Thx FC, for those that are not no Pulver's mailing list, may I suggest a sample part:
ITSP's measure minutes. They know their capacity and they know their
run. Very focused. Compare this to the measure in the RBOCs. The unit of measure is "Total Billed Revenue" [TBR] (pronounced tibber). TBR is a lousy measure because it is far removed from anything the customer buys. Monthly services, private line, end user common line, toll, -- all these get accumulated into TBR. So the company sends off a sales force to sell, sell, sell! Sell what? More TBR. Now imagine the customer as he talks to the ITSPs and the RBOC teams. It's easy to see why customers can be wooed away.
For those that would like to receive service, pulver.com:80/don/
n this Issue:
- Introduction from Jeff Pulver
- What do we mean by a directory?
- IPOrtals Play Proof of Concept - AOL
- Address Management
- The Cheese Stands Alone
- Industry - Hash Marks
- People Needed
- Directory Enabled Networking - Newbridge
- Reason # 1 CLECs win the business. What's at your core?
- FCC Report on Broadband
- Call for Speakers: Directories on the Net - November, 1999
- Bookmark Beat
- Recent Industry News
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction from Jeff Pulver
In the Internet Telephony Industry I enjoy the role of "community
developer". I am not the "city planner".
At the recent Sophia Antipolis meeting many people pointed to the fact
that Internet Telephony has the potential to be better than the PSTN.
Better from a simple sampling perspective and better in the way it
connects to the application.
During the past year, Yossi Vardi, the father of ICQ, has been suggesting
to me all the different places that directories touch. Looking at that
space, the market is huge from the perspective of all the applications
that benefit. Most of the times when an application is shown there is
the adjunct reference point called a "directory".
Directory has a more traditional role in telephony as well.
I asked Carl Ford to investigate what was going on with the traditional
directory services and he found that while many of the carriers had
developed web sites they had yet to look at the value of migrating into
the technology for their traditional services. A parallel to the way
that Internet Telephony seems to have developed. Obviously, with such a
broad range of users, there is bound to be some interesting difficulty seeing
relevance and learning to respect disparate business models.
It looks like a "community developer" would be a good resource in this
space.
So to quote field of Dreams "If you build it they will come" and in
November, 1999 we will gather the community, meet people, facilitate
knowledge transfer and help with the business networking and the building
of businesses.
Carl Ford is the pulver.com "Directory Community Developer" and please be
careful with him. Don't let Carl try to be the city planner, as he tends
to like that model. But he has directory experience and would be a good
listener and advisor. It's Carl's first person prose down below by in
large. If you want to comment to me please feel free to, but if you
want to talk with the author please email Carl@pulver.com
If you would like to receive future isssues of Directories on the Net,
please visit ( pulver.com ) and
subscribe.
- Jeff Pulver
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What do we mean by a directory?
Directory is a method of managing objects that allows profiling and
indexing to improve administration, management, operations and
security. This is a broad definition but is consistent with the way
directory technology is being used today and where it is heading.
All comments are welcome. Contact the Directory Community Developer aka
carl@pulver.com.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
IPOrtals Play Proof of Concept - AOL
Sometimes conversations go in strange directions. I overheard a
discussion of whether a pure portal play could work - an RBOC
perspective. It's hard to be more portal than AOL at this time. AOL
has subcontracted a number of carriers to provide access services, a
growing number of their customers come directly from the Internet.
Armed with this knowledge and the view that AOL's cost of customer
acquisition is between $1,200 to 2,000, Wall Street has gone mad for
eyeballs. Have a portal on the net with traffic and bingo, you too have
a billion- dollar market cap with less than 20 people on staff.
Recently, Network Service Providers, accepting Wall Street's analysis,
began aligning, acquiring portals for either a bundled or defensive
strategy. Portals are different all they have are brand names and
customer goodwill as assets. In the circuit switch environment the
phone number ruled your life and white pages and yellow pages were in
effect a linking of the facility to the person. This is why Local Number
Portability is considered crucial by so many CLECs. In packet, and
particularly IP, the individual and the facility have little to do with
each other. Thus it's hard to make a case for bundling, unless you
believe that the newcomers want one stop shopping and are afraid to
divorce transport from content.
And as a portal play, AOL has done that for its customers. AOL's
perspective was that the transport was secondary, can a transport
company come the same conclusion? For all my complaints to my family
about the way AOL works, they can't see a significant difference between
the Internet and the proxy world of AOL. In addition, AOL has some
winning applications like AOL instant messenger. It is a good buddy
list service and it gets my family's attention while they play SLINGO
( aol.com ).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Address Management
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers [ICANN] is
meeting in Singapore on March 2-4 and you can bet they are going to stay
focused on their goal! A worldwide domain naming model. The view is
that the NSI is the virtual monopoly as the sole name and number
authority. Asia, Europe and even the US have regional entities looking
to expand the address administration into an international solution.
