VON Keynote: Siemens -- Moving to 2gIP

Kids take to instant messsaging by sheer intuition, teaching us that the "advanced" communications of today are merely the basics tools of tomorrow's workforce, said Bernd Kuhlin, President Enterprise Networks, Siemens ICN, in a keynote address at the Spring 2004 VON conference in Santa Clara, California. Kuhlin believes that the industry has emerged from the "Telecom Winter" to a Spring where service providers are realizing the economic value of upgrading their networks. Another hopeful sign of warmer weather, said Kuhlin, is the FCC's decision to take a "light touch" with regard to VoIP. He expects this new policy will be a precedent followed by countries around the world.



Kuhlin observed that the U.S. economy has experienced remarkable productivity gains in recent years, which can be argued were based on the first generation of VoIP technology. To push productivity gains even further, Kuhlin believes we need to create a SIP-based "unified domain" centered on applications and that bridges wireline, wireless, public and private networks. Kuhlin avoids the term "VoIP," prefering instead "Second Generation IP" (2gIP) to encompasses the richer possiblities that will result when communications are embedded into a workflow process. Siemens is teaming up with partners to integrated its HiPath solutions to other platforms, including IBM's WebSpher, Microsoft's .net and SAP's enterprise portals. http://www.siemens.com