Today I am in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., having flown across the country from my Oregon home to moderate a panel at VoIP 2.0, the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo.
Although the Expo part doesn’t begin ’til this evening, the Conference is in full swing. This morning, I’ll proudly be wearing my ZDNet badge as I emcee a panel on VoIP: Where We’re Going, Where We’ve Been.”
The companies on the list for my panel are not the familiar names you might know of in enterprise and computer VoIP. No Cisco or Avaya, certainly no Vonage and most certainly no Skype.
Instead, this is a panel about what I like to call plumbing & architecture- the folks that build the under-the-hood software and platforms that ensure VoIP works. These are folks steeped in various protocols (SIP, mostly) who do the research for making IP Telephony work, optimize and provision VoIP networks, enable QoS.
These companies hire te salespeople show up for appointments in the corporate HQ of VoIP gear makers and services whose logos you see at your favorite computer or consumer electronics retailer.
What would you like me to ask these people?