Author: Martin

Despite having been quite a skeptic a couple of years ago when it came to Instant Messaging (IM), I have realized these days that I have fully integrated IM into my working and private life and today I wouldn't want back. In fact, if somebody calls me on Skype these days without sending an IM first to ask if I am available or to let me know what it is about, it feels a bit strange, almost like an intrusion.

Communicating with IM people

I usually don't call people on the phone that regularly use IM. In most cases the questions I have can be answered in a few words. No need to call and 'hard interrupt' the other person or myself. To me, IM seems more like a 'soft interrupt' with the option to ignore for a little while to finish something else first. I can even continue my work and once I have the answer I can quickly go back and fill in the gaps, if the task at hand permits.

While the amount of incoming and outgoing messages remain reasonable, I can get answers and answer questions myself pretty much on the fly without fully interrupting the main task I am doing at the moment. Much more efficient than making a phone call for both parties involved.

I can also see right away when somebody is busy or not available. So instead of calling and leaving a voice mail, I can set a 'notification event' in my messenger so I don't have to guess when the other person might come back or waste time in trying to call.

Communicating with Non-IM people

Seeing people being present gives me a sense of connectedness and the reassurance that I can quickly get help or advice when necessary. With people that are not connected, however, my business practice is quite different. Here, the only way to contact them is by phone or e-mail. While e-mail is definitely less intrusive than IM, you never know when the other person reads it or when he will answer it. And making a phone call will definitely interrupt whatever the other person is doing or I might not be able to reach him at all. It feels a bit like walking in the dark or playing the lottery.

No mobile-IM yet

What I haven't come around to using yet is IM on my mobile phone. Not that it's a technical issue, there are enough mobile IM clients available. Maybe that's because I also don't read my business e-mails on a mobile device since my questions and answers I get/send by e-mails are usually longer than what small keyboards, screens and not being able to look up things in documents, support. Or maybe I just don't want to be bothered while in transition!?

Interesting though how many of my friends, co-workers and customers are using mobile-IM these days, even those that generally questioned the usefulness of Internet access from mobile devices a couple of years ago.

So my question to you is: How do you feel about / use IM today?

P.S.: Have you noticed that almost everyone now uses an avatar (picture) in their IM program. I wonder how that happened!?

While ATM is used as a transport technology in backhaul and core networks for UMTS and ADSL today it looks like the technology is pretty much on the way out in next generation networks. In LTE for example, ATM no longer plays a role, everything is specified only down to the IP layer. The technology used below is up to the network operator. In many cases this will be Ethernet over copper (e.g. VDSL), fiber or Ethernet microwave.

Another example is the VDSL deployment of Deutsche Telekom (DT) in Germany. According to heise magazine 22/08, DT uses Ethernet over a Gigabit fibre (802.3ah) to their outdoor VDSL DSLAMs. Ethernet is also used over the last few meters of copper cable to the customer instead of ATM. While the VDSL modems can still do ATM, DT has decided to use Ethernet in combination with VLAN (Virtual LAN) encapsulation (802.1q). At the moment, only VLAN-ID 7 is used for all kinds of data, but there are rumors that DT plans to use several VLAN-IDs to separate IPTV from normal Internet access in the future with their IADs (Integrated Access Devices) that support Internet access, IPTV and (SIP) telephony.

Recently, while in the dentist’s waiting room I had a bit of time to read another article from the always very interesting Ericsson Review Magazine. In the 2/2008 issue there are lots of articles on IMS. In the article on delivering the optimal end-user experience, the authors describe that their IMS application environment allows to share with other users which IMS applications one is using. This way, one can not only see if it is possible to use a specific application to communicate with someone but it’s also possible to see which applications others are using and thus to discover new services. Kind of a viral marketing approach.

I haven’t read about this in any IMS articles so far and it strikes me as a good idea, not only for the IMS domain. From the article, it’s not quite clear if this is something proprietary of the Ericsson IMS client environment or something that was standardized in 3GPP or OMA. If this is part of an IMS standard and you know where to find it, please leave a note in the comment section.

Unified Communications – The holy grail of combining information technology and telecommunication. There are lots of different opinions on what exactly UC is and when I was offered to have a look at a book giving an introduction, I couldn't resist.

Unified Communication Solutions – A Practical Business and Technology Approach by David Kim, Michael Gibbs and Bob Decker, published by Nortel press, approaches the topic in four steps. The first part of the book introduces the reader to how the evolution and integration of messaging, voice telephony and business applications forms a Unified Communication Solution. Business processes are streamlined with UC by making business applications interact directly with each other and by improving the interaction between people working on a common project and goal.

The second and third part of the book then show how UC can be used to enhance business processes such as Customer service, Customer relationship management, Supply chain management, enterprise resource planning and sales force automation. Quite a thorough analysis which not only discusses UC but also gives an overview of how companies are run.

UC is not a low hanging fruit, as lots of thought has to go into how to introduce UC applications into business processes and how to secure them. By tying information and communication together, new angles of attack for the bad guys emerge and the final chapter of the book gives an introduction of how to secure VoIP, SIP and UC solutions.

Personally, I've been using some of the UC elements described in this book for a couple of years now. Take my VoIP soft-phone and the IPsec VPN software on my PC for example. I can't remember when I last used a desktop phone as I find headphones and a proper address book for phone numbers navigated with the mouse much more convenient than anything a desktop phone could offer. This has opened totally new ways of working to me as I am no longer bound to a specific place but can do my work from pretty much anywhere where an Internet connection is available. Over an encrypted IPsec tunnel my e-mail, SIP telephony and corporate IM work just as well as at my desk in the office, which I rarely use these days.

Thanks to 3.5G networks now common pretty much everywhere I go, I don't even have to worry much anymore about how to connect. The first question of many callers these days is 'Hey Martin, where are you today', because they know I travel a lot or work from home and simply can't tell the difference from the connection or the caller ID of whether I am in the office or somewhere else. That's UC in action.

What I am still missing in my personal setup is the proper integration of voice telephony in my business applications, i.e. in Microsoft Office and Outlook. But then, what would the world be without some room for improvement?

While the book talks about mobile devices in some places, it's clear that this is not really the authors domain and I think this part of UC was treated a little bit too lightly in the book. (Yes, I know, I work in the mobile domain, so that comment had to come…). Another area that I wished were a bit more  discussed is Web based tools for integrating communication functions into programs and web applications for communication inside the company and with the customers.

All in all, a great book and I managed to read it in about a week. In total, the book has 17 chapters and each can be read in 30 – 60 minutes. That's just the right time that can be set aside every now and then before other matters require attention or that train you are sitting in arrives at where you want to get off.

A quick note to point you to the Carnival of the Mobilists, this week over at VoIP Survivor. An incredible amount of posts are featured this week, they should keep you busy for a while 🙂