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IBM To Run VoIP On Linux
hrhsoleil writes "Johnny Barnes, IBM's vice president of global IT solutions and standards, told attendees at a TechTarget conference this week that his company plans to migrate at least 80% of its more than 300,000 employees to voice over IP by 2008. The project will replace approximately 900 PBXs around the world with regional IP installations. IBM's server-based IP telephony platform is going to run on Linux."
So. . . IBM is converting its employees to VoIP
Sounds interesting, I hope this is done in a humane way.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Read the sig. Learn. Grow up or go away.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
How is IBM going to handle irate state-owned telecos who are suddenly deprived of IBM monies? Will they grease the wheels with payola (less than they were paying for phone calls) or will Big Blue just tell them to go take a hike? Interested businesses want to know... is it safe for anyone to try and get around the monopolies now, or is it just safe for IBM?
Hell, here in the good old USA the "regulators" are already clamoring over the loss of all that free money that they've been siphoning out of our checkbooks. I can't imagine a state OWNED monopoly from doing any differently...
With this method you only have to dail up to 12 digits to get another phone!! Not our normal 10.
: hi:s.
So IP6 will never happen!!!
You try to dail let alone a girl's number of:
ab:df:00:23:d4:e5:wh:yi:am:st:il:lt:yp:in:gt
Yeah, they should use Windows instead so Microsoft can profit more. And since the OS is the only cost of the switch they should pay MS twice as much.
But I'm serious!
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
Microsoft isn't the only OS in town, you know.
Maybe you don't know...
This may be a dumb question but....
As more and more of our traditional communications mediums move onto IP, won't it be easier for crackers to comproomise these things?
For example, it may be difficult for a cracker to get his hands on a pbx let alone a working environment to do his "R & D" in. But as eveything moves to using really common standards, it gets pretty easy to test this stuff in his mom's basement or whatever...
"Hello, this is the operator." Is it?
So, how long until Darl McBride realizes he can team up with SBC, Verizon, et al to sue even more people?
Dude, where's my packet?
VOIP! Kristen, you look burnt, or dead.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
IBM's server-based IP telephony platform will run on Linux and provide gateways for connection to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) If the IBM software is affordable/GPLd, this could mean another jump in the popularity of GNU/linux! oh.. n that VoIP thing too..
Since they are extremely decentralized, this is REALLY a gamble for them. Imaging half of IBM "winking out" when their PBX network dies. I'm happy that they are brave enough to do this, but I worry for Linux's reputation if it becomes a boondogle.
The better off IBM is as a company, the better off the employees are (more stable environment, fewer layoffs).
They might not give savings back to individual employees, but it may stop (delay?) them from making cutbacks.
Like all productivity gains, they'll spend the money on new equipment, new r&d, expansion of their business, etc., which eventually means more employees. Which is a very good thing.
That's the most back-ass reasoning I've ever heard. Companies don't just hoarde their savings, they spend it on shit they want but can't have without savings in other areas.
IBM isn't going to bank the savings from this Linux stuff, they're going to roll it into R&D (jobs), growth (jobs), and some bonuses for executives (trickle-down jobs, hopefully).
If we all played by your reasoning we'd have a really... Amish way of life right now.
Plus, this will create LINUX jobs instead of IBM-proprietary jobs, how can you argue against that?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I don't understand why this is getting modded up. When you are talking about a massive rollout of technology, including that much software and hardware, the OS cost would be close to insignificant.
In the end they are paying for it anyway...(outsourcing, support contracts, etc)
Why dont we hear about the dozens of new products that are running Tron daily? Why is linux always big news here?
:-)
Hey linux is running some server some place! WHAT A BREAK THROUGH!
Wake me when BeOS is running something, that will be news
2008 sounds like a long time away, like vague future planning. But big companies need to do long-range planning, and it is significant that IBM sees Linux as the operating system in that future. It is almost a done deal - when major corporations imagine Linux as central to the future, Linux becomes central to the future.
=-+
Jesus fucking christ. Who let mr. mcbride be a moderator?
What an obvious troll. Do better next time.
You can't tell me that IBM plans to give the savings back to the employees.
No. Shareholders. You can always find cheap help. N-E-O-L-I-B-E-R-A-L-I-S-M.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
What the employees does not get falls throught to the shareholders or into added investments.
