ITExpo 2013, Las Vegas - Day 1

Yesterday was Day 1 of this year's ITExpo West, being held for the first time in Las Vegas. Much bigger here in many ways than Austin was last year. Too early to tell how this location plays out, but there are definitely lots of people here. Just sharing a few high level thoughts from what I saw yesterday.

Things kicked off with a roundtable panel on tech trends, with voices from TMC, analysts and consultants. There were a lot of good ideas and food for thought, and the hour flew by fast. Topics covered included M2M, white spaces, WebRTC and the need for IPV6. Bigger picture, a key theme was the idea that our personal identities have value - as we better understand that, the relationship between buyers and sellers will change, and this has implications for everyone in the room - both as consumers and as businesses trying to make money in telecom.

Moving on, I moderated a well-attended session on how technology can be used in the contact center to improve the customer experience. Lots to talk about there, and it's clear that things like social media, mobility and multichannel communication are presenting big challenges for contact centers. It's also worth noting that almost everyone in the room was a first-time ITExpo attendee. This happened as well in the panel I ran this morning on hosted PBX. I'm sure the Las Vegas location has something to do with that, and maybe TMC is tapping into a new audience - time will tell.

Otherwise, yesterday was full with briefings and from there, everyone went to StartupCamp8. Over the past few ITExpos, this has been the most engaging session, helped in large part by the open bar, but also the content. The format is well honed now, and 4 startups gave their pitches, followed by some feedback from the judges. After that, the audience voted on winner, which turned out to be a local startup, Alice Receptionist. None of these really stood out for me, but I have a more detailed post coming about these startups - it will run on the UCStrategies portal, hopefully before the week is out.

Preceding the pitches, we heard a good keynote from Jeff Bonforte of Yahoo!. Aside from telling us how they missed out on acquiring Twitter for pocket change in its early days, Jeff covered 12 elements that characterize innovative organizations. Overall, this sounds like a good recipe for success, and clearly most businesses simply aren't wired this way. Aside from things you'd expect to hear, I enjoyed his take on the need to fail before you can succeed. For companies that can learn from this, the main idea is that the more you fail, the more likely you'll find something that actually sticks. It seems countertintuitive, but when you compare the culture of startups against enterprises, it's not hard to see why this is standard procedure for the former type of business.

I'll get another post out by end of the week, and I'm sure the buzz will be great when the show floor opens later this afternoon.

Rich Tehrani kicking off the show

 Technology trends roundtable

 View of the strip from the 62nd floor during the reception following StartupCamp8

ITExpo Preview - Session #3 - VaaS

Last but not least, my third session at the upcoming ITExpo is titled: "VaaS - Leveling the Playing Field for SMBs". Add one more acronym to your alphabet soup canon in this space - now we're talking about video as a service. With cloud, you just know that sooner or later, everything will get their "aaS" moniker, just like finally getting added to the Apps store up in that same cloud.

Well, if any application can truly benefit from the cloud it's video. This is the most expensive of all communications modes to provide with a premise-based solution, and now that the technology is "good enough" for just about any endpoint, the market is finally here. This certainly isn't what Cisco had in mind with telepresence, which is such a great experience, but really just for the Fortune 1000 set. Cloud-based services are nowhere as good, but my favorite tag line of "good enough" definitely applies here, and that's one of the themes we'll be exploring on the panel.

Our session is Thursday, August 29 at 1pm, and is part of the the Cloud4SMB Expo, which runs under the ITExpo tent. I know it's one of the last sessions of the conference, but if you're not dashing off to catch a red-eye back East, this should be a fun session.

Joining me will be Vishal Brown - Yorktel, Mark Cray - AGT, and Steve Vobbe - Glowpoint. Full details are here, and hope you can join us.

Am on vacation next week, and blogging gets a break too, so I won't likely post again til just before the Expo. As a reminder, I'm also moderating panels on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I posted about them here and here. See you in Las Vegas!

ITExpo Preview - Session #2

Continuing from yesterday's post, this is a series of shout-outs for the sessions I'm moderating at ITExpo West, coming real soon. This is TMC's flagship event, and is being held in Las Vegas from August 26-29.

So, on Day 2 - Wednesday - I'll be hosting my second panel, titled "10 Ways Hosted PBX Will Benefit Your Business". Gee, I wonder what that one will be about? Whether you call it hosted or cloud or managed, the trend to go off-prem is really strong, especially in the SMB space.

Joining me for this one will be Aaron Charlesworth - Vocalocity, Tim Healy - Telepacific Communications, Steve Lingo - XO Communications, and Bill Miller - Freedom Voice. That's a pretty solid lineup, and if you don't come away learning something new here, then maybe you should moderate this topic next time around.

