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| Industry Buzz UC Strategies Views UC Expert Views In The Spotlight |
I had to contact a company’s customer service and technical support departments the other day - I won’t say the company’s name, but it rhymes with Pemantic. They don’t have a unified communications strategy. This was an extremely grueling experience, especially since I know that there’s better technology available, and that the technology used was implemented very poorly.
The other day, I heard from yet another convergence reseller about the woefully weak recruiting methods of so many convergence vendors. Haven’t vendors figured out yet that resellers are bombarded by vendors wanting to recruit them as “partners”? According to resellers that I talk with, there are very few vendors who have raised themselves above the noise and babble of everyone looking for partners.
One of the comments that I hear most often is that most vendors are unable to articulate a meaningful or clear value proposition for their product. A reseller wants to know that his customers will buy what the reseller is offering – and they’ll only buy if they have a reason to do so; hence the importance of the vendor’s value proposition. According to one very successful reseller, vendors don’t appear to have thought through why someone would need their product.
The other comment that I hear just as often is that vendors don’t articulate WHY a reseller should want to partner with them – what competitive advantage will the reseller gain? I’m baffled that vendors don’t approach reseller recruiting as if it were a sales process. What are the reseller’s primary needs and how does the vendor’s product and partnership address those needs? How will the vendor’s product(s) help the reseller to grow their business, become more profitable, differentiate themselves from their competitors, etc.? It’s amazing how almost every vendor’s recruiting presentation looks like every other vendor’s…. here’s who we are, here’s our product, here are some big name customers who have bought our product, and here’s our partner program….. blah, blah, blah. What about “Here’s how our product will help your business grow”? Or “Here’s why your customers will want to buy our product from you”?
So here’s something to think about…. if, as a vendor, you
don’t be surprised when the reseller shows you out the door as they answer yet another call from one of your competitors.
I had to contact a company’s customer service and technical support departments the other day – I won’t say the company’s name, but it rhymes with Pemantic. This was an extremely grueling experience, especially since I know that there’s better technology available, and that the technology used was implemented very poorly. [Read more →]
Manufacturers are jumping on the Unified Communications bandwagon! It doesn’t matter if the manufacturer is from the traditional voice or data worlds or was already involved in “convergence” – they all want to have a role in “unified communications”. All very well and good – because customers can actually realize distinct business benefits from integrating back office processes with front end communications. But…..who is going to sell unified communication solutions? Manufacturers are looking to their existing VAR or telecom partners – or new reseller partners – to take UC solutions to the end-user. [Read more →]
I’m having lots of discussions with the Avaya folks about Communication Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) while in Boston at the Avaya Analyst Conference, and I’m finally starting to see why they’re differentiating CEBP from Unified Communications. I originally disagreed with Avaya about separating out CEBP from UC, since I (and my UCStrategies.com colleagues) believe that business process integration is a key part of UC and its value proposition. That being said, CEBP (the way Avaya defines it) is indeed different from UC. While UC is generally person triggered (an individual or worker initiates the communication), CEBP is event triggered (a business process-related event initiates the communication). The event could be an inventory shortage, a stock price change by a specific percentage, a manufacturing malfunction, a shipment delay, etc.
I’m thinking that instead of calling it CEBP, it should be called Automatic CEBP (ACEBP), since the key is to have the events automatically trigger the communications related to the business process. Rather than having an individual identify a problem or situation and initiate a phone call, conference call, web conference, etc., a specific event automatically generates the notification and communication with the appropriate parties. This may or may not include presence and UC capabilities.
So this really comes down to semantics – CEBP, the way it’s defined by Avaya and others, is indeed different and separate from UC. I still have some problems with the term Communication-Enabled Business Process since Unified Communications is optimized when comm-enabling business processes and applications. The difference is that CEBP does this automatically based on an event trigger.
I’ll be having lots more conversations with Avaya about CEBP and UC over the next couple days, so stay tuned.
At Microsoft UC launch, Bill Gates made it clear that communications is changing and Microsoft plans to be both a market maker and a market leader in unified communications. I was impressed by the presence of customers at the launch, from companies large and small–e.g., L’Occitane and Gibson–describing how they use OCS to integrate communications into business processes, and how they are saving money while improving productivity and customer satisfaction.