These might have different Multiplier effects so the impact on the economy can be up / down or sideways. , but the blanket statement you made is not correct.
At least not correct in principel.
Help fight continental drift.
Let's say you buy a swimming pool for your house. You attach the hose to the faucet and start to fill that sucker up. But with what? What a dumb question! Water, of course. While it may be pretty cool to you to have a brand new swimming pool, the fact that it is filled with water is not news. That's just the natural thing to fill it with.
Same with small devices like cameras and phones. It's not news when they are loaded with Tron. That's what Tron was designed to be useful for and it's small, well-supported, and works really well at what it does. Maybe the news that you've got a new product to sell makes the news, but the fact that it runs Tron is just par for the course. It's the natural thing.
If you were to fill your swimming pool with gelatin or Mountain Dew, that might be news. But water? That's not news.
Of course I'm biased, but I hope the use an open-source codec.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Doesn't IBM have this internal phone system, I think they call "tie lines"? I've heard that from any of their offices they can dial any other (at least in the US) through short internal phone #s, without doing the typical dialing from the US to area codes or other countries (1+area code or 011+country code+etc)
If this is the case, then I guess they already found a way around the phone companiesss.
My personal guess is that there is some confusion between SCO's IP over facts lawsuit and IBM's voice over IP project.
economy will not gain any boost
Please attempt to calculate the value-add of a product such as Eclipse. IBM handed that to the world for free. They did this because IBM is a smart, well run company that knows how to make itself valuable in the marketplace. Eventually they'll save a big wad of cash when they stop paying inflated prices for proprietary PBX hardware and maintenance, and in a small way that will eventually contribute to the next moral equivalent of Eclipse.
Linux advocacy, giving AMD Opteron a huge credibility boost, one of the best JVM implementations, a world class IDE for free... You geeks need to show IBM some love. They are one of the good guys.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
First the phone companies will fall. Which is good
because they have been gouging for a long time
then the cable companies hopefully. These two
industries are in their twilight of existence.
When Fiber to the curb happens with government
municipals leading the way we will see the biggest
revolution since the invention of radio and the
telegraph. A big IF though is our government
leadership supporting it and not supporting the
dinosaur industries that keep us in the past.
Does this mean that telemarketers are going to interrupt my Tetris game?
Are the voip calls going to be encrypted?
Vonage may not encrypt calls, but at least on the IBM end, until it reaches the demarc line, they should stand up and do the right thing and encrypt all their voip calls.
Perhaps this will be the kick in the pants that everyone who is in love with voip needs.
Transmitting voip calls over the internet is absolutely nuts without encryption. Forget about tapping a phone line with recording equipment. Now all you need is a minimal size hard drive, and standard apps available on all platforms to tap into and record "telephone" conversations.
Don't forget that because wireless telephones aren't considered "secure" by courts, it doesn't require a search warrant, or line tap warrant to record the conversations. By using unencrypted voip, the bar is being lowered to no requirement for a search/line warrant for intercepting all voip phone conversations. And it looks like everyone, including the phone companies are migrating toward voip.
There have been slashdot stories raising big stinks about echelon, about tia, and about the fight over the strength of encryption allowed as exports, encryption classified as munitions, storing encryption keys with the government/clipper, and big stinks have been raised about each of these stories. Yet I've only heard of one company that I can't recall the name of right now that is offering encrypted calls, and they said that if the government needs access, they can turn over the conversation, as they are the midpoint on the encryption, and all the packets are cached on their servers anyway...
Where's the outrage over non-encrypted voip?
*rolls eyes*
Ah to be young and optomistic.
Now come over here, and give grandpa a hug.
I strongly suspect that all IBM's inter-site IP traffic flows through Encrypted VPNs.
Hopefully they will give savings back to individual employees in one way or another, its just a matter of accounting. IBM, if they save a significant amount, will push out dividends, put money into more R&D, bonuses to upper management.
Somebody and hopefully some peoples will benefit by IBM making this move
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Someone doesn't have a sense of humor. Shameful moderator. ;\ No wonder half the /. population saves their jokes for posting AC.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
In an effort to cut costs on phone bills, software giant Microsoft has switched to Voice over IP running on Windows 2003 Servers. The switch occured 3 weeks ago.
