April 26-30, 2010 – IMTC SuperOp! 2010,  IMTC premier annual Interoperability Testing event, will take place in Jesi (Ancona), Italy. During the event, IMTC members will get together to test various IP Video communications technologies, including Video-Conferencing over SIP and H.323, Packet Switch Streaming, 3G-324M mobile video-conferencing and more. Additionally, IMTC will held a Telepresence Interoperability workshop and kick-off meeting. The event is open to all IMTC members and non-members by invitation only. Additional information can be found at the registration site.

Update, the event is postponed to June 14-18:

” Dear Colleagues,

It is not an easy decision to make, but considering that the world just started very gradual recovery from the ash cloud travel disruption, IMTC SuperOp! Planning Committee decided that it will be reasonable and prudent to postpone the testing event until June 14-18. We truly believe that this is the best decision on behalf of all participants, as it will ensure that everybody will be able to safely get in and out of the event and will be able to focus on the testing and not on the travel headaches during the event. Additionally, we see this as an opportunity to may be bring additional companies to the event, especially those who couldn’t attend next week.

With this, there is a number of items to be taken care of:

1. To simplify the logistics, all attendees will be automatically rebooked with the hotel according to the new event dates (June 14 – 18). For example, for someone who was supposed to arrive on Sunday, April 25^th, the new arrival date with the hotel will be June 13. Of course the changes can be made as necessary by individual participants.
2. We are working on making the arrangements with the hotel to securely store all of the shipped equipment at no charge. Update will be provided on this later on.
3. We would like to encourage everyone to make new travel arrangements as soon as possible to ensure proper flights will be available.

Once again, we believe that this is the best decision for all the participants and IMTC members under current circumstances and we apologize for any inconvenience.

With best regards,

IMTC SuperOp! Planning Committee ”

How can you create an engaging, interactive, virtual conference, that will keep people interested, even though they are hundreds of miles away? This is the challenge that we at IMTC is facing this year, while planning its annual event.

IMTC’s Annual event is a meeting point of industry experts in the fields of video communication and interoperability. This year we decided to do a full day conference virtually, using available technologies. We are doing it because of three reasons:
1. This is the conference of the future: Though nothing can replace a handshake, virtual conferences are appealing from economic and efficiency perspective

2. This is what we do: IMTC is all about collaboration, unified communication, and content delivery. Virtual conference is best way to practice what we preach. We also would like to support our members by letting them showcase their technology in real life scenarios, and not only in booths and exhibitions.

3. This is the right thing in the current economic climate: With companies cutting their travel budgets, we should, as an industry organization, enable as many people possible to be a part of the experience. Virtual conference is a great solution for those who can’t travel, but still interested in the content or participants of the event. Also, in times when companies invest a lot in order to reduce their carbon footprint, virtual events are the way to go to help our planet a bit.

So what is the biggest challenge?

For me, the biggest challenge is not technical, but the experience :How can we prevent the conference from turning into a string of webinars or a list of audio presentations?How can we encourage people in the “audience” to interact with speakers and with each other?What should be the role of social platforms in the event?And how to make an extraordinary event, that pushes the boundaries of virtual conferences, with a shoe string budget?
Luckily, I am a part of a great team that is trying to make this project a reality, including Anatoli Levine from Radvision, Andrea Basso from AT&T, Shantanu Sarkar from Cisco, and many other volunteers.
Want to be a part of the effort to create the conference of the future? have  a relevant technology? Consider this as an open call for the industry and drop me an email at kfir AT Pravdam DOT com

Written By Anatoli Levine, IMTC President and Director, Product Management – Americas at RADVISION

Who heard of High Definition Video? Oh yes, thank you, so silly of me, of course everybody did – walk into any electronics store, and admire – clear, bright, juicy picture, hundreds of HDTVs of all sizes smiling at you, all at the same time. We like it and want to use it daily..
But what about audio? We had High Definition audio (remember what Hi-Fi stands for?) way back – in the times when you needed a few close friends giving you a hand with 25” TV being brought in the house, High Definition sound was abundantly available, so we did experience and we do know what good sound quality is.

