I was so glad to read on Blair Pleasant’s Enterprise Connect blog; Enterprise Connect 2011 What a Show! that the energy and crowds were back. I had been to ITExpo in the fall, and whereas it was better attended than recent shows during the downturn, and had new content, including social media in contact centers, still didn’t quite have the buzz of the shows we used to attend in the past when “telecom” was hopping. So I’m happy. I wish I could have been there, but Florida was too far this month.

I agreed with Blair on her assessment of cloud. We have been hearing it from every vendor from UC vendors to the contact center vendors, and cloud was tweeted to death during the show. However, it won’t happen overnight. Even if cloud shows up in every customer presentation, there is still a lot of investment in on-premise equipment and solutions that companies won’t just throw away. The key now is that everyone is thinking about it, so now they can plan for it, and it will move faster as — Blair said, with a hybrid approach, and with further offerings. Along those lines, Verizon’s announcement of the company’s Unified Communication & Collaboration-as-a-Service (UCCaaS) which they announced at the show, is being trialed now, will be available as a hybrid offering for enterprises later this year.

Siemens Enterprise Communications had another cloud winner (to use Blair’s analogy of the Oscars) with OpenScape Cloud Solutions; that build on and offers the capabilities of OpenScape Voice, OpenScape UC and OpenScape Web Collaboration, as cloud deployments. The solutions include a standard set of defined packages and options, to make it easy for a company to deploy and expand. The goal as with the other Siemens announcements I blogged about in December, is simplicity, cost effectiveness and reliability. These solutions will be hosted in third-party data centers and available through resellers.

An intriguing part of the announcement was OpenScape Mobile UC Client for Android, which featured new OpenScape Communication Gestures that will support the innovative Call Swipe Gesture (interesting name), the intent of which is to seamlessly transfer calls-in-progress to other devices with intuitive hand gestures on a touch screen interface.

Lastly, Siemens Enterprise announced OpenScape Fusion for Google Apps which delivers integration plug-ins for the Google Apps suite, enabling unified communications capabilities such as click to call from within Google cloud-based applications.

Other cloud announcements included Global Crossing introducing the company’s Communication-as-a-Service (CaaS) service. It combines the company’s IP VPN, SIP trunking capabilities and audio conferencing in the first release. Later releases will cover more UC capabilities.

I was also pleased to hear that interoperability was a winner. We talk about this all the time at UCStrategies in blogs, our podcasts and our calls, and although it seems like true interoperability will always be a moving target, all steps will help.  One announcement along these lines was Zeacom’s announcement that the Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC) will interoperate (see there is that word again) with Microsoft Lync 2010 is a further proof point of the blending of UC with the contact center.

Once again, I wish I could have been there. So if there was that much buzz, Eric and Fred, please, please, bring a west coast show back to San Francisco!!!.

Tags: Collaboration, Contact Center, Mobile UC, Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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I know that one of my UC Strategies colleagues, Don Van Doren, attended the 2011 HIMSS Conference in Atlanta and should be able to report more details in how UC is making progress with health care applications. However, I was very impressed to see Avaya jumping in with both feet to exploit mobile devices for both hospital staff as well as mobile patient contacts to fully exploit UC for operational efficiency and effectiveness. (Never mind reduced telephony costs because of IP Telephony and SIP trunking!)

I have always seen mobility as the real driver for end user interest and benefits from UC and Avaya has finally connected some of the dots between the hospital environment, health care information systems, and patients who are not in a hospital environment but are key participants in operational performance issues. Given that the health care topic is at the top of this country’s financial concerns, anything that will help improve the performance of health care activities will get attention from everybody!

So, the headlines that got my attention are some of Avaya’s new solutions announced at HIMSS this past week. What’s important is that this is not just a start-up company with a bright idea, but an experienced technology provider with an established market share that is finally delivering something significantly better to the marketplace. (So, expect others to follow suit accordingly!)

