Phil Wolff, Skype Journal 10 March 2011

Interop, please

“Bruegel's paintings seem to attribute the ultimate failure of

the Tower to engineering difficulties rather than to sudden, divinely-caused linguistic differences.”

� The Tower of Babel, Wikipedia

What if we start a standards/interoperability workshop for cloud conversation?

What if we start a standards/interoperability workshop for cloud conversation?

Not just the cloud telephony part; the world needs interoperability across a much broader scope.

• Consider Twilio, Voxeo, Skype, Telefónica/Jajah, Google Talk/Google Voice, Apple, Ribbit/BT, Yahoo!, TokBox, Microsoft/Nokia, Facebook, and Speek. • All operate a public cloud

communications platform, operate a private one for their own purposes, or are very likely to in the next 18 to 24 months. The list is growing.• Together, they serve more than a

billion people.

Their platforms are diverging on: • Models of a

conversation • Models of contacts,

relationship life cycles

• Models of groups of contacts

• Media and Modalities (IM, voice, video, 3D immersion/AR, subtitles, SMS)

• Dial Tone • Availability

Presence

• Activity messaging and streaming

• Intention Presence• Peering

Agreements • Call failure modes • Network failure

modes • Persistence • The new call detail

record (CDR) reporting

• User Interface widgets and experience design defaults

Early divergence can be good, as an industry explores the possibilities.

An industry with many platforms, however, benefits from some

types of convergence.

1. The ability for applications to reach more people, working across systems.

2. The opportunity for apps to run in more places.

3. Network effects bigger than any one company.

4. Calls to include parties from more than one network

5. Product innovation within architectural layers, so changes in one technology don’t obsolete all the others.

6. Portability of customer data.

7. Freedom to move between and among accounts.

8. Independence from any one platform provider.

9. Convergence of the new call metadata useful for security, identity, billing, and peering.

Interop can make this space into a more vital ecosystem and industry.

Now would be a great time to start a conversation by and for

the people building the protocols

and the people using them.

Starting Topics

In a world of mashups (that sounds so last decade), the cloud conversation products are new islands of isolation. • Are we ready to discuss interoperability?• Who should be invited to participate?• What will bring the right people together?• What will it take to make a safe space for

this conversation? • How open can we make this conversation?• What considerations affect timing?• Next steps?

Phil Wolff@evanwolf

pwolff@SkypeJournal.com

Skype:evanwolf+1-510-316-9773SkypeJournal.com

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