Broadband Developments

News of Nortel’s bankruptcy filing hit the news yesterday.  No one is really surprised.
First thoughts, you can bet that giants like Cisco and Avaya will be courting some Nortel customers.  The truth of it is, Nortel while they have some great products – was not run well.   Hopefully this status allows them to have time to regroup.

But honestly, after their peak in 99-2000 it has all been downhill.  This is hardly a surprise to many.  From the dotcom downturn, to the bogus earning scandal in 2003, and an inability to turn it around for the last several years, this appears to be a swan song.

The Unified Communications properties may be amongst the strongest chips the company may have as it can be anticipated that it will sell pieces of itself off.  The question is in these economic times, what company would possibly have the cash to pick this up?  Natural speculation, but this much is clear, Nortel’s UC technologies and clientele present an opportunity that someone out there will not be able to resist.  We know Microsoft is aligned with Nortel.  John Fontana explores this relationship in his NetworkWorld post.

“Microsoft said it is waiting for more information before it can evaluate the fallout. “All ICA offerings are currently available to customers and no changes are planned at this time,” said a company spokesperson via e-mail. “We are not in the position to assess the impact of the ICA until we understand Nortel’s plans.”

Juniper may be out there, Cisco, and on and on, but again it all comes down to who can pony up the cash in a tight, but loosening credit market.  This story will surely evolve..

A lot has played out in the UC world over the last couple months and I think it’s time to revisit the question of “What is UC?” and dive a little deeper. In this series of posts I’ll analyze what functional components make up a UC solution and examine offerings from IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and others.

Since the paragraph above is really just a tease on its own, I’ll dive right into an overview of Unified Communications. First, a disclaimer that UC seems to mean something different to each company. This is my opinion based on talking with a LOT of customers and doing a few dozen rollouts. It’s certainly not the only opinion however.

The 2007 Gartner report on UC states:

In a way, identifying who’s doing what in the UC industry is a little premature, because, until the new technologies are really finished or legacy technology is really ready to be replaced, UC has to be viewed as “a migratory work in progress.” However, it is important to track technology developments, products, and services so that IT will be ready to selectively deliver new UC capabilities whenever required.

I’ll start by saying there are two sides to unified communications; well at least two. First is functional, ie. what functions are included under the UC umbrella. The second is a business culture shift, ie. changing the way you to do business to take advantage of UC through communications enabled business processes (CEBP). In this post I’m going to speak more to the first. I’ve done a lot of research on the second only to conclude that the business case, and ROI plan, is vastly different for different companies and users. Thus, it needs to be addressed individually. Beyond recouping conferencing costs from bringing the function in house, the ROI model gets very complex.

Although I’m happy to discuss individual cases on a one-off basis I want to keep the topic of this post more generic. I’ll be focusing on the functional aspects of UC that apply to most, if not all, companies.

So, if we believe in the assumption that, from a functional perspective, UC is a platform not a product we must ask what are the parts of that platform? Here’s my take on what every UC platform needs:

Presence engine - A service or function that shows a person’s availability and willingness to communicate over multiple modes of communication. Features include:

· Contextual presence – willingness to communicate over multiple modes of communication (text, voice, video) depending on access and availability

· Integrated presence – Pulls information from other sources (calendar, phone) to automatically update states of presence

· Multi-tiered presence – user-defined levels of access for presence visibility

· Deep presence – More levels than online, offline, away

Instant Messaging - The ability to send text messages and files in one-to-one and many-to-many communication. The features include:

· IM in real-time with others

· Transfer files during a chat

· Escalate IM conversations to richer communication (voice, video, ad hoc web conference)

· IM in a group, more than one-to-one

Federation – The ability to search and communicate across security boundaries, like between partners, in a secure manner.

Public IM – The ability to communicate with popular public IM providers. I never thought this was an absolute requirement but it’s been in every requirements document I’ve seen lately. People are used to IMing and don’t want multiple clients regardless of who they’re communicating with, business or personal.

Audio and Video Conferencing from a desktop client – Normally 2 distinct requirements I never see one without the other so I’m bunching them together. I’m speaking purely PC-to-PC or PC-ConferenceRoom here, not yet into IP Telephony.

Web Conferencing - the ability to host scheduled and ad-hoc meetings including voice, video, data and shared desktop collaboration

· Ad hoc and scheduled web conferences including internal and external participants

· Shared documents and “handout” functionality

· Shared desktop for collaboration

· Support data, voice and video conferencing during meeting

· One-to-many live video streaming (ie. virtual company meeting)

Messaging Platform – A robust enterprise email and calendaring platform. Email has surpassed voice as communication mediums go so it needs to be scalable and reliable.

Mobility – The platform needs to have a mobile client for syncing mail and calendaring as well as IM/presence and other UC modalities.

Collaboration – Some would argue that a collaboration platform should be its own topic. And well it could be, but I feel any UC solution needs to have a strong collaboration story. After all, UC is all about collaboration. Once you find a person and IM them, where are you going to work together?