• Mobile Device Checkout - Basically, this new function supports “dual personna” mobility on premise by letting hospital staff use their own, personalized mobile devices to be be automatically accessible through the hospital’s phone system and WLAN,  by generating a temporary unique phone number. It allows for role-based-contacts, rather than having to know specific individual names and numbers, and it ties into a presence-based system for locating personnel. Yeah!
• Nurse Call Response - This solution replaces the need for a patient to contact a nurse’s station in order to talk to the nurse responsible for their care, but will initiate the contact directly with the appropriate nurse either available or assigned such responsibility. This reduces the wasted time delay and frustrations for a patient who needs immediate attention. (The announcement did not mention any options for such call contacts to exploit the benefits of UC with visual, contextual information on a smart-phone device.)
• Patient Admit Coordinator - This “workflow” solution targets patients coming to an Emergency Room for treatment to be admitted to a hospital bed. Currently, such procedures are paper-based, slow, inefficient, and costly. (I know from recent personal experience!)
• Patient Appointment Reminder - This is not really anything new, but is a basic application that can capitalize on the multi-modality of UC for personalized outbound notifications. It is particularly useful for health care and especially for senior citizens whose memory starts to suffer with age. It is also useful for other types of reminders, such as time to take a particular medication, or if an automated patient monitoring application detects a new problem, the need to see a particular doctor or take a particular medication suddenly becomes critical.

The above applications are tied to mobility of the individual end user, either as a contact initiator or a contact recipient, which in turn is tied to UC for flexible communications. I am sure there are other apps/solution examples in the health care environment, and some of these will also apply to other business activities, e.g., appointment reminders, CEBP applications, etc. So, I am glad to see some of the fundamental visions of UC that I and my colleagues have been pushing for several years starting to be realized in the real world.

Tags: Contact Center, Mobile UC, Mobility, Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
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At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Verizon CTO Tony Melone re-iterated the carrier’s planned commercial introduction of Voice over IP over LTE (VoLTE) before the end of 2012. He also stated that 4 LTE-compatible smartphones will be available no later than this June.  These are dual-mode devices, using traditional 2G cellular services for voice.

Why is VoLTE such a big deal? Here are just a few reasons:

For customers:

• Since the technology is all IP-based , this will make it much easier to for customers to use a wide variety of mobile and mobilized UC applications that also include voice, including those embedded in communications-enabled business processes (CEPB) like click to call embedded in a CRM application.
• VoLTE calls can interface to carrier-certified SIP stacks and applications, just as SIP Trunk services do today. This will make it less cumbersome for both SIP-based mobile and fixed handsets to use the same application –either network-based (like hosted IP audioconferencing) or premises-based. I expect the arrival of VoLTE will facilitate the introduction of many more mobile and mobilized UCaaS applications than are currently available. With VoLTE, FMC may finally come into its own.
• The same methods to monitor and maintain session and application performance can be used across all applications. Of course, these methods themselves continue to, ahem, “mature”. They haven’t “arrived” yet, not by a long shot.

For suppliers:

• On the mobile carrier side, use of the same technology to support all mobile applications is a necessary precursor to ultimately retiring 2G (cellular voice) service. We have seen this before—with the complete retirement of analog cellular technology just a few years ago. This process will take some time, but when it does, it will allow the carrier to re-deploy all of its licensed spectrum in a much more efficient manner, supporting several more magnitudes of simultaneous sessions than it can today.
• It will provide the basis for mobile device vendors, applications developers and carriers to work together to create the necessary methods to offer better end-end security, and as alluded to above, meaningful end-end SLAs. Finally, it will become harder and harder for all mobile suppliers to dodge these legitimate enterprise requirements.
• It will set the stage to unleash great innovation—on applications, devices, and ancillary services. This includes collaboration and UC. And if mobile carriers do their work very well, it can also create a necessary cornerstone of potentially huge wave(s) of (multi-media) cloud-based services. When VoLTE becomes real, we’ll have the opportunity, finally, to see how much an IMS architecture that supports both fixed and mobile SIP stacks can deliver on all of its promises. Many of us who are friends of UC Strategies can hardly wait.

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility by Lisa Pierce
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The saying “All roads lead to Rome”, could for this week be changed to “All communication roads lead to Barcelona.” The big names in mobility are there; Ericsson, Nokia, Microsoft, RIM, Motorola, Broadcom, Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE Corporation and Huawei and more, but also IT heavy weights such as Google’s Eric Schmidt, Paul Otellini from Intel and Cisco’s John Chanmbers. The line between IT and mobility feels like they are officially gone. More and more users choose mobile devices to access the Internet, so it is not surprising that so many choose to visit this gigantic event.

