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Weekly Industry News – TIP, Polycom, Skype, Facebook

February 20, 2011 By Itzhak Wolkowicz Leave a Comment

Polycom announce support for TIP
Polycom Inc. announced future support for the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol:
IMTC TIP protocol was developed by Cisco to enable multiscreen interoperability with multi-vendor Telepresence systems. Polycom MCU – “UC Intelligent Core Platform” will support TIP from Q2 2011.
More about TIP in our special TIP Hub : http://blog.imtc.org/index.php/tip

Tip Webinar Recording
For those of you that missed the first Telepresence Interoperability Protocol Webinar, here is the full recording:


We thank David Benham from Cisco,  for the help with the editing and distribution.

Skype Easter-egg allows easy setup of multi-party calls
Skype hidden feature creates URL links for Multi-Party calls invitations – In order to create a URL link for a multi-party call, type “/” from the group chat window. The result will be a URL link directing to the call – for more details, check VoiceOnTheWeb Article.

Telstra CTO calls Femtocell ‘A Dumb Idea”
In Mobile World Congress 2011, Hugh Bradlaw talked about his views on Femtocells – “Femtocells — I usually classify these in the dumb-idea-of-the-week category.” He said that Femtocells are an ‘Admission of Defeat’ and that LTE isn’t the end of all capacity problems – QOS is.

Facebook on SIM?
While smartphones slowly becoming a norm for cellular phones, less capable devices are still the most common form – And while facebook have about 500million user-base, less than half of it has smartphones that enable web/application access to facebook.
Gemalto, the world largest SIM manafucture, announced the development of a SIM facebook client, that will support just about every type of sim-based mobile phone.
Interactions with Facebook (statuses, friend requests, etc.) will be sent as Class 2 SMS data. Read more about it at 3G4G Blog.

About the writer: Itzhak Wolkowicz
Filed Under: Industry News, Interoperability, Technology insight, Telepresence Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

CTO Technology Session – Interoperability & UC Event

February 15, 2011 By IMTC 1 Comment

Register Here

IMTC has scheduled its first ever CTO Technology Session on March 8-9, 2011 at the AT&T Offices in Middletown, New Jersey. This is a forward looking session that will provide you will analyst information of the key technologies, markets and growth rates for UC, Video and Collaboration solutions. It is also intended, that the group will look at how all these technologies come together with a seamless, interoperable solution.

Historically IMTC has been at the center of communication industry technology changes as noted by our work with H.323, H.264, SIP Parity, IMS, T120, H.320 and PSS, 3G-324M, and other profiles for standard telephony protocols. Communications industry is changing rapidly, and IMTC is helping its members to embrace the change.

In addition to Keynote Speakers from AT&T, Cisco and Polycom, below is a list of confirmed speakers:

Confirmed Speakers:

  • Ronald Gruia, Principal Analyst ~ Frost & Sullivan
  • Phil Karcher, Principal Analyst ~ Forrester Research
  • Ginger Arnold, Manager, LMAC IT Infrastructure & Operations ~ Liberty Mutual
  • Russ Cary, Senior IT Manager ~ SAS Global Communications Services
  • Phil Edholm, VP Technology Strategy & Innovation ~ Avaya
  • Casey King, CTO ~ LifeSize  Communications

The IMTC is pleased to invite all IMTC member companies to this FREE event.  We’ll strive to provide you with information and answers to the following questions:

1. What is the current state of the communications industry?

2. What defines video communications today (Skype, Google, Apple, H.323 and SIP) and how it plays into Unified Communications?

3. How do these various video and unified communication solutions come together into a seamless cloud or enterprise implementation?

4. Where should your company spend its resources in order to solve our customers key pain points?

5. What are the key enterprise customer use cases?

6. Where do telepresence solutions fit?

7. What do I need to know about SVC? How does it impact the above?

8. What are the key dependencies impeding interoperability between equipment, network and cloud services?

9. What is the role of devices such as tablets and smart phones in the unified communication mix and specifically with video communications and how do they affect enterprise implementations?

