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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Year three of the unified communications push finally is showing signs of saneness in the marketing messages surrounding UC adoption. Maybe it’s partially the economy as companies are so much less likely to go storming ahead with full blown UC deployments, and are instead starting to take a much more measured approach; taking the time to really think hard about which pieces of UC they need now versus later, and taking more careful stock of what they already have (read network readiness). This in turn is forcing vendors to soften their approach. But I would like to think that it’s more than network readiness and the economy that is making this happen. I’d like to think that vendors are looking more broadly at what will benefit customers, and benefit them by implementing solutions in a non-disruptive order, than just pushing the ‘everything UC’ button.

For some vendors, a more sane approach has been taken all along, but now they are becoming more vociferous in their marketing delivery. While at VoiceCon, I talked to Joe Staples, Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing at Interactive Intelligence about their approach to UC and he talked a bit about marketeers gone wild when pushing the UC hype. I had to laugh when he said that even vendors who make headsets now say that they are optimized for UC. It’s a bit much.

Interactive Intelligence’s all in one solutions/platform approach makes it a lot easier to add new capabilities, but even without this Interactive Intelligence takes the approach of asking CIOs what problems are they trying to solve, which of their legacy stuff should stay or go, and if the underlying technology infrastructure is sound and in place. Interactive Intelligence also has the vision of communication based business processes which are discussed in my white paper “Peering Past the Unified Communications Frenzy” (June 2008), and in CEO Don Brown’s white paper “A New Approach to Business Process Automation” (November 2008) which are both downloadable on this site. Also worth listening to is Jim Burton’s interview with Joe Staples in which they discuss the communication-based approach versus communications-enabled one.

As for the addition of solutions to the UC mix that Interactive Intelligence sells, today they announced the addition of SMS to their all-in-one multi-channel contact center suite. This might not be the sexiest UC function, but it does enable customers who are into using SMS to interact with a contact center using the method they prefer and have those SMS messages routed, recorded and reported on the way that a call would be. It also allows the contact center agent to respond back in kind. One additional benefit of using SMS is that contact centers will be able to push messages and important information out to their customers, not just receive messages, so that customers can be notified of events, or status updates on everything from order purchases, special events, sales, or critical information such as when a stock price hits a certain level, etc. Although, with the economy and stock market the way that it is, maybe we don’t want to know the later.

Tags: 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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Mitel

Offsetting the bad news about lay offs at Mitel was their product announcements at VoiceCon. The glitziest is Mitel’s new TeleCollaboration product, due out in Q1′09, that adds to the growing number of telepresence products in the industry. TeleCollaboration is a combination of Mitel’s conferencing and collaboration software, video from Magor Communications (www.Magorcorp.com) and Mitel’s conferencing units and handsets.

Although Cisco TelePresence seems to be the gold standard for video conferencing these days, it costs gold to implement. Although Mitel didn’t announce pricing yet, they assured me that it will be a fraction of the upper level Cisco product. I’ve been happy to see others add to the stack of affordable solutions, particularly when they add productivity enhancements as this announcement does by providing collaboration and recording capabilities in the meeting. Still, they also provide life-sized video and spatial audio as part of the package.

An additional announcement Mitel made was SiMple Personal Licensing (SMPL) of their UC products, which includes role-based software licensing, taking into account roles of different user types within an organization. Their packages in the typical basic, standard and advanced format are designed to make it easier to deploy UC. They have bundled pre-integrated packages by user type, but also provide the flexibility for an organization to add additional applications off a laundry list of UC features. The packages are:

• Basic User - someone who might not even have a PC. Package includes a hard or soft phone (including hot desking)

• Standard User - Someone who has a PC and to whom communication is important. Package includes basic plus voicemail with unified messaging and a basic UC client

• Advanced User - Someone with a PC and who is reliant on communication in their job. Package includes standard plus voicemail with UM, mobile phone twinning, and an advanced UC client with presence.

Mitel also announced their own UC client and did some product renaming - Mitel Unified Communication Express 2.0 (formerly Integrated Office Companion), Unified Communicator Advanced 2.0 (formerly Your Assistant Premium), and Unified Communicator Mobile 1.6 (formerly Mobile Extension)

Avaya

Avaya advanced the user interface for UC with the addition of a speech-to-text (STT) solution for converting voicemail messages into text, delivered as an email to the end user. The voicemail then becomes an optional .wav attachment. The solution allows users to read voicemails, keep written records of them, allows them to respond via email or voice and the converted messages can be saved and searched on. SpinVox, one of the initial entrants in the STT area partnered up with Mutare Software; a developer of interactive voice and web applications, to deliver the solution to Avaya. STT is integrated into Avaya Modular Messaging unified messaging and is available in English, French, German and Spanish. It includes Mutare Software’s EVM gateway and comes with SpinVox’s STT messaging service.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
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Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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What a surprise! A judge found some of the provisions in Cisco’s ICPA (indirect channel partner agreement) to be “clearly one-sided” and “unconscionable”, and found no evidence that Cisco has ever negotiated a partner contract. Now I could say I was shocked and appalled, but the truth is that I don’t recall ever seeing an indirect channel partner contract - from any major manufacturer - that wasn’t one-sided and non-negotiable. At times, the one-sided nature of partner agreements has even led me to question the use of the word “partner” to describe the relationship between some manufacturers and their reseller channel.

