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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I just read, with some amusement, the UCStrategies podcast transcription on Microsoft’s latest announcement, which I missed because I was traveling. Numerous UCStrategies folks have already written about Microsoft’s latest and greatest, including discussing the new name, but I’d also like to chime in on the company’s naming strategy, as part of a naming trend I am starting to see.

What is so big about the way OCS was renamed? Well, two things really. One, this name, and some others that follow here, are part of delightful naming trend that has recently popped up that indicates that finally, high-tech is moving from boring - ‘this only really means something to us’ - to what consumer products companies have known for years - make it sound appealing to the consumer, or end user.

For decades we have been creating and selling products in communications such as voice messaging, PBXs, data centers, etc., with some of the most boring brand names known to mankind. Sure, back in the 80’s and 90’s we had some creative names that made sense whether you worked in a high tech company or were a consumer - such as ROLM’s PhoneMail voice messaging product, in which the name said exactly what it was - phone mail. But this same company had a plethora of products that were named with three and four letter acronyms that had model numbers after them, and if you weren’t in the industry you had no clue what they were. We also had our share of companies, such as Apple, that decided that just because their company had some name that had nothing to do with the products they were selling, that they should create product names having to do with the company name, and hence, Apple started selling a flavor of Apple, the Macintosh, instead of telling people it was a personal computer. Thankfully, they didn’t follow up with the Gravenstein.

The good thing about Apple is that they were both a consumer and business play, so eventually sanity took over and Apple started making products with names that had high recognition and consumer appeal. Now they have iTunes (says exactly what it is), iTouch, iPad (well, except this one…. I won’t go there), and others, that make perfect sense to the consumer.

So what does this have to do with Lync? Lync is part of an emerging trend to simplify naming, and creating shorter names that actually have something to do with what the product does. Plus, more importantly, they seem to elicit a thought about what the product should do, which is key in consumer product naming.

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.

As for Microsoft Lync, some of the comments my colleagues made talked about what the name might elicit in the minds of the user. For example, Blair Pleasant said, “Basically Microsoft said that they wanted a new name to get into the next generation of communications, and to embody the spirit of this new generation and this new version of the product. So the new name is the combination of link and sync and what I like about it is the ability to use the name as a verb, so sort of like it will be the Kleenex and Xerox and Google of office communications, I guess. You’ll be able to link with somebody and you know, “let’s link tomorrow,” or whatever. I really like the verb aspect of it.”

I like the verb aspect of it too. One important point that shouldn’t get lost here goes back to what I said about Apple, which also applies to Microsoft and a few others. And that is, some of these companies have been selling to consumers and enterprises for a long time, but with different marketing strategies. Now it seems the strategies are starting to overlap in that products, particularly unified communications and social media are bridging both worlds, and therefore, simplifying and making naming more consumer oriented will work for both sets of customers.  A good example of this is Cisco’s new Cius tablet, introduced in July. The name is simple and elicits the concept of being seen, which is part of the tablet’s video capability. So although Cisco launched the product with idea of it being a business tool, there is nothing that precludes them from turning it into a consumer product as well, and the Cius name works for both.

As Marty Parker pointed out, the goal isn’t really to go after the average consumer, but a greater pool of end users. In my opinion, a greater pool of end users can contain pure consumers, or just a bigger audience of business users, but in all, more user-friendly naming can only help the growth of unified communications, and social media.  

Tags: Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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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
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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
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Athens!  A cradle of western civilization.  I arrived in Greece with enough time to visit the Acropolis, the neighboring Areopagus, and the marvelous new Acropolis museum.  Even the Metro station in the center of the city has a 100-foot long wall of glass showing the layers of civilization back to 600 BCE, which were exposed during construction of the Metro. 

You might think that businesses in Greece could be so captured by their history that they would be slow to change.  Actually, the business people I met were justifiably proud of their heritage, but they took the lessons of history as a cause for action - as illustrated by the archeology, new methods always win out, whether suddenly or inexorably. 

Sure enough, this Microsoft UC Road Show event was well attended by a broad cross-section of business and government.  Hotel chain CIOs rubbed elbows with finance and insurance firms.  Natural resources firms interacted with manufacturing and distribution firms.  Several government agencies, including the Navy, were there, too. 

