Score one for Microsoft!  In a recent blog on the Microsoft Dynamics Partner Community site, Kevin Machayya talked about a special offer - Analyst Relations for the Channel - for Microsoft channel partners.  Once I worked through the corporate speak, I figured out that it provides the partners with access to market trend data and business strategy validation such as Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, as well as access to Gartner webcasts and a special Gartner portal.  Of course, I can’t get into the partner portal to see if there’s an associated cost, but I’m hoping not - or that it’s very minimal and hence affordable.

And score one for IBM, who is offering to their PartnerWorld members sales training - real sales training, not product sales training - for a number of vertical markets.  This one isn’t free, but for the value that it provides, it’s well worth the nominal expense for any VAR (or telecom dealer, for that matter) who wants to shift from selling “boxes” to the more profitable selling solutions.  Years ago when IBM only sold direct and used solution selling sales training that was the envy of many manufacturers, I had the opportunity to be trained  IBM-style (long story….old history).  I’ve been a “consultative selling” evangelist ever since because I know it works!

So why am I tooting the horn for these two vendors?  FINALLY, we’re seeing manufacturers take significant positive steps to actually help their channel partners become stronger and smarter.  What vendor plans their future strategy without having market data to refer to?  What reseller can afford to pay for access to similar market data?  But they’ve needed the information just as much as their vendor partners.  How long have vendors been offering product sales training to their partners, when savvy and successful resellers have figured out that they can’t be successful selling products - they have to sell solutions and professional services?  This is especially true in the UC space.

A few sales leads that usually don’t go very far….. marketing collateral that focuses on products, not solutions….. marketing funds that are usually only good for product-focused events/advertising…..all typical elements of most vendors’ channel programs.  FINALLY we’re seeing signs that vendors are figuring out the same thing that I’ve been recommending over and over and over again on the Sierra Summit Group website and have integrated into the UCStrategies UC Summit events - today’s resellers (solutions integrators) need more from their vendor partners if they are to survive and thrive.  With an economic downturn still in full swing, a better set of sales and sales support tools are essential to equipping channel partners with every possible advantage to drive revenue. It’s time for vendors to think outside the traditional channel program/support box!  Let’s see more vendors stepping up!  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the reseller channel succeeds, everyone wins!

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Pam Avila
1 Comment »

Last week in Las Vegas I got to follow up on Cisco’s contact center analyst day by attending Ciscolive, which is Cisco’s big customer event, co-located with C-Scape, Cisco’s main analyst event. Ciscolive was huge! In the main keynote there were 12,500 customers, a lot of analysts, and 23K total attendees if you include those participating virtually. As usual, John Chambers was completely engaging speaking on the vision that Cisco has with snippets such as, “Economies of the future won’t be information economies, but network economies”, and “Every mistake I’ve made as a leader is in being too slow or in having speed without process and being replicable.”

Ciscolive also had what Cisco called, ‘The World of Solutions Expo’, which was essentially a trade show of Cisco and Cisco partners. In the collaboration area we got to see and hear much more about UC and collaboration products, such as Cisco Pulse, and I was happy to hear that Cisco has come a long way in getting the answers to some of the questions I had last November when they announced those products.

The best part of the keynote was the Cius demonstration; Cisco’s new tablet phone. Aimed at a business user, rather than consumer, like Apple’s iPad, this UC tool, is nice. This telephone/tablet combination acts as a portable communications and collaboration platform, working as a phone with a screen that works with Cisco applications such as Telepresence or WebEx, and with Cisco’s Unified Communications manager, or as a tablet. When the tablet is docked it provides the screen, and the base has USB ports, a wired Ethernet connection, and, of course, a telephone handset and speakerphone.

When used as a tablet, Cius has an HD 720p camera that faces the user, and a 5 megapixel camera mounted on the back, so that a user can pop the tablet off of the base, and use it for two way video calls, or video calls in which the user can see the other party and show them whatever the back camera is pointed at.

The Cius tablet weighs 1.14 pounds, runs on the Android operating system, and supports 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and 3G. Later releases will include 4G mobile networking. Cius is blue-tooth enabled, and supports connection of other headsets through a micro-USB port. Cisco said that when the product is released in early 2011 that it will come with a set of applications and a Firefox browser, but also stated that Android developers can write applications to the device using Cisco’s own SDK and APIs. Cisco also claims that the tablet has an 8 hour battery life.

