Archive for May, 2004

Well, it was interesting to hear the views of my fellow panelists at VON Canada on the discussion of the Future of IP Communications. I particularly enjoyed hearing from Debbie Hindus who I believe has some great ideas and insight.

What I found to be even more interesting were the comments made by Skype CEO – Niklas Zennstrom during his panel presentation regarding proprietary preference over open standards in VoIP and IP Communications in general. I can’t imagine why anyone would prefer to tie themselves to one vendor for anything. As Scott Petrack from eDial noted in Q&A after the final panel presentation, “..look at the mess we are in with IM, Yahoo doesn’t talk to MSN and neither talk to ICQ..”. This all could have been avoided if a standard had been used. Standards are the key. Yes Skype has had 12 million downloads but how many active users do they have? Not more that a few hundred thousand is my guess. Nice enough guy, I just don’t believe in his mantra.

I would personally like to see a public debate on SIP versus Skype with myself and Niklas on the panel and put the theories in front of the people. If nothing else it might educate a few people.

All in all the show was a success. All the right players were there and I got to see my first Jays game with Trent from Shift Networks, thanks Trent! Go Jays Go!

Although none of our crew could make it to the event our software is in action at iLabs Interop in Las Vegas. The next interop event we will be attending is SIPop! at Supercomm in Chicago June 22-24. [booth 13840O]. Get a free pass to the Supercomm exhibit floor or register online and enter Priority Registration Code “XTEN”.