One of the people I connected with in the course of my security work is Dan Kaminsky. Dan's a widely respected security researcher and I was really pleased when he joined IOActive as Director of Penetration Testing. Josh Pennell and the IOActive team are friends and some of the sharpest security minds in the business.

While DNS problems might not sound like they fit in the world of unified communications. Dan's latest find is a big enough issue that I think it's wroth sharing here.

My colleague Dan Sullivan describes it here on the Realtime Messaging and Web Security Community.

DNS Cache Poisoning Code Now Publicly Available

As predicted it didn't take long for exploit code to become available to the DNS vulnerability found by Dan Kaminsky.

Ryan Naraine and Nathan McFeters has details and analysis here with updates here.

The code is available for Metasploit making it readily available to anyone with the open source tool. It's hard to imagine anyone who hasn't patched not dropping everything else this morning to get this patched.

If you haven't already patched your DNS, go do so now.

Technorati Tags: attack code, Dan Kaminsky, DNS poisoning, DNS vulnerability, Metasploit, patching

Posted by Ken Camp | Security in Unified Communications | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the past few days, I've been involved in a number of conversations about the phrase unified communications and what it means.

A couple of days ago, Art Rosenberg posted What Will Business People Call "UC?". Here's an excerpt -

Everyone may agree that "UC" and IP Telephony will be gradually swallowing up traditional voice telephone communications in both the business and consumer markets, but it has not exactly become a useful term for end users, nor yet created any viral demand from end users. There are practical reasons why this is so, including:

· UC technologies are still evolving and not as a single "package,"

· Communication functions are becoming more software based and device-independent, and therefore evolving differently from different technology providers,

· New multimodal devices are offering a variety of different form factors for UC capabilities and flexible user interfaces (visual, speech) through 3G mobile "smart-phones (e.g., Apple iPhones), desktop PC "softphones" and IP screenphones,

· New interoperability standards for end-to-end network contacts are still being defined, especially for person-to-person, real-time presence and availability ("federation"),

· Technology staffs are getting reeducated and consolidating their responsibilities for supporting IP telephony and data applications.

[Read Art's full post]

As always, Rosenberg makes some salient points that cut through the marketing babble and hype that's surrounded UC for far too long. Unified communications is simply not a useful term for end users and customers. It hasn't created viral demand for one simple reason - nobody really knows what the heck it is. Unified communications simply is not a product that you can write a check for.

Solution providers selling unified communications would do themselves and their customers a great service if they'd simply step away from the buzzwords and ask one question - What problem are you trying to solve?

Too often we get caught up in the technology and overlook the basics of business. Customers who implement technology solutions are most often not in the technology business. Their core business lies elsewhere - health care, finance, insurance, real estate, manufacturing, etc.

Having spent over thirty years in the technology sector I've seen cycles of business come and go. Selling technology has always been the single most unsuccessful approach, yet every few years the industry shifts into selling buzzwords and technology stuff. It's neat. It's cool. It has so much potential.

Too often the industry leads customers on with a "think of all you can do" sales pitch. If I'm a customer, I don't want to think about that. I'm too busy doing. I'd rather you show me that you know my business and know my industry. I want you to show me how I can rock the world in ways I haven't thought of.

That puts some responsibility on you, Mr. Vendor.

• You have to work hard to know me and my business. You have to study the market sector I'm in and know how we compete.
• You have to know who my competitors are. You have to know what strategies work and don't work in our fight to be on top.
• You have to be creative, but do it on your own time. Don't use me as an experiment. If we've been working together for a long time and I trust you, I might be willing to try some new things, but if you're a vendor I've never worked with, don't expect me to be your guinea pig. To quote Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets, "Go sell crazy someplace else. We're all stocked up here."
  

Customers don't want to hear unified communications or fixed mobile convergence or realtime collaboration phrases. It isn't time to hype buzzwords. The buzzword hype of unified communications is past. It's time to deliver real business value that solves problems and meets customer needs. Tangible, measurable solutions.

Posted by Ken Camp | Strategic Direction and Planning, Unified Communications | Permalink | Comments (2)

This morning as I was deleting the garbage reading the slew of news releases I get each day, a couple of thoughts occurred to me.

