UC in 2013 - Time to Change the Channel?

That's the title of my current column running in TMC's Internet Telephony magazine. The digital version of  the June issue is out now, and this month's Rethinking Communications column continues the theme from the previous issue where I started looking at the current state of Unified Communications.

I write extensively on UC, and this time around the focus is the channel and asking some fundamental questions about the value they bring for IT decision-makers. If UC was like hardware, the business relationship would be mostly transactional, with not much value-add needed. Today's UC, though is very much a solution that keeps evolving and in the right hands can have a transformative impact on the business. That's what I'm advocating UC buyers to be thinking about, and if they don't see this in their partners, it might be time to change the channel.

Here's the link - I hope you read it and your commments are welcome.

Before signing off, since we're on the TMC channel, it's never too early for an ITExpo shout-out. The 2013 West edition is coming to Las Vegas for the first time, and I'll be plenty busy there. Show runs from August 26-29, and in due time I'll be blogging lots more about it. Going?

Update on Zpryme Webinar on U.S. Smart Grid Market - Free Now!

Quick update for the Zpryme webinar I posted about the other day.

There's been a change in plans, and now it is free for all, not just Premium subscribers. Demand has been ramping up, and so has sponsor interest, and we think this change will be for the better all around. While there's no charge to register, the tradeoff is you don't get the supporting data unless you're a Premium subscriber. Seems fair to me.

So, if you want to learn first-hand about the current state of the U.S. smart grid market, please join us on June 13 - this Thursday at 1pm ET.

I'll be presenting some high level trends, which will set the table for two of the leading smart grid implementers - Duke Energy and Austin Energy, as well as Proximetry, one of of the leading vendors, especially for wireless networks in this space.

Here's the updated registration page along with more detail about the webinar and our sponsors. See you then!

Zpryme Webinar - State of the U.S. Smart Grid Market, June 13

Am wearing my smart grid hat here, and will be doing another webinar with Zpryme on June 13. The topic is large - current state of smart grid in the U.S., and joining me will be some people who really know - Duke Energy, Austin Energy and Proximetry.

This is a pretty high profile set of speakers, and as such this is a paid event unless you're a subscriber to our Premium service. If so, you know who you are, and otherwise, the registration fee is $275. I'll be both moderating and presenting, and hope you can join us. You get get all the details here, and I'll post/tweet again as we get closer to the date.

Cisco Connect 2013, Toronto - IOT and Beyond

Last Thursday, I attended Cisco Canada's annual Connect event here in Toronto. I've been to a few of these, and by Canadian standards it's a pretty large showcase for Cisco and their partners. They have the customer base to support an event on this scale, and Cisco provided a solid day of content and networking to make it worthwhile for everyone.

Analysts and media were a tiny contingent, but we did have our own tailored sessions with their executive team as well as hearing about some interesting customer initiatives. No complaints there, and we were well looked after. As we heard, Cisco Canada is doing some good things to invest in our knowledge economy based on the belief that gains in productivity will drive innovation and ultimately improve our standard of living. Examples cited included funding for some Research Chairs, innovation centers and an LP investment fund.  Kudos for showing good corporate citizenship here, and I hope it gets the desired results.

Overall, the main message for me was their focus on yet another new acronym - IOT. You've heard the term, but maybe not this shortform - the Internet of Things. Just when you thought mobile broadband has over-saturated us with connectivity, Cisco Canada's President, Nitin Kawale tells us that 99% of the world is still not connected. What's wrong with this picture? Well, he's talking about "things", not people. Now this makes sense, and it's really about M2M, and a little bit about P2M.

There's more to consider here, but this certainly is a good way to position vendors like Cisco for the next wave of growth. People are already pretty well connected, at least in the enterprise world, but there are many more machines than people, so there's lots of upside here. Of course, it's more than just connectivity, and Nitin noted that value comes from connecting things and people to processes, which sounds much closer to home for those of us in the UC space.

To amplify this, we also heard from Carlos Dominguez, a Cisco "techknowist". Make of that what you will, but he's a great speaker - very engaging and he touched on the challenges facing IT decision makers, especially around three things - the Internet, mobility and social media. Nothing new there, but his richer message was about how many sectors of the economy are now being "rebooted" around these things. He cited familiar examples like healthcare, government, education, and even cities. This is the stuff I get excited about, and was nodding along regularly.

