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Hybrids and Chimeras

  • From: Howard C. Berkowitz
  • Date: Thu Apr 10 10:25:29 2003 
At 6:20 AM -0400 4/10/03, St. Clair, James wrote:

Jack Bates wrote:

*I have yet to see someone swear by their own life that the new
*technologies will meet the uptimes of the legacy. The fact is, in the
*telco world, they don't.
Couple of some observations from some recent data/voice/video integration work both on the carrier and enterprise side. I _refuse_ to call this "convergence" -- routing protocols converge, telephones don't.


Good point, but I think what Gordon *may be* saying is that part of the
reason the above is true is the degree monopolies are struggling to keep
their legacy systems. I would argue those folks who have paid (handsomely)
for *pure* transitions to new technologies have seen benefits; it is the
persistent hybrids of new and legacy that complicate service.
I'm finding it quite useful to distinguish between "classical" hybrids and, borrowing a genetics engineering term for an organism created with genes from >1 species, "chimeras".

Hybrid solutions are essentially peaceful coexistence, perhaps sharing some LAN or WAN bandwidth. Chimeric solutions reccgnize strengths in some of the legacy technology, or perhaps that there are niche legacy technologies that simply aren't going to be ported, yet remain mission critical. The chimeric solution goes for a "whole greater than the sum of its part" answer, doing things, for example, like using campus IP telephony to the main call processor, which then runs compatible legacy trunking to a circuit switch that handles special service telephones (e.g., airline, military). The circuit switch can be much smaller than a full legacy PBX or Centrex, yet gives a rational way to keep mission-critical niche services operating. It's a slightly different paradigm than hanging gateways on the legacy equipment such that it can talk to the IP telephony switch.

*Even businesses that require time sensitive, guaranteed communications
*don't trust the new technology whole heartedly.

The best evaluation question I've used is to ask whoever is proposing a solution:
The PBX or IPT equivalent is on fire. How do you call the fire
department?


Hmm, I would disagree. More and more critical processes (such as RTU
controls at utilities) are going to new technologies, with the ROI being
less expense of special technicians and remote controls. Dell "bet the farm"
on new technologies for e-commerce and helped turn PCs into a commodity.

Just a thought...
Jim