IMTC

IMTC Highlights
Q2 2008


In This “IMTC Highlights”

  • Message from the President
  • AG Updates
  • Events
  • Member Alerts
Message from the President

We're halfway through 2008 and the IMTC has already made great strides in its goal to further Unified Communications through its thought leadership and interoperability expertise. By focusing on vendor-neutral Unified Communications solutions for the enterprise, we're filling a gap in the market - the kind of gap that could prevent widespread adoption and leave business opportunities and challenges unanswered.

We've met with industry analysts this year and discussed IMTC's approach to provide the industry with vendor-neutral Unified Communications (U.C.) solutions - and they agree this is currently a need that is not being met in the market today. In particular, IMTC is collaborating with leaders in the healthcare and financial sectors on their specific U.C. issues and requirements. We're working with these leaders on case studies within their industries to underscore the need for open, interoperable U.C. solutions led by the IMTC and its members.

At the same time, we're investigating new growth markets that interest our member companies, including opportunities in China. We'll have more information soon on membership and activities in this region of the world. Remember, it was members' interest in Unified Communications that sparked this year's initiative launch so if you have an area we should explore, please let us know.

IMTC interoperability events remain the core of our members' activity in the alliance. SuperOp! 2008, held May 12-16 in Tel Aviv and hosted by RADVISION, even attracted non-members to the event, including Surf Communications and Marvell. While this spring's SuperOp! was smaller than previous events, member and non-member participants alike marked new accomplishments, as our Activity Group chairs share in this newsletter. I'd like to thank again our event sponsors: Polycom, RADVISION, Tandberg and Ximpo.

Please hold the week of Nov. 10 on your calendar, as the two-day IMTC Fall Forum will be held in San Francisco during that week (also note that VoiceCon is in San Francisco during the same week). The theme of the Forum will be "Technology Meets Customer Needs - Unified Communications Supporting Business." Day 1 will focus on business issues and Day 2 will focus on technical presentations. The event keynote and speakers are being lined up now, including industry leaders and start-up organizations participating on a variety of panel sessions. In addition to recognizing leaders in the industry, IMTC plans to recognize leading-edge work being done in the area of Unified Communications by small businesses and start-ups.

Finally, we've created new membership levels in the dues structure to accommodate interested companies that don't have products to test themselves, but have a stake in our work - particularly in Unified Communications. It's a great opportunity to broaden investment and involvement in our work. We now have an Associate membership at $4,000 annual dues and an Individual Participant membership at no fee. More details on these membership levels are available at www.imtc.org.

Sincerely,
Anatoli Levine
President
IMTC

AG Updates

3G-324M

Accomplishments at SuperOp! 2008 and work this first half of the year:

  • Nine companies, including two non-members, participated in the SuperOp! event;
  • Made significant progress on the interoperability of MONA (H.324 Annex K);
  • The AG attained satisfactory interoperability for WNSRP (H.324 Annex A);
  • Focused on interoperability of the latest codes, including H.264 video codec and AMR-WB audio codec;
  • Published IMTC test cases document, Version 3.11;
  • Next face-to-face interoperability event will be held in the September/October timeframe.

PSS-AG (1H 2008)

  • Participated in a successful Face-to-Face Interop Event (Jan. 21-25 in Tampere, Finland), hosted by Nokia with joint attendance from PSS, 3G324m, and IMS AGs. There were eight PSS companies testing on site, with two additional PSS companies providing remote support for their off-site streaming servers. Nokia provided a dedicated 3G test network, including a network simulator.
  • Held a two-week PSS-only Virtual Test Event (March 10-21) with participation from eight PSS companies
  • Attended SuperOp! 2008 (May 12-16 in Tel-Aviv), which for PSS had an unusual 'hybrid' structure - five PSS companies were testing on site, with six other companies testing remotely. Overall the event had four PSS servers which were tested against clients from eight PSS client vendors.
  • PSS-AG continues to test 3GPP Rate Adaptation. We are now focusing on recent changes and clarifications to the spec. These changes came from a fruitful series of liaison exchanges between PSS-AG and 3GPP SA4.
  • PSS-AG began testing three other new features (3GPP Asset Info, RTSP Tunneling and Movie Fragments) according to test specifications recently completed within the group.
  • We are beginning our Summer of Exploration. We have a long list of potential new features and other technical discussion topics, and are prioritizing these for development in our summer conference calls. Please join us and provide your input!

IMS

  • Published Version 1.0 of the test cases document for video share testing - now publicly available.
  • Starting to work on MTSI

SIP and Conferencing AGs

  • New and fully updated version of the SIP Testing Plan for VideoConferencing services is ready and available on IMTC web site - largely thanks to Chris Neill and Pablo Kohan efforts.
  • Both SIP and H.323 had being tested during SuperOp!
  • Test plans need to be updated for both SIP and H.323 to include HD and TelePresence test cases.
  • Looking for co-chairs for both activity groups to drive the efforts
  • Planning to have Face-2-Face interop event in the October-November timeframe.
Events

The Fall Forum in San Francisco this November will again be held the same week as the VoiceCon event (VoiceCon takes place the week of Nov. 10-13 at Moscone Center in San Francisco). Appropriately, the theme for Fall Forum 2008 is "Technology Meets Customer Needs - Unified Communications Supporting Business."

A variety of thoughtful panel sessions, targeted at our stakeholders' interests, will be presented for attendees. Some of the session topics:

BUSINESS DAY

  • Healthcare Industry Unified Communications Needs
  • Financial Industry Unified Communications Needs
  • Cross-Vendor Implementation Challenges
  • Linking to External Systems / Social Network
  • Non-Standard in the Standard World
  • Telepresence & Future of Videoconferencing
  • APAC Chinese Company to Present on Multimedia
  • Online Collaboration Meets the Enterprise
  • Small meeting requirements for small biz communication

TECHNICAL DAY

  • Advance Multi-Media System (AMS)
  • H264 / SVC
  • AAC-ELD
  • G.719 (full band)
  • Value Interoperability Testing (Panel)
  • Conformance Testing & Methodology

The IMTC will honor leaders and significant contributors to the multimedia industry. For the first time, the IMTC will also recognize leading products and services in Unified Communications.

We'll host a networking event for members and guests on one evening.

Call for Speakers

Do you have a panel topic you'd like us to address? Further, if you - or someone you know - would make a dynamic contribution to a panel, please let us know. Your participation and your insight are crucial to the IMTC's success, so please share your ideas and questions by emailing Kfir Pravda, Vice President of Marketing, at kfir@pravdam.com

Member Alerts

Guest Bloggers Needed

The IMTC blog, located at http://blog.imtc.org/, needs more members to contribute to the discussion. Do you have any ideas or questions to contribute? The blog's value to members and the public increases with more frequent postings and diverse perspectives. For more information or to contribute, contact Kfir Pravda, Vice President of Marketing, at .

 
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