In other news, Microsoft's Sales and Support lines have been down for 2 1/2 weeks.
Chaos will always win out over order because chaos is more organized
That, or perhaps it's simply that the main points in your joke are all as extreamly tired and overplayed as BSOD jokes post WindowsXP.
Great vote of confidence for Linux based VOIP but it seems a technology company could do that migration in around two years, not four.
Asterisk: the open source software PBX, which runs on Linux, and has a hardware company to back it up with support and equipment?
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Take the big blue pill
You are a complete fucktard.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Mod accordingly. FUCK YOU very much.
This is just a ruse (shhhhh...) by IBM to bankrupt SCO. If SCO pays IBM to not use Linux by the gazillion truckloads, SCO goes bankrupt and Darl, being deprived of his crack allowance checks into the detox unit.
End of lawsuit, end of lunatic newsbriefs..
Awwwww....
We're exploring VoIP options, but for the time being I'm happy to let my telco provider take care of our voice and bandwidth needs.
Of course this is easier for us because our call centers are about 2 miles apart.
When I think of dirty old men, I think of Ike Thomas and when I think about Ike I get a hard on that won't quit. Sixty years ago,I worked in what was once my Grandfather's Greenhouses. Gramps had died a year earlier and Grandma, now in her seventies had been forced to sell to the competition. I got a job with the new owners and mostly worked the range by myself. That summer, they hired a man to help me get the benches ready for the fall planting. Ike always looked like he was three days from a shave and his whiskers were dirty white under the brim of his battered felt fedora. He did nott chew tobacco but the corners of his mouth turned down in a way that, at any moment, I expected a trickle of thin, brown juice to creep down his chin. His bushy, brown eyebrows shaded pale, gray eyes. Old Ike, he extended his hand, lifted his leg like a dog about to mark a bush and let go the loudest fart I ever heard. The old man winked at me. ?Ike Thomas is the name and playing pecker's my game. I thought he said, "Checkers." I was nineteen, green as grass. I said, "I was never much good at that game." "Now me," said Ike, "I just love jumping men. . ."
"I'll bet you do."
". . . and grabbing on to their peckers," said Ike.
"I though we were talking about. . ."
"You like jumping old men's peckers?"
I shook my head.
"I reckon we'll have to remedy that." Ike lifted his right leg and let
go another tremendous fart. "He said, "We best be getting to work."
That summer of1941 was a more innocent time. I learned most of the sex I
knew from those little eight pager cartoon booklets of comic-page
characters going at it. Young men read them in the privacy of an outside
john, played with themselves, by themselves and didn't brag about it.
Sometimes, we got off with a trusted friend and helped each other out.
Under the greenhouse glass, the temperature some times climbed over the
hundred degree mark. I had worked stripped to the waist since April and
was as browwn as a berry. On only his second day on the job and in the
middle of August, Ike wore old fashioned overalls. Those and socks in
his hightop work shoes was every stitch he wore. When he bent forward,
the bib front billowed out and I could see the white curly hairs on his
chest and belly.
"Me? I just love to eat pussy!" Ike licked his lips from corner to
corner then stuck it out far enough that the tip could touch the tip of
his nose. He said, A man's not a man till he knows first hand, the
flavor of a lady's pussy."
"People do that?"
He winked. "Of course the taste of a hard cock ain't to be sneezed at
neither. Now you answer me, yes or no. Does a man's cock taste salty or
not?"
"I never. . ."
"Well, old Ike's willing to let you find out."
"No way."
"Just teasing," said Ike. "But don't give me no sass or I'll show you my
ass." He winked. Might show it to you anyway, if you was to ask."
"Why would I do that?"
"Curiousity, maybe. I'm guessing you never had a good piece of man ass."
"I'm no queer."
"Now don't be getting judgemental. Enjoying what's at hand ain't beiing
queer. It's taking pleasure where you find it with anybody willing." Ike
slipped a handside the side slit of his overalls and I could tell he was
fondling and straightening out his cock. Now I admit I got me a hole
that satisfied a few guys."
I swallowed, hard.
Ike winked. "Care to be asshole buddies?"
