I've been thinking a bit as 2006 is winding down about all the lists we see of top 10 this and top 100 that. I'm going to take a different approach. What you have here is my view of the hottest ten areas of technology for 2006 and the companies involved in each hat, in my humble view, are the leaders. It's a broad general list, and like any such list, it's open to interpretation. These are just my thoughts as 2006 winds up. And I picked the name of a classic movie.

First, our ecosystem has change. A year ago we focused on VoIP. Many companies and businesses, to their detriment, focused on VoIP as the end game. VoIP has never been the end game. VoIP is part of the foundation of networking - unified communications networking. And while unified communications is the hot buzz phrase of the moment, it's also a perfect description of the current evolution in technology. A variety of very specific technologies tied to data, voice and video networking are converging to provide an integrated, or unified communications architecture that bring about change to the way we work.

Unified communications is about being an agent of change. Change in work flow. Change in process. Change in corporate culture. And change in societal communications at large. These changes are often incremental in nature as a new company or technology introduces another piece of the puzzle. But unifying communications today has as dramatic an impact on our world as Gutenberg's printing press, the radio, television and the telephone. Each changed how we communicate. Unified communications is doing the same thing, but with incremental steps and the convergence of multiple technologies rather than with a single invention.


On with the list. Note that some are grouped together for obvious reasons.

Ken's Magnificent Seven

Presence, Relevance and Context
Presence online started with the basics of IM and the buddy list. It has evolved to become so much more. Buddy lists are no long just binary online/offline indicators, yet they still have far to go. Presence management is an industry hot topic with many companies playing in to different pieces. Microsoft certainly wants to play (dominate) with the Live Communications Server, but the real innovation isn't taking place in Redmond.

Relevance is a word brought to our attention by iotum with their fabulous Relevance Engine. Relevance is all our status and availability. If I'm in a meeting, I can't take calls. If you're a telemarketer, you're spam and I don't want to talk to you. If you're family, I may want to be interrupted no matter what.

Context could be tied to relevance, but it's also something more. Twitter is the best example of the mashup relevance and context I can think of. It allows users to instantly update their status to friends, family and colleagues via SMS, the web, or chat clients. Instant social networking perhaps, but I've also explored using the Twitter concept for disaster recover and incident response teams.

The hot companies to watch? Today I'd say they're iotum, GrandCentral, Talkster and Twitter. Those are the ones I watch the closest. There are a lot of me-toos in the space, but these are the ones I see leading the way.

For the future, the big issue I see is how our personal information about presence, relevance and context must become part of our digital online identity. Identity management has been a very hot, and to me stalled and boring, topic for quite some time. The carriers, wireline and wireless alike, want to "own" our presence information. I think that's a problem. I own the information about me and I'll decide who can or cannot see it. I think in 2007 the industry will grapple with this. The key, as with digitial identity, lies in giving control to users, not to vendors and service providers.


Mobile Convergence and Mobility Feature Creation
Fixed mobile convergence (FMC) get lots of hype. And it's on the horizon. Like Jeff Pulver, I sometimes wonder if we aren't creating our own mythology, then buying in to the myth in the hopes of some future we'd like to envision. FMC, as it relates to traditional WiFi, will continue to present challenges for the next few years, mostly because of the unregulated aspects of 802.11 WiFi.

Mobile convergence is another thing entirely and there are other approaches that work. Nokia is introducing Gizmo/SIP support on the N80i phone. That will bring VoIP into play on mobile phones, and certainly has soem traction in FMC space. They're also bringing Skype to the N73, and Skype really hasn't ever been viewed as an enterprise FMC solution.

BridgePort Networks does some FMC work today, but the hot thing they've got hitting right now is their MobileSTICK. This is a USB device that wil basically alias your mobile number to a VoIP phone running on a USB stick. Is it FMC? Sure, broadly. But no WiFi component needed. It's a way to integrate your mobile phone into your wired or wireless desktop. Given Bridgeports other work in the FMC space, MobileSTICK will be a key early market penetrator for real world FMC.

Beyond that we've got a whole new open arena of adding features to existing services in new ways. TalkPlus can alias multiple phone numbers onto a mobile handset. With their solution, your mobile can look to others like your home phone, office phone, or some other phone. Anywhere any time.

Talkster provides not just presence information on the mobile phone. They provide mobile to VoIP conversation with a variety of IM clients. They don't look at it as VoIP. They call if Voice over IM. Ok, that's marketing buzz and symantec hair-splitting. IM runs over IP and it's VoIP. But being able to call a Gtalk user on a PC from the cell phone, without any new technologies on the user end, is hot stuff.

For me, the hottest companies and thought leaders in this space are the ones mentioned - Nokia, BridgePort Networks, TalkPlus and Talkster.


Video - VVoIP, IPTV and TVoIP
First of, I want to explain my view of video, because it differs from many and I believe the industry will evolve to some clearer delineation of video solutions that echoes my personal paradigm. I see three types of video today -

• VVoIP (Video and Voice over IP) is to me, collaboration. It's where voice and video intersect as a blended communications services. For some this means a video phone call, but I think it also means multiparty calls, and integration of video and voice calling into the web and into applications. Voice and video as a service in the application suite isn't here yet, but it's coming.
• IPTV - To me this acronym means moving the broadcast television industry off the traditional airwaves and onto the Net. I think of IPTV as broadcast media in some form. And while we see more and more independence, for me, this is the evolution of commercial broadcast television.
• TVoIP (teeVoIP) is my own concoction. I made it up for my own thinking. To me this is what is so often called user generated content. To me this is YouTube and blip.tv.
  

