My Webinar Tomorrow - Hosted VoIP for SMBs

Just one last post about tomorrow's Ziff Davis webinar I'm doing. The topic is hosted VoIP for SMBs, and I'll be exploring the pros/con and use cases, along with how to take a strategic approach for putting telephony in the cloud.

Webinar runs from 2-3 ET tomorrow, and all the registration details are here.

NEC Advantage 2016 - Quick Take

Just have time for quick getaway post before flying home.

This was my first NEC Advantage event, and I was one of just a handful of analysts there. It's mostly for partners and consultants, and this is where a lot of the business comes from, so it was a great opportunity to learn more about how NEC goes to market in this space.

I'll have more to say on that later, along with two other themes.

1. With so many UC offerings, it's really hard to differentiate, and that matters for everyone in the food chain. NEC is not a household name in this space - at least in North America, and they're very focused on changing that. The main differentiation message for me was how they focus on the integration between IT and UC for their value proposition. Other vendors do this to varying degrees, and given how strong NEC is with network infrastructure, this pairing makes sense.

2. Their SDN story is becoming a dominant theme for going to market. It's still evolving, but the virtualization story is resonating with enterprises, and NEC is pushing to become a market leader. This also ties into their IT/UC integration focus, and not many vendors can take things to this level. Most are going to market with a standalone UC solution, but NEC is surrounding this with a deeper play that can solve a lot of problems for IT.

That's it for now, but I'll have a recap post coming soon on UCStrategies, and as I get further along with their SDN story, look for more analysis on that as well.

Until then, here are some pix from the showcase, and a couple from our SIPTones gig last night. We had a blast, and when the dancing gets going, you know it's working. More to come on that as well, and if the video turns out half decent, the highlights will turn up on YouTube. I'll keep you posted, and if you like what we do, we'd love to play again soon!

 We're not internationally known yet, but it's nice to see our name at the top of the list here at the rehearsal studio on Tuesday.

 Hope to get photos soon from the NEC photographers at the gig, but this one comes via my analyst colleague, Rob Arnold, who posted this shot on twitter last night. Thanks bro!

Hot off the press from breakfast this morning - band shot, along with our patron saint of all things fun, Larry Kollie. 

Next Stop - Jacksonville for NEC and Another SIPTones Gig!

I've been following NEC for a long time, and this will be my first time attending their annual event. The main focus will be customers and partners, but there will also be some analysts and consultants at NEC's Advantage Executive Conference.

Am looking forward to meeting more of NEC's executive team, along with roadmap updates, especially for their UC platform, Univerge Blue.

I'll also be part of the fun, doing another stint on keyboards with the SIPTones. We've been working on our songs, and as per the agenda, we're playing poolside for attendees Thursday night. Hope to see you there, ready to dance!

If you haven't seen us play, here's our most recent gig at last fall's SCTC conference in Atlanta:

CPaaS - New Acronym for UC - Our UCS Podcast

This week's podcast topic was the growing role of APIs and emergence of CPaaS as the latest acronym - that's Communications Platform as a Service.

All of us at UCStrategies try to keep up with the changing landscape, and what we've long been calling Unified Communications seems to be morphing into the equally amorphous term Business Communications. Your guess is as good as mine as to what's next, but for now, the buzz is about CPaaS, spurred by the recent news of Vonage acquiring Nexmo.

It's becoming clear now that UC providers need to have some form of messaging in their offering, and that's what we covered during our podcast. The session was moderated by Blair Pleasant, and you  can check it out here on the UCStrategies portal.

Hosted VoIP - My Next Webinar

Wanted to start off the week with another shout-out for my next webinar with Ziff Davis.

The topic is hosted VoIP for SMBs, and I'll be providing a roadmap to help decision-makers understand what's involved when you put telephony in the cloud. Too much ground to cover in one webinar, but if it's early enough still in your "buyer's journey", it should be time well-spent.

