Mitel

Offsetting the bad news about lay offs at Mitel was their product announcements at VoiceCon. The glitziest is Mitel’s new TeleCollaboration product, due out in Q1′09, that adds to the growing number of telepresence products in the industry. TeleCollaboration is a combination of Mitel’s conferencing and collaboration software, video from Magor Communications (www.Magorcorp.com) and Mitel’s conferencing units and handsets.

Although Cisco TelePresence seems to be the gold standard for video conferencing these days, it costs gold to implement. Although Mitel didn’t announce pricing yet, they assured me that it will be a fraction of the upper level Cisco product. I’ve been happy to see others add to the stack of affordable solutions, particularly when they add productivity enhancements as this announcement does by providing collaboration and recording capabilities in the meeting. Still, they also provide life-sized video and spatial audio as part of the package.

An additional announcement Mitel made was SiMple Personal Licensing (SMPL) of their UC products, which includes role-based software licensing, taking into account roles of different user types within an organization. Their packages in the typical basic, standard and advanced format are designed to make it easier to deploy UC. They have bundled pre-integrated packages by user type, but also provide the flexibility for an organization to add additional applications off a laundry list of UC features. The packages are:

• Basic User - someone who might not even have a PC. Package includes a hard or soft phone (including hot desking)

• Standard User - Someone who has a PC and to whom communication is important. Package includes basic plus voicemail with unified messaging and a basic UC client

• Advanced User - Someone with a PC and who is reliant on communication in their job. Package includes standard plus voicemail with UM, mobile phone twinning, and an advanced UC client with presence.

Mitel also announced their own UC client and did some product renaming - Mitel Unified Communication Express 2.0 (formerly Integrated Office Companion), Unified Communicator Advanced 2.0 (formerly Your Assistant Premium), and Unified Communicator Mobile 1.6 (formerly Mobile Extension)

Avaya

Avaya advanced the user interface for UC with the addition of a speech-to-text (STT) solution for converting voicemail messages into text, delivered as an email to the end user. The voicemail then becomes an optional .wav attachment. The solution allows users to read voicemails, keep written records of them, allows them to respond via email or voice and the converted messages can be saved and searched on. SpinVox, one of the initial entrants in the STT area partnered up with Mutare Software; a developer of interactive voice and web applications, to deliver the solution to Avaya. STT is integrated into Avaya Modular Messaging unified messaging and is available in English, French, German and Spanish. It includes Mutare Software’s EVM gateway and comes with SpinVox’s STT messaging service.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information // 1 Comment »

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information // Add Comment »

What a surprise! A judge found some of the provisions in Cisco’s ICPA (indirect channel partner agreement) to be “clearly one-sided” and “unconscionable”, and found no evidence that Cisco has ever negotiated a partner contract. Now I could say I was shocked and appalled, but the truth is that I don’t recall ever seeing an indirect channel partner contract - from any major manufacturer - that wasn’t one-sided and non-negotiable. At times, the one-sided nature of partner agreements has even led me to question the use of the word “partner” to describe the relationship between some manufacturers and their reseller channel.

In this particular situation, the provisions in question revolved around termination (of the partner) and damage limitations (the vendor’s, of course). I understand the need of a business to protect its’ interests. However, what I don’t understand is protecting those interests at the expense of the “partner”. Whatever happened to the idea that a partnership is undertaken to be a win-win business relationship? The point is to create an environment where partners create and share in success - and sometimes in failure. Not to pick on Cisco - because they have some excellent elements in their partner program - but this is a great example of how one-sided the vendor-reseller relationship can be.

The data industry is a wonderful place to be. The pace is fast (make that frantic), and the changes in technology are exciting. But I believe that the industry has hurt itself with the dysfunctional relationship between manufacturers and their reseller channel. Rather than seeking ways to strengthen their resellers and help them be more successful (increasing the sales of the manufacturer’s products), many manufacturers have actually fostered the very elements that lead to the failure of many of their own channel “partners”. For example, we see partnership agreements that require a great deal of the reseller and give little in return, including “sales” training which encourages “box selling” leading to low margins, flooding geographic areas with many resellers with the same product competing against each other, onerous certification requirements for infrastructure products, and on and on. On my website, www.sierrasummitgroup.com, I discuss what is essential for resellers to be successful, and mention the importance of vendor selection in the reseller’s success. When all else is stripped away from the relationship, the degree to which vendors actually contribute to resellers’ success directly impacts the volume of products sold - i.e. the vendors’ success.

