Sprint Network Services For Enterprise UC

Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

May 12, 2009

Sprint Network Services Put “Meat on The Bones” Of Enterprise UC

Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

By now, most of the enterprise market understands what UC technology is basically all about (“Why of UC”) – i.e., enabling individual end users to flexibly communicate easily and cost efficiently anywhere and anyhow to do their jobs faster and better. Not only will end users be more productive, but business operations also become more cost efficient and effective. Because UC involves a significant change in handling phone calls within the context of increased mobility, messaging, and online information access, the biggest challenge to enterprise organizations is how to move forward with their migration to UC.

Sprint Nextel’s announcement this week offers a practical shortcut to business organizations to selectively bridge the gap between existing enterprise communications and the missing elements required for UC. Using their “Now Network” facilities, Sprint has teamed with strategic partners to offer new network services for mobile device support, multi-modal IP networking services (wired, wireless), integration with IP Telephony, Unified Messaging, Instant Messaging and presence management.

Connecting Enterprise Applications, Desktops, and Mobile Users

With the increased growth of wireless communications and multimodal “smart-phones,” business process operations can now support any form of contact that an individual end user requires. Not only does this apply to people within an organization, but also to any external business contacts they deal with (business partners, customers) whose communication facilities are outside the control of the enterprise.

While UC flexibility is useful at the desktop, it’s greatest value is when it is combined with the power of mobile accessibility. That is also when users really need the flexibility of choice in communicating with eyes-free, hands free speech, silent screen interactions and text messages, or video interactions. Without the combination of mobile access and choice of communication modality, operational time delays of “human contact latency” can seriously impact high-value business processes and cause missed or delayed revenues, serious financial loss, and even loss of human life.

Such concerns are no longer just about traditional person-to-person contacts. As business processes become more automated and monitor operational workflows, they too need to proactively and selectively notify responsible people of any situations that require awareness, decision-making, or action taking by people. Those people, in turn, therefore need to be as communication-accessible as possible in order to be responsive to such operational situations, especially if they are time critical. That’s where mobility and UC services are needed most.

Mix and Match - Sprint “Now Network” Services Will Connect People, Networks, And Enterprise UC Applications

In Monday’s announcement, Sprint revealed the integration of it’s comprehensive 3G and 4G, SIP-enabled, wired and wireless “Now Network” facilities with UC technologies provided by industry leaders Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco for enterprise-based Instant Messaging, Email, and IP Telephony. Their new service can help close the gap and speed up the migration from legacy PSTN TDM voice applications to IP-based, interoperable UC applications. In addition, Sprint’s UC solution can also open new avenues for enterprise business applications to access and interact with different types of end users, but still be efficiently managed and controlled by individual enterprise operations.

Sprint emphasized its use of SIP trunking over an MPLS network for its IP Telephony (VoIP) service offerings and interoperability with the PSTN network, as well as with enterprise IP Telephony networks. In addition, Sprint will initially provide Mobile Integration to support their subscribers’ Sprint CDMA phones in a Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) business environment. As the smart-phone market continues to explode, we would expect the service to become more open and device independent, as well as support “dual persona” mobile devices. That is where the UC action will really explode for all kinds of communication services and where we expect all network operators to follow Sprint’s lead to compete for mobile subscribers and enterprise applications access.

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.

Siemens Gets Ready For UC Enterprise Battles

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April 27, 2009

Siemens Sales Strategies For The New UC Markets

By Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

Siemens Enterprise Communications Group (SEN Group) new executive team discussed how they are addressing the changing needs of the global UC market that will absorb traditional premise-based telephony. As already reflected by competitive announcements from other leading UC technology providers, such as Avaya’s Aura, the Siemens announcement highlighted the need to support existing telephony investments while offering new “open,” IP-based application software for UC.

Key changes in marketing strategies mentioned by CEO James O’Neill and President of Sales Mark Vayda included the following:

• Global approach to sales and marketing
• Exploit “Cloud Computing” – Hosted/Managed services
• Software based, real-time telephony applications expertise
• Targeting key vertical markets such as Government, Health care, Education, Utilities, in major geographical area
• Shift of emphasis to channel-based sales, coupled with strategic direct sales activities
• Channels to include System Integrators, Carriers, VARs, Service Providers, etc.
• Device independence for end users (wired, wireless)

While this initial videocast covered some general organizational strategies for sales and marketing, there wasn’t enough time to address some more specific hard questions about products and services that would have to compete in the new UC market place.

Siemens is aggressively reorganizing its sales and marketing organization with new incentives and new staff to support the shift to software, services, and partnering strategies that UC implementations will require. Both O’Neill and Vayda lay claim to their successful experience in the software and services business with Oracle Corporation.

The challenge of migrating from legacy telephony to UC, IP Telephony, and mobile technologies will be the same for the entire industry, The question is how quickly will the technology and service providers get their acts together and offer flexible and future-proof solutions to meet many different customer needs.

What Do You Think?
Contact me at artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360

UC And The Future of Desktop Telephony

Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
April 5, 2009

The Real Message From VoiceCon – How To Prepare For Enterprise Desktop Telephony “End-of-Life”

Unfortunately, a fractured foot kept me from attending the Spring VoiceCon show as planned, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t see and hear the important messages that were delivered there. Needless to say, from a “vision” perspective, those messages are no real surprise any more. What we are finally seeing are practical products and services that will help enterprise IT to start selectively planning and delivering IP Telephony and UC applications, based upon real demand from both individual end users and specific, high-value business processes.

There is no question about where new telephony technology (IP Telephony) is going, from both a business and consumer (customer) user perspective. It will become an integrated UC application to make voice contact with people more flexible and efficient, “anywhere, any time, any way.” UC, in turn, will be integrated with all aspects of information access and information exchange, often referred to as “collaboration.” While direct access to information has become increasingly easy with web search facilities and portals, making real-time contact with people still remains a challenge that UC and presence management technology is helping to simplify.

