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Dialogic - ContactCenterWorld.com Blog Page 6
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Making the Connection Between the Brand and NFV Network Transformation - Part 2
In my previous blog, I spoke about AT&T’s thought leadership session at the recent ETSI NFV ISG. They explored a wide ranging of topics including; revenue opportunities from the cloud, NFV, SDN, 5G and reimagining the central office. You can read that blog by clicking here. While I was expecting more insights into NFV, on-going proof of concepts, and updates on new SDN-based services, I was pleasantly surprised to hear AT&T’s VP of Brand Identity Gregg Heard give one of the more attention-getting presentations on something you wouldn’t hear every day at a technical specifications conference; the AT&T brand strategy. But when you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. Service providers should be very cognizant of how consumers perceive their brand as they try to evolve themselves from voice, data and pipes to applications, entertainment, and IoT services like smart home automation.
Clearly there’s this divide between what people think about their mobile carrier and what they think about their super cool smartphone, tablet, or wearable device, so how should a mobile operator position itself to get its more than fair share of recognition with subscribers as the app and device developers? Gregg indicated that they’re making sure that at AT&T, its brand is in the center of all considerations when it comes to presenting the company. This attention to branding is having an impact on everything from vehicles to uniforms, their cool looking hardhats, and even the legal language they use on customer facing documents. Gregg also talked about the emphasis AT&T is putting on its sonic branding (second most recognized of AT&T’s brands). But what I thought was missing from the discussion was what AT&T is doing from an employer branding perspective especially in light of their massive undertaking to retool its employees when it comes to next generation cloud technologies, NFV and SDN.
In an earlier post, I talked about AT&T’s nanodegree program that the service provider has made available to its work force to bring them up to speed on the new software-centric technologies. In addition, many tech companies are starting to see that job seekers are also eventual consumers, and if potential employee candidates deem that a company is not good enough to work for, they sure as hell aren’t good enough to buy from either. Brand identification has a lot to do with treating “job candidates as eventual customers” conceptually. Somehow, their efforts should get them some improved marks the area of employer branding.
So in summary, service providers are going through transformational activities internally and externally as they change their emphasis to a cloud-centric delivery model. Not only is there impact to the People, Processes, and Products of these companies, there’s a fourth “P” undergoing change, and that is the Perception of the brand. In order to pivot into this technology turn, should service providers try to change the way their contribution to the value chain is being perceived by consumers of their brand? It definitely wouldn’t hurt. Let us know what you think by tweeting us at @Dialogic. Also, let me know how many acronyms you think I used in these past two blogs – I may send the first person who gets it right a prize.
Publish Date: May 25, 2016 5:00 AM |
ITW and the Importance of Services
As many of you know, ITW has historically been about wholesale voice minutes exchange. But as voice minutes exchange has lessened in importance in the industry (due to OTT Peer to Peer offerings such as Skype, etc.), this show has been more about what these minutes exchangers should do to grow. As an example, a couple of years ago, I created a marketing piece specifically for this show about HD Voice due to the coming VoLTE offerings or WebRTC offerings, and transcoding this to other formats so that HD voice minutes could be part of an offering. People looked at me askew those few years ago. But now, everyone knows about HD Voice so the concept of additional services is clearly taking root.
The i3Forum is looking at these issues as well. There are many working groups devoted to various service improvement offerings, with both vendors and service providers participating on these working groups. The fact that there are working groups devoted to these service offerings is a big step towards trying to work out a growth strategy.
During 2016 ITW, NFV also took a more prominent role. One reason, obviously, is because this is a very good vehicle for cost reduction. But really, the concept of service agility and adding services quickly is another great reason this was a topic for ITW.
As always, ITW was a great show for Dialogic because of all the meetings we had, and I look forward to continuing to come to this show as the whole audience pivots to a service oriented growth strategy.
Source: http://blog.dialogic.com/blog/itw-and-the-importance-of-services
Publish Date: May 24, 2016 5:00 AM |
Making the Connection Between the Brand and NFV Network Transformation – Part 1
AT&T hosted the recent ETSI NFV ISG conference in Atlanta and kicked things off with a thought leadership session that spanned several network transformation topics including cloud-centric revenue opportunities, NFV, SDN, 5G, and branding – yes, branding.
Bala Thekkedath, Director of Marketing, and Dossevi Trenou, Chief Technologist for Hewlett Packard Enterprise kicked things off with a discussion on something we all like to hear about – new revenue opportunities. The omnipresent OTT threat of course came up, and they suggested to the crowd (made up of service providers and vendors) to proceed down the peaceful coexistence route and focus on each of the respective core strengths of these seemingly contraposed parties. Probably the most interesting aspect of the discussion was around the concept of the enterprise as a Virtual Mobile Network Operator or VMNO which in the future could be supported by network slicing techniques (keep reading).
Tom Anschutz got the audience up to speed on AT&T’s CORD initiative. CORD is not just any old four letter word, it’s an acronym for Central Office Re-architected Datacenter. CORD, a collaborative effort between AT&T and ON.Lab, combines NFV, SDN and cloud concepts along with commodity hardware in order to build out an agile and programmable central office infrastructure designed for rapid deployment of services. Virtualized network functions such as firewalls, parental control applications and caching along with OLT, CPE and broadband network gateways run on commodity servers managed by an open VNF manager that leverages OpenStack. You can download an informative whitepaper on the architecture here.
