When you blog in the tech space like I have for seven years now, new faces are far more welcome than you might think. And for new bloggers (or podcasters and videographers) it can be challenging to figure out how to get introduced to the community of interest you participate in.

I got an email note today from Steve Brown at Network Observations, pointing me to his new blog sponsored be Network Instruments. They're a network analysis vendor with a great reputation. They follow VoIP, especially with interest in predeployment, roll-out and ongoing daily management. These are areas pretty close to my heart, and I talk about them often.

Here's a recent post, and I like what I see. I've subscribed with my RSS read and look forward to hearing more from Steve.

VoIP and Predeployment Testing
August 27th, 2007 by Stephen Brown

steve_brown.jpgThis column is a little longer, but with the continual roll-out of new technologies like VoIP on to the network, I think the importance of the topic justifies the length.

Denise Dubie today in her column for NetworkWorld covered the issue of what has been termed Unified Communications - unified communications aim to blend voice, video, instant messaging and conferencing with presence, collaboration, messaging and calendaring (so think VoIP, IM, and any types of collaboration or web meeting software) - are expected to be responsible for an increase in network traffic over the next twelve months. The column was prompted by a Network General poll of their client base. The key findings:

“Network General’s survey found that nearly 80% of companies expect the network traffic from communications applications to increase over the next 12 months. In the past three months, three-quarters of the companies polled say, up to 25% of their network traffic consists of unified communications.”