My words of advice…. vendors beware! Those one-sided channel “partnerships” may now come under some heavy scrutiny from the “other side” of the partnership.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information // 1 Comment »

I have a love/hate relationship with Avaya.

Way back in the pre-email, pre-cell phone days, when I started as an industry analyst with Dataquest, one of my clients was AT&T.  AT&T was a company I always admired and at one time in my checkered career I even tried to get a job with them.  Their human resources function was as screwed up as most big companies’ but that’s another story.  While AT&T was my client at Dataquest I had a great relationship with them.

As you know, AT&T begat Lucent which begat Avaya.  As the voice messaging industry was winding down in the ‘90s Avaya stepped in and acquired another company that I admired and had as a client, Octel.  As a result, I had lots of former Octel friends and former AT&T friends at Avaya.

This past Saturday, November 1^st 2008, marks the ninth anniversary of the founding of my company, Saddletree Research.  It also marks the beginning of my relationship with Avaya hitting the skids.  The love affair still existed back in 1999 due to the many friends I still had at Avaya from my Dataquest and In-Stat days, but I could instinctively feel things starting to change as any jilted lover can.

These days my relationship with Avaya is something akin to Avaya being a former girlfriend after a particularly acrimonious breakup.  We don’t have anything to do with each other except once a year when Avaya invites me to their annual analyst briefing.  We smile at each other and reminisce about the old days and better times, but I think we both know that we’re never going to get back together.  Avaya only dances with the big guys these days, like Gartner and Yankee, and select special friends.  I’m an independent in every sense of the word.  Gartner and Yankee are the football players.  I’m the soccer playing nerd.  A polite exchange of smiles is about as far as I get with Avaya.

When I go to their annual analyst fandango I endeavor to be civil and take in what they have to say.  Still, I have to admit it’s like seeing the old girlfriend that you never really got over.  Life has moved on and all parties have survived, but there’s still that faint feeling in the pit of the stomach.  The truth is I really don’t want to like Avaya anymore but they occasionally do something that still brings back happier memories of days gone by.

This year I connected with the usual Avaya suspects who gave me the simultaneous polite smile/brush off combo, but I also met some interesting people with surprisingly innovative ideas.  Most of these interesting people are recent additions to Avaya so they may not have been told the analyst relations rules yet.  I found these people to be candid and sincere, which were not traits that I had come to associate with Avaya over the past few years. 

One of these interesting, mold-busting people I met was Avaya’s relatively new vice president and general manager of unified communications, Steve Borcich.  When we sat down to talk I was expecting the rote Avaya company recitation from Steve but instead I found a guy who was, to use an already overused expression, thinking outside the box.  We talked about UC in general and in particular about how it could be applied in various business environments.  For example, Steve had thought through how UC could be applied in retail settings like the big box do-it-yourself stores to locate expert help regardless of which store an individual worked in.  He even talked about bringing in experts from outside the store who would provide customer assistance while at the same time promoting their own businesses.  Common sense but pretty smart nonetheless.

The idea of federation, as Steve described it, isn’t a new one but the way he described the use of UC in a federated arrangement showed that Avaya has been giving UC some serious thought beyond just beating the competition.  Steve’s idea of extended customer service could certainly be applied to the contact center and beyond.  I was impressed.

I still met plenty of Avaya people who looked me straight in the eye and told me they would do something when I know they had no intention of actually doing it.  I can usually tell who these people are and they haven’t let me down yet.  On the other hand there are plenty of new people at Avaya and they have to be given a chance to prove they’re different.  I hope some of them are reading this blog.  Don’t let us down.  People like me are counting on people like you, Steve.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information // Add Comment »

During this election season, I try to do what I can to help the candidates I’d like to see win, and the propositions I’d like to see pass or not pass (I live in California where we have about a dozen propositions to vote on). I decided to make phone calls to undecided voters for my presidential candidate and one of the propositions, and I got to experience what outbound call center agents/telemarketers get to experience every working day. And they have my deepest respect!

My two experiences were very different, as are various call centers, depending on their level of technological adoption. The phone calling system for the presidential candidate was pretty sophisticated, and via the Internet, it provided me with a list of key voters to contact in battleground states, a script to use in my conversations, and an easy interface to report back my contacts. Because it was web based, I was able to make calls from the comfort of my home. The script was simple to follow, and I clicked on the various options to report on the contact (eg, not home, refused to talk, non-English speaker, etc.), as well as which candidate they were voting for or leaning toward. It was a well-run operation that made it simple to make calls. There were links to sites providing background information, FAQs, etc. in case I wanted to read up on the candidate’s platform and policies before making calls. The system automatically kept track of how many calls I made, the outcome of the call, and any additional notes or comments I added.