Hank Kafka, VP of Access Architecture and Analytics, provided insight into AT&T’s vision for its 5G architecture and direction on virtualization. 5G is not only really fast connectivity (mobile broadband speeds over 56 Gbps) and but also improved connection densities both of which are needed to support the massive amounts of IoT/connected devices and near real-time applications that we know are coming. The low latency characteristics of 5G are important for real-time remote manipulation of devices, industrial controls, and applications such auto collision detection. Hank indicated we’ll start to see pre-5G with the coming of the 2018 Korean Winter Olympics. So we’ll get a taste of what’s in store when the time comes for 5G to start rolling out in areas outside Asia Pacific.
But one of the key takeaways I noted was the call for the core network to be reinvented when it comes to 5G. 5G use cases will definitely have an impact on core network design, and while there will be the same radio resources basically, they will be used in different ways. In a 5G world, the various devices will have a wide range of speed demands, a wide range of latency requirements and wide range of mobility needs. The “one size fits all network” that we have today is not in tune with new device and use case trends. The networks deployed were originally optimized for voice, but Internet demand has driven new generations of RAN and core technology and the new array of connected devices for vehicles, and wearables, and remote sensors –all of which will have different mobility needs.
This observation was a natural lead-in to the next concept Hank brought up, which was network slicing. You can read about this very cool concept in a blog that I wrote a few weeks back. With network slicing there could be multiple instances of virtualized network functions that could exist - each allocated to a specific network slice. Each different network slice would be optimized, orchestrated and functionally equipped for a specific use case, device or group of subscribers. This would enable the dynamic and automatic orchestration, addition or removal of network functions that provide the services in that network slice. One of the obvious demands going forward would be the need for new array of key functional richness obviously tailored to the requirements of the various slices. The main point I came away with was Hank’s comment that network slicing is a concept that is only possible with the use of NFV technologies.
Alan Blackburn, VP of Architecture and Planning, reiterated A&T’s goal to virtualize and - more importantly - control 75% of its network using cloud infrastructure and SDN by 2020. The “why” to this “what” was because of the exploding traffic volumes and the realization that they can’t build networks any more in the traditional manner due to the sheer tonnage of video traffic and massive amount of IoT sessions that they are experiencing. The range of traffic that networks have to carry will be vastly different.
AT&T recently released a white paper on its virtualization and NFV architecture framework that talks about their ECOMP (Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy) software platform. ECOMP is one of the three pillars - in addition to NFV and SDN - of its Domain 2.0 (D2) initiative. Together, these three frameworks are expected to enable AT&T to realize improved efficiency, reduced cycle times, and the ability to rollout innovative services at a faster rate.
ECOMP is a critical component in achieving AT&T’s D2 imperatives and it’s basically the brains of their D2 strategy. It provides closed loop automation and service instantiation to help rapidly on-board new services created either by AT&T or third party providers. While it’s designed to help reduce CAPEX and OPEX, D2 is a transformative initiative that will enable AT&T network services and infrastructure to be used, provisioned and orchestrated in a manner as is typical of cloud services in data centers. The challenge with a framework like Domain 2.0 is that there naturally has to be a “3.0” version, but AT&T is already starting to think about what that will look like.
All in all, the AT&T thought leadership session was a whirlwind of concepts that covered more than NFV, SDN, 5G, revenue opportunities, the “reimagining of the central office” and a healthy dose of acronyms. But what about branding? How does a company’s branding activity intersect with all the cloud technology initiatives discussed? That was one of the more interesting topics which I’ll talk about in my next blog. Stay tuned!
Publish Date: May 20, 2016 5:00 AM |
Scaling and Reliability of Real-Time Communications Applications - It’s All About the Foundation
These last few months we’ve increasingly found ourselves talking with customers about scaling application deployments. A pair of issues seems to come up over and over again: scaling and reliability. Once the proof-of-concept version of an application is done, it’s time to start thinking about how to deploy the application in large-scale. Like building a large office building, it all starts with a solid foundation. Not any foundation – one that is designed for the specific structure it will eventually support.
Let’s step back and look at the challenge.
To properly scale an application, you have to assume that no one server can support all the traffic and computational resources needed to meet large customer demand. Spreading the effort over multiple servers also gives a reliability gain. But users don’t want or need to keep track of multiple server addresses – they want one URL to access the application, even though that request will be handled by any one of a number of servers. In the web world, this is accomplished with an Application Delivery Controller (ADC), essentially a load balancer providing a front-end to an array of application servers that serve web pages to users.
As communications applications have moved to use more web-based technologies, they too can use a similar architecture, using a common point of entry that will distribute workload across an array of application servers. However, real-time communications applications have a number of unique needs that are often overlooked, making ADCs a poor fit for the job at-hand, spawning the need for a purpose-built Load Balancer for Real-Time Communications:
Latency Sensitivity – voice and video conversations and protocols are much more sensitive to delays that would not be noticed during a web session.
Carrier-Grade Reliability – with real-time communications being adopted in Emergency Services and other critical infrastructure applications, reliability is far greater of an issue when compared to an e-commerce site.
Service Affinity – collaboration applications benefit tremendously by bringing all the parties together on a single application server. Doing so requires that session routing has the ability bring multiple users together.
Cloud-Ready Software – with many communications applications destined for the cloud in a software-only deployment model, the associated load balancing function must also be a software-only solution that can be deployed in a virtual environment.
