This Coffee Talk session will present an independent analysis of the Avaya Roadmap for Nortel, delivered by Brent Kelly, Senior Analyst & Partner, Wainhouse Research. Avaya experts will be on hand to comment and react to the presentation, and you’re invited to ask your questions and share your perspectives.
Senior Vice President, Global Sales and Marketing and President, Field Operations
Jim Allen is the Global Unified Communications Architect for Medtronic Corporation. In his current role, Mr. Allen is responsible for overseeing architectural alignment across diverse organizations to ensure stronger design integration, impact, and execution of Unified Communications across Medtronic. In this capacity he has been instrumental in the design and integration of SIP trunking domestically as well as the deployment and standardization of IP Telephony and IP Contact Centers globally. Mr. Allen has over 20 years of experience in network architecture and engineering with multiple fortune 500 companies and consulting firms. He is a graduate from Chico State CA with a B.S. in Business Marketing and previously earned the Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert certification.
SIP Trunking is one the hottest issues in enterprise communications because it promises cost savings and true end-to-end IP voice connections. But few enterprises are actually using SIP Trunks to their full potential yet—partly because of the way in which carriers are offering these services, and partly because technical/interoperability challenges remain.
This workshop will examine the architecture options involved with deploying SIP Trunks, review the carrier offerings and ordering procedures, analyze the role of Session Border Controllers and options for configuration and present the critical issues – and best practices – for troubleshooting and managing SIP Trunks.
Andy Allison is a Senior Product Manager leading the strategy for Avaya’s messaging portfolio. He has been with Avaya for over 7 years with a focus on Unified Communications, messaging and collaboration. Prior to joining Avaya, Andy directed Business Development for Solsoft, now Exaprotect, in the security management industry.
Voice messaging systems became part of the landscape because phones need to be answered whether or not the called party was available. But with presence, IM and related Unified Communications applications and capabilities, there are new ways to assess the value voice messaging and Unified Messaging do—or don't—deliver. This session will analyze the new options becoming available, and the different ways to calculate ROI.
KEY QUESTIONS:
*Are IP-PBXs needed for a voice mail to unified messaging migration? What's the best way and place to store messages?
*Is end of life finally here for legacy voice mail systems?
*What are new options for getting voice messaging, call answering and auto-attendant services?
*Is it better to have voice mail built into the PBX software, or on separate servers?
*What is the impact of speech auto-attendants on voice mail?
Personal video conferencing is a very different paradigm from traditional room-based or telepresence video. Acceptance of this technology is being driven by a geographically disparate or travelling work force, company partnering and an incessant need to quickly establish personal relationships and execute business at a faster pace. Network bandwidth and desktop power are finally able to support a high quality experience. The market is rapidly evolving and many hardware and software deployment choices exist. How does the enterprise IT team decide which approach best works to support its specific business needs? This session will review different models of desktop deployment and highlight demonstrations of desktop solutions to help you make your decisions.
Standardized in 2007, scalable video coding (SVC) promises to deliver incredible benefits for personal, room, and mobile videoconferencing. While hampered by backward-compatibility issues, SVC is already shaking up the industry because it promises highly scalable, low-cost, high-performance video over standard, non-QoS IP networks. This session will investigate the pros and cons and risk factors facing today’s decision makers.
Key Questions:
*What is scalable video coding (SVC) and why does it matter?
*Are the current videoconferencing products about to become dinosaurs?
*Should enterprise buyers invest in this new technology or continue with their legacy systems?
*What are the risks here of making the wrong decisions?
Chalan Aras is vice president of product management for Polycom’s Voice Communications Solutions division. Aras came to Polycom from Ditech Networks where he was vice president of marketing, product management and strategy. Prior to Ditech Networks, Aras also served as vice president of marketing and product management at Jetstream Communications and as the director of PLM for all video products at First Virtual Corp. Aras holds an MBA from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, a Ph.D. in computer engineering from North Carolina State University, and is the recipient of five patents.
The majority of video conferencing systems today are in conference rooms. For video to move into everyday use, different devices will be required for different users. In addition to high-end room systems and telepresence systems, people can use so-called executive systems (dedicated video systems on a user’s desk), their laptops or even video phones.
Key Questions:
*What are the key video device options today and the pros and cons for each device?
* Which device is the best suited for what types of workers, locations or use cases?
* What are the key tradeoffs in terms of quality, price and productivity considerations?
* How are the different device alternatives evolving and what will the future look like in 2 years,
5 years and 10 years? How would this change the mix of video devices used within
the enterprise?
Manfred Arndt is a Distinguished Technologist and the UC & C Solutions Architect for HP ProCurve Networking. He is responsible for architecting the IP telephony and multimedia roadmap for HP networking solutions and with alliance partners. He also participates in several TIA and IEEE subcommittees, helping defining networking and telecommunications standards and is a co-author of the ANSI/TIA-1057 (LLDP-MED) standard. Arndt has over 20 years experience with several networking startups and the high-tech industry. Arndt holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also holds three networking patents.
As enterprise communications moves from the legacy PBX-centric architecture to one based on IP networking and software applications, the architectures supporting these systems will also change. Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate communications systems more tightly into their corporate datacenters, taking advantage of Web Services, server virtualization and Cloud Computing, among other technology trends.
So how should enterprises plan to take advantage of these trends, and what pitfalls await them as they do? And how will technology vendors attempt to leverage these trends in their own product or services offerings?
In this VoiceCon Summit, CTOs and other technology leaders will discuss and debate the various approaches to next-gen communications architectures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how your enterprise's communications systems will fit into the larger IT environment, and how these new architectures will support end users to provide higher productivity and great business benefits.
As we enter the era of truly converged networks the ground-rules for network design are changing. Pervasive use of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing drive new requirements for how the LAN and WAN are provisioned, configured, monitored and managed. This tutorial will give you an overview of network design issues for a combined voice, video and data network and will delve into the details of Quality of Service (QoS). The tutorial will provide a detailed understanding of the design issues you will encounter, techniques for overcoming them, and the specific technologies and practices that are required to make real-time traffic and applications run efficiently and at acceptable quality across your local and wide-area facilities.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What is required to deliver adequate quality of service (QOS) for voice and video on any local and wide-area IP networks that previously handled only data?
* What services do I need from my WAN vendor to support voice and video? What is an appropriate Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
* Can you run VOIP or video over the Internet with acceptable QOS/quality of experience (QOE)?
* How do I classify traffic in the network to ensure voice and video are treated correctly without opening my network up to overutilization by unauthorized endpoints?
* How do you extend your upgrade to serve mobile workers?
* What tools are needed for testing and monitoring a converged network with voice and video?
* I have lots of bandwidth and low utilization, do I really need QoS?
This VoiceCon Summit presents enterprise executives discussing their experiences with migrating to new communications infrastructures, architectures and services. In a roundtable format, the executives will describe what went into their decision-making for migrating, and they'll describe their implementation experiences —what went right and what didn't. The panelists will discuss benefits and problems, and offer perspective and advice that reflect their real-world experience. In addition to discussing the technical issues, the speakers will address the impact that new technologies and architectures are having on end users and the IT/telecom organization.
Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks. These have included local area, national and international networks as well as VoIP and IP convergent networks in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia. He has advised domestic and international venture capital and investment bankers in communications, VoIP, and microprocessor technologies.
For more than 30 years, Gary has been an independent communications and security consultant. Beginning his career in the USAF as an R&D officer in military intelligence and data communications, Gary was decorated for his accomplishments in these areas. He has analyzed the US Navy’s future for IP transmission via satellite and prepared a VoIP feasibility study for a multinational firm. He has participated in VoIP procurement, RFP preparation and review for converged systems and networks for enterprises and state governments.
Mr. Audin has been published extensively in the Business Communications Review, ACUTA Journal, Computer Weekly, Telecom Reseller, Data Communications Magazine, Infosystems, Computerworld, Computer Business News and other magazines. He has been Keynote speaker at user conferences and delivered webcasts on VoIP and IP communications technologies. He is a founder of the ANSI X.9 committee, a senior member of the IEEE, and is on the steering committee for the VoiceCon conference. Most of his articles can be found on www.webtorials.com and www.acuta.org. He writes a weekly blog on communications subjects that can be found atwww.nojitter.com and publishes technical tips at www.searchinifiedcommunications.com.
He holds a BSEE from New Jersey Institute of Technology, with graduate work in Computer Science at Syracuse University. He has been an Adjunct Professor at Pace University and an instructor at Boston University.
Legacy PBX systems are being retired and new functionality is essentially only available with IP-based systems. Enterprises are not faced with the question of whether to migrate to Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP Telephony (IPT), it's a question of when. And the emerging capabilities for Unified Communications increase the complexity this transition.
Despite the growth of these technologies, many enterprises have limited experience with IP Telephony and VoIP, and once the decision to migrate is made, there are a host of challenges to face - from inventorying the readiness of LANs and wiring closets, to WAN performance, IT organizational and staffing issues, security, utility costs and software support, patching and version control.
This workshop analyzes these issues with recommended actions and best practices that will lead to successful VoIP/IPT/Unified Communications deployments. It cuts through the hype to the real advantages and presents how VoIP/IPT and Unified Communications work and how they operate. This session will also guide the attendee through the rest of the VoiceCon conference with suggested sessions, exhibits and other resources that will make the conference attendance experience as valuable as possible.
How is your enterprise tackling the challenge of running converged networks and integrating communications with business applications? Do your communications teams talk to your applications teams? Do they know what the company's datacenter strategy is, and how that will affect the way communications are run within your enterprise? How are you coping with the pressures of headcount reduction? Come share your problems and your solutions with your colleagues.
This session will help you understand the latest approaches to providing E911 coverage for an IP Telephony-enabled enterprise. We'll examine the infrastructure you need to add to your deployment in order to ensure accuracy, resiliency and high-availability in your E911 coverage. We'll also look at related emergency-notification technologies aimed at pushing information out to end users in times of disaster or other crises.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How have enterprises tackled the challenges of providing location-specific E911?
* What cost will an E911 deployment across the enterprise add to an IP Telephony deployment?
* What are the risks of a piecemeal E911 deployment?
* How can you add emergency notification to your system to inform users of crises (e.g., school/workplace shootings, natural disasters, etc.)
At the conclusion of each VoiceCon, we ask leading analysts to join VoiceCon Co-chairs Fred Knight and Eric Krapf to summarize what they learned during the Conference. The Locknote will analyze progress in the migration to IP Telephony and Unified Communications, vendor positioning and market strategies, and examine whether the payoffs from new technologies are being realized. The panelists draw on their experience and what they've seen and heard during the conference, and they'll take your questions.
Warren Barkley is Director for the Partner and Devices development team in the Office Communications division at Microsoft. Mr. Barkley’s team is responsible for the development of the communication devices such as Roundtable, and working with the hardware, software, service provider eco-system to complete Office Communications solutions.
Mr. Barkley joined Microsoft in early 1997 and has held various positions in the field and product development organizations. He has worked primarily on networking technologies including TCP/IP, Network Location Awareness, Wireless (WLAN and WWAN) and security. Warren was extensively involved with the development of native wireless support in Windows XP including the automatic configuration and security components and worked broadly with the WiFi industry to define and implement new security standards. Barkley holds US and Worldwide patents in various networking and real time media technologies areas. He has several degrees from University of Victoria and University of BC. In his spare time he tries to keep up with his two boys on their mountain bikes or skis.
As enterprise communications moves from the legacy PBX-centric architecture to one based on IP networking and software applications, the architectures supporting these systems will also change. Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate communications systems more tightly into their corporate datacenters, taking advantage of Web Services, server virtualization and Cloud Computing, among other technology trends.
So how should enterprises plan to take advantage of these trends, and what pitfalls await them as they do? And how will technology vendors attempt to leverage these trends in their own product or services offerings?
In this VoiceCon Summit, CTOs and other technology leaders will discuss and debate the various approaches to next-gen communications architectures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how your enterprise's communications systems will fit into the larger IT environment, and how these new architectures will support end users to provide higher productivity and great business benefits.
John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video and data application performance. Recent work has focused on designing global networks to best support video conferencing and telepresence systems.
John has 32 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996.
Prior to working as a consultant, John was a founder and VP of Engineering and Manufacturing at Agile Networks, now part of Lucent Technologies. Under his leadership, the company designed and built a high performance Ethernet switch implementing VLANs, and one of the first commercial ATM switches. Both products were successfully introduced to the market and the firm became profitable before it was acquired. Mr. Bartlett also served on the IEEE 802.1 committee during this period, and contributed to the development of the IEEE 802.1P and IEEE 802.1Q standards (priority and VLANs.)
John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, where he received the Dartmouth Society of Engineers Annual Prize for the quality of his thesis presentation. John is co-owner of a patent in shared memory multiprocessor design.
Personal video conferencing is a very different paradigm from traditional room-based or telepresence video. Acceptance of this technology is being driven by a geographically disparate or travelling work force, company partnering and an incessant need to quickly establish personal relationships and execute business at a faster pace. Network bandwidth and desktop power are finally able to support a high quality experience. The market is rapidly evolving and many hardware and software deployment choices exist. How does the enterprise IT team decide which approach best works to support its specific business needs? This session will review different models of desktop deployment and highlight demonstrations of desktop solutions to help you make your decisions.
The vast majority of video conference calling is done within the enterprise, but it’s only a matter of time before these same systems are used to make calls to people in other organizations. However, unlike voice which has the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to link together all phones, video devices have no such network to connect to. Further, there are significant barriers to making inter-enterprise video conferencing as easy as a voice call such as addressing, security, quality of service and interoperability. This session will examine your options today, and identify what are likely to be a broader set of options in the coming years.
Key Questions:
* What are the different approaches to inter-enterprise video conferencing today?
* How do you find and call other video users (use “regular” phone numbers, URI address, IP Address, iNum, FDQN)?
*Will enterprises rely on service providers or handle this issue on their own -- internally? When should dedicated bandwidth be used vs. the public Internet or a hybrid approach?
* What are the security requirements and tradeoffs for inter-enterprise video?
* What are the different requirements for inter-enterprise video conferencing between video
endpoints from the same vendor? Different vendors?
* What are the considerations for opening up bridging (e.g., an MCU) for inter-enterprise video
conferencing vs. using a 3rd party?
Standardized in 2007, scalable video coding (SVC) promises to deliver incredible benefits for personal, room, and mobile videoconferencing. While hampered by backward-compatibility issues, SVC is already shaking up the industry because it promises highly scalable, low-cost, high-performance video over standard, non-QoS IP networks. This session will investigate the pros and cons and risk factors facing today’s decision makers.
Key Questions:
*What is scalable video coding (SVC) and why does it matter?
*Are the current videoconferencing products about to become dinosaurs?
*Should enterprise buyers invest in this new technology or continue with their legacy systems?
*What are the risks here of making the wrong decisions?
As we enter the era of truly converged networks the ground-rules for network design are changing. Pervasive use of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing drive new requirements for how the LAN and WAN are provisioned, configured, monitored and managed. This tutorial will give you an overview of network design issues for a combined voice, video and data network and will delve into the details of Quality of Service (QoS). The tutorial will provide a detailed understanding of the design issues you will encounter, techniques for overcoming them, and the specific technologies and practices that are required to make real-time traffic and applications run efficiently and at acceptable quality across your local and wide-area facilities.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What is required to deliver adequate quality of service (QOS) for voice and video on any local and wide-area IP networks that previously handled only data?
* What services do I need from my WAN vendor to support voice and video? What is an appropriate Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
* Can you run VOIP or video over the Internet with acceptable QOS/quality of experience (QOE)?
* How do I classify traffic in the network to ensure voice and video are treated correctly without opening my network up to overutilization by unauthorized endpoints?
* How do you extend your upgrade to serve mobile workers?
* What tools are needed for testing and monitoring a converged network with voice and video?
* I have lots of bandwidth and low utilization, do I really need QoS?
Real-time traffic (voice and video) demand that the network provide low latency, low packet loss and low jitter. Today’s dynamic networks are constantly changing, and the distributed nature of network configuration often lead to errors in design or implementation that can cause quality problems for voice and video conferencing applications. A new breed of testing methodologies and tools is required to test or monitor networks and to isolate problems. This session will explore the need for these tools, will categorize the tools and will list vendors that provide the different kinds of solutions needed to manage today’s complex converged networks.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Why are new tools required to support voice and video conferencing? Why can’t I use the tools that have been serving me well for years?
* What features are required in these tools for managing and monitoring real-time networks?
* Who are the vendors and what types of tools to they offer?
* Do I need different tools for debugging than I do for operational monitoring of the network?
At the conclusion of each VoiceCon, we ask leading analysts to join VoiceCon Co-chairs Fred Knight and Eric Krapf to summarize what they learned during the Conference. The Locknote will analyze progress in the migration to IP Telephony and Unified Communications, vendor positioning and market strategies, and examine whether the payoffs from new technologies are being realized. The panelists draw on their experience and what they've seen and heard during the conference, and they'll take your questions.
Tony Bates is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Group (ECSB), responsible for its overall strategy and development direction. The group comprises more than 12,500 employees and generates more than $20 billion of annual revenue. ECSB includes the Collaboration Software Group, Voice Technology Group, Data Center, Switching & Services Group, Wireless, Security & Routing Technology Group, Enterprise Systems & Operations, and the Small Business Technology Group.
A member of Chairman and CEO John Chambers senior staff, Bates sits on the Cisco Development Council, the Video Council, and the Enterprise Business Council.
Before his current role, Bates was Senior Vice President and General Manager for the Service Provider business unit. He was responsible for the overall strategy and development direction of the business resulting in over $10 billion of annual revenue. Prior to that he was the Vice President and General Manager of Cisco's high-end router business. During his tenure, he was responsible for the strategy and development of Cisco's flagship CRS-1 router, GSR, and Multi-Service WAN (MGX) product lines. He has also served as a Member of the Board of YouTube, Inc.
Preceding Cisco, Bates spearheaded the backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI (MCI.s national IP backbone). Bates has more than 20 years of experience in the telecommunications and Internet industries. He has published 12 IETF RFCs in the areas of Internet Routing and Operations, and holds nine patents in the area of Layer 2 and Layer 3 innovations.
Andrew Bezaitis
Senior Vice President of Product Management
Aspect
As senior vice president of product management at Aspect, Andy Bezaitis is responsible for product management and strategic partnerships. This includes overseeing an industry-leading team responsible for driving unified communications product enhancements through research, analysis, customer engagement, and driving corporate development activities, including the company’s global strategic alliance with Microsoft.
Andy brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in business development and communications technology, and was most recently vice president of corporate development at Aspect. Prior to joining Aspect, Andy was the senior vice president of business development at Cantata Technology. While there, he led ongoing business development and strategic partner initiatives, and established mutually beneficial relationships with industry-leading organizations in the carrier and enterprise markets. Andy has also held executive positions at several High Tech startup and large companies, and built businesses in communications for Wireless and landline customers.
He has been awarded nine United States patents for various technologies, including mobile Internet protocol (IP), point-to-point protocol (PPP) connection, wireless networking authentication, and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Andy has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon, a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology, and a master of business administration from The University of Chicago.
In this session, a leading analyst will offer her assessment of the current state of the contact center market—the progress enterprises are making on migrating to IP and SIP-based systems, and which vendors they're selecting as partners for this migration. There will then be a roundtable discussion in which executives from the leading vendors react to the analyst assessment and offer their own views on where the market is headed, and how IP-based systems can make the contact center more cost-effective in a challenging economic environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How has the economic downturn affected the migration to IP? What percentage of the new contact center systems being deployed is now SIP-based?
* Where do the vendors stand in terms of market share and technology leadership?
* Can the migration to IP and SIP be cost-justified either through network savings or potential increased sales or faster problem resolution?
* How are media such as text/instant messaging, video and social networking applications like FaceBook and Twitter being incorporated into leading-edge contact centers, and what are the challenges and benefits of these new media types?
* Is the contact center market in danger of being absorbed into other application areas, such as Unified Communications and Business Process Automation? Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
Marcus Birkl has been Vice President UC Integration & Mobility Solutions at Siemens Enterprise Communications since January 2009. Previously he was heading worldwide sales operation of wireless solutions at the company. He began his career at Siemens in 1997 as the Product Manager for the Hicom 300 E communications system. He later handled the worldwide market launch of the HiPath 4000 and took on global responsibility for communications systems for small enterprises. Birkl holds a degree in mathematics from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. He has written numerous articles and presented at many industry events.
The range of options for smart mobile devices continues to expand as do the choices for the underlying operating systems. With the move to unified communications, the mobile device will be doing more than just voice and push email. While consumers load their smartphones with entertainment features, enterprise users have to grapple with issues of security, device management, and a development environment that will support organizational objectives to mobilize line of business applications. However, users are pressuring IT departments support their familiar mobile devices raising issues of security and support. RIM, Apple, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android, WebOS, and LiMO all vying for a slice of the pie, and users face a daunting decision about which environment(s) they should embrace. In this session we will overview the major issues that will factor into that decision and hear from the vendors who will have a hand in making this vision a reality.
KEY QUESTIONS
• Which wireless devices are best suited for supporting enterprise Unified Communications, and—perhaps more importantly—which devices have users already chosen?
• If you support multiple operating system environments, how will that impact application development and support costs?
• How important is it that the mobile device be integrated with the overall Unified Communications solution, what functions are most important to mobilize, and which Unified Communications platforms will be most important to support.
• Should we develop mobile applications that are O/S specific or is it better to host the application on a server and simply use a mobile browser?
• Is it possible to effectively manage user-owned devices (“I want my iPhone/Pre/whatever”)?
• Can a solution that utilizes both Wi-Fi and cellular be implemented if those two technologies are managed by different groups? Who should be in charge?
• Will the combination of Google Voice and Android make Google a real option for the enterprise and how soon?
Steve Blair is a Senior Network Engineer with ISC Networking & Telecommunications at the University of Pennsylvania. Steve specializes in voice and video over IP. Prior to that, Steve was a Network Engineer and a real-time process control Software Engineer with The Boeing Company. Steve holds a Master's Degree in Telecommunications Engineering, an undergraduate degree in Computer Science & Mathematics and will soon receive a certificate from The Wharton School of Business Entrepreneurship program.
To round out our explorations of SIP Trunking, this session lets you hear from enterprise end user representatives who have implemented SIP trunking. These end users will talk from experience about the drivers, pitfalls and rewards of SIP trunking. You’ll come away from this session with an understanding of the real-world challenges and benefits that end users have experienced in production deployments, and you’ll be able to apply these lessons to your own enterprise’s situation.
KEY QUESTIONS
* What drives enterprise deployment of SIP trunks?
* What have users found with regard to such issues as carrier availability, pricing, SLAs and contracting/procurement?
* Did the promised benefits materialize? If so, what were the key steps that ensured the payback—and if not, where were the problems?