To attain such objectives:

·IP telephony functions will be software-driven and personalized

·IP telephony usage will be location, device and network independent

·UC device (smartphone, softphone) interfaces will exploit screen, keyboard, and speech interfaces instead of the legacy Touch-Tone keypad. This will enable person-to-person communications to be device-independent, multi-modal, cross-media, and trans-modal (switching between real-time contacts and messaging)

·UC will facilitate both person-to-person and process (application)-to-person contact initiation, thus making business processes more proactive (via CEBP integrations), flexible, and efficient for real-time operational performance management

The real challenge to enterprise IT management or third-party support services is how they should be migrating from current legacy telephony technology to the new and more complex UC-IP Telephony world of the future.

The “End of Life” Strategy of UC Implementation Planning

Unfortunately, every level of telephony communication technology will be affected by the convergence and integration requirements of UC. This means that changing legacy architectures, products, and old telecom perspectives will be necessary to deal with all the changes that will be evolving, even if the new technology were free! So the main message today from vendors attacking the upcoming UC market is to start the migration selectively with existing applications that can be updated with minimal disruption and costs. In addition, they will all offer expertise and consulting services to help inexperienced IT organizations plan and cost justify practical implementations.

With today’s economy forcing everyone to control technology spending as much as possible, the potential of lower costs and increased people/process productivity may not be enough to justify customer UC movement. This is particularly true when there is not enough “demand” from Line of Business management or individual end users of the technology who just may not be aware of the benefits they will gain from UC (UC-B, UC-U).

However, what is starting to force the issue of moving forward with UC, is the growing need to replace existing “end-of-life” enterprise technologies that are not only getting more expensive to maintain, but cannot be simply replaced with old technology. Needless to say, everything that is old and TDM telephony based, falls into this category, including desktop telephones, PBXs, TDM trunking, key systems, voice mail systems, call center systems, etc.

Growing use of personalized, mobile phones for increased accessibility is adding another driver for the need for UC flexibility. Throw in the fact that mobile and desktop smartphones, as well as PC-based softphones, can minimize the need to buy traditional and limited desktop phones, and you have a new ballgame for UC implementation planning. What is also complicating matters for enterprise IP Telephony planning perhaps even more, is the fact that IP-based, hosted/ managed services offer new implementation alternatives as opposed to traditional premise-based ownership.

Bottom Line For Enterprise IT In UC Planning

They can’t really do it by themselves! They will need to find the new requirements for UC applications and the business priorities for those requirements, before they can even start looking at the new UC products and services that are being announced daily.
What will also make it hard for the move to IP telephony and UC is that UC is not just about voice telephony, and the “elephants in the room” already are text messaging technologies (email, IM, SMS) and the myriad of online business process applications that are ready to exploit CEPB (communications enabled business process) capabilities to initiate automated notifications or contextual person-to-person telephone contacts. The aggressive presence of Microsoft and IBM at VoiceCon underscored their interest in enterprise UC/IP Telephony migrations.

So, it is interesting to see the kind of long-overdue architectural changes that leading telephony providers like Avaya are making to migrate their customers to IP Telephony in the UC marketplace. Open, real-time communication application software, rather than just desktop hardware, along with integrations with business process applications is obviously the new focus of their UC game. But it’s also obvious that they can’t just sell telephone systems separately anymore, so look for more teamwork between the operating systems providers, the desktop application providers, and the communication providers.

Which vendor will lead the UC migration? Who knows!

What Do You Think?
You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or .

Drilling Down On UC Productivity

Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide
March 24, 2009

UC Productivity , People "Accessibility”, and the Death of “Dumb” Touch-Tone Telephones

The basic objective of business communications is to improve accessibility to both people and information. The Internet and the World Wide Web has already made tremendous inroads in providing “virtualized” search and access to information, so the remaining challenge is to maximize similar ease of access to people. That is the fundamental objective of unified communications (UC), whether it is “person-to-person” or (automated) “process-to-person.” Conversational voice telephony is not going to disappear from the UC picture, in fact it may increase significantly because it may become easier. However, how people will be initiating and responding to phone contacts will certainly be changing.

The birth pains of UC, however, are deeply entwined with the migration of legacy, voice-centric TDM telephony to converged IP-based telephony and the media flexibility of multi-modal “smart-phones.” Disruptive changes have started taking place at all layers of business communication technology and usage, ranging from wired and wireless network infrastructures to “cloud-based” communication applications to new forms of end point communication devices. As UC-based services extend more flexible communications access beyond the boundaries of location, organization, networks, and devices, they have started to threaten the legacy telephony technologies of both enterprise organizations and service providers.

Communication “Availability” vs. “Accessibility”

While presence-based “availability” has been a differentiating factor in supporting the productivity benefits of UC for “person-to-person” contacts, it should not be confused with contact “accessibility.” Being “accessible” doesn’t necessarily mean being “available” for a voice conversation, but the reverse is also true - being “available” doesn’t necessarily mean being “accessible.”

To have a real-time interaction with a person, it will be necessary for that person to be both “available” and “accessible.” On the other hand, it will be sufficient to be just “accessible” to communicate via all forms of messaging. As messaging activity increasingly dominates business and social contact activities, the need to maximize individual user “accessibility” via more flexible endpoint devices will become universal.

Maximizing People “Accessibility” With Mobile, Multi-modal Devices

What triggered this article is the acknowledgement in the industry press that personalized, multi-modal mobility and “smart phones” will take over business communications the same way it is taking over the consumer market. What that means is that the business telephone, as we have long known it, is going to change dramatically into a flexible, multimodal, computerized device that can accommodate more than voice conversations. Not only will such devices allow efficient visual access to information from web-based portals, but they will also allow telephony functions to integrate “contextually” and seamlessly with all forms of screen-based text messaging and business applications.

It is therefore necessary for enterprise organizations to “cut to the chase” and start planning and prioritizing how their existing telephony technologies must slowly change to maximize the operational business benefits of UC and how such changes will include prioritizing the different UC needs of individual “end users.” The flexibility of mobile or desktop “smart-phones” coupled with UC, can maximize individual end user accessibility and productivity, as well as associated business process performance. Depending upon the contact needs of specific end users, however, the UC ROI “bottom line” will be heavily dependent upon the replacement of “dumb,” voice-only telephones as a primary communication device wherever they are used!