My experience with the phone calls for one of the propositions was totally different. It was not computerized, and I had to go to the phone bank to make the calls instead of calling from my home. The script was printed on several sheets of paper, and was very complex to follow (eg, if the person answers yes to question 1, go to question 3, which was 2 pages away). The names and numbers of people to call were provided to us on paper, and we had to keep track of the calls and responses on two different pieces of paper, which made it very confusing. At the end of the night we had to manually add up how many calls we made, how many wrong numbers we reached, how many people refused to talk to us, didn’t speak English, etc.

Making calls for the proposition was a very manual process, and not at all easy to navigate through, while calling on behalf of the candidate was all computerized and online, making it much simpler and more user friendly. It was much easier to stick to the script using the computerized process rather than the manual process, so I assume I was more effective while speaking to voters since I didn’t have to shuffle through different pages to follow the script. And because I had to manually record my progress and the results of the calls on two different forms, it was more likely I made mistakes and left out information.

While I didn’t come in contact with overtly hostile voters, not everyone was willing to talk or listen to my spiel (not that I blame them - like everyone else, I don’t like it when I get these kinds of calls). For the most part the people I contacted were cordial, but there were certainly a few who were pretty rude - even when they supported the candidate on whose behalf I was calling. Again, I hate receiving these calls, and I can’t blame anyone who is less than overwhelmed to chat about their political leanings.

What are the lessons learned from this experience? First, provide the right tools for your contact center agents (inbound or outbound). We’ve had CTI for years, but how many contact center actually have CTI implemented? Way too few.  Good tools can make all the difference. Also, make the process as simple and easy to use as possible for the agents - it will make them more effective and productive. A good user interface is important for both agent efficiency and accuracy in terms of reporting and tracking results.

And lastly, respect and value your contact center agents - they have a very difficult job that requires interfacing with people who aren’t always friendly or courteous. Give your agents a big pat on the back - they deserve it.

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Enghouse Systems Ltd., and its more well-known US subsidiary, Syntellect, acquired Envox Group AB this week. Speaking just of Syntellect and Envox alone, both have communication development platforms, extremely similar products and practices providing speech self-service and contact center solutions to the enterprise and hosted markets.

At first I wondered, consolidation play or something else? Certainly it’s a consolidation play. With more than 1.24 million IVR ports and more than a million contact center agents worldwide; this obviously gives Syntellect a leg up in the market share category. It also broadens their geographic coverage from a partner perspective too. But it is more than consolidation. Without going into deep detail about the nuances of their different product sets, it also gives Syntellect more product options quicker than they might have had alone. For example, Envox has broad support for a number of media types on their platform, which Syntellect does too, but this will give Syntellect support for media such as video and SMS right away. So, whereas the contact center industry vendors talk up video, it certainly isn’t prolific yet, but the addition of this capability will position Syntellect customers to take advantage of video as more uses for it in the contact center become apparent. I also believe this will speed up any potential move on Syntellect’s part of providing customers with unified communications type functionality.

Envox customers will also benefit from Syntellect’s product portfolio as well. Syntellect’s Customer Interaction Management suite brings a fully featured set of multi-media contact center capabilities that can leverage the existing Envox platform ports. Also, Voiyager, Syntellect’s superlative development and testing solution for VoiceXML applications that I have regularly blogged about will be a bonus for Envox customers. If Syntellect could combine Voiyager with some of the development tools that Envox has it would be a knock out. Just a thought, if this merging of product sets is done well.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information // 1 Comment »

To build on its movement into the world of UC and its relationship with Microsoft, Aspect announced that it is launching a new professional services and systems integration practice t”o assist organizations with planning, implementing and supporting unified communications products across their enterprises and into their contact centers.”

Aspect announced an important partnership with Microsoft a few months ago, focusing on integrating with and supporting Microsoft’s OCS (and Microsoft is investing a significant amount of money in Aspect). Aspect is integrating its Unified IP contact center solution with OCS to provide capabilities such as “ask-an-expert capabilities” using OCS’s presence technology.