Deployment Simplicity – SIP, WebRTC and other protocols are the staple of communications applications. Support for these protocols should be native.
Next week, James Rafferty, Product Line Manager at Dialogic and I will be hosting a webinar titled “Scaling Real-Time Communications Applications with Load Balancers”. During the event we’ll be exploring these unique requirements, discuss techniques to address those needs, and provide an overview of the Dialogic PowerVille LB – Load Balancer for Real-Time Communications. We’d love to have you join us for the live event on Thursday, May 26th at 2:00 PM ET for a deep dive into the world of large-scale deployments of applications with Load Balancers. Register Now.
Publish Date: May 19, 2016 5:00 AM |
Cool Apps on Agenda at SpeechTek 2016
I am planning my attendance to SpeechTek 2016 next week. After reviewing the agenda, and having attended the event off and on over many, many years, I’m finding it really interesting to see how much the show has matured consistently with what is happening in the industry. Many years ago, it was all about if, how, and when speech might take root – there were lots of fundamental technology discussions. There has always been a lot of talk about the vision of speech applications. I think that vision has arrived….and there’s still a long way to go. But in looking at the agenda, there will be key sessions on advanced uses of speech in applications such as intelligent assistants, voices biometric, tuning and analytics, and the Internet of Things. These are really cool topics – all very focused on solving problems in new and interesting ways.
With all these applications of speech, it’s important to remember how they get developed, deployed, and tuned. Here at Dialogic we are very focused on real time communications applications, including speech-based ones that solve problems for customers around the world. To that end, some applications such as our visual IVR application and many others are deployed around the world. We are very confident that our approach to supporting developers through real-time media platforms and app development tools advance delivery of new and cool applications to support business goals.
I’m expecting a very energetic and stimulating event. I’ll blog back.
Source: http://blog.dialogic.com/blog/cool-apps-on-agenda-at-speechtek-2016
Publish Date: May 18, 2016 5:00 AM |
The Growing Importance of VoWiFi Beyond VoLTE
Last week, I wrote about the importance of VoWiFi as an extension to the VoLTE strategy. When you look at the chart in this blog from the February 2016 Cisco VNI, and you see the explosion of VoWiFi, it may be tempting to say “wow, who needs VoLTE?” But remember that many of those VoWifi minutes will be generated because it will be a part of the whole service provider VoLTE strategy, utilizing the phone number to take the call, and minimizing the minutes.
But VoWiFi is not simply an expansion of VoLTE. While some of those minutes in the chart above will be coming from VoLTE, some will be coming from another phone number source: “roaming.” Land line service providers or MVNOs can expand their footprint to allow roaming wherever there is a WiFi hotspot.
This enables greater and very interesting competition coming up. VoWiFi is in a position to play a large role in the future of the service provider.
Source: http://blog.dialogic.com/blog/the-growing-importance-of-vowifi-beyond-volte
Publish Date: May 17, 2016 5:00 AM |
The Growing Importance of VoWiFi
VoWiFi is not new. Many of us have been using VoIP through the likes of Skype or Lync for many years and VoWiFi through the mobile versions of these VoIP offerings. In the context of this blog though, VoWiFi is about getting calls on your mobile phone number. Since VoLTE is IP-based, using VoWiFi as an extension of VoLTE makes sense.
From an architecture standpoint, the VoWiFi solution can be an extension of the 3GPP Evolved Packet Core (EPC) as described in 3GPP Technical Specification 23.402 and allows any WiFi network to be used to access the EPC. Obviously there is some infrastructure work to add such as an Evolved Packet Data Gateway or ePDG and VoWiFi-enabled TAS. The phones also need to be VoWiFi enabled, which is happening (iPhone6, Samsung Galaxy S6, LG Spirit LTE, LG G4 Stylus to name a few).
This enables switchover to VoWiFi when indoors, saving you or your small business on your data plan (which is increasingly becoming more important especially as video is becoming more important, which chews up data quite a bit), enables international phone calls to your mobile number, also saving you on your service provider plan, and enables phone number reach to wherever there is WiFi service.
This last point about WiFi service is critical. According to the February 2016 Cisco VNI report, total public WiFi hotspots will grow sevenfold from 2015 to 2020, from 64.2 million to 432.5 million with commercial hotspots growing from 7.5 million to 9.3 million. And it’s expected that VoWiFi is going to surpass VoLTE very soon. VoWiFi as an extension to VoLTE is a very important strategy.
I actually utilized that strategy when I was at Mobile World Congress. Rodgers has VoWiFi and I took a call from one of my Canadian colleagues who was using VoWiFi. It was on a hotel WiFi connection so the price was right! It also sounded very good. Obviously, using a HD Voice codec makes a world of difference.
Source: http://blog.dialogic.com/blog/the-growing-importance-of-vowifi
Publish Date: May 10, 2016 5:00 AM |
Rich Communications Services (RCS) – SMS/MMS 2.0
I recently heard from a colleague who was at Mobile World Congress this year that he actually saw a resurgence of Rich Communications Services (RCS)“Resurgence” is the right word, as RCS is not new, especially after the February 22nd press release from GSMA announcing that Google and some of the world’s largest and leading network operators are aligning behind RCS.
