TechWiseTV

Contextual Presence

Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group makes a couple of good points about the importance and need for ‘Context’ to improve upon some of the more basic goals of ‘Presence.’ I agree for the most part.

Pushing the Machine. There are some things that will continue to define the uniqueness of humanity. Knowing who to call and get answers to particular problems will often be unique attributes of specific individuals who can not only understand the problem but can visualize how to begin solving it. I don’t think we are anywhere near that.

Zeus expands his definition of presence to include a contextual element such as whether a user has the correct skills or knowledge. That is admirable but such a huge leap. I like what Cisco is pursuing internally to move something similar forward through expanded directory services. Employees within Cisco can now define their areas of expertise in their employee directory entry. We can’t do much with it yet but we soon will. It makes a ton of sense...working towards the codification of gray matter knowledge so we can find answers to questions quicker. As employees continue to self-select in this process, it is a trivial matter now to attach presence information to this. Presence in its most basic form of course is buddy lists on your instant messenger. This is a good move - it will continue to increase Cisco ‘shared intelligence’ and allow us to be more nimble - potentially unearth hidden talents...but it is still internal.

I think these self-definitions may suffer a bit initially as we all tend to define things differently...use different terms. Tagging could potentially solve a lot of this: as I start to write down what I think I am good at...give me some prompts for how others have ‘tagged’ themselves so I can stay within the same naming convention. If I am different or disagree I just create a new tag. The tag cloud then can help lead me down a more fruitful path if I have to find expertise in a place I am not as familiar with where to get started.

Another issue with this is busy-ness. I can’t believe someone actually made the comment to Jimmy Ray and I that they were so enthused at the value we could offer them for helping to tell their story....they were going to ‘keep us busy.’ What? Are we sitting around waiting for someone to help make us busy? I don’t know anyone like that. What kind of a sales pitch is that? “The benefit to working with me and my group is that you will be working harder than ever before.’ I don’t get that. I am not sure how much we will be able to help this group... The point of this is when it becomes known that you are good at something - your phone can ring off the hook. Jimmy Ray spends a lot of time helping some of our internal competitive teams. As a former technical developer at a different technology company he is VERY good at poking holes in competitive product - the challenge is a lot of people know this now so he gets asked to contribute ALL THE TIME. But this is not his day job... so what to do. One thing being tossed around (unofficially...) is the ability to be PAID for the access to your time and knowledge. So now, the benefit to sharing expertise is you could make more change....great idea. Until it gets out of hand and you are making more money from your knowledge exchange side job and ditching what you were hired to do. Something would obviously have to be worked out here...but it is very promising.

Going external with regards to presence is still a big frontier to conquer. These are multi-vendor communication challenges with no defined standard upon which we can interoperate. The reality of our world of course is that not all the smart people are located within our company (the collective company). We all work with a myriad group of temporary and shifting knowledge workers who come and go.

Shameless plug (you knew it was coming right?) - we dive into the technical challenges of presence in our next show airing November 20: TWTV 39 - Pushing the Boundaries of Collaboration. See the show notes and registration details at www.mytechwisetv.com.

Save your Bacon

Not the latest recycling strategy....but a new podcast from Cisco Subnet featuring Jimmy Ray as guest host chatting with our good friend Josh Stephens from SolarWinds.  Listen to the geeks review how they are using the amazing toolset available from SolarWinds for a myriad of challenges you face every day.

The New Collaboration Paradigm

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In today's global business environment, your employees need to be able to work effectively with partners, suppliers, and customers anywhere, anytime. Watch TechWiseTV and discover how the latest collaboration solutions from Cisco extend the full power of unified communications beyond your corporate firewalls.

Pushing the Boundaries of Collaboration
 
Thursday, November 20, 12 p.m. Eastern Time
Learn how you can enable your employees to collaborate seamlessly, yet securely, with people outside as well as inside your organization. Explore the technical issues and see the latest collaboration solutions from Cisco on TechWiseTV, including:

• The architectural challenges and realities involved in federating presence technology
• Cisco TelePresence 500, allowing personal offices to hold one-on-one meetings or to join large, multipoint TelePresence calls
• Cisco WebEx Connect, empowering independent groups to easily create virtual, customized workspaces over an open yet secure platform

Federating Presence

One of the topics we will be discussing in Episode 39: ‘Pushing the Boundaries of Collaboration’ is Presence. Specifically the status and challenges around federated presence which holds the alluring promise of extending these advanced productivity tools out to interoperate with associates not on our same network or domain. Dave Lizotte is an extremely gracious and knowledgeable guest to have with us and was willing to share more of the detail he will be discussing on the show.

Please enjoy!