The confusion for IT management that has long surrounded the definition of “unified communications” because of the convergence of its different technology components is now also hitting the definition of mobile “smart phones” (Read Matt Hamblen's post at: http://www.infoworld.com/news/feeds/09/03/16/Cell-phone--smartphone----whats-the-difference.html?source=gs)

See also what is now being labeled as “media phones” for the wired desktop. The software elements of “smart-phones” are like PCs and laptops, ranging from mobile operating systems to software clients to a variety of business and consumer applications that must support different user interface options and device form factors. All of this makes the choice of devices more personalized and complex, rather than a “one-size fits all” that an enterprise could supply in the past to employees.

What Does That Mean To Enterprise IT?

While individual end users and their job responsibilities will determine what endpoint devices they will carry with them for all their person-to-person communication needs, there will still be other enterprise responsibilities that IT will have to fulfill. These will include the need to cost-effectively support all business communication activities, including business “process-to-person” contacts and information access.

For openers, all forms of communications will generate traffic that needs to be supported by adequate broadband network capacity, both wired and wireless. Because of mobile access and contacts with customers or business partners, such connections will extend beyond the domain of enterprise controlled private networks. On the other hand, automated business process application contacts with end users will require appropriate information access security and integrations between communication applications, better known as Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP).

Given the dynamic flexibility of UC-based contacts, usage traffic will vary dynamically from the siloed email and telephone traffic of the past. This will make projections of UC traffic and private network needs difficult to specify in advance, but is especially important for estimating cost savings that can be derived from usage-based hosted UC services.

When it comes to supplying mobile endpoint communication devices, the enterprise will need to shift to supplying business client software, not hardware, for devices that will accommodate both personal/consumer needs and secure business process applications. The term “Dual Persona” has been used to describe this capability for a single device to manage all forms of contact (incoming and outgoing) for a single individual user. This should help support the challenge of “multitasking” between applications, between people relationships, and between job and personal responsibilities.

“Smart-phone” Flexibility and End User Productivity – UC-U = UC-I + UC-R

When it comes to measuring the “soft” user productivity ROI of UC, which looks at individual end user time saved because of ease and speed of communicating, the term “UC-U” has been created. This is differentiated from the business process ROI of “UC-B,” which looks at the total performance of a business process task in terms of elapsed time and quality, and is dependent to some extent on UC-U benefits that can be very dependent upon endpoint device UC flexibility that mobile and desktop “smart-phones” can provide.

But we really must look at UC-U from the two user roles in communications, the “initiator” and the “recipient/respondent” roles. Each role has its functional needs that must be supported by flexible application, network, and device capabilities to achieve end-to-end efficiency and effectiveness. So, when evaluating all the pieces in a UC solution or service, the productivity benefit for contact initiation (UC-I) should be evaluated separately from contact reception/response (UC-R). While most people will need both kinds of capabilities at different times, there will always be business processes where the value of one will be more important than the other. More significantly, it will be necessary to monitor communication activities to insure that end users exploit each type of capability properly to maximize both UC-U and UC-B.

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.

End User Demand for Business UC? – It’s the Same for Any Size Business

Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

As I have frequently pointed out, UC is really all about making timely and flexible contact with people, who are not always accessible or “available” in real time. Business contacts may be both traditional “person-to-person” contacts, as well as “process-to-person” contacts, where automated business application services proactively “notify” (deliver messages) to individual end users/subscribers about something that is important and time-sensitive specifically for them.

In either case, however, the ability of a recipient to be contacted more quickly because of mobile accessibility and/or a flexible choice of communication modalities, makes UC technology useful for both contact initiators and recipients, as well as for the performance of business processes that depend on people to take timely actions.

Up till now, there has been a primary focus by enterprise technology providers on UC infrastructure as a means of reducing support costs, TCO, etc., which is of particular interest to IT management, but not to individual end users or even to business management (LOB) in any size enterprise. While budgets and lower costs are important for management and implementation planning, they are not the real strategic objective for business operations. As I have often questioned, “If you got UC technology for free, what would you do with it?”

UC Surveys Starting To Look At Individual End User Needs

In the past year, there has been a realization that individual business users are really key beneficiaries of UC capabilities, but their communication needs and benefits are not identical. And it is not just about voice communications, either! That means UC implementation planning must be geared selectively to high-value needs of end users (“UC-U”), that, in turn, will also pay off most to the business ROI (“UC-B”). What should be recognized here is that if individual end user needs are not taken care of first, the business processes that depend on those users will suffer, because UC capabilities will not be adopted and exploited effectively.

From that perspective of end user needs as either a contact initiator or contact recipient in the performance of a business process, the size of an organization makes little difference in requirements for those person-to-person or process-to-person communication needs. However, the more individual end users that can significantly benefit from UC capabilities in doing their jobs, the greater the pay off for both the UC-U and UC-B aspects of UC investment ROI.

Siemens started looking at such end user UC needs, by asking them about common communication “pain points” that can be minimized or eliminated by UC technologies. It’s not that what such “pain points” will be a surprise, but rather to understand the relative impact on business process performance.

However, United Business Media did a similar study earlier last year, with somewhat different results, and CMP Media’s bMighty Publisher/Editor, Frederick Paul, compared the results in a bMighty article referenced in his blog. In addition, UC Strategies colleague, Marty Parker, also points out that the real challenge for business organizations is to help do something about those communication “pain point” problems.

Now that the spotlight is upon individual end users, regardless of where they work, it is clear that UC implementation has to help move traditional voice telephony into the converged domain of “virtual” and mobile IP communications, rather than the traditional wired, premise-based TDM networks. This change will also impact the carrier service providers, who have to let go of their “walled gardens” to support the mobile service application needs of both their subscribers (consumers) and business organizations. (More on that later.)

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at artr@ix.netcom.com or .

Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.