Together with our member companies, the IMTC would like to build a roadmap of key industry technology initiatives to be addressed in order for the seamless communications cloud to work.

This IMTC event is closed to only IMTC member companies. You can send as many representatives from a member company as you like, however we encourage you to invite senior product management and CTO types of individuals.

Venue:

AT&T Offices
200 Laurel Avenue South
Middletown, New Jersey 07748

Closest Airport:

EWR (Newark)

Nearby Hotels:

http://www.research.att.com/evergreen/about_us/middletown_hotels.html

Register Here:
http://www.regonline.com/imtcctoroundtable

About the writer: IMTC
Filed Under: Events, IMTC News, Interoperability, Technology insight, Telepresence, Unified Communication Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

News Summary – TIP, Cisco, CES and more

January 27, 2011 By Itzhak Wolkowicz Leave a Comment

TIP Webinar
A re-run of the first Telepresence Interoperability Protocol webinar will be held today (27 JAN) at 10:00am eastern (GTM-5).
For Login details/info – Please mail tip_infor@imtc.org.

Vidyo @ CES 2011
Vidyo continues with it’s Home video-conferencing vision and shows HD multipoint video-conference between an iPad, iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Nexus S and a Mac.
Vidyo solutions aimed to bring video-conferencing anywhere – Interoperability between Telepresence/HDVC systems to mobile devices can benefit remote home workers for example.
It’s interesting to note that Cisco Umi, which is a great enabler for home Telepresence (at least on the technology/affordability aspect) – still can’t inter-op with Cisco’s professional video-conferencing/Telepresence equipment.
The different approaches to the term “Home Telepresence” are indeed interesting.


Vidyo Videoconferecing demonstation @ CES 2011


FaceFlow – In-browser Group Conferencing
TMCnet recently posted an article about “FaceFlow”, a small startup by a 21 years old Canadian student named Dany Pelletier.
FaceFlow (with a name non-surprisingly similar to Apple’s Facetime) leverage the Flash Player 10.1 support for RTMFP Groups and enable 3 user free video group calling straight from your browser.

Cisco Cius tablet to go live with Verizon 4G service
Mike Dolan from FierceVoIP reports that Cisco Cius will be launching on Verizon network in Spring 2011. Verizon 4G network was recently launched at December 2010 and is expected for nationwide coverage by 2013.

VoLTE ready (Based on VoLGA) Providers
In the great blog WirelessMoves by Martin Sauter, Martin talks about one entrance berrier for LTE smartphones and that’s VoLTE availability.

Cisco Reinventing TV?
CES 2011 brought us many innovations, one of them is the Cisco Videoscape – what Cisco calls “A service provider solution” for the future of the TV. Cisco Videoscape is a delivery platform for service providers and a set-top box for the consumers.
Cisco hopes to attract ISPs with both hardware/software solutions: Videoscape Media Suite and the Cisco Conductor for Videoscape and the consumer soltutions: The Videoscape media gateway, Videoscape IP set-top box and Videscape software clients.
Videoscape is Cisco’s attempt of unifying video consumption at home – making it simple and accessible. At the heart of the system is the media gateway – it will function as a routing and multimedia device and allow the consumer to watch Video and Web content on any connected network device (TV, PC, mobile device). Read More at our Videoscape Post.

About the writer: Itzhak Wolkowicz
Filed Under: Industry News, Technology insight, Unified Communication Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Cisco – Reinventing TV?

January 20, 2011 By Itzhak Wolkowicz Leave a Comment

Cisco Reinventing TV?
CES 2011 brought us many innovations; one of them is the Cisco Videoscape – A “service provider solution” for the future of the TV.


Cisco Videoscape is a delivery platform for service providers and a set-top box/media gateway for the consumers.
Cisco hopes to attract service providers with both hardware/software solutions:
Videoscape Media Suite and the Cisco Conductor for Videoscape and the consumer solutions: The Videoscape media gateway, Videoscape IP set-top box and Videscape software clients.
The goal is to unify video consumption at home – making it simple and accessible. At the heart of the system is the media gateway – it will function as a routing and multimedia device and  allow the consumer to watch Video and Web content on any connected network device (TV, PC, mobile device). TV connectivity will be done with the set-top box, and Videoscape will also support Umi – Cisco’s Home Telepresence system.
When it comes to set-top IPTV boxes, it seems that Cisco is entering quite a crowded market – However its sheer marketing power and a complete product range might just do the trick.

