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

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

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

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

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

2010 STC Accomplishments:

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

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

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

As part of the process:

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

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

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

Tags: Speech Technologies, Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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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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Since Unified Communications applications and technology include mobility, it’s important to keep abreast of trends that can impact your current or future use of mobile UC applications.   I attended  Mobile Enterprise Magazine’s Executive Summit earlier this month (see www.mobileenterprisemag.com).   During the conference, several important trends were discussed.  Each of the trends highlighted in this posting pose significant management challenges:

1.       In the world of 4G, devices will have short shelf-lives, as short as 6 months.  For companies which can take much longer to test new, develop/customize and deploy mobile devices and applications, this is extremely unwelcome news.  If a new device has a considerably shorter shelf life than your processes are able to support, how will this impact your company’s device, applications deployment and customer support plans?  What will you allow/disallow as far as integration into UC applications, and how will you decide?  What could rapid device turnover do to your budget?  For mission-critical applications, will you seek out solutions that bundle the price of equipment into the service contract?  Will your company seek to reduce possible risk by using cloud-based services, or managed services that bundle the mobile device into the service contract?   Will you implement mobility device management solutions to better track your company’s mobile assets? 

2.       One of the big concerns facing customers is the 4G pricing model.  Carriers like Verizon Wireless have made it plain they expect 4G will provide more revenue (ARPU) than 3G did.  It’s just not yet clear how additional revenue will be extracted from customers.  Thus it’s not too soon to consider how you’ll ensure that the applications your company relies upon make the best use of mobile networks as possible – that they aren’t overly chatty or are bandwidth hogs.  How could this more expensive reality affect your planned use of key UC features like Presence (which is constantly updated) or applications that rely on Location (something else that can require many updates)?  What does this imply for your choice of devices or O/S?  RIM was designed to use bandwidth sparingly, while by comparison, the iPhone can be a bandwidth bandit, and the Android can be an absolute hog (remember, it’s a cloud-based O/S). 

3.       For general business applications, some prognosticators think IL devices will supplant CL devices.  In fact, in many businesses today, there are more employees who expense all or apportion of their mobile services fees (IL) than there are employees who use direct-company contracted and paid mobile devices and services (CL).  IL devices are simpler to administer than CL devices.  IL devices are a financial expense, CL devices are a corporate asset. I think one of the biggest drivers toward IL is employee device choice- in theory, an employee could use any smartphone.  But I think in reality this could be quite limited – because as discussed below, the hard facts (and associated expense) of application and device support do not go away in an IL world.  Regardless, special-purposes devices will remain CL devices for the forseeable future.   But for companies to successfully standardize on an IL framework, they’ll need to consider the following:

a.       Policy.  These issues don’t go away by moving to IL.  If employees use smartphones, major policies must still be decided, because IL devices become, in effect, corporate assets.  For instance, what applications and data are various types of employees privy to?  How much will each class of employee be reimbursed?

b.      Distribution.  In this world, should your company allow any and all smartphones?  I think a number of companies will limit choice even in an IL world – to specific devices and/or O/Ss that can support company policies, or that internal processes and personnel are trained to support (or alternatively, that are supported by external specialists).    See my next point.

c.       Application performance.  As discussed briefly in the 4G pricing section, not all device operating systems are optimally suited to day’s wireless world.  That’s likely to continue into the future-especially since many 4G users will be using both 4G and 3G services for the next several years.  We already know that different devices that use the same application can deliver a different user experience.  As discussed, they consume bandwidth in different ways, and at different rates.  Even if your company doesnot reimburse an employee for data services, how will you answer employee questions, and educate employees about these issues?

d.      Enforcement.  How will security policies be enforced, how will data be destroyed in the event the device is lost or stolen, or the employee leaves the company?

In short, given the likely evolution of services and devices in the U.S., I understand why some people conclude that a consumer-like (IL) model will dominate the business environment.  In theory, it removes the expense of the short device shelf-life from a company’s shoulders, and it can allow for greater freedom of device choice.  But many significant tradeoffs and management challenges remain, so I’m not convinced that our industry has yet identified an optimal solution. The good news is that there is time for better alternatives to come along.