Carlos brought this to life by citing some cool innovations that embody the IOT concept. Most are based on sensors that create new streams of data from everyday things like sneakers, street lights, home thermostats and even garbage. These things are bringing an explosion of Internet traffic and data that needs to be managed, and if you're thinking about Big Data now, you're right. Of course, this all drives networks, which Cisco happens to be in the middle of, so if you're wondering where the company is planning to get growth from, look no further.

Corporate self-interest aside, Carlos gave everyone a lot to think about, and if you get a chance to see him speak you won't be disappointed. You can put up the white flag and feel overwhelmed by all this new data that will soon be upon us, but there is also an exciting opportunity ahead for those prepared to invest in the right tools to get a handle on this and turn that mess of data into actionable insight.

Mobile demo unit for Cisco's healthcare vertical solutions

Carlos Dominguez

UCS podcast - the future for IT

Great topic for this week's UCStrategies podcast, and one that needs a lot of discussion.  In the wake of the recent UC Summit, we've all had a lot to think about, and it's fair to say that the role of IT has never been more challenging, with more questions than answers.

Our collective expertise is quite broad, and some of us were also at this month's Interactions event with Interactive Intelligence. When you hear what they're hearing as a vendor, the complexity of IT's job becomes even clearer for us as analysts and consultants.

I'm sure you have your own take on how IT is evolving, and it may not be for the better. Our group had a lot to say about that, and the podcast was posted this morning on the UCS portal. The session was moderated by Dave Michels, and from this link you can both listen to the podcast or read the transcript.

Microsoft Lync, UC and CEBP - Connecting the Dots

Busy is busy, and am blogging when I can - but it's never as much as I'd like.

This post will be short and my intention is to direct you to my May thought leadership contribution to the UCStrategies portal. A few weeks ago, I co-presented at the UC Summit with UCStrategies colleague, Kevin Kieller. Our topic was the business opportunity facing channels with Lync and it raised a lot of questions, especially around CEBP. Some was due to lack of clarity on my part, and to address all this, Kevin and I teamed up to share our thoughts and set some things straight. Hopefully this does the job, and we'd love to see more discussion, as CEBP can be a messy topic.

With that said, if any or all of these ideas are on your mind - CEBP, Microsoft Lync and UC - then I hope you'll read our analysis. The posting went live this morning, and here's the link.

Creating Business Value via UC and Collaboration - my Enterprise Management Interview with Sonus

I've been associated with U.K.-based Enterprise Management 360 for a few years, and my most recent engagement was doing an interview with Sonus about this topic. My partner this time around was Todd Abbott of Sonus Networks; he's their EVP of Strategy, and I've known him for some time. As an aside, he gave a solid presentation at the UC Summit a couple of weeks back, and Sonus looks to be well positioned as the SBC space moves into the next frontiers of cloud and mobility.

Back to the interview, which mainly covered the morphing of UC and collaboration into UCC. That term has become quite popular lately, and it speaks to the outcomes UC is trying to enable. On its own, UC is really just a toolset - a collection of applications that work well together as a solution. The business value comes from enabling collaboration to drive processes and do things more efficiently. That's worth investing in, and Todd shares his views on what both vendors and service providers need to do for UCC to live up to its potential.

The interview was recently published in the Q1 2013 print edition of their quarterly magazine, Enterprise Management 360, which is nicely produced and quite dense with in-depth interview and analysis. I have a couple of links to share to get you to the interview. First, to read it right away, you can access the online edition. Here's the link to the Index for the Q1 issue, and our interview runs on pages 52-55.

Next, here's the landing page on their website for the Q1 issue. I'm mentioned in the Editor's letter introducing the issue, but more important are other options to access their content. My roots are in the trade press world, and I like what they're doing here to remain relevant with digital readers. They provide apps links for both iTunes and Google play, as well as their own store where you can buy single copy print editions of the magazine.

Pick your path, and I hope you take some time to scan the Q1 issue and give our interview a read. As always, comments are welcome.

Interactions 2013 - My Takeaways and Some Music Too

Am through two days here at Interactions 2013, the global customer and analyst event run by Interactive Intelligence. It's being hosted in their hometown of Indianapolis, and they do a great job here. Time is up for me this time around, and am flying back today, so I'm going to share my takeaways with you now while they're still fresh.

This year's theme is "delivering the experience", and given the company's contact center focus, it's all about the customer. We hear a lot about network and architectures at these events, and while there's plenty of that on tap here too, it's nice to see more emphasis on the end user experience. Interactive certainly has a strong and growing customer base, so it's clear their technology works well. I like the message here, as distinct cusotmer experiences are one of the few ways companies can differentiate themselves these days.