But what makes it differ from current offerings by competitors (Google TV for example)?
1) It’s a complete platform (Media gateway AND a TV set-top box).
2) Unlike Google, Cisco is aiming for the ISPs – and maybe, unlike Google, they are more of a pipe rather than a potential threat to the Service/Content Providers themselves.

It’s pretty obvious that the key to the success of Videscape is the business benefits it will bring the service providers – Cisco talks about targeted ads, currently not available with today’s TV broadcasts.
By placing interactive web content next to TV streams and targeting specific audience Videoscape can help bring additional benefits to the current market.
As service providers relay on the “old” TV model and traditional media advertising - Videoscape success depends somehow on the decline of the traditional TV business, and that might take some time.

It seems  that the latest batch of Cisco products are driven by a long term strategy, as the increased traffic by video products can also boost networking products  - a major market for Cisco.
Increased adoption of video-centric consumer devices will boost online traffic, Cisco estimates that Global IP traffic will quadruple from 2009 to 2014 – and Video playing a major part in it.
Videoscape joins the lines of Cisco Umi and the recently acquired Flip cameras for yet an additional move into the home-video market.
While “reinventing TV” seems like a bold statement, things does look interesting for Cisco and the IPTV market as a whole.

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About the writer: Itzhak Wolkowicz
Filed Under: Industry News, Technology insight Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

IMTC 2010, A year summary

January 6, 2011 By Itzhak Wolkowicz Leave a Comment

It’s been a great year for IMTC and the Telecom Industry as a whole, some of our 2010 highlights Were:

* IMTC 2025 Global Virtual Conference was held in April 7th-8th using Radvision’s Scopia and lifestream platforms for broadcast. In the 2025 event we looked into the question – “How will your living room look like in the year 2025?” The two day event was a phenomenal success and attracted hundreds of viewers and many participants from major companies in the Telecom and Video conferencing fields (Cisco, Polycom, Radvision, NXP, PV and more). All the Videos from the 2025 event are available in our Youtube page and Here.

* SuperOP! 2010 - The annual industry flagship interoperability testing event, was highly successful and brought together more than 50 engineers from 14 companies from around the world. IMTC president Anatoli Levine wrote about it: “SuperConnect 2010, consisting of about 35 endpoints and servers, including a 3-screen telepresence system, took about 37 minutes from start to finish, with brilliant High Definition Video shining all over the room”.

* IMTC SIP Parity AG participated in SIPit27 Event – This year event was focused mainly on Video Interoperability, rather than voice. You can read the event summary Here.

* IMTC took ownership of the Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) protocol and established a new TIP Activity Group.  Read the TIP section for more details or send an email to TIP_info@imtc.org.

* IMTC First TIP Webinar was held at December 08. We had connectivity problems that prevented some of the speakers and registered users to participate – We apologize for that and will offer recordings of the event.
Additional TIP events are planned – further updates will be announced via our blog.

* IMTC Annual Meeting was held in November 3, 2010.  IMTC had a joint panel on the future of video with speakers from IMTC, UCIF and SIP Forum.

* IMTC President, Anatoli Levin Participated at AppTime Conference in LA, at the 4GWE/ITExpo event. Anatoli was also interviewed by Erin Monda for TMCNET 4GWE news.

* IMTC IMS AG leader and BoD member, Andrea Basso, participated at the 3G00/ETSI IMS November 2010 workshop on Implementation, Deployment and Testing.

We are looking forwards into 2011 events and activities – Stay Tuned!

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About the writer: Itzhak Wolkowicz
Filed Under: 3G-324M, IMS, IMTC News, Interoperability, SIP, Technology insight, Telepresence, Unified Communication Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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