Buying and Selling UC - My Webinar This Friday

Just a quick shout-out for my webinar this Friday at 2pm EST.

This continues a series I've been doing with Ziff Davis B2B, and this time we're moving up the value chain to focus on Unified Communications. The twist here is that rather than focus on the technology issues, I'll be talking about two different hats IT needs to wear when going down this road.

First regards the range of things that need to be done to make good buying decisions - which entails more than you might think. Second is the job of selling IT - not only must you convince management this is a good investment, but also to convince employees that it's a good idea to use UC.

There's plenty of ground to cover, and I hope you can join us. It just takes a minute to register, and you can also read more about the webinar here on the web page.

Know Your Alternatives - This Thursday, Toronto - Am Speaking There

Busy week! Just back from a great ITExpo event in sunny Miami, and on Thursday, I'm speaking at the Know Your Alternatives event here in chilly Toronto. Am also doing a webinar on UC on Friday, but I'll have a separate post about that.

So, the third Know Your Alternatives event is coming up fast - this Thursday at the Metro Convention Center, North Hall. First off - it's a solid event - I was there last year. We have very few telecom events up here, and the fact that this one is run by an IT consultant tells you just how different this space is from the U.S. KYA is only a day long, so it won't take up too much of your time. If you're local, it's not too late to register, and hopefully I'll see you there.

I'm speaking at 11:30 on Track #4 - Business. The session is titled "Why VoIP Now? End of Life Scenario Opens the Door to UC", and it's a fireside chat format. I'll speaking along with Emily Nielsen - she's the show organizer, as well as being President of her IT consulting firm. So, we'll be contrasting perspectives between an analyst and an IT consultant on the roadmap leading to UC.  We'll have lots of time for audience participation, so please come see us if you're attending!

ITExpo Highlights

Time sure flies, and that's not a good thing when the weather is sooo nice in Miami Beach. ITExpo is finishing up this afternoon, but I need to get on my way now. Guess I won't be winning the Jeep, but you can't have it all, right?

Seen a little of everything this time around - all the sessions and speakers I heard were quite good, but attendance was variable. I ran 3 panels - 2 were well attended, and 1 hardly at all. Video seems like the hot topic - those sessions were busy, as was Ingate's SIP Trunking program and Crossfire's M2M tracks. I'm not the only one feeling this way, and it's no reflection on the content - just a lot of demands on our time. Between visiting the show floor, catching keynotes, doing briefings, stepping outside for some sun, networking in the hallways and dropping in on sessions, there's a lot of ground to cover. This means attendance of your session has a lot to do with what else is going on at that time, and every conference has to deal with that.

Overall, TMC does a great job keeping things moving along, but I think the stress level would be lighter if there were fewer things to be running to. No time was wasted, and everything I saw was worth getting to - just wish I could have seen more.

With that, I have a highlight and a lowlight to share.

The highlight, as expected, was John Sculley's onstage interview during StartupCamp7. Larry Lisser has done a great job with this, and it always draws a full room. Quickly, the format is to have 4 startups do a 5 minute pitch, then take questions from an expert panel as well as the audience. There were two winners - the audience went with Verbalizeit, and the panel went with Thruview. I liked Thruview the best as well, but none really did that much for me. Seems like everybody is in the mobile apps business now, but they all face the same challenge of monetizing a cool idea. Enough from me on that - you can read up on all this on the Expo website.

Back to John Sculley. I didn't know much about him, but his story sure is a good one. I actually found his Pepsi experience more interesting than his time at Apple. Sometimes you have go way back to revisit ideas that really matter now, and he's a great example of that. Looks like he was the driving force that made Pepsi a major player based on a simple twist of marketing logic - "don't sell the product, sell the experience".

With so much commoditization in the communications space, this is probably the most important message to impart. If it could work with Pepsi, it sure can work with UC, video, social media, mobility, etc.  That's my big takeaway and highlight. When engineers run a company, it's all about the product; but when marketers are in charge, it's all about the experience. Ideally you want a balance, and that's why Steve Jobs was so successful. Obviously, it's hard to do, but it absolutely should be driving every company in our space.