The points of emphasis and inquiry by the attendees had their unique themes, including:

• Branch office and retail outlet communications. There was interest in how to support branch offices more quickly and effectively and with less cost. Certainly, Unified Communications was seen as a solution for branch office support by making the regional or central support teams more immediately available using presence, IM and click-to-communicate. Also, use of the conferencing functions of UC for training of new branch office employees and for training of all associates on changes in products or policies was seen as a potential method for saving both travel cost and time.
• Conferencing Savings. Direct cost savings were also anticipated by bringing hosted conferencing services in-house, using Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS). Those I spoke with were thinking of this savings in combination with putting the Office Communicator client on the employees’ desktops, to make conferencing easier to use. One company mentioned that after rolling out OCS, they trained their users on setting up and managing conferences using the combination of OCS and Microsoft Outlook and the use of conferencing went up by 30% in less than a month.
• Co-existence with aging PBXs. Many of the firms owned PBXs or key systems that were approaching a replacement cycle; or in some cases the firms were using direct central office support (like 1MBs or Centrex lines in the US) and were looking to reduce those monthly tariffs. The favored approach, both for ease of implementation and for the fastest cost reductions, was to implement the OCS solution for specific groups of users or for specific locations based on those which most needed a communications capability upgrade or system refresh and to connect to the remaining PBX users via gateways. There were no complaints of limitations or barriers from those who mentioned this approach.
• Management communication effectiveness and cost savings. One firm, a multi-national natural resources and minerals firm headquartered in Greece, is using OCS for their management team and their remote mining locations. They provide the managers with mobile phones equipped with the Microsoft Communicator Mobile client so the management team can see who is available for interaction and decision making at any moment, and across continents and time zones. The remote mining locations use either PCs or the USB or network-attached phones for communications to and from the sites and also to and from the management team members. The report showed lower telecom toll costs, reductions in cell bills, and economical deployments that reduce telecom costs for the remote mining sites.

So, in summary of the Athens event, it seemed to me that the Hellas business community is applying the logical methods for which their ancestors are famous to the current problems of cost savings and resource optimization and finding that software-based UC can deliver the intended benefits. 

It was a real pleasure to visit Athens both to interact with today’s business community regarding their UC actions based on Microsoft’s UC offerings and also to observe and contemplate one of the primary cradles of our western civilization. 

Tags: Unified Communications by Marty Parker
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Bangalore, India, has a unique flair.  As you may know, Bangalore is known as the “Silicon Valley of India.”  That concept is visible in many ways, with a very attractive new airport and a thriving business community that are set amidst a hospitable and diverse city with many traditional India sights, such as the fully lit wedding grounds along the main avenue on my evening ride into the city.  

For the UC Roadshow, customers packed the venue at the Oberoi Hotel, clearly interested in the possibilities of Unified Communications.  They represented a broad cross section of the Bangalore business community comprising software firms (both software producers and contract software firms), manufacturing and distribution firms, biological/pharmaceutical research labs, retail chains, systems integrators, and India offices of a major US financial services firm. 

These enterprises seemed to be well along the Unified Communications (UC) path.  Most of them already had hands-on pilot experience with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) and Exchange were working on the more advanced issues related to broad roll-outs and deployments.  Topics of major interest included:

• Finding the best mix of capabilities for desktop deployment. Specifically, there was an interest in positioning conferencing capabilities on the desktop and in determining the extent to which desktop video conferencing should be enabled and then promoted. This was linked to the question of how much bandwidth will be consumed by a desktop video session, to understand the trade-offs, i.e. would voice and desktop sharing/web conferencing be more than sufficient for the business purpose, or would video have enough incremental value to justify the additional bandwidth over the Wide Area Network or out though an Internet Gateway. The sense of the questions on video were still exploratory, indicating that might come in a second or third wave of roll-out for most users.
• Facilitating customer interactions. Since many of the firms worked on major contracts with large enterprises (software, pharmaceuticals), there was interest in the options for links with those customers using UC. Some wanted to include their customers without any technical requirements, such as by inviting them into OCS-based Live Meetings. Others were interested in the details of federation to their customers, since those customers already had UC deployments. Either way, there was interest in more and better links with their clients.
• Enhancing team collaboration. Of course, the software firms were very interested in project speed, but that theme was echoed by the research lab, the systems integrators, and the manufacturing and retail firms. The manufacturing and retail firms were focused on collaboration primarily for supply chain management (e.g. requirements planning, order scheduling, and marketing).
• Improved conferencing at lower cost. Of course, the cost factors were important here, as several firms were looking to lower or eliminate their conferencing service provider costs, but there was also a major cost reduction focus on training retail store and branch office personnel via web or video conferencing tools. One questioner inquired as to how UC conferencing such as provided with OCS compared to high definition or special room-designed “telepresence.” That led to an interesting discussion of whether the 720p high definition mode now supported by OCS and Live Meeting were sufficient for the interpersonal applications of telepresence, at the resulting lower bandwidth, and whether desktop, home office or mobile location uses of a UC HD solution were preferable to specific telepresence room locations. The consensus was in favor of the UC approach, probably reflecting a blend of the audience’s experience with OCS and the pragmatic cost-conscious theme of the road show.
• Options for PBX integration. Several firms were moving or planned to move a portion of their users to OCS and had detailed questions on the options and methods of integrating OCS with their PBX systems to provide seamless links between the two communities of users.

