Scott Petrack has a
unique take on how far Voice over IP
and how far it can still go.
After earning a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University, he worked
as a research fellow for IBM and later principal technologist of IP
networking at VoIP pioneer VocalTec Communications.
He became interested in guiding the technology’s development and was
founding co-chair of the VoIP Forum. And he’s helped steer the industry
toward the Session Initiation Protocol
More recently, he founded IP conferencing and collaboration specialist
eDial, which was sold to Alcatel in September and now
operates as a division of the French network equipment giant.
Petrack recently spoke with internetnews.com about the VoIP industry,
life after eDial’s acquisition and the new wave of carrier consolidation.
Q: You have an interesting professional background that can be traced to
the beginning of IP telephony. What’s your take on the development of the
industry to date?
Every 40 years or so there’s been huge change in telephony technology. We
moved from crank to rotary to touchtone and now VoIP. It’s now very real;
deployments are happening all over. VoIP will take 10 more years before it’s
everywhere, and another 10 years after that before the last vestiges of the
PSTN
Q: What are some of the implications of that evolution?
By turning telephony into another data service, VoIP makes it possible for
everything to be billed on a per-month, per-seat basis. By the time [the
shift] is over, that will be a major change in the way we do communications,
and it’s something consumers really want. There’s no nickel-and-diming.
Q: What was your vision when you founded eDial?
We saw a world of people online and near a phone. We couldn’t help but
notice all the VoIP players were busy trying to replace phone with
something. But we looked at what communication services people online and
near a phone wanted and could use and could save them money.
We are big believers in the value of IM. Among business users, half of IMs end
up in phone calls, so we felt you should be able to make a phone call from
an IM session. Conference calls are an expensive niche — the last bastion of
high-margin services. We wanted to turn conference calls into things you
could do all the time, using a proven interface to help groups of people
work together.
Q: Alcatel bought
eDial last year for its conferencing and collaboration tools.
What’s it been like to go from a 35-person firm to an international telecom
giant?
There’s been a huge acceleration for us. We’ve appeared in at least 10
[request for proposals] since the acquisition. Alcatel is an immense change
for us and an immense validation for us.
Q: Many of the carriers that Alcatel is selling to are acquiring or being
acquired. What does the consolidation trend mean for companies like Alcatel
that are making network hardware and software?
We think it’s awesome. [The carriers] need to offer bundled offerings to
people who are online and on the phone. We have the most modern equipment to
do it. It’s going to take some time for these acquisitions and mergers to
get adjusted, but we think we are strategically placed.
Alcatel is building triple-play [video, voice and data network] for SBC. The
next thing is to overlay applications on top of that. We worked hard on [our
eDial] user interface. It’s dead simple for actual people; it’s not about
VoIP geeks. We’re very excited that these large carriers will need services
that 10 million or 20 million people can do. With Alcatel’s size and eDial’s
execution, we hope to win a lot of these deals.
