The Commetrex Outlook | October 2007

You Gotta Be at VON

As always, we’ll be there showing some interesting new stuff. Our CEO, Mike Coffee, has put together a fascinating panel on DSP vs. HMP. In addition to Mike, panelists include senior executives from TI, Aculab, and Radisys. So if you’ve ever wondered what the HMP noise is all about and want to learn when it’s effective, come to the session.

DSP vs. HMP Wednesday, October 31, 2007, 11:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Here’s a session description:

Moore’s law continues to hold while the MIPS required to process a call’s media stream remain relatively constant. So we’ve seen a surge of product announcements for so-called “host media processing” (HMP) media servers. These products do in software the functions that formerly required specialized hardware since the MIPS available on the host computer are large compared with those required to process a media server’s call streams. HMP media servers are often less expensive than DSP-based systems, but are they just as good? What are the pros and cons of each?

And we’ll be demonstrating FaxIPTM for Skype, featuring the IPP2000 from Eutectics. Others have tried and failed; ever wondered how we did it? Come to our booth and we’ll explain our patent-applied-for technology and show it in action. Mike Lynes, CEO of Eutectics will also be in our booth.

But wait! There’s more! We’ve jumped feet first into open source and VoiceXML by developing and posting on Sourceforge.net Sourceforge.net/BladeWareVXML a functionally and performance-enhanced VoiceXML 2.1 interpreter. We’re also making commercial licenses and comprehensive support available.

Want more! Stop by our booth #226 and learn about all the new and exciting things happening at Commetrex. We will be happy to see you and welcome you to VON Fall 2007.

Now He’s Talking About VoiceXML

Commetrex’ CEO, Mike Coffee, has posted his latest CEO Letter on our Website, and it’s about VoiceXML. No surprise since we just put BladeWareVXML up on Sourceforge.net/BladeWareVXML for you to download. But what are the larger implications? He believes that the separation of call-specific application logic and data from the service network is a big deal. To find out why, read the letter.

Increased Emphasis On Support For The EU

In a move designed to better serve existing customers and seize our ever-increasing opportunities within the European telecom industry, Commetrex’ VP, founder, and CTO, Cliff Schornak will be splitting his time between Europe and North America for the coming year. The EU market has always been strong for Commetrex. We have many existing customers to support, with many more in the pipeline. Establishing an EU presence will allow us to serve those accounts better and strengthen the region’s contribution to our growing sales into the telecom OEM, service provider, unified messaging, and fax-server markets.

Cliff can be reached by phone on his direct line, 1-770-407-6027, on Skype at “CSchornak”, or send him an e-mail him at CSchornak@commetrex.com.

To further strengthen our BladeWare team, Commetrex has added Jerry Samples to the newly created position of Director, System Software. Jerry has an extensive background in system development, and holds MS degrees in Applied Computer Science and Geophysics.

Look, Ma! No TDM!

Commetrex’ new phone system is a perfect example of the power of IP-telephony, or as Jeff Pulver would say, “Purple telephony.” It’s now trite to say it, but even though this new system is saving us a bundle in just about every way you can imagine, it’s really about the features that IP makes feasible.

We just installed a new MAX1000 IP phone system from Altigen. (This is reverse customer-success story since Altigen’s products include several Commetrex media-technology products.) We decided to take advantage of the support of the SIPconnect recommendation by both Altigen and Cbeyond Communication, our all-IP service provider. So we avoided gateways altogether. Cool!

And if that’s not cool enough, consider that BladeWare will soon support SIPconnect. We’re working with several fax-server software vendors to develop BladeWare adapters for their applications, so they won’t need gateways either.

Then there’s Altigen’s IPtalk software, which means that our office extensions go wherever our laptops go, including overseas. We just opened a UK office and we don’t need a separate system or UK number. (The office is in the UK, but our customers are all over the EU.) They can be reached by calling our main number (770-449-7775) and listening to the prompts, by just dialing 770-407-6027.

So, what did we have to do to set that up? Nothing except get a broadband connection in the UK, which was hard enough. After one month of begging the incumbent, Virgin had it done in a week.

Commetrex’ Voice Strategy

So, why did Commetrex go to the trouble of putting BladeWareVXMLInterpreter , a new version of OpenVXi, on Sourceforge.net ? Well, one reason is that with Vocalocity’s asset sale and the subsequent withdrawal of their version of OpenVXi from the market, the industry needs it. And, we’re offering commercial licenses, so it makes business sense, but there’s much more to the move.

If you’ve been reading the Commetrex Outlook, you’re probably aware of our offering highly modular components for the OEM in addition to integrated systems, such as BladeWare. After all, in addition to other media technologies, we even license the secret sauce of BladeWare to OEMs that already have a media server. So, we’re not going to abandon this legacy when it comes to adding voice support to BladeWare. It’s all going to be modular, beginning with BladeWareVXMLInterpreter. We are integrating it into BladeWare as a system service. We’ll then do the same with MRCP, HTTP, CCXML, and Media Control.

A few more lines of code will then produce a voice browser.

VoIP 2.0 Meets Web 2.0 – White Paper

Until recently, the glacial movements of the incumbent carriers made it difficult to detect watershed events in the telecom industry. But the events that shape telecom are no longer controlled by the incumbents. Instead of the de jure telecom standards of the ITU, we have industry groups, such as the 3GPP, which developed IMS, the W3C, responsible for VoiceXML and other Web standards, and the IETF, which sets Internet standards. Then the Web 2.0 crowd, such as Google, Skype, and Yahoo!, are creating their own “telecom standards.” Can telecom mashups be far behind?

Commetrex believes that the decomposition of service networks for the carrier and enterprise into what is now being called IMS and service-oriented architectures (SOA) is defining a new approach to service-network implementation. Closely related is the utilization of Web servers and VoiceXML to supply the application logic and context-specific information needed to handle individual calls and subscribers.

This means that the “me generation” phenomenon will move beyond wireless to wireline and from wireline to the enterprise. Commetrex is basing its strategy on the understanding that communications and information are becoming personalized, more open than ever, and Web-based.

Want more? Interested in reading more? Check out our latest white paper at VoIP 2.0 Meets Web 2.0.