New Response Service For Text Message Recipients

Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

January 20, 2009

UM/UC Gets Another Boost From SpinVox’s “VoxLinks”

Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

Messaging is an increasingly important component of unified communications (UC) for a number of practical reasons, including the fact that text messaging has become “real-time” through Instant Messaging and mobile SMS, but also because text messages are much more manageable, self-documenting, and resource-efficient than voice messages. Such benefits contribute to the goals of UC to minimize human latency in business communications through individual end user productivity (UC-U) and thereby also increase associated business process efficiencies (UC-B).

However, typing text message input has always been slow and error prone and the holy grail of business messaging has been to use the convenience and efficiency of voice for message input, but the efficiencies of text for message retrieval and management. The first step in this direction took place a couple of years ago when SpinVox, among others, offered a telephone answering service that allowed callers to leave traditional voice messages, but enabled the recipients to retrieve those messages in text form.

What Message Recipients Really Need

There are really two kinds of actions that message recipients have to take when they get notification of a new message:

1. Retrieve the message

2. Respond to the message

Both actions need flexibility to meet individual user needs for handling different kinds of messages and that’s where the power of unified messaging (UM) comes into play for UC. Recipients need to retrieve messages in any form that is convenient for them at the moment, especially when they are mobile, and they also need to respond/reply in any modality that is appropriate. If most people are like me, we respond immediately whenever possible, either to satisfy the time needs of other people as soon as possible or simply because we might forget about it.

Until recently, enterprise “unified messaging” technologies (UM) supported the capability for flexible message retrieval by primarily converting text messages to voice for notification and delivery by a voicemail system. Voice messages were also made a bit more manageable by using an email screen interface for retrieval, but the actual voice message retrieval and voice response had to be supported through a telephone and voicemail system.

SpinVox’s “VoxLinks” Cross-media Message Service For Recipients

SpinVox’s new service addresses the practical needs of the mobile user as a recipient to reply/respond to SMS text messages in voice. Expanding upon the success of it’s original voice-to-text-messaging service offered through wireless carriers, and more recently through enterprise providers like Avaya, VoxLinks provides any transcribed voice message that is delivered by SMS, with a “click-to-reply” voice option, as well as a “click-to-listen” option to hear the original voice message that was transcribed to the received text message. Now recipients can “Have their cake and eat it too!”

SpinVox is planning to bring speech recognition to messaging technologies to provide a variety of public services for mobile users. This should fit in nicely with UC service requirements for “click-to-call” and federated telephony presence management, as well as provide speech interfaces for mobile business applications. The latter should enable speech input to mesh efficiently with visual outputs for mobile devices. However, the proposed services will need to support regulatory compliance for business use and that is something that has not (yet) been publicized. So, stay tuned!

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.

UC and Nortel Bankruptcy

Copyright (C) Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

January 19, 2009

Did Nortel’s Bankruptcy Get Your Attention For Enterprise UC?

Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

The enterprise telephony pundits are all putting their spin on the news that industry leader, Nortel, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. They all say that this is no surprise and it’s not just because Nortel made mistakes.

I also mentioned the first published rumble from Nortel in early December in a comment I wrote to an article on UC. (See what I wrote below. *) Because enterprise telephony technology is being integrated and absorbed into UC and multimodal mobile services are rapidly become available to consumers, the traditional telephony piece parts (endpoint devices, TDM networks, hardware switches, voice applications) will no longer be locked into those premise-based hardware/software solutions that the telecom industry has traditionally served up to the business market.

Blair Pleasant (at UC Strategies.com) took a great stab at trying to clear up the confusion that surrounds the fundamental concepts of “unified communications.” For the record, my own perspective has always focused on benefits for the individual end users of communication technology, which includes:

· Ease of use of endpoint communication devices

· Flexible and efficient modes of contact with people (who can’t always be available or accessible)

· Personalized manageability of all contact activities that are location and device independent

· Reasonable cost effectiveness

Whether for personal (consumer) usage or for business job responsibilities, without those benefits, UC technology will never gain user acceptance and enterprise implementations will never take off or pay off for business process efficiency!

Different Enterprise Constituencies and UC Perspectives

(* Comment on article “W ill the REAL Definition of UC Please Stand Up!”) )

Part of the problem of defining UC rests with the different constituencies involved with the use of UC capabilities. End users don't care about infrastructure requirements, only functionality and ease of use. Business management are primarily concerned with business process performance and operational costs. IT is mainly concerned with implementation and support costs for operational capacity, reliability, and security for network and server infrastructures, satisfying various end user needs and business management's application needs, and managing (control) over what they are responsible for, including software clients on end user endpoint devices.

What UC is changing the most is what Blair highlighted, the role of voice telephony. Not only is traditional telephony importance downshifting to visual interfaces and text content, but the traditional TDM network infrastructure and how it is managed is changing as well (IP telephony, VoIP, wireless mobility).

As Blair mentioned, the latter is having a drastic effect on enterprise telecom, telephone system providers, and the public service providers (carriers). Needless to say, the sales and support channels for all these providers will also be greatly impacted in who they represent and how they will do business with their clients.

Presence - Don’t Confuse Availability With Accessibility!

The one point I would want to clarify is the role of “presence management.” Availability status, from a contact initiation perspective, is primarily needed only for real-time connections, i.e., phone calls, IM, and conferencing. The increasing roles of asynchronous messaging and immediate message delivery (SMS) don't really require such information to be made available to senders. Message originators should be able to send messages whenever they need to, in whatever medium is convenient, and with any type of device, while recipients should have the same flexibility for controlling message delivery, retrieval and responses.

The reliability of location-independent message delivery (plus it's informational attachments) made email equally important with phone calls for business users in a study I reported upon over two years ago. At that time, the study didn't consider IM, so that would add another chunk of communication activity taken out of voice telephony's future role in business communications.

Voice conversations will always remain very important to both personal and business contacts, but the inefficiencies of ad hoc, "blind" call attempts that waste the caller's time can now shift to more efficient, "contextual" ways of initiating a successful call. That is where new federated presence technology will pay off, primarily to contact initiators, both on a person/application-to-person basis, or on a person-to-anyone-who-is- qualified-and-available basis (e.g., live assistance to a customer or any end user).

