The agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s “key strategic global alliance” for UC; both sides will invest in product development, sales, and marketing.

Polycom will develop a broad [...]]]>

Polycom (www.polycom.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) have declared their love, er a “global strategic agreement” for developing and marketing “integrated,” standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions.

The agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s “key strategic global alliance” for UC; both sides will invest in product development, sales, and marketing.

Polycom will develop a broad base of solutions for Microsoft Communications Server “14” and beyond, including lots of new Polycom CX series endpoints featuring HD voice and video, new room-based video systems designed for direct integration with MCS “14” and additional interoperable solutions between Polycom’s existing and future video conferencing solutions.

The biggest hoot out of this announcement is seeing a quote from Microsoft Corporate VP Gurdeep Singh Pall, the go-to guy when it comes to Microsoft’s telephony products. Two years ago at VoiceCon Orlando, he poo-poo’ed the traditional desktop handset, waiving around a cheap $300 netbook and saying one didn’t need all that dedicated hardware.

Today, Pall is singing the praises of one of the biggest phone guys in the business. “Microsoft and Polycom are committed to a roadmap that will deliver interoperable UC solutions with choice and innovation in video conferencing and customer devices that will help transform enterprise communication,” Pall said in a press release.

It’s a VERY different tune from “We don’t need no stinkin’ desktop phones.” Now Microsoft is the new BFF with the best desktop phone and videoconferencing company. Guess they figured out they can’t do everything standalone, especially when it comes to telepresence. Either that or the Acer netbook died…

Switchvox SMB 4.5 adds on Phone Feature Packs for Polycom handsets, enabling users to directly access things such as call recording, visual voicemail, a searchable company directory and call parking lots directly [...]]]>

Yes Virginia, there was more than the Digium AsteriskExchange store announcement at IT EXPO last week.  Digium also announced Switchvox SMB 4.5.

Switchvox SMB 4.5 adds on Phone Feature Packs for Polycom handsets, enabling users to directly access things such as call recording, visual voicemail, a searchable company directory and call parking lots directly on a Polycom handset, something that has made Polycom very happy.

New features beyond the Phone Feature Packs include support for distinctive ringtones for different types of calls, extension failover to a backup Switchvox SMB server, support for multiple extensions on a single hand set.  Also included in Switchbox SMB 4.5 are support for user profiles to provide caller information such as photo, extension, title and location; flexible language support in English, UK English, Italian, Castilian Spanish and LatAm Spanish, including sound packs including audio prompts.

Network junkies will appreciate Digium adding SNMP for monitoring into Switchvox 4.5.

Current Switchvox owners with a software subscription get SMB 4.5 free of charge while Phone Feature Packs are available for $30 per phone.

LifeSize has been targeting its high-end HD video telepresence and videoconferencing solutions squarely into the enterprise space, undercutting the likes of [...]]]>

Logitech, best known for its PC add-ons such as keyboards, mice, and *ding*ding* video cameras, has gone upscale, purchasing videoconferencing hardware firm LifeSize for $405 million.  Does it make sense? Time will tell.

LifeSize has been targeting its high-end HD video telepresence and videoconferencing solutions squarely into the enterprise space, undercutting the likes of Cisco, Polycom and TANDBERG.  In addition, it has a range of personal office/teleworker and SMB solutions for HD 720p video to complement its higher-end gear.

With the onset of the recession, Austin-based LifeSize has faced stiffer competition in the telepresence arena in the likes of HP, Siemens, and IBM.   The combination of Logitech (deeper pockets, bigger marketing) and LifeSize will be interesting to watch.

Last year, Logitech bought SightSpeed,  a multi-party videoconferencing/video chat services company with some long-distance VoIP services thrown in, so the company’s expansion into the higher-end video solutions and the enterprise space shouldn’t be a total surprise.   Be interesting to see if there are synergies to leverage between the SIP-based SightSpeed division and LifeSize in terms of offering a one-stop shop of services and high-end hardware.

Regardless of the success/failure of the purchase, the further consolidation of the high-end videoconferencing world is likely to stimulate further twittering on the future of Polycom… something I’m going to have to ponder over at HD Voice News later today.

It’s an interesting premise, since purchasing Polycom would give Cisco an effective lock on the videoconferencing/telepresence market AND add some [...]]]>

Yesterday, Cisco announced it bought Tandberg for $3 billion.  The deal effectively gives Cisco a video sales pipe into the enterprise boardroom. Speculation today is that Polycom might be next on the shopping list.

It’s an interesting premise, since purchasing Polycom would give Cisco an effective lock on the videoconferencing/telepresence market AND add some sizzle to Cisco’s enterprise desktop phone line.   As of Friday morning trading, Polycom’s market cap is around $2.1 billion, so if you were to pay a 2x premium, that’s be a top end cap of $4.2 billion — pocket change for Cisco’s warchest.

