The world of VoIP, video, and instant messaging is traveling at such a speed that your request to evaluate competing products may be obsolete by the time you finish reading this sentence.

So a group of like-minded industry individuals have come up with a so-called open source solution to the problem.

Spearheaded by Ed Mier and Dave Mier and sponsored by Siemens, a new wiki has been established to create a future-proof template request for proposal (RFP) for next-generation IP communications systems.

Introduced at the VoiceCon show in San Francisco, which runs through Thursday, the wiki tries to get into the details of what you'd specify if you were going out to bid with the aim of providing unified communications functionality for your users.

"What we'll be encouraging the industry to do is treat Ed and Dave's RFI/RFP as an open source project. There's no ownership involved, so you can download it and use it however you'd like. What we'd ask in return is that you join the conversation: We've set the project up as a wiki so that you can edit the document, add to it, or submit wholesale revisions if you think this one misses the mark, or submit versions tailored to specific industries or applications," said Eric Krapf, editor at Business Communications Review and VoiceCon program chair.

The template could have benefited national power tool retailer Black & Decker. Karen Dean, director of global telecommunications told the VoiceCon audience on Tuesday that her company went through a couple of RFIs before settling on Avaya's solution.