There’s a buzz in the air in Dubai - the electricity of optimistic growth.   The airport gives an amazing first impression, blending the high tech look of the new terminal with touches for Arabia in the arches, sconces with (cloth) flames, and the ceiling painted with the deep blue, star-studded night sky.  The ride into town is more of the same: the sparkling new Metro, the smooth-flowing expressways, and the beautiful skyline, now highlighted by the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world (at 2,720 feet - over half a mile tall) since the opening at the beginning of January.  

Dubai is, most certainly, a center for business, with all the supporting services.   One of the attendees pointed out that Dubai is a central location between Europe, Asia, and Africa.  A quick visit to Bing Maps will make that clear (mouse over to see country names, with U.A.E. in the middle of the map).  The companies represented at the Road Show ranged across the business spectrum, from banks and financial firms, to real estate development, to a mercantile exchange, to Emirates Airline, to the operator of a major chain of sports clubs (have to be healthy to do business), to a major regional telecommunications company.

While the audience was very focused on the cost-savings element of the program theme, they were also looking for new ideas that could create competitive advantages.  Of course, this fit well with the Microsoft messages in the event.   In fact, the conversations at the breaks and lunch were really centered on which innovations would likely yield the most return via savings or cost avoidance.

Probably the biggest single interest was in connecting more effectively with internal teams and with external partners and customers.  Almost all the companies were multi-location businesses and were not satisfied with the amount of money they were spending for inter-site communications nor with the limited functionality they could achieve with those connections. 

There was real resonance with the idea that one of the best ways to cut telecom tolls and cellular bills is “don’t call in the first place.”    Thus, presence and instant messaging were either already deployed or were high on the list of projects for a Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) deployment.

Once that was done, the attendees expected their users would quickly pick up on the internal company PC-to-PC calling and desktop sharing.  Also, most of the firms already had both Exchange and SharePoint installed, so the integration of OCS for communications directly from those applications was a top benefit, as well. 

There was also strong interest in linkages with field personnel, whether at construction sites, in retail banking, in development projects, or similar mobile roles.  Most of the attendees were in the planning or pilot testing phases of applications for the Communicator Mobile (COMO) client for OCS.   With that tool, calls can be placed to the cell phone under OCS control, rather than calling from the cell phone, which significantly lowers the monthly charges. 

Some companies were focused on process improvement, which of course resonated with me, based on our definition of Unified Communications as “communications integrated to optimize business processes.”  The customers’ concepts were that definition and streamlining of processes is key to competitiveness, since that avoids costly delays, mistakes and rework.  Of course, including communications in that analysis is key, often leading to simpler or more effective modes (e.g. IM vs. voice calling).  

This is all within the setting of telecom rules that do not allow Voice over IP calls to connect to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), similar to the situation in India (see blog from Mumbai).  On the one hand this is good, since it helps focus the Microsoft-based UC projects to those that did not conflict with the PSTN rules.  On the other hand, it complicates the initiatives that involve calling into the PSTN, such as requiring integration with the customers’ TDM PBXs. 

So, I’m heading home from Dubai with the same electric sense as my first impression, wishing all these customers the best of success in their UC endeavors.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Marty Parker
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Imagine a modern city where business, trade, society, architecture, religion, culture, continents, and history all come together in one place.  Got it?  OK, then Istanbul, Turkey, is very likely that place.  Istanbul (formerly Constantinople and Byzantion before that), sits astride the Bosporus, a magnificent waterway that connects the interior of eastern Europe with the civilizations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea.  One side of the Bosporus is the southeastern tip of Europe and the other side is a southwestern corner of Asia (locals chat about how they commute to work from Asia).  People and their goods have flowed up and down that waterway for over 8,000 years and have established business and culture in the very fabric of Istanbul; just visit the Grand Bazaar to be overwhelmed by what’s available and how many people there are to help you find something that you would like to have.   The Aya Sophia church and mosque was the largest known church for centuries, beginning in 537 C.E. (A.D.) and is marvelous even to this day.  Symbolically, Istanbul is celebrating its role as one of two “European Capitals of Culture” for 2010, beginning the weekend before the UC Road Show event.   

Against that backdrop, it’s no surprise that customers were out in force to find new ways to enhance business and trade.  Attendees included financial institutions, trading and distribution companies, food manufacturers, and many others. 

Most of the attendees and their firms had thought through UC and were taking action.  Most had either pilots or some level of deployment already in place, and were pleased with that progress to date.  The major themes were:

• Improving productivity: Essentially all of those I spoke with were focused on helping their people work more effectively. Having both presence indication of who is available and the ability to click-to-communicate via Instant Messaging, or voice, or desktop sharing, or even video is seen as a major step forward compared to the past where each media type was in a separate application or services. on the desktop. IM and voice got the most emphasis, but video interest was increasing for branch office communications, training, or expert services (link to an expert without the time delays or travel expense).
• Office application integration: A significant portion emphasized the value of linkage between Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) and the other applications in the Office family, especially Outlook and SharePoint. The comments indicated that each product got more valuable by virtue of linkage to the other, again due to productivity increases.
• Remote working - in branch offices, home offices, or on the road. Widespread use of the Microsoft Office Communicator client so that employees could maintain their productivity while also cutting both their telecom and travel expenses.
• Linking with clients and business partners: This application was one of the “next things” being considered by several companies. The attendees could see the value for optimizing their business processes, and were working on the policies and practices that are required for including outside people and companies in the UC operations. The sense was that the initial versions would by inviting third parties into OCS Live Meeting conferences rather than by providing those people with guest accounts on the enterprise’s OCS system or by federation (which will come later as more companies have UC systems with federation capabilities).
• Mobility: Last but not least, there is always interest in cutting the mobile phone bills. With the “caller pays” billing found in most GSM networks, OCS was being used to let the user click on their mobile to make a call, then to have the call come out to the mobile device (no fees) from the OCS server in the data center which then extends the other leg of the call to the intended party.

