It’s been a busy year for the Speed Technology Consortium (STC), which was formed a little over a year ago for the purpose of helping the speech industry grow the market and increase innovation. I first wrote about STC after attending a presentation on patent law at last year’s Mobile Voice 2010 conference in San Francisco. What got my attention was the well-thought out plan to fight patent trolls, who eat up vendor’s monetary resources and stifle creativity in the process. You can read my May 2010 blog on the Mobile Voice panel here for details, as well as a follow-up on a patent case involving Phoenix solutions and West in September 2010 here. Although the focus is on speech technologies, patent trolls and the work the STC is doing is pertinent to all the industries speech touches, including UC/collaboration and contact centers, so the organization is well worth paying attention to and joining.

This year at Mobile Voice 2011, Ria Farrell Schalnat, a patent attorney with Frost Brown, LLC, gave an update on her prior year’s presentation on “Trends in Intellectual Property Against Speech Patent Trolls”.  Ria went over some patent “wins” against patent trolls, reiterated that the cost of litigation starts at a million dollars, but a reexam of the patent only costs $25K, and that going through STC as a group is even less costly and more effective. This year Ria also introduced the Peer-to-Patent organization, best explained by the organizations’ ‘about’ paragraph, as follows:

“Peer to Patent is a historic initiative by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that opens the patent examination process to public participation for the first time. Peer to Patent is an online system that aims to improve the quality of issued patents by enabling the public to supply the USPTO with information relevant to assessing the claims of pending patent applications.

This pilot project connects an open network for community input to the legal decision-making process. The community supplies information and research based on its expertise. The patent examiner makes the final determination on the basis of legal standards. This process combines the democracy of open participation with the legitimacy and effectiveness of administrative decision making.”

Available at Mobile Voice were cards that outlined the accomplishments of the STC in 2010; the contents of which follow as a further promotional effort.

2010 STC Accomplishments:

• Formed an active board made up of industry leaders
• Assisted West in win against Phoenix Solutions
• Analyzed additional Phoenix patents for potential reexam
• Helped add speech to the United States Patent Trade Office’s (USPTO)s Peer-to-Patent initiative
• Defined the SpeechMap project with the USPTO
• Began creating the framework for mapping the industry
• Developed a strong working relationship with the USPTO

The SpeechMap project is a particularly ambitious and worthwhile project, and is collaboration between the STC and USPTO. The object is to:

• Create a shared resource for inventors, examiners and defenders
• Create a link between patent documents and non-patent literature
• Improve the quality of the existing and new patent pool

As part of the process:

• Open source content management links the information and the community through group participation
• Social tagging lets researchers put their own content where it belongs on the map
• Faceted indexing links not only to topics but multiple advances in the same speech engine, in the same lab, in the same application area, addressing the same problems.

I can’t emphasize enough that while some patents in themselves are a good thing and that some patent litigation is necessary and good. But when companies are formed with the primary or sole purpose of buying up patents, sitting on them, and then suing anyone who breathes near one of them it is only harmful to everyone.

If you would like to join, help or get more information you can check out STC’s website, email info@speechtechnologyconsortium.org.

Tags: Speech Technologies, Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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A lovelier setting for the 9^th annual Genesys conference couldn’t be had as the Ritz at Half Moon Bay. But first, it wasn’t just the ninth annual Genesys conference; it was the first annual Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise conference. But don’t think that the Genesys name has gone away. On the contrary, or perhaps I should say au contraire, ALU has made an even stronger statement about maintaining the Genesys brand with a new updated identity. Starting this week at their sales kick-off meeting Business cards at ALU will look like

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprises (Alcatel logo) and underneath in the Genesys red:

(Genesys Logo) followed by Genesys Communications Network

The intent is to represent that ALU is not just PBX, carrier and networking, but also is playing in the enterprise, and that they are leveraging from three different groups; Genesys, Communications and Networks. This is really about go-to-market, in that keeping them all allows ALU to use the market awareness of the Genesys brand in customer service, UC, etc., and the PBX, carrier, and networking capabilities of ALU.

On top of the business side of continuing the merging of the two organizations and a development of a superior go to market strategy than they have had before, executives pointed out that they felt that they had never seen a year of such technical innovation within the company. For example, within contact center ALU rounded out the company’s work force optimization (WFO) suite, adding quality monitoring and making a lot of progress on Interactive Insights with cradle to grave interaction reporting. The first phase of this was marketed as Infomart, (back-end data repository) followed in 2009 and 2010 with Interactive Insights (front end reporting). So now all of the scalability and consolidated data of Infomart (real-time and historical) has been brought into Insights, providing complete support of the entire Genesys product suite. ALU is also working on all manner of video for enterprise and contact center.