* How much can you expect to save with SIP trunks?
* What are the major technical challenges?
Jorge Blanco is the Vice President of Product Marketing for Contact Center Solutions at Avaya. Avaya is the worldwide leader in business communications systems and solutions. Avaya is also the worldwide leader in contact center solutions.
Jorge is responsible for the positioning, promotion, and placement of its extensive contact center solution portfolio. He is also a member of the Contact Center Business Unit’s Leadership Team that guides the overall direction of the portfolio, as well as Avaya’s corporate marketing council.
In his previous role, Jorge led the Product Management organization in Avaya’s Unified Communications Business Unit. During his tenure, Avaya delivered its next generation communications application platform – Avaya Aura™. He has also held leadership positions in solutions marketing, strategy, and planning.
Jorge is a twenty-year industry veteran who has led through multiple market transitions – voice to unified messaging, digital to IP telephony, IP telephony to unified communications. He is now taking that expertise to Avaya’s most important suite of applications for the contact center.
Jorge is a resident of Clinton, New Jersey. Jorge is a member of the Board of Directors at the Hunterdon Art Museum. Jorge was selected as a member of the Young Global Leaders program sponsored by the World Economic Forum in 2006.
This Coffee Talk session will present an independent analysis of the Avaya Roadmap for Nortel, delivered by Brent Kelly, Senior Analyst & Partner, Wainhouse Research. Avaya experts will be on hand to comment and react to the presentation, and you’re invited to ask your questions and share your perspectives.
In this session, a leading analyst will offer her assessment of the current state of the contact center market—the progress enterprises are making on migrating to IP and SIP-based systems, and which vendors they're selecting as partners for this migration. There will then be a roundtable discussion in which executives from the leading vendors react to the analyst assessment and offer their own views on where the market is headed, and how IP-based systems can make the contact center more cost-effective in a challenging economic environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How has the economic downturn affected the migration to IP? What percentage of the new contact center systems being deployed is now SIP-based?
* Where do the vendors stand in terms of market share and technology leadership?
* Can the migration to IP and SIP be cost-justified either through network savings or potential increased sales or faster problem resolution?
* How are media such as text/instant messaging, video and social networking applications like FaceBook and Twitter being incorporated into leading-edge contact centers, and what are the challenges and benefits of these new media types?
* Is the contact center market in danger of being absorbed into other application areas, such as Unified Communications and Business Process Automation? Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
Vice President, Product Marketing, Contact Center Solutions
Christopher G. Botting is the Director of Product Management for Cisco's Customer Contact Business Unit. In this capacity, Mr. Botting is responsible for Cisco's contact center product strategy and all aspects of bringing the company's contact center solutions to market. Previously, Mr. Botting was the Director of Business Development for Cisco's Voice Technology Group, leading world-wide business development and field engagement activities. Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Botting was most recently the Vice President of Marketing and co-founder of PakNetX Corporation. Previously, Mr. Botting was the Marketing Manager of Multimedia Call Centers for MultiLink, Inc.; National Marketing Director for L.M. Ericsson; and a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Northern Telecom. Mr. Botting started his career at Motorola.
Mr. Botting holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (1983) from Grove City College, a M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1989) from North Carolina State University, and a MBA (1991) from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
In this session, a leading analyst will offer her assessment of the current state of the contact center market—the progress enterprises are making on migrating to IP and SIP-based systems, and which vendors they're selecting as partners for this migration. There will then be a roundtable discussion in which executives from the leading vendors react to the analyst assessment and offer their own views on where the market is headed, and how IP-based systems can make the contact center more cost-effective in a challenging economic environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How has the economic downturn affected the migration to IP? What percentage of the new contact center systems being deployed is now SIP-based?
* Where do the vendors stand in terms of market share and technology leadership?
* Can the migration to IP and SIP be cost-justified either through network savings or potential increased sales or faster problem resolution?
* How are media such as text/instant messaging, video and social networking applications like FaceBook and Twitter being incorporated into leading-edge contact centers, and what are the challenges and benefits of these new media types?
* Is the contact center market in danger of being absorbed into other application areas, such as Unified Communications and Business Process Automation? Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
Stephen is responsible for the consultative design and engineering support for Mitel’s product and applications portfolio to our extensive network of business partners and U.S. based sales force. Stephen is responsible for a team of over 60 professional men and women.
Prior to joining Mitel in 1996, Stephen worked in the integrator space designing and installing many comprehensive voice and data networks. At Mitel, Stephen served in many roles ranging from technical support, systems/sales engineering, business development, and strategic alliance management. He has consistently contributed to optimizing performance levels, driving business growth, facilitating key alliances, and defining and implementing strategic technology-driven solutions.
As companies spread out across towns, states, nations and the globe, the challenges of interconnecting locations becomes more complex. And with more employees working from home and on the road, the question of which systems, services and personal devices becomes more challenging. There are new options for centralizing core communications facilities with distributed subnetworks, and the options for mobile communications are expanding almost daily. This session will review the newest options for connecting smaller/ branch locations and at-home and mobile workers.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What design configurations make the most sense for distributed network architectures?
* What's the emphasis on current developments--more features, more security, more availability?
* What are the real capabilities for ensuring system reliability, security and back-up?
* What's the pricing trend?
* Should you be thinking about on-premise equipment or using "the cloud"?
Mr. Burrell brings 25 years of expertise in voice, video, and managed services. His current responsibilities at Orange Business Services include global responsibility for managing the marketing of unified communications and collaboration portfolio, including telepresence.
In 2009, Burrell managed the global launch of Managed Microsoft OCS with Enterprise Telephony supports advanced telephony features within Microsoft applications by integrating Cisco and Avaya IP telephony. According to industry analysts, Orange was "first to market" with this type of packaged service offer.
In 2005, Burrell led a team to launch an Avaya-based IP telephony solution and become the 1st global Avaya Strategic Partner. In 2004, he launched Optimize Telephony Solution based on life cycle approach to IP Telephony. In February 2002, Burrell helped develop and launch of the industry’s first end-to-end IP Telephony solution with global availability. The service received the Frost and Sullivan 2002 Market Engineering Award for Product Innovation.
As a senior manager at BellSouth, Burrell led a team to build a Professional Services practice called Enterprise Network Consulting around network design, performance assessment, and security consulting. In 1998, he helped to plan and launch BellSouth Managed Network Solutions in an alliance with EDS to offer customers managed services for WAN, LAN, and messaging.
During his ten years at MCI, Mr. Burrell provided decision support, market program management and competitive assessment. In 1995, he helped launch MCI ’s entry into the ISP business through internetMCI. In 1994, Burrell supported the launch of Concert, MCI global services’ joint venture with British Telecom, contributed to the successful offering of VPN voice and data services to multinational businesses.
Mr. Burrell’s speaking engagements include: Orange Business Live in Europe, VoiceCon, VON, Network World Technology Tour - VoIP, Connect – Reality of Convergence, Wall Street Technology Association Hot Technologies, and BellSouth Major Client Association Conference.
Unified Communications presents such an array of technology requirements and demands, often with unproven payback, that many enterprises are considering outsourcing Unified Communications, at least until demand reaches critical mass within the enterprise user base and until standards and implementation best practices are more settled. The question is: What Unified Communications applications and functions are available in either managed or hosted offerings, and how should you decide whether it's worthwhile to go this route?
In this session, we'll look at specific managed and hosted Unified Communications offerings; you'll come away with a better idea of what's available, whether it's cost justified, and what competitive advantage your business might be able to gain by moving quickly to implement these Unified Communications apps via a managed or hosted offering.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What carriers, systems integrators or other service providers are currently offering Unified Communications as a managed or hosted service? What are the costs and the business cases?
* What integration efforts are required to make managed/hosted Unified Communications work with the communications functions that you keep in house?
* What are the pitfalls of going with a managed/hosted offering?
* How do you mesh new managed/hosted Unified Communications services with other managed services you may have for WAN equipment, security or other functions already under contract to a service provider? What vendor lock-in scenarios are likely?
* If you implement a managed or hosted Unified Communications service to get a Unified Communications capability up and running quickly, how easy or difficult will it be to move that capability in house later?
Jim Burton is Founder and CXO of CT Link, LLC and Co-Founder of UCStrategies.com. Burton founded the consulting firm in 1989 to help clients in the converging voice, data and networking industries with strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and distribution issues.
In the early 1990s, Burton recognized the challenges vendors and the channel faced as they developed and installed integrated voice/data products. He became the leading authority in the voice/data integration industry and is credited with "coining" the term computer-telephone integration (CTI). Burton helped companies including Microsoft and Intel enter the voice market and helped AT&T (now Avaya), Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Siemens and Toshiba with their CTI strategies.
In the late 1990s, venture capitalists turned to Burton for help in evaluating potential investments in IP PBX start-ups. He went on to help these and other companies with strategic planning and partnering, including NBX (acquired by 3Com, Selsius (acquired by Cisco), ShoreTel and Sphere Communications.
In the early 2000s, Burton began focusing on wireless services and technologies. In 2005 Burton started helping vendors with their Unified Communications strategy and in 2006, along with several colleagues, created a web site, UCStrategies.com, to provide information for enterprise customers and vendors.
For the past three years, the theme of Unified Communications has grown in importance, as it is the vanguard of a fundamental transition that is shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace: The industry is evolving from a focus on hardware to a focus on software - software architectures, software-based systems and services.
The good news is that the inevitability of this transition is widely accepted. However, the bad news is that the promise of Unified Communications remains largely unfulfilled. Implementations of "true" Unified Communications, while growing, remain relatively small in number. There is still considerable confusion in the market about what Unified Communications is and what it isn't. And there are tough issues like interoperability that inhibit wider adoption and deployment. The rocky economic climate doesn't help matters either.
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the Unified Communications market from a variety of perspectives: How far along has the market really evolved? What are the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime? What obstacles need to be overcome as enterprises try to mesh Unified Communications with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations?
In this session, executives from the leading vendors offer their assessment of Unified Communications' evolution to date: What's available now, and what's coming over the next 12 months. The discussion will also cover the barriers that must be overcome for Unified Communications to fulfill its potential - especially interoperability and TCO/ROI concerns, and will examine the various pricing models.
KEY QUESTIONS
* What are prospects for Unified Communications adoption given the weak economy and enterprise budget cuts?
* What are the top Unified Communications applications in terms of actual implementation? What hard savings or ROI exist? Are any "true" Unified Communications apps being adopted, or is it all about audioconferencing bridges and other routes to a quick payback?
* What specific examples exist of enterprises using Unified Communications to change their business processes? Name names.
* What interoperability challenges remain, and how are enterprises tackling the systems integration challenges posed by Unified Communications?
* How have the vendors changed their approach to pricing for Unified Communications capabilities, and what impact are these changes having? What's next in the evolution of Unified Communications pricing?
* Are vendors giving away Unified Communications apps to sell their call control platforms - or vice versa?
Doug is Director, Communication Solutions at N’compass. With over 20 years in the communications technology industry, Doug’s focus is on enterprise communication technologies. Prior to joining N’compass, he managed PlanNet Consulting’s Communications Technology practice and earlier held technical and sales management positions with AT&T and Lucent Technologies.
As a senior consultant and project manager Doug has extensive communications technology experience and has worked on a wide variety of complex engagements in a broad range of vertical industries. His professional experience centers on enterprise communication services which include strategic technology planning, technology acquisition, and implementation management.
Doug has presented on the subject “IP Telephony and UC Pricing and Software Licensing Models” at VoiceCon from 2005-2009. He has also spoken at other industry events such as ACUTA, IPComm, and Voice Report webcasts.
Doug pursued his BA in Business Administration from the University of Texas and earned an MBA from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
Pricing for communications systems had already been evolving rapidly, as the industry moved to software, with its pricing models. Now, as vendors seek new ways to sell products and push Unified Communications in a difficult economic climate, they're trying even more different and varying pricing strategies. In this session, we'll look at the range of pricing and licensing issues across communications capabilities—from basic IP-PBXs to Unified Communications applications, and you'll get a sense of the tradeoffs and negotiating strategies you'll need to get the best value for your communications investment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How has the shift from hardware to software fees affected the final system price and TCO?
* How does the new cost architecture impact your negotiating strategies?
* What license fees are typically charged on top of the cost of IP phones, messaging systems and other elements? How much do these fees run?
* What are the hidden costs in the new licensing structures, and how do you find them?
* Are vendors giving away Unified Communications application licenses in order to get the IP-PBX sale—or vice versa?
Chris Carr serves as Director of Video Markets at Masergy Communications, Inc. He is responsible for MASERGY’s strategic direction and partnerships in the videoconferencing and broadcast media markets. Prior to MASERGY, Carr was on the global sales teams at Zephion Networks and UUNET Technologies. His career in private enterprise was preceded by service as an Infantry Officer with the United States Marine Corps in a variety of command and staff assignments. He is an industry recognized thought leader on IP video transport networks and has been a featured speaker at numerous industry events.
Standardized in 2007, scalable video coding (SVC) promises to deliver incredible benefits for personal, room, and mobile videoconferencing. While hampered by backward-compatibility issues, SVC is already shaking up the industry because it promises highly scalable, low-cost, high-performance video over standard, non-QoS IP networks. This session will investigate the pros and cons and risk factors facing today’s decision makers.
Key Questions:
*What is scalable video coding (SVC) and why does it matter?
*Are the current videoconferencing products about to become dinosaurs?
*Should enterprise buyers invest in this new technology or continue with their legacy systems?
*What are the risks here of making the wrong decisions?
John Cash is an Enterprise Solutions Advocate based in Dallas, TX. Mr. Cash has over 18 years of sales and enterprise IT leadership experience spanning multiple industry segments including manufacturing, financial services and government/military. Prior to joining RIM, Mr. Cash worked for Nokia, overseeing early market sales of Nokia’s enterprise voice and mobility solution for the U.S. Other previous career assignments were with Capital One and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Mr. Cash has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Liberty University.
The range of options for smart mobile devices continues to expand as do the choices for the underlying operating systems. With the move to unified communications, the mobile device will be doing more than just voice and push email. While consumers load their smartphones with entertainment features, enterprise users have to grapple with issues of security, device management, and a development environment that will support organizational objectives to mobilize line of business applications. However, users are pressuring IT departments support their familiar mobile devices raising issues of security and support. RIM, Apple, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android, WebOS, and LiMO all vying for a slice of the pie, and users face a daunting decision about which environment(s) they should embrace. In this session we will overview the major issues that will factor into that decision and hear from the vendors who will have a hand in making this vision a reality.
KEY QUESTIONS
• Which wireless devices are best suited for supporting enterprise Unified Communications, and—perhaps more importantly—which devices have users already chosen?
• If you support multiple operating system environments, how will that impact application development and support costs?
• How important is it that the mobile device be integrated with the overall Unified Communications solution, what functions are most important to mobilize, and which Unified Communications platforms will be most important to support.
• Should we develop mobile applications that are O/S specific or is it better to host the application on a server and simply use a mobile browser?
• Is it possible to effectively manage user-owned devices (“I want my iPhone/Pre/whatever”)?
• Can a solution that utilizes both Wi-Fi and cellular be implemented if those two technologies are managed by different groups? Who should be in charge?
• Will the combination of Google Voice and Android make Google a real option for the enterprise and how soon?
Harpreet Chadha is Senior Director of product management and marketing at Extreme Networks, where he oversees product development of scalable Ethernet switching solutions that help enterprises and carriers build intelligent, cost-effective networks. Prior to Extreme Networks, Chadha was senior principal engineer and product manager at CoSine Communications, where he built and marketed an IP Switch that featured unprecedented scale of virtual routers, firewalls and encryption services. Prior to CoSine, he was a senior developer and architect for network planning tools at Make Systems (OPNET) and storage systems at Alphatronix Inc (Auspex). Chadha graduated from IIT Roorkee, India, and holds a Masters Degree and Doctorate from North Carolina State University.
As we enter the era of truly converged networks the ground-rules for network design are changing. Pervasive use of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing drive new requirements for how the LAN and WAN are provisioned, configured, monitored and managed. This tutorial will give you an overview of network design issues for a combined voice, video and data network and will delve into the details of Quality of Service (QoS). The tutorial will provide a detailed understanding of the design issues you will encounter, techniques for overcoming them, and the specific technologies and practices that are required to make real-time traffic and applications run efficiently and at acceptable quality across your local and wide-area facilities.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What is required to deliver adequate quality of service (QOS) for voice and video on any local and wide-area IP networks that previously handled only data?
* What services do I need from my WAN vendor to support voice and video? What is an appropriate Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
* Can you run VOIP or video over the Internet with acceptable QOS/quality of experience (QOE)?
* How do I classify traffic in the network to ensure voice and video are treated correctly without opening my network up to overutilization by unauthorized endpoints?
* How do you extend your upgrade to serve mobile workers?
* What tools are needed for testing and monitoring a converged network with voice and video?
* I have lots of bandwidth and low utilization, do I really need QoS?
Rupesh Chokshi is responsible for bringing new technology capabilities and emerging services into the market place to meet growing Customer needs. He leads the product management team, and is focused on SIP based Trunking and features. Business VoIP services offer economic benefits of network convergence by providing a fully managed Voice over IP communication solution that supports inbound and outbound calling, toll free, local, long distance, and international reach over integrated data networks.
Mr. Chokshi has held several leadership positions in key functional areas like Global Business, Customer Service, Enterprise Architecture, Network and Systems Development. He has a wealth of experience and background with SIP, VoIP, Voice, IP Data, VPN, and Wireless Technologies. Mr. Chokshi began his career with AT&T Labs in 1997. Mr. Chokshi has published and presented at several leading industry conferences and events including VoiceCon.
Mr. Chokshi holds a M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Clemson University, South Carolina and BS in Engineering from S.P. University Gujarat, India.
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the first portion of the session, Lisa will reveal the results of her research into the details of carriers’ offerings—pricing, service availability, service level agreements, and much more. She will follow up this presentation by leading a discussion with representatives of leading carrier organizations.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 1
* What is the current state of availability of SIP trunking from the major carriers? Are secondary carriers a viable option in places where the largest providers are not?
* What are the pricing trends and structures from the carriers? What specific “gotchas” are you likely to encounter
* What is the status of service level agreements (SLAs) for SIP trunking services?
* What are the elements you should include in an RFI/RFP for SIP trunking services?
Mark Collier is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Vice President of Engineering for SecureLogix Corporation. Mr. Collier is responsible for SecureLogix’s technology direction and research/development. Mark manages the development of SecureLogix’s Enterprise Telephony Management (ETM) System product line. Mark also manages the development of SecureLogix’s various security service offerings.
Mr. Collier is actively performing research in the area of Voice Over IP (VoIP) security. This includes development of custom security assessment tools. Mark leads SecureLogix's VoIP security assessments and is an expert on issues facing enterprises during their VoIP deployments. Mark has recently authored the Hacking Exposed: VoIP book, which describes actual attacks, use of existing and new tools, and practical countermeasures. Mark is also the author of the SANS training course on voice/VoIP security.
Mr. Collier has been working in the industry for over 25 years, with the past 15 in security, telecommunications, and networking. Mark is a frequent author and presenter on the topic of voice and VoIP security. Mark is a founding member of the Voice Over IP Security Alliance (VoIPSA). Mark has been named one of the most influential people in VoIP and maintains a widely read blog at www.voipsecurityblog.com.
Mr. Collier was formerly with Southwest Research Institute, where he directed research in the areas of security and Information Warfare/Operations.
Mr. Collier holds a BS degree from St. Mary’s University.
The issue of security in communications has gone well beyond concerns over vulnerabilities in IP networks. The issues of securing your enterprise's communications systems now extend into mobility, connections with other networks (public and other private networks), as well as the latest concern--issues around security and policy regarding social networking. In this wide-ranging session, we'll briefly review the state of VOIP security, but will then move on to these new, more complex issues. The session will give you a foundation for understanding the universe of security challenges you face in the new communications environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Is IP network security still the primary concern in converged communications networks? If so, what specific vulnerabilities are causing real-world issues?
* What security challenges are added as mobility systems are integrated into IP telephony/Unified Communications? How do you protect against these challenges?
* Can enterprises maintain security while connecting their "islands" of VOIP via SIP trunks? What about opening up their voice systems to business partners or to hosted providers that are delivering discrete elements of the enterprise's voice system?
* What are the biggest security concerns relating to users' adoption of social networking? Are the major issues related to corporate policies, or are there ways in which the security of the communications system itself can be threatened when social networking is integrated with enterprise systems?
Mark Cortner is a senior analyst with Burton Group, which was recently acquired by Gartner. Mark’s research is focused on real-time communications, including telephony and visual collaboration applications, as well as unified communications. With over 25 years of experience in the communications industry, he has served in a variety of development, product marketing, consulting, and senior management roles. Mark is an expert in enterprise strategies related to convergence of telephony, networking, messaging, presence, videoconferencing, telepresence, and wireless-based communications solutions.
The issue of security in communications has gone well beyond concerns over vulnerabilities in IP networks. The issues of securing your enterprise's communications systems now extend into mobility, connections with other networks (public and other private networks), as well as the latest concern--issues around security and policy regarding social networking. In this wide-ranging session, we'll briefly review the state of VOIP security, but will then move on to these new, more complex issues. The session will give you a foundation for understanding the universe of security challenges you face in the new communications environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Is IP network security still the primary concern in converged communications networks? If so, what specific vulnerabilities are causing real-world issues?
* What security challenges are added as mobility systems are integrated into IP telephony/Unified Communications? How do you protect against these challenges?
* Can enterprises maintain security while connecting their "islands" of VOIP via SIP trunks? What about opening up their voice systems to business partners or to hosted providers that are delivering discrete elements of the enterprise's voice system?
* What are the biggest security concerns relating to users' adoption of social networking? Are the major issues related to corporate policies, or are there ways in which the security of the communications system itself can be threatened when social networking is integrated with enterprise systems?
Bruce Craig is a member of Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs and is working in the Application Research Domain on enterprise social networking strategies and architecture and an active member of the People and Projects group. His research is focused on application of social networking data metadata to software development processes. Bruce is a software architect with 25 years experience and previously worked on Alcatel-Lucent Sales Portal pilot, knowledge management system research, and software platforms for Telecommunications .
Social networking is becoming a part of many information workers’ collaborative toolkit, presenting opportunities and challenges for enterprise network managers. Vendors are beginning to integrate social networking tools—both public and internal—into their communications systems. How do you keep up with what your users are doing, offer them better ways of doing it, and use these tools to optimize collaboration in a way that actually saves or makes money for your enterprise? In this session, communications vendors and software providers will describe—and show—what’s possible today.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What’s the best way to leverage the major public social networking tools—Twitter, Facebook, etc.—as part of your enterprise’s collaboration systems?