A lot of companies are struggling in this space, and Interactive is making it clear here that they're not one of them. Being a public company, we already know that, but it's nice to get another layer of detail to reinforce how well they're doing. The deal sizes are getting bigger, their international footprint is growing, and traction is strong in the right place - cloud. They expect cloud to account for 50% of total orders in 2013, and that's way up from just a couple of years ago. It's fair to say they're betting big on the cloud, and so far it looks like they've bet right.

Small thing, but I think it will get bigger - compliance. I don't hear vendors talk about this, and since I'm currently doing work in this area, it gets my attention. It was nice to hear that Interactive understands the importance of being compliant with regulations and standards like HIPAA, SOX, ISO and PCI. Some of this is standard procedure for anyone in the contact center space, especially when agents are handling personal information like credit cards. However, I believe that IT compliance audits will become more vigilant when it comes to things like VoIP and UC, and the more they start to see these as weak links that expose networks to security threats.

Interactive has a deep and expanding product portfolio, and I like seeing their focus on value-added applications that go beyond routine contact center peformance monitoring/management tools. Of particular note were  Interaction Analyzer and Interaction Mobilizer. The former focuses on real-time speech analytics and the latter on mobile customer care. Context is a big missing link in the contact center value chain and Analyzer will help customers make more sense of what is washing over agents all day long, and it's clear that Interactive sees a lot of opportunity here.

Two other areas caught my attention for things that help differentiate Interactive. One is their focus on vertical markets, and we heard a few examples of this, such as health care, retail, financial services and utilities. Anyone can come to market with a generic solution, but Interactive has smartly been emphasizing their expertise in verticals, each of which has a distinct set of customer needs.

The other focus was IPA - their take on CEBP. This is relatively new, and while not their core competence, they have slowly been building up some traction with process automation tools. They could have quietly exited, but they've stuck with it and now have a small base of commercial deployments, including some who are not using their UC platform. This means you don't have to be using CIC to use IPA, and if they're getting some standalone business, they must be doing something right on this front.

As usual, CEO Don Brown gave us the big picture, and the main message is that their cloud strategy is working. Interactive was early to market with this, and it's clearly paying dividends and validating Dr. Brown's vision for where communications is going. There are bigger things coming that we can't talk about yet, and if you like Interactive now, I think you'll like them even better as the rest of their 2013 roadmap unfolds.

Last but not least was the Mission Control keynote by Captain Jim Lovell and Gene Krantz, recounting the Apollo 13 mission and the value of teamwork and leadership. This was the conference highlight for sure, and these guys are totally the real deal. Makes you feel pretty expendible when you get stressed out about downloads that take 2 seconds too long, and these guys are trying to bring a spaceship back to Earth without any guidance tools because they didn't have enough power to support them. It was nice hearing their views on what it would take for the US to get back in the saddle with the space program, as it would do wonders to make everyone feel good about America again. Seems like such a long time ago now, but they are living proof of what it takes to be great. This is the only time I've seen a keynote get a standing ovation at a conference, and there was no doubt about how inspired everyone felt in their presence.

To wrap up, for fun, I was asked to play on a couple of songs with the SIP Tones Monday night. They're the travelling band of consultants who have been doing this a while now at various conferences, and it really shows. Great guys, and I really appreciate the chance to join them for a bit. A quick shout-out of thanks to Alice Deer - I'm told her Dad lent us the guitar I used. I just found that out now - thanks!

Garrett Myers put together a really nice 3 minute compilation of their set, and has posted it on YouTube. I'm in a couple of segments, and overall, it's a great sampler for what the SIP Tones do so well. Here's the link - enjoy! Also, colleague Blair Pleasant took a few photos, and thanks for sending this one over.

Next Stop - Indianapolis and Interactions 2013

My travels come in fits and starts, and it's been busier than usual for me lately. On Sunday, I'm heading to Indy for Interactions 2013, the annual customer-fest for Interactive Intelligence. I've been to a few of these, and their event keeps getting bigger and better.

It's not easy catering to customers, partners, analysts and media all under one roof, but they've got this down to a science now. Not to mention they're a public company, so they have to deal with both industry and financial analysts.

Let's just say I'm sure they're glad this only happens once a year. These events take a huge amount of planning, but since ININ has been on such a good roll, it's a great way to showcase why and how they've been so successful. As analysts, we'll get a front row seat on this next week, and to the extent I can, I'll share my thoughts here on on twitter as times allows. My handle is @arnoldjon and if you want to follow the event, it's #InteractIndy2013.