Changing Enterprise Responsibilities for UC Services/

The migration from current telephony investments that still work presents several challenges to enterprise organizations, primarily about what communication services they should be responsible for, what do they need to change first, who needs those changes, and how should they go about making such changes. I think it is getting very obvious that from an end user perspective, it will start with mobile devices for internal users, business partners, and customers who are involved with high-value business processes.

Mobility has always been the driving force of user demand for the flexibility that UC offers, rather than the desktop. So, to start with what all end users really need most from UC, just look at the role that the enterprise will play in supporting all the new "smart phones' that end users will bring to their work environment and that customers will start using to interact with enterprise portals and customer care staff. Desktop UC is "nice-to-have," but mobile UC will be "got-to-have!"

As Blair pointed out, the traditional telephony system and service providers are quickly trying to shift product gears to support the changing role of location-based, proprietary hardware and software telephony to open, software-based, device-independent UC and mobility.

Today's report that Nortel is considering bankruptcy possibilities is an indication that supporting Microsoft's UC strategies may not have done enough for their future survival. We are still watching how the other leading premise-based, business telephony (PBX) providers are changing (Avaya, Cisco, Siemens, Mitel, Alcatel-Lucent, etc.) vs. the enterprise premise-based email and IM technology providers (Microsoft, IBM), vs. what the hosted communication service providers are now able to offer.

Since UC covers all the pieces of business communication, including integration with business process applications (CEBP), it will be most interesting to see who ends up doing the business process consulting, solution selling, and technology infrastructure installation and support for the different UC components to fit various individual enterprise migration needs. Look for “UC Teams” of technology and service providers to be required to do the job of UC strategic planning and implementations.

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or .

UC and Tradeshows

Copyright © 2009 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

January 5, 2009

UC and The Future of Tradeshows

Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View

It is interesting to see how the big industry players are having an impact on UC evolution, directly or indirectly, and how UC will, in turn, impact how we do business. Apple made a big move when it introduced the iPhone to support consumer UC (although they didn’t say “UC”). They quickly followed up with additional capabilities for business users as well.

Now, Apple seems to be taking the lead in changing the future role of traditional, location-based, shared trade shows and conferences to reach customers. I think UC will play an important role in this trend and, most particularly for the UC market itself. (We do have to “Practice what we preach!”) If you think about it, UC is all about supporting communication needs of individual users "anywhere, any time, anyhow." That includes person-to-person" contacts as well as information delivery to people from business process applications (CEBP). The following are some of my comments to the discussion about the “Death of Tradeshows.”

The “Anywhere” Is Key To “Virtual” Audiences

The "anywhere" is perhaps the biggest change Mobile UC brings to both personal and business communications, because it means that people don't have to be in an "office," at "home," or at a particular location to do their jobs, get information, or make contact with people in any modality they wish.

The "any time" factor, however, must still be managed, because people don't have unlimited time and have different individual priorities and deadlines to meet. That makes presence-based "availability" and "accessibility" key factors for real-time contacts in the UC game.

So, what are trade shows or conferences all about? A place to make contacts and get information! Well, guess what? They just don't always have to be location-based activities any more. The old ploy of time-consuming travel to conferences at enticing, but expensive, plush resorts is going to diminish, along with overloading conferences with so many concurrent presentations and events to maximize audience size, that it is impossible to do anything efficiently.

You might say conferences are a useful way to participate in a presentation, discussion, or round table. Well, there too, it doesn't mean you have to be physically present to do so. In fact, real-time discussions may be less useful than threaded exchanges to allow more thoughtful interactions at the convenience of interested participants.

Perhaps the only justification for location-based presence is where there has to be physical hands-on to a product, say, for an automobile. Otherwise, person-to-person contacts, information access, and demonstrations of business process applications can all be done on an individually personalized basis, remotely, and at any time that is convenient for the customer.

“Virtual” Sessions – Real-time or On demand

I personally started to add "virtual" sessions to existing conferences back in 1995. This allowed remote speakers and audience members to participate selectively in real-time. In one event, I had only 20 people in the room, including a panel of speakers, while over 300 were conferenced in. (Today, that's no big deal!)

Recording these virtual activities enable access to such events after the fact. The bottom line is that "virtual" online sessions expand the scope of participation significantly and at much less cost.

UC technology includes real time voice and video conferencing applications, in addition to person-to-person contacts in any mode required by the individual communicants. By scheduling such events, you can maximize real-time participation and interactions from any location. However, when does it really have to be real time when people are now accessible all the time with asynchronous communications (messaging) and "click-to-contact" for any real time needs?

With the web, our increasingly global environment and mobile/portable devices, many location-based business activities are diminishing, e.g., shopping, education and training, customer service, information access, office work, socializing, business collaboration, etc., so it should be obvious why the time and costs of location-based conferences and trade shows will also succumb to the flexibility of "virtual" online events.

As pointed out about Apple, "virtual" shows don't really have to be shared with all other sponsors; this will help eliminate the "overloaded" schedules that shared-show producers create to maximize physical attendance. (I found that to still be a problem with some new online shared trade shows.) So, although there will still be location-based events, they can also maximize their potential audience by also making them "virtual." As well proven by Google, advertising on the web is more powerful and responsive than just location-based signage.

So, the power of the web, wireless mobility, and UC will be driving the next generation of conferences and trade shows in my book. It will help move all aspects of market access to both people and information to “virtual” audiences in real-time or on-demand. That will help the “greening” of the marketplace and change the way companies do business.

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.

Will the REAL DefinitionS of UC Stand Up: 6 Perspectives For A Single Definition

David A. Zimmer, PMP
Chief of Staff
American Eagle Group

In a recent article by a colleague titled “Will the REAL Definition of Unified Communications Please Stand Up,” Blair Pleasant offered a definition of unified communications. Overall, I felt the definition provided insight and was comprehensive from a technical perspective. She included the many “moving” parts, the technical components, needed to support a unified communications (UC) infrastructure.

