Open Realtime Communication
Communication over IP networks are about to change. What used to be an office business support network is now moving to a platform for realtime commnication. Adding IP telephony to the network is a first step on a long journey and for us, it’s important to do it right from start. For Edvina, IP telephony is not the only reason to build a realtime platform. You need to build an extensible long-term architecture for your organization. Phone calls is not the only application, it’s just one of the applications needed. If you don’t start with a scalable architecture, you will only get PSTN-over-IP, which is a short term solution.
Open Protocols are the foundation to build from. By using standardized interfaces between your applications and systems, you build a long term platform. Open protocols built the Internet and made it possible to build the global information system. Now we need to do the same with a global realtime communication system. An Internet-based system where we connect in realtime to talk, use video communication, chat and presence.
Don’t focus on your pbx. When building the new open unified communication, you need to have a wider scope than your old PBX. The pbx functionality is important for your organization, but it’s only one application for your realtime platform. IM, chat, presence, video and new applications inspired by services like Facebook and Twitter will run on your system. If you tie it too hard to PBX and telephone numbers, it will be hard to open up for the future.
Create a new address plan for unified communication. For realtime communication it’s very important to build a proper addressing plan. Each individual in your organisation, as well as applications that will interact using the platform, needs a unique primary address and multiple aliases. Old-school phone numbers is not the primary address, it’s an alias you use. One person already has multiple phone numbers – one for the cell phone and one for the direct office line. You need a permanent handle for communication, and what’s more natural than to base it on the e-mail address? Phone numbers are just aliases for the permanent address. In the protocols used, SIP and XMPP, the address is an URI based on your domain.
Learn more:
– Realtime applications for your unified communication platform
– Open Network Protocols for Realtime communication
– Using SIP over dual stack networks (IPv4 and IPv6)
– Security architecture for Open Unified Communication