Tech060204.ppt

Re-thinking Enterprise Conferencing and Collaboration

DiamondWare, Ltd

June 2, 2004

Index

• About DiamondWare

• Upfront POV.

• Conferences to always-on collaborative listening

• Changing telephony environment

• Overview DiamondWare technology integration

About DiamondWare, Ltd • Historically audiophiles chasing the “absolute sound” with Hi-Fi• Applying same demand for clarity to telephony systems. • Impact is like stereo was to mono or FM to AM radio. • Developing high performance VoIP software solutions.

• Virtual relationships between parties are on the rise. • Nuances in voice exchanges are a key attribute in productive relationship. • Presence management systems (enhanced IM and social networking tools) • “always on” demands new audio solutions.

• Developing integrated enterprise communications applications • World class technology since 1994 • Lead with the highest Quality of Service (QoS) and lowest latency available.

• Used by the U.S. military Special Forces. • Ready for release into multiplayer gaming and always-on Enterprise VoIP

conferencing• Including IP PBX and small platform mobility solutions.

Management Team• KEITH WEINER CEO and Cofounder is the passionate audiophile and software architect leading DiamondWare to

build 4th generation VoIP solutions. His drive and entrepreneurial ambition have transitioned DiamondWare from a two-person programming shop to a world-class engineering and business development team with 12 people on board making profits. He is the author of several patents, a recognized audio industry leader and a frequently requested industry presenter.

• ERIK LORENZEN VP, Engineering and Cofounder guides the development team, contributing his unique expertise in mixers, audio pipelines, and elsewhere. Erik designs the key algorithms, deserving direct credit for both the radical efficiency and good localization of Palantir's 3D positioning engine. Erik's engineering passion has led to many breakthroughs like voice colorization and multi-conferencing--on a server which supports 60 users on a 1.2GHz Pentium III.

• JOHN WILL VP - Business Development is spearheading partnership development around Wi-Fone and Palantir, and introducing them to Asia. He also runs DiamondWare's military communications business. Prior to joining DiamondWare, John has worked for the U.S. Government engineering radar, radio, and communications systems. Then, as a contractor, he defined program requirements for a converged VoIP system

• STUART HENSHALL VP - Marketing & Strategy is championing the vision of enterprise product solutions that integrate VoIP with mobility, real-time presence, collaboration, and learning. Stuart brings a broad international background to DiamondWare. Prior to DiamondWare he was a futurist and Internet strategist at GBN. Over 20 years, he developed a track record of innovative consumer products as General Manager and VP Sales and Marketing. Stuart is also a qualified Accountant.

Upfront Conclusions - POV:

• Always on access to multiple simultaneous conference calls is the way communications will evolve 

• Next generation web collaboration platforms will all integrate with telephony and ultimately video

• We are about to enter the age of the online presence spiral where presence and social networking will integrate with work, play and home.

• All this will be available from handheld devices.

Conferences to Always-On Collaborative Listening

Industry views trapped in the change.

• Interest and usage of collaborative conferencing environments is increasing.

• Remain a compromise between face to face and a phone call - save money and time

• Proliferation of new options emerging; unfortunately most aimed at cost cutting rather than increasing collaboration.

• Primarily aimed at structured / scheduled meetings; setup seldom spur of the moment.

• Few understand the need to integrated phone and mobility solutions.

Understanding Interactions Key to Emerging Conference Opportunity

“Sending and receiving is a rather old-fashioned and mechanistic view of communication. It’s a view that, in my experience, gets organizations into all kinds of trouble.

A dialogue or a conversation occurs in (or emerges from) the interaction of two or more people, and the idea of sender and receiver is neither technically accurate nor, in my opinion, a very powerful interpretation. Nothing is communicated directly to another. All (utterances) go through the interpretation processes of context, meaning, significance, content, etc. Even apparently sensible speaking is frequently merely noise to its intended recipient. You may choose to call yourself the “receiver” but what is occurring is not a linear process.

For communication to take place on any scale worth talking about, it will be ‘iterative generation” towards a shared understanding. The understanding of both the originator – ‘sender’? – and others will alter as the process progresses.