This is good news for network operators as it enables them to better compete with over-the-top (OTT) messaging apps like Viber, WhatsApp, Skype, and Facebook Messenger. At a very high level, RCS is essentially SMS/MMS that can work over IP networks and can enable presence and location, and sharing of media. RCS brings to operators the next-generation messaging features they have been lacking due to the fact that current operator messaging is based on the old SMS protocol dating back to before networks could carry internet data.
Why is it so important for network operators to have you use SMS (text messaging) instead of OTT apps, since you are, after all, still using their data? In short, it’s because they don’t want to lose the main interface with the customer and become a “dumb pipe.” Once they lose the main interface, they lose a lot of revenue opportunities from value added services. SMS is also one of the most highly utilized and essential feature to the customer. According to 2012 forecasts from Forrester Research, they reported that more than 2 trillion SMS messages were sent in the US in 2011, which equates to more than 6 billion SMS messages sent per day, with text messaging users sending or receiving an average of 35 messages per day. These numbers were a 14% increase compared with 2010. You can imagine where the numbers are today.
When RCS was first introduced, a lot of pundits said it was pointless as OTT messaging apps already did everything RCS said it could and would do. That may be true. However, as a user, the big benefit of RCS is that it is tied to the phone number, not an app. In other words, there’s no need to download or register another app and tying your identity to it. Also, RCS offers cross-operator interoperability. For the Network Operator, it is a way to get back into the messaging market and be a serious competitor to the OTT apps and make some money.
In fact, RCS is doing just that according to a recent study by ABI Research: “While RCS currently constitutes 32% of the total messaging revenue generated worldwide, ABI Research, the leader in transformative technology innovation market intelligence, expects its share to increase to 72% by 2021.”
RCS brings many of the features that people expect from mobile messaging today, such as group chats, high resolution photos, location sharing, and more. Bottom line… messaging capabilities are expanding and delivering content that is contextual and immediate, and if network operators want to keep messaging a part of the communications mix they offer (which they should), they need RCS.
Source: http://blog.dialogic.com/blog/rich-communications-services-rcs-sms/mms-2.0
Publish Date: May 6, 2016 5:00 AM |
Pivoting to the Evolved IPX
IPX operators and wholesalers are starting to pivot in their approach to providing value to mobile and fixed network operators. Their dominant customers now, mobile network operators (MNOs), are seeing significant challenges in the market place. Asset monetization has always been a concern for MNOs as they see shrinking ARPU even with increases in investment. They’re actively seeking ways to increase ARPU and figure out how to better monetize their huge investment in LTE technology and support the large amount of data being consumed over their networks. So they are looking for ways to improve their cost/revenue curves and still roll out services more quickly. IPX operators have an opportunity to help.
Hot Telecom analyst Isabelle Paradis and Steve Heap indicated in their report, Above and Beyond Connectivity – The Future of International Carriers, that International voice traffic volume will see moderate growth of about 2.1% (6 year Compound Annual Growth Rate through 2020), and rather stagnant revenue growth of only 0.3% over that same time frame. IPX operators and wholesalers will have to pivot, as they point out, in how they are providing value and move that proposition above and beyond terminating minutes. Many are doing that already.
So what and where are the opportunities for current IPX operators, wholesalers, and international carriers? Let’s look at what they are doing with innovative valued added services that take them beyond the minutes termination model.
- Hutch-IPX is leveraging its extensive and secure network as a means for OTT players to gain access to MNOs. Its open platform allows OTT players and Application and Content Providers to access other connected mobile, fixed, and cable operators to exchange IP content and application traffic.
- Syniverse has designed a set of enterprise solutions tailored towards specific enterprise verticals including finance, retail, travel, and hospitality to help them improve customer conversion, increase customer loyalty, and enhance customer service.
- PCCW Global’s MediaFlex Video Platform helps service providers rapidly roll out OTT multiscreen video services that can be customized for region specific applications. Solutions in this platform include media transport, media transcoding, CDN, video management and business consulting.
- Not only is TATA Communications providing services to help MVNOs with their business and connectivity needs, but they also have a cloud based, full managed OTT video platform that allows operators to deliver video-on-demand and linear content to a wide variety of devices.
So we see IPX operators expanding their addressable market by supporting fixed and mobile service providers as well as multinational enterprises with value added services. They’re seeing that they can leverage their ability to provide secure, end-to-end connectivity and their position in the network as a trusted intermediary to deliver value-added services. This can help connected customers accelerate into new markets and new offerings with lower CAPEX and less complexity. These value added services include offerings like video content, Unified Communications, VoWiFi enablement and IP voice and data roaming. Mobile group operators are also taking note and starting to adopt and deploy IPX functionality between member companies to help improve the user experience of their subscribers and brand stickiness across their various properties.
So while it’s apparent that voice is definitely not dead, IPX operators need to evolve their core Voice-over-IPX exchange by layering in additional capabilities to deliver these value added services. While an IP Proxy forms the basis of IPX IMS exchange providing service-aware bilateral and multilateral routing, it can also be used to break out calls to networks that still use TDM interfaces. With this same platform, an IPX can help connected service providers reduce complexity and improve end-to-end quality for inter-network calls by making sure HD Voice calls that can be terminated to a VoLTE enabled subscriber in another network can actually do so. They can also perform the signaling mediation, signaling conversion, MNP lookups, fraud detection, and media transcoding that are really important for seamless bilateral and multilateral connectivity.