Most interesting was probably this week’s announcement that Nokia partners up with Microsoft to use Windows Phone for their smartphones. This new strategy leaves a lot of questions, and the Nokia stock declined when the news became official. Nokia also negotiated with Google, but in the end they choose to work with Microsoft. This direction is not surprising since the world’s largest mobile phone supplier would have effectively created a duopoly with Apple iOS, if they had chosen Android over Microsoft. Microsoft has other challenges as well. Their efforts to claim the mobile device has not been as successful as many anticipated. The partnership with Nokia is really their chance. I am sure the two companies will work day and night to produce new phones. When Stephen Elop (former executive at Microsoft) president and chief executive officer of Nokia Corporation held a press conference after the Microsoft announcement he was confident, but made clear that they have a long way to go before this cooperation shows any results.

When Steve Balmer of Microsoft held his key-note he said that they will release two major updates to Windows Phone and make it possible to run Internet Explorer 9 on their phones. By using a hardware accelerant it will be possible to play h.264 encoded clips in the browser and get the same performance as running an application natively on the phone.

Ericsson announced a concept that will allow mobile operators to offer a cloud-pc together with Akamai. Ericsson explained that their vision is that our world is completely connected via wireless networks where everything is tied together using machine-to-machine technology. Hans Vestberg said that Ericsson will be the leading provider to the networked society. Ericsson is strong in mobility and broadband solutions, now they are investing in the third area, the cloud. Their service consists of a thin computer with a special version of Linux. Their servers use virtualization, network and security technology and was demonstrated running Microsoft Excel from a server in India via High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), high-speed 3G data services provided by cellular carriers worldwide that use the GSM technology.

But MWC is also about gadgets.

• Android is one of the big players where Google in only a few years have created a dominant position. MWC presented far more Android devices than any other.
• Motorola is back in the game again with new devises.
• Chinese company ZTE presented a number of 4G pad devices and thus trying to enter into the premium segment.
• Sony-Ericsson presented new devices before the show started. But for enterprise customers the business mobile Xperia Pro with built in support for device management, Microsoft Office document editing, and native Microsoft Exchange connector, a well-spaced QWERTY keyboard that slides out and Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
• Samsung presented a new Galaxy S II with larger screen, thinner casing, full HD, 8M pixel camera and voice control. They also demonstrated a new Galaxy Tab 10.1 with a 10.1 inch screen. But their strategic alliance with Adobe, Cisco and Sybase is even more interesting for enterprise customers and will be interesting to see what they will achieve together.
• HTC presented five new devises, among them HTC Scribe which allows the user to write with a pen directly on the screen.
• LG presented mobile phones and Pads that could show 3D without special glasses. This is a feature from their TV side.

So, what was missing? Or should I say who was missing? Apple.
As usual they are not participating in the Barcelona event. But the spirit of Apple does hoover the show. The rumors of new versions for Ipad and Iphone, what they will include keep flourishing.

But hey, who doesn’t love a mystery?

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility by Jason Andersson
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Sometimes marketing ideas go way to fast from idea to implementation.

Two partnering communication-suppliers in Sweden have together branded what a “Smart company” is, in terms of communication services:

A company is defined as smart that gives service to its customers when it suits them, has a mobile way of working and can share relevant internal systems with clients and partners. (TelekomIdag)

Then they have measured Swedish companies and organizations how well they are at “being smart”.

Sounds like a good idea, right. Well it depends on the reasons for the index. Both these companies want to position themselves as the key successful factors for those who want to be a smart company, and who doesn’t. But really what they are trying to do is what they always do (and should do) sell, sell, sell. They are not doing this to help or even to get any type of truth out; on the contrary, they will get organizations that are unsure of what they need to do, to invest in things their customers are not looking for.

Ok, let’s take their smart company definition one point at the time to find out what, if anything really is smart and what is absolutely necessary when doing business. In essence we want to see what in the definition will give a company or organization a cutting edge (or smartness) compared with the rest:

• Gives service to its customers

This is a key to ANY company or organization providing a product or service. First you give service to your existing customers. To win other customers, you can compete in any of the four P’s (Product, Place, Price and Promotion). More recently, three more P’s have been added to the marketing mix: People, Process and Physical Evidence. People focus on who uses the product or service, Process on how it reaches the customer and finally Physical Evidence is demonstrating other customers’ satisfaction, which is proof of customer service.