* What social networking/collaboration capabilities are being built into communications vendors’ existing products, or what new products are these vendors releasing in this area?
* How do you handle policy and compliance issues for employees’ social networking usage?
* What’s the cost of marrying social networking and enterprise communications, and how do you determine the benefit?
Brian Dal Bello is the director of Systems and Solutions in Cisco’s Voice Technology Group. Brian is responsible for planning, oversight and execution of Cisco’s Unified Communications System Releases.
Brian has been with Cisco Systems for 5 years and has a combined total of 25 years of experience in enterprise / carrier voice, video, rich media, and wireless communication solutions.
Brian holds a Bachelor Degree in Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Ontario Canada.
For the past three years, the theme of Unified Communications has grown in importance, as it is the vanguard of a fundamental transition that is shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace: The industry is evolving from a focus on hardware to a focus on software - software architectures, software-based systems and services.
The good news is that the inevitability of this transition is widely accepted. However, the bad news is that the promise of Unified Communications remains largely unfulfilled. Implementations of "true" Unified Communications, while growing, remain relatively small in number. There is still considerable confusion in the market about what Unified Communications is and what it isn't. And there are tough issues like interoperability that inhibit wider adoption and deployment. The rocky economic climate doesn't help matters either.
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the Unified Communications market from a variety of perspectives: How far along has the market really evolved? What are the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime? What obstacles need to be overcome as enterprises try to mesh Unified Communications with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations?
Senior Director of Systems & Solutions, Voice Technology Group
Tom Dalrymple is the director of Global Voice Services Product Management at Verizon Communications. In this role, he leads the product management team responsible for Verizon’s expansive portfolio of domestic US and international local voice services, outbound global voice long distance services, and VoIP Trunking services. Mr. Dalrymple is a veteran telecommunications industry professional with significant experience in marketing, product management, and new product development. His background includes product management of TDM and IP-based voice and data network services, managed services, networking equipment, application packaging, and core services. . Mr. Dalrymple graduated from Bucknell University with a degree in Business Administration and a concentration in Finance, and is based in Northern Virginia.
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the first portion of the session, Lisa will reveal the results of her research into the details of carriers’ offerings—pricing, service availability, service level agreements, and much more. She will follow up this presentation by leading a discussion with representatives of leading carrier organizations.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 1
* What is the current state of availability of SIP trunking from the major carriers? Are secondary carriers a viable option in places where the largest providers are not?
* What are the pricing trends and structures from the carriers? What specific “gotchas” are you likely to encounter
* What is the status of service level agreements (SLAs) for SIP trunking services?
* What are the elements you should include in an RFI/RFP for SIP trunking services?
Director, Global Voice Services Product Management
Andrew W. Davis, Managing Partner at Wainhouse Research and company Founder, has more than ten years experience as a successful technology consultant and industry analyst. Prior to independent consulting, Andrew held senior marketing positions with several large and small high-technology companies. He has authored over 250 trade journal articles and opinion columns on multimedia communications, image and signal processing, videoconferencing, and corporate strategies. Andrew has published numerous market research reports and is the principal editor of the conferencing industry's leading newsletter, the Wainhouse Research Bulletin. Andrew specializes in videoconferencing, rich media communications, strategy consulting, and new business development. A well-known industry guest speaker, Mr. Davis holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering from Cornell University and a Masters of Business Administration from Harvard University.
Personal video conferencing is a very different paradigm from traditional room-based or telepresence video. Acceptance of this technology is being driven by a geographically disparate or travelling work force, company partnering and an incessant need to quickly establish personal relationships and execute business at a faster pace. Network bandwidth and desktop power are finally able to support a high quality experience. The market is rapidly evolving and many hardware and software deployment choices exist. How does the enterprise IT team decide which approach best works to support its specific business needs? This session will review different models of desktop deployment and highlight demonstrations of desktop solutions to help you make your decisions.
Standardized in 2007, scalable video coding (SVC) promises to deliver incredible benefits for personal, room, and mobile videoconferencing. While hampered by backward-compatibility issues, SVC is already shaking up the industry because it promises highly scalable, low-cost, high-performance video over standard, non-QoS IP networks. This session will investigate the pros and cons and risk factors facing today’s decision makers.
Key Questions:
*What is scalable video coding (SVC) and why does it matter?
*Are the current videoconferencing products about to become dinosaurs?
*Should enterprise buyers invest in this new technology or continue with their legacy systems?
*What are the risks here of making the wrong decisions?
Nicolas de Kouchkovsky brings more than 20 years of IT and Telecommunications industry experience to his role as Chief Marketing Officer, Enterprise Applications for Alcatel-Lucent. He is responsible for the awareness and positioning of the complete Alcatel-Lucent enterprise portfolio, including the Genesys brand. Nicolas spent at 10 years at Genesys from 2000 to 2009 in senior leadership positions. As Vice President of Products and Strategy, he oversaw product management, product marketing and strategy while helping Genesys achieve a market leader position in the contact center software market. He later served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, overseeing key acquisitions for the Genesys portfolio. In 2009, as President, he was responsible for the management of Genesys, driving the company's strategic direction and expanding the Genesys brand with increased capabilities in Intelligent Workload Distribution. Genesys was named to the 2009 Visionaries quadrant for E-services by the market research firm Gartner, Inc. Prior to joining Genesys, he spent seven years in both business and engineering senior management roles at Alcatel (now Alcatel-Lucent). Before joining Alcatel-Lucent, he was Chief Technology Officer at Cirel, a startup in the field of multi-protocol telecom gateways for LANs. Nicolas earned a Masters degree in Math and Physics from Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau. He also holds a Masters in Robotics and Data Processing from Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées in Paris.
In this session, a leading analyst will offer her assessment of the current state of the contact center market—the progress enterprises are making on migrating to IP and SIP-based systems, and which vendors they're selecting as partners for this migration. There will then be a roundtable discussion in which executives from the leading vendors react to the analyst assessment and offer their own views on where the market is headed, and how IP-based systems can make the contact center more cost-effective in a challenging economic environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How has the economic downturn affected the migration to IP? What percentage of the new contact center systems being deployed is now SIP-based?
* Where do the vendors stand in terms of market share and technology leadership?
* Can the migration to IP and SIP be cost-justified either through network savings or potential increased sales or faster problem resolution?
* How are media such as text/instant messaging, video and social networking applications like FaceBook and Twitter being incorporated into leading-edge contact centers, and what are the challenges and benefits of these new media types?
* Is the contact center market in danger of being absorbed into other application areas, such as Unified Communications and Business Process Automation? Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
Lev Deich has been part of 911 Enable since its inception in 2005 and currently serves as its Director, responsible for day-to-day operations and ongoing business development.
Prior to 911 Enable, Lev had a distinguished career with Ericsson where he held various engineering and management positions in the US and Europe. Lev has over 11 years of datacom and telecom experience, including managing joint software development projects with large enterprises such as Juniper Networks and Advanced Computer Communication.
Lev holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Concordia University, where he graduated with distinct honors.
This session will help you understand the latest approaches to providing E911 coverage for an IP Telephony-enabled enterprise. We'll examine the infrastructure you need to add to your deployment in order to ensure accuracy, resiliency and high-availability in your E911 coverage. We'll also look at related emergency-notification technologies aimed at pushing information out to end users in times of disaster or other crises.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How have enterprises tackled the challenges of providing location-specific E911?
* What cost will an E911 deployment across the enterprise add to an IP Telephony deployment?
* What are the risks of a piecemeal E911 deployment?
* How can you add emergency notification to your system to inform users of crises (e.g., school/workplace shootings, natural disasters, etc.)
John Del Pizzo is the Senior Offering Manager for IBM's Lotus Sametime product family. In this capacity he is responsible for business strategy for the market's leading unified communications and collaboration platform. Sametime integrates enterprise class instant messaging, presence awareness, online, video, telephony and many other capabilities into a seamless user experience.
Prior to joining the Sametime team, John was a Global Solutions Executive in IBM's Sensor Solutions unit. There, he led multiple software, services and sales teams to deliver sensor-based supply chain solutions for the Pharmaceutical, Defense, Consumer Products and Retail Industries.
John has over ten years experience in the technology industry, holding sales and business development roles in several startups prior to joining IBM. He earned his MBA from Carnegie Mellon and has a BA in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. John currently resides in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and three children.
In this session, executives from the leading vendors offer their assessment of Unified Communications' evolution to date: What's available now, and what's coming over the next 12 months. The discussion will also cover the barriers that must be overcome for Unified Communications to fulfill its potential - especially interoperability and TCO/ROI concerns, and will examine the various pricing models.
KEY QUESTIONS
* What are prospects for Unified Communications adoption given the weak economy and enterprise budget cuts?
* What are the top Unified Communications applications in terms of actual implementation? What hard savings or ROI exist? Are any "true" Unified Communications apps being adopted, or is it all about audioconferencing bridges and other routes to a quick payback?
* What specific examples exist of enterprises using Unified Communications to change their business processes? Name names.
* What interoperability challenges remain, and how are enterprises tackling the systems integration challenges posed by Unified Communications?
* How have the vendors changed their approach to pricing for Unified Communications capabilities, and what impact are these changes having? What's next in the evolution of Unified Communications pricing?
* Are vendors giving away Unified Communications apps to sell their call control platforms - or vice versa?
Unified Communications presents such an array of technology requirements and demands, often with unproven payback, that many enterprises are considering outsourcing Unified Communications, at least until demand reaches critical mass within the enterprise user base and until standards and implementation best practices are more settled. The question is: What Unified Communications applications and functions are available in either managed or hosted offerings, and how should you decide whether it's worthwhile to go this route?
In this session, we'll look at specific managed and hosted Unified Communications offerings; you'll come away with a better idea of what's available, whether it's cost justified, and what competitive advantage your business might be able to gain by moving quickly to implement these Unified Communications apps via a managed or hosted offering.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What carriers, systems integrators or other service providers are currently offering Unified Communications as a managed or hosted service? What are the costs and the business cases?
* What integration efforts are required to make managed/hosted Unified Communications work with the communications functions that you keep in house?
* What are the pitfalls of going with a managed/hosted offering?
* How do you mesh new managed/hosted Unified Communications services with other managed services you may have for WAN equipment, security or other functions already under contract to a service provider? What vendor lock-in scenarios are likely?
* If you implement a managed or hosted Unified Communications service to get a Unified Communications capability up and running quickly, how easy or difficult will it be to move that capability in house later?
Mario Di Prizio leads solution architecture, product development and system deployment for Motorola's Converged Enterprise Communications (CEC) product division, which is part of the Enterprise Mobility Business. Prior to CEC Mario led many other product development organizations in other Motorola business units ranging from 2-way radio systems for Public Safety and Enterprises, RFID and Smart Cards, security solutions, wireless communications and voice over IP. Mario started his career in communications and high tech when he joined Motorola in 1981. Mario holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering; an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an Executive MBA from Northwestern Kellogg school of management.
The demise of the desk phone has been predicted for several years now, but is there any evidence of a decline? Has the economic downturn brought a reassessment of the 30-40% of a new system spend that's devoted to desktop instruments? What's the case for deploying a desk phone to non-customer-facing employees? In this session, we'll debate whether budget cuts should finally force enterprises to revisit the expense of desk phones. We'll also consider the features and functions that are most appealing in desk phones in this environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* With some vendors bundling Unified Communications functionality with IP-PBXs, is it worthwhile to forgo hard phones altogether?
* What is the price/performance of the latest phone sets? Are vendors cutting prices to stimulate continued demand? What are the life cycle expectations for hard phones?
* Will the cost of vendor-proprietary desk phones drive increased adoption of: SIP phones? Softphones? Mobility features in call control platforms?
* What quality and security challenges need to be overcome before softphones/Unified Communications portals go more mainstream?
Senior Director Engineering and Architecture Converged Enterprise Communications
Presence is the heart of next-generation enterprise communications by providing information about who is available and via what method. There are, however, two challenges: First, presence loses much of its value if it's implemented within discrete systems that can't exchange information – e.g., between different systems within an enterprise, between partner companies, with customers and between public and private networks. Second, while Unified Communications capabilities open up many more possibilities to identify and reach the individual or skill needed, that openness threatens to bury us in too much, too easy contact.
Two capabilities are needed: An open but secure ability to exchange presence information between systems, and an efficient way to establish and maintain rules and policies about who can contact who, when, and how. This session will explore these topics and examine progress on these important functionality issues.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What “rich presence” capabilities will we see, and how will they help Unified Communications applications deployment?
* What are the issues in inter- and intra-enterprise presence aggregation and federation, and how far have we progressed in solving them?
* How is the use of social networks affecting the concepts of presence?
* Will setting presence status require less manual intervention in the future?
* What is the role of rules and policy engines, and where are we in their development?
*
How should enterprises plan current deployments to be ready for future presence capabilities?
For the past three years, the theme of Unified Communications has grown in importance, as it is the vanguard of a fundamental transition that is shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace: The industry is evolving from a focus on hardware to a focus on software - software architectures, software-based systems and services.
The good news is that the inevitability of this transition is widely accepted. However, the bad news is that the promise of Unified Communications remains largely unfulfilled. Implementations of "true" Unified Communications, while growing, remain relatively small in number. There is still considerable confusion in the market about what Unified Communications is and what it isn't. And there are tough issues like interoperability that inhibit wider adoption and deployment. The rocky economic climate doesn't help matters either.
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the Unified Communications market from a variety of perspectives: How far along has the market really evolved? What are the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime? What obstacles need to be overcome as enterprises try to mesh Unified Communications with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations?
This Coffee Talk session will present an independent analysis of the Avaya Roadmap for Nortel, delivered by Brent Kelly, Senior Analyst & Partner, Wainhouse Research. Avaya experts will be on hand to comment and react to the presentation, and you’re invited to ask your questions and share your perspectives.
Vice President and General Manager, Unified Communications and Collaboration
Gordon Eddy is the Director of Product Management for the Enterprise Business Unit at Empirix, Inc. Over the past ten years, Gordon’s primary responsibilities have been to bring new, innovative network and service assurance solutions to the VoIP/NGN/IMS market place. He joined Hammer Technologies in 1999, one year before that company became part of Empirix, Inc. Prior to his arrival at Hammer, Gordon worked at Teradyne in a variety of roles ranging from test engineer to senior product manager. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Massachusetts-Lowell and MBA from Bentley College in Waltham, MA.
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the second portion, Lisa will describe the equipment that may be required for a SIP trunking implementation—IP-PBXs, VOIP gateways, Session Border Controllers, etc. Once again, she will follow her presentation by discussing the state of the industry with representatives from the leading vendors in the equipment space.
You will come away from this session with a clear understanding of the service and CPE elements that make up a SIP trunking implementation, and you will walk away more prepared to start developing RFIs and RFPs for SIP trunking for your enterprise.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 2
* Are IP-PBX vendors’ platforms able to support SIP trunks natively? If not, what must be added to these systems to accommodate SIP trunks?
* What is the role of the Session Border Controller (SBC) in SIP trunking? Are SBCs mandatory?
* How do you typically procure equipment that you may need to acquire to implement SIP trunks—do you implement them as CPE you manage yourself? Does the carrier provide them as part of its offer?
* What network management/monitoring capabilities do you need in house in order to validate carrier SLA compliance?
Director of Enterprise Product Management and Marketing
Phil Edholm is the Vice President of Technology Strategy and Innovation for Avaya GCS.
Prior to joining Avaya, he was CT/So for the Nortel Enterprise Business. Leveraging his experience as a technology leader across data and voice networking products, Phil focuses on the Avaya product portfolio. In this role, he is responsible for defining the vision and strategic technology directions for GCS. He also is responsible for GCS portfolio architecture, strategy, and Design/User Experience. In this role he and his team drive the technologies and architectures across the Avaya portfolio delivering systems value and capability.
At Nortel, Phil led the development of VoIP solutions and multimedia communications as well as IP transport technology. Phil’s background includes extensive LAN and data communications experience, including 9 years with Sytek/Hughes LAN Systems and 4 years with Silicon Valley start-ups. Phil was a member of the IEEE 802.3 standards committee during the definition of broadband Ethernet and 10BaseT, developed the first multi-protocol network interfaces, and was a founder of the Frame Relay Forum. He has been a featured speaker at many international conferences and is recognized as an industry visionary and leader of the convergence transformation. In 2007, he has been recognized by Frost and Sullivan with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Growth, Innovation and Leadership. Phil is a widely sought speaker at global conferences and has been in the VoiceCon Great Debate three times. Phil has been recognized by the IEEE as the originator of “Edholm’s Law of Bandwidth” as published in July 2004 IEEE Spectrum magazine and as one of the “Top 100 Voices of IP Communications: by Internet Telephony magazine. Phil has 10 granted patents with 12 patent applications pending. He holds a BSME/EE from GMI/Kettering University.
As enterprise communications moves from the legacy PBX-centric architecture to one based on IP networking and software applications, the architectures supporting these systems will also change. Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate communications systems more tightly into their corporate datacenters, taking advantage of Web Services, server virtualization and Cloud Computing, among other technology trends.
So how should enterprises plan to take advantage of these trends, and what pitfalls await them as they do? And how will technology vendors attempt to leverage these trends in their own product or services offerings?
In this VoiceCon Summit, CTOs and other technology leaders will discuss and debate the various approaches to next-gen communications architectures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how your enterprise's communications systems will fit into the larger IT environment, and how these new architectures will support end users to provide higher productivity and great business benefits.
Vice President, Innovation and Technology Strategy
Adam Edwards is the director of field systems engineering and business development at Apparent Networks. In this role Adam leads a team responsible for ensuring customer and partner success when deploying Apparent’s network monitoring and troubleshooting solutions to deliver performance critical applications such as VoIP, IP video, and virtualization. Before joining Apparent Networks in 2008, Adam spent 7 years at Motive in various technical leadership positions helping broadband providers remotely manage devices and deliver VoIP, IPTV, networking, and security services to business and residential subscribers. Adam has held numerous other leadership roles developing application, systems and network management technologies over the past 20 years. Adam began his career in technology while studying engineering at the University of Rochester and is a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserve.
Real-time traffic (voice and video) demand that the network provide low latency, low packet loss and low jitter. Today’s dynamic networks are constantly changing, and the distributed nature of network configuration often lead to errors in design or implementation that can cause quality problems for voice and video conferencing applications. A new breed of testing methodologies and tools is required to test or monitor networks and to isolate problems. This session will explore the need for these tools, will categorize the tools and will list vendors that provide the different kinds of solutions needed to manage today’s complex converged networks.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Why are new tools required to support voice and video conferencing? Why can’t I use the tools that have been serving me well for years?
* What features are required in these tools for managing and monitoring real-time networks?
* Who are the vendors and what types of tools to they offer?
* Do I need different tools for debugging than I do for operational monitoring of the network?
Patrick is Sr. Director of Product Management at Polycom and is responsible for driving the evolution of VoIP phones today to the UC endpoints of tomorrow. Patrick has been in the VoIP industry for over 10 years with recent past experience as VP of Product Management and co-founder of Zultys Technologies. Patrick has also held senior technical roles at CopperCom and Spirent Communications and holds a BSEE degree from Purdue University.
The demise of the desk phone has been predicted for several years now, but is there any evidence of a decline? Has the economic downturn brought a reassessment of the 30-40% of a new system spend that's devoted to desktop instruments? What's the case for deploying a desk phone to non-customer-facing employees? In this session, we'll debate whether budget cuts should finally force enterprises to revisit the expense of desk phones. We'll also consider the features and functions that are most appealing in desk phones in this environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* With some vendors bundling Unified Communications functionality with IP-PBXs, is it worthwhile to forgo hard phones altogether?
* What is the price/performance of the latest phone sets? Are vendors cutting prices to stimulate continued demand? What are the life cycle expectations for hard phones?
* Will the cost of vendor-proprietary desk phones drive increased adoption of: SIP phones? Softphones? Mobility features in call control platforms?
* What quality and security challenges need to be overcome before softphones/Unified Communications portals go more mainstream?
Michael Finneran, Principal of dBrn Associates, Inc. is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking field, his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID.
A lively and informative speaker, Mr. Finneran has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon, InterOp, and the Mobile Business Expo. In the consulting area, he has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas.
A long time columnist for Business Communications Review, he now contributes regularly to NoJitter and UC Strategies. Well respected as an educator, Mr. Finneran has conducted over 2000 seminars on networking topics in the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. His programs are offered through Telecom+UC Training.
A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
The range of options for smart mobile devices continues to expand as do the choices for the underlying operating systems. With the move to unified communications, the mobile device will be doing more than just voice and push email. While consumers load their smartphones with entertainment features, enterprise users have to grapple with issues of security, device management, and a development environment that will support organizational objectives to mobilize line of business applications. However, users are pressuring IT departments support their familiar mobile devices raising issues of security and support. RIM, Apple, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Android, WebOS, and LiMO all vying for a slice of the pie, and users face a daunting decision about which environment(s) they should embrace. In this session we will overview the major issues that will factor into that decision and hear from the vendors who will have a hand in making this vision a reality.
KEY QUESTIONS
• Which wireless devices are best suited for supporting enterprise Unified Communications, and—perhaps more importantly—which devices have users already chosen?
• If you support multiple operating system environments, how will that impact application development and support costs?
• How important is it that the mobile device be integrated with the overall Unified Communications solution, what functions are most important to mobilize, and which Unified Communications platforms will be most important to support.
• Should we develop mobile applications that are O/S specific or is it better to host the application on a server and simply use a mobile browser?
• Is it possible to effectively manage user-owned devices (“I want my iPhone/Pre/whatever”)?
• Can a solution that utilizes both Wi-Fi and cellular be implemented if those two technologies are managed by different groups? Who should be in charge?
• Will the combination of Google Voice and Android make Google a real option for the enterprise and how soon?
Which mobility issues are most critical for your enterprise: Integrating PBXs with cellular devices? Standardizing on a single type of end-user mobile device? Controlling cellular costs and negotiating better deals with the carriers? We'll gather to assess the state of mobility in the enterprise, and answer some questions about how to advance mobility and begin integrating it with Unified Communications.
Mobility is one of the key features of Unified Communications, however, each vendor seems to have a different range of solutions. Some depend on cellular service exclusively which can add to already spiraling cellular bills. The combination of wireless LANs and Wi-Fi can lower cellular usage and Wi-Fi also supports higher data rates than the cellular carriers’ 3G services. But upgrading the WLAN to support voice can be expensive and there’s the challenge of accurately matching capacity to call volumes. Most IP PBX vendors build or partner to provide dual mode Wi-Fi cellular that combine the two technologies and can transparently hand off calls. There are also Wi-Fi only and DECT solutions to support users who are mobile but only within the building or campus.