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications by Lisa Pierce
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This morning Cisco introduced three software products, continuing its parade of customer collaboration offerings that started with a deluge late 2009 at the collaboration summit they held in San Francisco. Each announcement since that one, that contained something around 60+ products, has built on that base.

Because of talk in the industry on social media, the most interesting of the three is SocialMiner, which provides social media monitoring, queuing and workflow. This will allow Cisco contact center customers to monitor social media networks, mine customer posts, and then sort and deliver actionable interactions to different customer care teams, who then can reply to customers in real-time back through the channel that they posted on. I got to see this in action with Cisco’s Flip Video team, who was an internal “beta” customer, and it really brought to light how useful using social media as a customer care channel could be, as seeing it live as opposed to just talking about it is so much more vivid because you get to see the kinds of things that customers post.

With SocialMiner there is no forced routing to agents. Instead agents can pick, reject or postpone taking a tweet, Facebook posting, blog, etc. Any agent can pick from an alert. In this iteration of the product there will be a “bubble” that says there is social media work in queue. When I saw the product all sorts of questions popped up for me including how much of an interruption will this be for an agent if they aren’t dedicated to that one channel, what happens if two agents go for the same interaction at the same time, etc. This is a work in progress, and just as we saw with Cisco Pulse and some of the other products introduced in November, a year ago, by July, Cisco had refined the products so much more that most of my questions were answered. I expect the same after more customers start using SocialMiner. After all, all the vendors who are adding social media are breaking new territory here. I think it’s exciting.

Door number 2 is Cisco Finesse, which a Web 2.0 collaboration desktop for the agent, which is a container, or as Cisco referred to it “a modifiable cockpit” that integrates collaborative applications into the agent desktop to help agents improve the customer experience. This is a merging of Cisco Quad, announced (again) last year, with traditional contact center functionalities.

Finally, door number three is (real name coming soon) network-based rich media capture that records conversations on the network, and allows agents access to captured media through simple interfaces. The solution supports recording, playback and storage, so that agents can mine valuable information about customers; hopefully improving customer satisfaction and all those other business goals we continually talk about.

So let’s get to “What’s in a Name Part II”. Back in September I blogged about how naming conventions have changed in high tech, and how it was helping unified communications and other areas including customer care. The blog is here, but in it I said, “We have recently seen a bunch of these names come out of Cisco. For example, Cisco Pulse, “takes a pulse” on what is going on knowledge or theme wise, within a company, by scanning through everything that traverses a corporate network that has been tagged. Not only is the name short, and a real English word - not two words slammed together with a capital letter in the middle - it also elicits the image of taking a reading. Cisco’s Show and Share is similar; short, sweet and not only tells what it is, but elicits the sense that it’s easy to do. I video, and then upload and share. Cisco has some other names in the works that are equally compelling. ”

Here you have it. Cisco Finesse and Cisco SocialMiner. When Blair Pleasant and were getting to see the demo of SocialMiner last week and heard the name, we both thought the same thing. We had to step back for a second because to us, SocialMiner reminded us of the company CallMiner. But we both came to the same conclusion that it is a great name because it says what the product does, and just because it reminds us of a company, which has an equally great name for that same reason, it won’t to everyone. To most people it will be another name in a string of useful product names. Similarly, Cisco Finesse, doesn’t evoke images of what the product does in terms of it being an agent desktop, but makes perfect sense in playing off what it should enable an agent to do. Score 2 for Cisco on the names.

Tags: Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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While enterprises and service providers have been moving quickly to support their end users and customers with the latest and greatest UC technologies, supporting multimodal mobile devices (smart-phones) will be one of their biggest challenges. Why? Because they will be constantly evolving as devices and with their mobile OSs, must be mobile application-independent, and be highly personalized in a variety of ways.

Since mobile products and technologies are still evolving and everyone is still learning to deal with “multimodal mobility” vs. traditional desktop communications and traditional cell phones, there will be ongoing competition for different devices and associated services.