As in Mumbai, the Microsoft IT (MSIT) team from India shared their experiences as part of the global Microsoft roll-out in deploying UC layers or “workloads” to 92,000 users across Microsoft, including (OCS), Microsoft Exchange, and Unified Messaging, with mobility and remote access thrown into the mix.  Also, Microsoft federates the OCS systems with their business partners, including presence, IBM and click-to-communicate.  For example, all Microsoft Partners in India are required to run their own OCS systems and to federate with Microsoft for ease of communications.   

Of course, the same regulations on non-interaction of TDM and IP networks exists in Bangalore as in Mumbai, addressed with similar creative configurations and operational solutions.

In summary, the Bangalore event just underscored the Mumbai conclusion that UC has momentum in India.  It will be very interesting to see what case studies show in 2010 as these customers roll out their UC applications.  

Tags: Unified Communications by Marty Parker
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Wow!  India!  What a happening place.  Even in the midst of a global economic slowdown, the morning Mumbai newspaper had the headline, “India GDP up 7.9%” reflecting the quarter ended September 2009 vs. the year prior.  This land of rich history is busy writing a new chapter, for sure.

The enterprise customers in Mumbai were a cross section of businesses, including retail banking, retail financial brokerage, construction, a major television network, a diamond-grading institution, and a number of software firms.  Most of the software firms were providing contract services to clients around the globe.

These businesses all had some very clear and consistent reasons for coming to a UC meeting.  Most of all, to find out more about how UC could help them save money and cut costs.  But, in every case, they added some business improvement goals, too, such as better collaboration with their customers, better employee productivity, improved branch communications, enhanced international communications, lower costs for conferencing services, and/or cutting the telecom bills.

Also, it was clear that these managers and planners were expecting to apply Unified Communications to selected parts of their businesses, in some logical sequence based on the applications mentioned.  They might be focusing on customer interfaces, or on mobile staff, or on branch operations, but clearly they were planning to proceed in phases to accelerate the benefits, to lower the risks, and to align with budgetary constraints. 

Roughly half of the firms were already running Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 in a pilot environment, anticipating production rollouts in 2010.  But whether they were in pilot mode or still in the planning stages, all of them were gathering the facts to help them justify and budget for their UC actions.  Notably, the questions about justification were very much in the mode of ‘how to’ make sure UC can be justified, rather than in the mode of not taking action until the case is ‘proven’ beyond doubt.  In other words, these businesses in India seem to be focused on how to capture the opportunities, rather than on protecting the status quo.

To add spice to the UC scene in India (beyond the spice in the wonderful food), both the customer and the System Integrator UC teams have to work with a telecom regulation in India that bans any call in the public network from crossing the boundary between traditional analog/TDM (time division multiplexing) telephony and IP (packet-based) telephony.  If there’s Internet Protocol telephony in the call, such as from a PC or an IP Phone, then the call has to stay entirely within the enterprise’s private network, or has to be entirely on the data network.  Obviously, this can create a few challenges in system design and call routing, but there seemed to be plenty of Unified Communications applications that could be deployed without crossing that regulatory line.  Hopefully, that type of regulation will be eliminated soon.  Regulatory adjustments have already been made to accommodate the booming call center industry in India, so it would seem the changes could be extended to general purpose communications, as well. 

In summary, UC has momentum in India.  Businesses are planning and pilot testing the next wave of applications.  And, with the thriving India economy, it sure seems there will be plenty of UC roll-outs around Mumbai in 2010!

