Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Third Party Voice Control

There are enough mechanisms and more ( like JTAPI, TAPI) etc which allow you to write applications that can do third party call control. My question is, are there mechanisms to do third party voice control?

Let's say that there are two ip phones which are controlled by your centralized IP PBX. Now I can write applications that can do a makecall(), answercall() etc on these two phones. But media will be to/from these phones. What I want to do is makecall() from one phone, but have the media terminated somewhere else.

I don't want to connect and then do a transfer, that would be a round-about way. But having said that, if there are no other ways to do it, then this would be the way to take. Let's come to the scenario where this would be useful ( would this be the next killer app?)

Let's say I have a dual-mode mobile phone with wifi and let's say that termination to a TDM line ( mobile/landline) is cheaper or has better quality through the GSM network. Or it could be as simple as I have way too much free minutes available during the weekend. Now, it is obvious I would be carrying the phone all the time. What if my wife is sitting somewhere else and wants to call somebody through my mobile GSM connection? Assuming she is connected on the Net, she should be able to reach the wifi enabled side of my phone and should be able to make a call out through the GSM world. But the media coming in should go to the softphone she has in her desktop/laptop rather than to the mobile I have.

The media will take the following route. Laptop->wifi side of mobile->GSM network->end user and vice-versa. This is more like a three party conferencing, only thing me sitting in the middle am not doing it, rather the third party is doing it. This would be the reason why I am looking for ways to do third party Voice control.

You don't need things like Skypeout minutes and you don't have to be with the phone to make/receive calls. Say, I forgot to carry my phone. No worries, all I need is an internet connection and I can still use my phone. Something like a pc-anywhere on my mobile phone, only simpler and easier.

Cisco Microsoft Collaboration

I was talking with one of the thought leaders/industry observer in the Unified Communication space and he came up with an interesting theory as to what areas Cisco and Microsoft can collaborate.

As you might already know, last week Steve Balmer and John Chambers decided to set aside differences, as they call it, "for the better good" ( Read "destroy Asterisk") and work more closely so that they can offer meaningful solutions to the end customer. Based on the discussion I had with the gentleman mentioned above, it became pretty evident that Speech recognition is one such area where they most probably would work together.

Microsoft had a pretty vibrant Speech Recognition development team until one of the senior guys Kai-Fu Lee defected to the other side (Google). People who had been following that story would know of the legal battle that took place between Google and Microsoft when Lee left Microsoft. What is not commonly known though is that Lee was the chief evangelist of the Speech Recognition practice in Microsoft and most of the innovations in MS-Speech was his brain-children.So Microsoft kind of lost steam when he quit. They were already way behind market leader Nuance and this did not help their case. But it looks like they have started to become an active force in this domain. From what I hear, some releases are on the way.

Now about Cisco. Cisco has been way behind in the contact center business and even way behind when it comes to self service technologies ( IVR). Their product suite that includes IP IVR and CVP largely depend on Nuance for the speech recognition platform and licenses. So let's say a customer wants Cisco CVP with speech recognition. He ends up paying a lot for Nuance licenses and since there is nobody really to challenge Nuance's position, they have been having a free ride so far.

This is where Cisco and Microsoft could get together. Cisco, like a lot of other Microsoft products, could OEM MS speech and include it as part of its platform. What MS speech lacks today is credibility/customer base and if Cisco can OEM it, it would be a good start for Microsoft. It would help Cisco because the cost to the customer is less and a better value proposition. If Steve and John are going to put their money where their money is, Speech technology would be a good place to start!!!

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Most Companies Don't Understand Call Center Business.

It has become the norm these days that if you are a player in the IP communication space, you think it is just a natural progression to cater to the Call Center needs. And looks like Skype is no exception. Let me get this out on the onset. IP Telephony is NOT the same as IP Contact Center. If you have agents on IP phones (be it Skype/Cisco phones) it does NOT mean you have a contact center solution on IP.

I don't blame companies that think "Hey, I have a softphone that can do voice/chat. I think I have a call center solution". Why, because I used to think that too in my previous assignments. Now that I am with a predominantly focussed Call Center solutions provider I understand that there is a vast difference between me making a VoIP call and an agent doing the same.

