Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Today, Digium, creator and primary developer of Asterisk, the leading open source telephony platform will be making a major announcement at Astricon later today. Digium hinted to me that a major announcement would be made at Astricon when I visited their Huntsville, Alabama headquarters in August.

I tried to find out what the news will be, but alas Digium couldn’t tell me. So I thought it would be fun to prognosticate what this deal could be.

1) Digium’s Switchvox will be distributed by Dell, which currently carries another Asterisk competitor, Fonality.

2) Digium will be acquired by Adtran, an avid supporter of Digium in the past.

3) HP seeing that competitor Dell is offering IP-PBXs (i.e. Fonality and Nortel) will partner with Digium to offer Digium’s line of IP-PBXs and telephony hardware

4) Now that Adtran, a financial supporter of Digium, offers their own line of IP phones, including the IP706 and IP712, perhaps Digium will offer a bundled IP-PBX package that includes Switchvox and a few Adtran IP phones.

5) Digium will announce this whole open source thing is nonsense, there’s no money in it, and they’re announcing that they are making Asterisk closed source effective immediately. Ok, maybe in some alternate universe!

6) CDW, a major distributor, will be carrying and distributing Digium’s products.

Ok, so what’s your guess? Costco? And remember the clock is ticking. The announcement could be made at any moment.

Tags: Adtran, alabama, Astricon, Digium, fonality, Huntsville, ip-pbx, IP706, IP712, voip

Related Entries
• Digium Headquarters Tour -
  Aug 26, 2008
• Avaya #1 VoIP PBX Vendor? -
  Aug 21, 2007
• Digium Acquires Astricon -
  Jul 11, 2007
• Digium podcast of Mark Spencer’s new role -
  Jan 30, 2007
• HUD 3.0 for trixbox CE and any other Asterisk IP-PBX! -
  Sep 23, 2008
• ITEXPO West 2008 a Resounding Success -
  Sep 18, 2008
• Internet Telephony Expo Preview -
  Sep 10, 2008
• Interviews with Top 60 VoIP Movers and Shakers… -
  Sep 05, 2008
• Fonality’s trixbox Pro Unified Agent Edition integrates with Salesforce.com -
  Sep 05, 2008
• Fonality Lands $12M Financing Round from Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) -
  Sep 04, 2008

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Digium Major Announcement - what can it be?

Copyright VoIP & Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

I discovered two Microsoft job postings several weeks ago and have been meaning to blog the discovery that Microsoft Office Communication Server ̶ will ship in December of this year. One is for ’Software Development Engineer in Test - MBD - RTC’ and the other for ‘Lead Software Develpment Engineer in Test - Office Communications Server’. One of the job posting says:

“The Office Communications Server team is starting a new deployment/management/administration team at Beijing. The Office Communications Server product team must deliver both an on-premise version of the Server as well as offering a hosted Service for Small and Medium Businesses. The test lead needs to understand current infrastructure (MMC, Setup.Exe, MOM, etc.) to help out in next release called wave13 due to ship in December 2008.

As the team ramps up in MBD China, the team gain experience in these areas and can form opinions/ideas as to how best to architect a new solution for the future. The test lead will work with PMs and Devs to identify scenarios, architect and build a new solution for both on premise and hosted offerings due to release in Q2 2010 for deployment/administration/monitoring. The new team would to build a new infrastructure that is conducive to hosted environments.

Examples include: web based flavor of management tools, a topology builder that can visually display a topology and once the solution/topology ‘compiles′, settings can be rolled out across the server farm (as opposed to admin’s having to run setup.exe on every machine out there). Monitoring also needs to be addressed in such a way that the server or service can be somewhat self correcting when alerts fire notifying administrators of a problem.

Key Areas of Responsibility:
Attract, Lead, Train, mentor, grow, and retain SDET talent at all levels
Work closely with the program management and development teams to drive quality through design and implementation
Participate in product spec reviews, design, triage, scheduling, and other product development process
Develop comprehensive test plans assuring the overall quality of the project, including functionality, security, performance and scalability
Hands-on writing test cases and test code
Lead the SDET team in implementation of a scalable, efficient test automation strategy
Work closely with program management and development teams to ensure appropriate quality metrics and goals are defined and tracked throughout the project lifecycle
Drive quality criteria for release and signoff
Work with other SDET leads and managers to ensure engineering excellence initiatives are driven effectively across the Commerce Platform Group.”

Apparently, Beijing, China will host some core Microsoft OCS 2007 ̶ folks instead of Redmond, Washington in the U.S. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Seems like American IT jobs are constantly being outsourced. But I guess it’s a global economy and I’m certainly not for protectionism either. Just very sad that IT jobs are outsourced because labor costs are less expensive than in the U.S.

One very fascinating part of this job posting is where it says, “architect and build a new solution for both on premise and hosted offerings due to release in Q2 2010 for deployment/administration/monitoring. The new team would to build a new infrastructure that is conducive to hosted environments.“

It would appear Microsoft wants to take OCS 2007 into hosted environments by 2010. Many service providers offer very successful hosted Exchange 2007 services, so offering hosted unified communications (IM, VoIP, video, collaboration, etc.) via a hosted OCS 2007 offering is a natural progression. Hosted OCS 2007 is a much higher value proposition than hosted Exchange email services and could be a boon to service providers. One advantage of a hosted OCS 2007 offering is that it removes the complexities of deploying OCS 2007 in the enterprise.

