Tim O'Reilly had a really interesting post the other day on O'Reilly Radar that I've been wanting to comment on.

Round 2: Dial Tone

In a conversation yesterday, John Fandel, the general manager of The O'Reilly Network, made an interesting point: he wants to build our web publishing tools around the model of delivering "dial tone."

As we talked, the idea took hold. I was reminded of Michael Crichton's observation in his 1983 book Electronic Life that in the 1940's there was concern that the telephone system was growing so fast that there wouldn't be enough operators unless AT&T hired every person in America. AT&T solved the problem by creating automated switching systems that, in effect, did turn every person in the world into an operator--without hiring them. The principle of dial tone is to create a situation where users can do something for themselves that once required the intervention of an operator.

Dial-tone is also a fabulous metaphor for one of the key principles of Web 2.0, which I've called "the architecture of participation," but which might also simply be described as the design of systems that leverage customer self-service. (Bill Janeway made this linkage to customer self-service as a key driver of success in the internet economy in a presentation he gave at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in 2004. Mitch Ratcliffe blogged his notes from a similar talk that Bill gave at a Red Herring conference.)

The important takeaway from this post is that Tim's not alone in these thoughts. Not at all. At the recent VoIP Developer conference, the discussion was focused around integrating services. VoIP integration with other services and with applications. The Services Oriented Architecture lends itself to just what Tim describes as the architecture of participation.

Here's a snip of something I recently included in a chapter of a book I'm writing:

The convergence of real-time media carried over IP along with data is where we've arrived. That’s the state of technology today. Now we're looking at how to converge these services onto application engines. Convergence with enterprise business applications presents another whole convergence layer. CRM, human resources, and ERP systems all introduce interesting ideas when blended with telephony services.

Converged communications is the capability to integrate at different layers than just telecommunications. These other layers are still fairly separated into silos, or vertical groups. Workers today have multiple communications devices and soft phones. New capabilities like real-time directories that provide presence and availability information, conference call setup and rich media integration empower the end user.  

Convergence integrates the power of multiple platforms that offer service capability in a unified environment rather than discrete applications or services. SOA, the Services Oriented Architecture, is moving toward opening up the services of one application for sharing with another application altogether. This isn't just VoIP. It isn’t just integrating communications. It's service integration through software across multiple business applications. Telephony software in the converged environment can now act like a business application, and interact with other business applications.

Many of the functions that the hardware enterprise PBX provided can now be performed in software. Integration at the software level…at the application level is the key to opening up integrated services within IP. We can do new things when we integrate business applications rather than focus on technology.

Converged Communications leads to Converged Applications

Specialized applications are becoming standard applications. Using the Services Oriented Architecture information resources available to all participants (users, services and applications) in the network as independent services may now be accessed in a standardized, converged way.

Users don't need to change context from one application to another. The end use shouldn't have to shift the context of the core application they're working in to make a telephone call. The developer communities are working to open up integration services to allow all that context switching to happen behind the scenes.

Real Application Examples:

·        A web browser-based interface is the simplest example. It can display state information to users. The browser can easily show presence state in an address book or telephone directory, with click-to-dial capability.

·        A mobile device that can run thin client or browser based applications presents another example. This device makes it easy to authenticate as a mobile WiFi user and then display state information based on that IP connectivity. The mobile device simply becomes a thin client using web services on the network. Again directories and presence state are prime examples of integrating productivity tools.

·        For large enterprises, think about the whole cumbersome process of voice and data adds, moves and changes for new employees and people shuffling from cube to cube. That's historically a huge labor effort. Why not enable an HR system that interacts with the voice and data services network to automatically configure telephony services for new employees?