Interoperability--or the lack of same--in the videoconferencing segment has always been seen as a major hurdle to broad adoption of the technology. A new report on the struggles an Australian telehealth initiative designed to get rural doctors onboard with the technology serves as a pretty stark example of just how much the industry has dropped the ball.

The six-month-old program, a $7.2 million piece of a larger $620 million telehealth push, has seen 1,200 doctors apply for the $6,000 grants. The goal is for teleconferencing to host some 500,000 consultations by 2015, reducing the need for patients and doctors to travel. It's targeted specifically at GPs in remote areas who may not have access to specialists and experts in certain medical disciplines.

But critics say that doctors have, in many cases, been flummoxed by the technology. In some cases, it's been too complicated for doctirs to use easily. In others, it won't communicate with other videoconferencing software other doctors have downloaded.

''It's a great ... initiative but the doctors should have been provided with more support and guidance about how to implement the technology,'' the chief executive of Hunter Nursing, David du Plessis, said. ''They don't have time to go on to IT forums to sort it out, so they defaulted to Skype.''

The Miscrosoft (Nasdaq: MSF) video calling technology has worked better than some of the more complex technology, said the head of Australia's rural doctors association.

'There is a whole range of technologies and, in establishing video-conferencing, [doctors] are not going to go out and buy some extravaganza of a system, they are going to stick with the simple stuff,'' Dr. Paul Mara said.

Research suggests that enterprises, SMBs and even individuals are eager to adopt some form of videoconferencing. But, until it's simple and users are sure they're going to be able to reach each other with a quality product, you can be sure growth is going to be less than the industry is hoping for.

There, literally, isn't a week that goes by that someone doesn't ask me about videoconferencing--the technology, how easy it is to use and, generally, for a suggestion on what service is best. It's worrisome that docs in Oz have cast their vote.

Skype is the best choice? Really?--Jim

New research suggests that interoperability issues and a lack of standardization limit the overall adoption of SIP trunking. A study from Research and Markets said that while SIP trunking has seen steady adoption over the past five years, the adoption rate has not met predictions, hamstringing service providers from gaining deeper market penetration.

Infonetics Research, earlier this month, projected a 52 percent compound annual growth rate for SIP trunking between 2011 and 2015, saying it, along with hosted business VoIP, would help drive the VoIP services market to grow some 17 percent in 2011 alone.

But Research and Markets contends that while industry organizations like the SIP Forum and SIP Connect eventually will eliminate the need for multiple certifications on different platforms; service providers, in the meantime, would have to engage in costly and time consuming interoperability testing with platform vendors.

Still, channel partners are beginning to push SIP trunking to their customers more aggressively as they become more familiar with the technology, helping them to offer a more comprehensive package of services and solutions.

As technology and SIP trunking services reach the mass market because of their value proposition, service providers are continuously simplifying and automating the provisioning process to alleviate the cost and hassle of SIP trunking implementations. Improvements in service management and billing capabilities also are helping boost adoption.

For more:
- see this release

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According to a recent InformationWeek study, most firms don't end up transforming their business when they adopt unified communications (UC) tools.

The InformationWeek Analytics 2010 Unified Communications Survey took the pulso of 406 business technology professionals to find out how UC was shaping business today. The main issue they seem to have found is that once the system is employed, users fail to adopt the system. IT teams need to set aside time and budget to train company employees and integrate the systems usage in to the day-to-day. Making sure technology and network speeds are up to snuff so that new adopters don't experience glitches that would create a buzz-kill for the new system is another important factor.

IW's survey and subsquent article goes into further details about the state of UC in business--adressing not only the need to user uptake but also the need for interoperability to spur more investment where hesitant companies fear being beholden to one company.

For more:
- read the article

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UC Strategies writer Don Van Doren talks about the key elements for an organization like the UCIF to succeed. The question is do they have all the right pieces in place? Article

LOS ANGELES - Marc Robins, managing director of the SIP Forum, said the advocacy and awareness group's mission is evolving now that nearly every service provider and vendor has some sort of SIP solution or offering on the market. Robins said the SIP Forum, which currently has 48 paying members, 5 academic partners and 6,500 individual registrants, is now most concerned with interoperability challenges.

"The first challenge was to get it adopted, and that is battle is over," Robins said. "SIP is everywhere, and the new battle cry is for interoperability, while you must instantly recognize that it's a complex problem."

Robins said that, similar to other standards, SIP has growing pains from vendors designing workable solutions from a common standards document that don't federate.

"We've got 150 RFCs and a similar number of drafts, which is great, because there is a lot of interest and development around the protocol," Robins said. "But it's difficult when companies' build on different solutions, which all are correct but don't interoperate. When Company A uses option 1, and Company B uses option 2, something weird will happen, from outright call failure to bad QoS. What the forum does right now is look for the major pain points."

Robins said SIP trunking, the forum's lead application, is the first to be addressed through the SIP Forum's SIP Connect initiative. He said Version 1.0 has been ratified and that Version 1.1 is being developed currently with a target delivery date of the end of 2009. 

For more:
- here's a link to the SIP Forum's IT EXPO announcements 

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Dan York, best practices chair of the VoIP Security Alliance and an admitted Skype advocate, is not impressed with the VoIP giant's product strategy, according to a recent blog post he wrote regarding Skype's 4.1 for Windows announcement last week. He said the inability for his Mac Skype client to talk to users on another operating system, such as Windows or Linux, makes it hard to get enthused about new updates to Skype's software.

"Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge Skype fan," York wrote. "It's open for me all the time and I have something like 40+ group chats (IM) open at any time for various projects and teams. But Skype's continued belief in a fragmented, fractured, siloed platform-specific product strategy is still a path of monumental stupidity, in my opinion."

York expressed his desire for the next full release of Skype to enable interoperability amongst operating systems and to also coordinate the release across the multiple OSs on which Skype operates. He's been talking about the lack of interoperability for some time, and you can take a look at an earlier article on York's position here. 

For more:
- see the full article here on Dan's Disruptive Telephony blog 

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