Very interesting article about Micro$soft's half-baked IPTV solution.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/01/ms_iptv_strategy_in_tatters/
Explains in clear technical words why Swisscom's attempt at IPTV is broken and delayed yet another year, if it will ever fly.
Great article.
I've been wondering for a long time, why Swisscom would rather go with MS than with an open-source based solution. There's plenty of great open-source projects in the video-streaming and media-center sector. The cost to hire a few capable developers to create a consumer-friendly package from these OSS would probably be a lot less, than the licences for Microsoft software alone...
Ah, who cares about money at Swisscom anyway...
Cheers, Viktor (Xbox Media Center and VideoLAN user)
Zitat von Andre Oppermann oppermann@networx.ch:
Very interesting article about Micro$soft's half-baked IPTV solution.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/01/ms_iptv_strategy_in_tatters/
Explains in clear technical words why Swisscom's attempt at IPTV is broken and delayed yet another year, if it will ever fly.
-- Andre _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
Uhm... - actually I do work at a large company. Usage of OpenSource is not a question of the company size, but of the company management.
However I understand the managers... OpenSource developers don't invite managers to a weekend in a mountain wellness resort, offer them free drinks at events or give you expensive gifts. Commercial Software companies do it all the time...
Cheers, Viktor
Zitat von Mickey Coggins mick@coggins.org:
I've been wondering for a long time, why Swisscom would rather go with MS
than
with an open-source based solution. ...
I take it you have never worked for a large company! :-)
-- Mickey Coggins Tel: +41-79-210-3762 _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
On Fri, 3 June 2005 08:25:33 +0200, Viktor Steinmann wrote:
However I understand the managers... OpenSource developers don't invite managers to a weekend in a mountain wellness resort, offer them free drinks at events or give you expensive gifts. Commercial Software companies do it all the time...
Yeah, right, get paid for the suffering afterwards when you use their crap.
scnr, Alexander
Sorry to poke my head in, but you're missing something fundamental--it's not bribery. It's fear-- there's an old corporate saying that "nobody ever got fired for hiring {IBM,McKinsey,PWC,HP}". I forget exactly which one.
You've probably heard some manager say "with commercial software we have someone to sue"? They'll never actually sue anyone, although I've seen it happen--what the guy's saying is that, if something goes horribly wrong, they can go to their boss and tell him/her "but, it's {IBM,McKinsey,PWC,HP}--they have great references, everyone does it". And not get fired. CYA = cover your ass, cowardly & unimaginative management, that's all it is. Don't read so much evil into it.
-John
Viktor Steinmann wrote:
Uhm... - actually I do work at a large company. Usage of OpenSource is not a question of the company size, but of the company management.
However I understand the managers... OpenSource developers don't invite managers to a weekend in a mountain wellness resort, offer them free drinks at events or give you expensive gifts. Commercial Software companies do it all the time...
Cheers, Viktor
Zitat von Mickey Coggins mick@coggins.org:
I've been wondering for a long time, why Swisscom would rather go with MS
than
with an open-source based solution. ...
I take it you have never worked for a large company! :-)
-- Mickey Coggins Tel: +41-79-210-3762 _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
This is another thing I notice quite frequently--too many technically gifted people can't express themselves and "sell" good ideas. No matter how technically superior a concept may be, you have to be able to understand and tie in concepts like operational/business risk and total cost of ownership. This means, yes, powerpoint. It may seem like b.s., but many of the guys making the decisions in the end are not stupid--for them these are perfectly valid criteria.
The reason you see so many technical stupidities being sold & implemented is because someone with little or no understanding of engineering reality was able to communicate the above ideas to "the business" well. Something to think about.
-John [and now back under my rock]
Fredy Kuenzler wrote:
John Morgan Salomon wrote:
CYA = cover your ass, cowardly & unimaginative management, that's all it is. Don't read so much evil into it.
That's exactly the point why in large companies or institutions (goverment etc.) decisions take ages. Noone wants to be held responsible.
F. _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
the problem is that EVEN if you can communicate your good ideas to the management, they would still follow their CYA guideline. what if you can sell your idea, but basically they don't really understand it so they fall back to CYA mode?
I have made the experience, no matter if the company is large or small, if your manager(s) are up to CYA, it doesn't matter how good you can "sell" your ideas. typically, you can find out about this if your idea (when you present it) gets talked down (too expensive, too complicated, too early for that etc.), but then, couple of months later, management presents it to the board and their bosses as "our new strategy". then you know you were right, but someone else will get the appraisal for it (after they did a thorough "risk assessment" in terms of CYA, if they rate it OK, they will present it to their management, that's why it takes some time).
cheers umbi
--- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --- Von: John Morgan Salomon john@zog.net An: swinog@swinog.ch Betreff: Re: [swinog] Why Swisscom/Bluewin can't get M$ IPTV to fly Datum: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 11:44:52 +0200
This is another thing I notice quite frequently--too many technically gifted people can't express themselves and "sell" good ideas. No matter how technically superior a concept may be, you have to be able to understand and tie in concepts like operational/business risk and total cost of ownership. This means, yes, powerpoint. It may seem like b.s., but many of the guys making the decisions in the end are not stupid--for them these are perfectly valid criteria.
