Development

Google Becomes a VoIP Provider with Gizmo5 Purchase

Google announced its 4th acquisition of the year with the purchase of Gizmo5. Gizmo5 gives Google the ability to connect VoIP calls from the Internet or from mobile devices, changing the game for Google Voice and Google Wave.

AT&T recently filed a complaint with the FCC charging that Google was violating communications guidelines by blocking phone calls to certain areas. Google’s response was that because Google Voice does not actually provide the backbone that carries the actual calls Google is not subject to those same guidelines. Gizmo5 puts some holes in that defense.

Google Voice has generated a lot of excitement providing a diverse set of advanced voice and messaging capabilities, but without Gizmo5 Google Voice relies entirely on your existing voice services. Google Voice is basically an extended feature pack that you implement with your existing mobile and landline phones.

By purchasing Gizmo5, Google now has its own VoIP capabilities and can beef up Google Voice to compete directly with Skype. The bigger picture, though, is what Gizmo5 provides Google in terms of expanding the unified communications functionality of Google Wave.

I have not been overly impressed with the early release of Google Wave, but the initial demonstration Google used to unveil Google Wave was quite impressive. If Google manages to mature the current Google Wave beta into the Google Wave it displayed for us at Google I/O 2009, and adds in SIP-based VoIP capabilities, Google Wave could be a potent unified communications platform and offer an impressive, cost-effective alternative to existing unified communications systems.

Google Wave Isn’t All Sunshine and Lollipops

OK. I swear that I am not anti-Google or anti-Google Wave, and I promise not to repeatedly bash Google Wave. In all honesty, I couldn’t wait to get my Wave invitation and I am still very excited to jump in and see what its all about. My previous post about being underwhelmed has more to do with what it looks like now during beta testing and not living up to the hype, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think it will eventually be a very capable product.

That said, there are two sides to the Google Wave coin. Its not all ice cream and rainbows, or sunshine and lollipops. First, the real-time collaboration is a huge benefit and the ability to see others typing as their fingers hit the keys is novel, but do we really need to watch others type…wrong…then backspace….then retype?

Have you ever written a message in anger or frustration? Then you take a step back and a deep breath, re-read it, and decide that there is a more appropriate way to say things so you edit the message before sending it? If you were holding that conversation in a Google Wave the other party would be able to watch as you type what a complete jackass….brain dead moron…..jerk….good person with the right intentions, but poor execution your boss is.

Real-time typing has its drawbacks.

What about the ability to chain and forward a Wave well after the fact? Say you start a Wave with a friend and you are venting between the two of you about a third friend. The Wave evolves and later the third friend is inadvertently added to the Wave. That person can go back to the beginning of the Wave, replay it, comment on it, etc.

Once its a Wave its sort of out of your control and the concept of assuming that everything you type will be shared publicly takes on a whole new meaning.

It will be interesting to see how some of the pitfalls of Google Wave are addressed as development evolves and the fully functional Google Wave eventually hits the Internet.

If you are on Google Wave, you can feel free to connet with me at s3kur3@googlewave.com.

Facetime Adds Sophos AV Protection to Unified Security Gateway

Facetime is a respected name in unified communications security. Its Unified Security Gateway, or USG 3.0, appliance allows enterprise administrators to control the web sites and applications that can be accessed by users, as well as monitoring and filtering content for Web 2.0 communications such as webmail, blogs, and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Aside from the goal of protecting intellectual property and sensitive information, the USG 3.0 appliance also provides the tools necessary to maintain legal and regulatory compliance related to network security and disclosing information.

Another threat that enterprise administrators have to contend with is malware and malicious attacks. Mike Rogers, vice president of Global Alliances and OEM for Sophos stressed the issue. “For the first six months of this year, SophosLabs detected 23,500 new infected Web pages–that’s one every 3.6 seconds. This statistic underscores the necessity of ensuring safe Web browsing, which includes virus and other malware protection.”

That is why Facetime is adding Sophos antivirus scanning and malware protection technologies to incorporate into the USG 3.0 appliance.

Google Wave Underwhelming

You know that anticlimactic feeling you get when something doesn’t quite live up to the hype?

Like when you tried to avoid seeing the movie Titanic because a Leonardo DiCaprio love story just didn’t sound appealing and you were already sick of hearing Celine Dion singing My Heart Will Go On, but then everyone in the world but you saw the movie….three times? So you finally caved and saw it and left thinking ‘it was a good movie, but nowhere near worth the attention its getting and certainly not something I’d pay to see more than once.’?

That is how I feel about Google Wave right now.

A few weeks ago when Google unleashed a new flurry of Google Wave invitations I managed to acquire one (thanks again Marcus). It still took forever for the invite to actually arrive in my email, but at least I didn’t have to continue begging, or troll eBay trying to buy a fake invitation.

Once it arrived though it felt like 4pm on December 25th when the feeling sinks in that after months of shopping, and wrapping, and decorating, and Christmas carols, and tons of money….its all over. That was it.

I am not condemning it yet. I understand that it is a beta version, and to be fair I haven’t comprehensively examined it yet. I will definitely be diving in and perhaps it will seem more compelling once I get under the hood and start figuring out what to do with it.