While there was some discussion of embedding UC into business applications such as SAP or Microsoft Dynamics CRM or customer portals, it seems that the embedding of UC into apps will be in the next set of projects, in late 2010, 2011, or beyond. 

So, Istanbul lived up to, and exceeded my expectations.  I wish all the attendees the best of success as the extend the Turkish business tradition.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Marty Parker
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Last week I accompanied a system integrator in the Midwest to meet with and help educate several of their customers about unified communications and building a UC strategy. In addition to the Midwest hospitality and better weather than I expected, I got some good insights into what these customers are thinking about regarding UC. I was gratified to see that these customers really understand and appreciate what UC can do for them in terms of saving time, making workers more efficient, increasing collaboration between work groups, etc.

One thing that came across loud and clear is that Microsoft did a heck of a job getting OCS out there for enterprise IM and presence. All of the companies I met with have OCS implemented to one degree or another, and most also have Sharepoint and Live Meeting. Several of the customers are Nortel shops, which makes me wonder if part of Microsoft’s success is based on the now-defunct ICA relationship between Nortel and Microsoft, although I tend to doubt it. Side note: Avaya stated that the ICA relationship has been terminated, although the two companies will continue to work on how they engage with each other, but Nortel (now Avaya) will no longer resell OCS. It will be interesting to see if this impacts OCS sales in any way, but it’s doubtful.

It’s clear that OCS is getting lots of traction, and vendors will have to work hard to compete with and displace Microsoft in the UC arena. A good portion of the customers I met with are Cisco shops, but none are using Cisco Unified Presence Server or Cisco Unified Presence Client – or any other presence/IM solution other than OCS. While none of the customers are using OCS for call control and don’t have any immediate plans to do so, none had gone the next step to integrate OCS with their PBX/IP PBXs. I’m glad to see more companies using IM and presence, but I wish more of them were actually integrating these capabilities with their voice capabilities to get more of the benefits that UC provides.

Some of the companies I met with clearly see the benefits of integrating OCS with their voice switches, but a variety of issues have prevented them from doing so. In some cases, the IT people are aware of the benefits of UC and acknowledge that the people in their companies could greatly benefit from it, but don’t want to deal with the integration or cost issues involved, and feel that they have enough to do without adding another layer of complexity. Others want to move to UC, but realize that in their particular environments it will be a major undertaking based on their existing technology and infrastructure.

For many customers, the will is there – they just need a good way to move to the world of UC. It needs to be simpler to implement and integrate all of the various pieces (data network, telecom environment, carrier networks, etc.). The vendors need to do a better job of working with each other to simplify integration and interoperability, and to help customers migrate. And to those vendors that would rather battle with Microsoft than accept the fact that they’ve made huge inroads into the unified communications world, I suggest you work harder to find ways to coexist in a multivendor environment, and to provide the necessary tools to your partners to help them support their customers’ mixed environments. Companies want to move to UC – let’s help make it easier for them.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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The bottom line payoff for UC-based business communications has been widely promoted as optimizing business process performance through communications efficiency and flexibility or “UC-B.” While there are also direct benefits to individual end users (UC-U) in terms of personal productivity, the reality is that the more you can automate and the less you need to depend on people to be be part of a business process, the more efficient the process will be. (In the real world, though, we can’t automate everything all the time!)

With the rapid adoption of personalized mobile, multimodal, smartphones by both consumers and business users, the opportunity to exploit UC for both inbound and outbound (proactive notifications) real-time interactions between customers, enterprise action-takers, and automated business applications will be increasing significantly. What that means is that both automated self-service applications and access to live assistance can be initiated by either a business process or by a customer, and the real-time medium of communication can selectively be combinations of voice conversations, “Push-to-talk” voice message exchange, online interactions, or text messaging (IM, SMS). (Social networking might also be part of the game.)

The “Apps Store” concept of wireless service providers can be extended to enterprise portals to facilitate consumer access to various mobile customer applications, while at the enterprise end, the automated business process can monitor the status of  application metrics and proactively initiate a personalized customer contact with a choice of user interfaces based on accessibility (device, Presence status) or user preference. I see CEBP getting the most mileage out of mobile online applications and proactive “process-to-person” multimodal notifications, (authorized, of course), both coupled with “click-for assistance” (choice of IM or voice connection). Such contacts will be more “intelligent” and efficient because they will be contextually initiated, based on the information source used by the customer for contact initiation or the business application that exploits CEBP. It won’t be just their identity as a caller or the location they call from.

If we are looking at UC-B as the major justification for implementing UC, we obviously must highlight customer contacts and interactions as a key target for UC flexibility. Accordingly, as consumer adoption of personalized mobile smartphones increases, the old enterprise voice-based call center game has to change as well.

Hello proactive “IVVR” applications! (Interactive Voice/-Visual Response)

Tags: Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
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