The reason you see so many technical stupidities being sold & implemented is because someone with little or no understanding of engineering reality was able to communicate the above ideas to "the business" well. Something to think about.
-John [and now back under my rock]
Fredy Kuenzler wrote:
John Morgan Salomon wrote:
CYA = cover your ass, cowardly & unimaginative management, that's all it is. Don't read so much evil into it.
That's exactly the point why in large companies or institutions (goverment etc.) decisions take ages. Noone wants to be held
responsible.
F. _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
Think about your management as culturally Asian. Stereotypical, maybe, but the good way to get someone to go for your ideas is to make them (a) think it's their idea, and what a good and wise idea it is, and (b) believe your mission is to make the sun shine out of their a**.
Sorry, got a bit offtopic. Now really back under my rock.
-John
Umberto Annino wrote:
the problem is that EVEN if you can communicate your good ideas to the management, they would still follow their CYA guideline. what if you can sell your idea, but basically they don't really understand it so they fall back to CYA mode?
I have made the experience, no matter if the company is large or small, if your manager(s) are up to CYA, it doesn't matter how good you can "sell" your ideas. typically, you can find out about this if your idea (when you present it) gets talked down (too expensive, too complicated, too early for that etc.), but then, couple of months later, management presents it to the board and their bosses as "our new strategy". then you know you were right, but someone else will get the appraisal for it (after they did a thorough "risk assessment" in terms of CYA, if they rate it OK, they will present it to their management, that's why it takes some time).
cheers umbi
--- Ursprüngliche Nachricht --- Von: John Morgan Salomon john@zog.net An: swinog@swinog.ch Betreff: Re: [swinog] Why Swisscom/Bluewin can't get M$ IPTV to fly Datum: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 11:44:52 +0200
This is another thing I notice quite frequently--too many technically gifted people can't express themselves and "sell" good ideas. No matter how technically superior a concept may be, you have to be able to understand and tie in concepts like operational/business risk and total cost of ownership. This means, yes, powerpoint. It may seem like b.s., but many of the guys making the decisions in the end are not stupid--for them these are perfectly valid criteria.
The reason you see so many technical stupidities being sold & implemented is because someone with little or no understanding of engineering reality was able to communicate the above ideas to "the business" well. Something to think about.
-John [and now back under my rock]
Fredy Kuenzler wrote:
John Morgan Salomon wrote:
CYA = cover your ass, cowardly & unimaginative management, that's all it is. Don't read so much evil into it.
That's exactly the point why in large companies or institutions (goverment etc.) decisions take ages. Noone wants to be held
responsible.
F. _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
Vicktor,
Uhm... - actually I do work at a large company. Usage of OpenSource is not a question of the company size, but of the company management.
I think you will find in most companies its about the cost of maintenance. As with commercial solutions there are good Opensource projects, apache for example, and bad opensource projects, sendmail for example. Ultimately its about finding the good and the bad and ensuring that you have capabilities to support and maintain this at a cost that is acceptable to your customers. People who believe that they 200 line perl script is a cheap way of doing something have an incredibly short sighted view, sometimes it does, somestimes it doesn't. Management clue and confidence is another issue, one of the reasons I went into management was to try and spread clue.
In my first company we exclusively ran everything as cheap as we could, we thought that opensource was the answer, it was 1992, we had GateD running on NetBSD 0.9 talking BGP4. Our mail platforms were all opensource based. We had developed our own cheap modem bank solution based on free software and perl. However we soon found out that to keep all these solutions going and growing required hundreds of people to maintain code, do testing, add features. We bought a couple of Ascend Max4000s [first in Europe to get them] and we were able to cut our costs by almost 60%. On usenet we bought Cyclone and every single issue we had with Usenet went away +overnight+.
These were not the only examples and our GateD route solution helped us to avoid spending millions on Cisco gear. That company is still running but now suffers a lot of it because of our homebrew solutions not scaling.
However I understand the managers... OpenSource developers don't invite managers to a weekend in a mountain wellness resort, offer them free drinks at events or give you expensive gifts. Commercial Software companies do it all the time...
The most I've ever got was a mouse mat - which vendors are you using? I want some of this goodness :D
Regards, Neil.