You've got time to plan, and just trying to get/keep it on your calendar for now. The webinar is on Wednesday, May 25 at 2pm ET, and from here, just hop to the registration page to sign up.

April Writing Roundup

Despite being away nine days at the end of April, I had plenty of writing going on, and below is a digest of posts you may still want to read if you didn't see them earlier. Aside from my ongoing focus on UC/collaboration, there's some smart grid content, a post about Toronto's global ranking for being future-ready, and Flashback Friday, where I re-run older posts from my blog archive - just because!

My Q&A with Esri - How GIS Delivers Value to Utilities, ETS Insights, April 26

Collaboration and Moments of Truth, Toolbox.com, April 26

How Can I Use an Online Whiteboard in my Business?, TechTarget, April 25

How Collaboration Impacts Customer Care, Toolbox.com, April 22

Flashback Friday - Cisco Telepresence Turns 5, my blog, April 22

How Disruption is Driving Change with UC, Toolbox.com, April 19

My UC Expo Article: Flexible Working - Adapting to New Challenges, my blog/UC Expo magazine, April 18

Toronto - We're Number 11!, my blog, April 15

Are Real Time Collaboration Tools Necessary for Enterprises?, TechTarget, April 14

Lowering Barriers to UC with the Cloud, UCStrategies, April 12

Connected Enterprise Report - Future Expectations for UC&C, Toolbox.com, April 11

LatAm Spotlight - VoIP Group CEO Talks Business Necessity of VoIP, TMCnet, April 5

Why Are We Still Using Email?, Internet Telephony Magazine, April 4

How UC Addresses Today's Business Challenges - Improving Productivity, Toolbox.com, April 4

More ETS Thought Leadership - GIS and Smart Grid

I blogged yesterday about a session I hosted at the Energy Thought Summit in Austin. It included a video of the full session that Zpryme has posted on YouTube, and am glad to see that my post is getting a lot of readership. So, to keep the ETS vibe going, here's more content.

As Community Advocate for the summit, another hat I've been wearing is doing a series of thought leader interviews. Many of these were posted prior to the event, and can be accessed from the News section of the ETS16 site. Other interviews were done later, so I have a series of those coming soon. One was published while I was away last week, and am sharing it here now.

This one was done with Bill Meehan of Esri, a company that has been pioneering the use of GIS since the 1970s. The applications go well beyond energy, so my UC/collaboration followers will also find this of interest. Bill explains this quite well in the interview, and you can see him in action on the above-mentioned video from my session - he gave a very colorful presentation!

So, here's the interview, and will update the blog as the remaining interviews get posted.

Energy Thought Summit Redux - Video of my Open Mic Session

Zpryme's Energy Thought Summit - ETS16 - was just over a month ago, but there's still good content being posted, and will share here for those interested in the smart grid/smart cities/smart home/smart car space. Our event was a great success and you'll be hard pressed to find richer, more diverse insights about what the future holds for the energy economy.

By now you should know this is another hat that I wear, and as Community Advocate for ETS16, I contributed in a few ways. If that's news to you, my recap post for the summit is a good starting point for my involvement there.

During the summit, I hosted the Open Mic event, where three energy thought leaders each had 10 minutes to talk about an energy challenge - with props - and persuade the audience theirs was the best. The game show format was fun, but don't let that fool you. Each had a timely and relevant message to share that causes you to re-think what energy means in 2016.

My role was to MC the session and keep things moving along to the end where the audience cast their ballots to choose a winner. Being ETS - and being in Austin - we did things a bit differently. As you'll see in the video clip, the speakers had to write the title of their talk on a chalkboard - can't get more old school than that. In keeping with the creative/artsy vibe of Austin, my new piano friend, Adam Lozoya was plucked off the busker-lined streets the night before and provided great ad lib accompaniment throughout the session. On top of that, we held the session in an improv theater space at the back of a nearby cafe.