ALU also showed us Social Engagement; which is the company’s entrée into the industry’s much beloved trend of integrating social media into customer service. They have some very interesting customer use cases brewing that I’m looking forward to being able to write about once ALU’s customers get a sizeable chunk of usage data.

Finally, ALU unveiled OpenTouch; which is the commercial name for the converged architecture (ICE), Genesys SIP server, GVP server, and OXE PBX. OpenTouch is a family and packaged offerings that are all about shifting the user from voice centric communications to multimedia communications, on devices chosen by the user. OpenTouch is also about taking communications that are now one-on-one communications to multi person communications with extreme ease, so that the user can add or remove people as their business needs dictate.

Yes, as I normally do, I’ll comment on the new naming convention. Much as there was a lot of stumbling of analysts, and even executives in saying things like OmniTouch instead of OpenTouch, or commenting on how close it was to Siemens OpenScape, it’s a good name. Both OpenScape and OpenTouch speak to the same thing - open. And whether it is touch or scape, both give the end user the idea of what the product is about, so I like them both. Let’s just hope that sales people from ALU/Genesys and Siemens don’t mix them up.

Tags: Contact Center, Mobile UC, Video by Nancy Jamison
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On February 10, we’ll begin to find out how much the Verizon Wireless +iPhone4 combination impacts competitors’ market shares.  I completed a project a year ago that included conducting a primary survey on mobile service and device customer satisfaction, and brand preference.  Results showed an  overwhelming interest in the above – the most desirable service provider combined with the most desireable device. 

But a lot has happened between then and now.  Unlike many commentators, I think that in the near term, adoption of this combination probably will say more about Apple vs. Android and Microsoft than it will about Verizon Wireless vs. AT&T Mobility.  Here’s why:

1.       Most people and businesses would want to keep their current phone numbers.  Although wireless number portability exists (WNP), there have been no significant mass migrations to really stress test carrier systems (the FCC has specified that wireless porting should be completed within a 48-hours window).  In particular, business customers will need to think this through—if they switch, how will they deal with service unavailability windows in which they have no control over the start time?  And what about contingency plans in the event that carrier problems prolong this window? 

2.       Most wireless customers are on term contracts - consumers 1 or 2 years, most businesses-2 years (some 1 year).  So, without financial incentives, the market won’t move swiftly.  Verizon Wireless could accelerate migration by offering to rebate customers for the switching expenses they would incur, but I think this is highly unlikely on anything except a very significant enterprise deal. 

3.       Verizon Wireless’ advertised 3G footprint doesn’t always live up to customer expectations, particularly in areas with less dense populations.  Given the company’s strategic focus, I expect this to continue going forward.  This matters - right now, one of my F 500 clients is switching from Verizon Wireless back to its former provider due to 3G coverage issues. 

4.       Bottom line:  Assuming ATT does nothing to try to stem the tide, I think people will think about switching more than we’ll see them switch this year.

5.       But ATT is doing something.  It’s offering new data plans.  It’s also publicly said it’s speeding up both its HSPA+ and LTE deployments.  So much so that several sources tell me of some ATT budget cuts in areas not remotely related to wireless.  Since ATT hasn’t revised its Wall Street earnings forecasts, clearly that money is going somewhere else.

6.       Thus the impact of this highly desirable provider-device combination on wireless carrier migration, even after 1 year, may be less than Verizon Wireless desires and ATT fears.

But this year, the impact on device share could be a very significant story.  For 2011, I’d venture to say that 70%+ of the Verizon Wireless iPhone 4 activations will be from current Verizon Wireless customers.  How much will that eat into Android’s and Microsoft’s future growth?  We’ll literally know in a matter of months.

What does this mean to UC users?  If your company is considering using FMC functionality on devices that include the iPhone 4, it’s natural that you’d want to do this with one service provider.  But depending on your employees’ calling and use circumstances, some of the issues I discussed above could impact the speed at which you’ll really be able to migrate to one provider, or even the desirability of doing so.   Obviously you’ll need to do some homework to make an accurate assessment.  However, there’s one certain benefit:  having greater device/provider choice can be very helpful in your negotiations with mobile providers.  And you can take advantage of that benefit at your very next contract negotiation.   

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility by Lisa Pierce
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