The VoiceCon team has put together a request for proposal for a mobile Unified Communications solution to work in conjunction with an IP-PBX deployment. A set of of mobility requirements has been added, but no particular technology solution is specified. Participating vendors will propose a solution based on their existing product lines, identify the products required to implement it, and provide cost per user and for the entire solution.
Twelve leading vendors have been asked to participate, and each will get the opportunity to describe their solution, why they chose it, and to highlight the cost and particular advantages of their approach. We have also asked them to complete a feature matrix, which we will use to summarize and compare their offerings.
Mobility is an increasingly important element in Unified Communications and this deep dive will allow you to:
- See what the vendors have to offer on the mobility front
- Understand the elements involved in their solutions, and the particular features they offer
- Recognize what it will cost to add mobility to Unified Communications
- Determine how creatively they can address mobility requirements
KEY QUESTIONS
• What is the most cost effective way to integrate mobility for users who split their time in and out of the office? How about those who are mobile only within the office?
• What elements are actually involved in adding mobility to each vendor’s Unified Communications solution, what do they cost, either purchased separately or in a bundle with other Unified Communications features?
• Can a dual mode Wi-Fi/cellular solution be cost justified on its own or do we have to look for soft productivity benefits?
• If the costs of upgrading a WLAN to support voice are significant, can DECT be a cost effective alternative?
• Will users get the same range of features on a cellular-only, dual mode Wi-Fi/cellular, and VoWLAN based mobile UC solution?
Hear from representatives of Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Mitel, NEC, RIM, ShoreTel and Siemens Enterprise Communications Group.
If users are mobile across a wide area, cellular is the only available option. However, if the range of mobility is constrained to the building or campus, there are several options that could be considered. If the choice is to go cellular, then the facility might require a distributed antenna system (DAS) or possibly femtocells to ensure adequate cellular signal coverage. If the facility has wireless LAN (WLAN) in-place, you can consider voice over WLAN technology, but the Digital Enhanced Cordless Telephony (DECT) option also comes into the picture. This Coffee Talk will put the options on the table and we invite everyone who has had to come up with – or is looking for -- a solution to come and describe their experiences.
As we enter the era of truly converged networks the ground-rules for network design are changing. Pervasive use of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing drive new requirements for how the LAN and WAN are provisioned, configured, monitored and managed. This tutorial will give you an overview of network design issues for a combined voice, video and data network and will delve into the details of Quality of Service (QoS). The tutorial will provide a detailed understanding of the design issues you will encounter, techniques for overcoming them, and the specific technologies and practices that are required to make real-time traffic and applications run efficiently and at acceptable quality across your local and wide-area facilities.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What is required to deliver adequate quality of service (QOS) for voice and video on any local and wide-area IP networks that previously handled only data?
* What services do I need from my WAN vendor to support voice and video? What is an appropriate Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
* Can you run VOIP or video over the Internet with acceptable QOS/quality of experience (QOE)?
* How do I classify traffic in the network to ensure voice and video are treated correctly without opening my network up to overutilization by unauthorized endpoints?
* How do you extend your upgrade to serve mobile workers?
* What tools are needed for testing and monitoring a converged network with voice and video?
* I have lots of bandwidth and low utilization, do I really need QoS?
Many industry analysts (and some vendors) are asserting that the desk phone is, if not dead, at least past its prime. They argue that there’s no cost justification for putting a hard phone on every desk, claiming a PC-based softphone is an adequate substitute for at least a significant portion of the user base. Those on the other side of this debate argue that PCs are prone to unpredictable problems and crashes, that they’re not always on, and that softphones provide lower voice quality and security. So who’s right? In this Summit, a panel of experts will debate the issues and let you decide.
From Wi-Fi to cellular and 4G, mobility is an increasingly important factor in enterprise communications. However, mobile technology remains a blind spot for many enterprise IT departments. IT staffs wrestle with basic understanding while users press for more far-reaching mobile applications. For security, IT has built a mobility fortress with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, but now users are more interested in iPhone, Android, and Pre. This session is designed to introduce some of the major topics that are impacting enterprise mobility, help you to understand the options available, and bring you up to speed on current best practices on the mobility front.
KEY QUESTIONS
• How do I get my mobile expenses under control?
• Is “consumerization” really the future of enterprise mobility?
• What are the current best practices for mobile device management and security?
• Can my Wi-Fi network do voice, or should I opt for DECT or stick with cellular?
• How do the options for improving indoor coverage, Wi-Fi, DAS, and femtocells, stack up?
• How do the 4G options, LTE and WiMAX, compare in terms of cost and capacity, and when can we expect to see them?
• What are the important planning steps for an 802.11n deployment?
• Can Fixed Mobile Convergence really save me money, and what are the major PBX and Carrier options being offered?
Personal video conferencing is a very different paradigm from traditional room-based or telepresence video. Acceptance of this technology is being driven by a geographically disparate or travelling work force, company partnering and an incessant need to quickly establish personal relationships and execute business at a faster pace. Network bandwidth and desktop power are finally able to support a high quality experience. The market is rapidly evolving and many hardware and software deployment choices exist. How does the enterprise IT team decide which approach best works to support its specific business needs? This session will review different models of desktop deployment and highlight demonstrations of desktop solutions to help you make your decisions.
Pat Galvin joined IBM in 1998 as part of the original Sametime team. He is now the lead architect for Sametime, and has contributed to every release along the way. He is also a leading evangelist for the use of SIP within IBM, and he lead the team that extended the WebSphere Application Server to support the development of SIP-based applications. Most recently he headed up the team that built Sametime Unified Telephony, an add-on that seamlessly integrates Sametime with the enterprise telephone system.
As enterprise communications moves from the legacy PBX-centric architecture to one based on IP networking and software applications, the architectures supporting these systems will also change. Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate communications systems more tightly into their corporate datacenters, taking advantage of Web Services, server virtualization and Cloud Computing, among other technology trends.
So how should enterprises plan to take advantage of these trends, and what pitfalls await them as they do? And how will technology vendors attempt to leverage these trends in their own product or services offerings?
In this VoiceCon Summit, CTOs and other technology leaders will discuss and debate the various approaches to next-gen communications architectures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how your enterprise's communications systems will fit into the larger IT environment, and how these new architectures will support end users to provide higher productivity and great business benefits.
Presence is the heart of next-generation enterprise communications by providing information about who is available and via what method. There are, however, two challenges: First, presence loses much of its value if it's implemented within discrete systems that can't exchange information – e.g., between different systems within an enterprise, between partner companies, with customers and between public and private networks. Second, while Unified Communications capabilities open up many more possibilities to identify and reach the individual or skill needed, that openness threatens to bury us in too much, too easy contact.
Two capabilities are needed: An open but secure ability to exchange presence information between systems, and an efficient way to establish and maintain rules and policies about who can contact who, when, and how. This session will explore these topics and examine progress on these important functionality issues.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What “rich presence” capabilities will we see, and how will they help Unified Communications applications deployment?
* What are the issues in inter- and intra-enterprise presence aggregation and federation, and how far have we progressed in solving them?
* How is the use of social networks affecting the concepts of presence?
* Will setting presence status require less manual intervention in the future?
* What is the role of rules and policy engines, and where are we in their development?
*
How should enterprises plan current deployments to be ready for future presence capabilities?
Robin Gareiss is Executive Vice President and Senior Founding Partner for Nemertes Research, where she oversees research projects and direction, conducts strategic seminars, develops cost models, and advises leading enterprises, vendors, and carriers. She currently serves as chief financial officer, as well.
Whether an enterprise is early in its migration to IP Telephony or further along and now evaluating the concept of Unified Communications, it's not easy to build a credible business case. IP Telephony and, in particular, Unified Communications, are complex and involve numerous technologies, decision-makers and equipment, software and service providers.
This workshop will be divided into two segments: The first is devoted to IP Telephony businesses cases, the second will cover the Unified Communications business case. It will be based on IP Telephony cost data that has been gathered over the past five years from more than 800 companies that have implemented the technology, as well as real-world data from hundreds of IT decision makers on the newer Unified Communications products and technologies.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How do companies build a business case around IP Telephony and Unified Communications? What are the key metrics?
* What does it really cost to implement IP Telephony? What are the cost components of a Unified Communications business case?
* What resources (internal and external) companies must devote to their VOIP and Unified Communications rollouts, per end-unit, per year segmented by rollout size and vendor.
* What are some of the key pitfalls? Where did companies go wrong?
* What are some compelling business case models for both IP Telephony and Unified Communications?
As companies spread out across towns, states, nations and the globe, the challenges of interconnecting locations becomes more complex. And with more employees working from home and on the road, the question of which systems, services and personal devices becomes more challenging. There are new options for centralizing core communications facilities with distributed subnetworks, and the options for mobile communications are expanding almost daily. This session will review the newest options for connecting smaller/ branch locations and at-home and mobile workers.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What design configurations make the most sense for distributed network architectures?
* What's the emphasis on current developments--more features, more security, more availability?
* What are the real capabilities for ensuring system reliability, security and back-up?
* What's the pricing trend?
* Should you be thinking about on-premise equipment or using "the cloud"?
Executive Vice President and Senior Founding Partner
Gary Gordon, Portfolio Manager for Core Solutions at NEC Corporation of America, has been with NEC since 2004. In his role, Gary manages all facets of the UC product line including NEC’s software-based solution, UNIVERGE Sphericall. Gary has more than 18 years experience working with emerging technologies, including presence based applications, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and Communication Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), all foundation technologies for UC. He has over seven years’ experience in managing PC and Web-based applications on a large IP network. Gary brings strong knowledge and management skill in presence-based applications and has additional expertise in sales and marketing.
As companies spread out across towns, states, nations and the globe, the challenges of interconnecting locations becomes more complex. And with more employees working from home and on the road, the question of which systems, services and personal devices becomes more challenging. There are new options for centralizing core communications facilities with distributed subnetworks, and the options for mobile communications are expanding almost daily. This session will review the newest options for connecting smaller/ branch locations and at-home and mobile workers.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What design configurations make the most sense for distributed network architectures?
* What's the emphasis on current developments--more features, more security, more availability?
* What are the real capabilities for ensuring system reliability, security and back-up?
* What's the pricing trend?
* Should you be thinking about on-premise equipment or using "the cloud"?
Peter Greco has been with Siemens and its antecedent entities for his entire professional career. His roles have included staff and management functions in System Design, Sales Engineering, Sales, Program Management, Product Support and Sales Operations. He has represented Siemens in numerous industry forums and public events. Peter has earned Circle of Excellence recognition in each role he has held. Peter’s primary focus is supporting the field, our partners and our customers through active participation in customer calls, issue escalation, new programs, customer and product strategies, etc. Currently operating out of the Philadelphia area, Mr. Greco has been published in several periodicals and holds an Honors Degree from West Chester University.
For the past three years, the theme of Unified Communications has grown in importance, as it is the vanguard of a fundamental transition that is shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace: The industry is evolving from a focus on hardware to a focus on software - software architectures, software-based systems and services.
The good news is that the inevitability of this transition is widely accepted. However, the bad news is that the promise of Unified Communications remains largely unfulfilled. Implementations of "true" Unified Communications, while growing, remain relatively small in number. There is still considerable confusion in the market about what Unified Communications is and what it isn't. And there are tough issues like interoperability that inhibit wider adoption and deployment. The rocky economic climate doesn't help matters either.
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the Unified Communications market from a variety of perspectives: How far along has the market really evolved? What are the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime? What obstacles need to be overcome as enterprises try to mesh Unified Communications with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations?
Steven Guthrie has spent the past decade in the IP network and telephony management market as an active participant in the emergence of IP-based business services and IP service technologies as well as real time IP communications such as voice and video over IP. In his role as Senior Principal Product Marketing Manager at CA, Steve is responsible for understanding how enterprises, government agencies and service providers use infrastructure and performance management solutions to improve the efficiency and cost of managing their networks, systems, database and applications. With this insight, he communicates user experiences and industry best practices to help other organizations optimize their converged network investments and achieve reliable business services and high user satisfaction.
Real-time traffic (voice and video) demand that the network provide low latency, low packet loss and low jitter. Today’s dynamic networks are constantly changing, and the distributed nature of network configuration often lead to errors in design or implementation that can cause quality problems for voice and video conferencing applications. A new breed of testing methodologies and tools is required to test or monitor networks and to isolate problems. This session will explore the need for these tools, will categorize the tools and will list vendors that provide the different kinds of solutions needed to manage today’s complex converged networks.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Why are new tools required to support voice and video conferencing? Why can’t I use the tools that have been serving me well for years?
* What features are required in these tools for managing and monitoring real-time networks?
* Who are the vendors and what types of tools to they offer?
* Do I need different tools for debugging than I do for operational monitoring of the network?
Bernard Gutnick, ShoreTel’s Senior Director of Product Marketing is a frequent representative for ShoreTel in public speaking events and education forums, and is well known for his case study presentations. Bernard has over 20 years of experience in the communications industry. Prior to joining ShoreTel in 2007, he was vice president product marketing for Sylantro Systems. He held senior positions in marketing and sales at TerreStar Networks, Aspect Communications, Octel Communications, Nortel Networks and the Manitoba Telephone System. He holds a master’s degree in business administration the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.
As companies spread out across towns, states, nations and the globe, the challenges of interconnecting locations becomes more complex. And with more employees working from home and on the road, the question of which systems, services and personal devices becomes more challenging. There are new options for centralizing core communications facilities with distributed subnetworks, and the options for mobile communications are expanding almost daily. This session will review the newest options for connecting smaller/ branch locations and at-home and mobile workers.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What design configurations make the most sense for distributed network architectures?
* What's the emphasis on current developments--more features, more security, more availability?
* What are the real capabilities for ensuring system reliability, security and back-up?
* What's the pricing trend?
* Should you be thinking about on-premise equipment or using "the cloud"?
Steve Hardy, is Director of Product Marketing for Avaya’s Unified Communication Business Unit.. He is responsible for driving product and solutions marketing planning and execution in support of Avaya’s core telephony and unified communications applications. Since joining Avaya in January 2006, Steve has overseen the global product marketing team for core telephony and appliances driving launch and ongoing marketing activities for Avaya’s core business.
Prior to Avaya, Steve spent 6 years leading global and regional product marketing activities at Intel Corporation in the US and EMEA, with accomplishments across service provider infrastructure though small business networking businesses. Prior to Intel, Steve held product marketing and product line management responsibilities at 3Com and Sun Microsystems (UK).
The whole IT industry seems to have its collective head in the "cloud" these days. Cloud Computing is all the rage and is being portrayed as the technical silver bullet to just about any IT-related problem. To be sure, the idea of reducing IT expenditures and headcount sounds compelling, particularly in tough economic times.
But where - and how -- does enterprise communications fit within the emerging framework for Cloud Computing? Does it portend a new set of options for delivering and managing voice, video and data communications, or is Cloud Computing for communications not much more than Centrex dressed up in 21st century buzzwords? Does the undeniable trend toward more mobile communications capabilities create the foundation for bringing together communications and Cloud Computing, or is it just the next iteration of heretofore unsuccessful initiatives like Application Service Providers (ASPs)?
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the promise, today's realities and the possible future scenarios for marrying enterprise communications with Cloud Computing. You'll hear a variety of viewpoints and have the opportunity to ask your questions.
In this session, executives from the leading vendors offer their assessment of Unified Communications' evolution to date: What's available now, and what's coming over the next 12 months. The discussion will also cover the barriers that must be overcome for Unified Communications to fulfill its potential - especially interoperability and TCO/ROI concerns, and will examine the various pricing models.
KEY QUESTIONS
* What are prospects for Unified Communications adoption given the weak economy and enterprise budget cuts?
* What are the top Unified Communications applications in terms of actual implementation? What hard savings or ROI exist? Are any "true" Unified Communications apps being adopted, or is it all about audioconferencing bridges and other routes to a quick payback?
* What specific examples exist of enterprises using Unified Communications to change their business processes? Name names.
* What interoperability challenges remain, and how are enterprises tackling the systems integration challenges posed by Unified Communications?
* How have the vendors changed their approach to pricing for Unified Communications capabilities, and what impact are these changes having? What's next in the evolution of Unified Communications pricing?
* Are vendors giving away Unified Communications apps to sell their call control platforms - or vice versa?
The demise of the desk phone has been predicted for several years now, but is there any evidence of a decline? Has the economic downturn brought a reassessment of the 30-40% of a new system spend that's devoted to desktop instruments? What's the case for deploying a desk phone to non-customer-facing employees? In this session, we'll debate whether budget cuts should finally force enterprises to revisit the expense of desk phones. We'll also consider the features and functions that are most appealing in desk phones in this environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* With some vendors bundling Unified Communications functionality with IP-PBXs, is it worthwhile to forgo hard phones altogether?
* What is the price/performance of the latest phone sets? Are vendors cutting prices to stimulate continued demand? What are the life cycle expectations for hard phones?
* Will the cost of vendor-proprietary desk phones drive increased adoption of: SIP phones? Softphones? Mobility features in call control platforms?
* What quality and security challenges need to be overcome before softphones/Unified Communications portals go more mainstream?
Dr MikeHollier is a technical and commercial pioneer in perceptual engineering. Between 1990 and 1999 he directed BT’s research into audio, video and multi-media performance assessment. His PhD was gained from the University of Essex for his work on using models of human hearing to predict speech quality; contributing to the ITU-T PESQ standard.
During 2000 Mike lead the incubation of Psytechnics Ltd and left BT to become the CEO. While CEO he managed the company's formation and early growth, raising further VC finance during the technology sector crash. This feat attracted an inaugural National Business Award in October 2002. Since October 2002 Mike has been the CTO acting as a market evangelist, working on business development and overseeing the R&D of a new generation of voice and video products.
Dr Hollier is a Chartered Engineer, twice winner of the Alan Rudge Award for Innovation, a fellow of the University of Essex and member of the AES.
As we enter the era of truly converged networks the ground-rules for network design are changing. Pervasive use of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing drive new requirements for how the LAN and WAN are provisioned, configured, monitored and managed. This tutorial will give you an overview of network design issues for a combined voice, video and data network and will delve into the details of Quality of Service (QoS). The tutorial will provide a detailed understanding of the design issues you will encounter, techniques for overcoming them, and the specific technologies and practices that are required to make real-time traffic and applications run efficiently and at acceptable quality across your local and wide-area facilities.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What is required to deliver adequate quality of service (QOS) for voice and video on any local and wide-area IP networks that previously handled only data?
* What services do I need from my WAN vendor to support voice and video? What is an appropriate Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
* Can you run VOIP or video over the Internet with acceptable QOS/quality of experience (QOE)?
* How do I classify traffic in the network to ensure voice and video are treated correctly without opening my network up to overutilization by unauthorized endpoints?
* How do you extend your upgrade to serve mobile workers?
* What tools are needed for testing and monitoring a converged network with voice and video?
* I have lots of bandwidth and low utilization, do I really need QoS?
Real-time traffic (voice and video) demand that the network provide low latency, low packet loss and low jitter. Today’s dynamic networks are constantly changing, and the distributed nature of network configuration often lead to errors in design or implementation that can cause quality problems for voice and video conferencing applications. A new breed of testing methodologies and tools is required to test or monitor networks and to isolate problems. This session will explore the need for these tools, will categorize the tools and will list vendors that provide the different kinds of solutions needed to manage today’s complex converged networks.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Why are new tools required to support voice and video conferencing? Why can’t I use the tools that have been serving me well for years?
* What features are required in these tools for managing and monitoring real-time networks?
* Who are the vendors and what types of tools to they offer?
* Do I need different tools for debugging than I do for operational monitoring of the network?
Mr. Hourihan brings over 25 years of experience to Acme Packet in executive management, marketing, product management and business development roles at voice over IP, IP networking, web infrastructure and computer companies. Seamus was vice president of marketing for internetworking leader Wellfleet and, after its merger, with Synoptics Bay Networks/ Nortel for nearly seven years. More recently, Seamus was vice president of marketing for Pingtel, widely recognized as a leader in SIP products and technology. He also held management positions at Data General, MASSCOMP, Bright Tiger and his own consulting company. Seamus holds an AB degree from Dartmouth College and an MBA from Babson College.
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the second portion, Lisa will describe the equipment that may be required for a SIP trunking implementation—IP-PBXs, VOIP gateways, Session Border Controllers, etc. Once again, she will follow her presentation by discussing the state of the industry with representatives from the leading vendors in the equipment space.
You will come away from this session with a clear understanding of the service and CPE elements that make up a SIP trunking implementation, and you will walk away more prepared to start developing RFIs and RFPs for SIP trunking for your enterprise.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 2
* Are IP-PBX vendors’ platforms able to support SIP trunks natively? If not, what must be added to these systems to accommodate SIP trunks?
* What is the role of the Session Border Controller (SBC) in SIP trunking? Are SBCs mandatory?
* How do you typically procure equipment that you may need to acquire to implement SIP trunks—do you implement them as CPE you manage yourself? Does the carrier provide them as part of its offer?
* What network management/monitoring capabilities do you need in house in order to validate carrier SLA compliance?
Vice President of Marketing and Product Management
Tony serves as the vice president of global marketing and public relations for MASERGY, a Plano-based provider of global business networks. He has 23 years of experience in marketing and public relations, with 19 years working in the telecommunications industry. Prior to MASERGY Tony served as marketing director for NetworkTwo--a U.S. based network company targeting retail and financial service firms. Tony also worked in a variety of Marketing and Public Relations positions for GTE and the Southern California Gas Company. He holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the John. F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Utah, and was selected as a Harry S Truman Scholar.
The vast majority of video conference calling is done within the enterprise, but it’s only a matter of time before these same systems are used to make calls to people in other organizations. However, unlike voice which has the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to link together all phones, video devices have no such network to connect to. Further, there are significant barriers to making inter-enterprise video conferencing as easy as a voice call such as addressing, security, quality of service and interoperability. This session will examine your options today, and identify what are likely to be a broader set of options in the coming years.
Key Questions:
* What are the different approaches to inter-enterprise video conferencing today?
* How do you find and call other video users (use “regular” phone numbers, URI address, IP Address, iNum, FDQN)?
*Will enterprises rely on service providers or handle this issue on their own -- internally? When should dedicated bandwidth be used vs. the public Internet or a hybrid approach?
* What are the security requirements and tradeoffs for inter-enterprise video?
* What are the different requirements for inter-enterprise video conferencing between video
endpoints from the same vendor? Different vendors?
* What are the considerations for opening up bridging (e.g., an MCU) for inter-enterprise video
conferencing vs. using a 3rd party?
Moz Hussain leads the Product Management team for Enterprise Voice, Deployment and Management, Devices, RoundTable and Mobility in the Unified Communications Marketing Group. Prior to joining the OCS Team, Moz led the Product Management team for Windows Live Sharing and Social Networking Products. Prior to Microsoft, Moz started a SaaS company offering collaboration tools for the construction industry and worked as a consultant with Accenture. Moz holds a MBA from Harvard Business School and a M-Eng from Cambridge University (UK).