Extensible API – As I mentioned above, UC means something different to everyone. An extensible API is an often overlooked requirement for extending UC functionality into other applications.

IP Telephony – Often just called VoIP, a UC solution needs basic IPT functions like single number reach, unified messaging (voicemail in email), and click to call. These functions need to be in the same UC client as other functions (IM, etc). No one wants 4-5 clients running to accomplish one communication task.

Gloomy news in a down economy abound. Signs are everywhere in many sectors of the technology spectrum.

The Social Networking site Linkedin is laying off 10% of its workers. Dell has asked personnel to voluntarily take unpaid leave. Apple is supposedly scaling back its Iphone production. John Furrier earlier reported on Cisco’s earnings problems.   Many mid-size companies have discovered placing their infrastructures in managed hosting environments has given them cost advantages.   Other companies are pre-emptively behind-the-scenes cutting back, canceling planned expenses for the quarter, scaling back hiring goals, postponing projects, etc.

Plenty of the problems are based on uncertainty and faith in the economy in general.  On the other hand plenty of companies survived or even thrived during past cycles.  The difference is preaching value and advantage.  We have before our eyes a number of bleeding-edge technologies that offer advantages to businesses large and small.

And this perspective is not exclusive of conservative budgets.  The realization of value, effectiveness, and most importantly optimization is tantamount to those companies that look to tighten the belt in the technology realm.

Take some of the recent Microsoft news.  They are now offering a program that allows for free software to start up businesses, and from the observer’s point of view to stave an exodus to open-source software in a capital and credit challenged environment.   In the infrastructure realm, Microsoft is leveraging the realization of optimization of existing and breakthrough technologies to cut costs in terms of deployment, maintenance, and security.   Part of this optimization path includes integrating layers of technology to satisfy technology initiatives like Unified Communications, Systems Manager and Sharepoint.  Their strategy is to draw out an idealized spectrum of basic infrastructure implementation to the idealized dynamic configuration.  That state in which return on infrastructure, messaging, and security is maximized.

As a VAR, consultancy, IT manager, whatever, ASK yourself:  What do you offer, who do you offer it to and what is the return?   What are my customers seeing?    What is my customer’s satisfaction?  Why would they choose me?  Do I have confidence that our service is the best we can do for our customer?

There is plenty of hard data available that support the cost advantages.  Sales teams tout these statistics freely.   The key is to get the relationship, satisfaction of goals, and the technological foundation presented to the right people.  That is where the renewed confidence in technology lies.  On the front lines, people like us touting the advantages everyday.   Managers pushing through contracts, enterprise aligning with blazing new technology, any company that chooses to advertise, small businesses realizing that  technology can be the edge that gets them to profit.  The businesses and people that come out on top make bold moves, correct moves in times of economic crisis.  CHOOSE TO BE BOLD - and you will reap the benefits.

I definitely have continued thoughts to share on this and will post more on this matter.

There’s a lot of buzz about Cisco’s acquisition of Jabber and before that, PostPath. John says it’s “getting interesting” but most of the discussion I’ve heard is how Cisco will remain a non-starter in rich UC. Bar none, Cisco makes a great VoIP platform with their CallManager platform. However VoIP does not a UC platform make. They now have all the pieces, email (PostPath), IM (Jabber), VoIP/UM (CallManager) but they lack the glue.

It’s impossible to overstress the importance of “unified” in unified communications. Microsoft’s Gurdeep Singh Pall adds

Cisco’s offering is the definition of “un-unified” communications. With more than 40 products, their solution is a patchwork of technologies and networking. The risk for customers is that a patchwork system is slower to roll out, harder to train users, and more expensive to manage and maintain over the long term.

He has an obvious vested interest but you can’t ignore that he makes a good point. No one wants to roll out 40 different independent platforms, or even 3-4. The whole point of UC is a single console and a single user experience across multiple modes of communication all tied together with a presence engine.

Cisco has proven they don’t have the software expertise to bring it all together as Brian Riggs notes in his evaluation of their current IM solution,

Cisco’s Unified Presence Server has instant messaging software built right into it. But this home-grown IM capability is not something Cisco has drawn a lot of attention to. All the data sheets, configuration guides, installation manuals and all other Presence Server product literature I’ve ever come across completely gloss over its inherent IM capabilities. I get the impression that the Cisco-designed IM software is not quite up to snuff compared with alternatives from Microsoft and IBM.

Didn’t know Cisco already had an internal IM solution? You aren’t the only one. Fact is, it’s not very good. Cisco isn’t a [end user] software company. With these recent acquisitions they’ve got a lot of wood but no carpenters and no nails. I just don’t see Cisco being able to put it all together anytime soon.

How do you demonstrate the value of UC? David (don’t know his last name because msft spaces is tough to navigation) who loves hockey and technology writes a post on Demonstrating Value of Unified Communications.

David points to a survey that provides detailed research and analysis interviewing a variety of end users, examining how they use UC in their daily work flow, and how UC has made an impact. Here are some highlights of those results!

