When Steve Jobs introduced Leopard, the code name for the next version of Apple’s OSX, he spoke of a number of secret features that would be announced in due course. Some of these and more should be supported in OSX server. Specifically, standards compliant VoIP integration should be introduced into iChat and supported on OSX server and that that full VoIP, Chat, calendar, address book and file syncing should be supported for the iPhone. Moreover, virtualisation of OSX Server on should be enabled to allow for shared OSX hosting services (a fantastic entrée for SMEs to use OSX Servers standards components and great administration tools).
In OSX Server, Apple has the beginnings of a powerful product for SMEs (a fact that is currently receiving attention). There are, however, a number of areas where some incremental extension could make the product a more persuasive sell. Specifically,
- Improvement of syncing and support for iPhone syncing
- Addition of standards based VoIP
- Addition of a virtualisation option, so that OSX server hosted services could become more widespread
I examine briefly each of these in turn.
Calendars, Address Books, Mobile Users and Syncing
One of the key frustrations for those who seek to use their mobile phones or PDAs to help organise their work are the imperfect syncing features. For example,
- Categories are not supported and synced in tasks and calendars
- Groups are not supported for address books
- Contacts for calendar appointments are not supported
Apple has already announced that extended calendar features will be available in Leopard (see Apple’s ‘sneak peak‘). When we consider the announced changes for calendar and address book in Leopard, the potential gap between desktop features and mobile capabilities becomes even greater. The new calendar features will support group sharing and document buckets (where you can ‘dump’ relevant files for a meeting that will be distributed to others sharing that entry).
Surely, one of the ways that Apple can justify the higher price of the iPhone is to make sure that these features are extended to the phone. For example, when adding a new contact to the phone, we could also put them in a relevant group and this would be synced. Importantly, it would be great to be able to sync over wifi of cellular data (e.g., to receive and read updated PDF documents on the iPhone).
With the current noise about the suitability of OSX server and xServe being ideal for SMEs, putting some of the syncing capabilities (i.e., being able to avoid using .Mac sync) would be a step forward, speed syncing for local users. While this might loose some revenue for .Mac, the target markets are not really the same, .Mac being primarily of interest to individual users and families, the scenario above being of interest to SMEs.
iChat and Talk.
When Apple introduced Tiger, iChat was updated to include XMPP (Jabber) instant messaging support. At the same time, OS X Server was updated to include a XMPP server. Jabber sessions on the client could be used (with or without OSX Server) to initiate audio and video conferences between iChat clients. With respect to standards-based chat, Apple is performing–as noted above, iChat supports XMPP and the next version of iChat server will communicate with other XMPP servers.
However, with respect to standards-based voice, OSX lags behind. iChat won’t do voice and video to other SIP devices. Third party products are limited. For example, eyeBeam doesn’t yet support H264 to communicate with SIP based video phones (including 3G mobiles) and xMeeting, while making progress is still in beta. My hope is that the next release of OSX Server will include a sip registry server and proxy server and that these will be integrated with the iChat server and director services. If this is done, adding a user automatically will add a voice user (who could use iChat or a hardware SIP phone) and also use Google’s proposed extension to the XMPP standard to initiate voice and video calls.
There would need to be some extra settings in both iChat and iChat server to support this, include a method for handing over calls to the PSTN network. Ideally, the iChat client on iPhone would fully support this so, when in wifi range, users could have their office extension (and when not, the preferences could be set to transfer the call via the PSTN network to the mobile (or other) number. There are literally thousands of SIP based VoIP providers to support this. Importantly, there are plenty of open source projects to provide the guts of this functionality.
Exploiting the Campus Base
Apple already has strong support on university campuses. One of the trends on campuses is to move users to VoIP, this helps students keep the one phone number as they move rooms and dormitories and enables faculty to stay in touch from home (given that many of them work from home a lot anyway). Simplifying this move and unifying contact details (i.e., everyone would be reachable by the their user@domain.edu address).
PSTN to VoIP routing is not a problem either, since existing switchboards can often route to VoIP. Moreover, if Apple built this software into OSX incentives would exist for hardware vendors to write OSX drivers for PSTN interface products.
Video, voice and the graphics industry
Another industry where Apple has strong support is publishing. Apple has already announced some improvements to iChat that link other applications to video conferencing (such as Keynote and iPhoto). Why not extend this with some voice and video APIs that allow any application to steam output to a audio or video connection. For example, Final Cut Pro users could steam a live preview (suitably compressed) over a standards based video connection to preview work to clients and simultaneously talk through the issues.
Virtualisation on xServe and extending the SME business
All of the above is great, if you have 40 or more users and can justify the cost of an xServe, the disk space, suitable backup, etc. But what about for smaller SMEs who would like to take advantage of these kind of things?
I’ve been struggling to work it out and there don’t seem to be any single suppliers that can provide it all. So SMEs are required to use one provider for their web and email and find (if they can) a separate hosted XMPP server service and a separate VoIP supplier (and even then if you want to have sip:user@domain.com addresses you may be out of luck).
If Apple supported virtualisation on xServe this problem could be addressed. Each xServe could then run multiple instances of OSX Leopard and these could be rented (much as we rent virtual hosts on Linux or Windows). Each virtual server administrator would have access to Apple’s fantastic (and getting better) administrator tools for adding users, setting VoIP policies, etc., etc.
Imagine how nicely this could work. An SME (or keen individual) signs up for a hosted OSX Server account. The hosting firm gives them an IP address and the addresses of the slave DNS servers. The new customers downloads the (free) OSX server admin tools, points them to the IP address, sets up their users and accounts and then points their domain to the DNS. Easy.
A whole new business would emerge that could entrench OSX Server and xServer as the ideal choice for SMEs. And of course, as the SME grows, it might move up to owning their own xServe.
[posted with ecto]