IP PBX

Adapability and Agility are Keys to UC Success

Unified communications is a rapidly changing market without a clearly defined product offering. Selling unified communications successfully requires being able to quickly understand and integrate new technologies, and the flexibility to evolve quickly as the landscape changes.

Companies that make their livelihood as resellers of telecommunications equipment spent decades essentially selling the same thing. A PBX was a PBX and it was basically built on the same PBX technology as a PBX from 30 years ago. Things have changed over the last decade though, and the pace of change seems to pick up exponentially from year to year.

A recent blog post noted “Some channel partners are still trying to figure out VoIP and now there’s unified communications, virtualization, and the cloud!” That is true, but don’t leave out virtualized unified communications in the cloud.

That same blog post went on to say “Business as usual or TWIWAD (”that’s the way it was always done”) definitely isn’t today’s formula for success.”

Success depends on three things:

1. Stay informed and educated on emerging technologies and understand how they integrate with existing technologies and the value they provide.
2. Establish a consultative relationship with customers and sell solutions- not specific products or services. The customer doesn’t care who the vendor of the software is or how the hardware is architected as long as it works and helps solve business problems.
3. Don’t forget #1 and #2- but especially don’t forget #2.

Adapt. Evolve. Succeed.

RIP TWIWAD

IP Sizzles 2009

While it may sound a little corny, the name IP Sizzles does have some….sizzle. Coming up in August the IP Sizzle 2009 Conference will be held August 11 & 12 in Dallas, and August 13 & 14 in Miami.

If you’re like me, you may not have heard of the IP Sizzle conferences, but this is the 6th time the event is being held. According to the press release the IP Sizzle conference is for:

technology resellers and integrators in the space of phone, data networking and CCTV. In addition to technical presentations, IP Sizzles 2009 also focuses on key business aspects and sales skills to succeed in today’s challenging economy. The overarching themes this year will be Unified Communications and Video for SMB. Last but not least, the show covers many areas where IP Technology can reduce client’s service bills which allow many systems to quickly pay for themselves.

If you happen to be in Dallas or Miami in August, it may be worth checking out and seeing what is new and coming on the horizon for IP communications.

SmartSIP Provides Exciting Possibilities for OCS 2007 R2

When Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2) was unveiled in February of this year, it signaled the beginning of the end for the PBX or IP PBX. That is just my opinion I suppose, but it at least signaled proverbial dropping of the gloves as Microsoft moves forward with plans to make the PBX obsolete.

One of the features of OCS 2007 R2 which signal the first step toward killing off the PBX is the ability to do direct SIP trunking- connecting a VoIP provider directly to OCS 2007 R2 without the need for a PBX appliance between them. This is good news, but not great news. The reason it is not great news is that Microsoft only has partnerships with two VoIP providers, severely limiting the potential of the direct SIP trunking feature.

That is where SmartSIP comes in. Evangelyze Communications,  a global voice and unified communications products and professional services organization that specializes in Microsoft Unified Communications IP telephony products and services, has developed a suite of custom tools that extend the functionality of Microsoft OCS and open new possibilities for unified communications. One of those tools is SmartSIP.

According to a recent blog post from Mike Stacy, Director of Services for Evangelyze Communications, SmartSIP “will allow you to connect OCS with virtually any SIP system – TCP or UDP.  The most common use is to connect a Mediation server to a customer’s existing ITSP, but it can also connect to other IP gateways, SBCs, IP PBXs, etc.”

The product is still in Beta now with the first release scheduled for April. Stacy’s blog post thought talks about the excitement that SmartSIP is generating in the field, and some of the innovative solutions that are possible with SmartSIP like the ability to provide failover redundancy for the VoIP connection, or saving a 350-user company over $90,000 on their unified communications implementation.

Check out Mike Stacy’s blog for more details, and check out the Evangelyze Communications site for more about SmartSIP and the other tools available such as SmartChat and SmartVoIP.

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Microsoft and Cisco Make Nice…Again

It is no secret that Microsoft holds a dominant position in the server and desktop OS market as well as the office applications market. However, Microsoft products need networking equipment in order to interconnect and communicate and Cisco has a dominant place in the networking and routing hardware market.

So, when Microsoft and Cisco both jumped into the unified communications arena it made some ripples. The two giants are competing head to head for dominance of the lucrative unified communications market with very different approaches and very different visions of what unified communications actually is.

Microsoft- being Microsoft- approaches unified communications from a software perspective and is working toward a goal of a pure software PBX solution and replacing  the traditional PBX. Cisco, on the other hand- being Cisco- has a more network and IP telephony-centric approach to unified communications. They each approach the market from their traditional strengths.

At one point, they had pledged to agree to disagree, but work together for the common good. That rhetoric lasted about until Microsoft unveiled Office Communications Server 2007 and then the gloves were off as they slammed each other’s products and solutions and went for the proverbial jugular.

In this market though, with this economy, they appear to have a renewed partnership. There is an old Arabic proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. In this case, Microsoft and Cisco have a common enemy in the economic malaise which makes them friends by association.

In order to boost customer confidence and ensure that enterprises do not delay purchasing decisions waiting for a clear winner, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Cisco CEO John Chambers have vowed to ensure that their competing systems will interoperate and work together.

Eye on the Unified Communications Market

TechTarget’s SearchUnifiedCommunications site has launched a new feature called Eye on the Unified Communications Market. This monthly feature will take an in-depth look at a specific vendor to provide insight into that vendor’s approach to unified communications and the pros and cons of that approach. For this first month, the column focuses on Microsoft.

The column’s author, Blair Pleasant, points out that “There are several groups of players in the enterprise UC arena, all coming from different directions: the switch, enterprise IM and presence, messaging, mobile devices, conferencing/collaboration, applications and so on.”

Depending on the existing infrastructure and applications already in place, and the overall goal or objectives that an organization wants to accomplish by implementing UC, one approach or vendor solution may make more sense than another.

Organizations need to have an eye on the long-term future though as well. Making decisions purely based on the current architecture could paint the organization into a corner and handicap their ability to maximize their efficiency and productivity with unified communications. Consider your ultimate unified communications goal and work backards to define logical phases to get there rather than starting purely from where you are and expecting to someday get where you want to be. If you aren’t aiming at a target it is hard to predict where you will ultimately end up.

Microsoft and the ‘Magic Quadrant’

Those who follow technology trends in business are probably familiar with the coveted Gartner Magic Quadrants. What has shocked many in the communications arena is that Gartner recently added a new player to their Magic Quadrant for corporate telephony- Microsoft. Microsoft is well known in many arenas, but corporate telephony has typically been reserved for players like Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, etc. Part of the reason for Microsoft’s inclusion may come down to this statement from Gartner: “Although companies are still deploying PBX and IP Telephony, most should make the decision in the context of a broader unified communications strategy.” For more about the Gartner report, take a look at this story from NoJitter.com.