Last week I accompanied a system integrator in the Midwest to meet with and help educate several of their customers about unified communications and building a UC strategy. In addition to the Midwest hospitality and better weather than I expected, I got some good insights into what these customers are thinking about regarding UC. I was gratified to see that these customers really understand and appreciate what UC can do for them in terms of saving time, making workers more efficient, increasing collaboration between work groups, etc.

One thing that came across loud and clear is that Microsoft did a heck of a job getting OCS out there for enterprise IM and presence. All of the companies I met with have OCS implemented to one degree or another, and most also have Sharepoint and Live Meeting. Several of the customers are Nortel shops, which makes me wonder if part of Microsoft’s success is based on the now-defunct ICA relationship between Nortel and Microsoft, although I tend to doubt it. Side note: Avaya stated that the ICA relationship has been terminated, although the two companies will continue to work on how they engage with each other, but Nortel (now Avaya) will no longer resell OCS. It will be interesting to see if this impacts OCS sales in any way, but it’s doubtful.

It’s clear that OCS is getting lots of traction, and vendors will have to work hard to compete with and displace Microsoft in the UC arena. A good portion of the customers I met with are Cisco shops, but none are using Cisco Unified Presence Server or Cisco Unified Presence Client – or any other presence/IM solution other than OCS. While none of the customers are using OCS for call control and don’t have any immediate plans to do so, none had gone the next step to integrate OCS with their PBX/IP PBXs. I’m glad to see more companies using IM and presence, but I wish more of them were actually integrating these capabilities with their voice capabilities to get more of the benefits that UC provides.

Some of the companies I met with clearly see the benefits of integrating OCS with their voice switches, but a variety of issues have prevented them from doing so. In some cases, the IT people are aware of the benefits of UC and acknowledge that the people in their companies could greatly benefit from it, but don’t want to deal with the integration or cost issues involved, and feel that they have enough to do without adding another layer of complexity. Others want to move to UC, but realize that in their particular environments it will be a major undertaking based on their existing technology and infrastructure.

For many customers, the will is there – they just need a good way to move to the world of UC. It needs to be simpler to implement and integrate all of the various pieces (data network, telecom environment, carrier networks, etc.). The vendors need to do a better job of working with each other to simplify integration and interoperability, and to help customers migrate. And to those vendors that would rather battle with Microsoft than accept the fact that they’ve made huge inroads into the unified communications world, I suggest you work harder to find ways to coexist in a multivendor environment, and to provide the necessary tools to your partners to help them support their customers’ mixed environments. Companies want to move to UC – let’s help make it easier for them.

Tags: Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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While the waiting game is over regarding the winner of the auction for Nortel Enterprise, there are still many unanswered questions – mainly the who’s and the what’s.

Who – we heard from Avaya and Nortel in a press/analyst call that Avaya has agreed with a minimum employee transfer of 75% of Nortel employee work force at the time of close of deal. Note – at the time of close of deal, not today, not last week. Who knows how many Nortel employees will still be around by December when the deal is expected to close.

Also, in a letter to the Nortel troops, Nortel Enterprise President Joel Hackney stated that Avaya will employ about three-quarters of Enterprise Solutions employees globally. This includes the full Nortel Government Solutions workforce and most employees who work wholly or mainly for the Enterprise Solutions business in countries with an Acquired Rights Directive (ARD) or similar law. ARD or similar laws apply in many of the countries in EMEA and require that employment automatically transfers to the purchaser upon an acquisition of the business. Outside of Nortel Government Solutions employees and those employees in countries where ARD or similar laws apply, we expect that a minimum of about 60% of the remaining Enterprise Solutions workforce will be offered employment with Avaya.”

If you’re a non-Government Solutions or non-ARD employee, you now have only a 60% rather than a 75% chance of being retained. And the Avaya employees aren’t all safe either – if someone from Nortel is retained but their job duplicates that of an Avaya employee, then the Avaya worker may be out of a job. I’ve known many of the Avaya and Nortel folks for a long, long time, and I certainly wish them the best and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for them.

Now for the most important part – the what. What products will remain, which will move forward with the company, and which will be set out to pasture? Will it be CallPilot or Modular Messaging? BCM or IP Office? ACE or Aura? And where do the Nortel products fit in Avaya’s Aura vision? Avaya is still working on its Aura story and now has to figure out how to leverage the products and platforms that Nortel brings to the table.

There are very few areas where there is no overlap (data solutions excluded). The one product that is sure to go forward in the Avaya line up is Nortel’s Diamondware (Nortel acquired Diamondware last year). I hope that Avaya recognizes its value and continues with development in this exciting area, particularly with Diamondware’s special audio capabilities. Similarly, I expect to see Avaya leverage web.alive and be more aggressive in this area.

