I've lost count on how many Unified Communications (UC) platforms are out there. It seems every week there is an announcement on a new vendor launching its own. It does not surprise me, as per most analysts, UC is a growing market with a market cap that is expanding by multiple billions of dollars year over year. Everyone wants a piece of that!

As in most market segments, in the UC market there are those vendors that took a risk and now are market leaders and others that came later, but by flexing their financial muscle were able to buy market share (you know who they are…). There are also the niche vendors that identified an interesting gap and are capitalizing on it. Independent of the type of vendor, in UC, there are base factors that can contribute to success or failure. One of these factors is audio and video quality. It is quite hard to collaborate when you have a poor experience on audio and video calls and conferences. A UC vendor could have the most advanced APIs or integrate with a multitude of applications, but if audio or video quality is not there and adaptable to different network conditions, then it is destined for failure.

Nerd alert! For a while I’ve postponed my chance to geek out about one of the latest buzz words in the telecom industry. Over the last few years, the telecom industry has been rampant with technical terms such as virtualization, network functions virtualization (NFV), orchestration, and lately containerization. Salespeople throw terms around like there is no tomorrow in hopes of getting prospects engaged and excited about their products. One term that is trending now is microservices architecture (MSA). Now, I did say I was going to geek out, but I promise not to get too technical, so hopefully, you will make it to the end of this blog.

My niece is volunteering in the Peace Corps in West Africa. When her younger sister learned that the 110V hairdryer she wanted to send would not work in the 230V environment in Sierra Leone, she asked an inciteful question, “How come her cellphone works?”. I am a telephony sales engineer by trade, and I was born and raised in South Africa, so naturally she turned to me for an explanation.

As mentioned in my previous DevOps blog, OpenStack is one of the cloud platforms with growing popularity in the market and it’s already supported by the Dialogic® BorderNet® SBC and other Dialogic products. Support for OpenStack often becomes an added-value driver for customer interest in our offerings.

If you are involved in product development, you’ve most likely heard about DevOps, which is a methodology for quickly delivering and improving products in less time than using traditional development methods. One of the main reasons for the adoption of DevOps is the need for software and infrastructure integration and collaboration, gaining the best from both, achieving better performance, and bringing the final product to an optimized level on the fastest track possible. DevOps is a culture backed by endless technologies and tools where the key is “Automate Everything.”

A Session Border Controller (SBC) is a network device that secures voice over IP (VoIP) infrastructures while providing interworking between incompatible signaling messages and media flows (sessions) from end devices or application servers. SBCs are employed in enterprise infrastructures and any carrier network delivering commercial, residential, business, fixed-line, or mobile VoIP services. They are typically deployed at both the network edge and at carrier interconnects, the demarcation points (borders) between their users and other service providers.

There is absolutely no doubt that IoT is on service providers’ minds as a new source of opportunity and revenue, especially as their core services like voice and messaging decline. And with predictions of 1 trillion connected devices by 2025, this new vision is certainly very compelling.

Are you a service provider looking for new revenue streams with a focus on innovation with IoT? If so, then you are reading the right blog! Dialogic has a long legacy of helping major telecom service providers launch unique services, and now we are working with Tier1 service providers around the world to leverage their telecom and digital assets into revenue-generating IoT solutions.

I am sure many of you have been or are currently involved in a project with one or more partners or vendors that demand frequent update calls. Typically, you would set up a conference bridge, exchange files via emails and, if required, send an instant message (IM) via SMS or some other OTT application. Does this scenario sound familiar? As time goes by,

It’s true you know – I used to be able to touch my toes .

Not many blogs start with a personal revelation like that – bet you are hooked already. As I reflect on the glory days of my youth it is with great pleasure that I reminisce about playing a variety of sports. As a younger man, adapting to multiple sporting disciplines and being flexible in my approach to different challenges was important if I was to succeed. The two important words that need highlighting from that previous sentence are “adapting” and “flexible.” As I have grown into an elder statesman, my ability to adapt is less, and I am certainly less flexible as my pulled muscles will testify.