If a unified communications “phone” could be fun, this would be it. It has a nice design, supports a lot of functionality, and appears very easy to use. For Cisco, the Cius is also a very attractive add-on to their shameless drive to put video everywhere, not only because of the video capabilities of the phone, but also because of support for Cisco’s myriad video-enabled UC applications.  There is no hidden agenda here; just video everywhere all the time, and this makes video appealingly mobile.

 Lastly, although the Cius is positioned as a business device, with Cisco’s statements towards bringing the network to everyone, it’s not out of the question that further positioning towards the consumer market might happen not far down the road.

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
2 Comments »

A new report from mobility expert, Tomi Ahonen,  shows that SMS has already become the most widely used text messaging application by all users in the world (53%), and even more by mobile users (78%). This reflects a shift from “real-time” voice calls that may run into “unavailability” problems and go to “voicemail jail”, to more practical “near real-time,” immediate message notification and delivery that another study reports will usually be responded to within five minutes.

A 2009 study by Lightspeed Research in the UK showed that 11% of mobile users didn’t initiate any voice calls at all,  while in the U.S., the percentage was even higher, 13%.

I am sure you are all familiar with seeing a user with a ringing cell phone often just looking to see who it is from then simply letting it go to a messaging function. Lately, voicemail-to-text services have taken care of caller voice messages by transcribing them automatically to text messages. So, whether the contact initiator chooses to use voice or not, the contact recipient can still deal with voice messages more efficiently than with voice mail interfaces.

From a UC perspective, where I include “process-to-person” contacts in addition to “person-to-person” contacts, text messaging and SMS are an obvious choice for personalized, pro-active, automated, time-sensitive notifications from a business process application, commonly referred to as Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), because business applications don’t really want to generate voice messages instead of their usual text message output.  (If the recipient requires a speech interface because they are driving a car, we can let them selectively exploit “unified messaging’  options based on their presence status.

With the rapid growth of screen-based, multi-modal smart-phones, the flexibility of input and output can be extended to end users independently of whether they are contact initiators or recipients/respondents for SMS. In addition, however, with the power of UC and presence, SMS exchanges can be easily escalated to real-time Instant Messaging and/or “click-to call” voice connections when appropriate.  This makes conversational voice calls more manageable from both a caller’s and callee’s perspective, and reduces the unnecessary problems generated by “blind” call attempts and voicemail’s retrieval limitations.

Needless to say, SMS itself doesn’t satisfy all the informational needs of users involved in a business process, but provides an efficient,  timely, mobile contact interaction to people wherever they are, along with links to the real information required for the business process, e.g., email. However, SMS is used 2.6 times more than email by mobile users. The key to efficient information exchange is to make timely and efficient contact first, not have conversations or deliver documents. Clearly, UC will be successful with its different forms of communication applications,  if it can exploit mobility for accessing individual recipients as quickly and flexibly as possible.

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
No Comments »

Technology can only do so much, and sometimes, human nature has to play a role. There are times when a technology isn’t being implemented properly because of cultural or social issues, and there are many situations where we have to change our cultural habits to accommodate new technologies.

In the early days of computer telephony integration, there were examples of call center agents who received screen pops on their desktops providing them with information on the caller’s name and what they’re calling about, and the agents would answer the phone based on this information. “Hello, Mr. Jones, I see you have a problem with your credit card statement, and since you’re a platinum card holder, I’d be happy to assist you.” Instead of rejoicing at this recognition, customers got flustered, wondering how the agent knew who they were, and the time it took for the agent to explain about screen pops eliminated the expected time savings that screen pops are supposed to provide. Some companies stopped using screen pops altogether, but generally most call center agents went back to using a neutral greeting so they wouldn’t alarm the callers.

In the world of unified communications, presence and IM, new etiquette rules are being developed, both formally and informally. I’ve heard of many companies where it’s considered rude to call someone without sending an IM first to see whether it’s a good time to call. Most companies haven’t formalized these rules, but I expect to see more and more companies promoting “best practices” or “etiquette guides.”

Microsoft has a wonderful “Instant Messaging Etiquette Guide” that provides general guidelines. For example, some tips for politeness when using IM include:
•    If you are initiating the IM, it’s generally considered polite to ask the other person if they have time to “talk” with you. This may not be necessary with someone you work with frequently and when the question is quick, as opposed to something requiring discussion.
•    Don’t invite someone to join a conference in progress without first asking the others in the conference if it’s OK to do so.
•    Don’t use all capital letters to type your message. It’s the IM equivalent of shouting (note: this goes for twitter, Facebook, etc.).

