Several days ago Chris Pirillo and I had conversation about the various IM clients out there and the one that that really pisses Chris and I off is the lack of interop. Open standards of course would be the best way to solve this but as Chris mentions in the interview it will be a while before this happens across the board.

According to Chris, it would seem that he thinks the second best alternative is a hybrid client that can connect to these other proprietary networks ie. Yahoo, AOL , MSN and maybe Skype but also complies with open standards like SIP and SIMPLE and/or XMPP.

Well, I don’t know of ANY client that does all of this today but if there were one that was reliable and feature-rich I would download it in a second. I am getting really sick of running 4 IM clients. Hmmm, maybe I am on to something here 🙂

With Avaya’s purchase of Nimcat and eBay’s purchase of Skype I think it’s obvious that P2P VoIP is one hot topic with investors and press lately.

Something that surprises me is the lack of Video in these offerings. Neither Skype nor Nimcat offer video. Yes, Skype has said it is working on Video but it would seem as though the technology needs work. At the recent VON show Niklas Zennstrom was supposed to make his keynote via Skype’s new video component but it failed and hence no keynote.

I think P2P VoIP has merit but in order for it to really take off it must be standards-based and offer all the features.

If 2004 was the year of VoIP maybe 2005 is the year of P2P VoIP.

It looks like the CRTC made the right move lately by denying the incumbents lower price handicaps over the newer VoIP offering e.g. Vonage.

This is great news for consumers and could very well spur innovation due to the stage that has been set here. Combine that with the Telus strike and we might see some interesting new consumer trends.

More…

More proof that P2P VoIP is hot right now and getting hotter, first Skype now Nimcat. Should be interesting to see how this P2P landscape shapes up.

Excerpt from National Post:

“Embedding communications intelligence directly in the endpoints rather than the network will enable enterprises to implement streamlined peer-to-peer IP communications quickly and cost-effectively.”

The nimX software includes the most frequently used telephone features such as voice mail, conferencing and auto-attendant.

“All that is required for installation is to plug the IP phones into the same data network used by office personal computers,” Avaya said.