Robb

 * * * *

Working for Cisco Advanced Services under the collaboration services umbrella I have been deeply  focused on UC architecture, Cisco-Microsoft interoperability, federation, SIP, and presence. The more I see this umbrella of UC solutions transform the customers usage models, the more I see customers requesting additional capabilities for social networking. People want information real time and they want it to cross all boundaries seamlessly, regardless if it is on a private or public network, fixed or mobile device. I see a transition occurring where basic IM and presence technology is becoming a critical service that must integrate deeper into the application space to enhance customer business value. Are we listening to our customers? What business problems can we solve for them? The control and selection options of how customers want to be communicated with is really placed in the end users hands. Users are requesting the ability to define their own business presence states, and integrate this information into applications and all kinds of endpoints. To accomplish this goal open standards, presence federation and protocols will play a very critical and important role. First of all what does it mean to get two disparate presence networks to talk to each other? Federation is the Key.

THE BASICS

Federation is basically the ability to get two different networks to share and exchange information as transparent to the end users as possible. In order to federate, the two networks will need to agree on how they are going to communicate with each other. They may need to speak the same language using a standard protocol or having some form of translator between them such as a gateway or transport agent device. You speak English and I speak French, well my friend speaks both languages so let him translate for us. The networks must have some form of solution in mind so they must have a level of trust and security. They must be able to listen and agree upon what informational messages are being sent to them so they can be understood and have value. The information shared can be messages, user account information user, presentity status and informational messages and many other into the work flow and application space. Most federation types do have some form of security like TLS. Other components can also be required if trying to pass information through firewalls or once through the firewall to route users to proper cluster locations like Cisco does for their presence architecture. Cisco’s approach to presence is to collect, aggregate and share presence status information over the network. Federation can be from a business to another business or from a business to a public entity. Federation is quick and can be accomplished in a very short time frame vs.. a costly deployment for a whole new system between enterprise businesses or public entities. So why do we hear different federation terms such as inter and intra-Domain federation.

DOMAINS

Inter-Domain Federation is defined as to separate enterprise network domains to exchange information and communicate. A good example of this would be A@cisco.com <mailto:A@cisco.com> and B@Microsoft.com <mailto:B@Microsoft.com> . Intra-Domain Federation is defined as two or more different presence solutions within the same enterprise domain to exchange information and communicate. This type of federation is harder to accomplish due to the level of complexity with numerous different systems in the environment They do not speak to each other natively and more then one system is going to try to act as the lead system with the most up to date and accurate information on user presentity and other account and informational messages. It even gets more complex since it is all now being tied into the email,telephony and other solutions like workflow applications and mobile devices. Routing and addressing to multiple user accounts for the same person will be extremely difficult. Can all of these systems understand all the different translations for messages? Real-time Presence out of synch will not be acceptable to users or business processes that affect Book, Bill, Ship and Close decisions for customers or vendors. So what are the main protocols being used in the industry for IM and Presence? The key to this comment is what protocols are leading the industry, not what protocols are standards in the industry.

PRESENCE PROTOCOLS: SIP/SIMPLE & XMPP

Cisco’s approach to presence is to collect, aggregate and share presence status information over the network. The two main leading or standard industry protocols used for presence are SIMPLE SIP Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions, and XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. XMPP is a protocol that routes XML messages between entities, in our case Presence and IM. SIMPLE is also XML based as an event package mechanism and rides on SIP. After reviewing a few other blogs and articles it is clear that SIMPLE became more popular with businesses and their VOIP solutions to utilize the SIP feature sets that can be accomplished. Even Service Providers are using SIP in their fixed and mobile networks. Most Businesses are using SIMPLE like Cisco. Although Jabber which is now owned by Cisco uses XMPP, as well as most public internet companies like Google and Yahoo. There are a few other protocols that are proprietary. This separation of protocol direction has created immature IM and presence standards an industry where open standards is very much required to deliver strong integrated and federated solutions to our customers.

STANDARDS?

Lack of Standards: The lack of standards also causes presence states, status and information exchanges to vary, thus limiting what information messages can be shared and understood between systems. Users are wanting the ability to create their own presence states to match their business requirements. Customers are demanding presence and status be placed into their business applications. Once again, our Collaboration technology must enhance customer business value. Companies are not ripping out their systems every time they need an new solution. The solutions must integrate and I believe that most integration is not that difficult technically. The key again is open standards and stronger vendor partnerships. It is one thing to have an agreed upon standard to communicate, but it a completely another issue to get two vendors or companies to agree upon what level and type of information they are willing to open up and share within their solutions. A clear example of this is with Cisco and Microsoft Interoperability. A good example for a lack of standards is Microsoft with their integration between Cisco and Microsoft. Even though we have inter-domain federation with some presence states available MSFT’s OCS does not follow the RFC 3261 description of how to perform a register request. This is why a MOC client can not register with another SIP proxy or B2BUA like Cisco Unified Communications Manager and this is also why compliant RFC SIP devices can not register with OCS.

