==============================================

VoiceCon eNews for the week of January 18, 2010

Weekly opinions and analysis of the trends in
enterprise communications and technologies.
http://enews.voicecon.com/

==============================================
 
Avaya-Nortel: The Roadmap

I’m writing this newsletter before Avaya makes its
much-anticipated January 19 announcement of its
roadmap for the newly-acquired Nortel product set,
but I’m writing it after reading the Fred Knight
piece on a “New, UC-Driven Architecture” excerpted
below. It makes for an interesting contrast.

In a sense, the Avaya roadmap had better be all about
the issues Fred writes about - how does a particular
set of end user enterprises plot its course into the
next generation of systems that will run their
communications?

On the other hand, when the road map comes out, we’ll
be talking in a lot of detail about Meridian 1 end-of-life,
and similar nuts-and-bolts concerns. Which is important.
That’s a heck of a lot of dollars’ investment we’re
talking about, not just in terms of money spent on
equipment, but also in terms of service dollars,
investments in training, and facilities costs. Just
how an enterprise is able to retire its legacy Nortel
investment and move on - a lot of money is riding on
decisions about how to move away from these old
technologies.

For Avaya, the stakes couldn’t be higher. In his
recent survey of telecom consultants, Allan Sulkin
found Avaya was the company most likely to be
recommended by consultants to their end user clients.
At the same time, a significant percentage of these
consultants seem to be looking to migrate off of Nortel
sooner rather than later. Almost half responded that
they were “not likely” to recommend that a Meridian 1
customer migrate to a next-gen Nortel (i.e., CS1000)
platform. If you put those two data points together,
there’s the potential, at least among this set of
decision-makers, for Avaya to drive legacy Nortel
customers onto its Aura-based platforms, fulfilling
the promise of the acquisition.

No Jitter Article:
Rating the Vendors: TEQConsult Group’s Consultant Survey
http://www.nojitter.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222300076

On the other hand, these consultants also rated Cisco
highly among products they’d recommend to customers,
and 45% said they thought it “fairly likely” or “highly
likely” that Microsoft will be in the top 5 vendors
in this market within the next five years. This is
spite of the fact that 62% also rated their personal
knowledge of Microsoft OCS 2007 for voice as either
“weak” or “fair.”

Almost everyone who closely watched last year’s slow
demise of Nortel expressed amazement at the reaction
of much of the Nortel customer base - at a time when
the company was clearly in a death spiral, these
customers were so loyal to Nortel and trusted it
so thoroughly that many of them simply didn’t engage
to a significant degree in post-Nortel planning.
Maybe as long as no resolution was final and few
systems were getting bought anyway last year, this
response made sense.

But starting this week, push comes to shove for Nortel
customers - and for Avaya, and for all of Avaya’s
competitors.

- Eric Krapf
Editor & Lead Blogger, NoJitter.com
VoiceCon Program Chair

————————————————-
This issue is sponsored  by VoiceCon Orlando 2010
Unify Your Enterprise Communications
————————————————-

Don’t miss VoiceCon Orlando 2010, where the thought
leaders from Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft and Siemens will
be joined by other senior executives from supplier
and customer organizations to present their visions
- and your options - for taking advantage of the
dramatic changes in communication and collaboration.
You don’t want to begin your migration without a
complete understanding of what these changes mean
for your network, your enterprise and your career.

Register today and save up to $800 or reserve your
FREE Expo Plus Pass with priority code CNLRVR02.
https://voicecon.reg.techweb.com/orlando/2010/Registrations?_mc=CNLRVR02

————————————————–
This Week’s UC Weekly - The UCstrategies.com team
————————————————–

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.

Well, those days are gone, long gone. While the uptake
for Unified Communications hasn’t been as large or as
rapid as its advocates would have liked, UC has evolved
into a code word for a new approach, one that encompasses
the full continuum of communications hardware and software
systems. This emerging UC-influenced framework also assumes
the presence of massive, always-available bandwidth, and
a mix of services or apps that can be accessed and delivered
from premises- or cloud-based servers.

