I'm having a chat this evening with a client in Califormia. We'll be using Skype. His job is at a Big Company, but it works OK for him behind the corporate firewall. When we last talked the audio quality wasn't great, so I suspect he's tunnelling out via HTTP or HTTPS via some supernode somewhere. These protocols aren't designed to carry real-time audio, and it shows.
This brings into question whether his internal telco manager is adding or subtracting value. I've had terrible experiences inside big companies using their telephony systems, because nothing integrates with my life. As an IT consultant in times past, I'd have an office landline number I had to put on my business card. I could set up the voicemail system to call me whenever I got a voicemail. Inevitibly, I then ended up with voicemails on my mobile telling me I had voicemails on my desk phone. (No, I couldn't simply forward inbound calls -- not an enabled feature, I guess to avoid paying outbound landline-to-cellular rates.) Then you turn up at a client site, and you can't even connect to their LAN. They're paying a fortune to have you there wasting your time doing dial-up via the fax line to access the information you need. It's as if it it's 1950 and everyone sits at one desk for their whole career.
In contrast, I've been independent for 2 years now, and I enjoy a great communications experience. Me and the Telco 2.0 team all use Skype. The event has a number of contractors involved, also all on Skype. Everything works. Native Skype conference calls a great. I'd hate to go back to being a standard enterprise user now. I probably pay a tenth of what a normal managed office desktop costs, for a much better environment. Pity those corporate users on a conference call who can't even share a URL around!
I suspect a lot of enterprises would be better off firing most of their IT/comms department, buying in some simple ASP apps, giving everyone a pure and raw Internet connection, and send them off to Circuit City or PC World to get the equipment they want. Then put some VPNs in place to access sensitive corporate systems, and you're off!
For every firewall there's an equal and opposite session border controller. Save your cash, fire the firewall and board up the border controller.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 3:40 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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