Dave Lizotte

Solutions Architect

New CCIE Training Released

As I understand it, this is the first time Cisco has ever released certified training for the CCIE level. Check out the news release. You can also check out the info directly on the Cisco Learning Network site. Our CLN correspondent Venita Valencia will be reviewing this announcement on Episode 39 (Pushing the Boundaries of Collaboration) airing November 20.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Shout Out: Nathan Shaw

We taped our collaboration show and were fortunate to have a number of guests that I will talk about later...but first, I want to bring up Nathan Shaw.  Demo's make the TechWiseTV show work...they are more work, take more planning but they keep us from falling into the all too easy trap of being a 'talking heads' show.  We wanted Nathan on the show to talk about the new CTS 500, Personal Telepresence and he took it a few steps further.  He offered to procure an actual unit for us and then with our help, we used his 4-Runner and physically hauled this thing over from building 18.  Its not designed to be portable of course...but we managed to do it last week.  He set it up so we could launch calls while on set and it worked like a charm. What an awesome package this thing is...we should ALL have one.  We really hated to give it back.  Nathan, thank you so much for the work you put into this.  The show will air on November 20 - check show notes (or this blog) at www.mytechwisetv.com for updates and registration.We taped our collaboration show and were fortunate to have a number of guests that I will talk about later...but first, I want to bring up Nathan Shaw.  Demo's make the TechWiseTV show work...they are more work, take more planning but they keep us from falling into the all too easy trap of being a 'talking heads' show.  We wanted Nathan on the show to talk about the new CTS 500, Personal Telepresence and he took it a few steps further.  He offered to procure an actual unit for us and then with our help, we used his 4-Runner and physically hauled this thing over from building 18.  Its not designed to be portable of course...but we managed to do it last week.  He set it up so we could launch calls while on set and it worked like a charm. What an awesome package this thing is...we should ALL have one.  We really hated to give it back.  Nathan, thank you so much for the work you put into this.  The show will air on November 20 - check show notes (or this blog) at www.mytechwisetv.com for updates and registration.

The Conversation is Happening

Melissa Blaisdell, our ‘Social Media Strategist’ and I co-presented to a group of channel partners up in Minneapolis today. As a group of salespeople...what is important for them to understand?

The Conversation is Happening - customers often know more about what we are offering than we do. Its NOT just the info that we are choosing to provide them because we don’t control the flow any longer. At a minimum, you need to try searching for the things your customer would be looking at as part of your preparation. What happens when your own name, or your own company name gets googled? You need to know, Just as you need to DO what you can to control that online brand you may have without even knowing it. LinkedIn is great for this as when it comes to names...their results show in the first page more often than anyone else. So knowing this, we all need to be using it as a tool for simply controlling your own brand at a minimum. The ability to research company info...potentially talk to people employeed by your target company is great.

The ability to get a rough idea of how your customer is consuming information is what Forrester calls ‘Technographics’. They cover it well in their presentations or in their new book: Groundswell, by Charlene Li. Melissa shared some interesting data today on how IT managers are more oriented to the ‘creator’ side of things. This is very good to keep in mind. How awesome would it be to know the comments, opinions and online postings your customer may have made before you meet with him?

This was a good group. We presented between showing segments of our Web 2.0 show from about 6 months back on Epsiode 31, (www.mytechwisetv.com).

Any comments? I am always curious what others think about the usefulness of Web 2.0 when it comes to marketing certainly but even more about the things individuals are doing in the sales field.

Robb

Spotlight: Accelerating Virtual Machines

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New show coming out with some HOT new technology from our Data Center Team.  Turns out we have been working behind the scenes to do some very cool stuff with VMware so the network can now remove much of the burden, hassle and issues around Virtualization. 

Register and see more with the show notes: http://www.mytechwisetv.com/page/38+Accel+Virtual+Machines

Cisco Intelligent Retail

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The Cisco Intelligent Retail Network provides essential infrastructure and applications that enable retailers to achieve their primary business goals. Such objectives include driving increases in same-store sales, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty, meeting regulatory and compliance standards (e.g., payment-card industry compliance), and improving employee productivity. Christian Janoff, Enterprise Architect for Cisco shows off some great new options.

VMWare and Cisco Accelerate Virtual Machine Deployments

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Learn how the Nexus 1000V software switch integrates with the hypervisor to deliver virtual machine-aware network services.

Want to dive into the techncial details?  Join us on TechWiseTV as we spin the propeller on these new technologies with the engineers who bring it to us.  Check out www.mytechwisetv.com for info and registration.