First I know that because we attend industry conferences as analysts/press/bloggers, and because of the topics we write about, we wind up on many press distribution lists that don't apply. So we get email announcements about topics we've never written about or expressed any interest in. That's expected up to a point, but it amazes me that some PR firms never cull their lists to eliminate people who aren't interested. There are a couple of PR firms who send me their news even though I've never written or mentioned anything they've sent and never responded in email. The only contact ever has been their spam news in my inbox. I have some of these folks who I've been receiving junk from for years now, and most of them are auto-filtered to my junk mail.

There's one firm in particular, who I won't mention by name (ok, maybe later I'll blast them in public for stupidity, but not this morning) who makes me laugh. They're in the broad industry of what we'd call unified communications. It's a topic I write about daily. I have actually written about the company one time, but in a most unflattering way. I pretty much called them me too copycats without vision or business plan. I may have said in that post they were a company I wouldn't bother writing about again.

Since that time, I get one or more news releases every week from their PR firm that's worded as if we're the best of friends. They always close with "may I call you to discuss in more detail?"

Let me clarify something. If I never wrote about your company, or wrote something that was negative, then never acknowledged your existence again, I probably don't want to hear what you're doing. It's unlikely I will ever write about you unless someone I really respect says something nice first. And we're not friends. I don't want to talk to you on the phone about the pure crap snake oil smoke and mirrors innovative technology you're foisting on unsuspecting victims delivering to the market.

How a PR firm approaches a blogger and industry analyst matters. And in many cases what begins as a negative view can be turned around simply by how you handle contacting us. But if you demonstrate cluetardedness by continually spamming, you do a great disservice to your clients. it's important to remember as a client of PR firms in general that the firms representing you is just as much your company image as your CEO. And they can leave you in a bad light if they do their job poorly.

Don't let your PR firm tarnish your image.

Posted by Ken Camp | | Permalink | Comments (2)

Last night my partner Sheryl and I hosted our new Internet radio talk show, Stardust Radio. Our radio program is truly planned as a broad forum to discuss a wide variety of topics, but because of our close involvement with this industry, it's a sure bet that technology and communications tools will be the subject from time to time. When it is, I'll cross post the shows here for ease of access. Last night's show was focused on dispelling some of the myths surrounding Unified Communications.. It was, in part, driven by my post here the other day - Unified Communications - Dispelling the Myths.

Joining us in the conversation were some of the thought leaders from several innovative companies in the sector.

One of the most clarifying conclusions I think we all came to is the open recognition that unified communications, regardless of what some vendors might claim, is not a product you can buy. It's an industry, and the term unified communications is as narrow in meaning for our industry as the word transportation is to that industry. Unified communications means many things to many people. In the podcast, you'll hear one participant say that if you ask one hundred customers what it means, you'll get two hundred answers.

Here's the content from our show last night.

Technorati Tags: podcast, Internet radio, Ken Camp, Sheryl Breuker, unified communications, Stardust Radio

Posted by Ken Camp | Unified Communications | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other day I wrote a post entitled Unified Communications - Dispelling the Myths on the Realtime Community site.

Tonight we'll be airing an episode of our new live, call-in Internet Radio show to talk about the topic of unified communications.

Stardust Radio

Technorati Tags: unified communications, VoIP, talk radio, internet radio

Posted by Ken Camp | Unified Communications | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been getting updates from a number of companies in the messaging business lately. Palringo comes to mind as one I see a lot of chatter about today, but there are others. Palringo offers cross-platform messaging from PC's and phones. It's left me thinking about the whole issue of what at the simplest, basic level, simply chat.

We chat on the phone. We chat at the water cooler. We have dozens of ephemeral conversations every day. As we've acclimated to life online, how we converse has evolved.

We had IRC (Internet Relay Chat). We had more IM solutions that we can shake a stick at - ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, MSN Messenger, Powow, CuSeeMe, NetMeeting and a host of others. These were all walled gardens and the hint of interoperability and a single unified IM client has been a pipe dream as the powers behind each backstab one another and delay any real advance. Even Skype's IM capability remains simply another walled garden in reality.

GoogleTalk came along and began to support Jabber and allow for some interoperability. GTalk wasn't alone. There are other multi-system clients like Trillian and GAIM that offer this capability.

But there's far more. Chat has moved. For many of us, SMS in some variation is our chat tool of choice. Blackberry Messenger is a chat variation of what began as PIN messaging that's a foundation of chat for many people today.

I've been using some form of line chat for over 20 years. Really. Dating back to before Windows existed. When I look at how people chat today, I look at my contacts. My universe of people isn't huge, but it's also not tiny.