But I don’t see it happening today, or tomorrow.  Cisco needs to assimilate Tandberg first and, judging from the *ahem* way Linksys fits so neatly in with Cisco,  the process is likely to take a while.   If someone at the Department of Justice is awake, there also might be some anti-trust implications — Cisco suddenly grabbing up a large chunk of the IP phone market.  It would likely make people uncomfortable.

Others are trying to spin the purchase of TANDBERG as a Good Thing for other nimble telepresence players in the market since it will take a while for Cisco to assimilate TANDBERG and the whole process may slow TANDBERG down in the marketplace.   Not sure if I’m hip with this interpretation, since Cisco has a big marketing force, a big marketing presence, and is probably cutting a deal to do some product positioning for TANDBERG gear on “NCIS” or some other hot TV show.

ZipDX provides a lot of value-add features for scheduling conference calls, including auto-ID of call-in participants and integration with web-based and other [...]]]>

Over the past two weeks, I have participated in a couple of HD-quality phone calls, using  ZipDX for the connecting service and its version of X-Lite that incorporates the G.722 wideband codec.

ZipDX provides a lot of value-add features for scheduling conference calls, including auto-ID of call-in participants and integration with web-based and other calendar systems. The service is designed to support Polycom’s phones using its trademarked HD Voice technology and also supports (legacy) PSTN dial-ins and dial-back.

Since I’ve been invited in as a participant of a conference, I haven’t had to pay anything; a conference moderator gets billed some amount for minutes and the like; not like the dial-ins are freebies.

There are some other “free” services that support G.722, so I’m going to be poking around and seeing how well they work.

The lowest [...]]]>

One of the missing pieces out of the HD Communications puzzle is standards — yes, plural.  There are plenty of codec standards, mind you, but what defines an HD phone call, really?  The telecommunications industry may have to borrow from a page from the TV world at some point down the road.

The lowest common denominator (LCD) for wideband codecs seems to be the almost archaic G.722 — but longevity and a little tweaking over the past couple of years isn’t a bad thing, mind you.    Manufacturers have embraced and incorporated the codec into their hardware and it has become a part of the DECT CAT-iq cordless home phone effort — and DECT CAT-iq is the HD/cordless standard for the cable industry.

Companies onboard with G.722 in handsets include VTECH, Siemens Gigaset, ooma in the consumer world and Avaya, Cisco, Polycom, and snom in the business arena.

Going into the wireless world, the standard with the most traction is AMR-WB, also known as G.722.2.  Spectral efficiency is the name of the game, so there’s a different manipulation of the media stream to conserve bandwidth and this segways into transcoding.

Can you do better than the two existing LCDs? A number of parties believe they can for various reasons, including bandwidth efficiency, CPU optimization/trade-offs, and the like.  Skype’s SILK codec is probably the best/most publicized effort for Yet-A-Better (YAB) wideband codec for speech applications.

What if you want to go beyond the LCD and get the very best experience, period?  There’s no definition yet for that in the HD phone call world which puts us slipping towards the Digital TV world to borrow some concepts.   Under this to-be-defined-framework (Hello? HD Connect? Hello?), a PSTN call would be “standard definition” and the baseline service when HD wasn’t available.  The next step up would be in the G.722 and AMR-WB frameworks — the equal of the 720p in the wireless and wireline worlds.

Finally, at the top of the heap would be a 1080i/1080p standard, for the very very very best in sound quality.   Is this something akin to CD quality? Or do you go higher and provoke a fight with audiophiles and embrace DVD Audio or something equally challenging?

Be interesting to see what Jeff Pulver thinks about this framework.

1)       Jeff Pulver can still pull over 100 of the “right people”  to an event just after InterOp and just before the U.S. Memorial Day weekend.

2)       The baseline for a PSTN/POTS phone [...]]]>

If you don’t feel like plowing through all of the HD Communications Summit pieces, here’s a recap of what went on.

1)       Jeff Pulver can still pull over 100 of the “right people”  to an event just after InterOp and just before the U.S. Memorial Day weekend.

2)       The baseline for a PSTN/POTS phone call hasn’t changed since 1937 or so – unlike everything else in the modern world.

3)       Pulver plans an FCC petition this fall to upgrade PSTN to HD;  digital TV provides a case justification to move to a new technology.

4)       Frequency range for a PSTN call is 300-3000 Hz

5)       AudioCodes Google Search on “HD Voice/VoIP” – Past 10 years, 190,000 hits. Past 12 months, 82,000 hits, so the trend line is going up and to the right.

6)       Depending on who’s talking, HD audio would use a range between 100-7000 Hz. Diminishing returns after 7000 Hz delivery.

7)       The tighter PSTN clips consonants.

8)       FM radio sounds better than a PSTN call.

9)       HD Connect is the working name of the HD Communications trade association Pulver is starting because a) Polycomm has a trademark on HD Voice and b) AudioCodes has a trademark on HD VoIP

10)    Everyone wants a “HD Connect” logo to put on their boxes

11)    When HD voice (generic) happens [in North America], it will happen really really fast, predicts everyone.