• When it suits them (the customer)

Have you tried to give service when the customer isn’t there? Not a good idea. Service happens when the rubber hits the road, so to speak. Service is live, attentive and can be done in a number of ways over a number of different media. But a company or organization should implement those channels that their customers ask for, or will ask for. For example, I don’t expect service if it will endanger my business; Say my bank wants to give me advice and uses an unsecured way of doing it, I would refuse such service. I don’t expect, or want, service if I am involved in something else; If my computer provider calls me when I am with a customer to help me sort out my network card which is not working, I am not too happy. Service is and always will be when it suits me, the customer, otherwise it is a nuisance.

• Has a mobile way of working

First of all; define mobile way of working! Is it that I can bring my laptop anywhere I want to? Is it that I have one number to my fixed phone and the same to my mobile? Is it that I can choose any of the above? Second, if my doctor is mobile when I come to the emergency room, I will not be too happy; I want him there, not mobile. Sorry for the bad example, but mobility is great, but not for everyone. It will, for sure, be for more and more people, but for everyone? Don’t think so. To measure if a company is smart based on a specific mode of accessing communication services is like covering your one eye and trying to measure the distance between two trees. Very tricky, if possible at all. And really is mobility not a cutting edge anymore? I think it is commodity, no matter how you slice it we expect to be able to take a number of office features with us, on the road, in our home office or while off site.

• Can share relevant internal systems.

This is also about definitions. What is a relevant internal system? Internet banking, e-government and other implementations are great. This is really about being smart. Doing more with less, or giving more information to the customer. Help customers to help themselves. Let partners know shipping status, get ordering details, or service case details. But is this is the hands of a communications supplier? Or is it really about publishing information, sharing and presenting it using web services, IVR system and other technologies?

A really good communication strategy starts with identifying who the customer is, how they wish to communicate, and then implementing a reactive and responsive solution that adapts and grows with the customer and organization.

Well, ok, a definition of a “smart company” is kind of good to get at least my juices running. But claiming that these four areas makes an organization smarter than others and then saying it “mirrors how good companies are in using information and communications technology” is not fair. And when they say they “hope together to be able to raise this average”, it becomes clear that their real purpose is to sell, sell, sell. And that is ok, I guess, but not smart marketing. The intent is to be objective but their arguments just became subjective and very biased.

Just my two cents anyway.

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Jason Andersson
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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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Based on statements it made yesterday, the FCC’s Net Neutrality decision (FCC 10-201), leaves current and future U.S. UC customers and suppliers in no clearer or more certain circumstances than before.  Uncertainty often inhibits investment in innovation, which is the exact opposite of the FCC’s stated intentions.  Some examples:

1.       The FCC’s logic clearly relies on its authority to regulate telecommunications, and thus it implicitly re-classifies Broadband Access and Internet Services as Telecommunications Services.  Up to this time, both have been explicitly treated as Information Services, and thus largely exempt from either FCC or legislative oversight.  This decision is so divisive that two current FCC Commissioners believe the justification used by the three other FCC Commissioners is illegal.  Thus it’s a virtual certainty the decision will be challenged by Congress, which warned the FCC earlier to not attempt to exceed its rulemaking authority.  Several facilities-based providers, most notably, Verizon, are rumored to be evaluating lawsuits to overturn at least some of these rules.

2.       While not everything in the FCC’s decision is controversial, here are some highlights that effectively create greater uncertainty (or uneven-ness in the broadband playing field):

a.       The decision attempts to regulate both wired and wireless Broadband access.  As seen just last April in the Comcast vs. FCC decision, federal courts have already made it clear the FCC lacks this type of rulemaking authority over cable companies (this was established decades ago by an Act of Congress).  Thus by default, “wired” refers to access provided by telecom carriers.  Also, this is the first time the FCC is explicitly attempting to regulate wireless access as Broadband.  However, its language in yesterday’s press release is quite vague (as of this time, the decision itself is not available on the FCC’s website).  It’s also a complete reversal from the FCC’s preliminary findings in the Net Neutrality NPRM it published in June (see http://www.fcc.gov/ftp/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2010/db0617/FCC-10-114A1.pdf

b.      Assures unfettered access to content.  Whether fixed or mobile, the FCC’s decision seeks to assure unimpeded access to “lawful” content so that Broadband providers can’t favor their own services or applications over those supplied by third parties.  This makes it unclear if and how 3G/4G providers will be able to continue with their existing relationships with select applications providers. 

