Cisco's Win is Avaya's loss

Just came across a news item which showcases a call center that moved from Avaya's platform over to Cisco's IPCC system.

Vcare Call Centers was using Avaya based solutions and now has moved over to Cisco IPCC ( the entire suite inclusive of Call Manager/EPBX/IVR). Talking about this move Sandeep Mehra, CEO of Vcare Call Center says

"We found Cisco's IP-based offering superior than the traditional Time Division Multiplexing (TDM based offering). We started using Cisco's Voice over IP Solution for about 2 years. We moved from a leased facility to our own facility and found that the voice quality of the Cisco's IPCC was far superior to any of its competitors." Mehra adds, "This solution helps large enterprises that need to centralize their contact center operations to gain more control over their resources."

Now what intrigues me is the statement Cisco's IPCC solution had a voice quality far more superior than any of its competitors. Did they to Avaya's/Nortel's systems before coming up with this comparison? In most of these implementations, QoS is ensured at the network layer and since I see the whole "Contact Center Suite" ( Cisco/Avaya/Nortel solution) in the application layer, I believe had the underlying network been implemented properly, any of these solutions would have been fine.

It is possible Cisco built the network for vCare as well as part of their solution which the other solutions can't even think about. I have said that this one reason is the most compelling reason why Cisco would succeed in the Contact Center space. They own the network and it is a one stop solution for a Contact center wanting to be 'IP' enabled.

Good win for Cisco, not so good for Avaya.

Telecom Professionals Group Website

The TPGI website has been created and launched thanks to Ram and Vivek. Hopefully we will start posting relevant content and our vision is to make that site the one stop place for all things Telecom coming out of India.

High aspirations; but something we think is possible.

Voice over VoIP. Secure or Pain?

Dan York in his blog talks about a new project by a Georgia Institute student which promotes embedding conversation in the voice data stream. Very interesting. .

As Dan nicely puts it they are using the available bandwidth in a G711 audio stream and embedding the G729 stream in it. Looks good for security purposes. But this is what I percieve would be the problem in real case scenarios. There are valid applications that need these details. For example Legal Intercept, Loggers etc.

The current IP Loggers ( voice recorders used to record RTP packets) would need to have knowledge about this and for this to happen the underlying signalling protocol has to have knowledge about this ( maybe through SDP). If that information is passed, your security issues starts all over again.

My verdict is that it is a very smart research paper, but to actually implement it would throw the existing systems into a spin.

Don't you wish you were an Apple employee!!!

Steve 'God' Jobs has promised each of Apple's 20,000 employees an iPhone. Now, that is one way to get a $12 million sales.

One of the companies here in India Cognizant Technologies (CTS) gave out ipods to all its employees couple of years ago. Would other companies follow suit and give out iphones to their employees? There has a been a new tax that has been introduced by the Indian government from this year onwards callled FBT ( Fringe Benefit Tax). Not sure whether iphone would be part of 'Fringe Benefits'. If not, expect a lot of companies to hand out iPhones.

Now, how do I get my boss to gift me one? ( once it is available) :)

iPhone in India : An update

I had wondered yesterday as to when would iPhone be available in India. This article in ibnlive kind of answers all my questions including the one as to whether I can use the iPhone bought in US. Looks like it might available sometime end of this year. This might happen after all considering Blackberry was available in India months after its release.

Thanks to Vijay and Ram for answering some of my questions.

Two more Days to Go...

Just another couple for days for the famed iPhone release. I think the anticipation is much more than any other Summer blockbuster. Got to give it to Apple and Jobs for raising the bar on this one.

I am hearing rumours that some of the Indian cell phone stores ( like Univercell) is going to sell the iphone. This news is still unconfirmed. Anybody have news on this? Which leads me to the next question. Can a locked phone like iphone ( locked with AT & T) be used in India? Can I just buy the iphone in US and use it here by using the local SIM? Any ideas on that guys?

Guess I have to wait for Airtel to partner with Apple to use iphone . I would never switch a service provider for iphone. Even though there are no penalties for switching over unlike some western countries, I would never leave Airtel because even though I have had issues in the past with their service, they still are way better compared to others.

Telecom Professionals Group Meeting : Second Edition

The second edition of the TPG meet went off fine and some major decisions were taken from an administrative point of view. It is getting more serious and structured and I see lot of exciting times ahead. The next meeting will happen soon ( I don't think there will be any more long hiatus from now onwards) to decide the focus of our group and somehow I get the feeling that this is going to be the start of something big.

VoIP as usual was the center of attraction and Ram ( as he has mentioned in his blog remarked we were VoIP heavy :) With more people from diversified backgrounds joining us, I think that will change soon. Ram has posted our group photo in his blog. I am not even going to try to capture what we discussed (on technology). Our discussions travelled through so many domains and you would need to be there to enjoy it.

Hope to see you guys soon for the next meeting.

Update* : Some more pics ( courtesy Vivek)

Vivek (left) and Chandra

Mahesh (left), Ram and Sharma

Venkat(left) and me.