Social and personal issues are often the reasons why technologies fail to be adopted, despite the quality and reliability of the technology itself. I often hear from enterprise workers that they don’t want to use UC (particularly presence capabilities) because they don’t want people knowing their status or because they don’t want to be interrupted if they’re working. Instead, they generally set their status to “unavailable” all the time, thus greatly reducing the value of the technology for not only that individual, but for people in their workgroups and organization. This could be avoided if everyone followed guidelines and best practices. For example, respect IM status settings. If someone’s IM status is “busy” or “away,” don’t try contacting them and disturbing them. Alternatively, recognize that just because someone’s status is “available” doesn’t mean that they can drop what they’re doing and interact with you. If someone doesn’t respond to your messaging request, it probably means they’re busy, even if they’re status shows that they are available.

Microsoft also suggests: “If you’re carrying on too many IM conversations at once, those you’re corresponding with may feel that you’re not giving them the proper amount of attention. No more than three conversations at a time is a general rule.” I suggest that contact centers also follow this rule – I’ve stopped using the web chat option for customer service because too often the agent I’m chatting with for service is also helping several other customers at the same time, causing delays in the chat and making it a very lengthy and unpleasant experience.

One of my personal guidelines is that after going back and forth on IM for a long time, it’s generally easier to have a live conversation, and UC users can easily click-to-communicate to have a phone or conference call.

What all of this points to is the need to consider human factors in any design. Success in a UC project will come not just from buying the best hardware and software, but from designing the best solution. As we are dealing with new tools that will allow people to do their jobs in new ways, we need to address the issue of how we help people to use these tools in the most effective way. People know their telephone etiquette, but part of our UC deployment plan has to look at how we teach UC etiquette.

Tags: Unified Communications by Blair Pleasant
1 Comment »

My last blog touched upon legal issues in UC and speech technologies by addressing patent trolls and what can be done about them. Here is another little legal nugget, rising up within UC which merits some attention as well, and that is, what to do about compliance issues, privacy and all those other things, that sometimes fall by the wayside when employees use social media applications.

It is pretty evident that companies are jumping on the bandwagon of social media, and investigating, planning, developing or deploying social media within their unified communications and contact center applications. Voxeo, Avaya, Siemens, Cisco, Genesys….. The list is getting longer and longer. The issue is that if we thought we had problems with just pure instant messaging working its way into corporate life unattended, well, well, well, think about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other of the dozens of applications popping up.

Below are excerpts of a press release from Autonomy this week that tackles this issue head on, so I wanted to post it here since the announcement is one of only a few that seems to deal with the legal aspects of incorporating social media into the enterprise, rather than just the fun and business use side. Autonomy announced the availability of Autonomy Social Media Governance, what Autonomy claims is the industry’s first solution designed to monitor, govern, and protect organizations across social media channels. Social Media Governance enables businesses to maintain compliance with new regulatory requirements for employees engaging on social media sites.

The May 26^th press release said:

“Rapid adoption of social media by employees, customers, advertisers, bloggers, and news organizations presents unique challenges to many organizations. Regulators recognize the influence and risks associated with these channels, and are starting to require organizations to actively monitor and govern employees’ social media interactions. For instance, FINRA (The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) recently issued FINRA Regulatory Notice 10-06, which requires member firms to supervise and archive content posted to social media for business purposes. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and the National Futures Association (NFA) are also developing rules associated with the use of social media.

New regulatory requirements around social media add to the already burdensome task of adhering to current law for organizations - which requires that corporations archive, set policy, and make discoverable many forms of electronic information, including email, audio, and video.”

“Social media represents an extremely important new channel for businesses to develop engaging and profitable relationships with their customers. However, it is not without its risks, and for a business to leverage social media legally and profitably, corporations need to establish a comprehensive strategy to govern social media interaction.

For instance, a business could face regulatory issues if a bank employee marketed or misrepresented the value of a potential investment on social networks. Likewise, if an employee defamed another fellow employee, or a client, on a social site, this could raise legal issues for the company. Also, a pharmaceutical company could run into litigation issues if an employee denigrated a product on a social site that the company is actively promoting with advertising on traditional channels.”

