sipXconfig
Friday, July 20, 2007
 
Hold the Secret Sauce please
Brian Rigss wrote a small piece on Nortel and SIPFoundry. It's an interesting news for all VoIP fans and it's a very good news for SIPFoundry community.

I was slightly surprised that open source hackers now apparently roam in loose-knit bands. It is a quaint image evoking sorely missing sense of adventure. As charming images go, this one has little to do with reality and is easily dispelled by subscribing to any devel list - including sipX one - and counting the references to my boss and my company.

I cannot resist having some fun with his secret sauce metaphor. To quote Brian:

[...] VoIP software has been sacrosanct. It’s the secret sauce. It’s the way IP PBX developers ensure that their customers have access to the most advanced sets of call features. It’s how they add value to their product, differentiate from competitors, generate the majority of their revenue, and transform themselves from providers of monolithic PBX cabinetry and into communications software developers of the future.


I happen to think that Secret Sauce turned out to be not what people hoped it to be. Actually, I think that it's not a sauce at all but a trans fat., which - at least according to wikipedia - is neither required nor beneficial for health.

If I were running a corporation, I would be suspicious of my communication system being dependent on a secret sauce. What happens if I get hooked and secret sauce provider goes out of business, what if their secret sauce does not mix well with the secret sauce of the other guy. Do I really want to take this risk?

I prefer my secret sauce provider to start making money on something that I actually want to pay for: developing more features, faster and better than their competition. Without hiding behind a secret recipe.

In several US states overactive legislatures banned trans-fats. I wonder if the Secret Sauce is next on the agenda.


Powered by Blogger