For the past three years, the theme of Unified Communications has grown in importance, as it is the vanguard of a fundamental transition that is shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace: The industry is evolving from a focus on hardware to a focus on software - software architectures, software-based systems and services.
The good news is that the inevitability of this transition is widely accepted. However, the bad news is that the promise of Unified Communications remains largely unfulfilled. Implementations of "true" Unified Communications, while growing, remain relatively small in number. There is still considerable confusion in the market about what Unified Communications is and what it isn't. And there are tough issues like interoperability that inhibit wider adoption and deployment. The rocky economic climate doesn't help matters either.
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the Unified Communications market from a variety of perspectives: How far along has the market really evolved? What are the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime? What obstacles need to be overcome as enterprises try to mesh Unified Communications with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations?
In this session, executives from the leading vendors offer their assessment of Unified Communications' evolution to date: What's available now, and what's coming over the next 12 months. The discussion will also cover the barriers that must be overcome for Unified Communications to fulfill its potential - especially interoperability and TCO/ROI concerns, and will examine the various pricing models.
KEY QUESTIONS
* What are prospects for Unified Communications adoption given the weak economy and enterprise budget cuts?
* What are the top Unified Communications applications in terms of actual implementation? What hard savings or ROI exist? Are any "true" Unified Communications apps being adopted, or is it all about audioconferencing bridges and other routes to a quick payback?
* What specific examples exist of enterprises using Unified Communications to change their business processes? Name names.
* What interoperability challenges remain, and how are enterprises tackling the systems integration challenges posed by Unified Communications?
* How have the vendors changed their approach to pricing for Unified Communications capabilities, and what impact are these changes having? What's next in the evolution of Unified Communications pricing?
* Are vendors giving away Unified Communications apps to sell their call control platforms - or vice versa?
Rob Ingram is a Senior Product Manager for Lotus Sametime Unified Communications based in Westford, MA. In this role, he works with customers, business partners and IBM teams to define the product strategy and drive the product requirements for the Sametime UC product family. His special interests include web conferencing, desktop VoiP and video, instant messaging, mobile UC and realtime collaboration. Rob has spent the majority of his career dedicated to communications, messaging and collaboration software for both enterprise and carrier applications. He is originally from Scotland and holds both B.S degree in engineering for University of Glasgow and an MBA degree from London Business School.
Social networking is becoming a part of many information workers’ collaborative toolkit, presenting opportunities and challenges for enterprise network managers. Vendors are beginning to integrate social networking tools—both public and internal—into their communications systems. How do you keep up with what your users are doing, offer them better ways of doing it, and use these tools to optimize collaboration in a way that actually saves or makes money for your enterprise? In this session, communications vendors and software providers will describe—and show—what’s possible today.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What’s the best way to leverage the major public social networking tools—Twitter, Facebook, etc.—as part of your enterprise’s collaboration systems?
* What social networking/collaboration capabilities are being built into communications vendors’ existing products, or what new products are these vendors releasing in this area?
* How do you handle policy and compliance issues for employees’ social networking usage?
* What’s the cost of marrying social networking and enterprise communications, and how do you determine the benefit?
Kevin Isacks is the Director of Director of Product Management for Network Equipment Technologies. With over 10 years of experience in designing and architecting VoIP products, Kevin is responsible for defining the company’s product strategy and roadmap. After completing an Electronic Engineering degree at the university of Kwazulu-Natel in South Africa, Kevin started his career as an Escalation Engineer for Microsoft in Johannesburg, providing Back-office and operating system support. Kevin is a well known authority within the VoIP and Unified Communications community and a founding pioneer of NET’s SHOUTIP and VX product lines.
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the second portion, Lisa will describe the equipment that may be required for a SIP trunking implementation—IP-PBXs, VOIP gateways, Session Border Controllers, etc. Once again, she will follow her presentation by discussing the state of the industry with representatives from the leading vendors in the equipment space.
You will come away from this session with a clear understanding of the service and CPE elements that make up a SIP trunking implementation, and you will walk away more prepared to start developing RFIs and RFPs for SIP trunking for your enterprise.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 2
* Are IP-PBX vendors’ platforms able to support SIP trunks natively? If not, what must be added to these systems to accommodate SIP trunks?
* What is the role of the Session Border Controller (SBC) in SIP trunking? Are SBCs mandatory?
* How do you typically procure equipment that you may need to acquire to implement SIP trunks—do you implement them as CPE you manage yourself? Does the carrier provide them as part of its offer?
* What network management/monitoring capabilities do you need in house in order to validate carrier SLA compliance?
Director of Product Marketing for Voice and Mobility
Dr. Jack Jachner brings more than 25 years of telecommunications research and development experience to his current position of Vice President of Cloud Communication Solutions at Alcatel-Lucent. In his current role, Dr. Jachner is responsible for the company’s strategic directions and partnerships in the areas of unified communications for private and public clouds.
Jack holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from McGillUniversity, and a Master of Science degree in data networking and Doctor of Science degree in digital signal processing from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
As enterprise communications moves from the legacy PBX-centric architecture to one based on IP networking and software applications, the architectures supporting these systems will also change. Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate communications systems more tightly into their corporate datacenters, taking advantage of Web Services, server virtualization and Cloud Computing, among other technology trends.
So how should enterprises plan to take advantage of these trends, and what pitfalls await them as they do? And how will technology vendors attempt to leverage these trends in their own product or services offerings?
In this VoiceCon Summit, CTOs and other technology leaders will discuss and debate the various approaches to next-gen communications architectures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how your enterprise's communications systems will fit into the larger IT environment, and how these new architectures will support end users to provide higher productivity and great business benefits.
Dan Jacobson is Senior Portfolio Manager for Converged Voice Services at Sprint Nextel. He leads a dynamic team of individuals responsible for the product strategy, development and life cycle management of integrated wireline and wireless services. His team launched Sprint SIP Trunking (VoIP solution for Business) and Sprint Mobile Integration, a product which extends the PBX/UC functionality to a mobile handset. Dan has over 20 years of industry experience across a diverse set of disciplines including VoIP, FMC and TDM product development, network, information technology, business development, operations, marketing, regulatory and customer service.
Dan received his Masters in Business Administration from Baker University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the first portion of the session, Lisa will reveal the results of her research into the details of carriers’ offerings—pricing, service availability, service level agreements, and much more. She will follow up this presentation by leading a discussion with representatives of leading carrier organizations.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 1
* What is the current state of availability of SIP trunking from the major carriers? Are secondary carriers a viable option in places where the largest providers are not?
* What are the pricing trends and structures from the carriers? What specific “gotchas” are you likely to encounter
* What is the status of service level agreements (SLAs) for SIP trunking services?
* What are the elements you should include in an RFI/RFP for SIP trunking services?
In this session, executives from the leading vendors offer their assessment of Unified Communications' evolution to date: What's available now, and what's coming over the next 12 months. The discussion will also cover the barriers that must be overcome for Unified Communications to fulfill its potential - especially interoperability and TCO/ROI concerns, and will examine the various pricing models.
KEY QUESTIONS
* What are prospects for Unified Communications adoption given the weak economy and enterprise budget cuts?
* What are the top Unified Communications applications in terms of actual implementation? What hard savings or ROI exist? Are any "true" Unified Communications apps being adopted, or is it all about audioconferencing bridges and other routes to a quick payback?
* What specific examples exist of enterprises using Unified Communications to change their business processes? Name names.
* What interoperability challenges remain, and how are enterprises tackling the systems integration challenges posed by Unified Communications?
* How have the vendors changed their approach to pricing for Unified Communications capabilities, and what impact are these changes having? What's next in the evolution of Unified Communications pricing?
* Are vendors giving away Unified Communications apps to sell their call control platforms - or vice versa?
Darrius M. Jones is an Executive Director within the Member Experience Channel Management organization at USAA. He is responsible for vision, and management of member interactions for a complex speech enabled voice self service portal and a 14000+ seat voice, video, and web collaboration enabled contact center. His previous role within USAA was in the Chief Technology Office as an Executive Director Technical Fellow where he was responsible for providing thought leadership, strategy and execution guidance in support of the Networking, Contact Center, Communications and Collaboration technology domains.
Prior to USAA Darrius has held technology operations and architecture positions within Merrill Lynch, Computershare, and Georgeson Shareholder; where he architected and implemented Unified Communications, Contact Center, and Workforce Optimization solutions for users throughout the United States, Philippines, Japan, Hong Kong and Europe.
This VoiceCon Summit presents enterprise executives discussing their experiences with migrating to new communications infrastructures, architectures and services. In a roundtable format, the executives will describe what went into their decision-making for migrating, and they'll describe their implementation experiences —what went right and what didn't. The panelists will discuss benefits and problems, and offer perspective and advice that reflect their real-world experience. In addition to discussing the technical issues, the speakers will address the impact that new technologies and architectures are having on end users and the IT/telecom organization.
Executive Director Channel Management - Technical Fellow
As the Enterprise Development Manager for the Skype Business Team, Matt works with enterprise customers interested in deploying any number of Skype for Business solutions within their organization. This may take the form of Skype software being deployed at the desktop/laptop level or integrating Skype with existing phone systems or mobility offerings. Matt is also engaged in developing vertical solutions for the travel and leisure, telemedicine and broadcast entertainment industries. Matt joined Skype in early 2009 from eBay, where he served as Telecom Services Manager. In this role, he successfully deployed Skype to over 10,000 employees globally, integrated Skype into eBay’s legacy telecommunications systems, such as PBXes and call centers, and replaced or supplemented legacy video conferencing gear with Skype in its conference rooms. Joining Skype has given him the opportunity to share these business solutions with other enterprises that are looking to save time, save money, and stay ahead by using Skype in their business. Matt has over a decade’s worth of telecommunications engineering and management experience. Prior to eBay, he worked for global organizations like Siebel Systems and McAfee/Network Associates, where he was responsible for managing call center design, as well as sourcing and deploying mobility, conferencing and collaboration offerings. Matt lives in San Jose with his wife. Together, they have two sons who love to use Skype video to follow their dad’s business travels around the globe.
The majority of video conferencing systems today are in conference rooms. For video to move into everyday use, different devices will be required for different users. In addition to high-end room systems and telepresence systems, people can use so-called executive systems (dedicated video systems on a user’s desk), their laptops or even video phones.
Key Questions:
*What are the key video device options today and the pros and cons for each device?
* Which device is the best suited for what types of workers, locations or use cases?
* What are the key tradeoffs in terms of quality, price and productivity considerations?
* How are the different device alternatives evolving and what will the future look like in 2 years,
5 years and 10 years? How would this change the mix of video devices used within
the enterprise?
The whole IT industry seems to have its collective head in the "cloud" these days. Cloud Computing is all the rage and is being portrayed as the technical silver bullet to just about any IT-related problem. To be sure, the idea of reducing IT expenditures and headcount sounds compelling, particularly in tough economic times.
But where - and how -- does enterprise communications fit within the emerging framework for Cloud Computing? Does it portend a new set of options for delivering and managing voice, video and data communications, or is Cloud Computing for communications not much more than Centrex dressed up in 21st century buzzwords? Does the undeniable trend toward more mobile communications capabilities create the foundation for bringing together communications and Cloud Computing, or is it just the next iteration of heretofore unsuccessful initiatives like Application Service Providers (ASPs)?
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the promise, today's realities and the possible future scenarios for marrying enterprise communications with Cloud Computing. You'll hear a variety of viewpoints and have the opportunity to ask your questions.
E. Brent Kelly is a Senior Analyst and Partner at Wainhouse Research where he co-manages the Unified Collaboration Practice. Brent has authored numerous reports and articles on unified communications including unified communications as a service, mobile unified communications solutions, detailed reviews of Microsoft’s UC strategy as embodied by Office Communications Server, IBM Lotus Sametime and IBM Lotus’ UC2 Strategy, and Telephony-Based Unified Communications. He has also written reports about migrating to IP communications, video network service providers, and the collaborative reseller channel. Dr. Kelly has authored articles for Business Communications Review Magazine, NoJitter.com, and he has taught workshops in North and South America, Europe, and Australia as well as at major industry events such as VoiceCon. Brent has worked for several er multinational companies including Schlumberger, Conoco and Monsanto. Dr. Kelly has a Ph.D. in engineering from Texas A&M and a B.S. in engineering from Brigham Young University. He is an elected official serving on the city council in his community.
This Coffee Talk session will present an independent analysis of the Avaya Roadmap for Nortel, delivered by Brent Kelly, Senior Analyst & Partner, Wainhouse Research. Avaya experts will be on hand to comment and react to the presentation, and you’re invited to ask your questions and share your perspectives.
As video becomes more pervasive, business are not only looking for ways to integrate desktop video solutions with group and telepresence systems, they are also seeking to integrate video with the PBX and the Unified Communications core to enable video telephony and click-to-videoconference. In such systems, there are three possible call control centers: the enterprise PBX, the Unified Communications server (particularly those from Microsoft and IBM) and the call control native to the group video deployment.
Inevitably, there are tradeoffs that must be made when trying to integrate video with both the PBX with the Unified Communications environment. This session discusses strategies for integrating group video systems with telephony call control and with common Unified Communications environments, describing the pros and cons of doing so.
Enterprise use of video is growing, but it remains a “niche” application -- largely used by a select set of users in planned sessions. For video conferencing to move into the mainstream, it needs to evolve into a universal tool for business – an application that is used both inside and outside a company’s boundaries.
Incremental growth isn’t that difficult, but challenges abound for any CEO or CIO who wants to extend video deployment to everyone in the enterprise – expanding from dozens of systems to thousands. That’ll be the focus of this session.
Key Questions:
*What are the product requirements for scaling a deployment and are today’s solutions up to
the task? What about bandwidth requirements and network upgrades?
* What makes sense to tackle internally vs. outsourcing or hybrid choices?
*Are people outside the firewall (teleworkers, branch offices) out of luck?
* How does VOIP help – or hinder – the expansion of video?
*Should the video network be integrated with other network elements (i.e., the PBX, PSTN)
and if so, when and how?
*Most enterprises are multi-vendor environments; how does that affect options for scaling video?
Unified Communications solutions are complex and are rapidly evolving, and at the same time, there’s growing interest in hosted, cloud-based computing and services. In 2010, while Unified Communications will continue to mature as a traditional premises-based offering, there are a new set of hosted/cloud-based Unified Communications capabilities coming from Microsoft, IBM and Cisco. The fundamental business questions, however, still need to be addressed: How can Unified Communications benefit your organization and what will the ROI be?
This session will compare hosted/cloud-based versus premises-based Unified Communications offerings and provide justifications enterprises can use when evaluating a hosted offering. It specifically compares the following services:
1. Microsoft Online, along with the carrier services enterprises are using with MS Online.
2. Cisco WebEx Connect, which offers hosted voice, conferencing and messaging.
3. IBM LotusLive, an inter-domain collaboration solution, that includes many of the Unified Communications elements plus social networking and team workspaces.
4. Hosted/managed versions of Microsoft Office Communications Server, and how service providers are offering OCS in hosted and hybrid configurations.
Attendees will come away from this session with a good understanding of the hosted Unified Communications market and available offerings, a list of benefits a hosted Unified Communications solution may provide, approximate pricing models and the knowledge to begin evaluating the hosted versus premises-based value proposition for their organization.
Kevin Kennedy is the president and chief executive officer of Avaya. Avaya is a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services.
Prior to joining the company in January 2009, Kennedy served as president and CEO of JDS Uniphase Corporation, a position he held since September 2003. He had also served as a member of the JDSU board of directors since November 2001.
Before joining JDSU, Kennedy served as chief operating officer of Openwave Systems, Inc., a position he held from August 2001 to September 2003. Prior to joining Openwave Systems, Kennedy spent close to eight years at Cisco Systems, Inc., most recently as senior vice president of the Service Provider Line of Business and Software Technologies Division.
Earlier in his career, Kennedy spent 17 years with AT&T Bell Laboratories, serving in a number of assignments in the Lincroft, Holmdel, and Middletown, New Jersey locations. During his Bell Labs tenure, he also lived and worked in Columbus, Ohio as part of the Conversant voice information system team, in the AUDIX Voice Messaging organization.
In 1987, Kennedy was a congressional fellow to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He was a member of the board of directors of Polycom, Inc. until January 2009. He currently serves on the board of directors of KLA-Tencor Corporation and is a member of the board of regents of Loyola Marymount University.
Kennedy holds a B.S. in engineering from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Rutgers University. He was an adjunct professor at Rutgers from 1982-1984 and has published more than 30 papers on computational methods, data networking and issues of technology management.
In 2006, Kennedy was honored by the School of Engineering at Rutgers as their Alumnus of the Year and awarded an Alumni Medal of Excellence. He is a co-author of "Going the Distance: Why Some Companies Dominate and Others Fail," published in 2003.
Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president, leads Yankee Group’s Global Enterprise and Consumer Research Kerravala’s team analyzes the impact of connectivity transformation on the Anywhere Consumer and the Anywhere Enterprise, and probes the changes to behaviors, motivations and technologies that result. Kerravala manages the research and consulting agenda that enables clients to meet the demands of the global connectivity revolution. Kerravala’s expertise involves working with customers to solve their business issues through the deployment of infrastructure technology. Before Yankee Group, Kerravala was a senior engineer and technical project manager for Greenwich Technology Partners, a leading infrastructure consulting firm. Earlier, he was the vice president of IT for Ferris, Baker Watts, a mid-Atlantic brokerage firm, deploying corporate-wide technical solutions to support the firm’s business units. Kerravala was also an engineer and technical project manager for Alex. Brown & Sons, where he was responsible for the technology related to the equity trading desks. Kerravala holds a B.S. degree in physics and mathematics from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.
As enterprise communications moves from the legacy PBX-centric architecture to one based on IP networking and software applications, the architectures supporting these systems will also change. Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate communications systems more tightly into their corporate datacenters, taking advantage of Web Services, server virtualization and Cloud Computing, among other technology trends.
So how should enterprises plan to take advantage of these trends, and what pitfalls await them as they do? And how will technology vendors attempt to leverage these trends in their own product or services offerings?
In this VoiceCon Summit, CTOs and other technology leaders will discuss and debate the various approaches to next-gen communications architectures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how your enterprise's communications systems will fit into the larger IT environment, and how these new architectures will support end users to provide higher productivity and great business benefits.
This VoiceCon Summit presents enterprise executives discussing their experiences with migrating to new communications infrastructures, architectures and services. In a roundtable format, the executives will describe what went into their decision-making for migrating, and they'll describe their implementation experiences —what went right and what didn't. The panelists will discuss benefits and problems, and offer perspective and advice that reflect their real-world experience. In addition to discussing the technical issues, the speakers will address the impact that new technologies and architectures are having on end users and the IT/telecom organization.
At the conclusion of each VoiceCon, we ask leading analysts to join VoiceCon Co-chairs Fred Knight and Eric Krapf to summarize what they learned during the Conference. The Locknote will analyze progress in the migration to IP Telephony and Unified Communications, vendor positioning and market strategies, and examine whether the payoffs from new technologies are being realized. The panelists draw on their experience and what they've seen and heard during the conference, and they'll take your questions.
Bassam Khan brings more than 20 years of IT industry experience to his role as Director of Product Management for the WebEx Mail division at Cisco Systems. In this position, Mr. Khan is responsible for leading the product management, operations development, and professional/ advanced services teams.
Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Khan served as Vice President of Marketing at Cloudmark, and as Vice President of Product Management and Product Marketing at Loglogic.
Bassam Khan holds a bachelor of science degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a master of science degree from Boston University.
The whole IT industry seems to have its collective head in the "cloud" these days. Cloud Computing is all the rage and is being portrayed as the technical silver bullet to just about any IT-related problem. To be sure, the idea of reducing IT expenditures and headcount sounds compelling, particularly in tough economic times.
But where - and how -- does enterprise communications fit within the emerging framework for Cloud Computing? Does it portend a new set of options for delivering and managing voice, video and data communications, or is Cloud Computing for communications not much more than Centrex dressed up in 21st century buzzwords? Does the undeniable trend toward more mobile communications capabilities create the foundation for bringing together communications and Cloud Computing, or is it just the next iteration of heretofore unsuccessful initiatives like Application Service Providers (ASPs)?
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the promise, today's realities and the possible future scenarios for marrying enterprise communications with Cloud Computing. You'll hear a variety of viewpoints and have the opportunity to ask your questions.
Fred Knight is GM/Co-Chair of VoiceCon, and the publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications.
Fred also led the evolution of VoiceCon from a single event into a 12-month per year operation, comprising conferences, the VoiceCon Webinar series, VoiceCon Virtual Events, and VoiceCon eNews, a weekly e-newsletter. From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. In December 2007, BCR magazine ceased publication and shifted to the Web with the creation of NoJitter.com.
For the past three years, the theme of Unified Communications has grown in importance, as it is the vanguard of a fundamental transition that is shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace: The industry is evolving from a focus on hardware to a focus on software - software architectures, software-based systems and services.
The good news is that the inevitability of this transition is widely accepted. However, the bad news is that the promise of Unified Communications remains largely unfulfilled. Implementations of "true" Unified Communications, while growing, remain relatively small in number. There is still considerable confusion in the market about what Unified Communications is and what it isn't. And there are tough issues like interoperability that inhibit wider adoption and deployment. The rocky economic climate doesn't help matters either.
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the Unified Communications market from a variety of perspectives: How far along has the market really evolved? What are the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime? What obstacles need to be overcome as enterprises try to mesh Unified Communications with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations?
Many industry analysts (and some vendors) are asserting that the desk phone is, if not dead, at least past its prime. They argue that there’s no cost justification for putting a hard phone on every desk, claiming a PC-based softphone is an adequate substitute for at least a significant portion of the user base. Those on the other side of this debate argue that PCs are prone to unpredictable problems and crashes, that they’re not always on, and that softphones provide lower voice quality and security. So who’s right? In this Summit, a panel of experts will debate the issues and let you decide.
At the conclusion of each VoiceCon, we ask leading analysts to join VoiceCon Co-chairs Fred Knight and Eric Krapf to summarize what they learned during the Conference. The Locknote will analyze progress in the migration to IP Telephony and Unified Communications, vendor positioning and market strategies, and examine whether the payoffs from new technologies are being realized. The panelists draw on their experience and what they've seen and heard during the conference, and they'll take your questions.
Presence is the heart of next-generation enterprise communications by providing information about who is available and via what method. There are, however, two challenges: First, presence loses much of its value if it's implemented within discrete systems that can't exchange information – e.g., between different systems within an enterprise, between partner companies, with customers and between public and private networks. Second, while Unified Communications capabilities open up many more possibilities to identify and reach the individual or skill needed, that openness threatens to bury us in too much, too easy contact.