Those are some good examples of the risks. What Autonomy provides is a platform that does what they call ‘meaning based computing’ which is recognizing patterns and relationships in unstructured information. They combine this with the company’s archiving, policy management, supervision, and analytics technologies. The result is that Autonomy Social Media Governance automatically identifies content and conversations on social networks, and allows a corporation to tie the information directly into a company’s existing compliance infrastructure.  All of this can be stored in Autonomy Digital Safe; a hosted archive service that enables corporations to outsource the storage and management of email messages, rich-media files, audio and video files, instant messages, and web content. According to the press release, the Social Media Governance product includes:

• Connectors and aggregation of thousands of relevant news feeds, blogs, and social media sites. Autonomy Social Media Governance can monitor social media content from employees logged in through company networks, as well as identify discussion from users operating outside company networks.
• Conceptual search of all aggregated content
• Policy-based monitoring
• Compliant archiving for regulated content
• Advanced analytics such as clustering and visualization tools
• Escalation and workflow management
• Reporting and trend analysis
• Executive dashboards

This is a great start to a knotty and growing issue that isn’t as fun to talk about as the benefits of incorporating social media into the contact center and UC.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
4 Comments »

At the recent Mobile Voice Conference in San Francisco at the end of April there were some delightful departures from the focus on speech technologies and mobility — although there is nothing wrong with speech and mobility. In fact, Mobile Voice was a name change away from the original name of the conference, Voice Search, due to the incredible growth in the use of speech technologies in mobile applications over the last five years or so. And that, of course, has everything to do with unified communications.

The departures from the expected presentations included a very interesting panel on patent law, which included Marie Meteer, of MM Consulting, speaking on “Speech Technology Consortium - Building the Prior Art Library to Enable Better Patent Application Examinations”, Jason Peltz, an attorney with Bartlit, Beck Herman Palencher & Scott LLP, speaking on “Patent strategy: considerations in filing a patent infringement suit and in defending such a suit”, Mark Powell, the Director of the Technology Center 2600 of the US Patent and Trademark Office, speaking on “United States Patent & Trademark Office - How You Can Work With Us”, and Ria Farrell Schalnat, a patent attorney with Frost Brown Todd, speaking on “Speech Technology Consortium - Using Re-examinations Proactively to Clear the Threat of Patent Trolls”.

It was a very educational and interesting session given that the topic involved the legal in and outs of intellectual property, not technology introductions, product information, or applications. Still it was a fascinating panel and one that struck a cord with me. Why? Because there is evil lurking out there in the form of patent trolls, which is threatening to stifle creativity and stall the speech technology industry, and related industries, one of which again is unified communications.

So just what is a patent troll? In a nutshell, it is a non-practicing individual or group/entity that buys up patents from willing sellers or struggling companies, that then turns around uses to sue related companies for patent infringement. In other words, this is someone who has not practiced their patent, and is not contributing or innovating in the industry in any way. Instead, they accrue patents as an arsenal (with multiple claims in each patent), bundle them up, and then take companies to court. We saw this happen starting more than a decade ago, with Michael Katz taking on the voice processing industry (at the time, voice messaging and IVR), and now, extremely aggressively, with Phoenix Solutions, who have sued big companies such as Sony, PG&E, and Wells Fargo, for their use of speech technologies.

To set the stage, Jason Peltz explained that there are 200K patents that are issued annually, with 2700 patent suits filed annually. Currently, there are 4000 patent cases pending. The average case takes two years, with an average cost of between $4.5 to $5M to defend, with an average jury award of $6.5M. Something that was equally interesting is that 30-40% of patent cases are overturned on appeal, which is dramatically higher than any other form of litigation. Also, in the case of patent law, the higher courts at the federal level do not have to defer to the trial court’s interpretation of the claims in the subject patent, so if a company successfully defends their patent, and the “troll” decides to appeal, they may get a second bite at the apple, with all the associated costs escalating. Many small companies just fold, as it’s often less costly to pay license fees than legal fees. But it is not just small companies that fold. In a recent case filed in 2002 (US patent 5,799,273) Allvoice Computing, PLC vs. Nuance, Nuance won their first case, and then ended up settling rather than going through it again on a federal level. Why does this matter? Because even though Nuance won, when they settled in July of 2007 rather than pay, it gave the patent troll a big stick to use against smaller companies by being able to say that Nuance paid rather than fight — we can beat you too.