This is how the progression should be. Companies that have vast expertise in Call Center technolgies ( be it the traditional TDM ACDs/IVRs) must lead the way and adopt IP as their underlying platform not the other way around, where IP companies start providing contact center solutions. The problem with the latter is that, they are just "emulating" the older solutions and as far as I can see there is no real innovation.

Yes, Presence based ACD ( i.e an agent transfers the call to the subject matter expert based on the expert's availability) is something only an IP solution can offer and I am sure this was based on the presence model that IMs used to offer, but still these applications are the exceptions rather than the norms. For example lets take Cisco's ICM ( Cisco's ACD). What does it do that an Avaya AES or AIC does not do from a feature set point of view? Answer is nothing. So where is the innovation?

Now coming to what triggered me to write this post. In the news-item mentioned above, Skype is offering live-chat to customers. OK, so what is so great about that? Who does not give that? What is so "intelligent' about that? The customer gets to speak to the subject matter expert. Again, so what? It also says that Skype will provide configurations to switch between Audio/Chat windows. That shows how primitive the thinking is. Have Skype's people ever gone into a Call Center and had a chat with the floor managers? The first thing they want is an unified screen. Any novice will tell you that. What are the integration touch points that Skype provides? Do they have connectors to MS CRM, Siebel CRM? Or are they going to provide even more "configurations" to switch between three windows!!!!

Enterprise Telephony will soon merge into Contact Center Telephony. I envision that happening in the future. But not today and the people who would need to drive it are the experts and not the novices.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Buzzworks & SearchtoPhone : Same Apps in two different parts of the world

I know what Buzzworks are trying to do, since they demoed their product in Proto.in. I have been intending to write more on their product but never got around to it. Today GigaOm has a piece on a company called SearchtoPhone and once I read what they are upto, I thought it was time I wrote about Buzzworks.

Basically, this is Buzzwork's premise. You want to reach one of your neighbourhood services but you don't know whom to call. So you call up a number and do a voice search ( through open source speech recognition) and the centralized software searches for the most likely candidate and calls them up for you and you get to talk to the guy whose service you want to use. But from what I see, SearchtoPhone is more or less similar except for one bit that the author neatly summarizes

Using voice recognition and knowledge of your location, Search-To-Phone determines merchants or service providers who might be able to help. These businesses receive calls from Search-To-Phone and listen to your recorded job request, decide if they want to talk to you further, and place a call to you via Search-To-Phone. Your phone number remains private.

Interesting to see two companies in entirely different parts of the world coming up with similar ideas at the same time. Had they been big companies, this is when the litigation would start :) Of the two, SearchtoPhone has a slighter edge because the caller maintains his privacy. Having said that, it shouldn't be too long for Buzzworks to incorporate this feature as well.

I don't know about what powers SearchToPhone's software. But in case of Buzzworks it is open source all the way ( Asterisk, openSER and oopen source Voice recognition software). So I am going to take an educated guess that Buzzworks would be the cheaper solution.

The problems I see either of them facing is that they have to work with the service providers and that requires lot of time and patience. On the technology front, I am not a big fan of Voice recognition software ( yes, that includes leader Nuance as well) and the accuracy is not something I would bet my life on. Buzzworks would have more problems because they are powered by open source ( not sure how stable that would be) and secondly, the dialects/languages in India are so much and I would be surprised if accuracy is more than 20%.

Two companies that I surely will be following for the next few months.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Irony : India fights China using the Chinese Model

Rumours have been flying around on this for sometime now but has just been made official. DoT ( The Department of Telecom) is planning to setup a Testing and Certification wing which will monitor security compliances to which all telecom operators in India have to comply by. The first rollout of these compliances will be setup as early as early 2009. Whether you are a private or a public operator you would need to pass these security tests to operate in India. This recommendation closely resembles the Chinese model where operators/equipment vendors have to adhere to strict norms. China's Information Technology Certification Centre enforces these norms.

The government can say this is to prevent "all" hardware/network vendors from accessing their systems through back door channels. But the bottom-line is, it is to prevent the Chinese vendors from doing this. They are not concerned about Alcatels or Cisco's of the world. They are more worried about the Huaweis of the world which has the Chinese government's backing. China, a rising power, has a lot of countries nervous ( including India) and they believe China might use the back-door channels to cripple Communications in case of conflict. The release says

DoT is concerned about the advent of 'new names' in the equipment vendor space which are of 'suspect origin', but extremely competitive in cost with regard to Telecom tenders.