So look for a hosted OCS offering in 2010. You heard it here first!

Tags: Exchange 2007, hosted, hosted communications, microsoft, OCS 2007, OCS 2007 ̶, unified communications, voip

Related Entries
• Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 (next release) to be 64-bit Only -
  Aug 29, 2008
• Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Rumors -
  May 15, 2008
• Cisco and Microsoft in Clash of the UC Titans -
  Apr 24, 2008
• Microsoft &amp Aspect Software Partner on Unified Communications -
  Mar 18, 2008
• Voice Mobility UCN Vmerge takes on Microsoft OCS -
  Feb 13, 2008
• SAP Duet to leverage Microsoft OCS 2007 -
  Oct 16, 2007
• Rich Liveblogging Microsoft UC Launch -
  Oct 16, 2007
• Dell Gets into VoIP Game with OCS 2007 -
  Oct 16, 2007
• Microsoft OCS 2007 Review -
  Oct 16, 2007
• NetIQ AppManager for Microsoft Office Communications Server -
  Sep 10, 2008

TrackBacks
| Comments | Tag with del.icio.us | VoIP & Gadgets Blog Home | Permalink: Microsoft Office Communication Server ̶ ships in December plus Hosted OCS Coming

Copyright VoIP &amp Gadgets Blog

Original post by nafiz

Home phone systems haven’t kept up with the latest innovations in mobile handsets, such as Internet access, streaming video, camera, etc. Considering many people are now choosing VoIP providers such as Vonage, PackeҐ, Skype, etc. which already sit on the Internet, wouldn’t it make sense to have more advanced home phone systems? Where is Phone 2.0 for the home?

In fact, most VoIP providers simply use an analog telephony adapter (ATA) that lets you use your home analog cordless phone system. If you think about it, that’s pretty kludgy. You’re using an analog phone system on a digital IP network. Not only do you lose voice quality (wideband codec), but you also lose advanced functionality. Though I should point out that Packet8 has made strides in offering advanced phones that are not analog, such as the Packet8 Videophone. They also offer the Packet8 Tango, which is still analog, but ads videoconferencing, digital picture frame on the LCD, and other functionality.

That said, wouldn’t you expect AT&T with their Uverse triple play (voice, video, data) service and Verizon with their FiOS triple play service to bundle advanced phones with their $80+/month service offerings? Well, John Sculley, former Apple CEO has visions for advanced home phone systems using OpenFrame created by OpenPeak. The OpenFrame devices are based on Freescale MX31 processors with two 600-MHz ARḟ chips and a proof of concept phone was developed that emulates the Apple iPhone interface.

Features like view TV schedules, send SMS, streaming video, music, web surfing, and more are possible. The phones will be heavily subsidized phones and could be shipping out in four or five months direct from the carriers.

OpenFrame is based on an "open" platform, using a custom hacked Linux kernel, however all of the software above the kernel is closed and proprietary - until the hackers hack it of course. OpenPeak will offer a full API for developing third-party apps, but only carriers need apply, not end-users. I wonder if the cordless handset depicted in the pictures is WiFi or DECT 6.0?

Update: I neglected to mention Rich’s blog post from yesterday (Comcast 2.0), which reiterates my call for home "Phone 2.0" devices. Go check it out.

Tags: analog, Apple iPhone, DECT 6.0, home phone system, OpenFrame, OpenPeak, Packet8, phone, Vonage

Original post by Eric

Want to see what AMD is up against come Q1? You′re looking at it, the 3.2GHz, quad-core, QX9770 Core 2 Extreme processor from Intel. Like Intel’s current headliner — the QX9650 — we′re talking 45-nm Yorkfield class silicon here with 1600Hz front side bus and 12MB L2 cache. HotHardware got their hands on the proc a bit early and call it the fastest quad-core processor they’ve ever tested, “bar none.” Generally speaking, they found it to be about 5 - 8% faster than the QX9650. As you can see from the graph up there, it easily smokes the $300 Phenom 9700 and the $350 2.6GHz Phenom 9900 (both due in Q1) likely won’t fare much better. Just keep in mind that Intel’s top-performer will cost you around $1,200 by the time it pops in Q1. Somehow, we don’t think that’s going dissuade any Crysis gamers out there.

&nbsp

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Desktops

Just like we heard, AMD has gone live with Phenom. With it, we′ve got an entire new platform, codenamed “Spider.” The Spider PC platform combines AMD Phenom quad-core processors, ATI Radeon HD 3800 series graphics, and AMD 7-series chipsets with CrossFireX and AMD OverDrive software for what AMD calls the “Ultimate visual Experience.” That’s the hype. Early reviews, however, are pretty much “underwhelmed” by the launch. Oh, the HD 3800 cards are ok (for mid-range graphics) and the 7-series chipset “is in good shape,” but AMD needs to roll-on those clock speeds beyond the 2.2GHz Phenom 9500 ($251), 2.3GHz Phenom 9600 ($283) and 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz Phenon 9700 and 9900 (available in Q1 2008 for $300 and $350, respectively), and do it quick, if they hope to pull ahead of Intel’s quad-core offerings. Unfortunately, that doesn′t seem likely.

Read — AMD Spider press release

Read — PC Perspective benchmark
Read — HotHardware benchmark

 

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Original post by Thomas Ricker