BY RICH TEHRANI
President and Group Publisher

Interoperability's Competitive Playing Field

Human beings are obsessed with competition: Witness the World Cup, World Series, the Olympics, or even your kids' little league games on the weekend. We all enjoy watching two teams fight it out to the finish, so that a victor can be declared. Even professional wrestling -- once you lose the theatrics, flying chairs, and other objects -- boils down to two individuals with loyal followings battling in a ring. On occasion, the better wrestler emerges victorious (or as a politician).

The whole essence of watching sports is being able to vicariously participate in the contest. Sports fans are often fanatical about the events they choose to observe: They'll sit in ice-cold stands for hours while cheering on their favorite team. Competition is healthy and necessary in sports because it builds athletes that are more focused, more driven, and more obsessed with winning. When it comes to sports, no one would argue that competition is a great thing.

But is competition always good in business? Is there bad competition? I believe there is. When IBM launched their PC and hundreds of competitors were able to produce competitive computers, prices plummeted and options increased manifold. Suddenly, a wave of developers started to produce applications on the PC making it the platform of choice for many consumers and enterprise users. This was good competition.

Some years later, IBM developed a proprietary computer bus that was faster and had more capacity than the original ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bus -- the MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) bus. IBM decided to license the MCA bus, but for a fee. IBM’s competitors, such as Compaq and others, got together and developed the EISA (Extended Industry Standard Architecture) bus. For the greater part of a decade, it was unclear as to which bus would win out. In the meantime, most manufacturers concentrated on selling one bus design or the other.

Those of us in MIS back then had to choose which architecture was better suited for our organizations. Undoubtedly, some of the products that worked in the MCA environment had no analogous products in the EISA world, and vice versa. The result of two bus standards meant innovation was stifled as manufacturers chose one platform or the other. Or, if they chose both, they had to spend tremendous time porting from one bus to another. This was bad competition: It stifled innovation as two camps fought a war that benefited no one.

Thankfully, the Internet telephony market is seeing a large share of what I call good competition. One of the best examples of this competition took place in my office last week when I had a chance to meet with high-level executives at Hypercom. During the course of our meeting, I was extremely happy to hear that sales of their Internet telephony gateways are progressing quite nicely. Hypercom has gone beyond gateways to providing turnkey solutions that include e-commerce and prepaid calling cards with Web-based account management.

During the meeting with Hypercom, I mentioned that all TMC events from now on -- including INTERNET TELEPHONY EXPO™, October 6-8, at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, CA -- will feature ConvergeNET™, an IP telephony network designed to allow vendors to test and demonstrate real-world IP telephony interoperability in the exhibit hall. I was so happy to hear that Hypercom was extremely interested in interoperability, and they loved the idea of ConvergeNET.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at their enthusiasm. In the short time since we announced the debut of ConvergeNET, we have garnered strong support from elemedia, VocalTec, and HP. In fact, both HP and elemedia are ConvergeNET sponsors.

Cisco, too, is proud of the fact that they are strong supporters of interoperability. In fact, every company I have spoken with that manufactures products for the voice and data convergence market jumps at the opportunity to prove their products work well with others.

As you've read in publications such as CTI and INTERNET TELEPHONY, a lack of standards is not a problem this industry faces. If anything, there is an overabundance of standards such as iNOW!, H.323, SGCP, IPDC, MGCP, SIP, SAP, SDP and more. Many of these standards are now morphing and undergoing upgrades as well.

One of the standards that provides a least common denominator for ConvergeNET is H.323. Please read "H.323: One Meal, 323 Flavors," written by TMC’s own Robert Vahid Hashemian, for details on this standard and others. As H.323 is one of the foremost industry standards and certainly the most popular, it seems fitting that we demonstrate interoperability using this standard as a starting point. While most vendors say they support H.323, many support it only on paper, and of course different vendors support it in varying degrees.

Paper standards are never enough when it comes to the fast-paced world of technology. Real-world tests and bake-offs are essential tools in ensuring interoperability that really works. ConvergeNET, with the help of the participating vendors and sponsors, will be the testing ground where the rubber meets the road. Perhaps in this way, ConvergeNET can accelerate our progress to the ultimate goal of Internet telephony interoperability.

Rich Tehrani welcomes comments at rtehrani@tmcnet.com.