JAA'S Analyst Blog - Current Posts

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A short note for navigating this section - scroll below for the most recent posts, and then for more, click on the Blog Archive box, where you can view all of my posts, going back to the beginning in March 2005.

July 10, 2015

Cisco Canada - Pan Am Games Update

July 10, 2015/ Jon Arnold

Today is the official opening of the 2015 Pan Am Games here in Toronto, and it's totally taken over the city. Cisco is a major partner, driving most of the technology both behind and in front of the scenes. It's a great opportunity to showcase their collaboration, networking, wireless and data security capabilities, much like the games are a huge global showcase for the city.

Yesterday, I was part of the local media and analyst contingent invited to Cisco Canada's new HQ. The main focus was to update us on all the cool things they're doing around the games, but also to invite us back to their almost-ready new offices. Back in February, I was part of the hardhat tour that showed us their vision for intelligent buildings, and now we're seeeing the near-finished product.

Cisco excels at large-scale challenges, and this is as big as it gets in Canada. Much of what we saw and heard will be baked into the 2016 Olympics in Rio, and that was another reason why yesterday's event was populated mostly by visiting media from Latin America. It was a lively group, and thankfully, they had a translator to follow Cisco's messaging.

Plenty of buzz all over town, and everyone loves to follow the torch relay leading up to tonight's opening ceremonies. They had a couple of torches on display yesterday for photo opps, but the main event was about how Cisco is keeping all that data flowing faster than any of us can possibly run. I'm sure they'll hold up their end of the bargain, but we're not quite at the point where it can solve all the traffic congestion. That's another topic, and for now, let's stay in a good mood and enjoy the games!

And - don't forget to tweet - #TO2015 for the games, and #CiscoTO2015 for their feed. Overall, here's a cool social media tracker from Cisco Canada for all the tweets - have fun.

Cisco Canada President, Bernadette Wightman

Cisco Canada CTO, Jeff Seifert giving us a real-time check-in of the Velodrome located in Milton, about an hour outside Toronto

Cisco Innovation Center demo

What the space looked like back in February

Lucky me - I happened to see the torch bearer passing through my neighborhood earlier this week

Ok, so look closely - yes, that's a big spider outside the window. We're 29 stories up - how did it get there, and how is it surviving? Maybe a new Olympic event?

July 08, 2015

June Writing Roundup

July 08, 2015/ Jon Arnold

Had several events in June, plus I'm still getting settled from moving, but I managed to stay busy on the writing front. Here's a digest of my top posts for June that showcase what I'm seeing the IP comms space. I also had a blast playing keyboards with the SIPtones at the Interactive Intelligence event in Indy. Once the video highlights have been compiled, I'll share that here and on social media.

Hosted VoIP Landscape - Incumbents: Pros and Cons, Toolbox.com, June 30

Cloud Realities to Consider for Hosted VoIP, Toolbox.com, June 23

Interactions 2015 - Big Bets, Smart Bets, Great Music and a Silver Lining for UC - UCStrategies, June 15

Three VoIP Realities - Caveat Emptor for SMBs, Toolbox.com, June 11

VoIP Security - It's Real, but so are the Solutions, Internet Telephony Magazine, June 8

CTCA 2015 Conference - What Partnering Means for UC, UCStrategies, June 5

Hosted VoIP for SMBs - Evaluating Your Needs, Toolbox.com, June 2

Canadian Telecom Summit Highlights, my blog, June 2

June 25, 2015

Nielsen IT Consulting New Office Reception

June 25, 2015/ Jon Arnold

The Canadian IT consulting community is pretty small, and our paths cross - beneficially - from time to time. Nielsen IT Consulting is the one I tend to do the most with, and it's great to see their practice doing so well. They're doing well enough that it's time for new offices, and yesterday they held an open house for the IT community.

Emily Nielsen is one of the hardest-working people I know, and it's really paying off with the way their business is growing, and it's certainly a good-news story for the London tech scene - which I'm told is booming. Their new offices look great, and they made a statement blending old and new with the location and modern design. The space is housed in the railway roundhouse building - not quite a heritage designation, but pretty close. Very cool, and no doubt it makes a great impression on clients and prospects. There are some photos posted here on their website if you'd like to see more.

Was glad to be there, and I look forward to working with Emily and her growing team again soon. Congrats again - always glad to give a shout-out to support the Canadian tech sector.

June 08, 2015

May Writing Roundup

June 08, 2015/ Jon Arnold

May was a light month in terms of public posts, plus month-end timing means some things I was busy with in May won't turn up until next month's writing roundup. However, I've been plenty busy on other fronts, including conferences, a new white paper that's about to be published, an e-guide that's almost done, along with an add-on webinar for later this month. Am also working with a new client doing various forms of ghost-writing, and those won't be reflected in my roundups.

Enough about what's not in my roundup - here are the posts from May that you'll still find worth reading if you haven't seen them already.

