Ziff Davis Webinar - Evolution of Fax

I'm a regular contributor to Ziff Davis for UC thought leadership, and when the stars line up, they engage me with their webinars.

Got a new one coming soon to tell you about. This webinar is about the evolution of fax, with the main focus being the virtues of cloud-based offerings. The evolutionary path taken by fax has parallels to telephony, and I'll be talking about that during my presentation.

The webinar is on Tuesday, July 16 at 1pm ET, and full details about the topic and how to register are on this web page.

I need to get the word out now as I'll be on vacation next week and won't be blogging again until I'm back on the 15th. Hope you can join us!

If I was a channel, would I partner with Mitel?

There's a pretty direct question, huh?

Am just back from Mitel's 2013 Business Partner Conference, and yesterday I posted my initial thoughts and takeaways. You'll have to read that to get my take, but there's a longer sequel that's running now on the UCStrategies portal, where I contribute a monthly thought leadership piece.

As the title of this - and that - post implies, I'm putting myself in the shoes of channel partners, a community that accounted for the vast majority of attendees at the BPC. I think it's an important question for them, and from Mitel's perspective, maybe even more so important for the partners who were not there and perhaps represent the future for Mitel. After all, the channel drives the business, and it's becoming a real challenge to find the right partners who are both willing and able to sell UC, especially as the cloud obliterates legacy business models.

That's what I'm exploring in this writeup, and is based on my BPC impressions on what Mitel has done to turn things around. They're definitely on the right track, but there's still plenty of risk out there and more needs to be done before they can realize the vision their management team mapped out for us this week. I invite you to read my post, and as always, your comments are welcome!

Mitel Business Partner Conference - First Thoughts

Seems like I just got here, and I'm going home in about 3 hours. This year's Business Partner Conference has flown by, and that's an indication of a well run event. Well, it's also because Mitel has done a great job with the program and the news has generally been good - surprisingly good.

I'm just going to share some quick takeaways here, and in the next day or so, I'll have a longer piece about BPC 2013 on UCStrategies.

Outside In - that's the theme this year, and it's all about being more customer-centric. It's an about-face from convention where the business is done from the inside out. In other words, you do things based on what works for you, which is fine when you have a lot of market power, but very few companies truly have that any more. So, Mitel has definitely glommed on to the idea of being customer-centric, and it sure looks like there's a cultural shift happening with them.

You can see it in how they're doing business now, what they're talking about, how they're engaging with channels and some moves they've made on the management front. Most notable for this last point is the addition of Martyn Etherington as their CMO. He's a solid marketeer and really knows what needs to be done. Some pretty exciting initiatives underway on that front, and if they execute well, you should expect to see Mitel register much more often in converstations about UC, cloud, contact center, mobility, video, etc.

Underlying all of these good vibes is a solid performance on the financial front, and we heard about this from CFO, Steve Spooner. Compared to a year ago, it sounded like Mitel was on the right track then, but it wasn't so clear how well things were going to go. Well, now we know, and the numbers bear this out. Top line still has a way to go, but they're profitable, margins are solid, they have money in the bank, a healthy line of credit, and they's been discplined paying down the debt they took on to acquire Inter Tel.

The numbers tell a good story both in absolute and relative terms. These days, anyone looks good compared to Avaya's financials, and alongside them, they selectively showed how things stack up against ShoreTel and Aastra. These companies are comparable in size to Mitel, but their numbers are weaker, so these are logical targets. If we're looking across the broader landscape, it's hard to ignore Cisco, MSFT, NEC, Siemens and even Interactive Intelligence, so if  you want to take this comparative analysis down a notch, sure, this crowd would mute the story a bit. However, it's Mitel's show, and their job is to put the company in the best light possible to partners, upon whom their success largely depends.

Overall, there's no doubt that the vendors in general are struggling to keep up with the various technology changes that are disrupting things for everybody. Some are doing better than others, but it's certainly fair to say that Mitel is holding its own pretty well. For me, that's the biggest takeway from BPC, and the better they can get living the outside-in mantra, the more successful they'll become. This is definitely a challenging market space and there are no guarantees for anyone. Technology alone isn't going to be enough, and when you look at things like culture, leadership and go-to-market strategy, I like what Mitel has in place now. If they've fallen off the radar for you, they warrant a second look. You don't have to be the biggest to be the best - these days it's more important to be agile and in touch with what drives value for your customers, and that's what I'm seeing here.

Banging the drums - change is coming at Mitel. Nice Blue Man Group-styled opening routine to set the stage. How about catching the moment here by getting "rhythm" in my photo!  :-)

CEO Rich McBee

CMO Martyn Etherington

Next Stop - Mitel BPC 2013, Ft. Lauderdale

Have had to stay local for a while, but am good to travel now, and I've got two trips to Florida over the next couple of weeks. Business-wise, my next stop is Fort Lauderadale for Mitel's Business Partner Conference, which runs next Tuesday - Thursday. Won't be blogging again until I'm there, so now's the time to do it.

I go to my share of vendor events, and this is a good one. Like clockwork, the 2013 BPC is exactly a year after the last one, which I attended and am looking forward to seeing how their positioning is holding up since then. I'll be blogging/tweeting as time allows - you can follow me at @arnoldjon, and the BPC hashtag is #mitelbpc.

Last Call - Tomorrow's Zpryme Webinar - State of the U.S. Smart Grid Market

Just doing one last shout-out for this. Registration activity has been really strong, but there's still room to join us. If you want to know where the U.S. really is at now with smart grid, this will be time well spent.

Joining me will be Duke Energy, Austin Energy, Proximetry and Industrial Defender. This is a pretty strong lineup and the content will be first rate. In short, the webinar runs from 1:00 - 2:30 ET tomorrow, and for the rest of the story along with registration details, here's the link.

Zpryme U.S. Smart Grid Webinar Update - Bigger, Better... and New Date!

Sorry to keep doing this, folks, but in this case, bigger is better. I'm not the ringleader here, but interest has been so strong in this topic, that Zpryme has moved it from a paid event to being free.

Now we've added another sponsor, which means a longer event, but also a richer one for you to learn new things from. To accommodate all this, the date has now been moved out a week.

So, instead of the webinar being tomorrow - as per yesterday's post - it's now next Thursday, June 20. Same start time of 1pm ET, but it runs longer now til 2:30.

Again - if you want to get a quick update on the state of the U.S. smart grid market, please join us - myself, Duke Energy, Austin Energy, Proximetry and our latest sponsor Industrial Defender. Full details and registration info is here, and I think it's safe to say our plans are set now!

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.