Owner: Unified Communications Strategies Blog URL:http://blog.ucstrategies.com/ Join Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2008 01:02:51 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: UC Strategies blog is an industry resource for enterprises, vendors, system integrators, and anyone interested in the growing Unified Communications arena. Site statistics:Click here
Gartner’s View of UC–Last Year and This Year 2008-02-13 00:18:16 Gartner Research has long been a leader in evaluating new computer-based technologies, and I personally know several of the researchers who write about business communications. Bern Elliot, Vice President of Research at Gartner, did a pretty good job in the middle of last year of putting UC technologies into an enterprise business perspective for their [...] Read more:Gartner
Rumors of Adomo’s Demise are Dispelled 2008-02-04 10:49:31
There was a rumor going around that Adomo, one of the newest players to the UM market, has just shut its doors. The folks at Adomo called me put to rest these rumors and to say that they are indeed still in business but are restructuring the business from the sales and marketing end, and [...] Read more:Demise
Recruiting from the “Right Channel” 2008-01-28 18:34:49 Over the years, manufacturers have often asked me which channel – voice or data – I thought would be most successful with “convergence” (and now unified communications) products and solutions. My answer has always been the same and now I am seeing an ever-increasing number of “integrators” who support my answer….
It is possible to draw [...] Read more:Channel
, Right
UC Opens up for the Mac 2008-01-28 18:27:43 Word is out that Cisco is introducing the Cisco Unified Personal Communicator (CUPC) client with native support for the Apple MacIntosh and Leopard. According to a blog post by M. Michael Acosta, manager of Cisco engineering, the latest version of CUPC is a fully native Mac application with a user-interface developed specifically for the Mac.
Why [...]
New Year’s Resolutions I’d Like To See 2008-01-04 14:14:58 It’s that wonderful time of the year when people around the world make their New Year
’s resolutions – things they’ll do differently, bad habits they’ll quit, good habits they’ll start, and so on. Here are some New Year’s resolutions related to unified communications that I would like to see in the coming year.
Vendors working [...] Read more:Resolutions
Customer Service – It’s Not Semantics 2007-11-30 01:46:14 I had to contact a company’s customer service and technical support departments the other day - I won’t say the company’s name, but it rhymes with Pemantic. They don’t have a unified communications strategy. This was an extremely grueling experience, especially since I know that there’s better technology available, and that the technology used was [...] Read more:Customer
, Customer Service
, Service
The Vendor Value Proposition Challenge 2007-11-29 13:10:17 The other day, I heard from yet another convergence reseller about the woefully weak recruiting methods of so many convergence vendors. Haven’t vendors figured out yet that resellers are bombarded by vendors wanting to recruit them as “partners”? According to resellers that I talk with, there are very few vendors who have raised themselves above [...] Read more:Challenge
, Proposition
, Value
, Vendor
New Conferencing Player in Town, with a Twist 2008-03-20 20:08:59 There is a new conferencing player in town, and this one has a twist or two. At the Spring VON show in San Jose, I met up with Wyde Voice, winner of the 2008 VON Innovator award, for producing the industry’s first wideband audio conferencing appliances with 16 kHz voice quality. Wyde voice is a [...] Read more:Conferencing
IMTC and UC – Hearing of IMTC’s Plans was a Breath of Fresh Air 2008-03-25 00:47:25 The 15-year old International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is an international community of companies working on promoting and facilitating the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunications products and services based on open international standards. For those unfamiliar with IMTC their goals, per their web site are:
To advocate the common interests of the [...] Read more:Breath
, Hearing
Carrier 700 MHz Plans: Didn’t I Just Say That? 2008-04-05 17:53:30 Last night the FCC gag rule came off, and the winners of the 700 MHz frequency auctions were free to describe their service plans. The two major winners, Verizon and AT&T, both weighed in, and not surprisingly, they’re both looking at deploying services based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. Most notable was that [...]
Carterphone for Cellular- Can Dinosaurs Clap? 2008-04-05 17:49:58 Mobile unified communications took a shot in the chops this week when FCC Chairman Kevin Martin announced in a speech at the CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas that he will oppose Skype’s petition to open up existing wireless carrier networks to outside devices. “In light of the industry’s embrace of this more open approach, [...] Read more:Dinosaurs
UC Approaches for SMBs or SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) 2008-05-01 13:26:48 One of the many valuable resources at UCStratgies.com is the “Ask an Expert” feature. Post your question and one of the UC Experts will send a reply with information, suggestions or other support.
