What’s IT all about?

Virtual Strategy magazine is a decent read for those interested in virtualisation in the workplace. A couple of recent articles caught my eye:

Solving Real-World IT Issues Through Client Virtualization
Dave Buchholz - Intel

Common Misconceptions of Server Consolidation
By Scott Feuless, Senior Consultant, Compass Americ

The Client virtualisation article is a little light on detail, but does set the scene for effective use of virtualisation technologies for testing new client applications, and also for enabling applications with different client requirements to co-exist.

The server consolidation article can read a little like a list of reasons not to consider virtualisation, however it is intendedto be read more as a checklist of considerations for when you are contemplating virtualisation in your environment. If you can answer all the hard questions then you know it’s right for you.

My testing of Google Apps continues, and one issue I have had has now been resolved. If you recall from a previous post, I had Lotus Domino handling mail, calendar and contacts for both work and personal purposes. Now that I am using Google Apps and Thunderbird for personal email/calendar/etc. I have lost the tight integration I had with my Palm Lifedrive and my mobile. But the synchronisation of calendar items between Google and Thunderbird has been solved…and the instructions are here.

OK it does not get my calendar items on to my Palm, but that’s not a major problem and I think that having my Google calendar in sync opens up a whole raft of new avenues, given it’s support for iCal and XML.

Now if only I could get contacts synchronised

…to arrange broadband in a new house before I’m actually living there ?

You may be aware that I will be moving house soon. If not don’t worry, it’s not that important to anyone but me and my family Being a brand new house, it doesn’t even have a physical phone line installed yet so the day after we move in BT will attend to run a wire across to the house and set up our new number.

(I must admit that arranging the new line with BT was a pretty painless process, and I even know what our new phone number will be before anything else has happened. A far cry from some of the business dealings I’ve had with them. Anyway, well done BT…so far.)

So, thinking that having exchanged contracts on the new house and committed to having a phone line installed, I called up my ISP of choice to ask for broadband, pretty please. I was a little shocked to hear that I can’t even place an order until the phone line is active, and once it is active I will have to wait 6 days for broadband to be activated. In a way I can understand why, after all it’s still possible that the house move will fall through or there will be a problem with the phone line installation. However, looking at it from a business point of view, wouldn’t it be better for them to sign me up rather than tell me to call back. After all, I may find a different supplier in the interim and take my custom there instead ! Additionally, I’m sure that some of the ‘paperwork’ could be sorted while we’re waiting for the phone line. And if a problem did occur, then simply cancel the order. How difficult can that be ?

The thought has occurred to me that BT would probably sign me up and enable broadband at least as quickly as the other supplier, but I have an issue with being tied into a 12- or even 18-month contract.

I would imagine many people are considering mating a HD TV with a Vista-powered Media Centre PC ? Maybe they should read this article before splashing the cash. Scary stuff !

As mentioned a while ago, Four Lakes is moving from the Surrey/Hants border to Kent, now confirmed for 24th May. As part of the whole operation I will be moving house, which has been described as one of the three most stressful activities that can be undertaken. This particular move, so far, has been probably one of the smoother one, and yet there have been negotiations over work needed on part of the roof, and pressure from our vendor to move in a certain timeframe. Still, we have managed to exchange contracts successfully, and the moving date is set.

One of the painful aspects of moving house, I have found, is sending out change of address notices to all and sundry. Email has eased that problem somewhat, and online services like Plaxo have the potential to help too, but notifying the myriad of companies we deal with in our personal lives has always been a chore. Whether it’s the utilities, banks, credit cards or whatever, finding the right address to send your ‘Please update your records with our new address’ letter is most definitely a chore.

However, I came across a service the other day that has given me some significant help with this particular problem. Iammoving.com asks you a few pertinient questions (old and new addresses, moving date, etc.) and then asks you to choose from a list of companies to inform, categorised by type. Once you’ve built your list and, if necessary, added company-specific information (such as your bank account number) to some of the selections, you can press the button and electronic notifications are sent to your list. Or, at least, electronic notifications are sent to some of the companies on your list. The others produce a pdf which you can print and stuff into an envelope.

So it’s not as easy as it might be, due no doubt to the reluctance of certain companies to accept electronic change of address notifications, but still a useful service. If you’re moving house then it’s worth a look.

The world of VoIP promises a lot, and not the least of those promises is free phone calls via the internet. The reality, at least for now, is not quite that simple; but then is anything ever that simple ? That’s not to say that free internet calls are not possible, rather that you have to meet certain criteria before you can reach that exalted goal. In essence, free calls are an option if you and the person you are calling are on the same network. So if both of you are using Skype, or are Vonage customers, or use any other internet telephony provider that you should be able to chat away for hours without any problems or charges. The issues arise when you both are on different networks.

Skype

First of all, let’s take Skype as an example. One of the barriers to non-Skype users is that Skype uses a proprietary protocol, and as barriers go that’s a good ‘un ! Therefore, if you’re using a SIP-compliant PBX/provide, the world of Skype users is pretty much closed to you unless, of course, you have Skype running alongside your SIP softphone/handset. Not ideal, but about as good as it gets. (Note: there is a product called PSGw which will integrate Skype and SIP, but it requires Skype to be running on your PC so I’m not convinced you gain an awful lot.)

