A Fire Hose of Good News from Voice and Video.
It seems like once a quarter, we go into overdrive on encouraging news for the emerging communications space. This past week qualified with flying colors.
Some Really Innovative Customers That Made us Go WOW!
One of the best parts of the Genesys/Alcatel Lucent Enterprise Application Group analyst conferences is the Customer Innovation Awards. The analysts get to hear from a number of innovative customers and judge them on how well they're using technology to improve customer service. Last week I got to hear from four Genesys/ALU customers, and each of them had a great story to tell.
Will PBXs Evolve into SAXs?
Several events and announcements in the past two weeks, including those made at Lotusphere, the Avaya/Nortel roadmap, Mitel's new mobile voice and data services, and what was discussed at the Genesys/Alcatel-Lucent analyst conference, reminded me of issues and predictions I made in a white paper more than 6 years ago. The paper was called The Communications/Information Productivity Revolution, and it covered a wide range of topics, including the important question of the future of the PBX.
Google Voice: Good or Bad for Micro-Business Telephony?
I find myself increasingly torn when it comes to Google Voice. As a very early adopter of the original GrandCentral's services back in '07, I've always appreciated the offering for its innovation and simplicity. And of course held great respect for GrandCentral's founders (and for anyone else who can sell voice companies to both Yahoo and Google in one lifetime!).
The Next Killer UC App: Reporting
If it cannot be measured, it cannot be managed. Most contact centers have very sophisticated reporting, recording, and surveys that enable contact center agent productivity to be optimized. The same cannot be said for most professional workers, and part of the problem is the lack of sophisticated reporting, recording, and feedback in most Unified Communications applications.
Corporate Video: There's Gold in Them-There Hills; But Is It Still Fool's Gold?
Many of the year-end prediction blogs and news stories I read highlighted corporate video as a market that would be red hot moving into 2010. Well we're still in the first month of 2010 and we've already had three major announcements involving video. These are SEN’s partnership with Polycom, Juniper's partnership and reference architecture for Polycom and Cisco's latest Telepresence announcement regarding its interoperability protocol. Seeing how 2010 has kicked off, one might believe that 2010 will indeed be the year that video finally becomes a mainstream corporate collaboration tool.
How Dominant Will Video Become?
The big event of the week that's not Apple's Hype-athon Tabletganza is Cisco's Networkers, and there's some pretty bold predictions coming out of the Cisco event in Barcelona, most notably relating to video.
The UC TCO
The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculation is an estimate, not a fixed concrete bill. I think it is a better financial measure of a Unified Communications acquisition than the Return On Investment (ROI).
When Considering the Forecast for the UC Market, Consider History
Recently, I had a call with some folks from one of the leading UC vendors, and one point stands out in my mind: In the context of another discussion, one of the participants noted that the majority of the vendor's customers have yet to standardize on an enterprise IM platform, and that most of those that haven't are struggling to get the multiple services their employees use to federate as needed.
Reflections on Lotusphere
Lotusphere 2010 last week included events and topics that impact IBM's plans and positioning for UC. Here are a few reflections.
Apple Money, Money, Money
Apple's financial results on Monday and conference call are available here.
Battle for the Voice Cloud Begins: Ifbyphone Snags Cloudvox.
I first met Irv Shapiro in the late fall of 2006. Scouring the wire as I always did for companies doing new things in voice, I came across Ifbyphone--a Chicago based startup at the time touting its hosted IVR platform, among other things. Frankly, I can't remember what their press announcement at the time was about--some voice blogging widget perhaps--but it caught my attention. And a few phone calls and a trip to Chicago later, I found myself with the good fortune of working alongside this visionary entrepreneur for the next 18 months.
Communications in the Cloud: When They Make Sense
As many of you know, I'm not the most bullish analyst on cloud computing. The problem isn't that I don't see the value of delivering applications over the Internet—that, I get: It can be cost-effective, especially for companies with small or no IT departments, or few resources to spend on capital projects; it is easy to scale up or down as needed; it breaks corporate boundaries, enabling inter-company collaboration long- or short term; it even may offer a needed way to share presence information across not just organizations, but multi-vendor systems, servers and clients.
Building a New, UC-Driven Architecture
Ah, for the good old days. When communications had nice, neatly defined silos--voice, data, video, wireless, fixed --and when there were clear distinctions between the technologies used in our personal lives vs. time on the job. The vendor side of the industry was more clearly delineated as well in terms of what they could provide--infrastructure, software, desktop vs. network or apps.
Lotus Knows Social Media, But Do Customers?