***
We worked steadily until noon. Ike drew a worn pocket watch from the bib
pocket of his loose overalls and croaked, "Bean time. But first its time
to reel out our limber hoses and make with the golden arches before
lunch."
I followed Ike to the end of the greenhouse where he stopped at the
outside wall of the potting shed. He opened his fly, fished inside, and
finger-hooked a soft white penis with a pouting foreskin puckered half
an inch past the hidden head.
"Yes sir," breathed Ike, "this old peter needs some draining." He
exhaled a sigh as a strong, yellow stream splattered against the boards
and ran down to soak into the earthen floor.
He cau
grow a sense of humor, jackass.
Didn't you catch the obvious scheme to get a post with the word 'fucktard' in it moderated up as insightful? Now that's funny.
No wonder you're having problems. Over half of that address is using invalid hex codes. You can only use 0-9, and a-f.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
While others struggle in Iraq to defend our freedom
Oh, a fellow Iraqi! Hello, Habibi!
But I think it is the Americans who are stuggling!
informative!
IBM already has a huge, dedicated network of satellite and leased lines, so this is just a straightforward decision to use proven technology and existing infrastructure to save $$. Maybe the fuss is because while IBM may sell some leading edge stuff, they are pretty trailing edge internally and culturally.
...and the penultimate line made this scatalogical bit funny.
How did you get 'Blacks' from kiwi and peso?
Mexican New Zealander, seems more likely.
Asshat.
I work for Alcatel Belgium (I work on the SMC 5735 RADIUS Proxy, a part of the 5020 SoftSwitch), and I can assure you that quite a number of products run on Linux, for example our OmniPCXOffice products. And you might find even more in the future (can't comment on that).
Other companies provide Linux based solutions too. And why not ? It's just an operating system. The fact that the Telecom companies are choosing Linux just proves that Linux is very stable. The actual fact that it's free has nothing to do with it (the cost for a license would be an extremely small part in the TCO).
And no, it can't be downloaded for free, just because it's Linux. That the first question my friends alwasy ask. Most of the software is propriety, and often written for special hardware. And also extremly expensive ofcourse, otherwise who would pay for all those hundreds of engineers that are developing them ?
power.
this stuff is unbreakable, & wwworks on several (more than 3) dimensions.
talk about pressure? those fauxking foulcurrs on wall street of deceit/capitollist hill, are having a whoreabull time attempting to hide the news (buy use of phonIE scriptdead ?pr? ?firm? hypenosys) of their felonious payper liesense billyonerrors' latest softwar gangster hostage taking attempts, &/or the adolescent dictator megalomania of the georgewellian fuddites/walking dead perpetraitors of the greed/fear/ego based life0cide against humankind.
for each of the creators' innocents harmed, there is a badtoll that must/will be repaid by you/US, as the aforementioned walking dead will not be available to make reparations, when the big flash occurs.
lookout bullow. the lights are coming up now.
mynuts won: va lairIE/robbIE's whoreabully infactdead PostBlock(tm) devise, fails again&again.
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down (like with fuddles' hobbyist bouNTy hunter softwar gangster witchhunt ?pr? scams). If you think this is unfair, we don't care. tell 'em robbIE? it's ALL about the monIE?
See, now, what you don't understand is that complaining about cliches on /. are, themselves, a cliche and a part of teh /. 7/^4|)1710|\|. (Thats 'tradition', if my spelling is t00 31337 4 j00 ). /. up to 3/4 million logins now, though I suspect 2/3 of that 3/4 are simply troll accounts.
I, for one, welcome these Soviet Russian Yoda dolls with Natalie Portman faces, greased with hot grits, shoved up all your base are belong to GNAA, at least at a low frequency.
It's that sense of tradition that has
While rambling to no effect, is there any way to see a list of all of the 'bumper stickers' at the bottom of the page? I'd like to see all of the ones with 'Law' in them in one place. Quite a hoot, that would be.
R,
Elvis
How about if we qualify that?
The IT economy might not get boosted, but if free software allows companies to spend money on other things besides software licenses, the general welfare is likely to improve.
Though you may well be right, I'm saying it needs to be modelled in some detail before drawing conclusions.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
A PBX is an internal phone system: a private branch exchange.