Tags: Unified Communications by Marty Parker
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Microsoft released their Visual Search beta on Bing this morning. It’s pretty cool, particularly if you are a visual person. I played around with some of the categories they had listed to show off the application. One category, dog breeds, really shows how this software shines, compared to doing searches on Google. I’ve done this search before when trying to show what certain breeds of dogs look like, for my kids. Visual search is cool. Click on dog breeds and up come boxes with the individual dogs in them, just like if you pulled open a big file drawer and could see all the files. Go and try it.

Easily laid out to help, the screen allows you to sort by size of dog, either by clicking on a “sort by size button” at the top, or sliding a scroll bar labeled as such down the side. On the left side are popular subcategories that some one might want to click on, such as “most obedient”, “hypoallergenic”, etc., Below that are sub categories under the heading “narrow the search”. For example, categories include grooming needs, size, temperament, etc. Once you narrow your search, then you get links to the best choice for what you are looking for.

I loved it. But it’s more than that. The visual component is what got me. Let’s take “popular books” as a category. Sometimes you know the author or the name of the book, but sometimes you have just seen a book around and can’t remember either of those. Click on “popular books” and up come dozens of covers. I instantly recognized several my fellow airplane passengers had been reading last week on a plane with me.

While just playing with it seems like a toy, it does have the potential for enhancing unified communications and mobility applications, particularly multi-modal applications. Giving people visual choices, even on a small screen can speed up their ability to make selections, and the visual component spurs memory recall. I’d like to see how developers will incorporate this function into applications.

For now I have to quell my desire to go to Barnes and Noble.com rather than work. :) I now have to quell my desire to play longer with Visual Search. It’s fun and useful. Oh oh, I hear “greatest movies” calling me. Back to work.

Tags: ADA communications, Mobile UC, Unified Communications by Nancy Jamison
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I frequently blog about Tellme due to their speech recognition and self-service offerings, and I liked the relative autonomy which Microsoft gave Tellme after the MS acquisition 2 years ago.

However, I sense a change is in the works for Tellme Network, because its’ founder and GM, Mike McCue, is leaving Tellme at the end of June. It’s been reported that part of the change will be an overhaul of Microsoft’s speech recognition efforts, and that Tellme and all related areas will be combined into one business unit at Microsoft under the leadership of Zig Serafin.

Read more on my blog, http://www.jamison-consulting.com/blog/

Tags: ADA communications, Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
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Yes, you’re eyes are still working!  It’s true.  The unrelenting push by Microsoft to make a product that delivers some version of enterprise telephony has broken into the Gartner MQ for that exclusive club, Corporate Telephony, that was published only last Friday, August 8. 

Now, most of you know that Microsoft had already propelled itself to the Leaders quadrant in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications 2007, but this is PBX and IP-PBX territory. 

What’s the catch?  Well, Microsoft is in the lower right quadrant — the Visionaries quadrant.  That’s the place for companies with completeness of vision, and Microsoft is rated far to the top (the right on the x-axis) on that scale, but still with work to do on “ability to excute”. 

While some may say this is bad for Microsoft, since they will look weak in the telephony group, it seems to me that this is ideal for them!  It says that Gartner sees Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 as addressing the future directions of Corporate Telephony, but isn’t ready to do it all.  That’s great.  I’ve argued before that Microsoft does not want to win as a leader in the PBX market, they want to win as a leader in the “communications” market, where their software can make major improvements in business operations, not just simply replace a phone. 

Gartner suggests that Microsoft OCS is on target for those who want to “look beyond enterprise telephony to different ways of working, especially for nomadic and knowledge workers.”  I agree entirely.  In fact, you read it here first, on UCStrategies.com.  We called this out from the beginning, advising readers, clients, and our workshop and VoiceCon attendees to look for breakthrough improvements for the specific users in specific business processes.  This is why we have always said that UC is, “Communications integrated to optimize business processes.”  Just look at the 200 Microsoft case studies for OCS 2007 – some are just simple travel avoidance or international toll cost savings, but many really are new ways to communicate and are real business optimizations. 

We’ll bring you more news on this as it unfolds, both here and at NoJitter.com.  If you want to know about Unified Communications, and if you want to know how UC will intersect Corporate Telephony, this is the place to be! 

Please do add a comment below, so we get a lively dialog on this momentous event.

Tags: Unified Communications Information, Unified Communications Information by Marty Parker
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