Real Time Communications: An Enterprise View

Rodger M. Will

Ford Motor Company

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Ford in A Nutshell Global Automotive Manufacturer founded in 1903 by Henry Ford 340,000 Employees World Wide 110 Manufacturing Plants in 26 Countries 3 Main Product Development Campuses (1 North America, 1 UK,

1 Germany), Smaller Campus in Australia Product Development Hubs for Jaguar (Coventry), Land Rover

(Gaydon), Volvo (Gothenborg), and Mazda (Hiroshima) Presence of Employees, Suppliers and Dealers in Nearly All

Time Zones of the Globe Complex Supply Base Integrally Involved in the Product Creation

Process Key Concerns: Product Creation Speed, and Quality

Technology Environment

Ford’s Wide Area Network connects 947 sites in 56 countries.

Class A address on the Public Internet – 1 of 126 class A addresses in the world – 19.x.x.x

1,493 routers globally (224 in the major data centers and 1,269 at Ford offices and plants).

More than 250,000 active TCP/IP devices on the Ford network on an average business day.

Extremely complex Supply Chain connectivity 622+ Mbps Public Internet connectivity

Enterprise Vs. Academia

Many Trade Secrets Frequent Target of Hackers (Thieves) Web of Partners that also Work with

Competition Time Shifting – Geography Regulation and Accountability Requirements Wall Street Pressures Intense Cost Cutting

Real Time Enterprise Product creation relies on Team Collaboration across the entire

Extended Enterprise. (Employees, Suppliers, Dealers, Consumers) Culture of Meetings and Conference Calls (CC 40% of Voice) Information Security is a Huge Concern Relatively informal workteams form dynamically, and present many

challenges. Fast product creation depends on easy to use, reliable, low latency

communications between the Supply Base and Employees wherever they may be, and connected to a variety of Networks

Supply Base generally has limited Technical Resources Product Creation is heavily dependent on Unix Workstations and

Supercomputing Resources Key Enabler – Standards Based, Interoperable Collaboration Tools

The Ideal Collaboration Platform A Secure, Integrated environment that is made up of Instant Messaging,

Teamware (Shared Workspaces), Threaded Discussions, Document Repositories, Voice and Video Conferencing, and most importantly, Cross Platform Application Sharing (Windows, Linux, Unix), with all tools leveraging a common Rich Presence and Group Presence infrastructure.

User Feedback: Presence and Availability awareness a breakthrough Federated and Peer To Peer Authentication and Trust Models The Toolset is componentized to allow integration with other developed

or purchased systems at the Web Service level. All tools are Securely accessible from any network, NATed or Wireless Engineered to resist Hackers and SPAM. Leverages both Generic Computing Devices as well as Purpose Built

devices such as VoIP Phones and Wireless Devices Based on Open Standards that permit Interoperability between multiple

vendor implementations

Gaps Standards are Immature (PBX Level SIP Telephony) and Competing

in Some Spaces Roadmap to a Single Enterprise Rich Presence Infrastructure Not

Clearly Defined Individual Tools are Immature - Lack Polish (Softphones, IM Clients) Tools are Poorly Integrated – User Experience Unacceptable Cross Platform Application Sharing a Technical Computing Niche –

Not Market Centric Implementing Secure tools over Public Networks a great Challenge Most Significantly: Managing the Cultural Implications of the

emerging “Always On” Enterprise, and defining usage Best Practices. A Usage and Governance Model for Real Time Communications, if you will.

THANKYOU

rwill1@ford.com