For quite a few years now, I have dreamed of running a debate between the prominent enterprise E911 vendors, where they could openly debate in a common environment the merits of their products and technologies against their competition.
Last week, at IAUG Eastern Connect in Newport Rhode Island, I finally realize my dream by hosting the Great E911 Debate which immediately followed my keynote to this wonderful group of users many of which I've known for 10 years or more. For the past several years I've been running various workshops on E911 remediation for the enterprise user, and each year attendance has been good with both new and old faces coming out to hear the latest and greatest on E911.
There is a palatable increase in the level of concern on enterprise E911, and is more IP centric deployments are occurring, the high level of mobility that a normal user can experience has gotten today's telecommunications administrators a little more concerned than they have been in the past about proper E911 handling.
So it appears we have the perfect storm. Heightened user awareness, a significant price restructuring of E911 solutions, and the inevitable emergence of Next Generation 911 services at the carrier level. The four vendors that were invited represented what I considered the leading vendors in the various types of E911 services commonly offered today. The vendors I chose for participation were:
911 Enable offers what I commonly call a "gateway model" where they place a piece of equipment on premises that acts as their management point into your network, as well as the entry point into their network via a connection on the public Internet. Once in the network, your call can be hosted by their parent company Connexion which can provide conductivity to selective routers, as well as dedicated dispatch services from their contracted emergency call center in Canada.
911 ETC is primarily a system integrator or SI. There functionality is focused on processes and controls within the business, as well as gateways and appliances as needed. Their services also act as an aggregation point for various external service providers, including a hosted service, and they partner with many of the common hardware suppliers.
RedSky Technologies has been in the 911 business for many years, and offers a variety of premises-based solutions that can track the location of IP devices, make the required updates in the PS-ALI database, as well as reselling hosted solutions from the common hosted suppliers.
Conveyant Systems, a relatively new player in the E911 space that focuses on enhancing functionality already residing in the PBX with location discovery of IP devices on the network, as well as a very robust on-site notification solution that can be customized to interface with existing databases and resources.
The debate started off with each vendor introducing their company and services, with some companies respecting the 4 min. time limit, some using much less, and others rambling on for nearly 8 min. I was asked by several people in the audience after wards why I did not cut off the vendors that went over there time allotment. I responded by saying "the audience is smart enough to see who did and did not respect the time limits, and for the ones that went over, they end up penalizing themselves."
All in all, each vendor did an excellent job answering the questions posed to them, and vocalized the merits of their ideology and architecture. I believe it became evident to the audience that there was merit of some degree in each one of the solutions that were being presented, and that no one solution was correct for any particular customer or environment.
When I asked the vendors about their strategy towards next generation 911, most of the answers danced around it, however some did acknowledge it and tied it into their roadmap moving forward.
For the most part, I receive positive feedback from the attendees of the conference, and I think that it set the pace for a follow-on event at the IAUG Global Connect event scheduled for 2012 in Boston. By that time we'll have a few more months behind us, and possibly some next generation 911 network environments deployed, and we can examine where the rubber meets the road and drill down into some specifics. I'll admit, this event was a little bit of a test to see if this type of venue would be valuable to customers. Based on the feedback I've gotten, the answer to that is absolutely. In addition to setting the stage for a follow-on event on E911, I believe that the debate style of presentation will become a popular one among user conferences as it takes all the hype and leaves it at the door. There are a few minor changes that I'll be making to the format based on feedback from the panelists as well as the audience, and I sincerely appreciate everyone's comments on the value that this brought to them.
When asked for their comments of the debate,
RedSky's Jerry Eisner put it "based on booth traffic, the people who were at the keynote session got our message. We had telecom managers from colleges, large multi-site hospitals, and multi-state laboratories all stop by because they got it."
Tim Kenyon, president of Conveyant added, "I think the panel provided an opportunity to really reach out to the customers. People need to learn what 911 is, and how to provide it efficiently and affordably in their organizations. It's no longer a good ol' boys network. Those days are over. It is Conveyant's goal to educate the masses and deliver affordable solutions that will take care of their needs today and move into the future with NG-911."
Speaking on behalf of 911 ETC, Bill Svien said "I believe that the Great E-911 Debate was a huge success, educating while entertaining. The format, spearheaded by Fletch, allowed the audience the opportunity to hear side-by-side approaches to solving enterprise E-911. I appreciated the opportunity to participate and educate the members of IAUG. We are looking forward to Boston in 2012."
Finally, Lev Deich from 911 Enable said, "911 Enable was pleased to take part in the Great E911 Debate at IAUG Eastern Connect. The forum was a fantastic opportunity to reach out to Avaya users regarding the importance of comprehensive, end-to-end E911 solutions."
So who was the winner of the 2011 Great E911 Debate? After detailed consideration of each respondent's answers, all of the votes are in, tabulated and verified, it's clear to me that the real winner of the debate was THE CUSTOMER. Watch the Avaya E911 connected Blog for details about our next debate, and how you can be a part of it.
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Until next week. . . dial carefully.
Comments
The Great E911 Debate 2011 was fantastic! I now have the information I need to sift through all of the fluff that is out there, and engineer a solution that does what I need it to do! Thanks so much for putting this on!
This show made joining IAUG worth every penny, and more!
Posted 14 Nov 2011 at 04:34 AMVery useful and timely information. Does this apply to EMEA 999 and 112 as well?
Posted 17 Nov 2011 at 07:40 PMYes, the basic principles do, although some countries push the data like Canada does. Bottom line there is a carrier infrastructure that routes based on CLID today, that will route on PIDF-LO in a Next Generation environment in the near future.
Thanks for the question! - Fletch
Posted 18 Nov 2011 at 09:08 AMWell I found this on Digg, and I like it so I dugg it!
Posted 2 Feb 2012 at 09:49 AMGreat concept for getting the information out tot he public!