all freshly edited and ready for public viewing, and were produced for both IP Convergence TV, where Jon serves as portal editor, and TMC for distribution on TMCnet.com.

Among those interviewed include Will Stefega of IDC, Matt Lukens of Comverse, Rich Tehrani and Greg Galitzine of TMC, Manuel Vexler of the IMS Forum, and last but not least Eric Burger, Deputy CTO and General Manager of the Communications Division at BEA Systems, and me as sidekick (Eric invited me to join in at the last minute, so how could I refuse...)

For our interview segment, Eric and I are wearing our SIP Forum hats -- he as Chairman of the Board of Directors and I as President and Managing Director (a bit of background and full disclosure all-in-one.)

Eric does most of the talking this time around, and he has some pretty interesting things to say, in my humble and biased opinion ;-) We cover the state of the industry, the interoperability challenge and the growing importance of the SIP for things like pure IP trunking (SIP trunking) to rich media/ communications application deployment. Have a listen here.

I've ranted before about a variety of automotive issues -- from the ridiculous cost of headlight changes to the mind-boggling complexity of today's computer/sensor-laden cars -- and I've got one more to add to the list: the problem with relying on computer-based diagnostic assessments of your car's condition.

First some background: I own a 2002 Audi A4, with about 51K miles on it. About a year into owning the car, an engine check light went on and I smelled burning rubber from the engine compartment. I brought it promptly to the dealer and had it serviced. Turned out a vacuum hose had melted (apparently all too common in VWs and Audi's) and the dealer replaced it, reset the on-board computer, and handed me back my keys saying, "You're all set!"

Problem is, the car never really felt right after that -- the Turbo-lag always seemed a bit too pronounced and the car never really accelerated as it should. Every time I brought it into the dealer for service, I'd complain about the performance and asked them to check it out, and every time I'd get a response saying "We hooked it up to the computer, and everything reads according to specifications."

A few months ago, the engine check light came on again, and this time I brought it to my local mechanic that I've come to regard as a genius. I no longer bring the car into the Audi dealer since my Audi bumper-to-bumper warranty has expired and I'm loathe to pay $160/hour for service -- and as I'll explain shortly, because I simply no longer trust the quality of the service the dealer provides.

The mechanic hooked it up to a diagnostic computer, and the printout stated that there was a vacuum leak somewhere in the system. A number of the vacuum hoses on the engine are sheathed in a nylon mesh that covers the rubber, and a visual inspection of the hoses found no problems, so he went to the next step of pumping a special kind of smoke into the system. Sure enough, he spotted a hose where smoke was puffing out of the nylon mesh -- and once he took it out noticed that the rubber under the nylon was brittle and cracked. He then took the next step of replacing all these hoses he could find in the car.

My car now runs like new -- no lag and no acceleration problems. I then related the issues I had been having -- for years -- with my car and the inability of the dealer to find any problems. The problem was the dealer's over-reliance on computer diagnostics, and that many problems aren't significant enough to trigger a fault in the system (since the computer is set to certain tolerances) but are serious enough to seriously impact performance. For four years I had been driving a car with damaged vacuum hoses (the melted one should have alerted the dealer to check them all), and my pleas to check the car out fell on deaf ears and eye's only interested in the computer printout.

So, the moral of this tale is when you are having performance issues with your car, and your service person tells you "everything checks out on the computer", don't accept this as "case closed". Find a mechanic who will think out of the circuit board, who will perform tests to get to the bottom of the problem and who knows the limitations of computer-based diagnostics.

I recently had a great conversation with Tom Cross, CEO of the TECHionary web site -- billed as the largest animated library on technology -- and a producer of online tutorials and a teacher for on-site corporate training courses on a variety of IP communications technology topics. Tom called to interview me for a piece on the SIP Forum (of which I am the managing director) that he's planning on publishing to his blog, Cross Talk, and once he got what he needed for his post, we started talking about a number of issues that are close and dear to our hearts.

One thing we shared was our astonishment over the enormous confusion surrounding the proper installation and set-up of high-def flat panel televisions, and the fact that a full 3/4 of the people who buy these sets aren't watching high-def images because they either didn't hook up their sets properly or didn't order the necessary high-def cable or satellite boxes from their service providers -- talk about the need for technology training here!...but I digress, since what I want to focus on here is what I'm calling the Convergence Dilemma.

Tom related to me his experience teaching a recent training course on SIP for a global hospitality company -- and how the only staff in the room were from the company's telecom department. When Tom asked why there were no data guys attending from the IT department, he was told "they do their thing and we do ours" or something to that effect. Apparently, this is a common occurrence during Tom's training gigs, and it apparently signals that even after several years of network convergence and the IP-ing of corporate communications technologies, a wide gulf still exists between the telecom and IT departments of many if not most large, Fortune 1000 corporations.

Today, we might have achieved voice and data convergence from a technology standpoint, but convergence from a human resources perspective is still a figment of our imagination (if that). If this situation is as bad as it seems from Tom's observations, it's certainly clear that it represents a major stumbling block in achieving the promised benefits of IP communications technology, and that such corporations with departmental "iron curtains" that are deploying these solutions risk wreaking havoc instead of reaping cost savings and workforce productivity/efficiency improvements.

I'm curious to see if you share Tom's observations, and if you have anecdotes you can share about companies who haven't yet closed the Telcom/IT Gap. Conversely, I'd love to hear about companies who get "it" -- how they've managed to meld their IT and Telecom teams, and what the outcomes were in terms of deployment successes and overall return on their technology investments.