Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Live Blog of Voice 2.0 Panel at PTC

Jonathan Rosenberg, chief technology strategist at Skype; Rodrigue Ullens, Voxbone CEO; Frank Fawzi, IntelePeer CEO and Mke James, Metaswitch Networks director of systems engineering kick around "Voice 2.0."


Voice 2.0: Beyond the Hype: Lots of ways people are using voice today, let’s look at changes. Gary Kim moderating discussions from Rodrigue, Mike, Frank, and Jonathan.
Jonathan: Voice 2.0 (see yesterday’s talk): it’s not voice anymore, it’s video. Voice is becoming integrated with other media, part of a broader communications experience. As voice and video permeates the web, everything fits together as interactive content experience with seamless integration.
Frank: interactive video being woven into experience. We’ve seen significant interest by enterprise carriers to enrich end-user experience, trying to reach audience by any means possible (clicking links, sms, etc.). It’s critical that you deliver quality as part of business process. We’ve seen minutes double, 4.5B end of 2008 to about 10B annualized run rate now, coming from all kinds of customers, uses, and sources.
Mike: Traditional voice now dull and boring, now it’s about software and applications. Voice embedded in PC, more integration with TV. No one carrier is everything to everyone, need support for 3rd parties to develop.
Rodrigue: Internet-based company with Internet-based business model, voice as part of it. Not a fight between AT&T and Google, is an ecosystem of business models in global market. Enterprises are next opportunity (IT direct, management and apps), mentality of using certain apps is going to change. Telcos can afford their business model is by staff and host switching, engineers, need to embrace new opportunities.
Gary: What strikes me about this panel is that panelists will benefit from creative applications and capability. This is clearly a good thing. What advice would you offer others in the ecosystem? No way to fight this, many new ways to drive revenue. Frank: We talk with carriers about opportunities to reach their end users, deal with hundreds of millions of phone number in their registry. How do you think about creating opportunities to expand embedded voice, lower cost of communications, increase applicability of voice in new ways? Expansion and connectivity between voice and multimodal technologies? (15 times more likely to convert with human interaction).
Gary: Rich voice? Jonathan: what makes voice sales more effective is the real people. All this technology is about replicating face to face interactions. It’s not just the words, it’s the nuances, facial expression, the reasons we get on airplanes. Voice is lowest level, video is next step closer to experience of sitting next to each other. As quality gets higher, you get increasing value of return.
Gary: implications of infrastructure with regard to partners? Mike: Sometimes we need to get out of the way and allow the end points to negotiate.
Gary: voice has always been cloud-based, but now there’s more to the cloud. Frank: communications as a service, using (common) links to access cloud. Slight distinction: now all we need to do is enable an IP pipe. Jonathan: leveraging the IP model, worldwide network model. Allows new service providers to offer new services. Voice was regional, now you can reach anywhere in the world. Rodrigue: one of the ways of providing voice over other apps: use hardware, open source, infrastructure where costs are declining and redundancy is scalable. Mike: agreeing, legacy connectivity enables… Rodrigue: lots of affordable solutions available today. Jonathan: a lot of cloud service providers develop locally, value is in software.
Question: What drives this Voice 2.0 development? Suggested application stores, is there community and/or clearinghouse function, who is gatekeeper? Jonathan: There is no one answer. One interesting area is the web and different web apps, distribution channel is the browser. Other: mobile apps, e.g., iPhone and Apple App store. Frank: types of folks that we work with, we’re not opening an app store, working with communities of interest who may want to add voice as a feature to enrich their end user experience. Mike: many models of distribution including the web, branded carriers and app stores; other carriers distribute through their own channels.
Gary: regarding voice as an app: abilty of smartest guys to be surprised. For example, Apple may not have expected App Store to be as big as they are. Now others are building app stores. Rodrigue: takes several months or years to create new products, while on the web you can launch, analyze, relaunch. Innovation can be brought online on behalf of their users.
Gary: executives express concern about protecting their brand. How to make use of developer community? Jonathan: on the web, if you want to see how things work, try it, collect results, improve or add new features. That new model of massive “learn as you go” is a hallmark of success of the web. Voice 2.0 is about embracing the benefits of the web, contrast with traditional telecom models (long time to roll out new features, compared to adding IM to Facebook).
Gary: US telecom industry replaced 50% of their revenue model in the 1990s. I’m calling for them to replace 50% over next 10 years. (You’ve done it.) Jonathan: it comes down to embracing the developers, doesn’t give up value to user. Windows: huge group of 3rd party developers. Devices and networks open up, carriers become portals, to become operating system of voice 2.0. Frank: wireline revenue disappeared, new technologies can displace existing revenue models. Wireless can help, uses for voice increase abundance of opportunities (scalable networks).
Question: Future of mobile environment: Jonathan: hoping for open environment where providers like us can add value-added services. It’s one of the next frontiers: getting quality up is a big challenge and growth opportunity.
Gary: experience is limited where networks are not robust (really cooking). Jonathan: capacity changes the equation.
Question: how do you tackle voice 2.0, what are trends? Rodrigue: identifier (phone number) from voice calls enable new innovation. Jonathan: enterprises are seeing vast deployment in IP communications (video, presence, IM), but landlocked inside of enterprise. Need to create new generation of peering technologies, security, etc. Cisco just announced product that’s focused on this problem, using phone numbers as identifiers (VIPER), peering.
Joe Weinman: concern for stability, scalability and reliability (911 and safety-critical apps), what strategies for innovation of massive disruptions, dilemma of brand protection vs innovation? Frank: point where scalability, robustness and quality becomes critical, need to have a high quality services, how does that apply on telco level, how to you move a large organization into disruptive model without affecting customers, mission critical services, and existing revenue streams? It’s more challenging. Jonathan: questions that presumption: reliability can be obtained, available; data is more critical than voice link going down. IP pipe needs to be always up. Rodrigue: difference between telco and app provider: telco provides infrastructure, everything is redundant, critical lines. Have a different business, e.g. BT and Ribbit, play at another layer (other business units). Frank: you guys are providing the infrastructure, reliabilty from traditional means; disruption does not take away responsibility of network providers. Joe: Mixing apples and oranges. Access is a critical issue, but at application layer testing becomes a brand protection mechanism. Mike: in some places, telcos are tied by regulatory bodies, services like Skype do not replace 911. Frank: we’re all capable of creating opportunities for ourselves. Gary: would be interesting to do a study about when we think things will break, all critical apps are IP based. We rely on the connection, not our hardware or software that can be fixed by rebooting. Interesting what human beings are becoming accustomed to. Frank: we’re willing to accept certain things, like quality of wireless compared to wired.

1 comment:

Asaad Y. Alnajjar said...

Traditional Voice connection has evolved exponentially through the past several years and has reached a vast number of users. Mobility today is the most required element for the users and is in fact replacing the traditional wired connectivity.

Adding Video to the formula puts pressure on network operators and internet providers to accommodate huge bandwidth of data transmissions.

The next generation of users will utilize many IP applications to be served within the cloud including voice, data, video, GPS location, social status, local services and many applications that are expected to evolve and serve within the cloud.

We are at a convergence point where networks and providers need to exceed the users needs and be ready for the next generation of products.

Voice 2.0 is the key today for future communications.

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