We're running at 10am, on Wednesday, August 28, and the session is part of the Cloud4SMB Expo, one of the many sub-events running alongside the ITExpo. For more detail, just scroll down this page to our date/time, and I hope you can join us.

ITExpo Preview - Session #1

TMC's ITExpo is now just 12 days away, and there are lots of loose ends to manage as usual. I'm moderating three sessions, and am doing separate posts for each. They're all different, and I hope to see you at some or all of 'em.

As you probably know by now, this year's West event is in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. It's a pretty hot time of year to be in the desert, but that's the story. This is actually TMC's 3rd locale for the West ITExpo in 4 years, so we're all looking forward to seeing how they've changed things up. Los Angeles was their base for several years, but they pulled roots and had the last two Expos in Austin. I loved it there, but it's not really a Western spot and I guess it just didn't pull right, so off to Mandalay Bay we go.

I'll be there the full time, and my first session is Tuesday, August 27 at 10am. This will be a topic I really enjoy researching, and it's going to be fun. It's called "Solving the Customer Experience Equation", and we'll be exploring the relationship between communications technology and contact center agents, and how best to marry those for providing great service.

Joining me will be Steve Brubaker from InfoCision Management Corporation, Steve Chirokas - VoltDelta, John Cray - Zeacom, and Ann Sung Ruckstuhl - LiveOps. With four speakers, the time will fly, but you'll definitely hear some pretty sharp perspectives.

If you want get regular updates on the show, follow my twitter feed, and along with TMC's - @arnoldjon and @ITExpo.

BestinBiz Awards Winners Announced

A while back, I posted about being asked to be a judge as part of the BestinBiz Awards. Their scope is international, but do have separate awards for North American companies, and 2013 entries for that region close really soon - August 16!. While not solely focused on tech or telecom, there certainly were companies in those spaces, but that's not really the point here.

Aside from that vertical focus, my MBA and entrepreneurial background give me a good perspective for assessing things that apply horizontally across any type of business. This is where my focus on strategy, go-to-market, organizational structure, customer satisfaction/retention, branding/positioning, value proposition, competitive standing, partnerships, fundraising, exits/M&A, etc. comes into play.

I was pleased to contribute this to the process, and it was fun evaluating the companies sent my way. While most of the 2012 International winners were outside my space, I'll give a quick shout-out here to the ones you'll probably be familiar with:

- Tekelec - Innovative Company, Silver
- Redline Communications - Comback Company, Gold
- Minacs - Customer Friendly Company, Bronze

You can read more about the competition and review the full list of 2012 International winners here.

Overall, I'm pleased to say that 8 of the 10 companies I evaluated made it to the winner's circle, and this process is a great way to get exposed to some interesting new players and technologies. A few have a focus in emerging areas that will be relevant to UC and CEBP, so don't be surprised if you hear about them at some point. Of note, I'll mention:

- Arkadin - mobile UCaasS - especially audio and video conferencing
- BlackLine Systems - enterprise SaaS to automate financial processes
- Vision Critical - engagement platforms to allow enterprises to build community with customers, suppliers, etc. to improve decision-making processes
- Mimecast - mobile security and data archiving
- Clarizen - collaboration and project management workforce platforms

ITExpo - 24 Days and Counting....

I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be in late August just before Labor Day than... Las Vegas. Yeah, it's a dry heat and everything is air conditioned anyway, but summer is short around here and if I have to travel now I'd rather be going to a cottage (that's happening the week before) or a beach (ditto).

With that said, it's ITExpo time, and this only happens twice a year, so that's where I'm going to be. As you likely know, TMC continues to expand/enhance/improve this show, and you have to admit, having Steve Wozniak speak is a pretty cool draw.

This is just a quick shout-out, and I'll be posting more extensively starting next week about the conference. I'll be moderating some sessions, so stay tuned for details, and if you're not following the TMC tweets - or mine - just add these handles for up to the minute updates - @ITExpo @TMCnet @arnoldjon

UC Pitfalls and Opportunities

The title says it all, and that's what we talked about on this week's UCStrategies podast, ably hosted by Blair Pleasant. Our roster of Experts has recently expanded, so there's a pretty rich range of perspectives on this topic, which seems to be a perennial thread in our consulting and analyst practices.

There's a lot that's right with UC, but it's more challenging to deploy successfully than you might think. To learn why, please head over to the portal and give the discussion a listen, or just read the transcript if that's more convenient.

Now You Want Me to Collaborate? Leave Me Alone!