Ms. Pleasant’s real premise of the article was to provide that one definition we can use to effectively describe UC – the “elevator speech” of UC. This is a goal another colleague Art Rosenberg and I have attempted many times over the past decade since we coined the term “unified communications.” No matter what we developed, I always felt short-changed, incomplete, not totally satisfied.

After reading Ms. Pleasant’s article and talking with Art, I came upon the root issue to this lacking definition. We typically attempt to define UC from one perspective which leaves the other perspectives dangling. UC is a rapidly moving, and yet frustratingly slow, whirlwind of needs, wants and whims. A need to one person is simply a whim to another. So, to pin a single definition on UC is fruitless. As soon as we are satisfied with the definition, it is outmoded, just as a PC purchased yesterday is obsolete.

A Departure From UC

Back in 2002 or 2003, I took a departure from the UC market to provide training and consulting to companies in the area of project management and IT service management. Over the past several years, I have trained thousands in industry-standard project management methodologies and proper MS Project use. During these seminars, I refered to unified communications. I’ve learned, based upon the person’s job description, their definition and understanding differs.

Rather than a single definition, I believe there is and always will be multiple definitions. The definitions result from different perspectives. I’ve captured these perspectives in what I call, the UC Cube©. It is a specialized version of the IT Cube© specific for UC although it uses the same perspectives.

What is UC Cube?

Over the years, I have been involved in many IT related projects. During that time, I have observed many perspectives to the project. Some felt the project was a raging success while others, looking at the same information, considered it a flaming failure. Why? I realized they were viewing the situation from different angles.

Imagine a cube – a six sided, 3D object. In the center of cube is the item of scrutiny. Depending upon which panel I am looking through to see the item, I see another aspect, a distinct surface resulting in “seeing the same thing, but differently.”

Let’s tie this to UC.

Any IT project, and UC eventually boils to technology implementation, has six different perspectives. I make some generalities to simplify the concept. There always will be grey areas and bleed-overs to other panels, but the following descriptions will help us understand our conundrum.

Panel 1: The Technician

The technician implements, maintains and upgrades the infrastructure that supports the features and functions of the UC system. He may have insight into only one portion of the overall system. For example, he may be the MS Exchange or Domino Server guru. He may not understand or be concerned with telecom stuff.

Regardless of how narrow or expansive his technical skill set, he is the one that understands the nuts-and-bolts. He must make the adjustments necessary to keep the system alive.

His perspective is technical. His questions and concept of UC is technical.

“What components must I implement and maintain to produce UC?”

“What widgets comprise a UC infrastructure?”

“Should I support VoIP or TDM?”

“What expertise do I need or certification should I possess?”

“What training best serves this area?”

And so on.

Panel 2: The IT or Technology Management

The IT or Technology manager, while concerned with the technology and its implementation, concentrates on uptime, stability, business support, evolution to meet future needs, etc. She reads different reports and magazines than the technician. Her concern is less day-to-day operations and more focused on providing the features/functions with appropriate availability to support the organization.

The IT manager’s perspective will be technical but with a “business” flavor added.

“Which set of technology meets the greatest number of needs expressed with the greatest uptime and lowest cost?”

“Can I prove ROI, TCO, ABC and XYZ the business slings at me?”

“At the end of the day, am I supporting their needs, wants and whims?”

“What metrics best prove I’m meeting my SLAs?”

“How do I really know the users’ needs?”

“Are the business initiatives being met by this latest technology implementation?”

Panel 3: Business Management and Executives

The business management focuses on company profitability, costs and competitiveness. If tin cans and string support the communication need, so be it. If it takes the latest advances and technology, that’s fine as long as it keeps us profitable and competitive. The goal is to manage the business, not the technology to support the company. The business defines the business requirements for profitability and competitiveness while the technology management translates those requirements into working technology.

The business’ view of UC revolves around reaction to market trends, business directions, customer responsiveness and so forth. If technology enables mobility, agility and profitability, they’re for it. Does the UC system integrate with our business processes and support greater productivity so we can do more with less?

While it is the IT manager’s responsibility to prove proper ROI and TCO, the business management factors those values into the equation for the cost of IT support. In other words, if the current system supports the business but doesn’t line-up with an industry definition of unified communication, who cares? If a UC system is implemented but doesn’t support the business, UC is no good. Simple.

The business perspective, therefore, looks at UC’s impact on the business itself and determines which “features and functions” are necessary. If IM does the job, it’s in. If UM doesn’t support profitability, it’s out. Yet, if the workers can get to their email, voicemail, fax and other communications just fine, they have “unified communications.”

Panel 4: The User

The rubber meets the road with the user. The user determines which aspects of UC he uses. Some might use IM. Others might use text/picture messaging from their mobile phone. One set wants iPhone® while the rest want Blackberries®. For business purposes, email and voicemail are required options, but their use might vary. Should we throw in calendaring functions and contact lists? Can they only contain business associates or will they contain family and friends? Does it support “presence” for all contexts so the user knows which device or medium to use?

Some users have a clearly defined boundary between work and personal life while others have no life outside of work – everyone is a potential customer. Some users are highly mobile requiring different types of security and equipment definitions while others might share devices because of their duties such as manufacturing shop floors and support desks.

Since each job varies drastically from one company to another, from one industry to another and from one country to another, a single definition will not suffice. Here’s the key: each user will define UC for himself or herself based upon his or her specific needs and job demands. The person across the aisle may want something completely different. Consequently, the IT staff must support a smorgasbord of features and functions, within limits of course, to cover the variety of definitions.

Which definition prevails? The business manager’s? The IT manager’s? The technician’s? The user’s? All will!

Here’s another aspect of a user, just to muddy the waters. Generational issues. Yup, this is one place age really does matter. Each generation has different ways of working based upon the technology available when they were young.

Not to give away my age, but I much prefer separated technology where my voicemail is voicemail and my email is email. Although I carry a Blackberry fully loaded with pictures, soccer schedules, contact information, email/spam-mail, I don’t do texting. I don’t like IM – too invasive. I don’t want my voicemail comingled with my email and overflowing spam. And my “find me/follow me” is fixed forwarding of my office phone to my mobile number. I don’t need more.