c.       Seeks greater authority over a broad swath of IP networks.  In this decision, the FCC intends to extend its rulemaking and enforcement authority not only to Internet services and Broadband, but to any and all current/future substitute technologies that may be used in their place.  The FCC expressed concern about the investments Internet facilities-based providers may make in other technologies at the expense of their investments in the Internet.  It’s not clear if the FCC plans to follow up this decision with explicit guidelines on what constitutes acceptable future investments in IP networks—something to which all facilities-based providers would strenuously object.   While they were not explicitly named, this kind of dark cloud could inhibit the pace of carrier’s investments building out enterprise WANs built on MPLS and Ethernet services.  That could in turn a chilling effect on the adoption of many types of business applications, including the use of enterprise-grade WANs to support UC and related collboration technologies on a multi-site basis.

d.      Prohibits third parties like content providers from paying facilities-based providers to treat their applications on a favorable basis.  This is an outgrowth of spats like the recent one between Comcast and Level 3 on the delivery of Netflix content (see http://www.level3.com/index.cfm?pageID=491&PR=965).  If it holds, this decision could affect all over-the-top providers.  If the full decision fails to prohibit consumers or other customers (like businesses) from paying for the preferential treatment of certain applications (via techniques like CoS or DPI), then it will in effect have approved it.

As mentioned, the above findings represent my preliminary conclusions.  Once the full FCC decision is available on its website (typically in a matter of a few days), I’ll be able to provide UC Strategies readers with a more thorough analysis.

Tags: Collaboration, Mobility, Unified Communications, Video by Lisa Pierce
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In the early days of UC, “softphones” (screen-based PC telephony), offered UC flexibility where traditional desktop “hardphones” were lacking.  It is still a viable alternative for wired, location-based telephony. However, mobile smartphones are making a huge dent in the consumer and business user markets for multimodal UC applications.  That is, until the larger screen size of tablets came into the picture. Now, a user has two kinds of mobile devices, one convenient for the hand and one to carry along.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece on the subject of mobility and what the user experience would be like if the user was standing up or sitting down.  Obviously, that experience will vary with the size of the device, the screen, and its impact on on the user interface. When worse comes to worse, and no screen can be looked at (e.g., driving a car), then speech interfaces come into  play, and that is one good reason that mobility needs multimodal UC flexibility.

So, with UC convergence, business applications need to be endpoint device independent, not only in terms of screen-based interfaces vs. speech interfaces, but also based on the size of the screens for handheld devices , portable tablets and iPads, and wired desktop PCs. The choice will be based upon who the users are and what they need to do their jobs, whether premise-based or mobile. It is becoming intuitively obvious that most business users will want to use a single, personalized smartphone when mobile for both their business and personal contacts with “dual persona” access management and services (two addresses). In addition, they can also use a desktop device on a transient basis, using the current network address of their choice.

All this represents a significant shift in old telephony networks, but not to Internet communications, which have always been “virtual.”  So, that’s what is shaking up the enterprise communications world while the migration shift slowly takes place. In the meantime, will multimodal PC “softphones” be replaced more easily by portable/mobile iPads and tablets when a bigger screen is needed for data output? How will the enterprise support such flexible mobile service with CEBP - based applications? Will the choice of mobile tablet become like the smartphones, that of the individual end users’?

Variance in device screen sizes brings with it the problems of standards, impact on Operating Systems, as well as the user applications themselves. The success of Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) will be very dependent on resolving these issues, because outbound notifications and information delivery to individual end users will be based on greater (process-to-person) accessibility through user mobility.

Tags: Mobile UC by Art Rosenberg
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While many eyes were on unified communications and collaboration this month, and speech technologies are certainly part of that, speech held its own for announcements in November too. Just taking a look at Nuance alone, there were quite a few. This didn’t even include the tasty, but so far false rumor that Apple was acquiring Nuance. This came about when Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, misspoke at an event, mentioning that Apple had acquired Nuance. It created quite a stir and a bump in Nuance’s stock price.

