A visit to the front lines

RELease 1.0, July-August, 1995

The market for hybrid communications products and services, which includes desktop conferencing, voice processing and computer-telephone integration, is a good place to dig into the standards process. It is bleeding-edge enough that the marketing and evangelism are still evolving and promising enough that many companies have joined these organizations in order to see where it will go. A few of them, especially Intel and AT&T, are moving quite aggressively. Despite the youth of this market, these organizations have been around long enough that there are established relationships and animosities between them, which makes it all more interesting.

MULTI-PARTY CONFERENCING

Companies have been trying to kickstart the digital multimedia conferencing industry for years. They have faced many obstacles, including inefficient compression schemes, expensive and hard-to-get digital bandwidth, cumbersome point-to-point architectures and costly hardware, all of which led to unsatisfying user experiences and a slow-growth market.

Recently, the picture has improved, thanks in large measure to the efforts of some of the following six groups (not counting their ancestor organizations): MMTA, IMTC, PCWG, ECTF, MMCF and Versit. Welcome to Acronym Alley!

Until this year, the Multi-Media Telecommunications Association (MMTA) was the North American Telecommunications Association (NATA), which was formed by telephone equipment vendors to lobby the US Government to loosen restrictions on telecom manufacturing. That mission has in large part been accomplished. As NATA, the group did some work in computer-telephone integration (CTI) evangelism, and recently it has moved into multimedia communications, but it has not yet demonstrated any new purpose. It doesn't help that AT&T's presence outweighs most other member organizations. The MMTA's new president, Bill Moroney, will have his work cut out to set the Association on course with a credible mission that is distinctive from the other organizations described here. As president of the EMA, long an x.400 e-mail stronghold, he got the organization in gear at a time when online services and the Internet began their rush to market. If Moroney can't bring focus to the MMTA, it may end up a casualty, or part of another group.

In November, 1994, two similar conferencing associations (CATS and MCCOI) merged to form the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC). CATS focused on audioconferencing, MCCOI on video, so they were complementary. The combination seems to have worked well. IMTC now has 60 member companies, including Microsoft (an important member to have). Data-Beam is a leader in the consortium, but it doesn't dominate. The group's Web site is quite useful and has pointers to information on many standards, standards bodies and more. IMTC's members are focused on speed-to-market. To get there, they have agreed on a "standards-first" approach based on the H.xxx and T.xxx series standards, which means that systems will at least use those protocols to announce and negotiate capabilities. The systems can then move to other, proprietary protocols as needed.

The Personal Conferencing Work Group (PCWG) started out pretty aggressively and has since rethought its process, message and goals. Intel created it in order to build a market for personal conferencing, specifically its ProShare and Indeo products. The project is important to Intel, which has put many resources behind it. (After all, a skeptic might ask, what other kinds of applications will eat enough MIPS to sell P6s to corporate America?) Other companies balked at Intel's proprietary approach. As a result, Intel and the PCWG agreed to support a "standards first" approach based on the H.320 multiparty videoconferencing standard. The PCWG's new short-term priority is to demonstrate multipoint audio/video calls with shared whiteboards, running on heterogeneous platforms - and built atop H.320.

The Multi-Media Communications Forum (MMCF) takes a broad approach to multi-media architectures. It is complementary to the IMTC, although the MMCF also crosses into areas such as video-on-demand. In fact, when the IMTC was formed (from CATS and MCCOI), they discussed whether MMCF should be folded in, too. However, the IMTC's specific, fast-track focus on real-time conferencing helped the organizations decide to stay separate.

Dialogic has been able to do through the Enterprise Computer Telephony Forum (ECTF) what Intel still hasn't achieved with the PCWG: It has helped launch a credible group to take over an architecture that it developed, called SCSA. The ECTF, which is modeled after the ATM Forum, includes many important players such as DEC, Ericsson, Fujitsu, HP, Mitel and Northern Telecom. Even former enemies are joining, notably companies that backed a rival architecture called MVIP. Dialogic, an excellent marketing company, has shown restraint and flexibility its participation. The industry is benefiting.

Two years ago, the CTI and voice-processing markets were fragmented into several warring camps: TAPI vs. TSAPI; MVIP vs. SCSA. Northern Telecom and Intel created a protocol translation specification called Tmap that bridges the gap between TAPI, Microsoft's client-based telephony protocol, and TSAPI, Novell's server-based version. When it helped found the ECTF, Nortel turned over stewardship of Tmap to the organization. Overall, the ECTF seeks to be a neutral, umbrella organization where existing initiatives can thrive. It is also working to unify Internet and ITU/ISO standards. Increasingly, the ECTF is a place where companies can turn over intellectual assets in exchange for blanket licensing agreements and the potential of faster market growth.