The Sunday New York Times article entitled “Living Apart for the Paycheck”  detailed how the economy is forcing more and more couples to have commuter marriages. This in turn caused me to reflect on the use of unified communications applications in the personal/home environment. I have written many blogs about unified communications, but applying unified communications to the home environment is a new. Read my take of this new development on my Blog, The User View, “Video Technology Aids the Enterprise and Families Alike“  at http://www.jamison-consulting.com/blog/ .

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
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2008 was the year of communications.  Unified communications became a reality, with products and solutions actually being deployed, to form a collaborative strategy within organizations.  Perhaps the need for cost efficiencies, combined with the plummeting economy, forced enterprises to rethink how they utilize their communications platforms to improve overall productivity within their organizations, and ultimately add to their bottom line.  While tools such as UM and e-mail have been deployed for quite some time now, the emergence of a more unified communications and collaborative strategy took shape.  The integration of telephony and presence features became much more critical to business processes. All of a sudden, there were so many modes of communications that calling someone on the phone really became secondary. Modes such as IM and SMS have become the way to have a conversation.

As the year comes to a close, what does 2009 hold in store for this industry?  With emerging technologies taking shape, business models changing, a new group of millennials coming into the workforce, the blending of personal and professional lifestyles, and a new president-elect, I think that despite the economy, we’re in for change.  Here are a few things that I think will happen in 2009 (in no particular ranking order-they’re all important):

1. The Unified communications market will consolidate-as the credit crisis continues, the financial viability of vendors will be challenged, those who don’t survive will simply get acquired in a rapid fire sale, or simply go away. 
2. Interoperability will happen-There’s no way around it, if UC is to succeed, vendors will need to interoperate and partner with other vendors, in order to drive UC adoption. Most enterprises will take a best of breed approach, simply because of existing, disparate technologies within the organization, which becomes expensive to rip out and replace.  2008 was a lot of talk about making it happen; 2009 will see it happen…really.  Vendors finally understand that this is not a one vendor-take-all space and will learn to guess what? Collaborate!
3. Customers will have the option of deploying UC and collaborative tools overall, in the Cloud, making for better resource efficiencies.  Although still a relatively nascent market, vendors will capitalize on this opportunity and make it enterprise ready.  Enterprises will evaluate any technology that can help to rationalize capex/opex.
4. Enterprise social networking will become a legitimate collaborative tool.  Look for Facebook and LinkedIn type enterprise applications take shape in order to enhance partner, supplier and customer relationships, while at the same time, securing an organization’s intellectual property.
5. SaaS will gain traction as enterprises, both big and small, look to reduce hardware investment and create efficiencies; market will move towards anything as-a-service.
6. Terms like software, hardware, and telephony will go away, making way for new terminology.

Although there are many things that MAY happen, I believe these WILL happen.  The market must go in this direction in order to further the value proposition of UC and collaboration in general.  The value and benefits will be hard for enterprises to ignore, even in this economy.  This is a good time for enterprises to take the time to re-evaluate their equipment, strategy and ultimately resources.  Automating many business processes and implementing productivity applications is key in this environment and vendors have a choice of solutions to choose from.

On that note, thank you for reading me, and providing feedback.  I’m very interested in reading what you think will happen in 2009, feedback is very much welcomed.  It’s been quite a year and glad to have been a part of it.  I look forward to sharing my thoughts and opinions with you in 2009, and wish all my readers a wonderful and prosperous New Year!

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Vanessa Alvarez
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In August I blogged on No Jitter about Voxeo’s self-service and contact center capabilities, and on their acquisition of SIP-provider, Micromethod Technologies. At the time I made the case that due to some of the capabilities that this acquisition would bring, that it wouldn’t be long until Voxeo came out with a UC story of its own, seeing as it now had so many of the pieces to do so. I won’t reiterate all the details as you can read the blog by going to the August archives on the No Jitter site.

However, today, Voxeo announced a further acquisition, that when you dig down into it only confirms that Voxeo is moving closer to a compelling unified communications strategy, but just won’t admit the launch date yet. This morning they announced the acquisition of VoiceObjects, another self-service and tools provider for VoiceXML applications, similar in make up to Voxeo. The differences, and hence the compelling reasons behind the acquisition, are that VoiceObjects, with its headquarters in Germany, has a strong European base, and a base of customers that includes some of the largest self service customers (they mentioned in the 4-5K port range).

Both companies provide self-service. Both are enmeshed in VoiceXML. As Voxeo put it, Voxeo brings simplicity at the VoiceXML/CCXML browser level and VoiceObjects brings simplicity at the application server level. Both have great tool sets for application development. But Voxeo has that huge developer community and myriad small and medium (primarily) applications. VoiceObjects developers and has medium to large implementations.

What VoiceObjects also brings to the party are some capabilities that will enhance Voxeo’s ability to get into the unified communications game, and strengthens their multi-channel strategy. For example, Voice Objects has support for video and SMS. They also support USSD, a GSM standard that allows a user to establish a session and gain IM-like capabilities, but also menu based offerings, such as news, etc. SMS sessions can be initiated within USSD if the user wants, and USSD can be used while roaming too.

Now Voxeo has the pieces to produce full scale unified communications applications when they finish this acquisition and the work of integrating the products from this acquisition and the last into their product set. The UC baby is due soon; we just don’t have a date yet.

Full content of August NoJitter Blog at http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2008/08/stealth_player.html

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
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At VoiceCon last week, it was clear that the economy had hit the show.  Attendance was light, booths were even lighter, and the word was that most enterprises were holding off on big IT projects until Q1-09.  From a vendor perspective, they felt VoiceCon Spring was a more important show.  This is definitely a sign that vendors are being cautious about where they put their marketing dollars. 

