Jim Burton is Founder and CEO of CT Link, LLC. Burton founded the consulting firm in 1989 to help clients in the converging voice, data and networking industries with strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and distribution issues.
In the early 1990s, Burton recognized the challenges vendors and the channel faced as they developed and installed integrated voice/data products. He became the leading authority in the voice/data integration industry and is credited with "coining" the term computer-telephone integration (CTI). Burton helped companies including Microsoft and Intel enter the voice market and helped AT&T (now Avaya), Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Siemens and Toshiba with their CTI strategies.
In the late 1990s, venture capitalists turned to Burton for help in evaluating potential investments in IP PBX start-ups. He went on to help these and other companies with strategic planning and partnering, including NBX (acquired by 3Com, Selsius (acquired by Cisco), ShoreTel and Sphere Communications.
In the early 2000s, Burton began focusing on wireless services and technologies. In 2005 Burton started helping vendors with their Unified Communications strategy and in 2006, along with several colleagues, created a web site, UCStrategies.com, to provide information for enterprise customers and vendors.
Some early signs of a shift are visible, although it may be another 5-10 years before everything is in place.
It's important to look at the major vendors' offerings, but also at products that complement what the major vendors are proposing.
The cloud/hosted market has matured to the point where it should be considered, particularly for small and branch offices.
At VoiceCon in Orlando IBM announced it planned to ship Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT) in July of this year. On June 23 IBM announced general availability of SUT and indicated it had already booked sales to close out the quarter--congratulations....
Microsoft will soon advise the market about how it intends to work with partners and enable customers to use their existing phone systems while working with OCS.
The message for vendors is clear: Leverage VoiceCon to network with potential and existing strategic partners.
While still very important, the phone system is now just one component of a UC solution.
It is critical that both vendors and customers spend time trying to predict the future as they plan their UC strategy.
This has been a very exciting year for our industry--but there is still confusion about some of the fundamentals--like what does UC really mean?
While Unified Communications many important capabilities and benefits, they boil down to the following:...
I am fortunate to live in St. Helena, CA, a little town in the heart of Napa Valley. We have great food, great wine and great weather. Every weekend there is a wine auction (or two) to support local charities....
I appreciate Eric's kind words and support. My message on this subject is very simple – enterprise customers need to start thinking differently about communications. They have communications silos in their organizations with staff managing and supporting each of these...
I've observed lots of discussions about Unified Communications on the web this summer, and am convinced that the reason this dialogue continues after several years comes down to one thing: Positioning. To be perceived as thought leaders in the UC...
The evolving Unified Communications industry is reshaping the communications marketplace. The changes create challenges for some vendors and opportunities for others. The legacy vendors are scrambling to revise their business models, and all of the major vendors, both legacy and...
Unified communications solutions continue to evolve, and while the initial crop of UC applications was rooted in call center environments, UC apps have now branched out into other areas of the business. But it's already clear that for a growing...
At first glance, there would appear to be little gained by the UC community with a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo. However, if you think about the importance of mobility in a UC world you can start to see some possibilities....