The 'tie lines' you speak of are probably leased lines from various telcos. There is no way any company could afford to run its own physical wire all the way around the world to connect all of its offices. But by changing over their internal phone system to VoIP, they can now easily use the Internet and other data networks to carry their voice traffic from branch-to-branch. And so now they no longer have to pay all the various telephone companies for these leased lines, they only have one bill now, for internet access.
VoIP is NOT the same thing as IP Telephony, yet folks here seem to use it interchangeably. Is IBM doing one, the other, or both? It's impossible to tell from the post. Voice over IP is simply packetizing voice somewhere within the network, mostly likely between PBX's while the handsets stay traditional. IP Telephony means even the handsets talk IP and can packetize the voice. In other words, everything is IP. Please know the difference.
The handsets aren't new but the password requirements are quite strict.
Blar.
SCO: "So how about we convert your servers over to something that isn't Linux, and we'll make it worth your while?"
.. ... and use Linux for even MORE great things!"
IBM: "How about I give you the FINGER..
SCO: "How can you give me the finger when you... have... no.. hands?"
Err, whatever. }:) Carry on...
The Telcos own all the fiber in the ground anyways. Just instead of charging them for voice it will all be Data. But you bring up a good point. I wouldn't be surprise if telcos start lobbying for tarrifs on VoIP. like they did when the interenet started getting popular.
VoIP may usher in a new golden age of phreaking!
Instead of beige boxing, young phreakers will now cut their teeth using a laptop running AirSnort.
And the inductive probe will find new uses, for sure.
Hey, you just brightened my day! Thanks!
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
Hmmmm, a few thoughts here. I agree with your basic point - ultimately the local incumbent monopoly still gets paid one way or another - because IBM's network will still need gateways to the PSTN, and because IBM has to get it's data-lines from the local incumbent.
.
But, one way I could potentially see the phone companies losing revenue is if IBM has a way, in their VoIP system, to automatically choose the closest gateway to the PSTN.
Consider the following examples. .
1) A Manager in IBM's Chile office (I don't know if they have an office in Chile, but I'm guessing they do) wants to call someone in the U.S. Now, the destination call in the US isn't directly on the IBM VoIP network (let's say for argument it is some sort of third-party contractor that IBM Chile is working with). Assuming their VoIP software is smart enough, it could figure out that the destination call is to an area code in North Carolina, and IBM has an office in NC with a PSTN gateway. . . route the call over IBM's VoIP network to the VoIP/PSTN gateway in NC and connect the call. You've just caused the Banana Republic phone company to lose billable international phone call traffic (and probably costs IBM quite a lot less for that IP data line than for the number of calls that might be made in similar scenarios to this).
2)Assuming the first scenario of intelligent routing is true. . . IBM could potentially offer as a 'benefit' to their workers in international offices that they can use the IBM network to make international calls to their family and friends back in the US or wherever, for free. Just call a local number from your apartment/hotel room/whatever which gets you into the IBM local VoIP gateway and then dial in the number you want to call in the US, and it could be routed over IBM's IP network back to the US and connected.
Again, the local phone co loses revenue from the international calls that the IBM employees would otherwise be making.
3) Again, basically another permutation of the above two scenarios. . . IBM has a larger regional office in, say, Peru, and subordinate offices in Chile and Argentina. A problem with an Argentine customer gets escalated to a regional manager in the Peruvian office, and that manager needs to call the customer in Argentina. Route the call over the IBM network to the Argentine office's VoIP/PSTN Gateway, and have it connected as a local call.
Sort of a 'build your own long distance network.' Most companies have already done this for internal communication, as you mentioned. It's the next logical step to route both internal and external traffic over the internal network as far as possible.
Now, I don't know much about PBX's, so it may be that the existing systems ALREADY do this (it would presumably be just as technically feasible using a proprietary PBX system to route calls internally to the closest PBX), so the phone companies might not be losing any additional revenue anyhow.
There's this ad on /. for a mp3 player that claims 'your pocket has never gotten so much action'. It has. Much more action than from a mere walkman or yet another worthless mp3 player. You see, I surreptiously jerk off while driving and even at work. You can too, jerk off in public that is... People don't really notice because they don't expect to see something like that.