I took a look at the Palrinog web site and here's a snapshot of the cross platform support.

As I looked through all these I recognized a big point. I don't talk to anyone on AIM, Yahoo, MSN or ICQ. Not one. If people aren't on Gtalk, Blackberry Messenger or Skype, I talk to them on SMS, or by voice or email. Or through a social media service like Twitter or Facebook.

My primary messaging platform is my Blackberry. I use it almost exclusively. And these are all supported on it. Plus Gtalk allows easy crossover support to contacts who use anything that supports Jabber.

So while Palringo looks like an interesting consolidation point, it begs the larger question - why would anyone use walled garden platforms that require something like Palringo? Aren't people moving away from that sort of constraint as quickyl as possible? Everyone I know sure is. And if they are, is there a long-term future for companies like Palringo?

I don't know, but given that the only thing Palringo gives me is the ability to use Gtalk from a different client, there's not much point for me personally.

So answer in comments. How do you use IM tools? Does something like this give you vcalue as a unified client for multiple chat systems? And does it really, or do you maintain buddy lists on multiple systems that are all the same people. Why would you do that? I'd like to understand a worthwhile value proposition and whether there's something I'm really missing or there's just a window of opportunity while widespread users in the masses are just slow at adopting standardized, consolidated tools.

Technorati Tags: unified communications, instant messaging, IM, chat

Posted by Ken Camp | Mobility/Fixed Mobille Convergence, Unified Communications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sheryl, my partner and fiance, called my attention to an interesting question this morning. It's not the first time recently I've seen this question raised in conversationbut the question seems to take many forms. My friend Jon Arnold asked just a week ago Is VoIP Really Happening?

Here's a snip from the Information week story that got me started on this thread.

Is Anyone Actually Implementing UC?
Posted by Eric Krapf, Jul 17, 2008 09:51 AM

A debate has been going on over at No Jitter about whether enterprises are actually adopting Unified Communications (see here, here, here, here, and here). I tend toward the skeptical end of any conversation about how widely a hot new technology is actually being adopted, but I do see a few signs that enterprises are at least paying attention and, where possible, looking for an opportunity to get their feet wet.

I was chatting with a consultant yesterday who told me that in his last three engagements, he'd put Unified Communications into the specifications as an option for the companies to include in their RFPs, and in all three cases, the companies jumped at it. The reason? Business differentiation, i.e., the hope that UC could provide a new competitive advantage. This, by the way, supports a theory that Chris Thompson of Cisco (NSDQ: CSCO) expounded to me at VoiceCon Orlando, that during difficult economic times, it's actually easier for enterprises to make investments in "aspirational" technology than that which is "perspirational".

To me, that says the UC message is getting through to enterprises. There's no guarantee that every company will ultimately make the ROI, in whatever way the individual user company calculates that ROI. Maybe the bids will come back and the business case just won't be there.

[Read the whole story here]

I've been following VoIP from the beginnng and unified communications since before the term came into popular use, and I feel like I have a distinctly different viewpoint.

We write and provide an eJournal series, Unified Communications
in Realtime, here at the Realtime Unified Communications Community that gets added to our Digital Library each month. It's also distributed through other channels.

In the three-part series for next month we've been working on a set of brief articles about the intersection between unified communications and social media. As part of that, I tried to explain what unified communications is to set a foundation for the discussion. Here's an excerpt from the soon-to-be-published piece -

Unified Communications - A Broad Definition
Unified communications is an interesting phrase that's come into widespread use in the past year or two. Many companies have made efforts to brand it as their own, but it's really a mindset tied to the journey of network convergence.

When we're connected effectively, we're more productive. Many working professionals are also more creative. With easy access to the tools we use to perform, our work is simpler. We're able to focus on the work they need to do. We perform at a higher level. Just as companies focus on their core competencies, we as people perform better when we put all of our energy into our primary work objectives

One of the biggest drivers of this increased productivity in the past ten years has been what we call convergence. Convergence is another one of those vague buzzwords that means many things to many people, but there have been some clear and distinct phases

Phase 1 - Voice and Data Converge on the Wire
Convergence really took hold as a concept in the late 1990's. IP became the most widely accepted transport technology for data traffic. Around the same time Voice over IP (VoIP) came on the scene as potentially disruptive technology for telecommunications.