This is specifically targetted at Huawei. What Huawei typically does is, off loads the network/communication gears to the Telecom provider for literally no cost and has an agreement that the Telecom provider can pay in say 10/20 years. This obviously has caught the attention of the Indian government and the security compliance is just a beginning. I foresee more stringent laws coming.

The compliance would include removing any inbuilt remote diagnostic facility in the equipment. This would be a major blow for Product companies that are planning to build NOCs ( Network Operating Centres) to monitor their products across locations. This would increase the cost of support, since resources have to be 'on-site' throughout.

These extra tests and support would mean more money spent and it remains to be seen who is going to take the brunt. It is very unlikely that the equipment vendors are going to take the hit, and I say this because the equipments are already given to these Telecom vendors at throw away prices. I know of a case where one major networking giant had to give an eighty percent discount on its products to convince one major Telecom provider in India to buy it. So they will not bear the brunt. And we know the Telcos never take the hit ( Is it just me, or are they turning to be the next-gen Oil Companies?). So it might be the end consumer who might be forced to shell out more.

It needs to be seen how badly the consumer will be hit. On the brighter side though, if you are in the Telecom testing space, this is bonanza time :) Interesting times ahead!!!

Sunday, August 12, 2007

In-Flight VoIP

Russell Shaw reports that maverick Sir Richard Branson might not be too averse to having VoIP in Virgin Atlantic/American flights.

And the considerate man also said, if it is introduced, it is quite likely it would be restricted to the last couple of rows to preserve other people's privacy. While we are it, can we restrict children to the last couple of rows as well :)

Friday, August 10, 2007

TPG Meeting

As mentioned before the Telecom Professionals Group met yesterday in Cream Center ( a nice little place on Chamiers road,Chennai). This was more of a goal setting meeting than a technology meeting ( Yup, Techies can try their hand at something other than nerd talk as well :) ).

The meeting revolved around what we as a group are trying to achieve out here and how do we get there. As the first step, we are opening up our group to include more people interested in Telecom. You could be a student, you could be a professional in any other field. But if you feel you want to know more about Telecom and you want to discuss things with like-minded people, you are welcome to join. There is no membership fee as of now and all you need to come with is an inquisitive mind.

It was decided that some of us are going to blog at our TPG site on a more regular basis. People from various walks of Telecom are going to be blogging there and that is one site you would need to bookmark. Ram is in the process of creating accounts for some of us, and you can expect feverish activity on the site from early next week.

Also, we are planning to have one of us ( or somebody from outside) give a tech talk on Telecom in the next meeting and we are planning to make this a regular feature in our meets. This is something I am looking forward too and I will keep you all informed as to who the speaker in the next meeting is going to be.

These are some of initial goals we have set for ourselves and if this interests you can register to this group here.

iLocus Top 10.

As most of you would be aware, iLocus is running a series on the Top 10 that established VoIP. In the recent issue they have asked the readers to post their comments on who would you think be the 10th on the list. Go ahead and leave your comments there.

For me it has to be one from the list I compiled few months ago. Anybody else, I wouldn't be too pleased. It is time these people/organization get their dues

2G spectrum for Sale?

Economic Times reports that Ministry of Finance ( hopefully with the consent of Ministry of Telecom) is pushing for the sale of 2G spectrum. What they are recommending is having a fixed fee model or an auction system through which the operators can bid for the spectrum.

The finance ministry hopes that this would enable effective utilization of resources. The operators, since they are paying for this, would pursue new technologies or improve existing ones since they have to get an RoI. This is the thinking of the ministry of finance. As of today, the operators pay an entry fee for 2G, but subsequent allotment of resources is free. A committee has been set to price the spectrum and the result of this will be out soon.

The CDMA guys are the major proponents of this because they feel cheated since the licensing model entitles GSM operators 6.25 MHz of free 2G whereas the CDMA guys get only 5 Mhz. The next few weeks ( till the committe comes out with its recommendation) are going to be quite interesting and it remains to be seen whether Reliance ( CDMA provider) can uses its political clout to get this done.

Have you Registered for the DNC campaign?