I attended this year's Lotusphere and, to no one,s surprise, one of the big themes of the show is social computing and its role in enterprise collaboration. IBM has been pushing the concept of what Lotus and social media can do through its "Lotus Knows" campaign, which I find to be fairly effective. The first time I saw the Lotus Knows campaign was when I was in a cab in NYC a few months ago, the ads were running on the little screen in the back of the cab and, for whatever reason, it caught my attention so my awareness of it had been raised quite some time ago.
How Much Video Conferencing Resolution Do I Need?
One of the first questions I ask during a video conferencing consult is the bandwidth requirement for each video conferencing call. Often users have not figured this one out yet, and so it needs some discussion. Video conferencing quality is directly related to the bandwidth consumed, and the two key factors are the image resolution and the frame rate. Most of the video conferencing discussion today is around High Definition (HD) resolution, and everyone seems to think that is what they need. But personal video conferencing delivers many more bits per face than either Telepresence or room-based video. My contention is that desktop video can deliver great images at much lower bandwidth and in most cases does not require HD bandwidth. Let's take a look at how this works.
Future of the Phone? Future of the PBX...
I bumped into Brent Kelly of Wainhouse Research in the press/blogger/analyst room here at Lotusphere (between us, we have all those job descriptions covered). So I asked him about the pretty remarkable report that Wainhouse just released, in which they predict strong gains for the Unified Communications market, despite Wainhouse's projection of an actual decrease in CPE revenues.
Lotusphere: Laying Down Some Hate on Handsets
The desk phone is dead. I'm used to hearing Microsoft hating on handsets, but IBM? The obsolesce of the desk phone was by no means among the overarching themes at the Lotusphere 2010 conference this week, nor did session and keynote speakers drone on about it. But the message was there, and frankly it took me by surprise.
Sametime Unified Telephony Progress Report
2009 was a big year for IBM Lotus's Sametime suite; a major upgrade, Sametime 8.5 was released, and Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT), which integrates multiple vendors' telephony platforms with Sametime, became publicly available. At this week's Lotusphere 2010, Bruce Morse and Akiba Saeedi of IBM Lotus's Unified Communications division gave a progress report.
Video Conferencing? Choose Between Open to Interoperable
It's funny how the video conferencing industry works. You can either choose an interoperable solution or an open one. Can't have them both.
Clouds, Virtualization, and SOA
The trouble with the market's preoccupation with fads and buzz is that it's easy to sweep really significant issues under the rug. In fact, that may be happening with some of the hottest topics of the day, according to enterprises I've just surveyed. As planners get more involved with new trends like cloud computing, they're learning new things about older trends like virtualization and SOA. What they’re learning in part is that they should have known more about these issues all along.
Lotusphere Opening
The theme of this morning's Lotusphere opening session was "Collaboration Agenda," and the topics ranged across the Lotus portfolio. There seemed to be less of a clear emphasis on any one element of the Lotus line, but the cloud and mobility seemed to me to be the elements that resonated most.
Panasonic-IBM Deal Boosts Hosted Email
In her last few posts (here and here), Melanie Turek has highlighted some Frost & Sullivan research that predicts strong growth in hosted email. Now there's a big announcement of a major IBM-based hosted email deployment of some 380,000 seats by Panasonic.
UC Growth: Managed and Hosted
Our friends at Wainhouse Research just came out with a new report that projects some very optimistic numbers for Unified Communications growth, and what's really interesting is where they expect the growth to come from.
The Year Over-The-Top Voice Apps Go...Over the Top?
An "over-the-top" application is perhaps best described by its very namesake. It implies a solution that can ride on top of existing infrastructure, rather than require heavy integration to get its value into the hands of end users.
On Premises Email Market Sees Growth Even in the Face of UC
Last week, I offered a sample of some of the key findings from Frost & Sullivan's latest study on the hosted email market. This week, I'm focusing on the World On-premises Email Market, another study conducted by my colleague, Subha Rama.
UC in 2009: How'd We Do?
Last year at this time I wrote about my wish list for UC in 2009. Let's see how we did:
Siemens Enterprise Communications Analyst Webinar
Siemens Enterprise Communications held a video webcast today to update industry analysts on the company's past year's results and activities since Gores Group officially assumed a 51% stake in the company a year ago. The key presenter was Mark Stone, Chairman. Mark Straton, Senior Vice President, Voice and Applications Marketing, also presented a section of the webinar. Also participating was Hakim Akhavan, who was recently announced as the new CEO.