Collaboration tools are changing and video is becoming a big piece of it. SightSpeed is one of my favorite companies, because they've stepped out and shown some key, thought leading efforts in delivering a real VVoIP solution to market. They're one example, but there are others in the wings. Just as Adobe is doing work that will bring voice more tightly inside the browser and application, I'm convinced they'll do the same with video. If Adobe were smart, they'd buy SightSpeed now. Regardless, Adobe bears watching.

IPTV is of less interest to me personally, but the success of the Slingbox, and SightSpeed's televison placeshifting ability have proven very popular and fueled the ongoing life of traditional TV programming. Beyond these solutions, 3G networks allow for the delivery of video. More and more we see mobile handsets with video features. The most recent news that comes to mind is Verizon Wireless and YouTube. While the mobile screen isn't the optimal viewing device, the reality is that there's a lot of video being watched on iPods and mobile handsets.

TVoIP is an interesting offshoot. What Flickr did to photo sharing, YouTube and blip.tv do for video sharing. We crave the ability to share our major and minor life events. Video posting to the web, video blogging, and sending video to friends and famliy are rising in popularity. Yahoo's latest entry into this mix is Mixd. I've only looked at it very briefly, but it's a blend of features of Twitter and YouTube that shows great promise. I'm very interested to know how this new feature fits in Brad Garlinghouse's recent Peanut Butter Manifesto" vision that got such a splash initially. I'm hoping that Mixd has some insight from Jeff Bonforte behind the scenes. For me that would be an indicator.

My personal hot companies are all listed in here - SightSpeed, Adobe, YouTube, blip.tv, and Mixd. Beyond Mixd, I'm not ready to coutn Yahoo out, but they need to congeal around their identity and let us all know who they really are and what they're all about.


Wireless World
We've seen 802.11 wireless evolve through many standards. Too many. It's a hodgepodge mess. But it works, it's cheap and it's easy. We won't see it go away. But wireless means so many other things. We're beginning to see early EVDO Rev A deployments. EVDO and Edge technologies are advancing. I think the US carriers are doing a dismal job in comparision to the real evolving 3G networks in other parts of the world, but we are making headway. WiMAX is evolving.

Wireless need is driven by two underlying user requirements. First is ubiquity. We want acces wherever we are. The PSTN is arguably ubiquitous, but we want more. We want access indoors, on the patio, at the beach, in the park. Those of us who live in technology would like to see the planet enveloped in a wireless cloud of high-speed access. The other factor is mobility. Cellular carriers mastered, to some extent, the ability to hand of a call from tower to tower as users move. In the unified communications world, that's far more complex. It's complex because we need to have off from one protocol to another, one technology to another and one carrier to another. Solutions will come, but these will take time. And they'll take focused collaborative work among people who want the work to succeed. We're still deailng with wireless carriers who sometimes seem VoiP as competition that erodes their market. Business thinking about a total solution still needs to mature in some corners.


One Click Solutions - Click to Converge
There's been a lot of brouhaha lately about click-to-call and how innovative it is. And with my apologies to Google and others who think the idea is something new, I can only [yawn]. Click-to-call telephone solutions have been around for a long time. I've had one or more click-to-call buttons on my personal blog and web site for years. If you look at the Internet Wayback Machine, you'll find Freeworld Dialup click-to call buttons at least 3-4 years ago, so I have trouble getting overly excited about that.

What i do find interesting is what I'm jsut beginning to think of as click-to-converge. I'll provide three examples I have personal experience with.


Abbeynet does some great work with integrating voice servics into the web. That's led to Sitebell that gave us Sitofono. That last link is really to my post abuot how they enabled a personal convergence for me. Converging click-to-call with the caller control provided by GrandCentral.

WebDialogs and Unyte give a completely different kind of click-to-converge. They let a VoIP user instantly, on demand, share any application on the desktop online. Instant collaboration convergence. Very hot stuff, and one-click complexity.

SightSpeed pops on my radar every day for one reason or another. They've been providing not just click-to-call, but click-to-see. One click convergence of voice and video. And given the rate they add enhancements, I expect they'll be two full generations down the road a year from now.

If you build it, they will come. But they may not do what you intended when you built it.
Mashup is such an inelegant word, but used so often in the Web 2.0 world. Click-to-converge brings that paradigm of the Web 2.0 mashup to a new
level. For those deeply entrenched in corporate buzzword-speak, they
enable or empower users. And whether you like the words or not,
empowering users, and creating solutions that they can
click-to-converge with other solutions is a market winner.

Some of these categories overlap so broadly, and there's one more solution that is becoming a centerpiece example - SIPPhone and Gizmo blur together for me, and I suspect they do for many of us. I've never spoken to the people involved, but they're getting ready to release something very cool with Nokia on the N80i. Gizmo does presence. It ties the IP network to the PSTN. With BridgePorts MobileSTICK, it could converge the mobile and SIP in a new way I think. Of the companies and solutions at the nexus of the core subject of this post, SIPPhone and Gizmo must be included on the list.

There you have my hot points and highlight solutions and companies in the cutting edge unified communications space. I know I've left out more than I've included. I'm sure there are errors and ommissions. But for an afternoon write-up of 2006 highlights, this will do.



Technorati Tags: presence, relevance, context, iotum, Twitter, GrandCentral, Talkster, FMC, fixed mobile convergence, Nokia, BridgePort Networks, TalkPlus, VVoIP, IPTV, TVoIP, SightSpeed, ouTube, blip.tv, Adobe, Mixd, wireless, click-to-converge, Abbeynet, Sitebell, Sitofono, WebDialogs, Unyte, SIPPhone, Gizmo, 2006 in review