The same platform can be evolved further to help operators speed up support for VoLTE roaming. There are basically three VoLTE roaming architectures approved by the GSMA, and the IPX can provide a roaming hub that can help connected carriers accelerate support for inbound VoLTE roamers by providing capabilities, like the Transit Routing Function (TRF), that they may be lacking. So when it comes to VoLTE interworking and VoLTE roaming, mobile operators will be turning to IPX operators for help interworking between the different implementations. Ovum analyst Catherine Haslam estimates that over 75% of the carriers rolling out LTE will turn to a third-party IPX provider to facilitate their roaming services. This includes not only routing the various call flows, but also providing value added services like ENUM and Mobile Number Portability (MNP) lookups, fraud and also Diameter hubbing authentication and authorization of inbound roamers.
In addition, IPX operators can layer value added hosted UC and contextual voice and video services and leverage information from the signaling path as well as the media to enhance a subscriber’s roaming experience, reduce fraud. These types of services also appeal to connected MVNOs as well as enterprise customers. We’ve created an infographic that visually steps you through this journey to get to the evolved IPX. You can download it by clicking here. How are you seeing the international carrier and IPX market pivot? Tweet us at @Dialogic, and if you are in Chicago for ITW, please stop by – we’d like to talk to you first-hand about mapping out the IPX opportunity.
Source: http://blog.dialogic.com/blog/pivoting-to-the-evolved-ipx
Publish Date: May 5, 2016 5:00 AM |
5G Market Status
Last week, I wrote about the status and projections of LTE subscriptions. So I figured I should do a brief update on 5G this week. First of all, as I’ve written before, 5G is clearly in its hype phase. It was all over MWC a couple of months ago. Although there are no specs yet, nor even any official 5G icon, there has been a lot of work done which justifies some air time here.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that 5G will be where the NFV/SDN world intersect. There has been a lot of work done on NFV, with still much more to do, and there will be NFV/SDN deployments before 5G ever hits the streets. But 5G will most likely be built on NFV, so it won’t be a “choice” anymore. It will be the way you implement it. 5G needs to support many more use cases than networks have in the past, given that networks aren’t just designed for voice or for high speed web access this time around – they’ll incorporate IoT connectivity, which comes with a huge variety of use cases such as connected cars, remote health care, and robotic (including drones) control. Of course, they’ll also be designed for very high speed mobile broadband access as well.
One interesting concept coming forth is known as “network slicing” where the physical network architecture (built on NFV/SDN), is “sliced” into virtual networks that are tailored to specific vertical industries or use cases (i.e. the connected car use case, connected sensor use case). The infrastructure therefore can be optimized for that service slice, as the needs of the service slice would be different. The programmability / elasticity / etc. of the NFV networks would therefore enable this concept to actually occur.
5G will introduce a new lifestyle to the masses by accommodating many more use cases. The questions is when all of this will happen.
Source: http://blog.dialogic.com/blog/5g-market-status
Publish Date: May 3, 2016 5:00 AM |
Scaling Applications with Load Balancing – Using the Right Tool for the Job
Have you ever helped a friend with a home improvement or auto repair project and watched as your friend struggled with a screwdriver trying to pry something free? You think to yourself “gee, a crowbar or pry bar would be the right tool for the job, but since the screw driver is all he has, I guess it will have to do.” Having the right tool for the job makes all the difference in achieving success without ending up with bloody knuckles.
The lesson holds true with scaling communications applications. This was the key takeaway message in a recent Communications Developer Zone podcast discussing load balancers and the new PowerVille LB software from Dialogic with Jim Machi, Senior Vice President for Marketing and Chris Boulton, Director of Systems Architecture for Dialogic.
As Jim noted, “The PowerVille LB Load Balancer is part of our PowerArchitecture,” an important part of Dialogic’s new application development and delivery capability that makes applications scalable. “We wanted to be the best at providing load balancing for SIP-based applications…and we have that now.”
Stepping back and discussing the role of a load balancer in deploying applications, Chris explained that “a load balancer is a software-based network entity that facilitates complex applications that are sitting behind a single HTTP entry point.” Users see one web page or application IP address, but the load balancer distributes the requests to multiple application servers to handle large volumes of demand and to provide a seamless experience. Congestion Management back-end server availability are also important to scaling applications.
Load balancing is part of virtually every web site, so what’s different about a load balancer for real-time communications? (This where having the right tool for the job makes a difference) As Chris explains, the key is that “Real-time communications applications use SIP, WebRTC, and other protocols providing RESTful services.” These protocols are very different from regular HTTP web services that need to maintain the state of sessions across lengthy communications sessions. Real-time communications applications also benefit from session affinity, bringing multiple clients together on a single server, a requirement for conferencing and collaboration applications. Encryption off-loading by load balancers also helps streamline the processing on communications application servers.
Like jamming a screwdriver into a task that it was never designed to perform, web-centric Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) are often used to perform load balancing for real-time communications. Not the right tool for the job.
So before you reach for that screwdriver, ask yourself “is this the right tool for the job?”
To get a deeper understanding, listen to the podcast first-hand as Jim and Chris further explain how PowerVille LB is the right tool for load balancing real-time communications.