Avaya and the Olympics
A number of news stories hit the internet in the last couple of days proclaiming that with just five weeks to go, Avaya had replaced Nortel as a sponsor of the Vancouver Olympics and Paralympics. There seemed to be a hint of potential gloom in the story leads that surprised me. Having visited Vancouver, and spoken with the Director of IT for one of the key Olympic venues, GM Place, I knew that the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) had locked down the network to changes months ago. (The picture is me and the Canucks mascot, Fin--not the IT director.) That said, the articles caused me to wonder just how the Avaya acquisition of Nortel would impact the Vancouver games. I spent some time today talking to Dave Johnson, general manager of the Olympic program at Avaya to get the answers.
Siemens, Shared Technologies Make Deal
Score a win for Siemens Enterprise Communications in its bid to grab North American market share and increase its indirect sales: SEN will announce next week that it's concluded an agreement to add a major North American distribution partner: Shared Technologies. I had a chance to talk this morning with Shared CEO Tony Parella and Siemens channel VP Denzil Samuels, and got a look at what they described as a unique service offering that offers a more incremental pricing model. Tony also talked about Shared's pursuit of Nortel Enterprise Solutions, which of course ultimately went to Avaya.
UC For Dummies Book
Just read the "Unified Communications For Dummies" book that came in the mail today. One of my rules of thumb is; "Something is not ready for mainstream implementation until there is a book out on it." So as more books come out on UC, I guess this means that UC is hitting critical mass. Expect a book on SIP trunking in the next few months as it matures into the mainstream.
How Much Video Conferencing Company Wide?
This is the third of three posts on video conferencing utilization and how to predict that use for room-based and desktop-based endpoints. Most of the discussion so far has been around determining the utilization of equipment for efficiency purposes (how well is my investment being used), or for determining the maximum demand on the network (peak bandwidth).
A Look at the North American Hosted Email Market
Yes, I know, e-mail is so 2009 (or is it 2005?). But the fact remains, when it comes to business communications, most of us use email more than any other technology. That's partly due to habit and tradition, but it has a lot to do with openness and interoperability, too. Users can email anyone, anywhere and any time, without worrying about what network they’re on or which interface they're using. Unlike phone calls, email is persistent. And, it's easy to rope in multiple parties, for group discussions.
Models of Video Conferencing Utilization
I mentioned in my last post that I had a conversation with Jim Idelson of DesigNET, and we worked on two models of video conferencing utilization, one for room-based video and one for personal or desktop-based video. These two deployment scenarios have very different use characteristics, and so have to be considered independently.
What's Hot and What's Not for 2010
I've read many of the prediction blogs and articles for 2010 and I thought I would put a different spin on my own predictions. There will be no shortage of industry announcements and hype next year, but which are the ones that will actually be impactful? Below, I've outlined which trends are hot and which are not.
What We Will Remember 2009 For
As we wrap up the year, I thought I would blog on all the things, that when we look back on the year, that we would remember. There were many general news events such as the death of Michael Jackson, Bubble Boy, the USAir flight landing in the Hudson, but I’ll try and stick to our industry :)
What to Watch in 2010
As we wrap up arguably the most tumultuous year in enterprise communications, I thought it would be worth spending a few minutes looking at what I believe will be the big stories of 2010. Here are my top five (in no particular order):
Jingle Bells Ringing for Jajah: How they created $200M of Perceived Value.
I can clearly remember the first time I tried what Jajah then called its ‘"web telephony" service, back in 2007. Its claim: to take the confusion and early adopter status out of VoIP, by letting people use their computers to place a call, yet still use their phone of choice to complete it. It was an early, yet very effective application of click-to-call. I was impressed.
Channel Changes on Deck
The telephone equipment channel is one of the few forms of distribution not largely impacted by national chains or Internet distribution houses. The channel remains predominately independent local firms that specialize in voice systems and related services. But several factors in play today suggest big changes are coming--partly due to technology changes and partly due to obsolete models now under competitive pressure.
Fighting for the Soul of UC
You're always supposed to have a New Year's Resolution. It's a reflection of your mistakes of the past, cast as a commitment to the future. So now we're heading into a new year and a new decade, and maybe it's time for UC to have its own resolution. According to the enterprise surveys I completed just before the holidays, UC may be fighting for its soul in 2010.
110 Billion Text Messages Last December
The Census Bureau released some statistics on Tuesday. A few interesting communication statistics:
On My Wish List for 2010: Certifying the Cloud
Last week's Telecom Management Forum event in Orlando focused on vendors' recent enhancements in topics like IT and Operations Excellence, Improving the Customer Experience, New Services and Business Models. In the latter, some vendors discussed managed services and cloud-based architectures as new business models for both communications/service providers and business users.
