This issue of VoiceCon eNews is sponsored by Zeacom

With over 15 years of experience in delivering award winning solutions to over 2,800 customers worldwide, Zeacom delivers Unified Communications solutions by seamlessly unifying telephony and computer applications into high-end functionality such as rich presence, intelligent mobility and conferencing. A Zeacom solution runs on a single server offering a single user interface and one point of administration.

www.zeacom.com

SIP Trunking, SIP Trunking and More SIP Trunking

As Fred and I planned VoiceCon Orlando, we kept adding SIP Trunking sessions. We had just one on this ultra-hot topic in San Francisco last fall, but the opportunities to put great stories onto panels just kept coming at us as we started building the Orlando 2010 program.

We’re keeping Sorell Slaymaker’s SIP Trunking workshop, and Sorell has added an enhancement — he’ll be joined for a portion of the workshop by an end user, Jim Allen of Medtronic, who will give some real-world stories.

And speaking of real-world stories, several end users came forward to offer themselves up as panelists, so we put together a SIP Trunking Case Studies session. This one will feature Steve Blair of the University of Pennsylvania, along with VoiceCon speaking veteran Larry Riba, who’s now with a company called Alpine Access.

Finally, we’ve been fortunate enough to get Lisa Pierce on the program. Lisa has for many years been the foremost analyst studying the enterprise services marketplace, and for the past year or so she’s been doing extensive studies of all aspects of the carriers’ SIP Trunking offers — everything from pricing structures, which are complicated; to SLAs, which are not always easy to secure; and service availability, which seems to be improving. In her session, Lisa’s going to present her findings about SIP Trunking, and then discuss the big picture with carrier representatives, and then with equipment vendor reps.

Then, just for a little extra, we’ve set aside time for a “Coffee Talk” session on SIP Trunking, which Sorell is going to facilitate. Coffee Talks are informal gatherings where you can join in an impromptu conversation with your peers and with the experts who attend the session as well. These are a great opportunity to bring your unique, specific challenges or questions about SIP Trunking, and to gain from the experience that Sorell and your other peers in the room have to share.

After looking at several of the presentations that have already come in, I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in the past that SIP Trunking is something you can actually make serious plans to do in 2010. Our end users have positive feedback; our experts report seeing progress; and the carriers seem to be coming around on the whole thing too.

To give you a sneak peek at some of the SIP Trunking material we’ve got at the show, I’ve put together a “slidecast” that shows you some of the slides that our end users will be presenting. You can access that slidecast here. If you want to see the full descriptions and speaker lists for these SIP Trunking sessions, go to http://www.voicecon.com/program. Lisa’s “Deep Dive” session and Sorell’s workshop are both on Monday, March 22, and the Coffee Talk and Case Studies sessions are both on Wednesday, March 24.

It’s probably been a good 3 or 4 weeks since I declared 2010 the “Year of” something, so let me make my quota: 2010 could well be, if not the “Year of SIP Trunking,” at least the year that SIP Trunking started to get real.

This week’s UC Weekly

Presence: Challenges in Realizing the Promise

Presence has been described as “the dial tone of unified communications.” That characterization reflects the key role that presence capabilities play in enabling new UC modalities by helping to convey information about whether and how people are available for interaction. But there are some significant limitations both in how users conceive of presence capabilities, and in how today’s offerings support the functionality that will be required in the future.

Many people think of presence only as a “buddy list” showing names of colleagues along with an icon indicating availability. The icon selection is generally controlled by the individual, and the information displayed is both limited (as to number of options) and undifferentiated (everyone accessing the presence information sees the same thing). Presence capabilities are available through an enterprise’s PBX or desktop supplier (e.g., IBM or Microsoft), public instant messaging services (e.g., AOL, MSN, Google) or through a small but growing list of business applications providers (e.g., Salesforce.com Chatter).

These presence capabilities provide helpful support for enhanced communications between individuals–what we call UC-User. In fact, in many enterprises today, an internal phone call is rarely made without first checking presence status, and frequently by sending a quick IM to verify availability.

