consultaglobal

Last week I gave a talk on emerging communication trends and technologies at IIT’s VoIP Conference. I would like to take this chance to thank everyone attending my session as well as those of you who have contacted me since.

I started the discussion by sharing my mind map on VoIP, which I thought it would be best visualized as a tag cloud, since from that point I focused on putting VoIP in the context of today’s 2.0 trends and multimedia communication technologies.

I would like to highlight the fact that our industry is shifting from a techno centric mindset to user centric innovations. A new paradigm shift has emerged by which systems and network engineering are now driven by human factors engineering. As an example, metrics addressing QoE, the end user’s quality of experience, set QoS, quality of service, requirements. This means putting people first and understanding that there is more to communicating than just enabling voice over any given network.

To be able to convey that and quite a few other points, I have created a simple framework (below) which I use when studying emerging concepts, trends and technologies. By definition innovations involve changes and, therefore, paradigm shifts occur. Needless to say that understanding the nature of these shifts helps identify new business opportunities. But, a careful analysis of any change often uncovers paradoxes which, in turn, bring up unexpected chances to further innovate and make a difference.

Leveraging this framework, I proceeded to address key implications regarding network and service infrastructure.

I also shared a vision for a near future in which user generated applications become as popular as today’s user generated content as a result of greater levels of service personalization and ease of mashup. To better illustrate that point, I introduced ALU, the amazing learning unit, a concept that I crafted to help visualize the points I made in the first half of the session.

I used about 15 visuals to support my presentation and was glad to hear that this session was of great interest. I would like to thank Lizette Velazquez and Carol Davids for having given me the opportunity to share the above and exchanging quite a few other insights at this year’s VoIP Conference.

Go to Slideshare or browse my presentation below:

Relevant links:

• IDC’s Newsflash on Alcatel-Lucent’s HLN – Highly Leveraged Networks
• Alcatel-Lucent’s webpage on AE, Application Enablement
• Alcatel-Lucent’s Carrier VoIP, Voice and Multimedia
• Alcatel-Lucent’s company overview

J. de Francisco blogging from Chicago on Nov 5

consultaglobal.org :::  disclaimer & disclosure