Introduction
Converging Perspectives
With this issue, we are completing our sixth month as Noblis -a nonprofit, independent, principled organization crafting scientific and technological solutions that work for our clients and for the public good. At Noblis, we have found that today's complex system and strategy problems must be defined in many dimensions and from many perspectives. Nowhere is this more apparent than in solutions to converge telecommunications networks, where century-old voice applications must be reconciled with legacy data networks. The relatively new Internet Protocol (IP) provides the foundation for converged applications, but it is not trivial to run voice, with high performance demands, in a data infrastructure, where best-effort quality of service is often good enough.
Voice over IP (VoIP) is a rapidly emerging technology that is supplanting the existing corporate telephony infrastructure based on circuit-switched technology. VoIP provides the ability to reduce the costs and increase the speed of implementing moves, additions, and other changes to the telephone environment. VoIP holds the promise of reduced costs for both equipment and service and the ability to develop new, converged applications to improve user productivity. Yet, VoIP requires those responsible for voice communications to embrace the large data network infrastructure that must carry applications for which it was not designed. Those accustomed to the data perspective must now respond to the special requirements of voice communication.
In this edition of Sigma, we consider what it actually takes to converge these two, very different worlds of voice and data communications. Guest editor David Garbin and the other authors discuss the innovative approaches required to continue the degree of performance and reliability that circuit-switched voice networks have offered for decades. The recurring theme is that solutions are far from plug and play. Rather, enterprises must carefully consider how to address an array of VoIP problem dimensions.
As this issue's cover reflects, any VoIP solutions must account for differing perspectives, and in that challenge, converged networks are like many current science and technology problems. Sigma's authors recognize that successful solutions must address a range of views and approaches. Hopefully, the knowledge you gain from reading about VoIP solutions will spark the insight and creativity essential to achieving convergence in many complex systems and strategy problems.
H. Gilbert Miller, Ph.D.
Corporate Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
Noblis
hgmiller@noblis.org