While buddy-list presence is a good start, it’s just that: A start. As many vendor case studies attest, much more significant business impact and demonstrable ROI comes from embedding new communications capabilities within processes and workflows–what we call UC-Business.

The presence requirements needed to support UC-B will, in many situations, go beyond what’s needed for UC-U. Here are a few examples:

* Finding a particular skill will be more important than finding a particular name. And, keeping those skills accurate and up-to-date will be challenging. Today, users update those capabilities in their profiles; in the future, solutions will automatically cull corporate databases and documents for clues to skills.

* Federation between different systems will become critical, as communications are integrated into business processes spanning supply chains or links to customers. The industry is now beginning to enable links between different suppliers’ offerings, but progress is slow, spotty and restricted to inter-domain links. There are even more difficult challenges, somewhat surprisingly, when trying to enable intra-domain links.

* Presence status needs to be expanded and also set automatically, based on inputs from devices or software, location-awareness and other sources. Individuals change state too frequently to keep their own status current, and “available” or “busy” are not adequate for more sophisticated UC applications.

* A mechanism for establishing rules and policies needs to be devised. My availability differs depending not only what I am doing, but also who is trying to reach me and why.

* Finally, there are privacy and security issues that complicate sharing presence information, including both internal policies and external regulatory requirements.

Without progress on these issues, many of which require inter-vendor agreement and cooperation, presence will not be able to fully support the increasingly sophisticated–and valuable–UC applications that could be available.

We will be talking about these important issues at VoiceCon Orlando at a session on Wednesday, March 24, at 3:00 PM. Come join me and a panel of leading suppliers as we discuss issues, trends, and the prospects for progress. Write to me at dvandoren@unicommconsulting.com or add your comments to the discussion here.

This issue of VoiceCon eNews is sponsored by CXtec.

For over three decades, CXtec® has provided new and pre-owned networking, voice, data center and cabling technologies worldwide. We put our own brand of certified pre-owned equal2new hardware through a rigorous testing process and back it with an industry-leading warranty. Each phone we provide is fully tested in a live network at our electrostatic discharge (ESD)-protected facility. We’re an ISO-certified company committed to maximizing value for our customers through needs-based, customized solutions.

www.cxtec.com

VoiceCon eNews: Congratulations to Best in VoiceCon Finalists

Round One of the Best in VoiceCon voting is complete, and we have our seven finalists. They are:

* Acme Packet– Acme Packet Net-Net Session Border Controller in Skype for SIP: Skype has deployed Acme Packet Net-Net session border controllers (SBCs) to simplify the interoperability and feature compatibility of the Skype for SIP beta offering with enterprise IP-PBX equipment.

* Avaya– Avaya Aura Solution for Midsize Enterprises: A single-server, unified communications solution for businesses as small as 100 employees and scalable up to 2400 users and 250 locations. 

* Cisco– Cisco Intercompany Media Engine: A new product that establishes a foundation for cross-organization rich media communications. 

* NET– VX1200 with Extend features: Designed to support the adoption of enterprise voice for Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2 customers, providing branch offices with several key features.

* Psytechnics– Experience Manager 5 with Service Desk Manager: Delivers per session QoE visibility to enable user- experience based IT operations and service management.

* Siemens Enterprise Communications– OpenScape UC Server 2010: The new iteration of Siemens’ next-generation, software-based enterprise communications platform for Voice, UC, Contact Center, Video and Mobility.

* Sipera– Sipera Secure Live Communications (SLiC): A security solution enabling employees to use VoIP, UC, cloud telephony, and other low-cost and feature-rich communications applications on mobile devices.

We had more than 40 entries for Best of VoiceCon, which for the first time ever is a juried award, with entries evaluated by a panel of industry experts. The finalists represent a good mix of companies large and small, as well as products representing broad-scale communications platforms as well as point products aimed at security and management. The fact that two of the products—NET and Cisco–are primarily aimed at connecting diverse network elements shows how important such network “glue” solutions will be in the future.

