Irwin Lazar's "Real-Time" Blog

Michael Sampson on Comm. & Collab.

Michael Sampson offers "Gartner Hype Cycle for Collaboration and Communication, 2005: The Missing "So What?" Analysis, Sep 20" free to any Gartner subscriber.

Ted Wallingford: The 8 things you must know about enterprise VoIP

Ted Wallingford of "The VoIP Weblog" has written a piece for O'Reilly Network on what enterprises ought to know when migrating to VoIP. It contains some good tips and is worth reading, but paints a bit rosier picture of enterprise benefits of VoIP than what I've seen in my own experiences. Costs for network upgrades, line power delivery capabilities & network performance management capabilities usually mean that implementing VoIP is more expensive than initially expected. In my conversations with large enterprises VoIP roll-outs invariably have difficult to cure performance problems that generate negative user experiences. These include anything from echo to noise to sudden call drops.

Enterprises ought to be aware that implementing VoIP isn't painless, but the opportunities presented by integrated IP communications such as presence and integration of voice with conferencing, instant messaging, and collaboration offer significant potential for productivity gains in the organization. Unfortunately these gains are difficult to quantify and as such, ROI calculations are difficult to establish.

eBay buys Skype for $4.1 Billion

Well, it's official, eBay is buying Skype for $4.1 billion. The current plan is to integrate Skype into eBay's auction site, while also preserve it as a stand-alone phone company.

I'm assuming that eBay will presence enable on-line auctions through Skype. If you have a question for a seller you can see if they are on-line, and either IM them or call them. You may also see live auctions via IM or voice. You will also be able to set alerts that go to your Skype client (auction closing, you’ve been out-bid, etc.). This is a great move from eBay’s perspective as it enables them to add a ton of real-time features to their auctions. As Skype moves into the mobile world you’ll be able to easily manage your auctions through your mobile device.

It remains to be seen what this means for the stand-alone phone service, I’ll be surprised if eBay continues to push Skype as an alternative phone company given that is so far outside of their business. While Skype has a ton of users and downloads, I haven’t seen any financial information as of yet.

If I were Microsoft I’d be pretty happy right now, the Teleo acquisition is going to position them to offer a very strong alternative to Skype for the average consumer. This is much better for Microsoft than Skype being acquired by a phone company.

Jabber and VoIP

Robert Liu at TMC.net writes about Jabber's plans to incorporate VoIP support into XMPP-based apps. There seems to be two schools of thought, develop a new protocol (TIMS) to support voice/video, or just hook into SIP. My guess is that the "hook into SIP" approach will find the most traction given the widespread and rapidly growing support for SIP in the marketplace.

New Skype for Mac OS X

Skype has introduced version 1.3 for the Mac, incorporating a slew of new features including group chat.

BTW, to address the tons of rumors floating around that Skype is going to be acquired by eBay. This makes some sense from an e-bay perspective, in that they could presence-enable their users. The idea being that if I have a question about a product being auctioned I can use my eBay Skype client to see if the seller is on-line and then establish either an IM or voice chat session to ask my question.

There of course is also the possibility for live auctions using Skype IM or voice chat services.

Finally, there is also the chance that eBay just wants to diversify, and that buying Skype helps it enter the IP telephony space (not excluding the ability to both preserve Skype as a stand-alone service but also integrate it into the auction site).

I suppose we'll have to see if the rumors are true, but either way, it shows the growing importance of Skype to the VoIP landscape.

Looking back on VoiceCon San Diego

I've posted my thoughts on the VoIP Loop site.

VoIP Loop - The Aftermath

Shelia McGee-Smith has a nice wrap-up of some of the efforts of the telecom industry to support the relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Kudos to Siemens for moving their analyst's event to Ft. Lauderdale next week from Houston so as to free their hotel block for Katrina relief efforts.

Network World: Microsoft warms up voice software plans

Network World covers Microsoft's plans in the VoIP space (and they quote me).

Greg Galitzine - VoIP Blog: In Light of Higher Gas Prices, Consider This

Greg Galitzine of TMCnet.com writes in his blog about the potential for high fuel costs to spur a growth in virtual collaboration tools such as web conferencing.

He provides quite a bit of market data showing the potential for growth in the IP conferencing space. He also notes that to accommodate the growing interest in IP-based conferencing and collaboration, the Internet Telephony Expo conference, run by TMC.net in October in Los Angeles, has added a "Conferencing and Collaboration over IP Summit" to its agenda.

I tend to think however that the growing in IP conferencing and collaboration will be driven more by the desire to improve the communications among virtual workgroups rather than on desire to reduce travel or travel costs. The reality of enterprise organizations today is that workforces are increasingly distributed and the primary means of collaboration are e-mail and audio conferencing. The growing capabilities of IP conferencing and collaboration solutions offers a great deal of potential to improve the capabilities of these virtual teams.

It's obvious the vendors in the IP telephony and conferencing spaces see real-time collaboration as a major growth area.

The end of cell phone minutes

Here's the first glimpse of the end of cell minutes as the transition from per-minute based pricing to flat-rate VoIP-based services begins, echoing the transition we've seen in the long distance market and transforming cell providers into bit haulers for IP services, just like any other ISP.

Russell Shaw comments in his blog as well.