Lowlight? Well, for me, it was my panel yesterday, which ended up having two speakers - BroadSoft and Metaswitch. How often does that ever happen? In headier times, this would have a been an SRO session, with everyone anxious to see how they would square off. Well, we played to a near empty room, so we ended up talking about more mundane things. Too bad - this could have been a very lively panel, but we were up against too many other things at that time, and that's the way it goes. Too bad. Maybe next time we'll be the headliners, and then we'll really have to be ready. I'm up for it!

Feb. 8 Webinar - Buying UC and Selling UC

Am doing another webinar with the Ziff Davis B2B group. It's on Friday, Feb. 8, at 2pm EST.

As the title implies, there are two aspects to getting UC going inside your company. First, you need to buy UC, and that actually entails quite a few things. Perhaps just as important, though, you have to sell it - IT needs a lot of buy-in to make this work. I'll be exploring 3 angles there - selling yourself on UC, and then getting buy-in from management and end users. I'm not going to say which has to happen first, but the buying and selling of UC are equally important.

So, if you're wondering just how you should go about this journey, you'll want to join us. The webinar is free, and here's the link for more details about what I'll be talking about, as well as how to register - just takes a minute.

Next Stop - Miami and ITExpo

Living in Toronto, it's a great time of year for Miami Beach, and that's where my first travels of 2013 are taking me. I'll be at TMC's flagship event, the ITExpo, where the winter edition has a nice home at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

If you've been following me, you'll know I'm a regular there, and this show has survived, thrived and keeps things fresh by covering the gamut of IP communications. It's fair to say things are spread impossibly thin, and one person can only take in so much, but you can't go there and not learn something new. Lots to look forward to as always, and to keep tabs from wherever you are, follow their twitter feed - @ITExpo - and it couldn't hurt to track @TMCnet as well.

I won't be hard to find, and would be happy to hear from you. I'll be taking part in Editor's Day tomorrow, and will be briefing with companies from 4-6pm. During the next 2 days, I'll be moderating 3 panels, which you can get details on by scrolling through the conference program here. I've also been blogging about each panel the past few days, and details are also posted on my website.

Enough about me - how about you - will you be there?

ITExpo Shout-Out #3 - Turning UC into Revenue

I don't mean to confuse you, as this message isn't meant for IT managers deploying UC - although that could be a worthwhile topic to explore - creatively. What I'm talking about here is for service providers - how they can leverage Unified Communications as a way to drive new revenues. This is pretty much a mobility story, where operators are struggling to keep up with our ever-changing wants - you can call them needs, but we've survived for thousands of years without these goodies - to satiate our smartphone and tablets obsessions. There's definitely money to be made here, and UC actually provides a lot of value to businesses trying to make sure their employees stay productive when out of the office.

That's the set-up, and for the rest, you'll have to join us next Thursday at 3:30 for our panel. I'm moderating, and will be joined by Chris Carabello of Metaswitch, Leslie Ferry of BroadSoft and Payam Maveddat of Taqua. These are all familiar faces for me, so it should be a lively session.

So, where and when? Almost forgot - Miami Beach - you ok with that? Of course, it's TMC's ITExpo, and this is the third session I'm moderating at the show, so I won't be hard to find. As with my earlier posts about my sessions, you can get all the details here - just scroll down to Thursday and you'll find us on the Service Provider Solutions track. See you there!

ITExpo Shout-Out - My Panel, The Optimal Customer Experience

Am just continuing my posts in advance of next week's ITExpo in Miami. It's -100 here in Toronto, so South Beach is looking better by the minute.

I'm moderating two panels on Wednesday, and this is my second one - at 1:30 on the Customer Interaction track. The full title is The Real Business Value of an Optimal Customer Experience, and as you might expect, we'll be talking about how the contact center can improve that experience and ultimately makes customers more loyal.

Joining me will be Lisa Abbott from Genesys, Brent Morgan from Interactive Intelligence, and Ann Sung Ruckstuhl from LiveOps. Should be a good one, and you can get more details here, then scroll down to our session, where all the info will pop up.

ITExpo Miami - My Contact Center Panel - "Can You Hear Me Now?"