For example, about a week ago we got these questions:
“What are the challenges facing the implementation of Unified Communications in small-medium enterprises (SMEs)? [...] Read more:Enterprises
, Medium
, Small
Why are companies not getting UC? Or not implementing it? 2008-05-13 19:29:50 In real-estate its location, location, location, in the UC world I believe it’s process, process process!
First I went to Wikipedia to see if they had a reasonable definition. The Wikipedia definition is “Unified Communications (UC) is a commonly used term for the integration of disparate communications systems, media, devices and applications. This potentially includes the [...]
UC and the Consultant Community - What Vendors Should Know 2008-05-13 18:53:39 Having once played extensively on the vendor side of the field, I have empathy for the vendors’ perspective on where consultants fit in their go-to-market equation. After all, we’re not as easily categorized as the end-user or reseller audiences. And quantifying our impact on vendor revenues has never proved straightforward. But we’re here, we’re very [...] Read more:Consultant
, Vendors
Some don’t seem to “get it” 2008-05-13 18:44:44 Independent consultants (IC) symbiotically aid both the customer and the vendor. We help the customer better understand the vendors, and we help the vendors better understand the customer. So why then do some vendors have such a negative reaction to ICs?That’s a question I am periodically left asking myself, wondering why some vendors resist the [...]
Verint Verdict - Vindication 2008-05-19 11:07:44 Verint Systems announced that it won a patent suit against Nice Systems, providing the company with vindication and $3.3 million in damages. Here’s a little background – Nice had initiated legal actions against Verint related to patent lawsuits, and Verint then countersued with its own patent infringements against Nice. Without getting into specifics, the patent [...] Read more:Verdict
, Vindication
The UC Contact Center Conundrum 2008-05-27 09:25:30 It all starts in the contact center.
That’s my contention anyway. When you look for the obvious launch point for unified communications in the enterprise, it has to be the contact center. Almost all discussions about UC in the enterprise include a mention of Presence, the UC concept that provides users with an overview of the [...] Read more:Center
, Conundrum
Thinking Outside the Box 2008-05-29 13:56:16 Every once in a while, a vendor comes along with not only innovative products but innovative ideas on how to help their channel partners be successful. Communicado wins my praise for “getting it” when it comes to innovative programs for resellers! Last week, they announced a new program, Quick Start Dealer Program to [...] Read more:Outside
Webinar on New UC Productivity Study 2008-05-28 14:07:10 Nancy Jamison and I just finished up a new study on UC productivity benefits, and will be presenting some of the key findings during a VoiceCon webinar on Wednesday, June 4, 2p.m. EDT/11 a.m. PDT, sponsored by Genesys Telecommunications Labs. You’ll get to hear first hand about our findings – some of which were expected [...] Read more:Productivity
, Study
Clarifying UC Definitions 2008-06-06 18:17:32 During a VoiceCon webinar Nancy Jamison and I presented along with Jim Krauetler of Genesys, I was asked to clarify a couple terms I had used. The following is intended to do a better job of explaining what these terms mean, both by definition and based on the impact they have on customers.
Tagging
“Tagging” allows UC [...] Read more:Definitions
The Definitive Unified Communications Market Study is Here 2008-06-15 22:28:18 At long last the UnifiedCommunications
market study I’ve been working on for months is now complete. This study, Unified Communications Market
2007-2012, has been a massive undertaking, and covers not just premise-based market forecasts, but also discusses the drivers, challenges, technology, trends, UC adoption scenarios, etc., and provides vendor profiles on all of the leading UC players. Read more:Study
Answering Fred Knight’s “Where’s the Beef?” Question 2008-06-23 12:10:57 In the June 19, 2008 VoiceCon UC eWeekly (a weekly newsletter jointly sponsored by VoiceCon and UCStrategies.com), Fred Knight
asked the question, “Where’s the Beef?”
At first, I thought that Fred was losing faith on the directions for UC. But after reading his newsletter a couple of times, I decided Fred was basically raising a challenge, [...] Read more:Question
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