Another category of vendor that was well represented in the entries, with some interesting product offerings, was service providers. Though none made it into the finals, we saw several entries in these categories that showed that service providers are looking to innovate and be part of the mix as enterprises look to the future of their communications.

One of the reasons why we made this a juried award was that we want to give the award a higher profile and do our part to stimulate a heightened sense of competition among the companies in the industry. Communications equipment vendors and service providers have always tried to innovate, but in the coming decade, their ability to do so will make or break companies and the industry itself.

Between now and VoiceCon, our judging panel will be taking briefings with each of the finalists, letting them make their case and letting us ask our questions, in preparation for our vote to select the Best of VoiceCon winner. I’m excited to see how it all goes.

 
THIS WEEK’S UC EWEEKLY

Will Video’s Momentum Continue?

Anyone attending next month’s VoiceCon Orlando is going to see almost as much video on the exhibition floor as traditional forms of voice and data communications. The story’s the same for VoiceCon sessions, and visitors to NoJitter.com have undoubtedly noticed that the number of articles and blogs that focus on or include video-related content is growing.

While clearly not yet “mainstream,” video is no longer a thing apart from enterprise communications. It’s no longer uncommon to see webcams stuck on office desktop and laptop PCs, and even though they’re often used to connect via Skype to friends and family, as we get into the habit of incorporating video into our personal routines, it’s not much of leap to start setting up ad hoc, business-related videoconferences.

It is for that reason that we’ll devote about 8 hours of session time to examining enterprise use of video during VoiceCon on Monday and Tuesday, March 22-23 — the complete video program agenda is here. These sessions will focus on two key questions:

* What’s the right video mix for your enterprise? We’ll spend three hours analyzing the basic options – room systems, personal video and telepresence – and assessing how you can decide what balance makes the most sense for your enterprise.

* Issues in enterprise video – 2010 and beyond: Session topics include scalable video coding, integrating group video with PBXs and UC architectures, inter-enterprise video and scaling video installations to 1000s or even 10s of 1000s of desktops.

So, does all this mean video’s time has finally come? Well, yes and no.
READ MORE: http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/02/will_videos_mom.html

This issue of VoiceCon Enews is sponsored by Cisco

Cisco invites you to experience the power of collaboration at VoiceCon:

• Attend Cisco’s keynote with Tony Bates, Cisco Senior Vice President and GM, Enterprise, Commercial, and Small Business
• Meet with Cisco experts to design your collaboration environment
• Participate in Cisco breakout sessions
• See integrated solutions in the Cisco Partner Pavilion
• Participate in live Cisco TelePresence sessions

It is time to transform your business. This is the new collaboration experience.

www.cisco.com/go/vcnews3

The Hidden Costs of IP Phones

Gary Audin always devotes a chunk of his VoiceCon tutorial, “IP Telephony/UC Basics to Best Practices” to the new challenges posed by the need to power IP phones via power over Ethernet, and the many implications of this need: Most obviously, you have to buy new PoE switches or, alternatively, install in-line appliances to add the powering if you’re keeping your legacy non-PoE switches. Then, there are the implications of that PoE decision — start installing PoE switches in very tight wiring closets, and you’re looking at a buildup of heat in those closets that will require new cooling measures — venting, for sure, and possibly even the more expensive and disruptive need to add air conditioning.

It’s a second-order disruption that hardly anyone besides Gary talked about — until now.

In a blog post on No Jitter last week, Irwin Lazar of Nemertes Research wrote that these new, costly challenges are starting to come up in discussions he’s been having with enterprise decision-makers. But while Gary has approached this as a technology issue to be solved, and a cost to be understood (and not ignored), Irwin suggests that the costs of facilities changes to support IP phones are being seen as a reason not to deploy those phones in the first place.

It’s a convincing argument. Very few IP phones are different and better enough, compared to their legacy predecessors, to justify the trouble and expense of upgrading closets and switching infrastructure. Enterprises aren’t looking to invest in their legacy wiring infrastructure at a time when their workers are decreasingly desk-bound. And for those who remain desk-bound, digital telephone sets work just fine at what they’re supposed to do: Make good voice calls.

