THE PULVER REPORT: The November 22, 1999 Issue
In this Issue:
Heard on the Net
People on the Move:
During the past couple of months there has been a lot of job shifting within
the VON Industry. Some of the people who have changed jobs include:
- Jonathan Rosenberg left Bell Labs and joined dynamicsoft as their Chief Scientist
- Kathleen Cholewka left Inter@ctive Week and joined Forbes.com
- Catharine Trebnick left Level 3 and joined ICG as their SR. VP Product management
- Simon Clayton Mitchell left AT&T and joined Global Crossing
- Sean Parham left Motorola and joined Austin, TX based startup General Bandwidth
- Andrin Bachmann left his daytime position at Glocalnet, still active on the
Glocalnet Board
- Stephen Lorusso left Natural Microsystems joined Unisphere Solutions
- Bart Schachter left Intel to help start and manage a new $125M Fund focused
on Emerging Communications ventures
- Leo Cyr has left MCI Worldcom and is now President of Castle Rock Communications
- David Sokolic left Vocaltec and joined Zapa Digital Arts as Director of Business
Development
- Ian Bell left Cisco
- David Gurle left Vocaltec
[please email: people@pulver.com to report a change in position]
Companies on the Move:
Band-X recently closed an $11m funding deal with Chicago based Madison Dearborn
Partners Recent VON IPOs: iBasis (IBAS), MCK Communications, (MCKC), Soon: deltathree.com
(DDDC), GRIC (GRIC)
For up to date Industry news - please feel free to visit ( http://pulver.com/news ). If you have news which you would like to see posted - please email: editor@pulver.com.
2000 - The year of Transition
for the VON Industry
During the past few years we have seen the evolution of the VON Industry.
Just to recap our recent history:
1995 - Year of the Hobbyist
1996 - Year of the Client
1997 - Year of the Gateway
1998 - Year of the Gatekeeper
1999 - Year of the Application
Looking back at this past year I still feel comfortable with my November '98 pronouncement that 1999 would be the "Year of the Application". Turns out that the main application which has emerged during this year is the Softswitch. The promise of Softswitch technologies and the possibility for a common API for service creation will be one of the drivers for the VON Industry as we move forward into the year 2000 and beyond.
However, looking at the current state of the industry and the transitional states that we seem to be going into and out of, it is my belief that 2000 will be known as the "Year of Transition" for the VON Industry. Never before in our history has there been so many people changing positions and joining new companies at such a rapid pace.
Thanks in part to the successful IPOs from the VON class of 1999, there is an abundance of capital available from the VCs communities from Sand Hill Road, Boston and Wall Street. This in turn is helping to drive the creation of new companies and provide the necessary later stage funding for some of the established pre-IPO players.
Another part of the other reason for the transition is due to the bad bets that some people made and the projections they made 2 and 3 years ago when they went to their company to fund a project with the promise of "significant" revenue by the end of 1999. For many the revenue has yet to materialize. Some of these people now find themselves without a job and others are in search of an internal sponsor to provide a budget for next year. As an Industry in Transition we are still in search of the "killer app" for the space. Currently I'm betting on the technologies related to IP based Presence and Awareness to become the "killer app" for the space over the next 18-36 months.
As the months move forward, look for more people to be changing jobs and joining both startups and established players. Some people will leave the industry as well. In addition, while progress has been made in VON Protocols and Interoperability, look for protocols to remain in a transitional state until at least the end of 2000. Looking at my foggy crystal ball, it still looks like it will take until 2001 for widespread product interoperability within the VON Industry.
Iceland is a Cool Country
I recently had an opportunity to visit Iceland.
Traveling from the airport to downtown Reykjavik, I felt like I was on a North Sea version of the Big Island of Hawaii as there were Black sandy beaches, Geo-thermal Hot Springs, and three Rainbows spotted during a 45 minute drive.
Turns out that Iceland has the highest penetration of Internet Access in the world, with 80% of the population having access to the net. Iceland is number two only to Finland with the penetration of Wireless Technologies.
While I was in Reykjavik I had a chance to meet with some of the key players from the Icelandic business community including: Iceland Telecom, Islandsimi and OZ.com. While meeting with Iceland Telecom, I was interested to learn more about Iceland's high rate of Internet penetration and started to explore the possibilities of using Iceland as a test-bed for new Internet applications. In my eyes, Iceland could be the ideal test bed and model for companies which are building applications for use in an "Always On" world.
One of the action items from these meetings will hopefully be the creation of "Internet ambassadorships" for U.S. and other firms who want to test the effects of new technologies there in Iceland. If you are interested in learning more of these opportunities please feel free to contact me.
For startups and established companies who want a live beta test environment to see how their technologies play out in an advanced Internet culture, Iceland is the place. As a direct result of my first trip to Iceland, I decided to have our first European VON Developers Conference in Reykjavik April 10-12, 2000. I welcome the opportunity for the Internet Industry to learn more about Iceland and the related business opportunities.