Until we begin to give up the mechanistic metaphor of sending and receiving as the basic mode of communication, we aren’t going to crack the problems we keep confronting.”

Michael McMaster in a posting to the Learning Organization email discussion group.

Traditional communication models

• Classic ordered / tell model

• Takes on a paternalistic or hierarchical top-down model.

• Talk at rather than listen to

• Who’s listening?• Scanning around us is

inhibited• Online fails to mimic

social structures and exchanges

• Currently too many deterrents to increased connectivity

Enhanced Communications Understanding

• Our own radar provides active scanning of the conversations around us

• Other conferences perturb us to listen or contribute

• New information sources resonate and make a difference

• Order in Chaos enabled through broad listening

• Examples RBC, IRC.

Emergent Communication Systems

• Autopoietic models of communications are much closer to the messy, incomplete and complicated nature of communication than the traditional 1 to 1 telephone.

• A conference format is required that enhances listening and enables “positioning” --- eliminating people talking over people problems.

• Additionally, for an online system to be effective it must connect multiple conferences to expand listening capabilities.

• Now a system is in place that encourages new conversations, increases shared understanding and thus accelerates learning and action.

The User and the Conference

• Enhance Listening – create establish and join conferences of interest

• Create a persistent set of conferences to enable a “resonance” and increase personal bandwidth for scanning.

• Enable ownership of personal communication spaces or project conferences both public and private.

• Use multi-modes --- text, voice, and application sharing to stimulate, capture and record progress

• Encourages an “always-on” interconnected environment of ongoing exchanges.

• Examples include my office, meeting rooms, situation rooms, the lobby, project

The classic example

• Years ago Xerox began using receiver-based communication to improve continuously the work of it’s repair teams. Each worker has a walkie-talkie which is on all the time, carrying messages, just like the radio in a taxi. When a repair worker hears something relevant to a problem they are interested in, they will pay close attention. In this way, improvements spread rapidly across the group.

• Same thing applies for IRC channels amongst software developers.

What must my online conferencing system do?

• Provide 3D Sound Positioning for conference participants and additional presence functionality

• Enable broad listening so users can participate in multiple conferences at the same time, via audio, text or in combination. Always-on.

• Be location agnostic and device adaptive to enable mobility and enhance always on features regardless of the users device.

• Scale rapidly and easily to thousands of users maintaining profiles, security, and usage logs.

Enabling Scenarios

• Military • Special Forces• Two-way Radios• Sound Control• Smart Positioning

• Hospital• Presence• Two-way Radios• Mobility• Intercom

• Trader• Multi-lines• Bridging Information • Active Listening• Press to talk • Logging

• Software Developer• Multi-Conferences• Conference and Projects• Public and Private• Audio IRC

Changing Telephony Environment

Change

• The concept of telephony is changing; as voice management and data converge new communications opportunities are being defined.

– End to End Telephony – Stupid Networks– Converging Devices - Telephone, PC, PDA, Cell

Phone– Enhanced Mobility – local, global, virtual– New Feature Sets – way beyond caller ID– Explosion of Growth and Interest – News Headlines

Redefining Telephony

• Happening all around us, individuals, homes, small companies and in the largest enterprises– Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), SIP– Wi-Fi– PC to PC Telephony– Presence and Messaging Systems– New handsets and headsets– Smart Phones– Intelligent PDA’s

2004 -2005 Transition Point

• Key social insights drive next level of technology development and value creation.

• Begin to leave “old” telephony behind.

– Acceleration of broadband deployment– Decreasing costs of talking– Advancements in software, including softphones, IM (instant

messenger) NAT and Firewall transition programs– Changing social patterns for work and play, including virtual

offices and work anywhere mobility– The online conference becomes always on to become part of the

work process rather than a call

Enabling Conversations Key

• Tomorrow’s communications systems must:– Enhance Conversation FLOW– Enable Conversation VELOCITY– Manage Conversation EVENTS– Broker Conversation SPACES– Seamlessly integrate with the ways in which people

really want to use them

• Conversations that help an organization learn faster are the key element for retaining competitive advantage.