Indeed, one of the perennial straw-man arguments is whether the desk phone is “going away,” and the answer is always, “No, nothing goes away.” The real question is whether the desk phone market as a cash cow for voice vendors is going away, and the answer to that is increasingly looking like a “Yes.”

It really makes a lot of sense: For workers who want or need phones, they’ve already got phones. Giving them a new IP phone doesn’t just cost you a lot of money rebuilding the closets, it adds on the less-quantifiable but still real costs in re-training end users on the new phones, imposing changes on these users in return for incremental improvements in the functionality of an appliance whose fundamental look, feel and function has remained essentially the same.

Much of this reluctance to upgrade has been predictable and even predicted — for example, Dave Michels suggested last year on No Jitter that IP phone sales had already peaked. What’s different now seems to be that, per Irwin’s latest blog, enterprise decision-makers are starting to agree.

As Irwin suggests, this is a critical moment in many enterprises’ deployment of next-generation communications technologies. Many enterprises are ready or are getting ready to resume investments in communications technologies, in anticipation of an economic recovery — but they aren’t necessarily inclined to simply pick up where they left off when rollouts slowed down almost two years ago. They’re revisiting the whole architecture, and increasingly, they’re not seeing a reason to invest in new IP phones.

As I noted in a No Jitter blog post last month, Brent Kelly of Wainhouse Research has pointed out that a significant dropoff in the market for new IP phones will have a major impact on the revenues of the voice vendors. Irwin Lazar’s latest blog should give them more reason to beware of just such a trend beginning.

This issue is sponsored by Cisco
The New Collaboration Experience

Join Cisco at VoiceCon Orlando 2010 from March 22-25 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, Florida and experience the power of collaboration. You’ll get a first-hand look at how Cisco empowers people to build relationships and grow businesses. It’s time to transform your business. This is the new collaboration experience.

For more details, visit www.cisco.com/go/vcnews2

VoiceCon eNews: Who’s the Best of VoiceCon?

I don’t much care for award shows, but I live with two other people who love them, so I rarely miss one. Sunday night I watched the Grammys. “Boy, Stevie Wonder looks great!” I remarked when Usher came onstage for the Michael Jackson tribute. My wife rolled her eyes and didn’t bother to say anything, I think because she knew that if she said, “That’s Usher,” I’d say, just to annoy her, “That’s an usher? Since when do they let ushers perform at these things?”

Of course my daughter and my wife oohed and aahed over the outrageous costumes that folks like Lady Gaga and the Black Eyed Peas showed up in, but color me unimpressed: I’m old enough to remember the getup that Milton Friedman wore to accept the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. And that was back when Elton John was wearing platform shoes with goldfish in the heels.

As it happens, we’ve got big news on the awards front here at VoiceCon: We’ve overhauled our Best of VoiceCon award, and we’re going to give it a much higher profile at VoiceCon Orlando 2010.

In the past, Best of VoiceCon has been voted on by attendees, but starting this year, Best of VoiceCon is going to be a juried award, in which my co-chairman, Fred Knight, and I will be joined by a panel of five judges to scrutinize entries. We’ll hold a preliminary round of voting to choose up to 6 Finalists, then we’ll hold briefings with each of the Finalist entrants, preparatory to a vote for the final Best of VoiceCon winner. It’s a significant time commitment on the part of the judges.

Our previous method of having the attendees choose the Best of VoiceCon wasn’t a bad way to do it, but we feel that this year and going forward, the entrants will be subject to much more intense and focused scrutiny than the average VoiceCon attendee had time to put into their votes in previous years. As a result, we believe that the new Best of VoiceCon award will be a major event for the industry, something that the Winner and the Finalists can point to as a meaningful recognition of the importance of their offered products.

VoiceCon Exhibitors who want all the specific rules and the online entry form can go here—and the deadline for entries is THIS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5.