UC Summit 2013 Takeaways - Podcast

If you weren't at last week's UC Summit 2013, you missed a great event. We did our obligatory post-event debrief on this week's podcast, and it's posted now on the portal.

Am short on time today, but wanted to get a quick post out now so you can give it a listen. The podcast was ably moderated by Blair Pleasant, and a transcript has been provided as well. Whether you were there or not, any feedback or suggestions for next year will definitely be welcomed!

Reminder - Smart Grid Cybersecurity Webinar - Wed., May 8

Just a quick shout-out for this webinar coming up tomorrow.

I'm wearing my Zpryme hat for this one, and will be presenting trends and forecast data around the need for cybersecurity solutions in the smart grid space. Utilities have a lot of catching up to do, and these themes should be familiar to my core followers in the communications space.

Joining me will be Brett Luedde from cybersecurity vendor ViaSat and Nadya Bartol from UTC (Utilities Telecom Council), and together this should all make for an engaging session.

The webinar is at 2pm, and if you want to get more details as well as join us, here's the registration page. Hope you can make it.

Where Conferencing fits into UC - Podcast

Last week's UCStrategies podcast was about a topic we deal with all the time - conferencing. We all use it, and the role of conferencing is evolving in the broader context of UC. As UC becomes more widely used, it will become a more interactive experience, and go well beyond the conventional audio conferencing environment we're so used to.

The podcast was moderated by Marty Parker, and we were joined by David Frankel, the CEO of ZipDX, the conferencing platform we use for our podcasts. He's doing some innovative things in this space, so it was a great opportunity to explore things first hand.

Things are a bit behind due to the UC Summit, which wraps up today, but the podcast has been posted now, and you can listen to it here.

UC Webinar with ShoreTel - This Thursday at 2 ET

Just a quick shout-out for our webinar this Thursday. Registration has been strong and I hope you'll join us. I'll be the featured presenter, and will speak to my recent white paper for ShoreTel about the three paths you can take to UC - premise, cloud and hybrid.

I'll steer you to my last post for the details - everything you need to know about the webinar and how to register is there.

Do You Have a Mobile Strategy?

That's a fair question, as well as the focus of my latest article for Internet Telephony magazine. I've been writing a monthly column there for a while - Rethinking Communications - and in the current issue, this is the theme I'm exploring.

Mobility is ubiquitous and becoming even more so.There are many things you could do - and should do - but more importantly, you need a plan. This can be a huge topic, and my article touches on three aspects of that - BYOD, BYOI and service providers. All are different, and the mix will depend on your environment, as well as where you want to take mobility - which of course is all about having a plan.

I welcome you to read the article, and hopefully that will help focus your thinking on mobility. Following that, I hope you continue reading my future articles there.

Best in Biz Awards - am on the 2013 Judging Panel

Here's something new. I was recently invited by Best in Biz Awards International to be a judge for their 2013 program, which is underway now. Looks like I'm in pretty good company, including Canadian Business magazine, the Jerusalem Post and the Vancouver Sun. All told, there are 43 judges from 18 countries, including several from Canada.

The awards program is pretty extensive, with both international and regional categories, spanning a wide range of classes, including company, team and personal level awards. I don't know yet which categories I'll be judging, but several are in my scope, and they'll be determined soon. Will keep you posted.

If you're looking for recognition, awards submissions are open until May 17, and for more details, here's where you need to go.

In terms of the judging panel, here's the link with photos/bios for everyone. They haven't quite got my name right, but that will be fixed any day now. For more detail, the press release announcing the judges went out on Tuesday, and from there, feel free to explore the website proper, and follow the tweets - @BestinBizAwards.

UC Webinar with ShoreTel - May 2

Busy week here, and I've got another webinar to tell you about that I'm doing. This one is with ShoreTel, and it's coming up quickly - next Thursday - May 2 at 2pm ET.

I recently wrote a White Paper for ShoreTel about the virtues of three paths to UC - premise-based, cloud and hybrid, and as you may know, they are one of a few vendors who can support all three. Each has its place depending on your situation, and both businesses and channels are struggling to make the right choice.

You're welcome to download that paper any time, and if these choices are on your radar, then you'll want to sign up for this webinar. I'll be sharing highlights from my White Paper, and will be joined by a ShoreTel customer as well as a channel partner.