In this particular situation, the provisions in question revolved around termination (of the partner) and damage limitations (the vendor’s, of course). I understand the need of a business to protect its’ interests. However, what I don’t understand is protecting those interests at the expense of the “partner”. Whatever happened to the idea that a partnership is undertaken to be a win-win business relationship? The point is to create an environment where partners create and share in success - and sometimes in failure. Not to pick on Cisco - because they have some excellent elements in their partner program - but this is a great example of how one-sided the vendor-reseller relationship can be.

The data industry is a wonderful place to be. The pace is fast (make that frantic), and the changes in technology are exciting. But I believe that the industry has hurt itself with the dysfunctional relationship between manufacturers and their reseller channel. Rather than seeking ways to strengthen their resellers and help them be more successful (increasing the sales of the manufacturer’s products), many manufacturers have actually fostered the very elements that lead to the failure of many of their own channel “partners”. For example, we see partnership agreements that require a great deal of the reseller and give little in return, including “sales” training which encourages “box selling” leading to low margins, flooding geographic areas with many resellers with the same product competing against each other, onerous certification requirements for infrastructure products, and on and on. On my website, www.sierrasummitgroup.com, I discuss what is essential for resellers to be successful, and mention the importance of vendor selection in the reseller’s success. When all else is stripped away from the relationship, the degree to which vendors actually contribute to resellers’ success directly impacts the volume of products sold - i.e. the vendors’ success.

My words of advice…. vendors beware! Those one-sided channel “partnerships” may now come under some heavy scrutiny from the “other side” of the partnership.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Pam Avila
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I have a love/hate relationship with Avaya.

Way back in the pre-email, pre-cell phone days, when I started as an industry analyst with Dataquest, one of my clients was AT&T.  AT&T was a company I always admired and at one time in my checkered career I even tried to get a job with them.  Their human resources function was as screwed up as most big companies’ but that’s another story.  While AT&T was my client at Dataquest I had a great relationship with them.

As you know, AT&T begat Lucent which begat Avaya.  As the voice messaging industry was winding down in the ‘90s Avaya stepped in and acquired another company that I admired and had as a client, Octel.  As a result, I had lots of former Octel friends and former AT&T friends at Avaya.

This past Saturday, November 1^st 2008, marks the ninth anniversary of the founding of my company, Saddletree Research.  It also marks the beginning of my relationship with Avaya hitting the skids.  The love affair still existed back in 1999 due to the many friends I still had at Avaya from my Dataquest and In-Stat days, but I could instinctively feel things starting to change as any jilted lover can.

These days my relationship with Avaya is something akin to Avaya being a former girlfriend after a particularly acrimonious breakup.  We don’t have anything to do with each other except once a year when Avaya invites me to their annual analyst briefing.  We smile at each other and reminisce about the old days and better times, but I think we both know that we’re never going to get back together.  Avaya only dances with the big guys these days, like Gartner and Yankee, and select special friends.  I’m an independent in every sense of the word.  Gartner and Yankee are the football players.  I’m the soccer playing nerd.  A polite exchange of smiles is about as far as I get with Avaya.

When I go to their annual analyst fandango I endeavor to be civil and take in what they have to say.  Still, I have to admit it’s like seeing the old girlfriend that you never really got over.  Life has moved on and all parties have survived, but there’s still that faint feeling in the pit of the stomach.  The truth is I really don’t want to like Avaya anymore but they occasionally do something that still brings back happier memories of days gone by.

This year I connected with the usual Avaya suspects who gave me the simultaneous polite smile/brush off combo, but I also met some interesting people with surprisingly innovative ideas.  Most of these interesting people are recent additions to Avaya so they may not have been told the analyst relations rules yet.  I found these people to be candid and sincere, which were not traits that I had come to associate with Avaya over the past few years. 

One of these interesting, mold-busting people I met was Avaya’s relatively new vice president and general manager of unified communications, Steve Borcich.  When we sat down to talk I was expecting the rote Avaya company recitation from Steve but instead I found a guy who was, to use an already overused expression, thinking outside the box.  We talked about UC in general and in particular about how it could be applied in various business environments.  For example, Steve had thought through how UC could be applied in retail settings like the big box do-it-yourself stores to locate expert help regardless of which store an individual worked in.  He even talked about bringing in experts from outside the store who would provide customer assistance while at the same time promoting their own businesses.  Common sense but pretty smart nonetheless.

The idea of federation, as Steve described it, isn’t a new one but the way he described the use of UC in a federated arrangement showed that Avaya has been giving UC some serious thought beyond just beating the competition.  Steve’s idea of extended customer service could certainly be applied to the contact center and beyond.  I was impressed.