You won't see this at other conferences, and it was a lot of fun. It's part of what makes ETS unique, and am glad to be part of it. So, explore at your leisure - the whole session is captured below - it runs about 45 minutes, and I won't give the winner away here. Hopefully, you'll watch the whole thing, and if you do, I'd love to hear who you think was the best. You up for that?

Mitel/Polycom Deal - our UCStrategies Podcast

If you're still wondering about what this deal means in the UCC space, our recent podcast on the Mitel/Polycom deal will be time well spent. As you may know, our group at UCStrategies covers the gamut among both analysts and consultants, so collectively, we've got a pretty good handle on the implications for both companies and the market in general.

I know this will be old news for some, but I've been away/offline 9 days, and didn't catch any fish. It was a great trip, though, but that's for another time.

For now, I hope you visit the UCStrategies portal, and give our podcast a listen. Comments as always, are welcome, and we'd love to hear whether you think this form of consolidation is good or bad for the market.

Otherwise, back to work, and I have a ton of postings to catch up on and share, so more to come.

Gone Fishing

This doesn't happen often, but  it's time to disappear for a while - back in a week or so!

Flashback Friday - Cisco Telepresence Turns 5 - Oct. 2011

The longer you blog, the bigger the archive, and for those only recently following me, you wouldn't know my earlier posts unless you went hunting. With time comes perspective, and I thought it would be fun to re-post some older posts, so am starting this Flashback Friday theme. Not sure if I'll do this weekly or whenever, so let's see how this one flies.

If you enjoy revisiting interesting points in time for the communications space - or are just wondering about things like "what were those VON events all about?", "what was life like before twitter?", or "I had no idea about Huntsville, AL!", I think you'll enjoy these flashbacks. Or, if there's something in particular you'd like to re-visit or discover, let me know and I'll see what I've got. Am sure many of you, like me, are students of history, and having blogged regularly since 2005, I've got a lot of posts, and have seen a lot of things happen.

So, here's my first Flashback Friday post. The UC&C market has largely moved away from telepresence, but it sure was a game-changer and Cisco bet pretty heavily on it. Not so much today, but here's my post from 2011 marking it's five year anniversary.

As an aside, the video clip at the bottom is from my YouTube channel, and is the most-viewed clip I've ever posted. I hardly post video any more, but maybe I'll start again soon. If you wander about there, you'll see lots of interviews from conferences, as well as a bunch of music clips of mine from bands playing at various conferences. I'll get around to some of those on future Flashback Friday posts.

So, here we go, and if you want to view the post directly from my blog archive, here's the link.

.................................................................................................

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Cisco TelePresence Turns Five

I put up a short tweet about this yesterday (and if you're not following me there, well, you don't know what you're missing - sign up... @arnoldjon)- but amidst all the other things keeping me busy right now, I realized it needs more attention. Just wanted to add a few thoughts here.

So, the first question to ask now that Cisco has reached the five year milestone with telepresence is the same one I would have asked back in 2006. Aside from the fact that back then nobody really knew what to call it, I'll simply ask - is it telepresence or TelePresence? I'm still 50/50 on this one, and as a rule of thumb, when I'm talking about Cisco, it's "T", but for the category as a whole, it's "t".

Branding is just as important in tech as any other business, and if you toe the Cisco line, you will believe they invented everything around this space and by rights, then, it's TelePresence, period. Of course, they're not the only game in town, and weren't even first to market, but nobody does tech branding for business better than Cisco. The consumer market is another story, but let's not go there for now.

Whether or not Cisco is the Kleenex of telepresence - much like I used to say that Vonage was the Kleenex of VoIP - you really need to give some props here. I think they've earned it, and when John Chambers talks about making big bets and capitalizing on market transitions, I think he got it right with Telepresence. There, I said it - with a capital T.