Wirefly Mobile Backup Will Help End Users Keep Up With Smartphone Evolution

Because one of the big problems with mobile devices is that they can be easily lost or stolen, end users will always need a way to easily replace what they already have. Coupled with the possibility that they may simply want to move to a new device or service, the first free, automatic,  cloud-based mobile data backup service available to consumers from developer Spare Backup and Wirefly fills both bills.

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility, Unified Communications by Art Rosenberg
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Yesterday I participated in a briefing with a vendor who indicated that some of its independent VARs are embarking on developing and offering their own hosted UC services.  These VARS serve medium and small businesses, and historically derive a significant amount of their revenue from designing and installing equipment like routers, IP PBXs, IADs/gateways, and LANs.  Another major source of their revenue consists of fees for upgrading this equipment, and to perform break/fix functions.  Most of these firms can show little if any expertise in the ongoing day-day operations, administration, management and performance assurance of both the assets and applications that are a service provider’s bread and butter.  For instance, many lack the breadth of operational support systems service providers use to monitor end-end IP performance on a continual basis.  This type of proactive, continuous monitoring and support is essential for many real time IP applications.  In addition most of the equipment VARs offer to customers is based on a purchase or leasing arrangement, but this is not the type of acquisition model many smaller businesses can afford at present.  Thus it surprises and concerns me that some medium and smaller VARs want to take on this challenge directly-because it’s an expensive undertaking (for equipment, applications development and management, operational support and billing systems and staffing expertise) with a very long payback to do right.  Considering that few VARs are flush with cash, I think the majority of those offering their own hosted UC services will re-consider, and so prospective customers are duly cautioned.

However, there is another business model for VARs that are interested in the opportunity that hosted and SaaS-based UC provides, one that I think makes more sense.  In contrast to the above, some vendors are creating packages/bundles that make it easier for VARs to sell and support a wide spectrum of hosted and managed UC applications.  This week’s Broadsoft/Adtran/Polycom announcement is a case in point-it focuses on offering VARs hosted solutions that are easy to install (see http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-newsroom/adtran-works-with-broadsoft-and-polycom-on-hosted-services-delivery.aspx and http://www.adtran.com/web/page/portal/Adtran/wp_newsroom_newsreleases).  If deployed in combination with the availability of the new Broadcloud application delivery platform, this should help a variety of providers, including VARs, to offer uniform (pre-specified)  SaaS-based UC services (UCaaS), precisely the kind of offers many medium and small customers want to deploy (see http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-newsroom/broadsoft-introduces-new-cloud-based-infrastructure-for-unified-communications.aspx and http://www.broadsoft.com/news/2010/broadsoft-introduces-broadcloud).  Over time, these types of offers should help reduce UC installation intervals.  For instance, today, most providers’ current SIP Trunk installation intervals are 60-90 days.  Additionally, the Broadcloud solution includes PacketSmart diagnostic tools that identify problems that can impact real-time applications, which is another important element on the road to becoming a service provider.  However, these tools are reactive in nature.  While this puts can place VARs on a level playing field with customers who would otherwise attempt to perform these functions in-house, it doesn’t provide a superior service experience.  Thus VARs who want to provide a higher level of performance assurance to customers should evaluate additional services, like VoIPCare, which monitors call quality on an ongoing basis.   This can help reduce the length of downtime or service disruptions.  While this does not constitute UC performance nirvana, it is several steps better than what many VARs and their customers have in place now, or would have in place with the go-to-market approach I described in the first paragraph.  Thus, I expect packaged product and lifecycle UC offers to be very useful to both VARs (and a number of other UC providers) and to their prospective hosted UC and UCaaS businesses customers.  In a world full of vendor solutions searching for customer problems, packaged product and lifecycle UC offers are indeed a solution that fits a very pressing business need.

Tags: Unified Communications by Lisa Pierce
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By now you must have read some of the very positive analyst comments on Interactive Intelligence’s (ININ) Partner and Analyst conference in San Antonio, TX on October 11-13th.  What was most impressive to attendees is how well-structured ININ’s contact center software applications were to cover both traditional call center and future UC business application needs. What caught my attention, however, was the successful push that ININ was making in the hosted services market, they refer to as CaaS or Communications as a Service.