Why a Collaboration Vision Matters for Bringing Lines of Business Together, JAA blog, May 27 (re-posted here on Cisco's Canada's blog, June 3)

Genband Perspectives 2015 - Four Takeaways, JAA blog, May 26

Taking the First Steps Towards Hosted VoIP, Toolbox.com, May 25

Hosted VoIP for SMBs, Why the Time is Now, Toolbox.com, May 19

Three Security Threats SMBs Need to Understand, Toolbox.com, May 15

One More False Assumption About VoIP Security, Toolbox.com, May 11

How an E-SBC Helps Make VoIP Secure, Toolbox.com, May 5

June 08, 2015

UCStrategies Podcast - is Messaging Helping or Hurting UC?

June 08, 2015/ Jon Arnold

Well, that's the gist of the topic we covered on last week's podcast. Every UC Expert has a point of view, and a number of us weighed in on the topic. It's a touchy subject, since messaging can really disrupt the UC value proposition, which until recently has been voice-centric. That's one of my big concerns, along with the fact these messaging platforms are going to be really hard to monetize unless they become ad-driven. Email is certainly going that route, and it's really annoying. Kind of like how all news sites now have a creepy mix of hard news and sponsored posts that look like news but clearly aren't.

I digress, but messaging is too popular to ignore, and it's not clear yet where it fits in the value chain we're still calling Unified Communications. If the incumbent UC vendors aren't careful, their offerings may go away and become usurped by more social platforms that are all about efficient communication rather than business processes and productivity. When everything is free, it's hard to stop employees from using them, so there's a lot at stake here.

Enough said - time to listen to our podcast, which is running now on the UCStrategies portal. Dave Michels moderated, and my comments are towards the end of our scrum.

June 03, 2015

Next Stop - CTCA 2015 Conference

June 03, 2015/ Jon Arnold

Later this morning, I'll be driving up to Mono, Ontario - am told it's about an hour outside of Toronto. That's where this year's CTCA conference is being held. The theme is "Partnering for Value", and that makes sense given that telecom consultants provide distinct value for their customers. Of course, business decision-makers face very different challenges these days, and providing relevant technology value is the big challenge facing CTCA's members.

I became an affiliate member recently, and as an analyst, I'm an outlier, but this community sure helps me better understand what's happening in the market. Likewise, they don't engage much with analysts, so I provide them a different perspective on industry trends. To that point, I'll be speaking on a panel tomorrow, moderated by long-time colleague Henry Dortmans. The session is at 10:45, with the focus being the "Future of our Industry". Definitely looking forward to it.

If you still wish to attend, there's room - plus, the resort is first-rate I'm told - and here's the agenda.

I'm getting my fill of Canadian telecom this week, having attended the Canadian Telecom Summit on Monday. On Sunday, I shift gears for next week's Interactive Intelligence conference, and then I get to stay put for while.

June 02, 2015

Canadian Telecom Summit Highlights

June 02, 2015/ Jon Arnold

Yesterday I attended the long-running Canadian Telecom Summit here in Toronto, and it was time well spent. This is their 14th year, and founders Mark Goldberg and Michael Sone have made CTS hands-down the best industry event for our space. Canada has several small events - I'll be speaking at one of them later this week (see my blog tomorrow) - but this is the only one I know of that draws from across the industry.

My schedule is too messy right now to stay for the full event, but there was plenty of great content from Day 1, and if you didn't catch my live tweets yesterday, here are the highlights that resonated for me.

Nitin Kawale, President of Enterprise Business at Rogers
Following a long run at Cisco Canada, Nitin seems the right man for this role at Rogers, and his messaging was spot on for getting CTS underway. He spoke passionately about the need to for businesses to invest in today's communications technologies - not just to enrich Rogers and his ex-employer - but to make employees more productive and better at collaboration, especially under the guise of being customer-centric. These are familiar themes in the UC space, but his focus was on tying this on a broader scale, where all these gains roll up to make our economy stronger, which in turn gives us a better standard of living. Noble intentions, but he really hit on the underlying holdback - businesses cannot drive innovation by continuing to support and invest in legacy technology, especially fixed line telephony. No argument there.

Here's Nitin in conversation with Mark Goldberg after his talk.

Big Data and Analytics panel
No photo here, but the speakers did a great job framing the issues in a balanced manner. David Ritter from Boston Consulting Group set the stage by breaking down these concepts, explaining why they matter and translating all this into business value. If you don't have a handle on these ideas, then you really don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Also of note was Ann Cavoukian's discussion about her Privacy by Design framework. I've written about her work in the Smart Grid space and was glad to see her in this environment. Basically, the heads-up for carriers is to understand that privacy is a give-and-take issue with consumers. Providers need to be transparent, which means they must articulate how they treat privacy, but also in language consumers will understand. Equally important is the need to "embed privacy in advance" - to be proactive and not do it after the fact. Otherwise, we get the unintended consequences of privacy breaches that everyone dreads.