I hope to soon get some of my questions answered regarding the future of the combined company, but I’m not holding my breath. It will take the company a long time to figure out its new product portfolio, and customers on both sides will have to guess as to the life expectancy of the products they have installed.

Of course, all this assumes that the DOJ doesn’t decide that this acquisition is anti-competitive and prevents it from happening. This is pretty unlikely to happen, as there are still lots of vendors in the telephony and contact center markets.

I was really hoping for a more creative outcome, such as Oracle, SAP, or an application vendor acquiring Nortel in order to communication-enable its applications. But alas, our industry has never been known for its creativity.

Tags: Unified Communications by Blair Pleasant
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I don’t know whether to laugh or cry!  Avaya announced on Tuesday, May 26^th, that it is “inviting” Nortel and Siemens dealers to join the Avaya team through a fast-track program.  My first thought was that I’ll bet the announcement just made the day for current Avaya partners.  In many areas, Avaya dealers have already been competing against other Avaya partners – now they’ll have even more Avaya partners to compete against!  Whopee!? 

 My second thought was that if I was a savvy Nortel dealer, I would already have been exploring opportunities to bring my business into the changed world brought about by convergence, VoIP and unified communications – not to mention the current economic situation.  I would be looking for new vendor partners with both innovative products and a partner program that’s really a “partnership”.  I would NOT be looking for a new partner who is encumbered by years of legacy, even though this might feel like the “safe” option.  As a Nortel dealer, I would grab the opportunity to move my company into the fast-paced world of UC by aligning with visionary vendors, and with UC integrators/resellers that have heavy expertise on the data side but need expertise on the voice side to provide UC solutions.

 My third thought (yes, I can have more than 2 thoughts at one time….) moves to the question of how many of these Nortel dealers are currently successfully involved in VoIP and/or UC or moving in that direction.  Does Avaya need more dealers who are “exiters” waiting to sell their business rather than change to the new model that I describe in “The Industry has Left its Reseller Channel Behind”?  Or does Avaya need the “go getters” that I describe in that same article?

 Would it be crazy to imagine that every single Nortel dealer is already being courted by the likes of Mitel, NEC, Cisco, Microsoft and too many other manufacturers to name?  Right now, these dealers can pick and choose their vendor partners and if they are smart, in some cases, they can set the terms of the new “partnership”.  What a fantastic opportunity for these dealers to put themselves in a position to successfully move forward in a rapidly changing technology world…. in an already changed business environment where customers’ buying requirements make the PBX (of any type) a pull-through item.  Most of all, this is a golden opportunity for Nortel dealers to shed their own mantle of “legacy” and join the movers and shakers who will be the successful dealers of tomorrow.

Tags: Unified Communications Information by Pam Avila
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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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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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The only news from Avaya this past year has been that Lou D’Ambrosio was stepping down as CEO, announced back in June.  Although the former CEO alluded to medical reasons for his sudden departure, I can’t help but think that this happened a year to the date when Avaya was taken private, acquired by SIlverlake Partners, in an 8.2 billion dollar deal.  At the time, it seemed that Avaya was poised for growth.  It had a great team in place, led by a great leader, as was Lou D’Ambrosio, with a strong story, “Democratization of UC”, which he preached at VoiceCon 2008.  My initial thoughts were that this private equity firm was going to make the necessary investments and take Avaya to the next level, becoming a leader in this industry.

Now, a year and a half later, the CEO has stepped down; Charlie Giancarlo, an ex-Cisco executive, has been at the helm of the organization since June; and there have been significant lay-offs and “resignations” of key people at Avaya.  Furthermore, and more importantly, product innovation has been stagnant.  It seems that leadership at Avaya is busy, going through organizational restructuring, or in laymen’s terms, cutting out the fat from the organization.  Although it’s not unheard of for organizations to go through some restructuring, particularly when private equity is involved, the lack of product innovation is happening at a wrong time, when the industry is moving so quickly, and innovation is happening at the blink of an eye. 

Initially, I thought the privatization was a good idea; now, I’m not so sure.  With no official CEO successor (Giancarlo is still interim CEO), and staff being slashed in droves, it almost seems as if the company was being dressed for two options:  (1) To be merged with another company or (2) To reinvent itself.  The latter would be the better option, but it will cost them.  Time to market is everything, and the clock is a-ticking.  Selling it would not be worth it at this point, given the economy and the state of Avaya as it stands now. So what does this mean for Avaya customers?

