SmartVoIP

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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Making a Case for VoIP

As a consumer I have used VoIP for almost 5 years. I have been with Vonage in three different houses in two different states separated by 1300 plus miles. While I didn’t take advantage of it when moving from Michigan to Texas (seemed like people might get confused by a ‘248′ area code in Houston), the fact is that I could have kept my phone number. The Internet is the Internet. As long as I have a broadband connection Vonage can route my call to me whether I am in Michigan, Texas, or New Zealand.

Cost is another factor. I was paying my local phone company for basic service, then paying additional money for long distance service (plus the per-minute calling charges), and adding nickel-and-dime costs for features like voicemail or caller ID. With VoIP I got everything for one flat fee. Again, with the Internet being  the Internet, it really doesn’t matter if I call my next door neighbor or a long-lost relative in Zurich. There isn’t any local and long distance. Some consumer VoIP providers haven’t gotten that memo though. My cable company offers ‘digital voice’ and charges per minute for long distance. No, thank you.

As it turns out, cost savings and number portability are also two of many compelling reasons for using VoIP for business telephony. The ability to develop custom tools and expand the functionality of voice communications to meet business needs is another great reason. Microsoft has made it exceptionally easy by letting organizations start with what they have and leverage their existing investment rather than replacing everything. Why isn’t every business moving to VoIP already?

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Enabling and Evangelyze Forge Partnership

Enabling Technologies and Evangelyze Communications have announced a comprehensive sales, marketing, and consulting agreement. The partnership combines the strengths of each in a complementary fashion that makes the resulting union greater than the sum of its parts.

Competitors have reason for concern, and customers have reason to be excited. The partnership extends the reach of both companies, enabling them both to expand the reach of the Microsoft Unified Communications platform and provide effective collaboration, improved productivity, reduced time to market, and increased efficiency.

The combination of established leaders to deliver these unified communications solutions is formidable. The innovative pilot programs enable organizations to test out Microsoft Unified Communications at no cost (or very little cost in some cases) to them, and custom development solutions such as SmartChat, SmartVoIP, and SmartSIP extend the functionality of the Microsoft Unified Communications platform and enable organizations to maximize the value of their UC investment even farther.

For more information, check out the official press release.

Defining ROI with UC-B

UC-B is apparently a term coined by Blair Pleasant (and others at UCStrategies.com), President and Principal Analyst for COMMfusion Unified Communications. In this SearchUnifiedCommunications.com article she talks about how communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) will be the driving force behind the success of unified communications.

Pleasant explains that she perceive two types of unified communications: UC-U (user-oriented unified communications) and UC-B (business-oriented unified communications). “UC-U is nice to have, but it’s UC-B where the ROI really comes in,” Pleasant said.

I couldn’t agree more. One of the primary advantages of unified communications is the extensibility of the platform and the ability to create custom communications solutions. Traditionally, businesses have had to conform their business processes to the limited capabilities provided by their communications systems. Now, organizations can design business processes that maximize their efficiency and productivity and develop custom communications solutions that fit their needs.

This article mentions some development that BT has done to customize the functionality of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007) for their customers. Evangelyze Communications is a leader in this aream having developed an entire suite of products around the extensibility of OCS 2007 and OCS 2007 R2. SmartChat, SmartVoIP, SmartSIP, and others enable organizations to expand the functionality of Microsoft Unified Communications and leverage ‘UC-B’ to maximize their ROI.

Making Unified Communications Work For You

According to a recent study companies continue to adopt and invest in unified communications technologies despite the crippled economy. As this ITWorld.com article points out though, companies should also understand the potential of unified communications and design a unified communications system that works for them.

The article, written by Evangelyze Communications Founder and CEO, and author of Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications, Joe Schurman, points out that software-powered voice opens up a whole new world of opportunity. Rather than letting the traditional methods and uses of voice communications dictate business processes, companies can now create communications methods that enhance and expand upon their business processes. Unified Communications enables companies to create new innovative solutions.

