Future of the Voice Endpoint

Panel: Representatives from Avaya, Microsoft, and Siemens

There was some discussion on extensions made to SIP by vendors in order to fill in some gaps in the protocol. All acknowledge that SIP lacks what is expected by the customer. To Office Communicator/Server, Microsoft adds strong authentication (Kerberos and TLS) and implements SRTP by default. Avaya (like Cisco) extends SIP to match features that its native protocol has. Sending individual digits immediately to the PBX as they are dialed is another example. (KPML is an extension that allows this.)

Will soft phones replace desk phones? These guys in the industry say “no;” Avaya says fewer than 10% will ever abandon the desk phone for a soft phone; it’s most useful in conjunction with a primary desk phone. People just want to pick up the always-on device and dial the digits. This matches with my own personal experience using soft phones (home & trial at work). Again, no one says that soft phones aren’t useful (especially me–I love the idea) but they don’t, and may never, stand on their own.

Enterprise 2.0: Evaluating the current “2.0” technologies

Blogs, wikis, social networks, tagging, mashups, modern portals. A good review of what’s out there and some commentary on the usefulness of each in the enterprise. Implement them with a purpose, not just because they’re the current thing. Confluence was highlighted as a good business-oriented wiki for its overall usability, file sharing and access controls. (Kudos to those who selected it for use at Penn State!)