This is one of those rule changes that if you don't pay attention you
can get stale real quick. Visit www.icann.org, and for a primer see the
Commerce Department's whitepaper
( ntia.doc.gov ).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cheese Stands Alone
Stop for a moment. How long have you been in the business. A Year or
less. Don't feel bad, you probably can do better at sounding relevant
than many of us old timers. WHY? Because the market has consolidated
to the point where the young have been eaten. Where are the upstart
Router companies that were going to teach the switch guys a thing or
two? Even Cisco now owns Summa Four!
Address Management is a key focus in service provisioning and it also
has seen consolidation in this new unimarket. The latest was the
acquistion of American Internet by Cisco but we have also had Quadriteck
into Lucent and Isotro into BAY (i mean Nortel). I expect that its not
over and that someone will tell me that Paul Funk ( funk.com )
is selling out and Merit ( merit.net ) is going to go IPO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Industry - Hash Marks
The reference comes from a John Madden color commentary (don't ask how
far back but it was CBS) and he was talking about the major innovation
that changed football. Listening to Nortel Networks John A. Roth,
vice-chairman and CEO on CNBC 1/26/99, the discussion turned to the
distribution of personnel at Nortel. Nortel personnel are distributed
25% in hardware development and the rest in software and systems
integration. When asked about this number he sited the fact that
customers need personnel to run the network as well as the hardware.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
People Needed
I start visiting companies and startups this week, and in the emails and
phone calls I get variations on the same theme. "Do you know any "good"
developers / marketers / engineers / etc.. The market was hot for
people who could spell IP, now it's for people who can spell SS7 and
know that IP can also mean "Intelligent Peripheral". If you know people
or are people, let me know and I will forward you onto friends.
(You can also consider listing Job opportunities at the pulver.com
website - pulver.com )
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Directory Enabled Networking - Newbridge
Newbridge and its affiliates are interesting to look at with their DEN
strategies. First, within Newbridge's network management system are
profiles that enable customers and service providers to view and
"manage" independently of each other. As the edge between the
enterprise and the service provider gets blurred something that is
flexible enough to redirect and allocate on demand is a very powerful
concept. Check out the announcement on Multiservices Remote Access
Solution. Web site ( newbridge.com )
Newbridge affiliate Fast Lane ( fastlanetech.com ) is an
enterprise solution for integration with email, and LAN technologies
based on an NT platform. Moves, Adds and Changes (MAC) costs are an
obvious target for such a product.
Newbridge Affiliate TimeStep ( timestep.com ) is right in the
midst of all the standards activity in IPSEC and is using an X.509
directory policy management system at its core. TimeSteps's solution
enables Enterprise VPNs to be partitioned beyond the firewall, including
the intercorporate extranet solutions such as the auto industries ANX
solution ( anx.com ).
Newbridge Affiliate Bridgewater ( bridgewatersys.com ) provides
Class of Service partitioning within the directory. Borrowing from the
pages of AIN, Bridgewater provides a service control solution, transmits
LDAP and has a web based customer interface. Service creation tools are
coveted by service providers and customers alike.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reason # 1 CLECs win the business. What's at your core?
A good friend / coworker has often compared notes with me on various
alliances, projects and proposals. He always starts with the same
question? To judge success what will be the unit of measure? His point
is that if you can't answer that question, you haven't "got it" yet.
Cisco knows its unit of measure, packets. If you talk about ports with
Cisco, it's your unit of measure not theirs. Increasing packets makes
for a very clear mission. You can have multiple strategies and warring
factions internally, as long as they add packets.
ITSP's measure minutes. They know their capacity and they know their
run. Very focused. Compare this to the measure in the RBOCs. The unit
of measure is "Total Billed Revenue" [TBR] (pronounced tibber). TBR is a
lousy measure because it is far removed from anything the customer
buys. Monthly services, private line, end user common line, toll, --
all these get accumulated into TBR. So the company sends off a sales
force to sell, sell, sell! Sell what? More TBR. Now imagine the
customer as he talks to the ITSPs and the RBOC teams. It's easy to see
why customers can be wooed away.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
FCC Report on Broadband
The first for 1999 (Report No. CC 99-1) is about to be released and
based on .3% percent of the residential population that has broadband
services. The Commission ( fcc.gov ) feels that Broadband to
the home is on the right track. They may have it right, too. A recent
Vienna Whitepaper included consumer research indicating that secondary
line customers are heading toward additional lines.
I may be a good case study myself. Wife and kids are constantly on
AOL. The teenrager has her own line. First time a cable modem offer
comes in the area — I'm there. As a matter of fact I have been thinking
about becoming a burglar alarm company and watchdogging my local ISP
with a $20 circuit and some HDSL devices. (I know of one school system
that swears by it).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Call for Speakers - Directories on the Net: November, 1999
Call for Panel Proposals. Our first Directory Conference is being
planned as we speak.