TMC's ITExpo East starts next Tuesday, and I'll be moderating three panels, as well as participating in Editor's Day on Tuesday. I'll do a preview post for each panel, and let's start with the first one.

My first panel is at 9am on Wednesday, titled Contact Center Customer Experience: More than “Can You Hear Me Now?”. The basic idea is to explore how to make the experience better for customers beyond providing decent call quality. This presents some challenges to IT, since their domain is usually internal when it comes to communications. When customer satisfaction is on the line, it doesn't pay to be underwhelming, and we'll talk about approaches IT can take to get the opposite result.

Joining me will be Rick McFarland of Voice4Net, Theresa Szczurek of Radish Systems and Steve Shalita of  Netscout Systems. We're part of the Customer Interaction Track, and you can read up on the speakers and our topics on the Program page of the show website - just scroll down to the Wednesday sessions.

AudioCodes One Voice - Another Take

Pretty hectic week here, so this will be short. On Monday, AudioCodes announced One Voice, which is basically an integrated solution to voice-enable Microsoft Lync. Notice that they don't call it telecom - it's a subtle way to say you can do voice without an IP PBX, which by extension makes/keeps the desktop at the center of your communications environment. Some vendors partner with Microsoft and others compete with them, and it's an interesting time to see how the various classes of vendors hold their own, given all the disruption from the cloud and mobility in particular.

Many aspects of this announcement really tie into UC, so I'm going to continue this thread by steering you to the UCStrategies portal, where my analysis was posted this morning. I'm keen to know if you agree with my take on things, as I see One Voice as a sign that PCs aren't going away any time soon, and another indication as to how hard Microsoft is trying to leverage their footprint and provide the complete solution for businesses to communicate with.

Deloitte Predictions 2013 - Takeaways

This is the 12th year that Deloitte has published TMT Predictions, and during the few years, this has really grown into a big event. TMT is their Technology, Media and Telecommunications practice, and I have been friendly with their group here in Toronto for a while. I've blogged about previous Predictions events, and feel free free to search  my archive to see how the event has evolved.

Duncan Stewart is Deloitte Canada's Director of Research, and as the public face of Predictions, he did his usual first-rate job pacing us through the highlights. The overall scope is beyond my everyday coverage, but the trends are fascinating for sure. No big surprises for me, but it's nice to see the trends presented with so much substance behind them. I'll just share a few top-line takeaways here, and then steer you to their site, where you can download the research and read further for yourself - and you really should.

1. Wireless spectrum - like real estate, they're not making this any more, and this is the year we run up against a mobile spectrum deficit. Demand, of course, is being driven by data - gee, who talks on their mobile phones any more? - and given the out of control growth, you knew this day was coming. Needless to say, prices must rise to get supply and demand back in synch, so watch for new tiers of mobile data plans in 2013.

2. Who said PCs are dead? Duncan - and others - have been talking about the post-PC era for a while now,  but it's a bit misleading. Mobile devices - tablets and smartphones - have finally bypassed PCs in terms of units, but by far, we spend most of our online time on the PC. He shared some nice metrics, and I'll be citing those in another post, so I'll keep you in suspense for now - or just go read the research.  :-)

3. Enterprise social networks - a good idea, but...  nobody really uses them. As popular as these things are - however you want to define them - most people use them in a passive way. It's too bad, given that they're generally free, so they can be a useful platform to share knowledge and communicate. I guess there's just something about free applications that spooks people. It's easy to collect contact names and build out your address book, but not many of us actually turn this into gold. I can think of a few reasons why, but until Mark Zuckerberg or Reid Hoffman bring me into their inner circles, I'll hold on to those thoughts. Wouldn't you?

Enough for now. This is just a taste of what Deloitte's research has come up with, and I hope you dig deeper - here's the link. They've got a pretty good track record, and I think you'll find this time well spent.

UC Channel Challenges and 8x8's Approach

For this week's UCStrategies podcast, we tried something different. Our format is usually a closed shop with UCS Experts talking about a specific topic. That works well, and if you like what the usual suspects in our group have to say, then I'm sure you're eagerly anticipating  each podcast.

