Rethinking Enterprise Conferencing and Collaboration

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Re-thinking Enterprise Conferencing and
Collaboration

• DiamondWare, Ltd
• June 2, 2004

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Index

• About DiamondWare
• Upfront POV.
• Conferences to always-on collaborative listening
• Changing telephony environment
• Overview DiamondWare technology integration

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Conferences to Always-On Collaborative Listening
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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.

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Understanding Interactions Key to Emerging
Conference Opportunity

• Sending and receiving is a rather old-fashioned
  and mechanistic view of communication. Its 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 arent going to crack
  the problems we keep confronting.
• Michael McMaster in a posting to the Learning
  Organization email discussion group.

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Traditional communication models

• Classic ordered / tell model
• Takes on a paternalistic or hierarchical top-down
  model.
• Talk at rather than listen to

• Whos listening?
• Scanning around us is inhibited
• Online fails to mimic social structures and
  exchanges
• Currently too many deterrents to increased
  connectivity

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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.

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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.

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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

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The classic example

• Years ago Xerox began using receiver-based
  communication to improve continuously the work of
  its 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.

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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.

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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

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Changing Telephony Environment
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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

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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 PDAs

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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

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Enabling Conversations Key

• Tomorrows 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.

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Leadership Requirements 1

• DiamondWare identifies key technology enablers
  and differentiators that are redefining
  communication for collaboration, presence and
  connectivity.
• 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.

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Leadership Requirements 2

• 5. 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 PDAs, mobile
  phones, tablet PCs 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
  todays PBX. Engineering reflects small devices
  and efficient solutions.

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Overview DiamondWare platform
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DiamondWare advanced technology platform enhances
conversation
Communication Velocity Enhanced
Communication Application Enablers
Audio Processing Capabilities
VoIP Network Integration
Presence Nurtures Events
Conversations Flow Naturally
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Client / Server provides controlled enterprise
solutions vs. P2P

• Each peer adds to bandwidth
• Audio streaming duplicated across the network
• Adds clock time alignment complexity
• Significant Security Issues

• Centralized audio mixer reduces latency, enhances
  QoS
• Enables larger conferences and scales at lower
  cost

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Technology intersection creates multi-modal
opportunity
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Product Comparison
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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.

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Contact

• DiamondWare, Ltd.
• 4850 E Baseline Rd
• Suite 107
• Mesa, AZ 85206
• www.dw.com
• Telephone [phone]
• FAX [phone]