The idea is now new, but ININ has taken the lead in making CaaS offerings more flexible in order to overcome the concerns of organizations that don’t know enough (yet) about whether they want to end up with a hosted service or take full responsibility for support with their internal IT staff. Given that customer interactions applications are moving into the new UC domain of “multimodal communications,” there is little experience available to make such a decision yet. So, the obvious approach is to “try before buy” with minimum cost and maximum flexibility. What ININ has cleverly come up with is the option to start with a hosted service but switch to other support alternatives based on actual experience with the specific UC applications involved.

Not surprisingly, ININ reports tremendous interest in their CaaS offering for contact center applications, particularly since they have gone out of their way to allow business organizations to retain local control over their telephony communications activities (CaaS with Local Control).

In terms of other contact center UC application functions, those are still evolving slowly but steadily, but will benefit from ININ’s “”all in one” platform philosophy for cost efficient integrations. Their approach is being enthusiastically supported by their business partners who are focused on helping customize different organizational needs for both inbound and outbound multimodal customer UC interactions.  I am waiting to see them support the needs of consumers who will be using mobile smartphones!

Tags: Mobile UC, Mobility, Unified Communications by Art Rosenberg
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Ah, September. Back to school, back to football, and back to preparing for the cold months ahead. It was a quiet month, as always, at Lake Wobegon. Not so by the tempest-tossed waters of Lake Uceeisnow. For months, there were rumblings of disenchantment about the pace and depth of customer migration to UC. This was coupled by near-universal agreement that UC could not really be defined but nonetheless, you’d know it when you see it. Moreover, according to numerous analysts, UC could enhance your enterprise’s “business processes”, assuming you know what they are or can derive them.

In early September, Nick Jones of Gartner had the audacity to put forth the polarizing notion that UC is some sort of Ponzi scam http://blogs.gartner.com/nick_jones/2010/09/07/is-unified-communications-the-biggest-scam-since-ponzi/  This created quite a stir and (at last count) 27 comments both pro and con. It is still referred to in recent No Jitter posts. Of course, some UC pundits will write this off as a spurious Gartner analysis input which has little credibility, only Gartner’s Magic Quadrant with vendor rankings has “value”. The gist of my response to Nick-which I’ll stick with-was “It (UC) is overhyped, undefined, and un-measurable, but unfortunately the tag has been adopted by enough vendors, media types and others so that right or wrong we’ll all have to live with it. There’s no doubt that advanced and converged communications (IP and otherwise) can (eventually) improve an enterprise and how it does business. BUT in a down economy there are lots of alternative bangs for limited IT bucks. I don’t think a UC vendor or analyst’s “trust me” with or without B-School white paper will be the closing argument for moving to UC (whatever it is). One would think any CIO, COO, CFO or CEO would want real ROI as opposed to the proverbial marketing song and dance.”

Soon after the Ponzi reference and its analyst reverberations were felt, Microsoft announced the renaming of OCS to Lync. It was a timely event, in my opinion, because for months overall UC perception needed some sort of shot in the arm. There’s nothing like Microsoft and its resources (i.e., money) to boost any IT market opportunity. Unifying enterprise voice, instant messaging, applications/desktop sharing and video and audio conferencing into a “new, connected communications experience” was the theme of the Lync announcement. Nothing new here but welcome nonetheless as a reaffirmation of Microsoft’s vision for UC. In many respects, Microsoft was and is the primary driver of UC and this was clearly reflected in the sycophantic responses to Lync by the UC analyst claque.

To a one-time voice switching guy like me, Microsoft is hardly ignoring VoIP but continues to integrate it into their “stuff” (software, servers, etc.) in lieu of separate (IP) PBXs. By now, Lync’s voice functionality should be robust enough and user-acceptable. How fast users will dump operable PBXs for the Microsoft equivalent in these difficult economic times remains to be seen.

A mere two days after Lync, Avaya’s Flare came on the scene. The Flare “experience” and the “non-tablet” Desktop Video Communicator have been adequately discussed and dissected on these pages and elsewhere. The impact for me is that Avaya, the classic voice/PBX-centric UC participant, has done something innovative and out-of-character. It took “chutzpah” to do this, good for them. The announcement underscores the emerging importance (at least to vendors) of flexible, portable video conferencing and tablet-like devices. As for price points and whether the dogs will eat the dog food, as always, time will tell.