Despite the “rumor”, Nuance was quite busy in November, boasting several announcements across the company’s product lines. Nuance added another mobile device to the customer list by announcing that Nuance’s natural language voice technology is behind the new Genius Button and Hands-Free mode innovations on T-Mobiles’ myTouch 4G phone, which will allow consumers to speak, receive and send text messages completely by voice, by pressing a button and saying “Turn Hands-Free Mode on,”. This turns on Bluetooth capabilities, providing complete hands free use. While this wasn’t a big announcement, I’m all for it.

Nuance’s Healthcare division announced an outsourced transcription service - Nuance Transcription Services, which expands their clinical transcription services portfolio. This draws upon resources they received through the company’s acquisition of Outsourcing Solutions, Inc. and Encompass Medical Transcription Inc. They also introduced PowerScribe 360, which is an advanced radiology reporting and communications platform that combines the best capabilities of PowerScribe and RadWare into a unified solution. Nuance claims that 1/3 of all radiologists in the country now use PowerScribe. Also in the radiology area, Nuance announced collaboration with a privately held company - Montage Healthcare Solutions, that does search and analytics on radiology reports, to improve the ability to search radiology reports. Hmmm. Any time I see privately-held company and Nuance in the same paragraph I smell mergers and acquisitions, but I digress.

Nuance had several mobile applications announcements too. These included saying that Nuance technology is behind the voice-to-text on the new Ask for iPhone application from Ask.com, and that Nuance Dragonmobile technology is behind the new price check for Amazon application for the IPhone as well.

Another announcement that I really liked, although it was also not earth shattering, was Nuance’s announcement that they will be working with WGBH’s National Center for Accessible Media, to improve the quality of close captioned media. A US Department of Education-funded project, this effort seeks to improve the close-captioning of real-time news programming for the hearing impaired. Nuances’ contribution will be using the company’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking technology as the basis for developing customized language processing, data analysis, and benchmarking tools for the project. As a long time proponent for using speech technologies to improve accessibility, I’m all for this one too.

Although not a formal announcement, last week I also spoke with Nuance on how the company is extending Nuance on Demand to include extensions for CTI and ACD, essentially giving Nuance the capabilities of hosting entire contact centers rather than just self-service. This solution includes speech self-service, intelligent routing, screen pops, and fully-featured ACD capabilities. Nuance has paid particular attention to extending their goal of improving the caller experience by providing capabilities such as having the self-service “agent” continue interacting with the caller while the caller is in queue, and populating the agent screen with call context when the caller requests to be transferred to an agent.

Nuance has seen 98% growth in its hosted on-demand customer service applications in the past year, with about half of new customers moving over to Nuance from other hosted service providers. Nuance’s hosted offering is now processing over 2 billion minutes annually, with just self service alone. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that Nuance is now making the foray into hosting the entire contact center. It makes sense from the standpoint that they have had pretty significant success in hosting, and the fact that growth in virtual contact centers in general is growing exponentially across the industry.

This is a good thing for existing Nuance customers who choose to move the contact center to Nuance because they will get better end-to-end analytics capabilities if they choose to do so. It is also a good solution for adding on remote offices or remote agents, and lends itself well to a hybrid approach as well, as Nuance can overlay a CTI adapter onto a Nortel or Avaya contact center and get the intelligence they need to route calls to a Nuance contact center agent or one of the others, for example. It will be interesting to see how competing vendors react to this, however.

We are at a cherry picking time in the contact center industry right now. It is a decade past when we churned a lot of the installed base because of the millennium change, there is a huge installed base of systems out there that are getting to end of life, and hosted solutions are now a common choice. Not to mention the churn that is being caused by consolidation, such as we have seen with Avaya and Nortel. So, all companies that have moved into the virtual contact center space, including Nuance, are in a good spot to capitalize on the chance to win contact centers over to their offerings. One caveat, Nuance isn’t going into the “hosted contact center” wherein they provide agents, just agent management applications.

As an additional proof point of the move to the cloud, Five9, an on-demand contact center software provider, also announced the availability of a speech self-service offering in the cloud in November too. Within Release 8 of their Virtual Contact Center product line, Five9 customers can now add IVR as an integrated or standalone product.

Finally, I had originally set out to do one November roundup of speech announcements, but Nuance has just been too busy this month to bury them in a bigger blog. I’ll blog about the others shortly.

Tags: Collaboration, Contact Center, Mobile UC, Mobility, Speech Technologies by Nancy Jamison
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