There are six major components for evaluating a Unified Communications offering, according to Ed LaBanca of CollabGen, Inc., an independent consultant and analyst:* Communications Server--IP Telephony and multi-media services * Presence Server--Presence information * Communications Portal--Phone and/or web user interface * Collaboration--Voice, video and web conferencing applications * Voice/Unified Messaging--stand alone or integrated e-mail voice fax and SMS * Voice Portal--Auto-attendant/ IVR, speech recognition, text-to-speech
These six components can be evaluated and rated against:
* Technology * Innovation * Function * Adaptability * Professional services
Ed LaBanca points out these components and evaluation factors in his "Avaya Unified Communications Portfolio NuViews® Summary Report" that he issued earlier this year. The full 129 page is available for purchase. Ed is offering a 9 page summary that provides a great overview of the report conclusions. A free copy of the summary is available here.
A summary and rating of his conclusions are shown in the figure below.
One of the observations is that collaboration is a relatively weak component of the Avaya UC suite at a score of 80 out of 100 for four of the five rating factors. Only the technology aspect of collaboration is rated high. This is not say that the Avaya collaboration is poor, only that it is Avaya's weakest component.
The report provides comments for each of the six components across the five rating factors. The area that interested me most was the evaluation of the professional services. I have found this category to total up to 60+% of the entire UC bill in recent UC proposals. Ed includes the software subscription as well as support as part of professional services. In my recent proposal evaluations, the vendors defined professional services as the labor component excluding the software licenses and subscription.
When you look at the professional services bill, whether according to my definition or Ed's, the most glaring fact is that most of the professional services will be paid in the first year. The software subscription is a prepaid 1-, 2-, 3- or 5-year prepayment. This is a big hit for the first year's budget. The remaining years' operation will not be affected by the software subscription if the customer prepays for multiple years.
In reading the report, I learned that This looks good on paper, but the enterprise should learn where these experts and centers are located relative to the enterprise's location(s).
Any vendor should also have a fully standardized set of procedures for planning, procurement, implementation and operation. The reason for this is that the enterprise should not depend on specific personalities within the vendor organization; if there is any change to the vendor staff, the UC project must be able to continue smoothly.
Where there is a potential professional service weakness is when a VAR is offering the Avaya product. You should spend as much time evaluating the VAR professional services as you do the product itself, even if the vendor of the products looks good. The VAR may be the weakest element of the project.
It is very hard to evaluate the labor portion of professional services, since the services success has much to do with the personnel assigned. The vendor should have a comprehensive set of procedures and tools that can be used remotely from the enterprise, to evaluate and solve 95+% of the problems. Evaluate this capability, as it should speed the problem resolution and depend less on the onsite location of the vendor's personnel.
My primary concern about the Avaya product evaluation is the discussion missing on Avaya's management and monitoring tools. In the Avaya product presentation that I received last fall, I was not impressed by what the management and monitoring tools could perform. I believe that in Communications Manager Version 5.1, this is improved by the inclusion of management software from IR Prognosis.
Even with this addition, I still think there is considerable room for improvement. I might say that I was also not impressed by the Cisco management tools either. This area, management and monitoring tools, should be elevated in any enterprise's product evaluation. The enterprise should also consider procuring third party tools that are in many cases superior to those offered by the UC vendors.
Ed's analyst reports can also be accessed via www.CXOReports.com. NuViews is a registered service mark and a proprietary methodology which includes visual representations and criteria for analyzing and comparing information in common formats by various top-tier vendor platforms and functions.