As noted, the Microsoft and Avaya announcements came when UC, by any definition, needed some positive press. Mission accomplished on that.  Moreover, as far as I could determine, neither vendor tied their announcement and its contents to any mystical enterprise workflow improvements, reduction in “human latency”, or other UC pseudo-science rationale. Perhaps, the Apple-like approach may be taking hold, namely, easy-to-use solutions to real definable problems and provide an enjoyable “experience” in getting there.

The final September item of note was the No Jitter article by Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group on Cisco’s near-term UC strategy http://www.nojitter.com/feature/227500594. This created a firestorm of 19 comments and spawned a separate posting by another blogger commenting on all the comments! Why all the excitement? It was all about Cisco vs. Microsoft and there are a lot of strong opinions about that. Sort of like Fox vs. MSNBC on a political topic. Opinions, yes, market share demographics, not really, since those vendors as well as most others do not have a common definition of UC, and in some cases, even its scope. However, if you’re keeping score at home, Microsoft seemed to have the edge in UC mindshare.

September was definitely interesting, let’s see what October brings. As for the name game, one can hope that the fuzzy UC tag is sent to the recycle bin if and when adult supervision arrives. It would be useful to have a more descriptive set of terms rather than one misused global label. My initial suggestion is Advanced Converged Communications (ACC) and its 4 dimensions-voice/telephony, messaging/presence, conferencing/collaboration, and mobility. More on this at a later time.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Jay Brandstadter
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This morning Avaya and Skype went public with a partnership they term “a strategic agreement to deliver innovative, real-time communications and collaboration solutions to businesses of all sizes”. The output of the agreement will come in two phases. The first is centered on integration of voice, and the second, integration of video and other unified communication capabilities. The output of the agreement will be development around integration as well as a combined go to market strategy.

In Phase 1, Avaya’s US customer base will have access to Skype Connect^TM, allowing customers to communicate via SIP between Avaya communication systems and Skype. This will be available to customers with Avaya Aura^TM Session Manager or Avaya Aura SIP Enablement Server, CS1000, Avaya IP Office, or BCM systems. Avaya cited that calls will be handled using Avaya’s routing, conferencing, messaging, mobility and contact center capabilities, and collaboration services.

In Phase 2, which is slated some time off in the later part of 2011, the two companies promise to deliver integrated unified communications and collaboration solutions to enterprises, including video. The companies claim that the integration will establish federation between Avaya Aura and Skype communications platforms, and through that, will bring together the business and consumer side.

This union is interesting and promising from two perspectives. First, the two companies have offerings that complement each other. Avaya, focused on communications for government and the private sector businesses, seeks to round out and expand its communications offerings. This builds on their UC and collaboration offerings, including this month’s Flare Experience announcement, and it provides benefits to Avaya customers by helping reduce communication costs. Skype, built its popularity among consumers, but seeks to attract more businesses by expanding capabilities attractive to the enterprise, and this will enable them to do that. Second, is the promise that this union will provide federation of some applications, including presence, voice, video and IM, between businesses and consumers. The later could produce some interesting customer service business benefits, and is something we have all been waiting for.

A small note, even though Skype’s growth has hinged in part on being available to users internationally - part of its appeal - this announcement was focused solely on the US. Plans to expand internationally will be rolled out as the partnership and offerings are developed. Also, complete plans for the product roadmap won’t be made available for a few weeks yet.

In all, I really like the promise of what this partnership will bring, especially as both integration and federation have been two sore spots that have had a lot of lip service given them, but not a lot of concrete work done yet. However, although there are solid plans in this agreement to do so, Avaya still hasn’t extended that intent by joining up with the UCIF just yet. During the Q&A part of the analyst call on this, Jim Burton asked if Avaya would join the UCIF for interoperability. Avaya’s answer was very politely that there is some governance challenges associated with joining that they are trying to work out with the companies involved. They added that the way that the effort is structured raises concerns if the UCIF is truly an open and peer-based organization. More to come on this, I’m sure.

Tags: Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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