I’m very excited to be the first to welcome you to the IMTC Blog! As a popular saying goes, it is hard to teach old dogs the new tricks. IMTC is 14 years old, so in the terms of age technology, it is quite an honorable age. A lot of young engineers today might even question the sheer existence of the standards IMTC was all about. However, IMTC as an organization is evolving, and we do “learn new tricks” and reinvent ourselves. We moved from H.320 to H.323, then to Packet Switched, SIP and 3G Mobile Video. We continue evolving further to IMS and Content Delivery.
IMTC managed to build an incredibly valuable collection of standardization-related documents for such technologies like JPEG (we call this collection a Historical Archive). While organization evolved, the core things IMTC is all about stayed the same – standards, interoperability and expertise.
IMTC always advocated multimedia communications technologies based on open standards. The focus of the IMTC work is Real Life Interoperability. With numerous Interoperability testing events, including the flagship annual SuperOp! event, IMTC is well known in the industry as leading authority on interoperability testing. And with IMTC Forums, we always bring together world experts in multimedia communications and standards development. And this combination of expertise and leadership makes me believe in exciting future prospects of IMTC.
I do like science fiction a lot. While driving today to work, I was thinking about predictions made in the books about the ways we will communicate. And one thing did strike me is that almost everything which was dreamed of, except may be “Beam me up, Scotty”, is the reality today. We can see and hear each other any time any place, we always know our exact location, our cars can park themselves…if you are a science fiction writer, what kind of communication technologies will you envision? Well, I’m sure, whatever we will come up with, IMTC will be around to make sure it is interoperable and to promote it.
And while the new technologies are being invented, IMTC is continuing on its current way, and inviting you to join in. Next week at VON in San Jose, IMTC puts together a panel of experts who will discuss the role of standards in the today’s communications world. More info is available here: http://www.von.com/schedule_gcs31168946047.html
Then in April, IMTC members will get together for annual SuperOp! 2007 event ( April 23-27, in Jesi, Italy), to test all the latest developments in SIP, IMS, 3G-324M, Packet Switched and other technologies. And of course we have more events planned throughout 2007 and beyond. Bottom line is very simple – if your company is not a member of IMTC yet, make it high priority to join IMTC and help shaping the future of multimedia communications!
Have a great interoperable communications day!
To Standard or not to Standard
March 1, 2007
By Kfir Pravda
So you gathered a bunch of telecom freaks, rented a basement, and saved some budget for cold Pizza. You are going to conquer the world with your amazing application that changes the way people consume media and communicate - forever. Chambers is going to beg you for a job, and the guys with the funny name from Estonia will have wished they stayed in P2P file sharing applications when you’re done.
Now is the time to get down and dirty with the little details - such as - are you trying to build a whole new ecosystem, or ride on the waves of others?
More specifically - are you going to create your own proprietary protocols, or base your product on open standards?
One of the biggest mistakes is to think that this is a technical question that an engineer should answer. The truth is that this question is mainly a business and strategic one. It pretty much depends on the way you see your future - do you want to be an ant in the grass, with a chance to become the next big thing that captures the market? Or would you rather ride on the back of the elephant, with a chance to play a major part in an industry created by others (with deeper pockets)?
I have to say that there are a lot of pros in going standard. First of all, you can reduce your development time by using the accumulated knowledge of the industry. The knowledge you can tap when working in a standard environment will always exceed any amount of engineers and technology experts you can possibly hire.
Second, in case your application is based on a Network Effect, like most of the communication products, you can rely on the marketing dollars of others to educate the market. Then, you just need to find a niche where you gain cash and exposure (in a way, the “crossing the chasm” concept).
Third, you might be able to shorten the time to exit. If you base your products on standards, a company which is interested in buying you will have a much easier life in integrating your products in their organization and product line (based on the assumption it also works on standard based products).
Well, this would have been a great post if those annoying guys from Skype didn’t come with their amazing application. You see - they did it all on their own, and at the end of the day - made my mother use VoIP - before any other SIP based product. They focused on user experience, and still managed to beat the rest of the VoIP techies to the desktop.
If so, maybe the standard world isn’t that great? First, it takes ages to draft standards. Then, the standard bodies are dominated by the big players, which make the life of the little guys harder - as they have different agendas then helping a young start-up to rise. And last but not least, it is not trivial to find a niche in a standard based industry, especially for a small company. When standards reduce technical competitive advantage, marketing dollars kicks in - an area in which a small company will usually loose to the big guys.
So, here is the question: If you would develop a new video conferencing application, the next VoIP system, or any other communication related product - what will be your choice? To Standard or Not To Standard?
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We are going to try and answer this question at the panel “My Mother uses Skype – Why Bother with Standards?” in the upcoming Spring VON, in San Jose, 19-22nd of March 2007. Among the panelists are Anatoli Levine, IMTC president and Sr. Director, Software Support at RADVISION, Håkon Dahle, CTO, TANDBERG, Chris Steck, Director of Technology Strategy, RealNetworks, and the brave Skype representative Jonathan Christensen.
This post by Kfir Pravda was originally published in Jeff Pulver’s blog