Two capabilities are needed: An open but secure ability to exchange presence information between systems, and an efficient way to establish and maintain rules and policies about who can contact who, when, and how. This session will explore these topics and examine progress on these important functionality issues.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What “rich presence” capabilities will we see, and how will they help Unified Communications applications deployment?
* What are the issues in inter- and intra-enterprise presence aggregation and federation, and how far have we progressed in solving them?
* How is the use of social networks affecting the concepts of presence?
* Will setting presence status require less manual intervention in the future?
* What is the role of rules and policy engines, and where are we in their development?
*
How should enterprises plan current deployments to be ready for future presence capabilities?
Voice messaging systems became part of the landscape because phones need to be answered whether or not the called party was available. But with presence, IM and related Unified Communications applications and capabilities, there are new ways to assess the value voice messaging and Unified Messaging do—or don't—deliver. This session will analyze the new options becoming available, and the different ways to calculate ROI.
KEY QUESTIONS:
*Are IP-PBXs needed for a voice mail to unified messaging migration? What's the best way and place to store messages?
*Is end of life finally here for legacy voice mail systems?
*What are new options for getting voice messaging, call answering and auto-attendant services?
*Is it better to have voice mail built into the PBX software, or on separate servers?
*What is the impact of speech auto-attendants on voice mail?
Eric Krapf is co-chair of the VoiceCon events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Unified Communications marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, TechWeb’s online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Unified Communications industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters.
From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine's editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America's Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas.
As enterprise communications moves from the legacy PBX-centric architecture to one based on IP networking and software applications, the architectures supporting these systems will also change. Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate communications systems more tightly into their corporate datacenters, taking advantage of Web Services, server virtualization and Cloud Computing, among other technology trends.
So how should enterprises plan to take advantage of these trends, and what pitfalls await them as they do? And how will technology vendors attempt to leverage these trends in their own product or services offerings?
In this VoiceCon Summit, CTOs and other technology leaders will discuss and debate the various approaches to next-gen communications architectures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how your enterprise's communications systems will fit into the larger IT environment, and how these new architectures will support end users to provide higher productivity and great business benefits.
The whole IT industry seems to have its collective head in the "cloud" these days. Cloud Computing is all the rage and is being portrayed as the technical silver bullet to just about any IT-related problem. To be sure, the idea of reducing IT expenditures and headcount sounds compelling, particularly in tough economic times.
But where - and how -- does enterprise communications fit within the emerging framework for Cloud Computing? Does it portend a new set of options for delivering and managing voice, video and data communications, or is Cloud Computing for communications not much more than Centrex dressed up in 21st century buzzwords? Does the undeniable trend toward more mobile communications capabilities create the foundation for bringing together communications and Cloud Computing, or is it just the next iteration of heretofore unsuccessful initiatives like Application Service Providers (ASPs)?
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the promise, today's realities and the possible future scenarios for marrying enterprise communications with Cloud Computing. You'll hear a variety of viewpoints and have the opportunity to ask your questions.
This VoiceCon Summit presents enterprise executives discussing their experiences with migrating to new communications infrastructures, architectures and services. In a roundtable format, the executives will describe what went into their decision-making for migrating, and they'll describe their implementation experiences —what went right and what didn't. The panelists will discuss benefits and problems, and offer perspective and advice that reflect their real-world experience. In addition to discussing the technical issues, the speakers will address the impact that new technologies and architectures are having on end users and the IT/telecom organization.
At the conclusion of each VoiceCon, we ask leading analysts to join VoiceCon Co-chairs Fred Knight and Eric Krapf to summarize what they learned during the Conference. The Locknote will analyze progress in the migration to IP Telephony and Unified Communications, vendor positioning and market strategies, and examine whether the payoffs from new technologies are being realized. The panelists draw on their experience and what they've seen and heard during the conference, and they'll take your questions.
Jay Krauser is General Manager, Sales Support and Engineering for NEC Corporation of America. In this role, Jay works with other NEC divisions, subsidiaries and NEC partners to help build repeatable, commercially successful solutions for our direct sales force and our dealers. Through Jay’s team, NEC broadens the solutions it can provide to the industry, assists channels with the distribution of these products, and supports NEC partners with the tools and services they need to be successful. During his tenure, Jay has helped to bring to market NEC’s award-winning products and applications for the industry. He continues to work closely with customers and partners to gain insight that helps NEC develop innovative products and applications. Jay has held various engineering and product management positions within NEC, most recently as Assistant General Manager of Product Management and Product Marketing for the Marketing and Sales Support Division of NEC America’s Corporate Networks Group. During his 18 years of industry experience, Mr. Krauser has held various telecommunications management positions as an end-user with large NEC call centers and has worked within large interconnect companies.
The demise of the desk phone has been predicted for several years now, but is there any evidence of a decline? Has the economic downturn brought a reassessment of the 30-40% of a new system spend that's devoted to desktop instruments? What's the case for deploying a desk phone to non-customer-facing employees? In this session, we'll debate whether budget cuts should finally force enterprises to revisit the expense of desk phones. We'll also consider the features and functions that are most appealing in desk phones in this environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* With some vendors bundling Unified Communications functionality with IP-PBXs, is it worthwhile to forgo hard phones altogether?
* What is the price/performance of the latest phone sets? Are vendors cutting prices to stimulate continued demand? What are the life cycle expectations for hard phones?
* Will the cost of vendor-proprietary desk phones drive increased adoption of: SIP phones? Softphones? Mobility features in call control platforms?
* What quality and security challenges need to be overcome before softphones/Unified Communications portals go more mainstream?
Mr. Laezza joined Glowpoint in 2004 focusing on operations, became COO in 2006, President in 2008, and in March 2009, was appointed as Co-CEO.
Having spent more than 17 years in the Telecommunications industry, Mr. Laezza is considered a leading authority in building global operations and service delivery business units for several leading firms. Prior to joining Glowpoint, he served as Vice President of Operations at Con Edison Communications in New York City, where he was responsible for the company's network operations, including service delivery and deployment. Mr. Laezza also held management positions at a number of telecommunications service providers, including AT&T and XO Communications where he was responsible for operations, service delivery, and customer service efforts. He has been recognized for his managerial and technical capabilities, where his organizations have won numerous awards and industry accolades.
His team at Glowpoint continues to pioneer numerous breakthrough features and services, having earned one patent – with eight other patents pending.
Mr. Laezza has completed undergrad studies in Telecom Management at Denver University and management course at USC Center for Telecom Management.
Mr. Laezza’s Recent Speaking Engagements:
2008 – Infocomm – Panel, “Manufacturers’ and Service Provider’s Forum”
Mr. Laezza’s Speaking Topics:
Telepresence and Video Conferencing Operations
Telecommunications Infrastructure
Trends in the video industry
IP video and technology
Business Outsourcing
Glowpoint Awards:
“Excellence in Globalization” Award, Visual Collaboration Managed Services (Frost & Sullivan, 2009)
Top Seven Member, Best Managed Conferencing Services Providers (VCinsight, 2009)
Top Ten Member, MSPmentor 100 List (MSPmentor, 2010)
Growth Company of the Year, Finalist (New Jersey Technology Council, 2007)
Personal video conferencing is a very different paradigm from traditional room-based or telepresence video. Acceptance of this technology is being driven by a geographically disparate or travelling work force, company partnering and an incessant need to quickly establish personal relationships and execute business at a faster pace. Network bandwidth and desktop power are finally able to support a high quality experience. The market is rapidly evolving and many hardware and software deployment choices exist. How does the enterprise IT team decide which approach best works to support its specific business needs? This session will review different models of desktop deployment and highlight demonstrations of desktop solutions to help you make your decisions.
Dr. J. Chris Lauwers, Chief Technology Officer
Lauwers has been Avistar's CTO since February 2000. Prior to his current position he served as the Avistar's vice president of engineering for five years. Before joining Avistar, he was principal software architect at Vicor, Inc. and served as a research associate at Olivetti Research Center. Lauwers holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven of Belgium. He also holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from Stanford University.
Enterprise use of video is growing, but it remains a “niche” application -- largely used by a select set of users in planned sessions. For video conferencing to move into the mainstream, it needs to evolve into a universal tool for business – an application that is used both inside and outside a company’s boundaries.
Incremental growth isn’t that difficult, but challenges abound for any CEO or CIO who wants to extend video deployment to everyone in the enterprise – expanding from dozens of systems to thousands. That’ll be the focus of this session.
Key Questions:
*What are the product requirements for scaling a deployment and are today’s solutions up to
the task? What about bandwidth requirements and network upgrades?
* What makes sense to tackle internally vs. outsourcing or hybrid choices?
*Are people outside the firewall (teleworkers, branch offices) out of luck?
* How does VOIP help – or hinder – the expansion of video?
*Should the video network be integrated with other network elements (i.e., the PBX, PSTN)
and if so, when and how?
*Most enterprises are multi-vendor environments; how does that affect options for scaling video?
Irwin Lazar is the Vice President for Communications Research at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, develops cost models, conducts strategic seminars and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, Web 2.0 initiatives, social networking, and collaboration.
The issue of security in communications has gone well beyond concerns over vulnerabilities in IP networks. The issues of securing your enterprise's communications systems now extend into mobility, connections with other networks (public and other private networks), as well as the latest concern--issues around security and policy regarding social networking. In this wide-ranging session, we'll briefly review the state of VOIP security, but will then move on to these new, more complex issues. The session will give you a foundation for understanding the universe of security challenges you face in the new communications environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Is IP network security still the primary concern in converged communications networks? If so, what specific vulnerabilities are causing real-world issues?
* What security challenges are added as mobility systems are integrated into IP telephony/Unified Communications? How do you protect against these challenges?
* Can enterprises maintain security while connecting their "islands" of VOIP via SIP trunks? What about opening up their voice systems to business partners or to hosted providers that are delivering discrete elements of the enterprise's voice system?
* What are the biggest security concerns relating to users' adoption of social networking? Are the major issues related to corporate policies, or are there ways in which the security of the communications system itself can be threatened when social networking is integrated with enterprise systems?
Whether an enterprise is early in its migration to IP Telephony or further along and now evaluating the concept of Unified Communications, it's not easy to build a credible business case. IP Telephony and, in particular, Unified Communications, are complex and involve numerous technologies, decision-makers and equipment, software and service providers.
This workshop will be divided into two segments: The first is devoted to IP Telephony businesses cases, the second will cover the Unified Communications business case. It will be based on IP Telephony cost data that has been gathered over the past five years from more than 800 companies that have implemented the technology, as well as real-world data from hundreds of IT decision makers on the newer Unified Communications products and technologies.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How do companies build a business case around IP Telephony and Unified Communications? What are the key metrics?
* What does it really cost to implement IP Telephony? What are the cost components of a Unified Communications business case?
* What resources (internal and external) companies must devote to their VOIP and Unified Communications rollouts, per end-unit, per year segmented by rollout size and vendor.
* What are some of the key pitfalls? Where did companies go wrong?
* What are some compelling business case models for both IP Telephony and Unified Communications?
Wikis, blogs, Twitter....these are no longer just for consumers. Enterprises are embracing social networking tools and tying them into communications platforms and infrastructure. This session gives participants a chance to share experiences and ideas, and to discuss opportunities as well as potential pitfalls.
Vice President Communications & Collaboration Research
Stephen Leaden is founder and President of Leaden Associates, Inc., an independent Telecommunications IT consulting firm providing specialized support in Telecommunications technologies and ROI strategies. Mr. Leaden has been in the Telecommunications field over 25 years, with 18 of those with his own firm. Clients include recognized enterprise clients in healthcare/education, manufacturing, financial services, publishing, and government vertical market segments. Mr. Leaden's firm focuses as an extension of IT staff to facilitate the design, procurement, project implementation, and outsourcing for converged voice and data solutions. During their engagement, Leaden Associates proactively adds value via ROI strategies integrated into the projects they serve on. Mr. Leaden's practice has focused on Voice over IP and key market trends in this area - he has spoken at national and International conferences on VoIP, has written several papers on VoIP strategies, troubleshooting and security, and has been quoted in national industry publications including NoJitter, BCR Magazine, Computer World, Information Week, and the Washington Post among others. Mr. Leaden is on the faculty of Telecom+UC Training (a spin-off of BCR Training) and teaches two courses: "Cost Control of Wired and Wireless Networks: Best Practices and "Optimizing Enterprise Networks".
The demise of the desk phone has been predicted for several years now, but is there any evidence of a decline? Has the economic downturn brought a reassessment of the 30-40% of a new system spend that's devoted to desktop instruments? What's the case for deploying a desk phone to non-customer-facing employees? In this session, we'll debate whether budget cuts should finally force enterprises to revisit the expense of desk phones. We'll also consider the features and functions that are most appealing in desk phones in this environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* With some vendors bundling Unified Communications functionality with IP-PBXs, is it worthwhile to forgo hard phones altogether?
* What is the price/performance of the latest phone sets? Are vendors cutting prices to stimulate continued demand? What are the life cycle expectations for hard phones?
* Will the cost of vendor-proprietary desk phones drive increased adoption of: SIP phones? Softphones? Mobility features in call control platforms?
* What quality and security challenges need to be overcome before softphones/Unified Communications portals go more mainstream?
Many industry analysts (and some vendors) are asserting that the desk phone is, if not dead, at least past its prime. They argue that there’s no cost justification for putting a hard phone on every desk, claiming a PC-based softphone is an adequate substitute for at least a significant portion of the user base. Those on the other side of this debate argue that PCs are prone to unpredictable problems and crashes, that they’re not always on, and that softphones provide lower voice quality and security. So who’s right? In this Summit, a panel of experts will debate the issues and let you decide.
From Wi-Fi to cellular and 4G, mobility is an increasingly important factor in enterprise communications. However, mobile technology remains a blind spot for many enterprise IT departments. IT staffs wrestle with basic understanding while users press for more far-reaching mobile applications. For security, IT has built a mobility fortress with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, but now users are more interested in iPhone, Android, and Pre. This session is designed to introduce some of the major topics that are impacting enterprise mobility, help you to understand the options available, and bring you up to speed on current best practices on the mobility front.
KEY QUESTIONS
• How do I get my mobile expenses under control?
• Is “consumerization” really the future of enterprise mobility?
• What are the current best practices for mobile device management and security?
• Can my Wi-Fi network do voice, or should I opt for DECT or stick with cellular?
• How do the options for improving indoor coverage, Wi-Fi, DAS, and femtocells, stack up?
• How do the 4G options, LTE and WiMAX, compare in terms of cost and capacity, and when can we expect to see them?
• What are the important planning steps for an 802.11n deployment?
• Can Fixed Mobile Convergence really save me money, and what are the major PBX and Carrier options being offered?
Paul Liesenberg is a Sr Manager in Cisco’s Collaboration Architecture Team. Paul develops methodologies that optimally align next-generation network infrastructures and overarching business processes. Prior to Cisco, he was VP of Strategic Marketing for ZettaCom and Bivio Networks. Earlier, he was with StrataCom and Cisco post-acquisition, Nortel’s Data Networks Division, and Siemens’ Public Networks’ R&D division. He holds two patents in the area of VoIP, and an M.Sc. from TUM (Technische Universitaet Muenchen).
As we enter the era of truly converged networks the ground-rules for network design are changing. Pervasive use of Voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing drive new requirements for how the LAN and WAN are provisioned, configured, monitored and managed. This tutorial will give you an overview of network design issues for a combined voice, video and data network and will delve into the details of Quality of Service (QoS). The tutorial will provide a detailed understanding of the design issues you will encounter, techniques for overcoming them, and the specific technologies and practices that are required to make real-time traffic and applications run efficiently and at acceptable quality across your local and wide-area facilities.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What is required to deliver adequate quality of service (QOS) for voice and video on any local and wide-area IP networks that previously handled only data?
* What services do I need from my WAN vendor to support voice and video? What is an appropriate Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
* Can you run VOIP or video over the Internet with acceptable QOS/quality of experience (QOE)?
* How do I classify traffic in the network to ensure voice and video are treated correctly without opening my network up to overutilization by unauthorized endpoints?
* How do you extend your upgrade to serve mobile workers?
* What tools are needed for testing and monitoring a converged network with voice and video?
* I have lots of bandwidth and low utilization, do I really need QoS?
Duane Longhofer, Telecom Manager with AccuQuote. With over 26 years in the Telecom industry, Duane has experience with everything from pulling cable to the Carrier Switch, splitting time with 16 years in the VAR environment and six as a customer. Duane has always focused on leading edge technology and honing his expertise to be ready for the next paradigm shift. This included the first PC-based voice processing systems, the first PC-based PBX and one of the first all-in-one server-based Call Center systems. As Telecom Manager at AccuQuote, Duane is involved in one of Interactive Intelligence’s, first IPA, workflow processing implementations and a high volume outbound Dialer. Prior to this, Duane managed the telephony systems team of a global fitness manufacturer where he evolved a high volume inbound Call Center into a Contact Center and then designed and implemented a ubiquitous SIP Telephony solution worldwide at nine locations on a MPLS network. That garnered a case study with Interactive Intelligence and a Webinar with the Yankee Group. He also worked with their carrier and developed a SIP trunk business continuity/overflow solution that was highlighted in a Gartner case study. He was also involved with the development and integration of a CRM portal to improve customer service call times. Duane enjoys the process of analyzing telephony processes and developing improvements for businesses and the customer experience. Duane pursued an Electronic Engineering degree at Kansas State University and has certifications from several technological companies.
This VoiceCon Summit presents enterprise executives discussing their experiences with migrating to new communications infrastructures, architectures and services. In a roundtable format, the executives will describe what went into their decision-making for migrating, and they'll describe their implementation experiences —what went right and what didn't. The panelists will discuss benefits and problems, and offer perspective and advice that reflect their real-world experience. In addition to discussing the technical issues, the speakers will address the impact that new technologies and architectures are having on end users and the IT/telecom organization.
The whole IT industry seems to have its collective head in the "cloud" these days. Cloud Computing is all the rage and is being portrayed as the technical silver bullet to just about any IT-related problem. To be sure, the idea of reducing IT expenditures and headcount sounds compelling, particularly in tough economic times.
But where - and how -- does enterprise communications fit within the emerging framework for Cloud Computing? Does it portend a new set of options for delivering and managing voice, video and data communications, or is Cloud Computing for communications not much more than Centrex dressed up in 21st century buzzwords? Does the undeniable trend toward more mobile communications capabilities create the foundation for bringing together communications and Cloud Computing, or is it just the next iteration of heretofore unsuccessful initiatives like Application Service Providers (ASPs)?
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the promise, today's realities and the possible future scenarios for marrying enterprise communications with Cloud Computing. You'll hear a variety of viewpoints and have the opportunity to ask your questions.
Director of Global Unified Communications and Collaboration Marketing
Social networking is becoming a part of many information workers’ collaborative toolkit, presenting opportunities and challenges for enterprise network managers. Vendors are beginning to integrate social networking tools—both public and internal—into their communications systems. How do you keep up with what your users are doing, offer them better ways of doing it, and use these tools to optimize collaboration in a way that actually saves or makes money for your enterprise? In this session, communications vendors and software providers will describe—and show—what’s possible today.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What’s the best way to leverage the major public social networking tools—Twitter, Facebook, etc.—as part of your enterprise’s collaboration systems?
* What social networking/collaboration capabilities are being built into communications vendors’ existing products, or what new products are these vendors releasing in this area?
* How do you handle policy and compliance issues for employees’ social networking usage?
* What’s the cost of marrying social networking and enterprise communications, and how do you determine the benefit?
Nicholas (Nick) Maier, SVP, Marketing and Channels - Mr. Maier is a senior executive with over 15 years in telecommunications marketing, product development and channel development. In his current role, Mr. Maier is responsible for the product roadmap for RedSky’s enterprise E911 software products and its strategic channel relationships with OEM VoIP platform providers and resellers. Mr. Maier has served as the co-chairman of the Avaya DevConnect Advisory Council that represents over 175 ISVs and is active in the Developer programs of Nortel and Cisco.
This session will help you understand the latest approaches to providing E911 coverage for an IP Telephony-enabled enterprise. We'll examine the infrastructure you need to add to your deployment in order to ensure accuracy, resiliency and high-availability in your E911 coverage. We'll also look at related emergency-notification technologies aimed at pushing information out to end users in times of disaster or other crises.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How have enterprises tackled the challenges of providing location-specific E911?
* What cost will an E911 deployment across the enterprise add to an IP Telephony deployment?
* What are the risks of a piecemeal E911 deployment?
* How can you add emergency notification to your system to inform users of crises (e.g., school/workplace shootings, natural disasters, etc.)
John Malone is Founder and CEO of The Eastern Management Group. He heads one of the oldest and most respected research and consulting organizations, providing professional services to global telecommunications companies.
He has advised almost every major telecommunications service provider, manufacturer, and software company in North America, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
Before founding The Eastern Management Group, Mr. Malone spent a decade with AT&T. He developed the first call center while at AT&T, and went on to run sales, marketing and strategy organizations for the company.
In addition to his firm’s 400 clients, he has advised Members and Staff of The US House of Representatives, US Senate, Department of Justice, FCC, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, State Legislatures, State Regulatory Commissions and the European Commission. He has testified extensively before the US Congress, state legislatures, and regulatory agencies.
His market assessments are quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Business Week. Fortune magazine has called John Malone the leading analyst in the industry.
Mr. Malone has served on the Board of Directors of many private and publicly held companies including American Fiber Systems, Valere Power, In Motion Technology, Phaethon Communications, Applied Digital Access, VINA Technologies and Larscom. He has also served on the Alumni Board of Directors of the University of Dayton. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing, as well as an MBA from the University of Dayton.
While Open Source PBXs now account for as much as 18% of stations shipped (for all size segments) in the U.S., the vast majority of the implementations remains in small businesses. But with Skype and others offering connectivity to Open Source systems and vendor interest broadening, will Open Source be part of your next procurement, or at least included in RFIs and RFPs?
This session will present the major systems and offerings, discuss how to get started with Open Source, the benefits you can expect to gain, and what (if any) enterprise-grade features and functions you'll have to give up.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Why has open source PBX been growing in popularity?
* Can these systems scale, and can they support all the features and functions that enterprises get with proprietary systems?
* Is open source PBX "free?" What costs are associated with researching, obtaining, customizing and deploying an open source PBX?
* Can you deploy open source PBX as a subset of an enterprise communications environment that also runs proprietary systems? What are the pros and cons of doing this?
* What level of post-deployment support and ongoing involvement in the open source community is required in order to ensure a successful implementation and manageable system?
David Marshak leads Real-time Collaboration and Unified Communications product strategy and planning for IBM Lotus Software, including Instant Messaging, Web Conferencing, VoIP, telephony, and video. He is the product manager of Sametime Unified Telephony.