So let’s connect the dots. This blog is about Internet Communications, also widely known as VoIP. On cell phones, we are used to crappy voice quality and dropped calls – and we don’t even get irritated after so many years of training. Regular telephony, delivered over analog or PSTN, is almost an apogee of goodness – at least it was until few years ago. Yes, yes, nowadays VoIP is reliably deployable and we can enjoy the same voice quality as in PSTN.
But is it time for the new experience? Enters HD Communications Summit.

When I talked to Dan Berninger a few months back, when he started planning of the Summit, my initial reaction to HD Voice idea was – why do we need it? Reliable calls – of course, but what’s wrong with PSTN quality? Well, as Dan rightfully noted, we don’t know what we don’t know – as we didn’t have a chance to experience HD Voice in our daily communications, we don’t know what we are missing.
So I’m looking forward to the Summit which will take place in New York City on May 21st with the hope to find some answers. Will my presentations to the customers more convincing, if delivered in HD Voice? What codecs should be used? What’s the economic rationale behind this technology, and how would we maintain interoperability in this new space? What will be the psychological effects of this new technology? I’m sure answers will be found in the lively discussions.
There is one more thing I’m really curious about – as today we need an option of answering calls with or without video (early morning ad hoc video call? brrrr, I’ll pass, thank you), will we need a new option to decide if we want answer a voice call in HD or not?

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Written By Anatoli Levine  

My CEO swears by Yahoo messenger. My R&D guys swear by Jabber. We have Cisco Call Manager connecting our offices in 15 countries and providing seamless voice connectivity. We use Polycom room systems in most of our conference room, however some of new Tandberg devices we connected just recently, also work quite well. We just equipped two of our boardrooms with brand new Telepresence systems from Telanetix. And our support department is really happy with their decision to use Skype to allow customers call in with questions for any place in the world. My Sales department is demanding that each sales director is always reachable on one and the same number, whether inside or outside of the corporate office, so I need to find an FMC solution for them. By now you probably figured that I’m in charge of information systems in my company, so I’m really the one who have to make this all work together. And hh yes, yesterday my friends got really upset with me – I didn’t have twitter installed on my brand corporate smartphone, so we couldn’t chat during the football game.

Sounds far fetching? I don’t think so. Today’s enterprise deploys myriad complex communications tools and technologies, all of which should function in concert. Does it always? No, not really, there is lots of work required and no success is guaranteed. What can help here? IMTC is proposing to define a reference architecture, a deployment blueprint which will define a minimum technological profile for the prospective equipment and recommend potential design of the network to make all the pieces to interoperate smoothly and successfully. Want to learn more about it? Come to VON.x in San Jose this week and participate in IMTC Panel “Reference Architectures for Content Delivery & Unified Communications” which will take place on Thursday, March 20 from 1:30pm – 2:45pm.

Do you remember the times when service providers didn’t think about issues such as being a pipe versus media company? When media consumers could easily identify which device is used for video and which for audio? When content creators had to buy equipment in millions and millions of dollars just to create one minute of moving picture – and distribute it?

Well, these times are long gone. Today, technology is disrupting the whole industry – and its value chain. Content creators are making new innovative media products for a fraction of the cost, and distribute it independently. Availability of high bandwidth across networks poses a dilemma to service provider regarding their role in the market place, and which infrastructure will support an unclear future. Users consume media in various shapes and forms – often with intrusive content protection methods that affect their rights.

IMTC Forum will discuss these issues and more, with thought leaders from companies such as Radvision, Cisco, AT&T, BEA, Avaya, RealNetworks, FWD, and independent content creators. Panels cover perspectives of each industry player – vendors, users, content creators, service providers, and the link between content delivery and unified communication.

The event, a Fall VON pre-conference, is taking place in Boston on the 29th of October. Come to say Hello, and be a part of a controversial and insightful conversation.

(Cross posted here)

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