Aspect, which now calls itself a “unified communications and contact center software and services provider,” says that the new services practice within Aspect Professional Services is “designed to help companies create and execute a logical UC rollout strategy, from basic infrastructure through business process enablement, which will improve enterprise productivity and enhance customer-facing business processes.” The new UC practice is intended to support the Aspect/Microsoft strategic alliance, and assists organizations in deploying Microsoft OCS and other Microsoft UC applications from planning through implementation.

The new services practice will include several types of services: UC Strategy, Planning and Architecture, and implementation and integration.

In addition, Aspect is already hard at work supporting the new voice capabilities in Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 (see my UC Strategies Views post on R2, Aspect’s Professional Services Practice - Makes Sense to Me. Aspect will support the voice features that support remote and mobile workers, audio conferencing capabilities, and developer tools, which will be used to create tight integrations between OCS and Aspect Unified IP, with the first integration release scheduled for December.

During my pre-announcement briefing with Microsoft about OCS 2007 RS, I asked about Microsoft’s contact center strategy, since there were no new contact center capabilities or features included in the new release. Knowing that many enterprises purchase their switch (IP PBX) based on the vendor’s contact center offerings, I was surprised that Microsoft acknowledged no plans to introduce its own contact center capabilities. Instead, the company plans to continue to partner with companies like Aspect, Nortel, and others.

Microsoft has made many partnership announcements since it entered the world of unified communications, and I didn’t take all of them very seriously (everyone is a “special friend” to Microsoft). Its relationship with Aspect is different - Microsoft isn’t just partnering with Aspect because it has to and because its customers are demanding it (like in the case of Cisco). Instead, when customers ask Microsoft about its contact center offerings, Microsoft points them to Aspect or Nortel.

So it makes sense that Aspect is building up its professional services capabilities in UC to help customers in their UC strategy and implementation. The more help that’s provided to customers, the better for everyone.

Tags: Unified Communications Information, Unified Communications Information // 1 Comment »

If ever there was a time to step back from “business as usual” and look at new ways to work with your reseller partners, now is the time! It doesn’t take a crystal ball to know that customers of all sizes are going to go through a belt tightening exercise over the next months - once they move past the current panic stage. IT budgets are certainly going to be hit hard, which means that your reseller partners are going to be selling fewer products, which in turn, of course, means that you’ll be selling fewer products. 

Now I’m a big believer in “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten”. And let’s face it, even in good times most resellers haven’t been knocking the proverbial ball out of the park when it comes to selling your products and solutions. Most vendors have pretty much chosen to ignore the fact that a very large percentage of their reseller partners really don’t know how to sell beyond the training that they received in how to “sell” your products. Most of their sales people are clueless when it comes to discussing a customer’s business needs, or showing the customer how a proposed solution will help that customer reduce expenses or generate additional revenue or give them a competitive advantage or increase profitability.

Unfortunately, in tough financial times, customers aren’t likely to spend money - period! If they are going to let loose of dollars, it will be for solutions that are going to help them survive. And we know that many unified communication solutions can actually be shown to address at least one of the “big 4″ needs mentioned above.  So here’s the opportunity that I see for unified communication vendors….. and other data or voice vendors as well.

Granted it would be prudent to have a reseller channel capable of selling UC solutions.  However, present economic conditions will put the channel into survival mode without the time or funds needed to reshape their sales force quickly.  As vendors, we can shake our heads and watch sales go down; or we can rapidly take some smaller steps to ensure that our channel keeps selling. Here’s one significant step that you can take.  Create tools for your reseller channel that very specifically identify:

• Each general business need/problem that your product plays a role in addressing
• How your product addresses that need (even if it’s as part of a whole solution)
• Where the customer can expect to see cost savings or improvements. Better yet, give them a template for creating an ROI specific to your product/solution.

And if you can do it for vertical markets, better yet!

Think outside the box!  Because the box was built for a different economic environment, as noted on my website (www.sierrasummitgroup.com).  And to tell the truth, that “box” wasn’t entirely appropriate for the UC reseller channel anyway. 

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The only news from Avaya this past year has been that Lou D’Ambrosio was stepping down as CEO, announced back in June.  Although the former CEO alluded to medical reasons for his sudden departure, I can’t help but think that this happened a year to the date when Avaya was taken private, acquired by SIlverlake Partners, in an 8.2 billion dollar deal.  At the time, it seemed that Avaya was poised for growth.  It had a great team in place, led by a great leader, as was Lou D’Ambrosio, with a strong story, “Democratization of UC”, which he preached at VoiceCon 2008.  My initial thoughts were that this private equity firm was going to make the necessary investments and take Avaya to the next level, becoming a leader in this industry.