Hi Stony
I'm not sure the question is using open-source products or not, but rather open standards or not. Ok, there are lots of open source products implementing the standards... but also commercial, closed, products implementing them, with support, with free wellness weekends and so on. The thing is that because it uses standards, you can compose your solution with bricks from different vendors.
For example, if you take VLC, either client or server, it is really not stable enough to be used in production environment (and some 3play providers tested it without success). But "proprietary" DVB to IP or Whatever to IP mpeg streaming stable solutions exist.
Greg
Viktor Steinmann wrote:
Great article.
I've been wondering for a long time, why Swisscom would rather go with MS than with an open-source based solution. There's plenty of great open-source projects in the video-streaming and media-center sector. The cost to hire a few capable developers to create a consumer-friendly package from these OSS would probably be a lot less, than the licences for Microsoft software alone...
Ah, who cares about money at Swisscom anyway...
Cheers, Viktor (Xbox Media Center and VideoLAN user)
Zitat von Andre Oppermann oppermann@networx.ch:
Very interesting article about Micro$soft's half-baked IPTV solution.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/01/ms_iptv_strategy_in_tatters/
Explains in clear technical words why Swisscom's attempt at IPTV is broken and delayed yet another year, if it will ever fly.
-- Andre _______________________________________________ swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
swinog mailing list swinog@lists.swinog.ch http://lists.swinog.ch/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/swinog
Andre Oppermann wrote:
Very interesting article about Micro$soft's half-baked IPTV solution.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/01/ms_iptv_strategy_in_tatters/
Explains in clear technical words why Swisscom's attempt at IPTV is broken and delayed yet another year, if it will ever fly.
I don't actually find it as clear as that, yes there is some good info but I do think some stuff is lacking in there. This is my 2 cents to add to the mix.
October 2003, during Telecom 2003 the initial Swisscom/M$ deal was announced. In those days there was a major initial issue, codec quality and bandwidth usage. M$ has done a great job with the VC-1/VC-9/VM9 codec. Note that VC-1 is the SMTPE standardised version of the VC-9/WM9 video codec.
As for H.264 AVC (MPEG-4 part 10) it was still far away from being ratified by the ITU so VC-1 was the only option if you wanted to has SD quality at @ 1Mbps rate which is the intial focus for carriers and therefore be able to deploy over the existing ADSL network(s) and provide a high(er) penetration rate of the service.
VDSL2 (just standardised for those that missed it) was under dev but again no one could count on that there and then. And the point for the carrier is to make cash and more cash, so better off selling the service twice, once as an SD feed with more choice, PVR options and so one. Then again as an HD feed using the new VDSL2 infrastructure and a remarketing of the product. Even with LCD/Plasma sales growing fast, the penetration rate of "HD Ready" (aka, min res of 720 lines versus 525 for PAL) is still limited and is only reaching low enough prices for the mass consumer market (most owners of LCD/Plasma/DLP screens/beamers have a 800x600 res).
So simply working out on those 2 "small" facts, when Swisscom decided to work on this it did (IMHO) seem like a good option, a pseudo one stop shop, M$ providing to support some of the pain (most likely for a big chunk of cash but that was also renegociated versus the marketing around the M$/Swisscom agreement and all the other details I'll exclude from this thread for the sake of the reader's sanity)
Last but not least, Alcatel as dropped it's IPTV plans to partner with M$, so they can now all work together since Swisscom was first to sign on with M$ and Alcatel for the VDSL2 platform (AFAIK). Think of the cost savings for those deals and the shareholders joy on the earnings.
Today, the other carriers are either "small" enough to decide to do their own integration or entered the arena after the first experiences were made and therefore some of the painful choices made by others could be prevented. Now that H.264 AVC has been approved and the the first silicon vendors are pushing end user devices chips (Sigma Designs, ATI, etc...) and 1st gen realtime encoders (Tandberg, Envivo, etc...), M$ is not the only one on the market that can provide a solution for the video bandwidth.
Channel surfing, EPG issues, VOD distribution models, integration into OSS/BBS, provisioning models, new IP/MPLS backbone. There is a lot going on at Swisscom that can explain the delay beyond what is actually mentioned in the press release. The only thing I'm sure about, they want/need VDSL2 and their service available for mid 2006 for the World Cup that will be broadcasted in HD, that is the one killer app they are most likely chasing (as all other broadcasters) in order to demo and get fans/early adopters to purchase the service and have something that no one else is providing in the Swiss market (on a large scale).
Thomas
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Alexander Koch -
Andre Oppermann -
Fredy Kuenzler -
Gregoire Huet -
John Morgan Salomon -
Mickey Coggins -
Neil J. McRae -
Thomas Kernen -
Umberto Annino -
Viktor Steinmann