At EtherSpeak we talk of cloud formation for the communities we support for business-telephone-lines-over-the-Internet, or our SIP trunks. Now we’re a good provider of voice, fax and video trunking services – but the point of this blog is to discuss why we’re a cloud provider and others may not be based on their lack of normalization at the customer edge. The premise being: All SIP providers are not necessarily a “cloud-service-provider”.
Cloud computing is not a new concept – but an evolution of the “software-as-a-service” business model (best represented by Salesforce.com). Cloud computing differentiates from other types of computing models, namely Grid-Computing; Utility-Computing; and Autonomic-Computing.
Cloud computing is defined as a subscription, where a customer does not buy any equipment, rather they connect to the cloud via what equipment they have in place already (eg standard firewall).
Apple Computer has a feature built-in to the Snow Leopard OS and the Apple X-Server that enables Grid-Computing – where based on the super-computer and virtual-computer model that efficiently distributes the load for complex computational tasks Using this feature, a X-Serve customer can make use of distributed computer power of networked nodes on a just-in-time basis. For example, my Mac at home (connected to X-Serve) has a feature where complex production of a multi-media presentation can be distributed to access and utilize the computing power of the remotely networked MAC nodes toward the production of a Podcast production or other multi-media deliverable..
Utility computing provides (like an electric utility) where tenant leverage a community of servers or applications and only use (and pay) what they need and when they need it. Autonomic Computing (not all that relevant here) is essentially computers capable of self-management.
Cloud-Computing users typically avoid capital expenditure when they pay a provider only for what, when, and how much they use. There are start-up fees – typically a customer may use existing infrastructure to connect to the cloud service provider. Cloud-computing also provides a solution for the heterogeneous mix of technology on a customer premise AND it most-likely relies on industry agreed open-standards to inter-operate and move the customer data from cloud to cloud. This means a cloud-provider must be able to take in all types of data – from all types of environments and “normalize” or standardize the data so that it may be passed to other cloud providers – and “de-normalize”, or put the data back into a proprietary format so that the customer may leverage the cloud despite having a proprietary system on their local-area-network or wide-area-network.
We support native SIP trunk connectivity for ShoreTel, Microsoft, Zultys and Asterisk. ShoreTel and Microsoft for example have proprietary solutions for providing Unified Communications solutions. Both are well-known, well-rated an like within their respective communities. However, Microsoft interfaces to SIP providers using TCP based connections – not UDP like most if not all SIP trunks that are available in the market. ShoreTel, as a very robust MGCP based solution, must utilize a cloud provider to normalize SIP to bridge between MGCP to SIP to MGCP. Interfacing to industry open-standard SIP connections is difficult unless the provider can provide a bridge from MGCP to Session Initiation Protocol or SIP. In both these examples, to be a provider in the Microsoft community, a provider like EtherSpeak sits in the core of the network and moves real-time policy enforcement; routing, control, monitoring and interoperability out of the individual PBXs and into a common SOA-based session layer. EtherSpeak’s SOA interfaces eliminate direct point-to-point communications between the clients and servers, making it much easier for organizations to reduce costs further through vendor consolidation and PBX centralization.
As you consider your next SIP provider, explore whether they can provide normalization features. This capability will make interaction with the cloud-service-provider a key part of reducing the operating expense of your business now – and well into the future. If they don’t have this capability – you will have no choice but to wait for solution to integrate from your PBX manufacturer to be able fully leverage the cloud for services like voice, fax-over-ip, inter-site video, enterprise IM federation and other useful services for your business.
Sincerely,
Neil Darling
EtherSpeak
Now we're EtherSpeakin' 