Jeff Pulver on ABC-TV's "Spin
City" - November 30th - 8.00 PM EST/PST
In a move totally unrelated to my activities in the Internet space, I recently
had a walk-on role as an "office extra" in the "The Doorman Always Rings Twice"
episode of ABC-TV's "Spin City" which is scheduled to air November 30th at 8.00
PM EST/PST.
I won the honor of the walk-on role as a result of being the winner in a live auction which the which took place this past May at a benefit for Diabetes Research.
Spending 11 1/2 hours on the set for the taping of the show gave me a first hand look at the behinds the scenes activity of the filming of a TV situation comedy. Having never acted before, it was a little difficult at first to understand what the assistant director meant when he shouted "left right up center" to me. Thanks to his patience and the help of the regular "office extras" on the set, I was able to get to the right place and remain in the background, in the scenes which I was placed in.
While it is most likely that most of the scenes which I was in will look like nothing more on your TV set than background motion, I can be seen for about 10-15 seconds during Paul's dream sequence which takes place midway through the episode.
To my credit, I tried explaining
Internet Telephony to some of the series stars, including Barry Bostwick, but
quickly learned that I was the only person really effected by the net on the
set. Most of the stars were familiar with the Net as a place for their fans
to go but nobody who I met with was personally active themselves.
IP based Presence and Awareness
- The Killer App for IP Networks
The evolution of Instant Messaging and Presence technologies will result in
the creation of a secure IP based signaling network which will complement (and
not replace) the existing SS7 Network and which will allow the customers of
service providers to remotely update information regarding their "Presence"
and "Awareness" which will result in the reduction of phone tag and the increase
of successful call completion to the person one is looking to reach.
Early examples of the inherent value of instant messaging beyond the Net will be represented by the leading edge service providers rolling out Instant Messaging services which allow their customers to touch multiple Networks - i.e. Public Internet, GSM, PSTN and Broadband in an agnostic manner.
As competition continues to increase amongst service providers, it is my belief that the service provider who provides the best service will win, not necessarily just the one who offers the cheapest prices.
For example, if the customers of carrier X find that people who they gave their phone number to are able to reach them more often then then they did when using carrier Y, thereby reducing personal phone tag, then over time this should draw more customers to carrier X.
Service providers always want to
increase revenue. The ability to increase call completion can have a positive
effect on both top line and bottom line revenue. The promise of developing enabling
technology to increase call completion should provide enough funding to turn
today's concepts into critical-mass realities over the next 3-5 years.
In Search of: Intrusive Web Technologies
At pulver.com when it comes to the web, I have developed an internal philosophy
which I call "You are What you Web". In essence, the web site which you maintain
should be a direct reflection of who you are.
While some websites have adopted technologies which allow frequent visitors to personalize the information which is displayed, (i.e. my yahoo), I've been looking for technologies which allow a webmaster to describe to the webserver the rules and content to be used when creating personal, dynamic HTML pages based on the incoming domain of the client browser.
I would appreciate hearing from people who are aware of the existence and availability of such technologies. Please email: jeff@pulver.com with details.
SIP Avalanche: Report from the
November '99 IETF Meeting
The avalanche of Internet Drafts on SIP has determined the IETF to start the
new SIP Working Group for the Nov. 7-12 meeting in Washington, DC. http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/sip-charter.html
The "SIP Avalanche" was manifest
by the large number of contributions (22) from many organizations: - MCI WorldCom
contributed nine Internet Drafts. They include * detailed call flows for generic
SIP services and for * enhanced carrier services such as IP Centrex as an alternative
to PBXs.
- Cablelabs/AT&T and cable vendors contributed six drafts on the SIP based Distributed
Call Control Architecture (DCS) and this required an extra six hour session
on Sunday 11/7, besides the two regular SIP WG sessions.
- Other carriers such as Level3 and vendors/organizations; DynamicSoft, Ericsson,
HP, ipVerse, Nortel, Telcordia, Toshiba and TransNexus made contributions to
enhance the use of SIP for new communication services.
New areas of interest for SIP emerged, for such topics as:
The convergence of IP, wireless
and SIP are embodied in the management of mobility in 3G IP wireless networks.
* Host Mobility Management Protocol Extending SIP to 3G-IP Networks (Telcordia
and Toshiba),
* Dynamic Registration and Configuration Protocol (DRCP) for 3G wireless (Telcordia
and Toshiba).
Management of QoS using SIP in IP
backbone networks (Nortel and University College London).
* Using SIP for the management of MPLS Label Switched Paths for scalable QoS
Service Provision for IP telephony and other real time other applications.
Ensuring QoS and Payments for SIP Telephony in an Interdomain environment, such as found on the Internet between over 10,000 ISPs: * Interdomain-SIP-QOS-OSP showing the combined messaging for SIP, COPS (Common Open Policy Service), (OSP Open Settlement Protocol), RSVP and SBM / (Subnet Bandwidth Manger for 802-style LANs), (MCI WorldCom and TransNexus)
Notes from Instant Messaging
'99
Instant Messaging '99 took place November 9-11 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las
Vegas, NV. Presentations from IM'99 are now available at: (http://pulver.com/im99/request.htm
)
The focus of the Summit was the state of Instant Messaging, not Instant Messenger.