I don't really think it matters that Cisco's lead offering is hugely expensive - they've been the frontrunners in immersive TP from Day 1, and now that Tandberg is in the fold, I think they'll stay there. It's a bit like complaining that the biggest stars in pro sports are overpaid. In absolute terms, that's absolutely true. Only whiny sportswriters care about that - it's the relative basis that really matters. So long as those athletes live up to expectations (and that's a big IF - hello John Lackey and Carl Crawford - I digress...), and big market teams like my Red Sox are willing to pay the freight, all is in balance. There are buyers and sellers at all price levels, and the market ultimately defines value. Cisco Telepresence may be out of reach for SMBs, but their book of business with the enterprise crowd is doing just fine, thank you.

That leads me to yesterday's announcement, which talks about some updates to their offering and how Cisco TelePresence can now reach a broader market. I'll save the details for another time, but the main thing is that Cisco is evolving the product as market conditions require. Again, this brings me back to why this five year milestone is worth reflecting on. We didn't have tablets or Android then, and the smartphone market was basically RIM and Nokia. You don't need me to tell you what's come along since, and that video has now become pretty mainstream for everybody.

As a result, Cisco needs to evolve its TP portfolio to cater to these new - and emerging opportunities, some of which didn't exist 2-3 years ago. Of course, Cisco would love to own every segment of the TP and collaboration market, but that's not going to happen, esp with all the free/OTT offerings out there that I've been writing about here and elsewhere recently.

Regardless, Cisco has done a lot of things right with TelePresence, and these new twists are just ensuring they'll have a place across all market tiers. More than that, Cisco wants be to remain at the innovation forefront with this technology, because if they don't, those fearsome interlopers - Apple and Google - will take their spot. I'm not saying that Cisco has all the great innovations here, but when it comes to delivering a value proposition that businesses are willing to pay for, they know what they're doing. This ground is going to be harder to defend as these other players continue to make inroads, but if anyone can to do it, it's Cisco.

Finally, for those of you sticking with me here to the end, you get a prize. If you want to step in the wayback machine to see what TP looked like at the beginning, here's a video clip I took of my first live demo at Cisco's Canadian HQ here in Toronto, back in December 2006. This clip is on my YouTube channel, which you're welcome to explore. I'm not posting video there these days - I don't know why - but wanted to share this as a sidebar to Cisco's fifth anniversary for TP. I was there at the beginning, and to show you how much interest there is out there around TP, this clip has by far received more views - over 100,000 - than anything else I've ever posted, and - as you'll see on the site, to this day, I'm STILL getting comments about that clip. How's that for the long tail of the Internet? If I could just find a way to make this pay...

My UC Expo Article: Flexible Working - Adapting to New Challenges

Among other things, I contribute occasional articles to U.K.-based Enterprise Management 360, with my latest being this one, in support of the upcoming UC Expo in London. I won't be participating at this conference, but am hoping to for their follow-on event later this year.

The cloud and future of work are big themes for the expo, and my article focuses on flexible working. If you're attending UC Expo, you'll see it in their special Preview Magazine to support/promote the event. Otherwise, you can read it here in the digital edition, starting on page 20. You can also access it from the UC Expo website - just scroll down a bit on the homepage, and you can't miss the info about how you can read it online.

Toronto - We're Number 11!

It's not every day that I get to say Toronto, Dell and Harvard in the same sentence, but we were all in the room together earlier this week, and am doing my civic duty here.

I've been developing some good relationships recently with Dell, and the stars lined up for me on Tuesday to participate in a panel as part of a Dell Canada event here in Toronto. This was a new event for me - Power To Do More - but it included a session with analysts, press, Dell Canada customers, and most notably Prof. David Ricketts from Harvard.

For background, Dell sponsored the 2015 Strategic Innovation Summit, which was convened by Harvard, with Dr. Rickerts serving as the summit's General Chair. Briefly, the summit focused on harnessing the forces of change - mostly tech-related of course - to drive the "innovation-based economy" of tomorrow.