(By the way, no screw drivers were harmed in the writing of this blog)
Publish Date: May 2, 2016 5:00 AM |
How to Make a WebRTC App: Step-by-Step Guide
Back in September 2014, I published what turned out to be a popular blog about “How to Develop a WebRTC Video Conferencing Server Using PowerMedia XMS, Free in An Hour”. As you can imagine, a lot has changed since this blog relative to WebRTC and our PowerMedia XMS media server, so a ‘refresh’ to the content was long overdue.
The most notable change was by Google’s new Chrome security policy on WebRTC where, starting December 2015, the getUserMedia() API would require using HTTPS. So I needed to change the web server to use a secure connection for hosting my WebRTC conferencing application. We’ve also made some large strides in getting PowerMedia XMS optimized for a cloud environment, so I wanted to include the option of using Amazon Web Services for those interested in moving to AWS. Lastly, I decided to upgrade the code to use HD 720P resolution instead of the default VGA – the quality difference from VGA to 720P is tremendous and will really make a significant difference when being used for video conferencing.
Overview:
Before getting into building the conferencing application, it’s worth noting the architecture being used for the video conference is a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU). In a MCU architecture, each WebRTC endpoint will encode and transmit their media stream to a centralized point (the PowerMedia XMS in this case) where the media will be decoded and mixed with the other conference participants before being returned to the WebRTC endpoint. This differs from a WebRTC point-to-point (P2P) mesh conference in that each participant will only be sending and receiving one media stream whereas in a P2P mesh each participant will send and receive media from each endpoint in the conference. As you can imagine, mesh conferencing (sometimes called "mess conferencing") has some serious limitations when scaling.
VS
Making the WebRTC App
Programming Experience: Novice
Time to implement: ~1 hour
What you need:
* Bare metal server OR VMware w/ adequate processor/memory/storage OR Amazon Web Services access (see server requirements in PART 1 below)
* (1) IP address to be assigned for PowerMedia XMS
* Putty
* Your favorite editor (vi, emacs, notepad++)
* PC client(s) w/ microphone, camera and Chrome installed
PART 1: Download and Install PowerMedia XMS (~5 to 30 mins)
**Two options**
Option 1 (Install using on-premise hardware)
1.) Download the latest PowerMedia XMS ISO here
Note – I used PowerMedia XMS 3.0 SU2 for these instructions
2.) Follow the "PowerMedia XMS Installation and Configuration Guide" for proper system requirements and installation. You’ll need Linux.
Option 2 (Install using Amazon Web Services AWS)
1.) Log on to your Amazon Web Services EC2 console, select Images à AMIs on the left hand side. Change the search to be “Public images” and search for ‘dialogic_xms’. The most current PowerMedia XMS images will be available for usage.
Reference the Dialogic PowerMedia XMS and Amazon Web Services guide for more detailed configuration details
Note - the PowerMedia XMS developer install comes with a (4) port fully enabled license. Contact the Dialogic sales team to discuss licensing options beyond the base four ports.
PART 2: Obtaining the WebRTC HTML/CSS/JS code (~5 mins)
**Two options**
Option 1 (manual download from github.com/Dialogic):
1.) Browse to: https://github.com/Dialogic/dialogic-html-javascript
2.) Select “Download Zip” to pull down the dialogic-html-javascript-master.zip archive
3.) Copy the dialogic-html-javascript-master.zip to the /tmp directory of the PowerMedia XMS
Option 2 (git download direct to PowerMedia XMS server):
1.) Using Putty, SSH into the PowerMedia XMS Server
2.) Login using root and default password powermedia
3.) (Optional if already installed) Install the git software: yum install git
4.) Change to the tmp directory: cd /tmp
5.) Retrieve the archive from the github repository: wget -O dialogic-html-javascript-master.zip https://github.com/Dialogic/dialogic-html-javascript/archive/master.zip
PART 3: Unzip the archive and move to appropriate directory (~2 mins)
1.) Unzip the archive: unzip /tmp/dialogic-html-javascript-master.zip
2.) Change into the new directory: cd dialogic-html-javascript-master
3.) Copy the entire contents of the ‘confServer’ directory into where the Apache web server will be hosting: cp -r /tmp/dialogic-html-javascript-master/confServer /var/www/rtcweb/html
4.) Copy the entire contents: cp /var/www/rtcweb/html/js/conf720p.js /var/www/rtcweb/html/confServer/js
PART 4: Review the HTML front-end for the user interface (~5 mins)
1.) Open the conference.html for review – there are three main sections to the user interaction:
- loginPanel: input for the "username" variable and calls the "conferenceLoginClickHandler" function upon onclick
- videoPanel: defines the "remoteVideo" element used to display the inbound WebRTC video feed from PowerMedia XMS. Also defines the "localVideo" element which is used to obtain the local users video feed but will be hidden from HTML display
- conferencePanel: input for the "confID" variable and calls the "conferenceClickJoinHandler" function upon onclick
XMS Node NetAnn Conferencing Demo
Login:
Conference ID:
PART 5: Configure the JS to interface with PowerMedia XMS and the HTML front-end (~10mins)
1.) First, we'll need to define the functions being called in PART 4 - let’s start with "conferenceLoginClickHandler()" where the user enters their username and selects login. In this function, we'll create a new instance of the Dialogic Javascript library and assign to myConf. Once the instance is created, we'll need to retrieve the 'username' element from our HTML form, which will then be passed to the PowerMedia XMS server IP address along with the username.
Note - be sure to change the "my_xms" variable to the proper IP address you set in PART 1.