During the three days we explored the current state of services from the viewpoint of carriers and looked at the current state of service creation tools. We also took a look at enabling end user control. We also had several sessions focusing specifically on Directories on the Net and Instant Messaging issues. We concluded with general sessions focusing on Security & Management and Billing & Support systems.
One of the challenges facing service providers is to learn how to take services which are available for free on the net and evolve them into services which customers pay for. While this remains to be the service providers dilemma, I'm confident this will be solved over the next couple of years.
Overall, IM'99 provided an opportunity for people and companies involved in the Instant Messaging space to get together, share ideas and develop business relationships. Instant Messaging '2000 will be taking place in May, 2000 in Boston.
VoIP User Groups @ pulver.com
During the past year I have been contacted by individuals who have started their
own VoIP User Group and who were looking for a place to have their meetings
listed. In addition, in some cases I was asked to help with speaker placement
at some of the User Group Meetings.
pulver.com is now offering free web hosting to all VoIP User Groups which would like to take advantage of our offer. In addition we will be tracking meeting dates/time for user group meetings and on a proactive basis will be able to help with speaker placements at User Group Meetings.
If you represent a VoIP User Group, and would like to arrange to have your group hosted at pulver.com, please contact Darwin Yu at darwin@pulver.com.
Nortel Networks in the pulver.com
Open Test Network
"Nortel demonstrated our SIP proxy and SIP gateway in the pulver test network
at the fall 99 VON show. We demonstrated our SIP based IP phones (I2004) on
the show floor. We ran our proxy server out of our Dallas location.
We were able to show that voice
can sound good over the public internet. We let conference goers make PSTN calls
using our SIP gateway at the Pulver site on Long Island. Users were very impressed
with the quality even though we had 30% packet loss and ping times of over 500ms.
We made calls to a local movie line in NY. This showed toll arbitrage case in
action. We then let uses make calls anywhere in the US. People were very impressed
when talking to friends and family. This demo was a big success. We made calls
between the SIP phones using our proxy in Dallas. The call setup time very small
even though we had the long haul to Dallas over the public internet. We also
make calls to Mediatrix and 8X8 showing SIP interoperability. We also made calls
through the GTE SS7 gateway. We feel that this was the best VON show yet."
- Greg Osterhout NetFX - SIP Development, Nortel Networks
The pulver.com Open Test Network will be on display once again at Spring '2000 VON.
If you are interested in joining the Open Test Network and gain additional exposure on our conference show floor, please visit ( http://pulver.com/testnetwork ) and contact Carl Ford carl@pulver.com to arrange a visit to our Melville, NY office.
Random thoughts: Effects of the
Net on my Family in '99
Living on the net on Long Island with high speed internet access in my home
is something which I've taken for granted for a few years.
During the past couple of years, both my wife and my twin sons (who are now 5 1/2) have also started becoming affected by living in an "Always On" world and have become dependent on net based resources.
For my kids, I believe their early usage of the Net helped them to read and spell at an early age. These days they understand "Internet English" and are adapt at communicating with search engines and navigating websites.
With our kids latest interest in Pokemon (and Gameboy) they have been able to use the web to learn about the latest Pokemom Gameboy product releases in Japan (Pokemon Stadium and Silver and Gold) and had a chance to see an advance preview of the games they want to play once the games get translated into English next year. They enjoy watching streaming video previews of the latest kid movies and sometimes take advantage of the online kid games available at places like cartoonnetwork.com and nickjr.com.
My kids have also learned how to use shopping carts on places like eToys.com and WarnerBrothers.com and my wife and I have learned to be very careful about websites which use cookies to store credit card information since that is our only protection from preventing our kids going out on a virtual shopping spree.
Looking at some of the advertisements placed in the magazine's my wife reads, one of the effects of the growth of eCommerce in the US has been a steep increase in ad placements promoting websites. This is noticeable in not only magazines, but in much of the traditional hardcopy world of newspapers and other periodicals and even roadside billboards. In fact, we have started noticing more consumer advertising on TV and Radio for .com companies which we never heard of in the past. The advertising of URLs seems to be a boom in many places including the back of New York City buses to the ads seen promoting URLs in the New York City Subways. I'm predicting at least 70% of the ads placed during the SuperBowl will contain a URL.
My current take on some of the eCommerce sites my family interacts with on a semi-daily basis is that their success or failure won't be so dependent on technology but on their back-office operations staff. Being able to manage the expectations of the customer is still critical, regardless of the interface to that customer. Being able to send out the right products in a predictable efficient manner will be one of the things which differentiates the end user experience and the ultimate success of one eBusiness over another. The gross mis-management of the enduser customer experience is something which can taint a company for a long time.