I still met plenty of Avaya people who looked me straight in the eye and told me they would do something when I know they had no intention of actually doing it.  I can usually tell who these people are and they haven’t let me down yet.  On the other hand there are plenty of new people at Avaya and they have to be given a chance to prove they’re different.  I hope some of them are reading this blog.  Don’t let us down.  People like me are counting on people like you, Steve.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Paul Stockford
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During this election season, I try to do what I can to help the candidates I’d like to see win, and the propositions I’d like to see pass or not pass (I live in California where we have about a dozen propositions to vote on). I decided to make phone calls to undecided voters for my presidential candidate and one of the propositions, and I got to experience what outbound call center agents/telemarketers get to experience every working day. And they have my deepest respect!

My two experiences were very different, as are various call centers, depending on their level of technological adoption. The phone calling system for the presidential candidate was pretty sophisticated, and via the Internet, it provided me with a list of key voters to contact in battleground states, a script to use in my conversations, and an easy interface to report back my contacts. Because it was web based, I was able to make calls from the comfort of my home. The script was simple to follow, and I clicked on the various options to report on the contact (eg, not home, refused to talk, non-English speaker, etc.), as well as which candidate they were voting for or leaning toward. It was a well-run operation that made it simple to make calls. There were links to sites providing background information, FAQs, etc. in case I wanted to read up on the candidate’s platform and policies before making calls. The system automatically kept track of how many calls I made, the outcome of the call, and any additional notes or comments I added.

My experience with the phone calls for one of the propositions was totally different. It was not computerized, and I had to go to the phone bank to make the calls instead of calling from my home. The script was printed on several sheets of paper, and was very complex to follow (eg, if the person answers yes to question 1, go to question 3, which was 2 pages away). The names and numbers of people to call were provided to us on paper, and we had to keep track of the calls and responses on two different pieces of paper, which made it very confusing. At the end of the night we had to manually add up how many calls we made, how many wrong numbers we reached, how many people refused to talk to us, didn’t speak English, etc.

Making calls for the proposition was a very manual process, and not at all easy to navigate through, while calling on behalf of the candidate was all computerized and online, making it much simpler and more user friendly. It was much easier to stick to the script using the computerized process rather than the manual process, so I assume I was more effective while speaking to voters since I didn’t have to shuffle through different pages to follow the script. And because I had to manually record my progress and the results of the calls on two different forms, it was more likely I made mistakes and left out information.

While I didn’t come in contact with overtly hostile voters, not everyone was willing to talk or listen to my spiel (not that I blame them - like everyone else, I don’t like it when I get these kinds of calls). For the most part the people I contacted were cordial, but there were certainly a few who were pretty rude - even when they supported the candidate on whose behalf I was calling. Again, I hate receiving these calls, and I can’t blame anyone who is less than overwhelmed to chat about their political leanings.

What are the lessons learned from this experience? First, provide the right tools for your contact center agents (inbound or outbound). We’ve had CTI for years, but how many contact center actually have CTI implemented? Way too few.  Good tools can make all the difference. Also, make the process as simple and easy to use as possible for the agents - it will make them more effective and productive. A good user interface is important for both agent efficiency and accuracy in terms of reporting and tracking results.

And lastly, respect and value your contact center agents - they have a very difficult job that requires interfacing with people who aren’t always friendly or courteous. Give your agents a big pat on the back - they deserve it.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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Enghouse Systems Ltd., and its more well-known US subsidiary, Syntellect, acquired Envox Group AB this week. Speaking just of Syntellect and Envox alone, both have communication development platforms, extremely similar products and practices providing speech self-service and contact center solutions to the enterprise and hosted markets.

At first I wondered, consolidation play or something else? Certainly it’s a consolidation play. With more than 1.24 million IVR ports and more than a million contact center agents worldwide; this obviously gives Syntellect a leg up in the market share category. It also broadens their geographic coverage from a partner perspective too. But it is more than consolidation. Without going into deep detail about the nuances of their different product sets, it also gives Syntellect more product options quicker than they might have had alone. For example, Envox has broad support for a number of media types on their platform, which Syntellect does too, but this will give Syntellect support for media such as video and SMS right away. So, whereas the contact center industry vendors talk up video, it certainly isn’t prolific yet, but the addition of this capability will position Syntellect customers to take advantage of video as more uses for it in the contact center become apparent. I also believe this will speed up any potential move on Syntellect’s part of providing customers with unified communications type functionality.

Envox customers will also benefit from Syntellect’s product portfolio as well. Syntellect’s Customer Interaction Management suite brings a fully featured set of multi-media contact center capabilities that can leverage the existing Envox platform ports. Also, Voiyager, Syntellect’s superlative development and testing solution for VoiceXML applications that I have regularly blogged about will be a bonus for Envox customers. If Syntellect could combine Voiyager with some of the development tools that Envox has it would be a knock out. Just a thought, if this merging of product sets is done well.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
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