MRX: Technology Rant

JDRF "Walk For The Cure" Nov 1st @ Tempe Town Lake, Tempe,AZ

2008-10-08T23:24:00Z

Mark Pareja is walking with Go Daddy on November 1, 2008 in Tempe, AZ.

Greetings Everyone!

As you may not be aware, GoDaddy is a large sponsor of the JDRF Walk for the Cure this year I will be walking and I'm asking all of our friends, family, and business partners to participate in the walk. However if busy work and personal schedules conflict I'm asking for a sponsorship donation, any amount helps.

P.s. I'm willing to wear stickers, logos, headbands, face paint, pins, hats, and even temporary tattoos. . .

Our goal: To raise $105 million to help fund research for a cure for type 1 diabetes and its complications.

Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, is a devastating, often deadly disease that affects millions of people--a large and growing percentage of them children.

Many people think type 1 diabetes can be controlled by insulin. While insulin does keep people with type 1 diabetes alive, it is NOT a cure. Aside from the daily challenges of living with type 1 diabetes, there are many severe, often fatal, complications caused by the disease.

That's the bad news... and yes, it's pretty bad.

The good news, though, is that a cure for type 1 diabetes is within reach. In fact, JDRF funding and leadership is associated with most major scientific breakthroughs in type 1 diabetes research to date. And JDRF funds a major portion of all type 1 diabetes research worldwide, more than any other charity.

I'm writing to ask for your support because now more than ever, EACH of us can be a part of bringing about a cure. Each of us can make a real difference

Won't you please give to JDRF as generously as you're able?

Together, we can make the cure a reality.

Thank you,

Mark Pareja

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Asterisk vs Proprietary IP PBX - a technology and business point of view

2008-07-28T21:33:00Z

I'd like to say Open Source is always the clear choice, and it may be the right one in some cases. However the fact of the matter is that Asterisk is so extensible that it some times hurts the product. Everyone who has replied thus far has expressed a common risk factor. End users, they are your greatest asset and threat at the same time. Distributions like TrixBox have the right idea, build a distribution and implementing "Service Modules" to handle the configuration of tasks.

    Now this answers the cry of all the "mom and pop's" out there, lets address "Big Boy Corporation." Larger corporations need a security blanket and if you cant offer that then your out the door, most open source products do not offer that however if you are "Super VoIP Man" the one man consulting operation, it presents a unique niche market. Yes Asterisk is Bad @$$ and can do many of the things that "XYZ Big Box" vendors offer and more but there are points where it takes extreme amounts of configuration time to compete with 'out-of-box' features that "YXZ" have.

    Some of these Key features break down to Survivability and Redundancy. Now I know many of you have put together exceptional plans that can recover failed systems or distribute load across a multitude of physical servers but if "Super VoIP Man" gets hit by a bus tomorrow how long do you think that system will survive without you? Defiantly not past its next major upgrade. Big Boy Corp.'s around the world know this and in an instant you and your service become a risk.

    lets examine one other scenario, Big Boy Corp.'s IP enabled contact center. Transacting 20k worth of calls a day IVR's w/ speech recco, Advanced ACD call treatment and distribution, recording and analytics, geographically disperse locations. I can guarantee that there is not a single open source solution that could deliver a working, STABLE (keyword:Stable), highly available solution like "XYZ Big Box" can. Why you ask? well that's easy, MONEY. Everyone out there is driven harder by the influence of money to make things faster,better,and easier to use. Big problem in the industry, throw some money at it, guarantee it will get fixed.

    There is always going to be a niche market where Open source solutions (like Asterisk) fit, and that market is always changing. but when it comes to playing the game with the big boys they guys with the deep pockets will win, basic economics. Now for every Asterisk VoIP wizard out there (I wish there were more) I have one recommendation focus on integration solutions, I'm saving thousands (in Cisco Device Licensing) utilizing Cisco Communication Managers and a SIP trunk to an Asterisk server catering to Wifi SIP endpoints. For home I use Askerisk (on my Linksys router) to power all my wired and wireless SIP endpoints.

    In conclusion Asterisk is a great product and can (be configured to) do a lot of things but it is simply not Big Boy Enterprise ready. And may never be for that matter, as long as it is a open source solution.

"Boomers" Being left behind?

2008-06-05T17:47:00Z

For many years now we have been predicting the demise (retirement) of the "Boomer" populous, normally as a generation passes we build some sort of memorial, or CNN special on their life. Wow the generation that gave life and energy to the Internet, and technology, retiring? or being left in the dust? It has come to my attention that this generation is not retiring, they cant. A lot of boomers that made it big in the 'Tech' or '.com' boom, spent that money poorly, or forgot about retirement. But what is hurting the boomers the most is 'Ego' , this world has been transformed around technology, and technology is constantly changing.

As a technology professional ask yourself "If I did it 5 years ago, and it works! Why should I change it?" what this translates to is "I learned all this stuff 6 years ago and implemented this system, I don't want to learn something new!" . Now first off I'd like to go on record stating that in no way shape or fashion am I taking cheap shots at the 'Boomers' I'm merely pointing out basic human nature. Well this method of thought is like poison to the tech world, and the next generation recognizes this and is quickly pushing the Boomers (demoting/firing) out of the way.

It is no longer acceptable to retain (commit to) the pioneers of yesterday that refuse to keep up with technology, the guys that sat back and relaxed too long and are now inhibiting the progression of technology in most SMB’s. So the astronomical decline in qualified IT personnel is even more evident as we enter the next century. Now I’m not writing to tell you that there is a problem, most of us are aware, I’m writing to ask how we solve this problem? I’m the last person in the world that wants to be responsible for firing anyone but where do my responsibilities lay, with a co-worker , or subordinate ? No, they lay with my employer, because at the end of the day they are in fact the ones who sign my check, they are the ones who have hired me to make the best decisions for the business.

What do you think?

Cisco VoIP and Contact Center Solutins for the Enterprise

2008-06-02T17:12:00Z

For the last two years I have been engineering and supporting the VoIP and IP Contact Center Environment for my organization which heavily leverages Customer corespondents via phone. I have recently rearchitected the solution and upgraded it to Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise 7.2 and Cisco Unified Communications Manager 5.1. By bringing these two solutions together and centralizing all the voice processing products between two geographically disperse, high availability data centers, we have built a rock solid VoIP/Contact Center solution that is flexible, redundant, and scalable.

What I'd like to hear is if anyone else out there is undergoing a similar project with Cisco or any other Vendor. Now TDM is a technology that is quickly becoming an antique so i prefer not to discuss it, as I have had more familiarity with it than I ever care to have again. But none the less if you feel the need to write about it feel free. On another note here on this blog technology is embraced, so I would be extremely disheartened to hear anyone is building and "Enterprise" Class Cuntact Center with 'Legacy' TDM Products.