Though there are a whole lot of issues where CDMA and GSM operators in India don't see eye to eye, one thing they plan to colloborate on is to run a campaign to educate their subscribers on the DNC ( Do Not Call) registry. Am I the only one to see the irony here? They are calling people to let them know they won't be called if they register for DNC :)

This registry is supposed to become active in September ( I am a little skeptical of the date because I first heard that it was going to be active as early as April). Call Centers that use Outbound Dialers need to start looking at this database. I know for a fact that Cisco's Outbound solution caters to this. As a matter of fact, I think any Dialer company that has sold its product in North America would already have this. The companies that might be affected are the ones that cater to just the Indian market ( like for eg. Drishti Solutions)

Anyway I still don't have information as to how to register for this online. I need to register for this asap. I am done with people offering me great personal loans and credit cards.

Telco to offer Insurance?

The things Telcos do these days to retain their subscriber base!!! BSNL, one of the leading Telco in India is offering a non-life insurance cover to all its 40 million landline subscribers for an extra 1 Re a month.

BSNL has been losing subscribers at an alarming rate ( mainly to Bharti Airtel) and this scheme they hope will stop the outflux. I assume BSNL will bear the rest of the premium. The second stage involves them extending this offer to its mobile subscribers.

Let me do some Math here. In general for an insurance cover of Rs.50000 a year ( 1200$), you would need to pay a premium of Rs.200 ( $5) a year. Now Rs.1 a month translates to Rs.12 a year, the rest Rs.188 has to be shelled out by BSNL per year per customer. This makes no business sense to me. Yes, I appreciate the noble cause where everybody including the poor in rural India get a chance to be covered. But how does BSNL plan to make profit?

Having said that, Insurance premium is a volume game ( more people you have, lesser the premium) and if anybody can play the volume game, it is the Telcos in India. With nearly 70 million subscribers ( landline + mobile), I am sure they can twist the insurance partner ( in this case State Bank of India, though BSNL retains the right to have multiple partners if need be) to reduce the premium rates.

Let me throw out an interesting thought. If this is the precursor of things to come, would Telcos enter retail as well? Bharti-Airtel ( taking a leaf out of Walmart's book) is almost there with it ELP ( Everyday Low prices) scheme. Reliance has a very strong retail/telecom business. So what if they come and tell me ( Bharti is my landline/Broadband/mobile service provider) that I get better deals in their retail stores because I am a subscriber. Now THAT would make me stick to them for ever!!!

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Are we going to see a Telecom M & A spree in India?

I am hearing from various sources that TRAI ( Telecom Regulator of India) is seriously thinking of relaxing some rules to make Telecom M & A easier. There is a peculiar law ( which I never failed to understand) that prevents a telecom company from holding more than 10% stake in two operators in the same circle.

TRAI is looking to remove this ceiling which I think would be a major step in enabling consolidation in India. At the same time TRAI is keen that we don't see monopolies taking over. There is yet another law that states if two players are looking at M & A, then their combined market share should not exceed 67%. TRAI is not only looking at relaxing the 10% ceiling but also looking at reducing this 67% to 50%. These would counter balance each other.Also I believe there are plans to ensure that the number of operators at any given circle is minimum three.

It is very refreshing to see TRAI being proactive. They understand that Telecom needs more consolidation in these parts of the world and are acting accordingly. It is just going to be a matter of time before my predictions of large M & As starts to become true.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Solid Quarter for Cisco

Cisco has reported its fourth quarter earnings and it is good news all the way. Profit increased by 25% which also meant that they raised their forecast for 2008. That is an investor's delight.

And I don't know see their momentum decreasing anytime soon. Their data network business is booming and they are achieving phenomenol gains in the Unified Communication space. They seemed to be romping over the likes of Avaya and Juniper in this space and they just seem to be getting better with their key acquisitions and partnerships.

Good times for Cisco employees and share holders :)

Sunday, August 5, 2007

A grin on Vivek's Face

So why is Vivek of Unleash Networks grinning? Because he has got what most people in the Networking industry dream about. Having Cisco as a customer.

Great news buddy. Vivek has been keeping us informed about some of the stuff he has been upto these days and let me put it this way, you ain't heard nothing yet!! This I believe is going to be the launching pad for better things and I soon hope to see Vivek 'unleashing' some great products.

If I were a VC, I would pick up the phone and be talking to Vivek right away :)