I want to emphasize that the purpose of these awards is to recognize forward-looking, even revolutionary product offerings. We’re at an inflection point in the communications industry: A lot of the fundamental assumptions about architectures and elements of communications systems are being called into question.  What will the future really look like in enterprise communications? Of course we hope that the whole VoiceCon event, conference and exhibition, will help you answer that question, but we especially hope that the new Best of VoiceCon award will become a lodestar for the migration.

Fred and I will be joined in the Best of VoiceCon judging by the following distinguished panel:

* Michael Finneran, President, dBrn Associates
* Marty Parker, Principal, UniComm Consulting
* Sorell Slaymaker, Communications Architect, Unified IT Systems
* David Stein, Principal, PlanNet Consulting
* Allan Sulkin, President, TEQConsult Group

We’ll present the award on the Wednesday morning of VoiceCon Orlando, March 24. Again, exhibitors and everyone else can get more info on the award at http://www.voicecon.com/bestofvoicecon/. I’m excited about the judging process and the award that it will result in.

THIS WEEK’S UC EWEEKLY
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.

We are at the very early stages of the office phone evolution, but it is easy to predict that in the future the majority of office phones will be wireless. This will dovetail with the evolution of how these devices get connected – the role traditionally played by a PBX. In the white paper I predicted a new Connection Model – how we will communicate based on various use cases. In very simple terms, a series of SIP servers - at home, in the office and in the cloud, will communicate to connect users to each other and provide them with access to information.

What does this mean for the future for the PBX?  Well, the PBX as we’ve known it will disappear, as it evolves into a Services Access Exchange (SAX). The SAX will know where you are, what devices are available near you and the capabilities of those devices, such as display size, bandwidth, etc.

But for this to occur, the carriers/service providers need to evolve their strategy, as do the vendors providing call control functionality.

Read more: http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/02/will_pbxs_evolv.html
ON NO JITTER THIS WEEK

* The Next Killer UC App: Reporting
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/the_next_killer.html

* Corporate Video: Gold or Fool’s Gold?
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/corporate_video.html

* iPad… It’s a Little Too Big!
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/ipad_its_aits_a.html#comments

VoiceCon eNews for the week of January 11, 2010

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

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

 
New Regulatory Battles on the Horizon

Regulation of the U.S.’s communications infrastructure has
always lagged far behind technology developments. The
Communications Act of 1934 was the cornerstone of our
federal regulatory regime until 1996, though it probably
didn’t escape even the politicians’ notice that a lot of
things changed about technology during that period. We may
now be reaching another inflection point, where regulators
and/or legislators are forced to take on extremely complex
legal and technical challenges because everybody - but
especially the entrenched interests in the industry - feel
they can no longer tolerate the status quo.

AT&T lit the fuse with an end-of-year FCC filing asking the
Commission to embark on a process whose intended culmination
would be the “retiring” of the Public Switched Telephone
Network (PSTN). We’ve covered this on No Jitter here, here,
and here. This filing asked the FCC to issue a Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking on the subject, which is the step that
would kick off any formal process - so these documents
weren’t necessarily the place for AT&T to get into a lot of
detail about what exactly they want to do with their PSTN
assets and when. But if the FCC issues the Notice AT&T seeks,
we can expect AT&T, and everyone else, to jump in with lengthy
descriptions of exactly they think should (or shouldn’t)
happen, on what timetable.

No Jitter: AT&T’s Call to Sunset the PSTN>>
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/atts_call_to_su.html
 

There are a ton of issues that have to be addressed, and Gary
Audin, one of our regulars, has started working on a feature
article for No Jitter that will highlight some of them -
starting with the question of exactly what network elements
AT&T plans to retire, what will happen to people who only need
or want Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS), and what role the
state public utility commissions (PUCs) will play in this drama.

It’s clear from the filing that AT&T’s aims are anything but
altruistic. The bottom line is…well, it’s the bottom line.
AT&T is spending a lot of money delivering POTS to people whose
POTS AT&T would rather not be bothered with, when it could use
the money it spends providing that service, to…well, what
they would use it for, I’m not really sure. They talk in their
filing about modernizing their infrastructure, but they need to
do that anyway if they want to have any customers left in a
few years, so ultimately this has as much to with dividends as
it does dialtone.