Unified Communications and Gartner's Strategic Technologies
There was a buzz in the UC blogosphere when Gartner identified its Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2010 at Symposium this fall. UC wasn't on the list. In the two previous years, UC had been there, at least in name. The 2008 UC entry focused on the move to IP, and in 2009 on the effects of vendor consolidation. While hardly making the kind of compelling case and game-changing impacts that we see reported in many case studies, at least UC made the cut. But not for 2010.
A Rose By Any Other Name
Well, the debate on the definition of Unified Communications is raging again (visit the What is UC? Forum at UCStrategies.com). As often occurs, vendors focus their marketing spending on differentiation, which means there is constant rebranding of products (or even entire market categories); thus we see many terms for "UC" such as CEBP, IPA, or Collaboration. Other vendors, wanting to link their products to the UC momentum, are applying UC branding to components of UC solutions; this linkage is certainly good marketing, unless the marketing material claims that the component, on its own, is a complete UC solution.
Indentifying UC Opportunities in the Healthcare Market
Recently, my colleague Alaa Saayed published a study on the possibilities for unified communications in the healthcare industry. Although the industry has traditionally lagged in its IT deployments, many providers see opportunities and value in UC.
Sizing UC Market Makes Little Sense
I recently read some industry news stories and articles referencing a recent market research report about the size and spectacular forecast growth of the Unified Communications (UC) market and had to laugh in response. UC is not a product, but the result of multiple products sometimes interacting on a particular task. As Dave Michels' recent No Jitter article said, UC is a result, not the start of a communications process or session.
How a Jobs Website Uses New Voice Apps
Yes, the voice business has changed abundantly over the last few years. We've seen it give rise to entrepreneurial startups like never before, many with the hope of providing services that legacy operators either overpriced, or under-delivered on. Some have prospered, while others have found that taking on giants has its drawbacks. Many joined in on what I like to call the 'race to zero'--a clock that if we could watch it real time would display the downward spiral of the cost of a call (landline or mobile), and with it the valuation of a voice call as we know it.
ADTRAN's New UC Suite
ADTRAN, which has mostly been known as a networking and infrastructure vendor, announced its NetVanta Unified Communications product suite. Building on its NetVanta 7000 Series IP PBXs for SMBs, ADTRAN introduced four new products as part of its NetVanta Unified Communications Solutions. NetVanta Unified Communications is a family of UC solutions scaling up to over 2,000 users per server. The underlying code is the same for all of these products--the only difference is the licensing.
ADTRAN Seals The Deal With UC Server
Back in the early fall, ADTRAN acquired Objectworld, a Canadian Microsoft Gold partner that made a sticky UC product to run on MS Server. What's interesting and explains more to me in the way of design questions is that the Objectworld server fills the void where the IAD or the IPT7000 series missed a few areas. Not only does the UC Server close some gaps but it also adds some elegance to the ADTRAN IPT solution.
Cisco Financial Analyst Conference Provides Strong Shout Out to its Voice Business
At the recently held Cisco conference for financial analysts, the following data was presented in support of its spectacular growth record for enterprise voice communications:
SIP Trunking Enabling UC
SIP trunking has taken over as the buzzword of enterprise telephony. As Sheila McGee-Smith mentioned in her No Jitter post, when we asked Thomas Behnke of Kraft what benefits his company was getting from its implementation of Avaya Aura, he immediately responded that the savings from using SIP trunking among locations was the primary and initial benefit.
How Often Will Users Turn to Video?
In my network consulting practice I am often working with clients who are deploying video conferencing. One of the first steps in this process is to determine the video demand, which means predicting how much bandwidth the video conferencing will use on the Enterprise network. One of the critical components of this calculation is to understand how often users will be using the video conferencing equipment.
Is it Time for Integrated Collaboration?
All the buzz about collaboration lately got me thinking about a conference co-located with Interop that Jim Burton and I organized back in 2003, and a term we coined--i-Cast, for Integrated Collaboration Applications, Services and Technologies.
New CEO for Siemens Enterprise Communications Confirmed
Siemens Enterprises Communications (SEN Group) today confirmed in a press release the appointment of Hamid Akhavan as its new Chief Executive Officer, with full transition to the role by late February. Mark Stone, interim CEO over recent months will resume his duties as Executive Chairman and remain part of the Executive Board.
The Future of The Internet
It's an interesting read from PEW Internet & American Life Project. The report, The Future of the Internet III states the experts agree that the mobile phone will become the primary device for online access and they disagree about whether or not the technology and the Internet will lead to more social tolerance, more forgiving human relations or better home lives. Their predictions are for scenarios in 2020. Other observations they make are:
THE HOT ZONE
A focus on burning issues in Enterprise Communications
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