We're sticking to the formula, but are also mixing things up a bit. This week is the first time we had a guest join us, namely Don Trimble, VP North American Sales, 8x8. As you likely know, 8x8 is one of earliest players in the hosted services space, which has now come into its own under the amped up cloud umbrella.

This is not a long infomercial for 8x8 - far from it. Rather, the focus was on channel-related issues and challenges for selling/supporting cloud, so we took turns posing our questions to Don. We found it a great opportunity to explore these topics first hand with a provider who is living it every day. Overall, the results were pretty much as advertised, and the conversation was balanced on both sides. Am sure we'll do it again soon, but for now, if channel is on your mind for UC - or if you're an 8x8 fan, the podcast and transcript can be found here. Enjoy - and kudos to Dave Michels for keeping the conversation and giving all of us a chance to jump in.

2013 Contact Center Trends - Three Wise Guys on Google Hangouts

A couple of weeks back, Fonolo's Shai Berger hosted a fun analyst roundtable on Google Hangouts. Bigger companies spend tons of money doing webinars, podcasts, etc. - of which I'm often a happy beneficiary - but there are lots of tools out there to do a nice job without spending anything. Google Hangouts is one such tool, and kudos to Shai for not being shy (yes, that rhymes - now you know!) to go this route.

Shai, of course, is widely followed on his Customer Service Blog, which you can find on the company's website (and often on Twitter), and that's where you can find the replay of our roundtable. I'm one of the analysts, along with Dave Michels and Dan Miller, and we had no shortage of things to talk about.

To make life easier, Fonolo has broken things up into shorter segments, based on specific topics, so feel free to graze as we cover things like social media, mobility, virtual queuing, the cloud, IVR, etc. I found Google Hangouts easy to use and the results turned out pretty well.

The clips were just posted today, and here's the link. So, have fun, and if the mood strikes, pass it around and let us know what you think. What else would you like to see us cover next time around?

Also, when you're done, you can download Fonolo's free short report, Top 10 Customer Service Trends for 2013.

Rethinking the Contact Center/2013 Greetings!

Been a pretty spotty few weeks for blogging, but I'm not alone on that front. Am slowly getting back into work mode - one gear at a time, but should be fully engaged next week. Sure hope your 2013 is off to a good start!

I can't complain - got a full plate of writing, a couple of new consulting engagements about to start, and some speaking/moderating spots at two conferences over the next few weeks. I'm also still active in smart grid, via my association with Zpryme Research, and we just kicked off a series of forecasts that are part of a broader premium service that covers the hottest topics in this space with an ongoing series of reports.

Speaking of conferences, one of those is ITExpo, less than a month away in Miami Beach - can't wait. I'll be moderating three panels there, and you'll be hearing more about that shortly. On that note, the current iteration of my Rethinking Communications column is running in TMC's flagship Internet Telephony magazine. I missed posting this earlier - it's been out a couple of weeks now - sorry about that.

Anyhow, the article is titled Rethinking the Contact Center, a topic I've been writing about a fair bit lately. The theme should be self-evident, and I'd love for you to give it a read and let me know if you're thinking about rethinking is similar to mine - or not.

2013 Look-Ahead - I See Video

Last week on UCStrategies, we had our look-ahead podcast for 2013, and not surprisingly, everyone had an opinion. I certainly recommend you give that a listen to get the big picture on where UC is going - or not - and collectively, we sure covered a lot of ground.

I wanted to expand further on a theme I think is going be big for all kinds of reasons in 2013 - video. This has been a big story for a while, and has been primed to become an  even bigger story for just as long. Of course, Cisco has been betting big on video for a few years now, and even though they've had as many hits as misses, I wouldn't bet against this trend right now. I think video is the key to success for each of the Big 3 vendors in North America - Cisco, Avaya and MSFT - and there's a lot of innovation and disruption coming  from the bottom up. Startups and pure plays like Vidyo, BlueJeans and Vidtel are building nice traction now, and I'm pretty sure there are companies nobody is following now that will become hot names in this space at some point next year. I don't know who they are yet, but I am certain that's going to happen.