The panel discussed what could potentially be done about this, and Ria Farrell Schalnat talked about using re-examination as an alternative or supplement to litigation. Depending on the type of re-exam conducted, costs may initially be anywhere between $5,000 - $50,000+. It all depends on the complexity of the patent as well as whether the initial decision is appealed. Although these fees are a fraction of litigation, they may still be too cost prohibitive for one company to take on by themselves. The potential solution would be to band together to fight the trolls as a group - hence the birth of the idea of a Speech Technology Consortium (STC), which would pool money and intellectual property resources to defend and win against the trolls. There would be a membership fee for participating companies, but no charge for the cost of accepted re-exam requests. A key component of this effort would be to uncover, gather up, and create a database of prior art to be used as evidence in the re-exams.

Ria cited statistics showing a 73% patent “kill rate”, through August 2008, which is a complete elimination of all claims targeted by a requestor, which represents a rate much higher than litigation at 33%.

I just love the whole concept of a group effort to defeat something which only hurts the industry. Needlessly spending money to defend or settle “claims” only drains the coffers of companies trying to honestly innovate, and has the effect of inhibiting new companies from emerging because it jacks up the cost of entry to the market. I believe that as the STC is developed, that companies in the unified communications space should definitely jump on board and help out as the technologies used in UC, and the features and functions in these claims are interwoven, leaving UC companies at risk of attack too.

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
1 Comment »

AVST announced that it is acquiring Active Voice, formerly a subsidiary of NEC. Active Voice’s products will join the AVST portfolio, take AVST into the hospitality market, and deliver AVST an OEM relationship with NEC. AVST will continue to manufacture, support and enhance specific Active Voice product offerings for NEC, its channel partners and the independent Active Voice channel. The main benefits to AVST are access to additional distribution channels and expanded engineering resources. NEC customers will also benefit by having better access to AVST’s messaging and speech capabilities. This should also help AVST move more in the unified communications world by way of NEC.

AVST CallXpress delivers call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax, speech, and notification fax, with integration to over 250 PBX products using a multitude of integration methods, including SIP, E1/T1, analog, and digital station set emulation. For those of you unfamiliar with Active Voice, the company offers several UM products, including Kinesis (which supports a variety of switches), Repartee LX, and Repartee for Windows. Active Voice’s productivity applications for its Kinesis unified messaging solution include ViewCall, FindMe/FollowMe, and VideoMail. Active Voice OEMs its products through NEC and its products are also sold through reseller partners.

As part of the agreement, AVST and NEC have entered into a long-term strategic technology relationship. AVST now has a stronger OEM relationship with NEC, enabling the company to reach more customers with its messaging and speech products. AVST has been an NEC partner for a while, and is a member of NEC’s UNIVERGE Solutions Partner Program. According to AVST, the two companies have been working together for over 8 years, and as a participant in the UNIVERGE Solutions Partner program, AVST can deliver products with tighter integration to NEC communication products. While AVST’s CallXpress is tightly integrated into the NEC product portfolio, supporting NEC TDM and IP telephony switches, the agreement with NEC means that NEC will now OEM AVST products, offering more options to its customers.

In terms of unified communications, AVST provides a platform that supports several applications of which UM is one of the stronger components. Moving forward, AVST will enhance CallXpress to make better use of presence and availability information and rules to determine how best to complete a communication request. AVST also sees UC solutions helping to bridge the void that currently exists between an ever increasingly mobile workforce and enterprise data.

This acquisition gives AVST additional engineering resources in order to help the company develop additional UC capabilities and functionality, and we expect to see the fruits of this in the coming months.

Tags: Unified Communications by Blair Pleasant
No Comments »

Ever since the “UC” concept started to gain traction in business communications, I had been bugging Fred Knight to let go of the emphasis on voice telephony reflected in the name of their very successful “VoiceCon” conference.  I also was suggesting that enterprise  text messaging technology providers like Microsoft and IBM bring their customers to  this show to start delivering a common technology message of convergence, flexibility, and UC interoperability to the market place.

Well, today, on the 20th anniversary of VoiceCon, they announced a name change at the show to “Enterprise Connect.” To learn more, go to www.voicecon.com/is-enterpriseconnect.

This simple name change will help open business communication doors wider to include more than a flexible choice of person-to-person voice/video or messaging connections, but to also include “application process-to-person” and “person-to-application process” contacts that exploit the efficiencies of automated (self-service) business processes across all forms of communication interfaces.

Maybe we will see the next name change take us from the real-time traffic-centric label of  VoiceCon’s popular blog site,  “No Jitter,” to something more pertinent to the UC vision of flexible, interoperable, multimodal user interfaces.

Congratulations on the name change!

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Art Rosenberg
2 Comments »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Marty Parker
No Comments »

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Marty Parker
No Comments »