Customers must assess Avaya’s next moves and figure out what that means for them.  This is a crucial moment for enterprises to start implementing a UC and collaboration strategy, and evaluating the right vendors, who are promoting interoperability, is key.  So while Avaya has been a leader in telephony, I question their ability to take it to the next level of collaboration, as we saw a few weeks ago from Cisco.  UC and collaboration is much more than just telephony, and traditional vendors will need to make the right additions to their product portfolio.  Avaya was on its way, but seems as though it’s fallen off track.  Their analyst conference is next week; stay tuned to this blog for an update.

Tags: Unified Communications Information, Unified Communications Information by Vanessa Alvarez
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It’s that wonderful time of the year when people around the world make their New Year’s resolutions – things they’ll do differently, bad habits they’ll quit, good habits they’ll start, and so on. Here are some New Year’s resolutions related to unified communications that I would like to see in the coming year.

Vendors working together toward federation: One of the biggest obstacles to UC success is the lack of federation, or the ability for one vendors’ UC/IM/presence offering to work with another’s. While we’ve seen some good success stories of UC helping companies internally, the number of situations where companies can use UC to interact with customers, partners, and suppliers using different platforms and different vendors’ products is limited. If I’m on a Cisco UC system, I can’t see the telephony presence of my customer on an Avaya UC system, for example. Federation is number one on my wish list.

Vendors, analysts, and consultants agreeing on a definition of unified communications: We’ve all been harping on this for a while, but there are still multiple definitions not only of UC, but also of Communication Enabled Business Processes, which is confusing to enterprise customers.

Analysts and vendors agreeing on a way to measure the UC market: As an industry analyst one of my jobs is to analyze and forecast the UC market. I’ve been an analyst for many years, analyzing several different markets – the unified communications market is by far the most difficult market I’ve had to measure. There is no agreement within the vendor community as to what constitutes the UC market, and they have not been forthcoming in providing market data that could be used in a market analysis (most likely because we’re still in the early stages of the market and the shipments have been limited).

Vendors and resellers providing sales and shipment data for their UC solutions: While PBX market analysts can easily count the number of PBX lines that have been shipped, or in the email market we can count the number of email licenses sold, there is no single element to count in the UC market. I resolve to develop a way to measure the UC market, but I need future buy-in from vendors and resellers who will need to provide the necessary market data.

Resellers being more receptive to selling UC solutions, rather than “boxes”: I know it’s a hard transition for many resellers who have been successful selling telephony or convergence products, but the time has come to embrace UC, which means a new sales approach. This approach may involve taking a vertical focus or a longer-term solution focus, but it is necessary. Some resellers are making the transition more easily than others, but vendors will be changing the way they compensate partners, so these partners will have to accept this and get on board.

My personal resolution: I resolve to be more open to other people’s definitions of UC and CEBP – this is an evolving market, and it is too early to say what it will look like in a few years. Even though I have firm ideas about what makes a UC solution, there are others with different beliefs, and many of these should be taken into account. I resolve to listen to these other ideas and integrate them into my own when appropriate.

If we as an industry can make and keep these resolutions, it will go a long way to helping the Unified Communications market grow.

Tags: Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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I’m having lots of discussions with the Avaya folks about Communication Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) while in Boston at the Avaya Analyst Conference, and I’m finally starting to see why they’re differentiating CEBP from Unified Communications. I originally disagreed with Avaya about separating out CEBP from UC, since I (and my UCStrategies.com colleagues) believe that business process integration is a key part of UC and its value proposition. That being said, CEBP (the way Avaya defines it) is indeed different from UC. While UC is generally person triggered (an individual or worker initiates the communication), CEBP is event triggered (a business process-related event initiates the communication). The event could be an inventory shortage, a stock price change by a specific percentage, a manufacturing malfunction, a shipment delay, etc.

I’m thinking that instead of calling it CEBP, it should be called Automatic CEBP (ACEBP), since the key is to have the events automatically trigger the communications related to the business process. Rather than having an individual identify a problem or situation and initiate a phone call, conference call, web conference, etc., a specific event automatically generates the notification and communication with the appropriate parties. This may or may not include presence and UC capabilities.

So this really comes down to semantics – CEBP, the way it’s defined by Avaya and others, is indeed different and separate from UC. I still have some problems with the term Communication-Enabled Business Process since Unified Communications is optimized when comm-enabling business processes and applications. The difference is that CEBP does this automatically based on an event trigger.

I’ll be having lots more conversations with Avaya about CEBP and UC over the next couple days, so stay tuned.

Tags: Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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