Now note that I referred to this new framework as “emerging,”
because virtually all of what is commercially available today
is, at best, a hybrid of old and new, and that makes sense.
Enterprises don’t rip and replace their infrastructures, and
while a growing list of vendors can deliver a much wider
assortment of systems and services that exemplify what UC
is all about, none can yet offer one-stop shopping for the
emerging architecture and related services.

Read More >>
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/building_a_new.html

=======================
On No Jitter This Week
=======================
News, Analysis and blogs on Enterprise Communication
from industry experts.

* The Year Over-The-Top Voice Apps Go…Over the Top?
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/the_year_overth.html

* On Premises Email Market Sees Growth Even in the Face of UC
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/on_premises_ema.html

* What It’ll Take for Softphones to Work
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/what_itll_take.html

==================
Next Live Event
==================
 
VoiceCon Orlando
March 22-25, 2010
http://www.voicecon.com/orlando/

The Leading Conference on IP Telephony, Converged Networks,
UC, & more.

Register today and get VIP Special pricing
https://voicecon.reg.techweb.com/orlando/2010/Registrations?_mc=CNMJVC01

==================
VoiceCon TV
==================

Watch keynotes and event videos from VoiceCon San Francisco >>
http://www.voicecon.com/sanfrancisco/tv/

==================
From The Blog 
==================

* “Unified Communications” Is Neither Unified nor Communications.
Discuss.
http://blog.voicecon.com/2009/10/06/unified-communication-is-neither-unified-nor-communications-discuss/

*  The VoiceCon Countdown
http://blog.voicecon.com/2009/08/08/93/

* VoiceCon Wins!
http://blog.voicecon.com/2009/07/21/88/

More articles >>
http://blog.voicecon.com/

==================
VC Virtual Event
==================

Register for on-demand attendance at the recent
“Virtual VoiceCon: The Key Forces Driving Enterprise
Communications in 2010″ online event.
http://www.voicecon.com/virtualevents/

==================
VoiceCon Podcast
==================

* 10 Guiding Principles of Reducing Network Costs:
http://nojitter.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=454751

* AVST-Unimax
http://nojitter.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=454082

More free podcasts >>
http://nojitter.libsyn.com/

==================
Stay Connected
==================
  
Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=75925767292

Twitter
http://twitter.com/voicecon

Linkedin
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1928190

==================
Free Webinars
==================

* 11/18 - Nortel: From Contingency Plan to Strategic Plan:

VIEW ON DEMAND >>
http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=173865&s=1&k=F7A6BCF51B13D8F27FA8DE6A1BBC63A8

* 10/14 - Taking Advantage of SIP Trunking:

VIEW ON DEMAND >>
http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=164863&s=1&k=22697A3EB3D381A0B8CA1722ECE66EAE

==================
VoiceCon Digital Library
==================

The VoiceCon Digital Library provides fast access to
Enterprise Communications content. Get presentations
from previous VoiceCon events, whitepapers, webcasts
& more.
http://www.voicecon.com/archive

===============================================================

(C)2010 TechWeb, A UBM Company. All Rights Reserved. VoiceCon c/o
TechWeb, 999 Oakmont Plaza Dr. Suite 100, Westmont, IL 60559.
VoiceCon, and associated design marks and logos are trademarks
owned or used under license by United Business Media LLC, and may
be registered in the United States and other countries. Other
names mentioned may be the trademark or service mark of their
respective owners. 
 
VoiceCon eNewsletter respects your privacy. This message is sent
to qualified recipients who recently attended, or requested or
downloaded information about, either VoiceCon or a related
United Business Media event or publication and requested
information about our events, publications and products.

Unsubscribe from VoiceCon eNewsletter.
https://www.cmpadministration.com/ars/optoutregistration.do?mode=optreg&forward=optoutpage&F=1001291&K=&P=VCENLT&T=ML

This email was sent to %%email%%. If this email was forwarded
to you and you would like to begin receiving a copy of your own,
please visit our site.
http://www.voicecon.com/sanfrancisco/mailing-list.php

Please do not reply to this email as replies are not being read.
Comments and questions about this email may be sent to
mailto:athorndike@techweb.com.

Privacy Policy
http://ubmtechnology.com/united-business-media-llc-privacy-statement/

Posted in VOIP |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Trackback from your own site.