Here’s a separate but peripherally related item: Michael
Finneran has a blog on No Jitter about MagicJack, the company
whose commercials you see in between Vince the Slap Chop guy
and those inane “male enhancement” ads. Turns out, the MagicJack
folks are branching out from landline toll arbitrage to cellular
arbitrage, in a way that I can’t believe will withstand
regulatory scrutiny. According to Michael, MagicJack is basically
selling a product that uses licensed cellular frequencies, and
claims it can do so without the licensees’
(i.e., cellular carriers’) permission, because the product is
used inside people’s homes.

No Jitter: MagicJack Works Their Magic in Femtocells>>
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/magicjack_works.html

I don’t see how that’s going to fly, but whenever you see a
cutely named telecom product - think Hush-a-Phone - what you’ve
got is somebody who’s sharper and faster than the telecom
monopolists or duopolists, coming up with a product that hits
the carriers where they live; and so the carriers immediately
release the hounds, who file suits that wind up bearing awesome
names like “Hush-a-Phone v. United States.” When carriers start
going to court against products like this, they may have the
law on their side, but the customers are often another matter.

Hush-A-Phone v. United States>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush-a-Phone_v._United_States

So in ways big (AT&T’s PSTN-sunset filing) and small
(MagicJack’s femtocell-killer), we may be entering the next era
of regulatory battles.
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
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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
————————————————–

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:

1. Channel training and incentives for UC: A year ago the channel needed
to be incentivized to go beyond selling switches to selling UC solutions,
especially those that integrate with business processes and applications,
and most VARs were still leading with IP Telephony rather than UC. This
hasn’t changed much, especially in light of the poor economy. To make
things worse, several vendors took away incentives for selling UC licenses
by bundling UC functions with core PBXs. I don’t expect much of a change
in 2010, although some vendors are working with their channel partners to
assess their UC sales readiness and capabilities, which will help identify
areas of strengths and weakness and where more work is needed. Grade: C.

2. Develop and provide ROI tools that demonstrate how UC will impact the
bottom line.

Read More>>
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/uc_in_2009_howd.html

=======================
On No Jitter This Week
=======================

* Rating the Vendors: TEQConsult Group’s Consultant Survey
http://www.nojitter.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222300076

* Siemens, Shared Technologies Make Deal
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/siemens_shared.html

* MagicJack Works Their Magic in Femtocells
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2010/01/magicjack_works.html

==================
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March 22-25, 2010
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UC, & more.

Register today and get VIP Special pricing
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==================
VoiceCon TV
==================

Watch keynotes and event videos from VoiceCon San Francisco >>
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==================
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/

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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

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VIEW ON DEMAND >>
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* 10/14 - Taking Advantage of SIP Trunking:

VIEW ON DEMAND >>
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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
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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

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

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**** VoiceCon eNewsletter ****

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

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

Week of September 28, 2009

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

 
*** A Slice of VoiceCon ***

We’re delighted to have Brent Kelly of Wainhouse Research
back at VoiceCon San Francisco. Among the sessions Brent
will be leading is a two-hour “Deep Dive” into video for
the enterprise - everything from endpoint strategies to
architectures and codecs. Brent’s also going to be reprising
his always-popular tutorial offering an in-depth look into
Microsoft OCS and IBM Lotus Sametime.

If you haven’t been fortunate enough to see this tutorial,
you can get a preview by viewing this “slidecast”.
http://www.slideshare.net/ekrapf/vcsf09-preview-brent-kelly-workshop

Here, Brent narrates a half-dozen of his key slides; it’s
pretty tough to condense 3 hours to 3 minutes, but Brent’s
network diagrams and summary slides will give you a sense
of the tutorial’s scope.

This is something we plan to do a lot more of; I’ve got
material from David Bryan, who’s back again, leading our
SIP tutorial, and will soon post a similar slidecast of
his material. The aim is to give you a flavor of what
you’ll get in a VoiceCon session, the level of depth and
strength of expertise that our speakers bring to the event.

