VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly Issue 127, September 15, 2009
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
This issue of UC eWeekly is sponsored by Empirix
SIP Trunking Services provide many benefits for enterprises over current, legacy ISDN trunk lines, including significant cost savings, access to new services, and integration with existing IP based services and business applications.  [...]

VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly Issue 126| September 2, 2009
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
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This issue of UC Weekly is sponsored by VoiceCon San Francisco
 
Register now and save up to $900 off the regular price for VoiceCon San Francisco to be held November 2-5, at the Moscone North Convention Center.  For more information visit [...]

If, on the other hand, you see UC as part of the ongoing evolution of communications technology, and as part of the never-ending transformation in how that technology gets used, half full would be right, and not a bad thing.

That’s my perspective after reading an impressive two-part article on No Jitter by Brent Kelly– see “Do You See What I See Shaping UC?” at www.nojitter.com. Brent has done all of us in the industry a service by compiling a list of 10 issues that present the good, bad and the ugly about UC.

Among the good:

*UC is expected as part of a communications offering: UC is table stakes – no one can compete without a full complement of UC capabilities.

* While UC technologies continue to mature, they’re stable, they integrate with back office elements such as corporate directories, calendars, office productivity applications and they interface with voice — the most common communications medium of all.

You may be asking yourself, what is a “solutions integrator?” We created that term to describe companies that sell and integrate UC solutions – including VARs, interconnects, telecom dealers and system integrators. From the vendor perspective, this group is called “the channel” or “channel partners,” but from the end user or enterprise perspective, these are the people who not only sell them the voice and data products needed for a UC solution, but also help put the solutions together, tying them together with the organizations’ existing systems (telephony, data), desktops, devices (wireless, wireline), and perhaps most importantly, applications.

In the past, the job of resellers, VARs, interconnects and telecom dealers was essentially to sell products or “boxes” (PBXs, phones, voice mail systems, etc.), and in some cases they would also provide some related software applications.

The situation today is much different, with the focus on applications first, requiring an understanding of the customers’ business, business processes, workflows, etc. As you’ve heard countless times by now, Unified Communications is: Communications integrated to optimize business processes. It’s the job of the solutions integrators to do this integration, and this is a different type of activity than simply selling boxes.

Today’s solutions integrators must understand various work modes in the context of the business processes that are being performed, e.g. is the work primarily customer-facing field work (sales, service), or on-site process-centered mobile work (health care, retail, manufacturing, distribution), or on-site or virtual office desk-based work (financial services, enterprise support departments), or flexible location information or knowledge work (development, marketing, consulting, management)? The solutions integrator must then be able to convert that information about the processes and the roles within those processes into designs that specify the best communications modes and applications and support those choices with the best UC software, hardware, devices and procedures.

There’s no doubt that the cloud offers some important benefits, many of which McMillan describes in his post. And there’s also no question that there are successful cloud-based services that enterprises are buying and using; Salesforce.com and Amazon’s EC2 come to mind.

But when it comes to porting over enterprise communications and IT operations, it seems that the key question is whether the cloud is a long-term play or merely a response to short-term budget belt-tightening. Timeshare systems disappeared and Centrex’s enterprise market share continues to shrink because of two inter-related issues: First, cost — enterprises found that the total cost of renting exceeded the cost of ownership of IT facilities, equipment and personnel. Second, flexibility and responsiveness – the owner of the cloud determines what capabilities will go into the cloud, when upgrades will occur and when new capabilities will be added. The pace at which an enterprise’s requirements change, however, won’t always fit with the cloud owner’s investment schedule.

VoiceCon presents unique opportunities, because the segment of the industry it covers is so much in flux. During the ‘90s, the opportunities for this type of networking were limited, because the PBX industry looked like the old computer industry – vertical stacks with each vendor providing everything from call control to phones. Now that the industry is becoming much less vertical, it’s clear that no single vendor can provide a complete solution – UC imposes the requirement for multiple vendors and system integration support.

But how do potential partners find each other? How can a small vendor get in front of a large vendor, and how do large vendors know which small vendors to invest time with? And how can the right people get involved in the conversation at the right time?

All this is not hard; it just takes attention. Many companies have a training department that can help with this. Training tools continue to improve, offering easy recording of a successful UC user session in the context of their specific job. Note: I’m not referring to canned vendor product training, it should be job-specific; and, if your UC strategy is built on Use Cases, then train to those. It is also easy to record a training webinar for later reuse (think: enterprise YouTube) or to narrate onto PowerPoint slides with tools such as Articulate.

For the change management elements, project managers or HR team members are likely resources. Also, the tools used in call centers are often applicable, as are methods described in the book “AKDAR,” by Jeffrey M. Hiatt. Setting up recognition, rewards and metrics are all part of managing change, too.

My friends at UniComm Consulting, Marty Parker and Don Van Doren, tell me they are often asked to help customers analyze and then justify a new IP-PBX within the UC context. Their clients recognize the importance of UC, but often have been told to start by upgrading their existing phone system. I understand this thinking — it took me some time to really understand that UC isn’t just about a new phone system – it is about “communications integrated to optimize business processes,” a definition you’ve seen repeatedly on our UCStrategies.com website and this newsletter, and heard in numerous VoiceCon keynote addresses at since early 2007.

I’m continually bemused, and not a little dismayed, by the chameleon-like way suppliers use “UC” – making it fit into whatever marketing spin the supplier wants to give it. It’s old news that many companies have seized upon UC, and then burnished and breathlessly rebranded their slightly tarnished offerings with this shiny-new-object label.

But wait. There’s more. The thing that got me back on this tear was a postcard-like promo sent out by one of the major UC suppliers, encouraging people to view their executive’s keynote address from VoiceCon San Francisco. The card features a UC-themed mantra: “Find. Reach. Collaborate. DONE.” Nice summary.

Several enterprise customers noted that their companies have eliminated all unnecessary travel, but because they have been able to meet with customers, co-workers and partners via videoconferencing, they have been able to maintain the relationships and get their jobs done without having to get into a train, plane or automobile. In addition, videoconferencing helps make meetings more effective than audio-only conferences, because you can see what the other person/people are doing; in short, video helps to ensure that participants pay attention to what’s being presented and discussed, instead of checking their Blackberries or doing other unrelated activities.