12)    But right now, [North American] service providers are on the fence waiting to see who jumps first.

13)    Nobody can agree on a single HD codec, but most agree we need fewer codecs and there seems to be sufficient codecs out there

14)    More codecs = more part cost, more support costs, so the fewer, the better

15)    Ain’t no such thing as a “free” codec. Support costs and potential indemnification issues lurk.

16)    Wireless and wireline will likely use different codecs because the cellular carriers need to get the most out of their leased spectrum (i.e. spectral efficiency)

17)    Transcoding will be necessary to move between HD codecs; AudioCodes is happy.

18)    North American cable companies are getting ready for HD, but until the business case is clear (i.e. “Show me the money”), they aren’t in any rush.

19)    Cable may have a leg up by locking in DECT CAT-iq as a standard so service providers can provide an end-to-end experience without transcoding or other tweaking.

20)    The Europeans are ahead of us (again).  BT, France Telecom, T-Mobile are all deploying HD today in their respective territories.

21)    France Telecom expects to be able to exchange HD voice calls with other carriers by the end of the year.

22)    Enterprises are likely to be the earliest adopters of HD. They control their own infrastructure, are deploying VoIP, HD gets rolled out as “just another app” onto the existing infrastructure.

23)    Avaya has incorporated wideband codecs in all of its phones; Polycom is adding wideband codecs to all of its phones.

24)    HD is a “killer app” when it comes to talking to a non-native language speaker and you can’t understand his/her accent.  The broader range means you can understand what someone is saying rather than having to work at interpreting (i.e. filling in the blanks) as to what they are really saying.

25)    HD on cell phones is happening – in Europe.  France Telecom is (once again) leading the way with mobile HD.

26)    Truphone says it is working with HD in the lab and is ready to roll when the time is right.

27)    Qualcomm has done demos/field trials of HD on cellular.

28)    In the trials, Qualcomm used the Swiss-army-knife of IP telephony – Digium’s Asterisk – to transcode between its 4GV-WB codec and G.722.

29)    Qualcomm is still trying to fight the EVDO/LTE battle.

Earlier pieces on the HD Communications Summit

HD Communications Summit: Pulver announces HD marketing association, FCC petition, fall event

HD Communications Summit: Codec convergence, “HD” logo take center stage

HD Communications Summit: Cable bides its time

HD Communications Summit: Islands of HD, trending upward

HD Communications Summit: HD Cellular is happening

HD Communications Summit: Analysis – Will international needs bootstrap HD voice?

Presentations at the HD Communications Summit – pictures

HD Communications Summit – A PR/marketing view

Handset manufacturers Polycom [...]]]>

At yesterday’s HD Communications Summit, most equipment manufacturers said they would like to see fewer HD codecs and an “HD voice” logo to slap on to their boxes and gear.  Discussion also took place on the relative virtues of a “free” codec and the intellectual property issues associated with free codecs.

Handset manufacturers Polycom and Snom expressed a belief that more is less with fewer codecs. Existing HD codecs are “good enough,” said Polycom’s Chalan Aras, but there needs to be “convergence” with fewer selections “Fax has one standard and look where it’s gone,” Aras stated.

Despite advances in more memory and faster processing speed, every codec added to the stack of must-support features adds cost, even if it is “free.”  Each codec consumes memory and therefore requires more resources and more resources bump up the expense of the parts put into a desktop handset.

More codecs also increase the complexity of support in having to transcode between one codec to another one and having to transcode between different codecs can introduces various artifacts and degrade voice quality, noted Polycom CTO Jeff Rodman — not something you want to do with HD voice.  In an ideal world, the same codec would be used from end-to-end, negating the overhead and potential issues with transcoding.  Rodman would like to see the industry downselect to two or three HD codecs.

Finally, so-called “free” codecs still require verification testing and support, not to mention the cloud of potential intellectual property liabilities for developers; GIPS made sure to underscore the latter point.  Ryan Heidari, Director Technical and Product Marketing for Qualcomm, said carriers tend to shy away from proprietary but free offerings; they want to open source, fully published C code to verify what is under the hood and to enable the codec to be adopted by multiple manufacturers.

Summit sponsor AudioCodes was more prosaic about transcoding, believing that as long different industries picked different HD codecs, there would always be a need for an appliance in the middle of the communications stream to conduct transcoding between different carrier “islands.”

One of the challenges the HD Voice world faces is the divergent needs of wireless and wireline carriers.  Qualcomm’s Heidari stated wireless carriers want spectral efficiency due to their relative limitations in bandwidth relative to other service providers.

Snom founder and CEO Christian Stredicke found plenty of support in a call for a standard “HD Voice” logo that could be put on the side of a box.  Another speaker noted that a standardized “HD voice” certification or logo would provide a differentator in the marketplace.