The conference will cover all aspects of directories from Addressing to
Search Engines, Protocols to Web Sites. The intended audience are the
MIS, Strategic Planners and Chief Technology officiers that influence
and manage corporate directory implementations. Readers are invited to
submit proposals to ( pulver.com )
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bookmark Beat
Need a glossary ( glossary.its.bldrdoc.gov )
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recent Press Releases
Alcatel announced the intention to use Unwired Planet's implementation
of the Wireless Applicaton Protocol for use with new internet
terminals. ( alcatel.com )
related sites ( wapforum.org )
Cisco announced its Security Specialization Program training channel
partners regarding Virtual Private Networking in an integrated
networking environment.
( cisco.com )
Data Connection announced their SS7 gateway that functions marries ATM
and SS7 protocols on a high availability platform.
( datcon.co.uk )
Entrust announced it had passed PeopleSoft's certification testing after
joining PeopleSoft's Global Alliance Program. Entrust/PKI™ security
software provides a public key infrastructure.
( entrust.com )
Fast Lane Technologies, a Newbridge affiliate, released the FastLane
DM/Administrator a directory management solution for MS NT. The product
costs about $7 / per user.
( fastlanetech.com )
IBM is holding a Directory Developer Workshop for the SecureWay
Directory (aka the eNetwork LDAP Directory). Topics covered include
install/configuration, schema design, directory tree design, management
and LDAP API development. The conference will be held March 8-10, 1999
in Austin, Texas, at the Renaissance Hotel. The entrance fee for the
conference is $500 USD.
( software.ibm.com )
ICANN, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is
working on the procedures for Domain Registration as an international
perspective. The URL below points to the latest draft.
( icann.org )
Infoseek announced plans to develop Ultraseek Server Content
Classification Engine (CCE) a version of their search engine available
on Linux. ( info.infoseek.com )
Listing Services Solutions Incorporated [LSSI] announced the European
Services Provider Telegate will use LSSI US National Directory as the
source for the Operator Services. Located in Germany. Telegate has 1300
operators and is one of the largest nonincumbent carriers in the
European Market.
Lucent announced the QIP® Enterprise 5.0 Domain Name Services (DNS) and
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers have added features
that speed up the performance of DNS beyond that of DNS using BIND. The
solution also enables class of service to be implemented to a user's
address. ( lucent.com )
In a separate announcement Lucent announced it was working with Motorola
and AT&T to develop a VXML solution for Voice Services. Upon completion
this protocol will be submitted to the W3 Consortium.
( lucent.com )
NTIA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA) announced a public meeting on March 9th on the Future
Administration and Management of the .us Domain.
( ntia.doc.gov )
Netscape announces the release of both the Netscape Delegated
Administrator, Netscape Directory Server and Netscape Messaging Server
on the Linux platform. Software implementations include Caldera and Red
Hat on systems by Compaq, Hewlett - Packard and VA Research.
( home.netscape.com )
Nortel Networks has developed the Symposium* Express Call Center which
retains features of its hire end product such skill-based routing for a
target market of 10 to 40 active call agents.
( nortelnetworks.com
ss.html )
In a separate announcement Nortel announced the Succession Call Server a
device that supports cross platform services from the circuit and packet
switched networks.
( nortelnetworks.com )
Novell announced earnings increased, and attributed 88% of revenue
growth to directory related services.
( novell.com )
Oracle announced with Alcatel, Cable & Wireless, Electricité de France,
Enron Communications, Ericsson, IBM, Lucent Technologies, Motorola,
Network Computer, Inc., Nortel Networks, Philips Electronics, Sun
Microsystems, Sybase, and Toshiba a joint effort define the Open Service
Gateway specification. This protocol will be used by ISPs to offer a
variety of services for the home and small business market via wire and
wireless links.
( oracle.com )
SAP AG and Dunn & Bradstreet have integrated the DUNS numbering scheme
into the SAP R/3 solution for credit, purchasing and marketing
information as well as data rationalization to reconcile inconsistent
data from internal systems. ( sap.com )
Tekelec and Bellcore announced a strategic alliance enabling the
interworking of Tekelec's EAGLE IP7 Gateway and Bellcore's ISCP System.
This enables the bridging of SS7 to IP services.
( tekelec.com )
==========================================================================
If you are aware of others who would like to receive this service, please
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They will automatically receive a subscription. To discontinue your
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Please send your comments and feedback regarding this issue of
Directories on the Net to carl@pulver.com. Your suggestions for topics
to be covered for future issues would be greatly appreciated.
Carl Ford Tel. +1.516.753.2640
Directories on the Net Fax. +1.516.293.3996
March 8, 1999
(c) 1999 pulver.com, Inc. pulver.com
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