And I really despise presence. Why? Because, frankly, I don’t always want to be available. Worse, just because my mobile phone is on and the presence indicator says I’m available via that method, I’m not. I’ve left it behind because I needed a break. But for many, presence is the coup de grais of UC. Without it, UC isn’t UC!

While I have this older view of the world, my younger counterparts (and off-spring) are suffering carpel tunnel syndrome of the thumbs from texting/IM’ing/video-gaming, and more. They have a different concept of work and play from me. Their communications needs differ.

I have a problem with “communicating” with robots and systems that simulate humans helping me with my tech support while the younger folks like it better. I don’t want to speak to a machine trying to act like a human. I’m not a fan of tech support “live chat” while other love it – too slow and I know I am not the only customer of the tech, therefore, I have to repeat myself too many times and get inaccurate answers.

Therefore, the user defines UC to meet his or her need. It cannot be dictated by the industry.

Panel 5: Analysts and Pundits

The analysts and pundits will have a completely different definition for UC than everyone else – by definition. Our job is to determine the market size, advise our clients what’s best, apprise them of the future after we predict it, and convince them our guesses are just around the corner. Therefore, our definition will be a combination of technical specifications, market forecasts, customer requests and users demands (as determined by surveys). I’m not trying to be harsh, simply reality based.

We will ask,
“What are you current pain points?”

“What problems are you trying to fix?”

“What solutions do you think best fit your situation?”

“How many users do you support?”

“What purchases are forecast for next year, and the year after that, and five years out?”

“What functions do you foresee as important today that you don’t have?”

“What are your predictions for next year?”

We take the information and see how it matches current products and services, then illustrate the current gaps and the market potential. Of course, we have to define the problem we are solving in order to come to a solution. The solution, therefore, evolves into our definition with additional future-proofing. While this is a bit “tongue-in-cheek” of our services, our vision of UC differs from all the other groups, by necessity.

As analysts, we have to stand squarely in the past, the present and the future. The technology must support all three timeframes, the features must meet all needs expressed or at least in a prioritize order of needs, and so forth. Our view and definition of UC can be biased based upon the data collected, the reports read, the information mined and more. The good news is, we can be just as right as any other panel.

Panel 6: The Vendors

The vendors are in business to meet the needs of the customers. Their goal is to understand the definition sufficiently to produce the product or service supporting the definition. Of course, no one vendor can meet the entire definition, therefore, they express how their products/services are UC.

I once saw a vendor claim they had “unified messaging” because they could receive faxes on a PC. It did not integrate with a mailbox, email, voicemail or any other product, but that was their definition of unified messaging – PC fax.

The vendor’s definition of UC will be biased toward their product or service. In many cases, they will fit a square peg in a square hole, but sometimes, it will be more cylindrical than square.

They will be asking questions such as,

“How does our product or service fit this concept of UC?”

“Do we have some aspects that will work so we can make such a claim?”

“Can we state we are UC-compliant?”

And so forth.

Conclusion

Defining UC with a single, industry acceptable definition is impossible. No matter how inclusive, it will certainly exclude some aspect. We must define it from multiple perspectives. We must realize also UC is constantly moving and shifting. There are many moving parts which are evolving at various rates and directions. Users’ needs, wants and whims are never static and change like the wind. Market factors, economic conditions and business climates impact UC quarterly.

The six perspectives give us a clue as to the true complexity of UC. The complexity results from the various viewpoints, more complex than the technical aspect. Serving each angle will challenge us for years to come.

What Do You Think?

Do you think it is possible to have a single definition? Do you think I am accurate in articulating six perspectives? Does the concept of a cube help focus this amorphous collection of needs, wants, whims and technology into something tangible? Send me your thoughts. Either leave a comment to this blog posting or send me an email at info@ameagle.com.

To learn more about my kick-butt Project Management 5-day boot camp or excellently rated MS Project seminars, shoot me an email or call +1/215-491-2544. Thousands have reaped the benefits of more project success from this valuable training.

UC Cube is copyrighted by the Unified-View. IT Cube is copyrighted by American Eagle Group. All rights reserved. Use of term permitted with credit citation to respective copyright holders.

Copyright (C) 2008 Unified-View, All Rights Reserved.

Managing UC and Mobility Services For Business

Art Rosenberg
The Unified-View

Although we start looking at unified communications (UC) from an end user perspective, i.e., who really needs which capabilities from UC, we must also look at IT’s role in planning, implementing, and supporting UC capabilities in a business environment. Even though the basic justifications for UC must come from the business users (individual end users and business process management), we must still rely on IT technology expertise to develop a practical UC implementation and support plan that is acceptable to everyone.

Drawing the line between fixing existing business technology that is broken vs. implementing new technology is a traditional challenge to IT management. For UC, it is further complicated by the need to support the new communication alternatives that will allow internal staff, outside partners, and most importantly, customers to communicate more flexibly and efficiently. Such flexibility will be increasingly required by mobile users employing handheld, multi-modal “smart phones,” to maximize both their business and personal communication accessibility.

UC and Mobility

Unified communications (UC) still struggles to be defined conceptually for its role in person-to-person communications and process-to-person interactions. The ability to use either speech or text communications between people was a starting point for more flexible business contacts, facilitating the choice of asynchronous messaging vs. real-time synchronous contacts (phone calls, IM). Now, with improved speech recognition and multi-modal mobile devices, the next stage of efficient user real-time interaction with business process applications is here – the choice of entering or retrieving information with voice or screen interfaces, or a combination of both. As the title of a white paper published by NEC at the beginning of this year suggests, UC may be viewed as the next stage of mobility. Right there, enterprise IT will face the problem of supporting both existing internal desktop applications, as a well as a variety of public and private networks, mobile communications services, and endpoint devices that end users will be deploying to communicate with different people and different applications. How will usage of such mobile services be managed from an enterprise IT perspective?