• “100% of those polled said UC has positively impacted the way they do business.”

• “UC has reduced travel my time by 30-40%!”

• “Voicemail has been reduced by 80%!”

• “One problem in particular was solved in minutes, when it would have taken hours to solve before UC.”

• “If UC functionality were taken away from me, I’d demand it back! Seriously, it’s one of the big changes that I’ve seen since being in business.”

Executives, operations, IT, human resources, and marketing users were all interviewed for this study. The consensus was that UC has made a critical impact on their productivity.

UC is certainly a hot area but I want to see how the existing UC vendors are dealing with the new presence paradigm of environments like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, ..etc

To me I have yet to see the value ..as they say ‘Where’s the beef’

I found this great writeup from Brian Bourne today on CIO site. Brian Bourne is the president of CMS Consulting and cofounder of the SecTor security education conference. He is an expert in systems integration work with large complex multiplatform networks.

UCStrategies.com has some great content that CIOs can use to understand and leverage their enterprise and IT assets while positioning themselves in the new web 2.0 and convergence area.

Today’s CIOs must focus on developing more effective strategies toward taking connectivity and messaging capabilities to the next level. And there’s no denying that unified communications (UC) is an IT issue that all CIOs in the 21st century should carefully consider.

Internet Protocol-based (IP-based) solutions operating over a converged voice-and-data network are heralding a new world of communications. Indeed, successful organizations recognize that improved collaboration translates into “faster answers and better teaming”—connecting teams in a way that they can communicate and work together, whether in the office, telecommuting or on the road. And as technology continues to converge, CIOs will need to develop effective strategies to update aging communication systems to be more productive.

From a CIO perspective, it is highly important that any UC investment deliver a rapid and adequate return, with both strategic and financial value. Now is a good time to revisit UC technologies—looking at what fits your enterprise, what you might already own and what you can leverage.

UC: The New World of Business

While unified messaging integrates disparate communication tools—including fax, voice and e-mail—into a centralized repository available from a variety of different devices, unified communications takes it a step further, automating and merging existing communication modes in a manner that optimizes business operations. UC effectively connects disparate technologies into an infrastructure that allows people to connect with the appropriate available team members and work collaboratively using a variety of technologies in a seamless fashion.

As adoption of IP telephony reaches critical mass, successful CIOs are recognizing that UC is becoming not only more practical but a potential competitive driver as well. In a real-world context, UC is about improving collaboration and overall presence for internal staff and clients alike. UC can improve the productivity of network staff and accommodate network growth with the same staffing levels. It also enables geographically dispersed personnel to function as if they were in the same location, whether it’s via video, the Web or voice.

Given all the communication technologies today’s knowledge workers now use on a daily basis, the potential to quickly and seamlessly shift between voice, instant messaging and videoconferencing technologies is fast becoming more than a “nice to have”—it’s becoming the shape of working more productively and collaboratively in the 21st century.

Building the Case for Unified Communications

Discovering value in UC comes from understanding its potential to fundamentally change the way we communicate, collaborate and get work done. Certain UC components are very mature (for example, dropping a voice mail or fax into an inbox). That said, now’s a good time to move from tire-kicking to a staged deployment and start working at it in chunks.

From the CIO planning perspective, an effective UC approach takes the communications pieces with the highest return and implements them first. Leverage what you already own and deploy first those components that will provide greatest value to your users. While it’s true that some of these UC components might already exist within the IT environment, it is also imperative that training is planned that will slowly get users accustomed to new technology. If you suddenly drop new e-mail and corporate instant messaging capabilities along with desktop sharing, Web conferencing and video tools onto an unsuspecting workforce, the results will likely be less than positive.

Today’s conventional business telephony is being supplanted by IP-based software applications. It’s important to consider that as traditional PBXs reach end of life, IP-based communication can potentially deliver extended functionality. That said, many solutions exist to tie older PBX systems into the new IP-enabled world. Integration and convergence are the keywords, not system-wide replacement. Companies need to understand the competitive drivers for UC adoption now, and at least develop a long-term strategy for improving internal and external communications.

In developing a UC strategy, it’s important that CIOs account for the support and complexity requirements involved. Adding voice capabilities to the network often represents the initial step, extending into other types of real-time communications. While cost savings are indeed a crucial part of the decision, any UC business case should also mull over the broad range of financial and strategic improvements, including more effective communications, enhanced user and IT productivity, greater operational resilience and improved customer service.

With unified communications slated to be as ubiquitous and essential as conventional phone services, CIOs should carefully consider UC as the best way to extend an existing communications infrastructure without having to uproot the legacy environment. The goal involves laying the technology foundation that enables administrators, managers and employees to connect with colleagues no matter the location—no matter the communication mode. Today’s CIOs should recognize that UC can provide definite competitive advantages not just in teaming and collaboration, but also in attracting and retaining forward-thinking knowledge workers throughout the organization. Ultimately, UC is more than just technology; it represents an entirely new way of company communication and collaboration.