Leadership Requirements 1• DiamondWare identifies key technology enablers and differentiators that are

redefining communication for collaboration, presence and connectivity.

1. Sound Quality: Hear an audible difference as telephony moves to a higher quality audio solution. There will be a clear perception and audible difference between the sound of traditional telephony and next generation communications.

2. Spatial Positioning: Since Stereo first introduced the sound stage we have increasingly brought the surround sound experience into our lives. Telephony has not kept up. Stereo VoIP technology closes the gap between the online conference and the physical meeting room. Future integration of video will further narrow the gap with face to face meetings.

3. Presence: Online presence reduces the number of failed connections, repetitive messages, and improves understanding of availability. Presence is only now becoming multi-modal and being integrated from the desktop into other devices.

4. Communications Centric: IM systems have traditionally been text centric with poor support for audio and video. Communications-Centric presence platforms are redefining how calls and texting work in tandem as the first step in enhanced collaborative communication.

Leadership Requirements 25. Always On: As call costs trend to zero, closing a call (hanging up at the end) resulting in

termination may no longer make sense. In an open plan office chatter goes on all the time. In an always-on world of telephony you may participate in multiple concurrent conferences.

6. Push to Talk: Push to talk and intercoms may seem like a very old idea. However look at a money trader example and see the benefits of multiple lines and always on connections in a fast moving information environment. That whisper from another conference may just provide the answer.

7. Mobility: As devices combine PDA’s, mobile phones, tablet PC’s and Wi-Fi solutions are enabling new forms of connectivity and decision-making. We are preparing for a day when every mobile device exceeds the capabilities of today’s PBX. Engineering reflects small devices and efficient solutions.

Overview DiamondWare platform

DiamondWare advanced technology

platform enhances conversation

CommunicationApplicationEnablersAudio

Processing Capabilities

VoIPNetwork

IntegrationConversations Flow Naturally

Presence Nurtures Events

Communication Velocity Enhanced

• Centralized audio mixer reduces latency, enhances QoS

• Enables larger conferences and scales at lower cost

• Each peer adds to bandwidth• Audio streaming duplicated across the

network• Adds clock time alignment complexity• Significant Security Issues

Client / Server provides controlled enterprise solutions vs. P2P

3D Positioning

• Human ears are amazing organs. They process spatial cues based on phase and frequency response differences between the left and right. They use this information to determine the location of each sound emitter. With eyes closed, one can discern if a sound is in front, to one side, behind, or even above or below. This same sense works to help one focus on one particular sound, among many.

DiamondWare Media Stack (1)• APipe is DiamondWare's software component to manage any audio pipeline. It abstracts objects

for source, sink, and everything in between such as encryption, compression, logging to disk, echo cancellation, jitter buffering, voice disguise, automatic gain controller, etc.

• Telephony Sound ToolKit is the answer to the hardest problems in the client, in both streams. It handles the audio from mic to application, and from application to loudspeakers. Tele-STK was developed to break out of the conventional latency-robustness tradeoff. If the audio latency is too high, then the system does not provide business-class communications. But trading off sound quality for low delay is not acceptable.

• JitPP is a dynamic jitter buffer. It performs three functions: (1) take the packets received from the network out of order and unevenly distributed in time and turn them into an ordered, periodic stream; (2) correct for clock "drift", i.e. the fact that even if the remote host is programmed to the same sampling rate, its clock rate will differ from the local clock and therefore it will send either too many or too few samples; and (3) conceal lost packets.

• JitPP is a dynamic jitter buffer. It performs three functions: (1) take the packets received from the network out of order and unevenly distributed in time and turn them into an ordered, periodic stream; (2) correct for clock "drift", i.e. the fact that even if the remote host is programmed to the same sampling rate, its clock rate will differ from the local clock and therefore it will send either too many or too few samples; and (3) conceal lost packets.

DiamondWare Media Stack (2)• DirectMixer® solves a problem that is not apparent until one develops a softphone

application: it doesn't work unless the recording source is the microphone, the mic is unmuted for recording but muted for playback, loudspeakers are the digital audio destination, the loudspeakers are unmuted, and the volume levels for record and playback are appropriate. It turns out that this is an exceedingly difficult thing to achieve using the Windows API calls, but it is required nonetheless.