Lots of good insights came out of this summit, and Dr. Ricketts was on hand to discuss them in a group setting. The newsworthy highlight came in the form a list of top 50 global cities that the research deemed as being most "future ready". I'm not going to break down the methodology or full listing here, but you can get all the key takeaways in the press release issued by Dell Canada in support of this event.

I find this research fascinating, and Toronto certainly comes out looking good, ranking at #11. We all love to shout "we're #1", but San Jose has a lock on that spot, and #11 is not too shabby. I'm not alone among Toronotians who can effortlessly spout all our shortcomings, but as liveable cities go, TO is pretty hard to beat.

Given that I also wear a smart grid/smart cities hat, I'd be remiss if I didn't give a hat tip as well to Austin, which came in even higher in the global rankings at #7. Having just served as the Community Advocate for last month's Energy Thought Summit in Austin, I can tell you first hand this is an up and coming city - looks like the next San Francisco to me - and they are doing some very cool and smart things, especially in the energy space. For a taste of that, here's my blog post with some highlights from ETS16, and for our broader thought leadership on energysmart cities - including mine - feel free to check out the News tab here.

Coming back to Dell/Harvard, what the research is really focused on is the extent to which leading cities have the right mix of attributes to sustain economic growth, and the authors break this down into three core dimensions - human capital, infrastructure and commerce.

There's lots more to explore here, but for now I'm just doing a shout-out to share TO's good news. As well, kudos to Dell for sponsoring this research, and as I get more involved with their IoT practice, I'll have to more to say about what cities need to do to be globally competitive, as well as how best to use technology to help make that happen.

Lowering the Barriers to UC with the Cloud - My New Post

My writing takes many forms - as it has to these days - and one of them is on a partnership basis. Regular followers will know that I'm part of UCStrategies, and contribute a monthly column - new one coming next week - along with participating in our regular podcasts.

Another is authoring thought leadership on behalf of sponsors who engage with UCStrategies to help educate the market about industry trends and new technologies. AT&T is one such sponsor, and as part of an ongoing program with them, I was tasked to write about how I see the cloud as an enabler for UC adoption. There are lots of reasons for enterprises to push back on the cloud, but plenty of others to embrace it, and that's what I focused on in this article.

AT&T may be the sponsor of this series, but the content is largely mine. The writing may have gone through many corporate review cycles, but as you'll see, it's my independent voice in the article. There's always a balance to strike with sponsors, but I think you'll agree it's pretty objective, and hopefully you'll find it helpful as you think about UC and the best way to get full value.

The post is running now on the UCStrategies portal, and if you like my writeup, look around a bit, as there are some other articles there from the AT&T series that are you'll enjoy just as well.

My Next Webinar - Hosted VoIP for SMBs

VoIP adoption still has a long way to go among SMBs, and the best validation for that is how crowded the hosted space has become. With cloud poised to become the option of choice for telephony, SMBs have a lot to choose from, ranging from incumbents, cablecos, CLECs, OTTs and even SIs.

My upcoming Ziff Davis webinar focuses on why conditions are well aligned now for SMBs, as well as a review of persistent holdbacks that have kept VoIP from taking over the world since entering the telephony space back in 1995.

The webinar date is Wednesday, May 25, so you've got time to make plans. Since the registration page was posted the other day, I might as well do an early shout-out now. All the details are here, and if you don't know your May plans yet, I'll post here again as we get closer to the date.

My VoIP Group Interview - Spotlight on the LatAm Market

Sometimes content gets generated in a few seconds, and other times much longer. This falls into the latter category, as do most things that are published and go through editorial review. I actually have another example of this set to run next week, and I'll update that in due course.

For now, the story is my interview with Alfredo Bellagamba, CEO of Brazil-based VoIP Group. I didn't know this company until I met with Alfredo for an interview during the recent ITExpo event in Ft. Lauderdale. They have a good story to tell, and it's a great example of what goes on in the VoIP space outside of North America. LatAm is a major market in its own right, and VoIP Group seems to be in the middle of most everything going on there.