Longer-term, we intend to use these slidecasts as the
beginnings of an effort to make VoiceCon(and its sister
website, No Jitter) truly a year-round effort, something
you can turn to any time for in-depth, accurate, objective,
useful content. I hope you’ll check it out.
Eric Krapf
Editor & Lead Blogger, NoJitter.com
VoiceCon Program Chair 

==============================================
This issue is sponsored by Siemens Enterprise
Communications Group
==============================================
Siemens knows your organization needs to be primed to
come through this recession ahead of your competition.
Siemens can help you to stay in the lead while you reduce
TCO, improve process productivity, and increase customer
satisfaction. With our “Open Communications” approach,
you have the freedom to deploy a seamless and innovative
UC solution today - simply and cost effectively. Visit
us at VoiceCon San Francisco in booth #601.

For details, go to the Siemens website.

==========================================================
 
*** This Week’s UC Weekly - The UCstrategies.com team ***

One of the challenges for any enterprise is selecting the
right combination of vendors, and Unified communications
only makes this more complex. Since no vendor can provide
a complete UC solution - one that meets all the business
and technical requirements - we’re seeing more vendors
partnering to offer more comprehensive solutions.

While the big-name vendors provide core solutions, their
partners may have the biggest impact on the level of success
of the entire project. Indeed, more often than not, it’s the
small public companies and the startups that deliver the
innovation that fuel the industry.

We’re seeing this in UC. Read More >>
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2009/09/sources_of_inno.html

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

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

* Is There A Bright Spot in Today’s UC Market?
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2009/09/is_there_a_brig.html

* Putting Teeth Into Net Neutrality:
http://www.nojitter.com/blog/archives/2009/09/putting_teeth_i.html

* Planning for Full-Speed WLANs:
http://www.nojitter.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220100846

================================
NEW! VoiceCon Digital Library
================================

The VoiceCon Digital Library provides fast access to
Enterprise Communications content including IP Telephony,
UC and wireless/mobile communcations. Get presentations
from previous VoiceCon events, whitepapers, webcasts & more.

Join the VoiceCon Digital Library and receive a FREE Expo
Plus Pass and conference discounts for VoiceCon SF by
entering code: CNEFVC13
http://www.voicecon.com/archive

==================
Next Live Event
==================
 
VoiceCon San Francisco
November 2-5, 2009
Plan, Build, Deploy and Support your Next-Gen
Communications Platform.

Pre-Show Special Offer for VoiceCon eNews Subscribers!

Register now and save up to $500 off the regular price
for VoiceCon San Francisco.

For more information visit our website >>
http://www.voicecon.com/sanfrancisco/?priorityCode=CNEFVC04

Register today with VIP Code: CNEFVC04
http://www.voicecon.com/sanfrancisco/?priorityCode=CNEFVC04
 
==================
Video
==================
Use Communications to Transform Your Enterprise

Watch video online »
http://www.voicecon.com/sanfrancisco/program/program.php

==================
From The Blog 
==================
* *NEW*The VoiceCon Countdown
  http://blog.voicecon.com/2009/08/08/93/

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

* Virtual VoiceCon Hangover
  http://blog.voicecon.com/2009/06/15/virtual-voicecon-hangover/

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

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

If you missed VoiceCon’s first-ever Virtual Event last
June, there’s a wealth of information waiting for you
to access on demand.
http://www.voicecon.com/virtualevents/

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

* NEW! 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
==================

* 9/29 - CASE STUDY: Surviving and Thriving in a Down Economy

VIEW ON DEMAND >>
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=164983&sessionid=1&key=20EC2FA0AC527120BDA053866BD6BBB9&sourcepage=register

* 9/16 - Unwrapping the Challenges of Ensuring High Quality
SIP Trunks

VIEW ON DEMAND >>
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=159657&sessionid=1&key=8BC6EFBD6AB137A60FC68CF098C53DA6&partnerref=CODE&sourcepage=register

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

Register Today For VoiceCon San Francisco, Save Up to $500
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==================================================

(C) 2009 TechWeb, a division of United Business Media LLC.
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.