Note - the "handlers" variable being passed with myConf.setHandlers is defined in step 5 below.
var my_xms = "XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX";
var myConf = null;
function conferenceLoginClickHandler() {
console.log("*** conferenceLoginClickHandler - ENTER ***");
// Create a new instance of Dialogic JavaScript library here
myConf = new Dialogic();
myConf.setHandlers(handlers);
//Retrieve username info from HTML and pass for registration
var username = document.getElementById("username");
var my_xms_ws = "wss://" + my_xms + ":1080";
myConf.register(username.value, my_xms_ws, '');
}
2.) Next, we need to define "conferenceClickJoinHandler()" where the user enters the conference id and selects join. In this function, we'll first need to convert the "confID" variable into appropriate NetAnn syntax:
conf=YYYY@XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
// Where YYYY is the conference ID and XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX is the IP address of the PowerMedia XMS server.
// Once converted, we'll use myConf.call to pass the variable to PowerMedia XMS.
function conferenceClickJoinHandler () {
console.log("*** conferenceClickJoinHandler - ENTER ***");
var confID = document.getElementById("confID");
confID = "conf=" + confID.value + "@" + my_xms;
console.log("confID:" + confID);
var ret = myConf.call(confID, 'video');
if (ret == 'ok') {
document.getElementById("conferencePanel").hidden = true;
document.getElementById("videoPanel").hidden = false;
} else {
console.log("Error attempting conferenceClickJoinHandler");
}
}
3.) The last function we need to define is "initialize()" which gets called as a result of a successful registration (see step 5 below). As part of this function, we will retrieve the local and remote video elements and pass them as part of our mediaContraints.
function initialize () {
console.log("*** initialize - ENTER ***");
var localVideo = document.getElementById("localVideo");
var remoteVideo = document.getElementById("remoteVideo");
var spec = { 'localVideo' : localVideo, 'remoteVideo' : remoteVideo, 'remoteAudio' : null, };
var ret = myConf.initialize(spec);
var mediaConstraints = { 'audio': true, 'video': true };
myConf.acquireLocalMedia(mediaConstraints);
if (ret != 'ok') {
console.log("Error initializing user media");
}
}
4.) Next, we'll need to create the associated functions from the handlers. In this case we only need to add logic to the registerSuccessHandler which will issue the "initialize()" function and change the HTML form inputs from the "loginPanel" to the "conferencePanel"
var registerSuccessHandler = function () {
console.log("*** registerSuccessHandler ***");
document.getElementById("loginPanel").hidden = true;
document.getElementById("conferencePanel").hidden = false;
initialize();
};
var registerFailHandler = function () {
console.log("*** registerFailHandler ***");
};
var ringingHandler = function () {
console.log("*** ringingHandler ***");
};
var incomingCallHandler = function (name) {
console.log("Incoming call from: "+name);
};
var callHangupHandler = function () {
console.log("*** callHangupHandler ***");
};
var disconnectHandler = function () {
console.log("*** disconnectHandler ***");
};
var userMediaSuccessHandler = function () {
console.log("*** userMediaSuccessHandler ***");
};
var userMediaFailHandler = function (){
console.log("*** userMediaFailHandler ***");
}
var remoteStreamAddedHandler = function () {
console.log("remoteStreamAddedHandler");
};
var messageHandler = function () {
console.log("*** messageHandler ***");
};
var infoHandler = function () {
console.log("*** infoHandler ***");
};
5.) Lastly, as mentioned in step 6, we'll need to define the handlers variable that is used to store the various events to be returned as part of joining the conference. Below is a stock list of handlers that can be implemented - note the handlers being registered are associated with function handles.
var handlers = {
'onRegisterOk': registerSuccessHandler,
'onRegisterFail': registerFailHandler,
'onRinging': ringingHandler,
'onConnected': null,
'onInCall': incomingCallHandler,
'onHangup': callHangupHandler,
'onDisconnect': disconnectHandler,
'onUserMediaOk': userMediaSuccessHandler,
'onUserMediaFail': userMediaFailHandler,
'onRemoteStreamOk': remoteStreamAddedHandler,
'onMessage': messageHandler,
'onInfo': infoHandler,
'onDeregister': null
};
6.) Save the changes and close the conference.js file
PART 6: Testing your new WebRTC Conferencing Server (~3 mins)
1.) Open a Chrome browser session and navigate to: https:///rtcweb/confServer/conference.html
2.) Enter your name select
3.) Select "Allow" for the browser to access the microphone and camera
4.) Enter the conference ID
5.) BOOM – we’re done! Share the URL of your new video server and Enjoy!
To watch a high overview guide on how to make a WebRTC app, watch this video.
Source: http://blog.dialogic.com/blog/how-to-make-a-webrtc-app-step-by-step-guide
Publish Date: April 28, 2016 5:00 AM |
Top 10 Best Practices for Communications Application Developers - Tales from the Trenches
You’ve been tasked with turning a great idea for a new communications application into a working product. Seeming at first to be an insurmountable mountain of effort, there is panic as you realize the magnitude of the project and struggle getting your mind around the thousands of decisions and preparations that need to be made between now and completion. Some expert advice and best practices sure would come in handy as the groundwork for the new application starts.
This was the subject of a webinar I hosted this last week titled “Communications Application Development – Top 10 Best Practices.” The webinar included Peter Kuciak and Elhum Vahdat, two of the seasoned members of the application development team here at Dialogic who have dozens of years of experience each in managing development of advanced applications.