My interview was published this week on TMCnet as a featured article, and I hope you give it a read.

Why Are We Still Using Email?

That's a good question, and that's the title of my current column in Internet Telephony Magazine, and is a follow-on to my previous column, titled Why Are We Still Using Desk Phones?

These are valid questions and they speak to a radically changing landscape driven both by new technology and changing expectations among end users. There's a lot to explore here, and you might be surprised by the issues raised in my column. I hope you give it a read - and the previous one - and if either spurs a reaction, I'd love to hear from you and even more so if you care to share.

Next Stop - Chicago and Cisco

Still feeling the vibe from last week's Energy Thought Summit in Austin, and am increasingly optimistic that utilities will figure this transformation out as they modernize for the digital world. We think of the Internet as being all-important, but it's not compared to the true necessities of life. After food and water, nothing matters more than power, and as this becomes more of a demand-driven market, it's really interesting watching how utilities adapt.

There are parallels happening in the customer care space, and Cisco is at the forefront of how vendors are adapting to changing demands and expectations from the marketplace. Contact centers are assessing the business value of the cloud and new approaches like omnichannel, as well as trying to figure out how to map the customer journey before their customers wander off someplace else.

Am going to Chicago tomorrow for a short analyst event with Cisco focused on customer care, and look forward to hearing where Cisco is on their own journey to strengthen their hold on the contact center market.

March Writing Roundup

Busy month, yeah.

Had two conferences at the back end of the month - Channel Partners, and ETS16 - from which I just returned late last night. So, aside from my regular writing stints, I produced a lot of content for the GetVoIP blog from Channel Partners, along with my smart grid thought leadership around ETS16 - and more of that to come. Here's a summary of what I was up to in March.

Channel Partners Takeaways -What Millennials, Mobility and 5G Mean for UC, UCStrategies, March 31

ETS16 - Day 1 Quick Hits, March 30, my blog

What Else SMBs need to do to Ensure UC Provides Flexibility, March 29, Toolbox.com

Channel Partners Spotlight on Vonage - What Makes Them a Good Partner, March 25, GetVoIP blog

Microsoft at Channel Partners - "We're Partner Friendly", March 25, GetVoIP blog

Channel Partners Spotlight on Nextiva - Winning Those Loose Balls, March 22, GetVoIP blog

8x8's State of Channel Program, March 21, GetVoIP blog

Intel Q&A - Utilities and the Internet of Things, March 18, ETS Insights

How UC Brings Flexibility to Your Business, March 17, Toolbox.com

Channel Parters Conference - First Take, March 16, GetVoIP blog

Why SMBs Aren't Adopting UC, March 14, Toolbox.com

Why Are We Still Using Desk Phones?, March 9, Internet Telephony Magazine

S&C Electric Q&A, Part 2 - Energy Storage Opportunities, March 8, ETS Insights

Allconnect Q&A - News Ways to Connect with Customers, March 8, ETS Insights

Why VoIP Hasn't Yet Replaced Legacy Telephony, March 7, Toolbox.com

Humans - Bringing the Personal Touch to Energy, March 7, ETS Insights

Univago - Solving Video from the Cloud, March 4, my blog

What Millennials, Mobility and 5G Mean for UC - My Channel Partners Takeaways

I produced a series of spotlight profile posts for the GetVoIP blog around the recent Channel Partners conference, but I had more to say specifically about UC&C. That's what I focused on for my latest contribution to the UCStrategies portal.

As the title implies, these three factors all have an impact on where UC&C is heading, and when you mash them all together, it's pretty profound. I got a really good sense of that from a panel at Channel Partners comprised of Millennials, and moderated by Verizon. If you're willing to listen to the younger generation rather than dismiss them, you can learn a lot, and that's the tack I'm taking in this writeup.

We have lots of great content on the portal, and hopefully you'll read my post, and from there check out what my fellow UC Experts have to say. Sharing is encouraged as only, and if you share for me, I'll gladly share for you!