Prior to joining IBM in January 2005, Marshak was an internationally known industry analyst and consultant with Patricia Seybold Group for 18 years.
Marshak has spoken worldwide to audiences, large and small, on emerging technologies and future trends. He is often called upon to be a featured speaker and panel moderator at numerous industry conferences such as VoiceCon, Collaboration Technologies Conference, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, COMDEX, InternetWorld, Groupware, VON, NetWorld, and Lotusphere, among others. He has appeared as an expert commentator on PBS, CNBC, and on National Public Radio and has lectured on collaboration at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Babson College. Marshak has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times, Business Week, and Investor’s Business Daily as well as the technical press.
Marshak is the author of Understanding and Leveraging Lotus Notes, the Notes Strategist Series, as well as Mission Critical Lotus Notes (Prentice Hall, 1996).
The whole IT industry seems to have its collective head in the "cloud" these days. Cloud Computing is all the rage and is being portrayed as the technical silver bullet to just about any IT-related problem. To be sure, the idea of reducing IT expenditures and headcount sounds compelling, particularly in tough economic times.
But where - and how -- does enterprise communications fit within the emerging framework for Cloud Computing? Does it portend a new set of options for delivering and managing voice, video and data communications, or is Cloud Computing for communications not much more than Centrex dressed up in 21st century buzzwords? Does the undeniable trend toward more mobile communications capabilities create the foundation for bringing together communications and Cloud Computing, or is it just the next iteration of heretofore unsuccessful initiatives like Application Service Providers (ASPs)?
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the promise, today's realities and the possible future scenarios for marrying enterprise communications with Cloud Computing. You'll hear a variety of viewpoints and have the opportunity to ask your questions.
Christopher May is Vice President, North America, and is a co-founder of of VOSS Solutions. He is responsible for all North America operations and he also oversees the corporate marketing function for VOSS.
Christopher is an expert in the fields of Operational Support Systems (OSS) for the Telco and Broadband markets, with a specific focus in the area of IP Telephony and unified communications.
Prior to co-founding VOSS, Christopher was a founding partner of Broadcentric Ltd, a specialist Digital Broadband 'convergent solutions' company. Christopher has 20 years experience with large, technology projects, including the launch of Australia’s first DOCSIS broadband platform and the world’s first commercial launch of standard’s based digital satellite TV.
Christopher has an MBA from Macquarie University and an Engineering Degree from the University of Sydney.
Whether because of a best-of-breed strategy, mergers, acquisitions or a migration from either traditional TDM or a mixed TDM-IP environment to one that supports Unified Communications, enterprises typically have a complex mix of multiple telephony vendors and platforms. Adding to this complexity is a growing need to integrate voice systems with critical business applications like active directory, HR, ERP, etc. These environments are extremely expensive to manage and there is a growing realization that new management and administration tools are needed. This session will focus on best practices for managing and
administering complex telecom environments, and include a review of tools for provisioning, automation and reporting.
Sheila McGee-Smith, the founder of McGee-Smith Analytics, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant focused on the contact center and enterprise communications marketplaces. She has a proven track record of accomplishment in new product development, competitive assessment, market research, and sales strategies for communications solutions and services.
Ms. McGee-Smith works on a daily basis with both solution providers and enterprises. Her insight helps them develop strategies to meet the escalating demands of today's consumer and business customers. Ms. McGee-Smith has spent over twenty years in the telecommunications industry, including 12 years with The PELORUS Group, most recently as Director, Call Center and Operator Services. Prior to joining The PELORUS Group, Ms. McGee-Smith held sales management, market research and product management positions at AT&T, Timeplex and Dun & Bradstreet.
She received a bachelor's degree, cum laude, from Barnard College, Columbia University, majoring in psychology and an MBA, awarded with distinction, majoring in marketing and management information systems from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Sheila McGee-Smith is a featured blogger on No Jitter.
In this session, a leading analyst will offer her assessment of the current state of the contact center market—the progress enterprises are making on migrating to IP and SIP-based systems, and which vendors they're selecting as partners for this migration. There will then be a roundtable discussion in which executives from the leading vendors react to the analyst assessment and offer their own views on where the market is headed, and how IP-based systems can make the contact center more cost-effective in a challenging economic environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How has the economic downturn affected the migration to IP? What percentage of the new contact center systems being deployed is now SIP-based?
* Where do the vendors stand in terms of market share and technology leadership?
* Can the migration to IP and SIP be cost-justified either through network savings or potential increased sales or faster problem resolution?
* How are media such as text/instant messaging, video and social networking applications like FaceBook and Twitter being incorporated into leading-edge contact centers, and what are the challenges and benefits of these new media types?
* Is the contact center market in danger of being absorbed into other application areas, such as Unified Communications and Business Process Automation? Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
How are the new technologies and trends in contact centers affecting your plans? Topics will include SIP and Unified Communications in the contact center, self-service, support for home-based agents, multimedia, and whatever other issues you bring.
Allan is the Senior Marketing Manager for Unified Communications at Avaya. While he resides in Canada, his effectiveness in his global role is a testament to the application of Unified Communications solutions. His marketing, product management, and business development career has spanned 20+ years dealing with the planning and application of voice, data, and information systems to support the needs of business with particular focus on employee productivity and customer service. His applications focus has included: unified communications, messaging, IVR, contact center, CTI, voice over IP, and remote data access. Prior to joining Avaya (via Octel and Lucent) in 1998, Allan led marketing and business development teams at two mid sized organizations entering new stages of growth, which followed his applications marketing tenure at Nortel. Allan holds an MBA in Information Systems (McMaster University) and an Honors BA in Economics and Psychology (York University). Next to family activities with his 13-year old twin girls, his favorite pass times include playing golf and ice hockey.
Presence is the heart of next-generation enterprise communications by providing information about who is available and via what method. There are, however, two challenges: First, presence loses much of its value if it's implemented within discrete systems that can't exchange information – e.g., between different systems within an enterprise, between partner companies, with customers and between public and private networks. Second, while Unified Communications capabilities open up many more possibilities to identify and reach the individual or skill needed, that openness threatens to bury us in too much, too easy contact.
Two capabilities are needed: An open but secure ability to exchange presence information between systems, and an efficient way to establish and maintain rules and policies about who can contact who, when, and how. This session will explore these topics and examine progress on these important functionality issues.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What “rich presence” capabilities will we see, and how will they help Unified Communications applications deployment?
* What are the issues in inter- and intra-enterprise presence aggregation and federation, and how far have we progressed in solving them?
* How is the use of social networks affecting the concepts of presence?
* Will setting presence status require less manual intervention in the future?
* What is the role of rules and policy engines, and where are we in their development?
*
How should enterprises plan current deployments to be ready for future presence capabilities?
Dave Michels is an independent analyst and blogger. Dave's unique perspective comes from a career involving telecom, IT, and the channel including leadership positions in Fortune500 companies as well as start-ups and even a telecom dealership. Dave carries the title "Telecommunications Protagonist" at his telecom blog PinDropSoup.com. He is also a regular contributor to NoJitter.com and a member of the UCStrategies.com analyst and editorial teams. He is the founder and President of Verge1 which offers consulting and analysis on Unified Communications and emerging technologies of convergence. Dave holds a Master's degree in Telecommunications from Colorado University where he has also been an adjunct faculty member. Other education includes Harvard Executive Education on Technology. Dave lives in Boulder in a recently remodeled green and hi-tech home.
The whole IT industry seems to have its collective head in the "cloud" these days. Cloud Computing is all the rage and is being portrayed as the technical silver bullet to just about any IT-related problem. To be sure, the idea of reducing IT expenditures and headcount sounds compelling, particularly in tough economic times.
But where - and how -- does enterprise communications fit within the emerging framework for Cloud Computing? Does it portend a new set of options for delivering and managing voice, video and data communications, or is Cloud Computing for communications not much more than Centrex dressed up in 21st century buzzwords? Does the undeniable trend toward more mobile communications capabilities create the foundation for bringing together communications and Cloud Computing, or is it just the next iteration of heretofore unsuccessful initiatives like Application Service Providers (ASPs)?
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the promise, today's realities and the possible future scenarios for marrying enterprise communications with Cloud Computing. You'll hear a variety of viewpoints and have the opportunity to ask your questions.
Many industry analysts (and some vendors) are asserting that the desk phone is, if not dead, at least past its prime. They argue that there’s no cost justification for putting a hard phone on every desk, claiming a PC-based softphone is an adequate substitute for at least a significant portion of the user base. Those on the other side of this debate argue that PCs are prone to unpredictable problems and crashes, that they’re not always on, and that softphones provide lower voice quality and security. So who’s right? In this Summit, a panel of experts will debate the issues and let you decide.
At the conclusion of each VoiceCon, we ask leading analysts to join VoiceCon Co-chairs Fred Knight and Eric Krapf to summarize what they learned during the Conference. The Locknote will analyze progress in the migration to IP Telephony and Unified Communications, vendor positioning and market strategies, and examine whether the payoffs from new technologies are being realized. The panelists draw on their experience and what they've seen and heard during the conference, and they'll take your questions.
Mike Milburn is the Director of Consultancy responsible for Global Delivery of the Service Cloud at salesforce.com. Prior to joining salesforce.com, Mr. Milburn ran Professional Services at Apropos Technology. Mr. Milburn’s passion for customer service and support has brought innovation and success to clients of all sizes for the last 10 years.
Mr. Milburn is recognized as a thought-leader in Service and Support, most recently in the SaaS world.
In this session, a leading analyst will offer her assessment of the current state of the contact center market—the progress enterprises are making on migrating to IP and SIP-based systems, and which vendors they're selecting as partners for this migration. There will then be a roundtable discussion in which executives from the leading vendors react to the analyst assessment and offer their own views on where the market is headed, and how IP-based systems can make the contact center more cost-effective in a challenging economic environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How has the economic downturn affected the migration to IP? What percentage of the new contact center systems being deployed is now SIP-based?
* Where do the vendors stand in terms of market share and technology leadership?
* Can the migration to IP and SIP be cost-justified either through network savings or potential increased sales or faster problem resolution?
* How are media such as text/instant messaging, video and social networking applications like FaceBook and Twitter being incorporated into leading-edge contact centers, and what are the challenges and benefits of these new media types?
* Is the contact center market in danger of being absorbed into other application areas, such as Unified Communications and Business Process Automation? Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
Tom Minifie is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. In his current role, Mr. Minifie is responsible for the strategic direction of the Company's CallXpress® product line. Prior to his promotion to CTO, Mr. Minifie served as the Vice President of Product Management for AVST since its inception in 2003. Previously, Mr. Minifie held a variety of executive level positions in the sales, business development and marketing organizations of Captaris, Inc. and its predecessor company, Applied Voice Technology ("AVT"). Mr. Minifie is a recognized authority in the field of Unified Communications and a frequent speaker on the topic. Mr. Minifie has also spent considerable time cultivating strategic technical relationships with many of the industry's leading technology companies including Aastra/Ericsson, Alcatel–Lucent, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Mitel and NEC. Prior to joining the communications industry, Mr. Minifie held various sales and marketing positions within the high tech industry. Tom holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of Washington.
Voice messaging systems became part of the landscape because phones need to be answered whether or not the called party was available. But with presence, IM and related Unified Communications applications and capabilities, there are new ways to assess the value voice messaging and Unified Messaging do—or don't—deliver. This session will analyze the new options becoming available, and the different ways to calculate ROI.
KEY QUESTIONS:
*Are IP-PBXs needed for a voice mail to unified messaging migration? What's the best way and place to store messages?
*Is end of life finally here for legacy voice mail systems?
*What are new options for getting voice messaging, call answering and auto-attendant services?
*Is it better to have voice mail built into the PBX software, or on separate servers?
*What is the impact of speech auto-attendants on voice mail?
Phil brings strong leadership skills and sales management expertise gathered from his more than 14 years in the software technology industry. Prior to joining Unimax, Phil held various executive business management roles at leading technology companies, including SoftBrands, Inc. (formerly Fourth Shift) and Epicor. Most recently, he was responsible for developing a $100 million sales channel including more than 100 third-party sales representatives. Phil holds a B.S. degree in general business, sales and marketing from St. Cloud State University and is CPIM certified.
Whether because of a best-of-breed strategy, mergers, acquisitions or a migration from either traditional TDM or a mixed TDM-IP environment to one that supports Unified Communications, enterprises typically have a complex mix of multiple telephony vendors and platforms. Adding to this complexity is a growing need to integrate voice systems with critical business applications like active directory, HR, ERP, etc. These environments are extremely expensive to manage and there is a growing realization that new management and administration tools are needed. This session will focus on best practices for managing and
administering complex telecom environments, and include a review of tools for provisioning, automation and reporting.
Bruce Morse is Vice President, Unified Communications and Collaboration, IBM Software Group. In his role, Mr. Morse has overall responsibility for IBM's Unified Communications and Collaboration software business unit, including setting strategy, delivering innovative software products such as IBM Lotus Sametime, catalyzing associated IBM hardware and services offerings and building key industry alliances.
Mr. Morse has over twenty five years of software and hardware experience in the IT industry and has held key executive positions in marketing, product management, engineering, business development, mergers and acquisitions, and finance. Prior to his current role, he led IBM's industry software solutions organization helping clients leverage SOA and IBM software to improve their business processes. Mr. Morse also led IBM's Contact Center Software and Client Technologies business units, and played a leading role in establishing WebSphere Portal as the market leader in enterprise portals.
Mr. Morse received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Industrial Engineering from Northwestern University, Chicago Illinois, and has participated in graduate courses in business administration.
For the past three years, the theme of Unified Communications has grown in importance, as it is the vanguard of a fundamental transition that is shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace: The industry is evolving from a focus on hardware to a focus on software - software architectures, software-based systems and services.
The good news is that the inevitability of this transition is widely accepted. However, the bad news is that the promise of Unified Communications remains largely unfulfilled. Implementations of "true" Unified Communications, while growing, remain relatively small in number. There is still considerable confusion in the market about what Unified Communications is and what it isn't. And there are tough issues like interoperability that inhibit wider adoption and deployment. The rocky economic climate doesn't help matters either.
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the Unified Communications market from a variety of perspectives: How far along has the market really evolved? What are the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime? What obstacles need to be overcome as enterprises try to mesh Unified Communications with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations?
Dr. Narendra is responsible for new product innovation in the converged communications space within Enterprise Mobility Solutions business of Motorola. He has focused on high velocity development of new products and solutions leveraging internal and external innovation to solve the unified communications challenge in specific domains such as Retail and Healthcare. His current thrust is to unify work flow driven communications across multiple devices, platforms and even diverse technologies as WLAN VoIP, cellular and two way radios in each of the application domains. In prior roles, Dr Narendra was the chief architect and directed the product and technology strategy for enterprise and productivity handsets in the Mobile Devices business. He held strategy, product management and development positions leading wireless broadband, enterprise solutions and enterprise devices in both the Mobile Device and Network businesses. Prior to Motorola, Dr Narendra's career in Honeywell spanned technology, product and general management positions in digital signal processing, sensor and image processing, systems on chips, and applied artificial intelligence and robotics and aerospace lithium polymer batteries. Pat earned his PhD in Electrical Engineering and MSEE from Purdue, an MBA in Strategic Management from University of Minnesota and a BSEE from Bangalore University. He has 8 issued patents and published several dozen papers in global technical and business journals.
In this session, executives from the leading vendors offer their assessment of Unified Communications' evolution to date: What's available now, and what's coming over the next 12 months. The discussion will also cover the barriers that must be overcome for Unified Communications to fulfill its potential - especially interoperability and TCO/ROI concerns, and will examine the various pricing models.
KEY QUESTIONS
* What are prospects for Unified Communications adoption given the weak economy and enterprise budget cuts?
* What are the top Unified Communications applications in terms of actual implementation? What hard savings or ROI exist? Are any "true" Unified Communications apps being adopted, or is it all about audioconferencing bridges and other routes to a quick payback?
* What specific examples exist of enterprises using Unified Communications to change their business processes? Name names.
* What interoperability challenges remain, and how are enterprises tackling the systems integration challenges posed by Unified Communications?
* How have the vendors changed their approach to pricing for Unified Communications capabilities, and what impact are these changes having? What's next in the evolution of Unified Communications pricing?
* Are vendors giving away Unified Communications apps to sell their call control platforms - or vice versa?
Andrew H. Nilssen is a Senior Analyst & Partner at Wainhouse Research, where he is the practice manager for audio/VoIP conferencing infrastructure, web conferencing, and IM/Presence technologies. Since joining WR in January 2000, Andy has co-authored several of the firm's research studies and continues to consultant to conferencing and collaboration vendors, network infrastructure vendors, end users, government agencies, and venture capitalists. Earlier in his career, Andy managed the planning and launching of PictureTel's Venue and Concorde group videoconferencing systems, was Vice President of Marketing at Visual Technology, and was a product line manager at Sun Microsystems. Andy has 30 years of experience in high-technology product marketing and market research, earned his MBA and BSEE degrees from the University of New Hampshire, and holds two ease-of-use related patents. Andy can be reached at andyn@wainhouse.com .
Web conferencing could provide the key path for users to become comfortable with both desktop video and softphones. While enterprises are moving toward ubiquitous desktop video, VoIP and real-time collaboration, web conferencing already incorporates all of these technologies. This session, which is grounded in recent survey and interview data, will examine the adoption numbers reported by web conferencing users for video and VoIP, the benefits they perceive in their words, and application fit. The session also will examine platform differentiators, and provide recommendations on how web conferencing can be a catalyst that drives adoption.
Key Questions:
• In what ways does web conferencing create a path for greater use and acceptance of desktop video, VoIP and real-time collaboration?
• What applications are “low hanging fruit” for voice and video-enabled web conferencing?
• What motivates web conferencing users to give VoIP and video a try – and stick with it?
• Does web conferencing play an equally strong role if conferencing is provided in-house vs. a service bureau/”cloud” approach?
• Which web conferencing platforms offer VoIP and video – and how is it packaged?
• What are the network requirements for today’s web conferencing?
Jason Norton is the Director of Operations and Telecommunications for Scripps Networks. The Operations and Telecommunications group is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Scripps Networks Data Centers, Local Area Network, Wide Area Network, Internet, Firewalls and Cisco VoIP infrastructure.
Jason has over 16 years of professional experience in the computer industry managing or directing the IT vision of three companies. This supervisory experience includes as many as fifteen employee's, a 12 million dollar IS budget, outsourcing design and implementation, over 500 client/server/networking projects and responsibility for the P/L of his departments. Jason has worked extensively with UNIX, Novell, Windows NT, WAN's, databases, software development, telephony, Hosting environments, Intranets, help desk, workflow, and project management, assignments. He has taken hundreds of Information Systems projects from start to completion, in mission critical, fault tolerant environments. Jason understands IS planning, business processes and technology for many different business environments where metrics, reporting, and controls are imperative.
Scripps Networks is a leading developer of lifestyle content for television and the Internet, where on-air programming complements an array of broadband video, social media areas and e-commerce components on companion Web sites that attract more than 17 million unique visitors each month. Beyond the screen, Scripps Networks brands have extended into magazines, retail products, video games and live experiences. Scripps Networks is comprised of lifestyle television brands HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network, Fine Living Network (FLN) and country music network Great American Country (GAC). Scripps will extend its category dominance in 2010 by acquiring a controlling interest in the Travel Channel and rebranding FLN as the Cooking Channel.
This VoiceCon Summit presents enterprise executives discussing their experiences with migrating to new communications infrastructures, architectures and services. In a roundtable format, the executives will describe what went into their decision-making for migrating, and they'll describe their implementation experiences —what went right and what didn't. The panelists will discuss benefits and problems, and offer perspective and advice that reflect their real-world experience. In addition to discussing the technical issues, the speakers will address the impact that new technologies and architectures are having on end users and the IT/telecom organization.
Peter Nutley has more than 20 years of experience in videoconferencing, data communications and telecommunications. At TANDBERG Peter serves as Director of Product Marketing, where he is responsible for working closely with TANDBERG R&D and product management to deliver products to market, identify market opportunities and provide input for product roadmaps. In addition, Peter and his team develop and deliver sales tools, collateral, and product promotions and training.
Prior to joining TANDBERG Peter held key marketing and technical positions at SeaChange International, IBM, and PictureTel Corporation. At both PictureTel and SeaChange Peter served as Vice President for Product Management, where he was responsible for product strategy, new product development, partner and business development and international market cultivation. During his tenure at PictureTel, Peter also held positions including senior product manager and senior sales engineer.
Standardized in 2007, scalable video coding (SVC) promises to deliver incredible benefits for personal, room, and mobile videoconferencing. While hampered by backward-compatibility issues, SVC is already shaking up the industry because it promises highly scalable, low-cost, high-performance video over standard, non-QoS IP networks. This session will investigate the pros and cons and risk factors facing today’s decision makers.
Key Questions:
*What is scalable video coding (SVC) and why does it matter?
*Are the current videoconferencing products about to become dinosaurs?
*Should enterprise buyers invest in this new technology or continue with their legacy systems?
*What are the risks here of making the wrong decisions?
Marty Parker is a leading industry consultant in Unified Communications. Marty and his UniComm Consulting teammates are committed to advancement of Unified Communications (UC) to produce new benefits and efficiencies in enterprise communications and to stimulate and justify innovation in the business communications industry.
Using the UC definition of "Communications integrated to optimize business processes," Marty sees Unified Communications as transforming the highly manual, unmeasured, and relatively unpredictable world of telephony-based-voice and e-mail communications into software-assisted, coordinated, simplified, and predictable processes that will deliver high-value benefits to customers, to employees, and to the relevant enterprises.
Marty is co-founder of UniComm Consulting, the industry’s premier independent consulting firm providing UC strategy, planning and implementation support for large enterprises in all industry segments.
Marty is also co-founder of UCStrategies.com, the industry’s leading forum for UC information and dialog. Marty also offers UC training such as the workshop, “Planning and Implementing Unified Communications”, offered though Telecom + UC Training.
Marty’s background provides the foundation for his work in Unified Communications, including positions with IBM in enterprise computing; with a leading north American communications VAR (dealing with Siemens, Toshiba, Mitel, Nortel, and other PBX product lines); as leader of two venture-funded voice mail and unified messaging startups; and with ATT/Lucent/Avaya for unified messaging, conferencing & collaboration, and the earliest versions of unified communications.
Please join him in VoiceCon sessions: "Implementation Options: Deep Dive", Monday, 9 AM; "Comparing UC Options: Who's Offering What?", Monday, 2 PM: and "How Much Voice Mail Do You Really Need?", Wednesday, 8 AM.