In preparing for the event, I asked each to contribute their own best practices, creating a shortlist that we could share with listeners facing the long steep climb of creating their own new communications applications. That long climb includes challenges along the way too – being prepared for those challenges gives a developer a significant head-start, like a short-cut up the mountain.
Here’s a brief overview of their “Top 10”:
Proven expertise – if you plan to be successful, you need to have a seasoned team that “knows the ropes” and can bring their past experience to the task at hand.
Leverage – using known software building blocks and existing intellectual property can shorten the effort significantly.
Commitment to Innovation – seek out vendors and team members that are committed to new innovations and technologies. No sense building tomorrow’s hot new application on yesterday’s technology.
Agility – work with vendors that have the ability and willingness to adjust as the project evolves, allowing for adaptations to changes in the market and the competitive landscape.
Cloud & Mobile Focus – designing your application with a mobile-first perspective and leveraging the power of the cloud will give you an advantage. Use it.
Build or Buy – with the first-to-market advantage pressure, it’s important to explore the possibility of buying some portion of the application or underlying libraries
Forward-Looking Migration Path – give consideration to “what’s next” to reduce future upgrade costs and service disruptions when 2.0 of your application hits the market. Is it an easy upgrade for your customers or a rip-and-replace?
Future Customization – consider the possibility that not every customer may want the same exact solution. Consider special versions for different markets and ways to simplify the customization.
Multi-Service Platform – plan for deployments across platforms, sharing resources and skills needed for those platforms.
Open Platform/Architecture – and finally, consider utilization of open architectures and platforms that allow integration of other best-in-class technologies. Closed architectures are dead ends in the eyes of many buyers.
As Elhum and Peter explained during the live event, careful planning and consideration to the partnerships can give significant advantages to both the first and subsequent versions of your application. Remember that any big project (even climbing Mount Everest) starts with plenty of preparation followed by putting one foot in front of the other.
You can download a copy of the slides and view a recording of the event (which does include much more detail) on the event landing page.
Publish Date: April 27, 2016 5:00 AM |
LTE Market Status, the Tie-In to VoLTE, and the Importance of 3G Interoperability
On March 7, the GSA put out a press release confirming that 2015 ended with over 1 billion LTE subscriptions. This is a hockey stick unlike other mobile hockey sticks. And if you want to see the GSA LTE subscription hockey stick, you can get it if you register at the site. Basically, 1 in 7 mobile connections worldwide are now LTE, and the rate of LTE subscriptions is accelerating. It’s expected that by the end of 2020, half of all mobile connections will be LTE.
So what does this mean? It means people love LTE because of various factors, such as data speed. And it means even if you don’t believe in VoLTE, it is coming because the service providers will make sure their investment in LTE pays off. So down the line, you will be talking over a VoLTE network. Additionally, it means there will be voice-enabled applications such as Rich Communication Service apps on VoLTE.
But it’s important to note that with all of this unprecedented growth, by the end of 2020, half of all mobile connections will NOT be LTE. In fact, in 2015, 3G still grew. LTE interoperability with 3G will remain important for many years. This means voice/video media codec and signaling transcoders and gateways will remain important infrastructure elements during these years. And with 3G still around, SS7/Sigtran will still be around. I’ll write a future blog about that soon.
Publish Date: April 26, 2016 5:00 AM |
Click-to-Call and WebRTC – The Perfect Marriage of Convenience and Technology
In one of my previous blogs, I used a video ACD example where I referred to Click-to-Call and WebRTC. In this blog, I want to dig a little deeper and discuss the benefits of a WebRTC-based Click-to-Call application.
What makes the addition of WebRTC to Click-to-Call so blissful?
Before the union of these two, Click-to-Call was just that… a call. Not to mention in most cases, it required you to enter your phone number so you would receive a call back. Therefore, a lot of people say it should have really been called “Request-a-Call.”
Enter WebRTC (play Mendelssohn’s Wedding March). Of course, there are many benefits to WebRTC, but the most compelling reason to use WebRTC is that it single-handedly solves the incompatibilities for real-time communications by leveraging the web browser as the “application,” facilitating browser-to-browser communication. Since the browsers themselves include all the capabilities needed to support real-time multimedia communications, no software downloads or registrations are needed, thereby standardizing communications between browsers.
Now, I believe WebRTC-based Click-to-Call should really be called “Click-to-Multi-Media” because you can start a voice call, video call, social media interaction, or SMS chat, and who knows what else in the future as WebRTC-supported devices continue to grow.
But wait, there is another very important benefit this union brings: “Contextual Awareness.” This means information such as the caller’s browsing history, the page the caller was on when they clicked-to-call, the status of their shopping cart, and other features that enable the agent and the caller to immediately be on the same page (both literally and figuratively) can be pushed through WebRTC to the live agent. Of course, context-based routing to the appropriate agent is also included… all leading to a highly personalized experience.
Imagine callers contacting you with a simple click of a button when they are most interested in your product or service. It will increase your conversion rate of visitors to potential sales opportunities, enable you to sell higher-value products and services, and improve your customer satisfaction level --- all courtesy of the union of WebRTC and Click-to-Call.
Now stop imagining as it is here.
Publish Date: April 22, 2016 5:00 AM |