Now, a year and a half later, the CEO has stepped down; Charlie Giancarlo, an ex-Cisco executive, has been at the helm of the organization since June; and there have been significant lay-offs and “resignations” of key people at Avaya.  Furthermore, and more importantly, product innovation has been stagnant.  It seems that leadership at Avaya is busy, going through organizational restructuring, or in laymen’s terms, cutting out the fat from the organization.  Although it’s not unheard of for organizations to go through some restructuring, particularly when private equity is involved, the lack of product innovation is happening at a wrong time, when the industry is moving so quickly, and innovation is happening at the blink of an eye. 

Initially, I thought the privatization was a good idea; now, I’m not so sure.  With no official CEO successor (Giancarlo is still interim CEO), and staff being slashed in droves, it almost seems as if the company was being dressed for two options:  (1) To be merged with another company or (2) To reinvent itself.  The latter would be the better option, but it will cost them.  Time to market is everything, and the clock is a-ticking.  Selling it would not be worth it at this point, given the economy and the state of Avaya as it stands now. So what does this mean for Avaya customers?

Customers must assess Avaya’s next moves and figure out what that means for them.  This is a crucial moment for enterprises to start implementing a UC and collaboration strategy, and evaluating the right vendors, who are promoting interoperability, is key.  So while Avaya has been a leader in telephony, I question their ability to take it to the next level of collaboration, as we saw a few weeks ago from Cisco.  UC and collaboration is much more than just telephony, and traditional vendors will need to make the right additions to their product portfolio.  Avaya was on its way, but seems as though it’s fallen off track.  Their analyst conference is next week; stay tuned to this blog for an update.

Tags: Unified Communications Information, Unified Communications Information // 3 Comments »

This week I went to Toronto in order to attend the ICCM Canada trade show.  This is the third year in a row I’ve gone to that particular show and have provided the keynote session as well as the final session of the event, which is an executive overview of the North American contact center industry.

ICCM Canada is one of the few trade shows I go to anymore.  It’s not a particularly large show and there isn’t a lot of flash and hype like you find at so many American shows.  Instead it is an event that attracts attendees who are genuinely interested in the information provided, who will look you directly in the eye, who aren’t looking for something for nothing and who will generally do what they say they will do without first determining what’s in it for them.  In other words, Canadians.

Like many other contact center trade shows, ICCM Canada was top-heavy with operationally-oriented sessions.  Although conference session topics based upon things like determining the appropriate number of pizza parties to have for agents each month or establishing cake baking as a team building exercise are lost on me, there must be people who get value out of it.  That’s probably why so many contact center conferences have these same old tired conference session topics time after time.  There is typically very little discussion of the industry’s trends, issues or opportunities.   Conferences today tend to be dominated by topics of interest to first line supervisors and below.

At ICCM Canada I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who made an effort to seek me out to talk about UC and Web 2.0 in the contact center and who stayed right to the bitter end to join me in my locknote address.  The final session of the final day had to be moved to the main auditorium to accommodate the number of attendees.  That tells me something about the dedication of the people who make up the Canadian contact center industry.  Feedback from those people dictated that I spend the majority of the locknote presentation discussing UC and Web 2.0, which also tells me that ICCM Canada probably attracts more strategic and higher level managers.

Over the two days of the conference I had the opportunity to attend or audit several other conference sessions.  I noticed that there was very little audience participation even during the Q & A part of the sessions.  I know part of this can be chalked up to politeness.  Remember, this was Canada where even the radio shock jocks are polite.  But things were very different when the topic turned to UC and Web 2.0 in my session.

As my presentation turned first to UC, then to Web 2.0 and its impact on the contact center, the audience became very engaged.  The several questions I received during the presentation turned into a lively discussion during which I could tell I’d hit a hot button with this otherwise stoic audience.  The session actually went beyond its scheduled finish time.  Remember, this was the last session of the last day.  I didn’t even lose the people who had to face that Toronto commute traffic in order to get home.  I was pleased and impressed.

If you’re not paying attention to the Canadian market due to size, buying power or any other reason, it’s time to reconsider that position.  Historically the Canadian telecommunications market has been an early adopter of new technologies and an innovative user of new communications solutions.  If my experience at ICCM Canada in Toronto is any indication of the potential adoption of UC and other new communications strategies in the Canadian market, my advice is to make a run for the border, eh!

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications Information, Unified Communications Information // 1 Comment »