This workshop will provide a comprehensive overview of the options available for Unified Communications along with an assessment of suppliers for each option. It is intended for enterprise CXOs, decision-makers, IT managers, communications managers, and business managers who are planning to install Unified Communications -- either via a new system or by adding Unified Communications to existing PBXs, email systems and business applications.
The session will highlight the five most popular Unified Communications enterprise deployment options. The functions of each option will be outlined, and savings and ROI elements will be highlighted. The five deployment options are:
1. IP-PBX augmented with supplier's Unified Communications modules -- Integrate to e-mail, office, and business software packages.
2. Unified Communications software system as the primary communication platform for all or selected users -- Integrate to PBX(s), e-mail, office, and business software packages.
3. Unified Communications software product(s) as overlay with integration to existing communication tools - PBX(s), e-mail, office & business software packages. Use Internet-based/hosted consumer Unified Communications packages (non-integrated).
4. Mobility Unified Communications package as an overlay to existing PBX(s), e-mail, office, and business software packages.
5. Add Unified Communications functions to your business software packages for specific jobs and roles.
Top-ranking vendors for each option will be compared and evaluated, and estimated pricing of each approach will be included in the analysis. Vendors that are reviewed will react and respond to this analysis. This tutorial will provide attendees with:
* A basis for comparing and selecting the Unified Communications options best suited to their enterprise.
* A framework for decision-making about investment choices for Unified Communications, along with ROI information.
* Descriptions and diagrams of solutions applicable for each Unified Communications deployment option.
Hear from representatives of Aastra, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Interactive Intelligence, Microsoft, Mitel, NEC, RIM, ShoreTel and Siemens Enterprise Communications Group.
This Deep Dive will provide you with the details you need if your firm is considering or planning Unified Communications investments any time soon. You will get the details you need to make your Unified Communications decisions, to select the best vendors, and to plan your implementation.
This session will show the specific Unified Communications configurations and investments that are required for three of the most common cases for Unified Communications investments:
Case 1: Expand Voice Systems: You want to add applications to your voice communications system, such as presence, mobility support, in-house conferencing (audio, web and/or video conferencing), and desktop communications (possibly including instant messaging or other tools). Optionally, you may choose to integrate the selected elements with your installed desktop applications.
Case 2: Expand Desktop Systems: You want to add communications to your desktop application systems (such as e-mail, calendar, instant messaging, or collaborative workspaces) such as presence, click-to-communicate, conferencing (audio, web and/or video), and mobility. Optionally, you may choose to integrate the selected elements with the your installed PBX systems.
Case 3: Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP): You want to integrate communications with core business applications in your business, such as with applications for sales, service, logistics, human resources, or specialized vertical market apps such as in health care, financial services, manufacturing, transportation, education, or government. This focus is on presenting communication tools in context of the applications and within the business application user interfaces (on a PC, laptop, mobile devices, or telephone).
In each case, the Deep Dive will review the system configurations, the added software and hardware elements, and the systems integration scope of work likely to be required to achieve the desired outcome.
This session is organized by UCStrategies.com, moderated by Marty Parker with panelist support from the UCStrategies.com team -- Don Van Doren, Blair Pleasant and Jim Burton – and selected Systems Integrators. The Deep Dive content will include solution elements from Avaya, Cisco, Siemens, NEC, Microsoft, and IBM as well as suppliers of gateways, Unified Communications end-points (SIP phone, Bluetooth and USB devices), and wireless elements (access points, devices, etc.).
Voice messaging systems became part of the landscape because phones need to be answered whether or not the called party was available. But with presence, IM and related Unified Communications applications and capabilities, there are new ways to assess the value voice messaging and Unified Messaging do—or don't—deliver. This session will analyze the new options becoming available, and the different ways to calculate ROI.
KEY QUESTIONS:
*Are IP-PBXs needed for a voice mail to unified messaging migration? What's the best way and place to store messages?
*Is end of life finally here for legacy voice mail systems?
*What are new options for getting voice messaging, call answering and auto-attendant services?
*Is it better to have voice mail built into the PBX software, or on separate servers?
*What is the impact of speech auto-attendants on voice mail?
As director of Solutions Marketing, Tim is responsible for creating positioning and messaging for all products in the Interactive Intelligence portfolio. Solutions Marketing is also the outward facing delivery team for webinar, seminar, analyst and media presentations as well as prospect and end customer demonstrations and consultant relations. Tim has been with Interactive Intelligence since 1998, and has more than 18 years experience in the contact center and business communications industry.
For the past three years, the theme of Unified Communications has grown in importance, as it is the vanguard of a fundamental transition that is shaking up the enterprise communications marketplace: The industry is evolving from a focus on hardware to a focus on software - software architectures, software-based systems and services.
The good news is that the inevitability of this transition is widely accepted. However, the bad news is that the promise of Unified Communications remains largely unfulfilled. Implementations of "true" Unified Communications, while growing, remain relatively small in number. There is still considerable confusion in the market about what Unified Communications is and what it isn't. And there are tough issues like interoperability that inhibit wider adoption and deployment. The rocky economic climate doesn't help matters either.
This VoiceCon Summit will examine the Unified Communications market from a variety of perspectives: How far along has the market really evolved? What are the issues facing both buyers and sellers as they adapt to this new regime? What obstacles need to be overcome as enterprises try to mesh Unified Communications with their existing network design and procurement procedures, network operations and organizations?
In this session, a leading analyst will offer her assessment of the current state of the contact center market—the progress enterprises are making on migrating to IP and SIP-based systems, and which vendors they're selecting as partners for this migration. There will then be a roundtable discussion in which executives from the leading vendors react to the analyst assessment and offer their own views on where the market is headed, and how IP-based systems can make the contact center more cost-effective in a challenging economic environment.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* How has the economic downturn affected the migration to IP? What percentage of the new contact center systems being deployed is now SIP-based?
* Where do the vendors stand in terms of market share and technology leadership?
* Can the migration to IP and SIP be cost-justified either through network savings or potential increased sales or faster problem resolution?
* How are media such as text/instant messaging, video and social networking applications like FaceBook and Twitter being incorporated into leading-edge contact centers, and what are the challenges and benefits of these new media types?
* Is the contact center market in danger of being absorbed into other application areas, such as Unified Communications and Business Process Automation? Would this be a good thing or a bad thing?
J. W. Penland joined IOCOM as Executive Vice President – Subscriptions & Hosted Services in 2008, to launch IOCOM’s software as a service offering.
Prior to joining IOCOM, Penland was Area Vice President -Illinois and Wisconsin at Sprint where he was the general manager of one of Sprint’s most profitable business units serving 2.3M subscribers and generating $1.6B of annual revenue. In this role, Penland led an 800 person organization that managed 80 retail stores, 90 direct business account executives and 800 partner retail locations. The Illinois Wisconsin Area was a consistent top performer within Sprint in key business metrics including new customer additions, customer churn, average revenue per user, and customer acquisition cost.
Penland is also credited with the turnaround of Sprint’s business operation in Chicago which had been among Sprint’s most underperforming markets relative to competitors. Within a year of arriving, Penland increased Sprint’s share of new customer decisions over 100%. He accomplished this by cultivating new distribution to create a diverse portfolio of distribution channels while implementing new business practices across the organization. Sprint became the co-market leader of wireless service in Chicago in conjunction with the Sprint Nextel merger.
Before assuming his general management role leading Illinois & Wisconsin, Penland spent 10 years in progressively more complex sales, marketing, strategy, planning, and operations roles at Sprint.
Penland earned his BSBA in Accounting from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and his MBA from Harvard Business School. Penland was also a certified public accountant (CPA) in Washington, DC.
Personal video conferencing is a very different paradigm from traditional room-based or telepresence video. Acceptance of this technology is being driven by a geographically disparate or travelling work force, company partnering and an incessant need to quickly establish personal relationships and execute business at a faster pace. Network bandwidth and desktop power are finally able to support a high quality experience. The market is rapidly evolving and many hardware and software deployment choices exist. How does the enterprise IT team decide which approach best works to support its specific business needs? This session will review different models of desktop deployment and highlight demonstrations of desktop solutions to help you make your decisions.
Mr. Percy is Director of Market Development at AudioCodes, a leading provider of Voice over IP Telephony products and enabling technology. In this role, Mr. Percy is responsible for identifying market trends and building relationships to foster new business opportunities. Mr. Percy joined AudioCodes in 2001 and brings over two decades of experience in the telecommunications, networking and wireless equipment industries. Mr. Percy is a frequent industry speaker and contributes to a number of industry journals and blogs.
AudioCodes Connect – A FREE educational, dining and networking opportunity at VoiceCon
http://www.audiocodes.com/events/audiocodes-connect
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the second portion, Lisa will describe the equipment that may be required for a SIP trunking implementation—IP-PBXs, VOIP gateways, Session Border Controllers, etc. Once again, she will follow her presentation by discussing the state of the industry with representatives from the leading vendors in the equipment space.
You will come away from this session with a clear understanding of the service and CPE elements that make up a SIP trunking implementation, and you will walk away more prepared to start developing RFIs and RFPs for SIP trunking for your enterprise.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 2
* Are IP-PBX vendors’ platforms able to support SIP trunks natively? If not, what must be added to these systems to accommodate SIP trunks?
* What is the role of the Session Border Controller (SBC) in SIP trunking? Are SBCs mandatory?
* How do you typically procure equipment that you may need to acquire to implement SIP trunks—do you implement them as CPE you manage yourself? Does the carrier provide them as part of its offer?
* What network management/monitoring capabilities do you need in house in order to validate carrier SLA compliance?
Lisa Pierce is the founder and President of Strategic Networks Group (www.strategicnw.com), a consultancy dedicated to improving the quality of telecommunications and IT services, and the service experience, that business customers receive from key suppliers.
Most recently, she served as a Vice President of Telecommunications Research at Forrester Research/Giga Information Group; prior work includes emerging telecommunications protocol consulting and training for a boutique consultancy; at AT&T, her work focused on new business services -- product development, product management, new services research, statistical modeling and forecasting.
From a network technology perspective, Lisa now focuses on SIP Trunking, Unified Communications (particularly collaboration and FGC), broadband access, 3G and 4G wireless services, managed network services, switched Ethernet (VPLS) and MPLS services.
A member of the IEEE, she is a frequent industry speaker and media commentator, and periodically contributes to the work of the Metro Ethernet Forum, DM Radio and VoiceCon/NoJitter. She holds an MBA in marketing and statistical modeling from Willamette University, and a B.A. with Honors from Gordon College.
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the first portion of the session, Lisa will reveal the results of her research into the details of carriers’ offerings—pricing, service availability, service level agreements, and much more. She will follow up this presentation by leading a discussion with representatives of leading carrier organizations.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 1
* What is the current state of availability of SIP trunking from the major carriers? Are secondary carriers a viable option in places where the largest providers are not?
* What are the pricing trends and structures from the carriers? What specific “gotchas” are you likely to encounter
* What is the status of service level agreements (SLAs) for SIP trunking services?
* What are the elements you should include in an RFI/RFP for SIP trunking services?
SIP trunking is the hottest technology trend in enterprise communications , but how do you procure the services and equipment to make it a success for your organization? In this Deep Dive session, Lisa Pierce, the industry’s leading expert on carrier services for the enterprise will offer detailed presentations on the services and technologies you will need to acquire in order to roll out SIP trunking.
In the second portion, Lisa will describe the equipment that may be required for a SIP trunking implementation—IP-PBXs, VOIP gateways, Session Border Controllers, etc. Once again, she will follow her presentation by discussing the state of the industry with representatives from the leading vendors in the equipment space.
You will come away from this session with a clear understanding of the service and CPE elements that make up a SIP trunking implementation, and you will walk away more prepared to start developing RFIs and RFPs for SIP trunking for your enterprise.
KEY QUESTIONS:
Part 2
* Are IP-PBX vendors’ platforms able to support SIP trunks natively? If not, what must be added to these systems to accommodate SIP trunks?
* What is the role of the Session Border Controller (SBC) in SIP trunking? Are SBCs mandatory?
* How do you typically procure equipment that you may need to acquire to implement SIP trunks—do you implement them as CPE you manage yourself? Does the carrier provide them as part of its offer?
* What network management/monitoring capabilities do you need in house in order to validate carrier SLA compliance?
As President and Principal Analyst, COMMfusion LLC and Co-Founder, UCStrategies.com, Blair provides consulting and analysis on Unified Communications and voice/data convergence markets and technologies, aimed at helping end-user and vendor clients both strategically and tactically.
Behind the basic questions --How big is the Unified Communications market, and which vendors are winning/losing?—lurks a more difficult question: What "counts" as Unified Communications when we're measuring this market? In this session, a leading Unified Communications analyst will present research that looks at the market's size, players and prospects, the impact of Unified Communications on end users and future trends.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Who are the principal players, and how are they positioning themselves?
* How is Unified Communications defined, and who—according to this definition—is really selling in this market? Who's buying?
* What are the drivers behind the growth from a customer perspective?
* What are the current and likely future patterns of adoption—e.g., by job type, mobile work, business process?
* How is the current economic climate affecting adoption? When will this market take off?
Voice messaging systems became part of the landscape because phones need to be answered whether or not the called party was available. But with presence, IM and related Unified Communications applications and capabilities, there are new ways to assess the value voice messaging and Unified Messaging do—or don't—deliver. This session will analyze the new options becoming available, and the different ways to calculate ROI.
KEY QUESTIONS:
*Are IP-PBXs needed for a voice mail to unified messaging migration? What's the best way and place to store messages?
*Is end of life finally here for legacy voice mail systems?
*What are new options for getting voice messaging, call answering and auto-attendant services?
*Is it better to have voice mail built into the PBX software, or on separate servers?
*What is the impact of speech auto-attendants on voice mail?
Alistair Rennie is General Manager, Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal, IBM Software Group. Mr. Rennie was appointed to this position in January, 2010. As general manager, Mr. Rennie has oversight for an extensive portfolio of collaboration tools designed to empower people to be more effective, responsive and innovative within the context of the work they do. This portfolio includes Lotus Software, software that enables businesses to communicate, collaborate and increase productivity, and WebSphere Portal, software that enables organizations to design their Web experience with personalized applications. He is a member of the IBM Integration and Values team, a select group of executives who provide leadership across IBM on various business and strategic issues. Mr. Rennie is also IBM Senior State Executive for Massachusetts, providing leadership for IBM in the community statewide. Mr. Rennie was previously Vice President, Development and Support, Lotus Software and WebSphere Portal, responsible for the strategy and development of IBM's Collaboration portfolio. He also led the worldwide technical support team dedicated to software client satisfaction. Prior to this role, Alistair led IBM Software Services for Lotus - a global organization consisting of highly skilled technical consultants working in more than 35 countries with clients to optimize value from the IBM collaboration portfolio. Mr. Rennie joined IBM at the Toronto Software Laboratory in 1989 and has held a number of executive roles within IBM Software Group with a primary focus on the introduction of new technologies. Prior assignments include Vice President, Marketing and Channels, Lotus, and Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Pervasive Computing. Mr. Rennie holds degrees in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario.
Larry Riba is the Senior Voice Engineer at Alpine Access in Denver, Colorado. He is responsible for architecting and delivering a reliable, cost-effective and secure voice environment in the fast growing outsourced contact center market. Larry is also involved with evaluating and piloting new technology.
Larry joined Alpine Access in 2007 after more than 16 years at Hewlett Packard in a variety of engineering and architecture positions. At HP, Larry was responsible for strategy setting, implementation and operations for voice technologies including contact center, IP telephony, unified communications, CTI, IVR, voice messaging, mobility, PBX, and Centrex.
Larry holds an M.S. in Telecommunications from the University of Colorado and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Columbia University.
To round out our explorations of SIP Trunking, this session lets you hear from enterprise end user representatives who have implemented SIP trunking. These end users will talk from experience about the drivers, pitfalls and rewards of SIP trunking. You’ll come away from this session with an understanding of the real-world challenges and benefits that end users have experienced in production deployments, and you’ll be able to apply these lessons to your own enterprise’s situation.
KEY QUESTIONS
* What drives enterprise deployment of SIP trunks?
* What have users found with regard to such issues as carrier availability, pricing, SLAs and contracting/procurement?
* Did the promised benefits materialize? If so, what were the key steps that ensured the payback—and if not, where were the problems?
* How much can you expect to save with SIP trunks?
* What are the major technical challenges?
Bob Romano is the VP of Enterprise Marketing of Radvision; a leading provider of video conferencing solutions including network infrastructure, desktop and conference room endpoints and developer tools for unified visual communications over IP, 3G, and emerging next-generation IMS networks. He is an industry veteran with over 15 years experience in the visual communications industry and as a daily user of online conferencing technologies he is an expert in how to effectively meet over distance. Prior to assuming his current role at RADVISION, Mr. Romano has held positions as President of VCON, Inc. a market leader in video over IP solutions and VP of Sales and Marketing at First Virtual Communications, an enterprise software conferencing company. In addition he has consulted in the conferencing industry to many of the market leading companies and was President and COO of an early stage web conferencing startup. Prior to his involvement in the conferencing industry Bob spent eleven years with IBM in a variety of sales and finance positions both nationally and internationally. He holds a B.A. in Business Administration/Account from the University of Washington in Seattle.
The majority of video conferencing systems today are in conference rooms. For video to move into everyday use, different devices will be required for different users. In addition to high-end room systems and telepresence systems, people can use so-called executive systems (dedicated video systems on a user’s desk), their laptops or even video phones.
Key Questions:
*What are the key video device options today and the pros and cons for each device?
* Which device is the best suited for what types of workers, locations or use cases?
* What are the key tradeoffs in terms of quality, price and productivity considerations?
* How are the different device alternatives evolving and what will the future look like in 2 years,
5 years and 10 years? How would this change the mix of video devices used within
the enterprise?
Personal video conferencing is a very different paradigm from traditional room-based or telepresence video. Acceptance of this technology is being driven by a geographically disparate or travelling work force, company partnering and an incessant need to quickly establish personal relationships and execute business at a faster pace. Network bandwidth and desktop power are finally able to support a high quality experience. The market is rapidly evolving and many hardware and software deployment choices exist. How does the enterprise IT team decide which approach best works to support its specific business needs? This session will review different models of desktop deployment and highlight demonstrations of desktop solutions to help you make your decisions.
Jeronimo Romero is the CTO of EUS Networks. He has been building custom enterprise PBX and call center solutions with a strong focus on the financial services industry since the 1990’s. He has designed large and small multi-site enterprise telephony deployments throughout Europe and North America. Jeronimo Romero is a frequent quest speaker at telephony conferences like Astricon, Voicecon and ITExpo.
While Open Source PBXs now account for as much as 18% of stations shipped (for all size segments) in the U.S., the vast majority of the implementations remains in small businesses. But with Skype and others offering connectivity to Open Source systems and vendor interest broadening, will Open Source be part of your next procurement, or at least included in RFIs and RFPs?
This session will present the major systems and offerings, discuss how to get started with Open Source, the benefits you can expect to gain, and what (if any) enterprise-grade features and functions you'll have to give up.
KEY QUESTIONS:
* Why has open source PBX been growing in popularity?
* Can these systems scale, and can they support all the features and functions that enterprises get with proprietary systems?
* Is open source PBX "free?" What costs are associated with researching, obtaining, customizing and deploying an open source PBX?
* Can you deploy open source PBX as a subset of an enterprise communications environment that also runs proprietary systems? What are the pros and cons of doing this?
* What level of post-deployment support and ongoing involvement in the open source community is required in order to ensure a successful implementation and manageable system?
The vast majority of video conference calling is done within the enterprise, but it’s only a matter of time before these same systems are used to make calls to people in other organizations. However, unlike voice which has the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to link together all phones, video devices have no such network to connect to. Further, there are significant barriers to making inter-enterprise video conferencing as easy as a voice call such as addressing, security, quality of service and interoperability. This session will examine your options today, and identify what are likely to be a broader set of options in the coming years.
Key Questions:
* What are the different approaches to inter-enterprise video conferencing today?
* How do you find and call other video users (use “regular” phone numbers, URI address, IP Address, iNum, FDQN)?
*Will enterprises rely on service providers or handle this issue on their own -- internally? When should dedicated bandwidth be used vs. the public Internet or a hybrid approach?
* What are the security requirements and tradeoffs for inter-enterprise video?
* What are the different requirements for inter-enterprise video conferencing between video
endpoints from the same vendor? Different vendors?
* What are the considerations for opening up bridging (e.g., an MCU) for inter-enterprise video
conferencing vs. using a 3rd party?
Shantanu Sarkar is Director for New Technology in the office of the CTO for Cisco’s Voice Technology Group. His team is responsible for analyzing technology trends, prototyping innovative products and integrations, and helping shape the technology direction of Unified Collaboration at Cisco. He is on the Board of Directors and AG Chair for IMTC (International Multimedia Telecom Consortium). He was one of the early pioneers in the field of Enterprise VoIP, and has many technology firsts to his credit including the first VoIP call from space. He has led engineering teams and built groundbreaking products in a variety of areas, including VoIP, cellular infrastructure, routing and switching.
Shantanu has over 20 years of experience in a variety of startups and large companies including Cisco, Motorola, Hughes Software Systems and DEC. He has 37 granted patents, and 40 applications pending. He holds an M.S. Degree from the Ohio State University, and a B.S. From the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
As enterprise communications moves from the legacy PBX-centric architecture to one based on IP networking and software applications, the architectures supporting these systems will also change. Enterprises have the opportunity to integrate communications systems more tightly into their corporate datacenters, taking advantage of Web Services, server virtualization and Cloud Computing, among other technology trends.
So how should enterprises plan to take advantage of these trends, and what pitfalls await them as they do? And how will technology vendors attempt to leverage these trends in their own product or services offerings?
In this VoiceCon Summit, CTOs and other technology leaders will discuss and debate the various approaches to next-gen communications architectures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how your enterprise's communications systems will fit into the larger IT environment, and how these new architectures will support end users to provide higher productivity and great business benefits.
Stephen L. Schilling currently serves as President & CEO of Cypress Communications. Mr. Schilling has over 20 years of experience in the telecom and data communications industry where he has specialized in turnarounds, start-ups and managing high-growth firms. Prior to Cypress Communications, Steve was the founder and President of Netifice Communications, a company he created in 1998 and led until its merger with MegaPath Networks. Prior to Netifice, Steve was President and COO of Charter Communications International, and prior to Charter Communications, he held executive positions at GE Capital-ResCom, MFS and RealCom Office Communications.
Steve has twice been named to Catalyst Magazine’s Atlanta’s Top 50 Entrepreneurs list; he was an Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, a recipient of Atlanta Telecom Professionals’ Award for Outstanding Leadership and recently awarded the Phoenix Award by the Association for Corporate Growth. Steve speaks frequently at industry events and has been published in numerous trade journals. He earned a B.S. in Administrative Management from Clemson