• Mixlib is the heart of Palantir. It provides control mechanisms for joining/parting conferences and other actions which can affect who hears who, as well as for setting 3D positions, voice colorization, volume levels, and other real-time parameters. And it can give indications such as VU meter, member list in a conference, etc. The heart of mixlib is the mixing itself. This part of the code base is critical; it must be extremely efficient because it executes so many times per second.

• DDD is the algorithm and code to convert a monaural voice stream into a stereo sound stream that is perceived to be outside the listener's head, with a particular location vector. Like mixlib, this function has to be extraordinarily fast to run.

• Red, Blue, Green, etc. These are the algorithms that colorize voices and "tag" up to eight teams with a unique and distinctive sound. For the same reasons, must be very fast to run.

SIP

• DWSIP is DiamondWare's Session Initiation Protocol stack. It was developed after looking at several commercial and several more open-source SIP stacks. Although low-performance SIP stacks are a commodity item, there are none that require under 100K of memory, and none under a megabyte that support the latest Internet Engineering Task Force Request For Comment (IETF RFC) standards, namely RFC 3261 and SIMPLE. Reluctantly, DiamondWare built its own SIP stack, which saved on license fees and enables a truly small PDA voice application. Other devlopers who target small embedded platforms may want to consider DWSIP.

Technology intersection creates multi-modal opportunity

Audio Processing Capabilities

Conference Application Enablers

VoIP Network Integration

•Centralized Mixing•Dynamic Jitter Buffer•Sound level controls•Advanced 3D Stereo•Team Tagging and Voice Colorizing•Clock Drift Compensation and alignment•AEC Acoustic Echo Cancellation•AGC automatic gain control•VAD Voice Activity Detect•Audio Prioritization •Low delay Audio Processing

•3D Conference Positioning mixer.•Multiple Simultaneous Conferences•Formats including Ad Hoc, Persistent, Private, Scheduled, and Opportunistic•Ongoing Presence and Availability Information•Membership Control•Voice and text Instant Messaging •Presence•Recording and logging•Mute, Paging and Do not disturb functions

•Call Processing functions.•G711 G.723 G.729 Speex Vorbis •SIP•Speech Processing functions.•Management and Applications Software.•Mixed PSTN and VoIP Conferencing•User Interfaces.•Network Interface Protocols.•Security

Features DiamondWare Skype Messenger ? Yahoo / AOL

Other

3D Participant Positioning

Yes No No No

Audio Quality on VoIP Better than phoneStereo 16khz

Better than phone Worse than phone Worse than phone

Voice Tagging and Colorization

Yes No No No

Conference calling Modes

Structured, Ad Hoc, Scheduled

Timed & Opportunistic Up to 60 participants

Ad Hoc only, limited to 5 participants

No No / Varies

Multiple Simultaneous Conference Occasions

Yes Always-on capabilities

NoHold Function only

NoNA

NoNA

Persistent Conferences Yes + Failover No Not hosted by user Not hosted by user

Push To Talk Yes No No No

Cloud Under licensee’s control Centralized control Centralized control Unknown

Audio IRC capability Yes No No No

Multi-modal Participation & Presence

Yes Limited Limited Limited

Secure and Encrypted Communications

PGP Keyed 256 bit No unkown

Firewall and Nat Travers coming Yes No No

Social Networking Across Federated Clouds

No No No

Product Comparison

Provides Potential to:

• Eliminate the need for a desktop phone• Enhance corporate security, logging, employee and

reputation management• Overcome the security issues raised by the current crop

of exciting but flawed P2P solutions.• Enable new forms of networking and collaboration• Disruptively smash previous IP PBX cost parameters. • Extend secure enterprise reach so employees are

always-on.• Merge, separate and manage work and personal in a

way that enhances people lives.

Contact

DiamondWare, Ltd.4850 E Baseline Rd

Suite 107

Mesa, AZ 85206

www.dw.com

Telephone: (480) 380-1122

FAX: (480) 380-1133