Collectively, this will give you a broad perspective on the drivers for each scenario along with hands-on realities from the field. We're not doing this to tell you which path is best for UC, but to provide guidance for you to decide which path is best for your needs.

I hope you can join us, and to get you there, here's the landing page with all the details along with the registration form.

UC Summit Preview - Lync and the Channel Opportunity

Am wearing my UCStrategies hat here, as the 2013 UC Summit is coming up and starts this Sunday. I'll be there for my second time and am very much looking forward to it.

This time around I'll be speaking as well, and am co-presenting with fellow UCStrategies Expert, Kevin Kieller. We'll be looking at the business opportunity Lync presents to channel partners. It's a mixed bag, but there is money to be made, and more importantly, Lync offers a path to keep your customers.

I'm going to steer you now to a more detailed writeup of mine about the opportunity, which has now been posted on the UCStrategies portal. There's more information there as well about the Summit, just in case you haven't made up your mind yet. Hopefully, my preview article will push you off the fence, and I hope to see you in La Jolla!

Cybersecurity Webinar for Smart Grid - May 8

Cybersecurity is a complex topic, and I follow it to some degree in the VoIP and IP communications spaces. While the threats are real, it's easy to ignore them until something bad happens. I know this sounds eerily familiar to what happened last Monday in Boston, but these threats are not well understood, and the bad guys just need to be a step ahead of where you feel safe to do their thing.

Some of you know that Smart Grid is another market I stay busy in, and frankly, I can't think of a bigger cybersecurity target to be worried about than our power infrastructure. I'm pretty attuned to this given my focus on the growing overlap between Smart Grid and communications, especially when IP is layered across this.

On that note, I'm wearing my Zpryme hat on May 8, when I'll be moderating a webinar on the importance of this topic for utilities. They have a lot of catching up to do, and as Smart Grid matures, cybersecurity will pose more of a risk unless the right precautions are in place. Joining me will a speaker from the webinar sponsor, ViaSat, along with a cybersecurity strategist from UTC.

This should be of timely interest to anyone in the Smart Grid space, as well as those interested in cybersecurity issues for vertical markets - and this is a pretty big one. Details to register can be found here, and I hope you can join us on May 8.

UCStrategies Podcast - Innovation Roundup

Don't ask where the time goes - it just does. Blogging for me lately has become like VoIP - it's on a "best efforts" basis - not because I have nothing to say - am just too busy. Also, as you hopefully know, my writing pops up regularly in a few places, so I'm not that hard to find.

One thing I try to do regularly is participate in the weekly UCStrategies podcast, and Dave Michels led a great topic a few days back. Instead of talking about what all the majors are doing to tighten their grip on global domination, the focus was on innovation we're seeing from the smaller guys. As usual, this is where most of the cool ideas percolate up from, and each of us has our own circle to draw from.

I chimed in near the end, talking mostly about Fonolo, and what they're doing with virtual queuing to reduce hold times in the contact center. Aside from making the customer's life easier, this actually saves the contact center a lot of money, and I wanted to cite Fonolo because their solution is built around a specific business problem rather than being a catch-all for a lot of things.

I also added some thoughts to two vendors mentioned earlier in the call - Vidtel and Esna Technologies. Video got a lot of attention on the call, and Vidtel is emerging as one to watch, along with BlueJeans. For transparency purposes, I'll note that I'm an Advisor to both Fonolo and Vidtel, but that doesn't mean I can't speak well of them objectively, especially when I'm also talking about other vendors in a similar light.

Enough about that - it's a solid podcast, and you can check it out right here, right now.

UC Summit 2013 Coming Up

Regular readers will know that I'm part of the UCStrategies group, and I contribute a monthly post to the portal. Their annual UC Summit is coming up later this month, and to start buiding some buzz, the first press release went out today.

Last year I attended for the first time; it was a great event and am happy to be returning for the 2013 edition.  Unlike most conferences, this one is invitation-only - it's a good way to ensure the best fit among attendees, sponsors and speakers.

Speaking of speakers, I've been asked to do just that, and will be co-presenting a breakout session with fellow Torontonian and UCStrategies Expert, Kevin Keiller. We'll be talking about Microsoft Lync and how channels can monetize this opportunity. There are definitely pros and cons to going with Lync and we'll be looking at both sides of the story. The agenda is still being mapped out, but I think we're on at 2pm on Sunday, April 28.

I'll update you soon, but for more detail, as well as how to apply for an invitation to attend, here's what you need to do next.