The versit Consortium was a multivendor initiative founded by Apple Computer, AT&T, IBM and Siemens in the early 1990s in order to create Personal Data Interchange (PDI) technology, open specifications for exchanging personal data over the Internet, wired and wireless connectivity and Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). The Consortium started a number of projects to deliver open specifications aimed at creating industry standards.
One of the most ambitious projects of the Consortium was the Versit CTI Encyclopedia (VCTIE), a 3,000 page, 6 volume set of specifications defining how computer and telephony systems are to interact and become interoperable. The Encyclopedia was built on existing technologies and specifications such as ECMA's call control specifications, TSAPI and industry expertise of the core technical team. The volumes are:
Appendices include:
The core Versit CTI Encyclopedia technical team was composed of David H. Anderson and Marcus W. Fath from IBM, Frédéric Artru and Michael Bayer from Apple Computer, James L. Knight and Steven Rummel from AT&T (then Lucent Technologies), Tom Miller from Siemens, and consultants Ellen Feaheny and Charles Hudson. Upon completion, the Versit CTI Encyclopedia was transferred to the ECTF and has been adopted in the form of ECTF C.001. This model represents the basis for the ECTF's call control efforts.
Though the Versit CTI Encyclopedia ended up influencing many products, there was one full compliant implementation of the specifications that was brought to market: Odisei, a French company founded by team member Frédéric Artru developed the IntraSwitch IP-PBX. Odisei was later acquired by semiconductor company 8x8, which deployed the IntraSwitch technology as the second largest standalone U.S. VoIP service provider.
In 1995, the Consortium proposed and went on to create the vCard and vCalendar technologies. vCards were intended to make it easy for many people using computers connected to the Internet to exchange contact information, while vCalendars were intended to make it easy for people to swap scheduling information.
In 1996, all rights to these technologies were transferred to the Internet Mail Consortium, an organization founded by Paul Hoffman (VPNC), which continued to maintain the standards until 2002, when the IMC ceased its activities.
This was later extended to create technologies for VToDo, to transfer ToDo details between computing devices, and vBookmark, to transfer URLs between computing devices.
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, where hypertext documents include hyperlinks to other resources that the user can easily access, for example by a mouse click or by tapping the screen in a web browser.
The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and the Internet Protocol (IP). Early versions of this networking model were known as the Department of Defense (DoD) model because the research and development were funded by the United States Department of Defense through DARPA.
The Open Systems Interconnection model is a conceptual model from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that "provides a common basis for the coordination of standards development for the purpose of systems interconnection." In the OSI reference model, the communications between systems are split into seven different abstraction layers: Physical, Data Link, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, and Application.
Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitatively measure quality of service, several related aspects of the network service are often considered, such as packet loss, bit rate, throughput, transmission delay, availability, jitter, etc.
The Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) is a network protocol for delivering audio and video over IP networks. RTP is used in communication and entertainment systems that involve streaming media, such as telephony, video teleconference applications including WebRTC, television services and web-based push-to-talk features.
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating communication sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used in Internet telephony, in private IP telephone systems, as well as mobile phone calling over LTE (VoLTE).
Telephony is the field of technology involving the development, application, and deployment of telecommunication services for the purpose of electronic transmission of voice, fax, or data, between distant parties. The history of telephony is intimately linked to the invention and development of the telephone.
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for voice calls for the delivery of voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet.
In computer networking, the transport layer is a conceptual division of methods in the layered architecture of protocols in the network stack in the Internet protocol suite and the OSI model. The protocols of this layer provide end-to-end communication services for applications. It provides services such as connection-oriented communication, reliability, flow control, and multiplexing.
Computer telephony integration, also called computer–telephone integration or CTI, is a common name for any technology that allows interactions on a telephone and a computer to be coordinated. The term is predominantly used to describe desktop-based interaction for helping users be more efficient, though it can also refer to server-based functionality such as automatic call routing.
WebDAV is a set of extensions to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which allows user agents to collaboratively author contents directly in an HTTP web server by providing facilities for concurrency control and namespace operations, thus allowing Web to be viewed as a writeable, collaborative medium and not just a read-only medium. WebDAV is defined in RFC 4918 by a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
GeoPort is a serial data system used on some models of the Apple Macintosh that could be externally clocked to run at a 2 megabit per second data rate. GeoPort slightly modified the existing Mac serial port pins to allow the computer's internal DSP hardware or software to send data that, when passed to a digital-to-analog converter, emulated various devices such as modems and fax machines. GeoPort could be found on late-model 68K-based machines as well as many pre-USB Power Macintosh models and PiPPiN. Some later Macintosh models also included an internal GeoPort via an internal connector on the Communications Slot. Apple GeoPort technology is now obsolete, and modem support is typically offered through USB.
In information technology, header refers to supplemental data placed at the beginning of a block of data being stored or transmitted. In data transmission, the data following the header is sometimes called the payload or body.
HCL Sametime Premium is a client–server application and middleware platform that provides real-time, unified communications and collaboration for enterprises. Those capabilities include presence information, enterprise instant messaging, web conferencing, community collaboration, and telephony capabilities and integration. Currently it is developed and sold by HCL Software, a division of Indian company HCL Technologies, until 2019 by the Lotus Software division of IBM.
PacketCable network is a technology specification defined by the industry consortium CableLabs for using Internet Protocol (IP) networks to deliver multimedia services, such as IP telephony, conferencing, and interactive gaming on a cable television infrastructure.
The iSCSI Extensions for RDMA (iSER) is a computer network protocol that extends the Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) protocol to use Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA). RDMA is provided by either the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) with RDMA services (iWARP) that uses existing Ethernet setup and therefore no need of huge hardware investment, RoCE that does not need the TCP layer and therefore provides lower latency, or InfiniBand. It permits data to be transferred directly into and out of SCSI computer memory buffers without intermediate data copies and without much CPU intervention.
CT Connect is a software product that allows computer applications to monitor and control telephone calls. This monitoring and control is called computer-telephone integration, or CTI. CT Connect implements CTI by providing server software that supports the CTI link protocols used by a range of telephone systems, and client software that provides an application programming interface (API) for telephony functions.
Telephony Server Application Programming Interface was a computer telephony integration standard developed and promoted by Novell and AT&T. It consisted of a number of call control commands for switching calls, voice mail and call logging using NetWare servers. Unlike the competing Telephony Application Programming Interface from Microsoft and Intel, it was a server-based system that did not expect client-side equipment to handle call switching. This was important to AT&T, which sold large telephone switches that Telephony Server Application Programming Interface was intended to work with.
Odisei S.A. was a French company based in Sophia-Antipolis, France that developed the first Internet protocol private branch exchange (IP-PBX) software solution hosted by carriers. It was founded by Frédéric Artru in 1998 based on his work at the Versit Consortium. Odisei was acquired by 8x8 in May 1999. It is likely the highest return on investment on a time-basis for a French-based technology company.