Cybersecurity panel
Another solid group session with speakers from Radware, Juniper, Bell, Telus and KPMG. Familiar messaging overall for me, but lots of prime examples showing how businesses are still falling way short. Juniper's Paul Obsitnik talked about the need for a holistic approach, not just for getting the right technologies in place, but also educating employees about the threats as well as the role they have to play to mitigate them. Amplifying that, Bell's Vivek Khindria talked about the "human firewall being your first line of defense". I couldn't agree more.

David Bray, CIO of the FCC
Regulation and telecom policy has always been a hallmark of CTS, and David Bray provided a great perspective, not just about U.S. realities, but also global issues arising from the growing impact of the Internet. Cybersecurity is very real in his world, and noted that for the Department of Defense, 85% of incoming email is spam. These threats are accelerating as the Web proliferates, and he noted that the 2014 tally of globally networked devices will double from 7 billion to 14 billion by the end of 2015. The magnitude is getting really hard to grasp now, and his bigger concern is the borderless nature of these technologies.

Governments at all levels - but especially federal/national - will have a harder time being effective, not just to provide public service, but to protect citizens and government itself from cybercrime, which seems to evolve at a faster pace than anyone knows how to address. His overall theme of finding "terra firma" was pretty powerful, as the Web has long stopped being a fun place to explore and learn without thinking twice. With so little safe ground out there, we risk seeing the Web turned into a lawless no-man's land, and right now, it's hard to see if this Pandora's Box can ever be made right again. Kinda bleak, but very engaging stuff.

May 27, 2015

Why a Collaboration Vision Matters for Bringing Lines of Business Together

May 27, 2015/ Jon Arnold

Over the course of this five-part series, I’ve talked about the value of collaboration for making enterprises more successful and the role played by communications technologies to make this possible. Conversely, I’ve also looked at the challenges facing IT to fully leverage today’s collaboration solutions along with how the dynamics of enterprises act as inhibitors against these intentions.

The nature of large enterprises and collaboration technologies are each complex in their own ways, and IT must manage both, and that brings us to the final post in my Collaboration Insights series. Vendors offering collaboration solutions are really just one piece of the puzzle that IT needs to pull together into an overall plan.

On a broader scale, IT has to sell the virtues of collaboration across the organization. Not only does management need to be sold on the business case, but employees need to buy into the personal productivity benefits, plus line of business managers need to buy into this as a better way to drive team-based results.

Dealing with Shadow IT

To further understand how daunting this can be, consider present day realities. I could write many posts along this track, but will touch on one common example here – Shadow IT. Despite best intentions to serve the overall needs of the enterprise, IT often runs up against gaps that simply cannot be filled, either at all or on a timely basis. These are the conditions that give rise to Shadow IT, and while this can lead to effective solutions, they don’t always align well with enterprise-wide priorities such as collaboration.

While there certainly is merit for innovation coming from anywhere inside the organization, Shadow IT initiatives within a specific department or business unit can undermine IT’s efforts to serve the business as a whole. Rather than leave this unchecked, IT can take a more inclusive approach to welcome these forms of innovation and look for opportunities to make them part of an enterprise-wide collaboration platform.

The key here is to clarify that Shadow IT projects are condoned, but that IT wants to be informed throughout the process. This approach actually empowers both parties; namely validating Shadow IT as a conduit for innovation, and positioning enterprise IT as being more engaging and less controlling.

Ultimately, this puts IT in the role of a leader rather than a follower, making it easier to step up and own collaboration. Strategically, IT is in the best position to do this, since collaboration should be a horizontal solution for everyone, not just a specific department or line of business. My last post touched on this in terms of making collaboration strategic, and I’ll now extend that for IT to have a vision to drive this strategy.

Creating a collaboration vision

By nature, each LOB has its own agenda and corporate targets to achieve. Regardless of how independent LOBs may be, there will always be a need to work together – to collaborate – with a common objective. Just like how employees must work together, things become more challenging when the numbers grow. Two LOBs may not require much help, but when several LOBs must pool resources, ideas, data, etc., they really need a common platform. This scenario goes well beyond what Shadow IT can address, and serves as a prime example of the enterprise-wide collaboration vision that IT needs to both create and own.

The real value-add here comes from IT showing how this vision makes it easier for LOBs to collaborate, as well as for individual employees. While LOBs need to operate independently, they must also see how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts for making the business more successful. This is the power of seamless collaboration, where the platform is easy for everyone to use and does not get in the way of achieving shared outcomes.

For IT to sell this vision convincingly, they need to choose collaboration technology partners that have the same vision and understand how to support it. That’s where IT has some of homework to do, but when that piece is covered, IT will be empowered, knowing that they can deliver this capability enterprise-wide.

Not only does this bring LOBs closer together, building consensus on how best to collaborate – without threatening their internal workings – but it diminishes the need for Shadow IT initiatives that conflict with or undermine collaboration solutions. That’s a winning approach for IT to own collaboration and play a more strategic role as the business comes to rely more on technology-driven trends to drive growth.