That's the title of my current article running in Internet Telephony Magazine. As you hopefully know, this is TMC's flagship publication - both print and digital versions - and my monthly column, Rethinking Communications, has been running there since May 2012.

As the column's namesake implies, I try to focus on issues that transform how we think about and use communications technologies. This is pretty fertile ground, and I often look at things from the end user's perspective. That's definitely the topic this month, as I approach collaboration from a slightly less receptive vantage point.

If you lean on me long enough about collaboration, you'll tap into a vein along the lines that it's overrated and overestimated. I'll leave it at that for now, and hope you'll hop over next to the digital edition and give my article read. Give that some thought, and I'd love to know if we're seeing things the same - or not.

Before signing off, I'd be remiss to not use this post as a quick heads-up for ITExpo, TMC's bi-annual conference that's just three weeks away! Yikes - I have to get my panels organized, like now. More on that in my next post. Will I see you there?

New Research - Promising UC Outlook for SMBs

Got some new industry research to share, and the news is good. Back in late 2010, Metaswitch Networks did some ground-breaking research with SMBs to better understand their thinking around communications technologies, especially their phone systems. I produced a position paper for them based on the data, which gave me first-hand access to the detailed findings.

SMBs don't just buy on price, and we all have a lot to learn about this huge segement of the business market, especially UC vendors and service providers. Well, I'm happy to say that Metaswitch Networks has updated this research and am even happier to say that there's lots of upside for those who take the time to understand what really drives SMBs.

Metaswitch is just starting to get the word out, and I got the first analyst briefing about it last week. There's lots to digest, and they've done a nice job summarizing the key findings in a public document you can access from their website.

Before you do that, though, I'm going to steer you to my analysis of that summary, which has just been posted on the UCStrategies portal. UC wasn't in the mainstream vernacular in 2010, but it is now, and since UC is a key element of the research, UCS is the logical home for my writeup. So, please give it a read, share your thoughts with us, and if you want to learn more, give their research summary a read as well.

Smart Grid Future Outlook Webinar - Thursday, July 18

Back from vacation now - haven't been online much for a while and slowly catching up to things. Non-stop busy since returning, and I wanted  to do a final shout-out for this webinar tomorrow. I've been doing a fair bit lately with Zpryme, and this webinar is going to be very well attended.

We'll be talking about where the smart grid is going, and along with myself, there will be presentations from eMeter, Bluebonnet Elecctric Cooperative, Arizona Public Service and NAESB. It's another strong lineup, and with five speakers, this will be a 90 minute event. I hope you can join us - we start at 1pm ET, and the full details can be found here.

Zpryme Webinar - Future Solutions for the Smart Grid

Pretty busy here just before disappearing on a family vacation. Am happily wearing my smart grid hat now and donning my dual role of host and presenter for an upcoming Zpryme webinar. These events are getting great takeup and the last two I've done have been really good. First rate panelists, up-to-the-minute research and solid insights from leading companies in this space.

So, if the smart grid crystal ball piques your interest, you'll want to join us on Thursday, July 18 at 1pm ET. Joining me will be speakers from eMeter (a Siemens company), Arizona Public Service, Bluebonnet Electric Co-op, and NAESB - North American Energy Standards Board.

If you lived through the disruption of Hurricane Sandy, you'll know how vulnerable our aging power grid can be, and this is the place to be to learn how the smart grid will better prepare us for future disruptions.

The webinar is free, and runs 90 minutes - we have a lot of ground to cover. Here are the details about the topic and our speakers, as well as how to register. See you there!

Merits of UC in the Cloud - EM360 Podcast/Article Now Posted

Enterprise Management 360 is a UK-based venture focused on thought leadership for IT executives from the analyst community. This is another entity that engages me on occasion, and my most recent involvement was an interview I did with Todd Abbot of Sonus back in May.

They do a good job of bringing industry leaders to the table, and a few weeks back, they had me lead a roundtable panel on the business case and reservations about putting UC in the cloud. It's a huge topic these days, and we had a great group on hand.

Joining me was Sanjay Bhatia of GENBAND, Richard Bennett of Avaya, and Jon Martin of BT Global. I really enjoyed having views from both vendors and carriers, as this presents major implications - and opportunities for each as they struggle to maintain ownership of the end customer.

We had so much to talk about that the podcast was broken up into three distinct segments. EM360 has just posted them here on their website where you can download and listen any time.

They've also included excerpts in their flagship quarterly glossy magazine. The Q4 edition is in distribution now to subscribers, and the digital version is now running live. Here's the link, and the transcript from part of our podcast runs on pages 12-15.

I hope you find this content helpful, and comments are most welcome.

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!