SIP

If you are on a SIP network (there are many providers such as Vonage, Sipgate, Voiptalk, FreeWorldDialup etc.) then you have a few more options. Most SIP ITSPs (Internet Telephone Service Providers) will have peering arrangements with other SIP ITSPs which allow you to route calls directly from one network to another. Therefore, if you are a Sipgate customer and you are calling a FreeWorldDialup customer then, with the addition of **777 at the front of their phone number, your call does not touch the PSTN and you incur no charges. Nice, but with a couple of limitations:

1. Limited peering. You are reliant on your ITSP having peering arrangements with many other ITSPs, and some are better than others in this respect.
2. Foreknowledge. It only works if you know beforehand which ITSP your contact uses, and then go to the trouble of programming in the right prefix for them. So for new or rarely used contacts you will invariably end up just using the standard number. (Note: SIP addresses go part-way to fixing this, so that if you publish your SIP address (e.g. SIP: 5576167@sipgate.co.uk) on business cards, emails, etc. then that information can be used to place free calls as long as appropriate peering is in place.)

Asterisk

The addition of your own Asterisk server (or any other PBX for that matter) into the mix opens up another option. Now, instead of having your softphone or shiny new SIP (or even IAX2) handset hooked up to your ITSPs PBX, you can run your own PBX, and only route calls through your ITSP when necessary. The advantage of this kind of setup is that you can accept incoming calls that are not routed through your ITSP, and this is important. Why, because you now have a means of avoiding the ITSP peering restrictions that would otherwise restrict from whom you can accept SIP calls. You are essentially setting yourself up as your own ITSP and can decide with whom you wish to peer.

“Hang on” you say, “doesn’t the other person need to know your server details in order to call you for free?”. And yes, you are quite right. As with peering, if the calling party doesn’t know you can accept a call directly then the default route is through the PSTN and back out through your ITSP. This is the issue that SIP addresses are supposed to resolve at the ITSP level (see above), and the mechanism for resolving this problem when you are running your own PBX is ENUM.

ENUM is most easily described as DNS for telephone numbers. For instance, on the e164.org site you can register your VoIP phone numbers and add ENUM records that will translate that number into an IP address, domain name or even a SIP address. It’s similar to publicising a SIP address, except in theory it is much more powerful for the following reasons:

1. Set and forget. Rather than relying on the person calling you to have received your SIP address information somehow, you are now relying on them performing an ENUM lookup. This is a one time operation for the PBX owner, making it much more likely to be done.
2. It’s all about control. And in particular, putting you in control. You set up your ENUM records, and you can change them should your circumstances change.

ENUM is more likely to be used in a business environment as only a small percentage of SOHO VoIP users will run their own PBX, so it is certainly still sensible to publish a SIP address for now. For home users, ENUM lookup on outgoing calls is a feature offered by some ITSP’s, although given that it will only ever reduce their income, you can understand why many are not offering it. For them there is a balance to be found between making money from SIP to PSTN calls, and improving their attractiveness to potential subscribers by having a lot of peering arrangements or ENUM lookups. Right now there are relatively few VoIP numbers out there…but that will only grow.

Conclusion

So, to summarise, it is possible to maximise the number of free VoIP calls you can make, but you just need to do a little groundwork first.

• Check your contacts. If most of your potential VoIP-enabled contacts are Skype users, then use Skype to call them. If they have SIP facilities, then implement a SIP solution.
• Start small. The world of VoIP is still low on the growth curve and thus is changing constantly. So right now it makes little sense (unless you’re a large business) to implement a costly solution. Keep it simple for now.
• Plan for growth. Having said “Keep it simple”, you should also factor in likely growth. Not so applicable for domestic solutions, but for a growing business you might want to think twice about putting a Skype handset on every desk.
• Ask for advice. There are a lot of open source solutions (such as Asterisk) in the VoIP arena, and many people willing to offer advice. Be wary of the guys who shoehorn their ‘product’ into any scenario you can come up with, but keep an open mind.

OK, shameless plug time. If you are a growing business looking for help and advice on a VoIP solution, then please feel free to email or call. PSTN number is (UK) 01233 888240.

Rather than give you chapter and verse, have a read of this article on Digium, the company behind the Asterisk Open Source PBX and you might get an inkling as to the opportunities still available to you when you can’t charge for licences.

…as announced on Ed Brill’s blog. The guides cover such topics as Roaming, Password Recovery, Backup & Recovery, Admin Process, Calendaring & Scheduling and Security.

There are a few optiones if you wish to use a free database in your business. Nowadays many are aware of the open-source options such as MySQL and PostgreSQL, but may not be aware of some of the free options from Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. In this article, Leon Katsnelson of IBM evaluates his company’s offering - DB2 Express-C, in a prelude to looking at Microsoft SQL Server Express 2005 and Oracle Express Edition (XE). It’s an interesting read, with the obvious proviso that this is an IBM guy talking about an IBM product.

My review of the AT-530 did not go unnoticed, particularly one of my critical comments regarding the display which was permanently set to ‘VOIP Phone’ - not particularly useful I’m sure you’ll agree. Well, a couple of days ago an email arrived with a rather large attachment - a new firmware update hot off the Atcom presses (now also available on the Atcom website download area).

The new firmware offers a few new features:

Version 07-04-24 Release Note:

　　1.Add eight different ring tone
　　2.synchronize from SNPT server
　　3.Add the sliding bar of menu setting page
　　4.Add LCD logo display customization function
　　5.Display the current server type ( SIP or IAX)

You’ll note No. 4, which I can confirm works. I have yet to check the other new features (keep an eye out for the full review soon), but this new firmware does appear to have broken one previously working function. Now, if you set the time zone to GMT then you just cannot enable daylight savings, so the clock will be an hour slow during the summer months. Back to the drawing board guys !