The conference overall, took a turn in terms of the hype around it. It was quieter than usual, and I realized that the hype has died down.   UC is no longer a question of if it will happen, but more of when and how it will happen.  Vendors at the show focused more on features and functionality of UC solutions, really getting down to what the actual solution consists of.  Many also pointed out partnerships that will enhance their solutions, as is in the case of NEC and Tellme, where NEC will be combining its services with Tellme’s on-demand platform.  Several topics that I didn’t see however, or wish there were more of were: 

Green IT-GREEN is a big initiative for the president-elect, and I would not dismiss being “green” as a core part of UC’s value proposition.  Enterprises today have either included, or are including green initiatives into their business strategy, in part because of corporate social responsibility, in part for the more obvious, which is the cost savings behind being “green”.  Unified communications brings together groups of global talent at the click of a button, making go-to-market timing much more efficient; the reduction of travel not only helps the air pollution, but also an enterprise’s bottom line; less hardware (servers, wiring closets, etc) means less real estate; relationship building with external partners through unified communications, improves customer satisfaction; and ultimately, when we see communications increasingly embedded into business processes, automation of those processes, which in turn, will help enterprises to reallocate resources towards other business initiatives.  I would also include in this section, offering services in the cloud, which is still very much a nascent market, but not one to be overlooked. 

Mobility-Although VoiceCon has historically not been a wireless show, I firmly believe that the lines between wired and wireless are blurring.  Unified communications is tearing down this wall, but did not see much focus around mobility.  As was evident during Microsoft’s keynote when they introduced their customer, the “convergence” manager from Boeing, leading enterprises understand that the worlds of wired and wireless have come together. I did receive an interesting demo from Mitel, which has understood that the key for mobile UC will be the GUI, and they have opted to mirror the GUI for each supported device (i.e. BB with their own interface, etc).  Many vendors have strong mobile UC stories; however, I didn’t find them prevalent at this show.

Collaboration-Although unified communications is still not widely deployed, and I don’t expect it to evolve to a more comprehensive collaboration strategy within enterprises any time soon, there has been growing interest in what the next step for unified communication is. Collaboration is the long-term evolution of UC, and the umbrella under which UC falls. I look at collaboration as being unified communications+wikis, blogs, communities+enterprise social networking.  While we’re certainly not there yet, it would be great for enterprises, both big and small, to see what the evolution of UC is and have a better understanding of how they all fit with one another. 

So, while it was good to see all the usual suspects attending this event, this industry is changing, and VoiceCon must evolve.  It really is not just about voice anymore, but so much more, of which voice is a small part of. The roles within an IT organization are changing, and targeting the “network” guy or the “telecom” guy is no longer the case. The coming together of IT and telecom is happening and addressing one and not the other is detrimental.  I have seen titles like IT manager evolve into convergence manager and titles such as Chief Information Officer turn into Chief Innovation Officer.  What do you call them?  The telecom guy? The IT guy?  I think I’ve made my point.

For enterprises, it’s critical that a long-term collaboration strategy is put in place.  Although the economy has put many IT initiatives on hold, UC and collaboration should be priorities.  The long- and short-term benefits are well worth it and employees need to begin taking advantage of these tools. Organizational behavior starts from the top, and management must implement policies that will encourage the use of UC and collaboration tools. Cisco has been a vendor that has demonstrated that they practice what they preach.  With a mandate from the top to cut 1 billion dollars in CAPEX/OPEX, the use of these tools is critical to making that happen. Conducting business doesn’t stop just because you can’t get on an airplane.  It’s critical that the necessary tools be put in place as to not disrupt business.

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Vanessa Alvarez
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Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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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 by Paul Stockford
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Here is an excellent article about the “smartphone” becoming your next computer.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/smartphones/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210605369

I might rephrase the title to something like “Is The Mobile Handheld Computer Going To Become Your Next ‘Smartphone’? From a UC perspective, you are damn right it will!

As I pointed out in my last post about Citrix and it’s new policy of “BYOC” (Bring Your Own Computer) for its employees, the big hangup for enterprise mobility has been security and device support. Mobility is where the flexibility of UC really pays off most, much more so than at a desktop. So, as I see it, the security concerns for mobile devices can be relieved by “virtualizing” enterprise applications, just like they are starting to do for desktop use. The hosted application servers control access to sensitive information, in a hosted and secure network service environment but where the enterprise can still manage usage and access. That is where the new network infrastuctures of SOA and SaaS are taking business process applications, so we need to include wireless mobility and UC flexibility into that mix as well.

You should keep an eye on the posts of my colleague, Michael Finneran, about mobile devices and whether these should store business applications and data like a desktop computer, or just be a “terminal.” My opinion? The handheld or portable laptop device should always be at least a mobile “terminal.” If you really need to have reliable access, find a wired connection! Otherwise, use any available wireless access. If you have to do real “work,” and want to carry information with you, you will probably want a more efficient bigger screen and a keyboard, so carry a laptop (and your “smartphone” and find a place to dock and sit down!

Of course, we still need the wireless carriers to be more cooperative with consumers, who are also business users, that need mobile access to and from enterprise applications, exploiting Communication Enabled Business Process (CEBP) and self-service portals. That same need will apply to any consumer who is a “customer” of an enterprise business. But, that’s another debate that isn’t finished.

The big issue that is really shaping up is who will supply those “smartphone” devices, mobile operating systems, and mobile software clients to subscribers of wireless services, and how will enterprise organizations be able to exploit and control those devices in terms of access to proprietary business information by authorized business users. The battle for control is just starting!

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications Information, Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
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