All I’m saying is that after the 90 minute video overview Google unveiled it with, and the hype leading up to getting the invite, it just doesn’t seem very exciting, or like the unified communications competition it has been described as (which I am guilty of as well).

Stay tuned for more in-depth reviews and assessments as I dig in and figure it all out.

FaceTime Strengthens UC / Web 2.0 Security with Sunbelt Partnership

FaceTime is building more comprehensive security into its Unified Security Gateway thanks to a partnership with Sunbelt Software.

According to the press release, “Sunbelt’s anti-malware technology, designed specifically for the gateway, and its Threat Track(TM) data feeds have been licensed by FaceTime for integration with its Unified Security Gateway product. As part of the integration, FaceTime will deploy Sunbelt’s VIPRE(R) technology into its appliance to augment the protection provided by FaceTime’s Security Labs and the FaceTime WebFilter.”

What that translates to for you is a gateway appliance that performs both Web filtering and malware scanning at the perimeter to keep bad stuff out and good stuff in. The combination of FaceTime’s Security Labs efforts to identify Web 2.0 threats and SunbeltLabs malware research provide a formidable defense against emerging threats.

If you are using unified communications and/or Web 2.0 technologies in your network, the FaceTime Unified Security Gateway is probably worth investigating as a solution for securing and protecting your network.

Why Twitter Works

The consumer masses may be under the impression that social networking is comprised only of MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. What they are not aware of is that there are many other tools and sites that have come and gone. Many may even still exist, but they haven’t gained the popularity or reached that critical mass necessary to catch the attention of mainstream consumers.

Why is that? What does one social networking site do different than another that causes one to capture the imagination and explode onto the Web, while others fade into obscurity? In this post, The Zen of Twitter, that question is examined as it relates to Twitter. One thing I like is the list of specific things that Twitter has done which seem to be working for them.

Follow me on Twitter

Google Voice- UC For The Budget-Impaired?

A llloooonnnngg time ago (OK- it was 2 years. But, in tech-time that is an eon) Google bought a small company called Grand Central. The essential principle behind Grand Central was “one phone number for all your phones, for life.”

Grand Central has been adapted into what is now Google Voice. Google bought up 1 million phone numbers recently as it prepared to launch Google Voice to the masses. Earlier this week Google Voice began its public launch. Currently it is by invitation only (Google employed the same sort of social network marketing to create demand and build interest when it launched its GMail email service).

The central component remains the same as the principle behind Grand Central. Essentially you can have a single Google phone number which can ring to your home phone, mobile phone, work phone, or any combination thereof. As you move, change jobs, etc. your Google Voice number remains the same so you never need to update peers, friends, or family.

Google Voice offers a number of other useful features beyond single-number access though. You can receive voicemail in your email and forward or share it as you wish. You can customize which phones ring based on who is calling. You can establish different voicemail greetings depending on the group or individual who is calling. It also provides conference calling and call recording features, as well as the ability to switch between phones mid-call.

Google Voice is free (at least for now). As it is, it seems like it could be a sort of poor man’s unified communications for the budget-impaired. When you combine Google Voice with the upcoming Google Wave, it certainly appears that Google could put a dent in the unified communications market. Check out the Google Voice site for video demos of the features and functions. You can also click the link to beg for an invitation to the party.

Unified Communications & Social Networking

Many of the components included in unified communications started off or at least became mainstream in the consumer market. Instant messaging, web-based email, wikis, etc.. These technologies seem to catch fire as a grassroots movement from end-users jumping on the latest cutting edge technologies often before they even understand what the point of them is. Eventually, they become more mainstream and enterprises find ways to leverage or exploit them as well and they become integrated into the corporate network.

Unified communications is an established market, but also a young and evolving market at the same time. Web 2.0 and social networking continue to evolve almost exponentially as well. Where the two meet they can either assimilate and become one, or battle to the death for dominance. Read this article to learn more about a panel discussion at Interop 2009 focused on the future of unified communications and social networking convergence.

Social Networking on Company Time

Employees are only human. They take breaks. They get distracted. As companies demand more from fewer employees and blur the line between ‘work’ time and ‘personal’ time, it is to be expected that personal or non-business use of computer and network resources will occur. But, how much is too much?

A recent study by Facetime found that actual usage is about 10 times higher than what managers estimated employees were doing. Employees are using MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and many other social networking and Web 2.0 resources. This activity may exceed a reasonable amount of ‘personal’ time for some employees and it also has security implications for the enterprise. Check out this ITWeb article for a more detailed breakdown of what Facetime found in the study.

Determining Number of Users for OCS Front End

For capacity and scaling purposes, there may come a time when you need to determine how many users are connecting to a given OCS front end. As Mike Stacey of Evangelyze Communications points out in his blog, there is no inherent feature or function in OCS 2007 that provides this type of information. With a little resourceful ingenuity between Mike and Evangelyze Communications co-worker Simon Booth, they managed to come up with a solution to gather the information they needed though. To learn more, take a look at Mike’s blog post SQL Query to return number of users per Front End.