Enough said - otherwise, you won't get around to reading my analysis. For that, I need to steer you back to the UCStrategies portal, where you can read my December contribution and 2013 look-ahead.

2013 - the UCStrategies Look Ahead Podcast

Well, you name it, and we covered it on this week's UCStrategies podcast. It's a long one, but if you want a collective perspective on what we think 2013 holds in store, you can download the podcast here. Topics covered include overall UC adoption trends, WebRTC, cloud UC, mobility, video and federation.

Jim Burton did the moderating, and he had his hands full making sure everyone got a chance to contribute -nicely done. There's also a transcript if the sound of our voices is getting too familiar. Enjoy, and we'd love to hear what you think 2013 is going to look like as well!

So, What DO Analysts Think of Industry Conferences?

Well, who better to ask than the analysts? That's exactly what we talked about on this week's UCStrategies podcast, which also included consultant perspectives. There's a core group of us who go to a  lot of the same events, so this is a good chance to get our collective take, especially in terms of what we actually get out of going to them, and how well they meet our needs.

In case you're wondering, we don't just go for the fancy dinners and open bar - that's really more for the host's customers than us - attending these events is a lot of work. Job 1 is trying to absorb a non-stop firehose of information, and parsing out the useful bits from the marketing-speak. Not to mention the opportunity cost of billable time from being out of the office and fulfilling project work. It just means having to try and juggle all these things at the same time, and after you go to enough of these, this becomes second nature. The biggest wildcard is the destination, as most shows are on one of the coasts, so some of us are always dealing with jet lag, especially those coming from overseas.

If this is your idea of fun, then scour the Careers section of the analyst firm websites. It doesn't quite hold the romance of joining the Navy, but as long as the coffee is fresh and the room is bedbug-free, I can think of worse ways to make a living.

Almost forgot - yeah, there's a podcast to get the full story - here's the link for the audio, along with the transcript. Blair Pleasant - who I probably see at events more than any other analyst - moderated, so hat tip to her!

Been heads-down writing all week, btw, so blogging has been on hold til now. Should be back to more regular posting next week.

VoIP - Stepping Stone to UC - Webinar this Friday

One more shout-out for my upcoming webinar with VoIP News - it's this Friday at 1pm, EST. This is a follow up to our last webinar, which covered the rationale for SMBs to adopt VoIP. Once you've made that move, UC should be the next thing on your radar. If you're in that frame of mind, you'll want to join us, and all you need to do is register here.

New White Paper - UC for SMBs

Wanted to share word about a short white paper I recently produced for  a client - Vertical Communications. They have a long history in this space and a pretty refined value proposition for small businesses. To support that, they engaged me for this paper, which can now be downloaded from their website.

The paper is titled "Beyond VoIP - Enabling Collaboration, Mobility and Business Process Enhancement with UC", and it just takes a minute to register here. If you're an SMB considering the merits of VoIP, I think you'll find this a good starting point on your journey.

Next Friday, Webinar - VoIP: Stepping Stone to UC

Just another quick shout-out for next Friday's VoIP News webinar. I've been doing a series of these with them, with the last webinar being a primer about VoIP for SMBs.

Now it's time to build on that, and the focus will shift to the broader possibilities of VoIP, especially when used in a Unified Communications environment. That's the ground I'll be covering on December 7 at 1pm ET, and I hope you'll join us. Here's the URL - it just takes a moment to register.

ShoreTel Partner Conference - UCStrategies Podcast

If you're still thinking about what to make of ShoreTel's prospects following their partner event event earlier this month, here's how you should spend the next 30 minutes of your life.

Last week's UCStrategies podcast focused on our collective takeaways from the conference, but with a twist. For the first time, ShoreTel invited consultants to the event, so our podcast included perspectives from both analysts and consultants. You may not realize it, but we're in different lines of business with different types of expertise, and we're glad that ShoreTel has embraced both communities.

The twist is that no UCStrategies consultants were at the event, but a couple who are friendly with us were. So, not only do you get a complete picture of the event, but you also get to hear from some new voices. The podcast was ably moderated by Blair Pleasant, and if you can't spare the time to listen, there's a trascript to read as well. Here's the link, and as always, your comments are welcome.