Prior to this, most large companies often managed multiple networks - one for voice and another for data. In many cases, these networks were supported by different administrative and operations groups.

Integration of voice and data onto a single wired circuit infrastructure helped many companies reduce costs and improve the bottom line. The convergence of network technologies brought efficiency gains in many different business areas.

Phase 2 - IP Takes Center Stage as the Convergence Protocol
The convergence of the physical network onto a single circuit was the start of something that's still in motion. Voice over IP (VoIP) provided yet another catalyst for change. It was ballyhooed as the end of telecommunications as we knew it and the signal that the legacy telephone companies would be out of business.

VoIP hasn't matured in the way those wild prognostications foretold but it has become the stable foundation for telecommunications infrastructure. VoIP proved to be an enabling technology that has changed our way of thinking about voice. VoIP pointed the way to voice as simply another service of the network.

Phase 3 - Unified Communications
This convergence of voice and data networks has continued around the globe for the past several years. Today there are many networks that still haven't fully converged. The process continues, and for many companies, the end of the road is nowhere in sight.

Convergence became the term used to describe the integration of data, voice and video onto one unified network. These network services used to all use separate networks. Today they share the resources of the corporate network and the Internet.

In the past two years, the word convergence has given way to the phrase unified communications. For most people, unified communications simply means the fully converged network, supporting data, voice and video.

That's unified communications of today, but the journey doesn't end there. There are mission-critical business applications that will integrate more tightly through Communications Enhanced business Processes (CEBP). These include:

• Enterprise Resource Management (ERP)
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Supply Chain Management (SCM)
• Sales Force Automation (SFA)
• Human Resource Management (HRM)

There will always be room to further integrate for efficiency. One key added area that's seeing a lot of current improvement is integrating people with voice recognition technology. The user interface will always be a key component of how we enhance the way people use computerized resources.

In the Information Week piece, Krapf asks is anyone actually implementing UC? I'd rephrase it differently - Is there anyone who isn't implementing UC?

Unified communications is a buzz phrase like convergence. It means different things to different people. In today's business environment, VoIP is prevalent. Jon asked is it really happening, but I'm often hard pressed to find places where it isn't happening.

Unified Communitations is everywhere. Think about it. Voice services, video services and voice mail have converged onto a single unified platform - an IP network and our computers or other devices. Without unified communications, you have no social media - no Facebook, no Twitter, no comprehensive integration. Without unified communications, the web as we know it is a pipe dream. It had email and static web pages.

Web 2.0, the phrase we've all heard a million times is unified communications. Without UC, there could have been no Web 2.0. Unified communications, like VoIP, isn't a product you write a check for and buy. It's not a single product you implement and move on. It's not as complex as vendors make it sound.

Unified communications in a foundation mindset of a single, integrated platform for doing business. Simple.

Sheryl and I are in the process of augmenting our work at Stardust Global Ventures. Our GeekSpeekTV has been very popular, but with the hectic moving process we've had to endure lately, it's been difficult to produce our regular shows. We're now in the process of incorporating Stardust Radio into our portfolio.

Stardust Radio

Technorati Tags: unified communications, VoIP, talk radio, internet radio

Posted by Ken Camp | Unified Communications, VoIP | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you really want to spend a little time wisely, you can't do any better than spending a half hour with someone I think is probably the sharpest knife in the drawer at Skype. It's been online for a while, but a good friend Just pointed it out to me again and I think it's worth sharing.

Jonathan Christensen

At the Emerging Communications Conference 2008, Jonathan Christensen of Skype speaks about the development of IP communications over the past 10 years. Christensen is general manager of audio and video at Skype.

The pioneers of VoIP developed the basic technology between 1996 and 2001. The first ever usable VoIP technology that people remember was the VoltaTec VoIP phone. Following that, companies that established gateways across end-points entered the market. They were followed by carriers that established gateways and POPs and connected them to the PSTN networks. The two important use cases that drove the VoIP market were -- PC-to-PC ham radio users such as Jeff Pulver, and tandem trunking, or two-staged dialing.

Cost saving potentials and the regulatory framework of VoIP, have changed the telecom industry profoundly. New players have entered the market and influenced prices pushing them down and as a result, per the vision of Jeff Pulver, commoditizing voice.
[Read on ITConversations]

Technorati Tags: Jonathan Christensen, Skype, ITConversations, podcast

Posted by Ken Camp | Unified Communications, VoIP | Permalink | Comments (0)