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Light Reading reports on Microsoft's acquisition of VoIP provider Teleo and quotes from a blog post I made about Teleo several months ago. The acquisition of Teleo certainly helps Microsoft position it's consumer messaging service as an alternative to Skype, and potentially Google.
Below is a link to my presentation at today's VoiceCon conference in San Diego.
Thanks to Alex Dunne for covering my session with Rohan Mahy in his VoIP Loop blog posting
I've also posted some thoughts on some of what I've seen so far, though I've only been able to attend a couple of sessions due to meetings.
Eric Krapf is already blogging live from VoiceCon. I plan to do the same as soon as I arrive in San Diego. (I'm now at 36,000 feet somewhere over Colorado).
Joho the blog has some info about the Denver airport authority finally abandoning it's much maligned automatic baggage handling system.
There is a lot of good information here for network and systems designers about the challenges of implementing centrally managed, complex systems, especially when the world has moved toward distributed intelligence.
Messaging Pipeline has the scoop on LiveOffice's announcement that it will link its service to Google Talk, enabling Google Talk users to leverage LiveOffice's audio, video and web conferencing service.
My best guess is that if Google begins to position Google Talk as something that enterprises can use for real-time communications and collaboration, it will find a much more approachable market than Skype (at least in the United States), given Google's brand name, established business model, and size.
SMBs may find that basing their IP communications plans on a service like Google Talk will become increasingly attractive, but we're probably a few years away from widespread enterprise acceptance. Despite all the hype over the last few days, let us not lose sight of the fact that this is still a beta product, and still only works on Windows XP (at least if you want to leverage the voice chat features).
Jeff Pulver writes in his blog that Skype's recent announcements that it is opening up its APIs to developers will help bring the concept of "Presence" to the consumer and enterprise market. Jeff notes that few understand what Presence really means.
In my conversations with enterprises, this is rapidly changing. Spurred by the introduction of Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and its ability to deliver presence-based voice, video, IM, and collaboration, enterprises are rapidly coming to the realization that the future isn't just about VoIP, it's about enterprise-wide unified, presence-based IP communications.
We covered this trend in our "End of Telephony" session at Catalyst in July, and I'm moderating a repeat panel at our European event this November. The more I talk with our enterprise clients the more I see that they "get it" when it comes to IP communications. Less frequently do I see enterprises buying phone systems in a vacuum, rather increasingly the question that they ask is "how will that integrate with my collaboration strategy"? The future is about enabling a whole suite of unified enterprise communications, of which VoIP is just one of many real-time communications applications, all with presence capabilities, and all accessible anytime, anywhere, from any device.
My colleague Mike Gotta shares his thoughts on several announcements out of Microsoft furthering their capabilities to deliver presence-based solutions that are integrated across their product lines. Mike provides several recommendations to developers who are evaluating these new tools, including perhaps the most important one, be aware of single-vendor lock-in. Check out Mike's complete post on his blog.
James Seng decodes how Google Talk works. Unfortunately he's discovered that rather than relying on SIP for voice, Google has implemented their own proprietary extensions to XMPP. So basically we'll have yet another "island" out there in the IM/voice chat world. Hopefully this is a short term implementation and the long term goal is to integrate Gizmo Project's SIP app into Google Talk.
I'm happy to announce that I'm now a contributing Blogger for VoIP Loop, the VoIP portal from the same folks that manage the VoiceCon conference. I'm joining a stellar list of contributors including Eric Krapf, Sheila McGee-Smith, Matt Brunk, Gary Audin and more.
I will be providing links on this blog to any posts I make on VoIP loop, and still posting here as well. My first post, on Google's new Google Talk IM Service, is now available.