Microsoft has accomplished a lot since it announced that it was entering the UC market in June 2006. There are over 100 customers participating in Microsoft’s Technology Adoption Program (TAP), and while only a fraction of their 5 million employees are using Microsoft OCS, the potential is clear. Microsoft has over 50 go-to-market partners, including Nortel, Mitel and Polycom, with more lined up for certification over the next few months. And perhaps most important, Microsoft has recruited 800 channel partners for its unified communications portfolio, and they’ll all be hitting the streets with OCS, Exchange 2007 and SharePoint in the coming weeks and months.
Part of the Microsoft message and promise is its strategy for enhancing its products and providing partners with APIs, software development kits (SDKs) and other tools to enable partners to innovate–and distinguish–their products as part of a Microsoft UC solution. This didn’t get much attention at the launch, but this area will be critical going forward. Microsoft hasn’t tried to hide the fact that it has not made much progress to date in providing current and potential partners with the information they need to innovate around Microsoft’s UC offerings, but it hasn’t made it very public either. For example, the phones that carry Polycom and LG Nortel’s logos are the same exact phone device–they are both based on the Microsoft reference design–the only difference is the logo. I expect to see some serious innovations from these and the other endpoint partners over the next year.
Microsoft’s primary job now is to get the OCS product out to the market; providing partners with interface specifications naturally comes later. The big questions are how much later, and how much control will Microsoft wield on its partners. Given Microsoft’s reputation for dictating to its partners, it will be interesting to see how much leeway will be allowed.
Also noticeably missing from the OCS launch event was a roadmap. Microsoft has delivered on what it promised over a year ago, but how well the company will perform over the next 3-5 years is a key concern. There was little discussion about future plans, and Microsoft stayed focused on the message of the day: The availability of Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007, Office Live Meeting, Microsoft Roundtable and Exchange Server 2007 SP1. Hopefully Microsoft will address its future plans and roadmap over the next few weeks.
There will be a lot of news around the Microsoft UC launch in the coming days and weeks, which is one of the reasons UCStrategies.com is adding a UC News Service. On a weekly or daily basis (depending on individual preferences), we will be sending out links to the important news from all the major news sources in our industry, along with our team’s views on these news items. Stay tuned for news on Microsoft, as well as IBM, Cisco and the other UC players, as the market unfolds.
What do you think? Drop me a note at jburton@ucstrategies.com
Jim Burton
CT-Link and UCStrategies.com
Google’s big announcement this week about it’s open-source mobile OS (Android”) Open Handset Alliance, is theoretically challenging Microsoft, Symbion, etc., about their role in mobile communications and business applications, as well as the business models that will control mobile service offerings. First, by going the open source route, it will help break down the traditional “walled gardens” of the carriers. Secondly, with Google’s well-established dominance of web-search and associated advertising revenues to monetize mobile information content, their approach will fit in nicely with new. multimodal “smart phones.” Couple that with enabling their offerings to be free, guess what service providers and subscribers will opt for!
So, how will that affect enterprise Unified Communications users?
As I have frequently stated in my Unified-View column, mobile business users are the ones who will get maximum benefit from the flexibility of UC because their contact modality will be constantly changing. Sometimes they will need a visual interface, sometimes they will need a hands-free/eyes-free speech interface (driving a car). More recently, with improved speech recognition as a convenient form of input, interactive interfaces can now be a more efficient combination of speech input, text input, and visual output (multimodal interface).
As I have also stated frequently, UC flexibility must support mobile device independence, and as business users start using mobile consumer services and devices that can support business applications, they will expect enterprise UC to support their mobile device of preference. Enterprise security issues can be software controlled with enterprise-provided software clients installed on those open devices to take care of any information or user communication access that is in the governance responsibility of the enterprise. Personal, consumer services (entertainment, social contacts, etc.) can still remain functionsl, even if the business features are shut down by an enterprise.
What this really mean, then, is that mobile devices will become the personalized choice and responsibility of business end users as long as the device operating system enables separate control over business information and communication activities from personal stuff. That kind of mobile security management technology is already available from a number of providers, so the concept just needs a proper operational environment in the form of multimodal devices and an open, mobile OS that supports it all.
The question now is, what impact will the Google offering have upon personalized, handheld mobile devices, and which combination of mobile device and mobile OS will end users go for? Some bloggers have made critical comments about the announcement claiming that that is all that it is at this point, an announcement. Some critics said similar things about Microsoft’s venture into UC with OCS 2007. However, at this point in the evolution of UC technology, we are looking for both long term direction, as well as short term availability of technology that will be both useful and future-proofed, not complete and perfect (especially if it is software).
So, what do you think will happen will mobile devices and services at this point in the UC enterprise evolution game? Will they follow the lead of the Web experience or continue with traditional enterprise telephony CPE thinking?