It’s not enough to design and develop new technologies for business end users; it is also critical to manage technology support and changes to keep in synch with the operational usage needs of different people and work environments. Now that telephony is joining other forms of business communications under the UC umbrella to support multimodal, mobile devices that are software-based, IT technology support for all forms of business application integrations has to be consolidated and structured as well.

Orange Business Services Offers Microsoft UC Plus ITIL-based Support

A clue to how enterprise UC mobility will be evolving through the use of managed services appeared in a recent announcement from a leading European service provider, Orange Business Services of France Telecom, targeting multinational, global business organizations. They announced they would be supporting the use of the following standard Microsoft software applications to business customers on a managed basis:

· Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

· Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

· Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007

What Orange has also added to their business communication offerings is standards-based service management through ITIL, Information Technology Infrastructure Libraries, which is a set of documented concepts and policies for managing operational support and change procedures for information technology services.

To get some insights into that perspective of UC implementations, I talked with my old Unified-View partner, David Zimmer, who has been actively involved with educating IT personnel on the gospel of ITIL.

According to David, here are some key points about ITIL:

· ITIL is a significant cultural change for IT organizations in performing their responsibilities to support enterprise information and communication technologies

· It requires understanding and coordinating business management needs and priorities, individual end user needs, as well as the trade-offs between existing and new technologies to provide required technology services

· Most importantly, it requires defining all aspects of technology support as reflected in Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for different technology support services, i.e., break-fix problems vs. changes to existing capabilities

· The ITIL framework includes standardized procedures for:

- Service support

- Service delivery

- Security management

- Infrastructure management

- Application management

- Change management

- Continual service improvement (Metrics)

Finally, David suggests that IT project management still has to determine how to best implement any requested and approved application changes and that kind of expertise is very fuzzy at best. New implementation options can now include hosted or managed services, integrated with existing enterprise technologies.

Business management, on the other hand, has to understand its operational problems and priorities and the value of selectively solving those problems with UC technologies. Such solutions must be properly planned and implemented on an evolutionary basis at both the IT support level and the individual end-user adoption level.

“ITIL is a framework for describing the practical guidelines needed to align IT technology with business initiatives,” commented Zimmer. “UC is fundamentally a business initiative using supporting technology. Moving from current technology to UC and then continually upgrading or introducing new features in the rapidly changing world of business requirements is the crux of the ITIL framework. In the short term, companies go through cultural change, but come out further ahead because of the systematic methodologies employed to support the business,”

In the long run, proper IT management of UC technology implementations and usage will result in time-savings, avoiding expensive mistakes, and making new UC applications more future-proofed to keep up with the real-world of both business and end-user needs.

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360. You can reach David Zimmer at dazimmer@ameagle.com or (215) 491-2544.

First Contact Resolution Catches Up With “Customer UC”

Art Rosenberg
The Unified-View

The search for enterprise benefits from UC capabilities always seems to revolve around improving business results and that usually means communicating more effectively and efficiently with customers.

When real-time customer service was primarily focused on telephone call centers, a key enterprise challenge for customer satisfaction was to minimize caller wait time for live assistance. Although telephone self-service applications can be used to minimize such demand, there are always situations where live assistance is still needed to supplement the limitations of the telephone user interface (TUI) to efficiently satisfy caller information needs.

Even with fast access to live assistance from a call center “agent,” the need for particular expertise cannot always be provided because it is impossible to train all agents to know everything. As a result, agents would have to either try to find an “expert” to assist in providing necessary information during the same call, or require follow up calls to resolve the caller’s problem. This consideration led to a key metric for customer satisfaction, “First Call Resolution” (FCR), based on getting other personnel quickly involved in satisfying all the caller’s needs during a single call.

“Different Strokes For Different Folks”

Now that customers can easily access information on the Web without necessarily talking to a live person, the name of the FCR game is shifting from voice-only telephone contacts to multimodal contacts. In particular, live assistance can be invoked more flexibly, contextually, and selectively by customers than by manually initiating a phone call.

With online search via Web browsers becoming the primary source of information access “on demand,” customer assistance is shifting away from ad hoc phone calls to contextual online contacts for customer. The latter includes:

· “Click –to-email”

· “Click-to-chat”

· “Click-to-call”

Not only can this be done at a desktop PC or portable laptop, but with the growing consumer adoption of personal “smart-phones,” multimodal customer contacts for both information access and live assistance will be the new order of the day for enterprise customer support. Now “First Call Resolution” will really be only one flavor of “First Contact Resolution.”

New Metrics For “First Contact Resolution” Through UC

A new market study by long-time voice expert, Walt Teschner, who now runs the GetHuman website, confirms intuitively obvious metrics for customer contact responsiveness beyond phone calls. Sponsored by Fuze Digital Solutions, almost one thousand consumers in different age groups, gave their opinion about what would be acceptable responsiveness to the different forms of customer-initiated contact with a business.

Although, older people are a bit more demanding, there was not much difference in service level expectations between the different age groups. However, a key concern for all consumers is to know what to expect before they try to make contact for assistance.

Response expectations averaged the following:

Email - 4 business hours

Text chat - 10-70 seconds

Traditional telephone callers expect a call to be picked up within three rings by a person, but with most call center systems there are other time delays before reaching live assistance, including preliminary call screening via an IVR interface, then waiting in queue for an available agent.

However, the study did not get into the issue of fully completing the customer contact, i.e., the “resolution” of the caller’s reason for calling. Apparently, that is not as much of a problem to a caller as it is to contact center management who worry about agent performance (call“ handle time”) and staffing requirements. Obviously, if the caller doesn’t get the results they want, they will be still be extremely “dissatisfied,” no matter how quickly they are serviced.

As new UC capabilities become available to customers, both online at the desktop and with mobile “smart-phones,” initiating contact via email, chat or telephone will not limit interaction with live assistance to those modes of interaction. Email contacts can be escalated to online chat or voice conversations and it is those forms of interactions that could make the difference for a satisfying “customer experience,” not just how long it takes to establish contact with live assistance.

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360.