Evangelyze Communications, Schurman’s company, has created a suite of products that customers can use to extend their communications capabilities and leverage the power of unified communications to improve business processes. Products like SmartChat, SmartVoIP, SmartSIP, and SmartConference demonstrate some of what is capable by extending the functionality of Microsoft Office Communications Server by developing custom applications. There are also opportunities to customize these applications for specific needs, or simply develop custom solutions specifically for unique customer needs.

The ITWorld.com article, Putting Unified Communications to Work, has some more general insight that companies can benefit from as well. Schurman offers up 4 tips for unified communications success, and the following 3 Classic Mistakes for companies to avoid:

• Not choosing a partner that understands how to build a solution around your unique business processes. There are a ton of Microsoft partners out there that are Gold Certified, but there are only a handful that know how to create this kind of unique voice and unified communications solution for your organization.
• Shelling out money too soon. Don’t pay yet! This is new technology, it has to be proven. Microsoft and key partners are offering free consultation and pilots so take advantage of it. If you like what you see, you can then budget a production deployment that will pay for itself within 6 months based on the amount of hard and soft cost savings.
• Not getting business people involved. Business managers need to be involved so that you can see a clear distinction between what is just technology and what is going to support your unique business process.

Book Review: Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications

Bottom Line:
Unified Communications is one of those hot, ‘buzzword’ technologies that everyone is talking about and many are adopting, or at least exploring. However, unified communications is also a somewhat ethereal concept with no agreed upon standard for what it actually is, and a playing field that is shifting faster than customers can understand. Unified communications is important and it will transform the way companies communicate and do business so managers need to grasp how to leverage the technologies. Joe Schurman’s book provides understanding that readers need regarding unified communications today, but more importantly it provides insight into the unified communications of tomorrow so that readers can develop strategies that are effective now as well as the near future.

My Review:
Joe Schurman is uniquely suited to write Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications. Schurman has been involved in voice and unified communications technologies virtually since their inception. He has been a successful consultant, speaker, and trainer, focusing on evangelizing Microsoft solutions, for the past 15 years. As the Founder and CEO of Evangelyze Communications, a Microsoft Gold Partner and Voice Premier Partner, Joe continues to be a respected authority in the field and a trusted confidant of Microsoft.

The book is not available today. According to Amazon.com readers can find the book around the end of February. I was fortunate to be able to read the pre-publications drafts and to provide my insight and feedback on the chapter dedicated to VoIP and unified communications security.

The book opens with an excellent overview of the history of telephony and the evolution through VoIP (voice over IP) to SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and other voice protocols, the concept of Presence, and the development of what unified communications is today. Schurman then goes on to talk about the use of VoIP by the consumer market using tools such as Windows Live Messenger, an excellent look at Microsoft’s Response Point phone system for SMB’s, and a discussion of enterprise-class solutions built on Microsoft Unified Communications technologies such as Office Communications Server and Exchange Server.

The book then covers additional topics like integrating collaboration and speech recognition into the unified communications / VoIP environment, and how to customize the solution to extend its capabilities. This is an area that Schurman has intimate knowledge of as his company, Evangelyze Communications, has leveraged the extensibility of Office Communications Server to develop innovative products like SmartChat, and the 2008 Internet Telephony Magazine Product of the Year, SmartVoIP.

Schurman covers more advanced topics like securing and virtualizing unified communications and voice, and a chapter for consultants to help them understand how to sell the unified communications concept to customers.

Unified communications is a quickly evolving technology (or collection of technologies) that businesses around the world are struggling to understand and embrace. Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications is just the title that these readers need to educate themselves on what unified communications can do for them today, but more importantly to position themselves for what unified communications will do for them tomorrow.

Features and Facts:
Title: Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications
Price: $39.99 (available from Amazon.com for $26.39)
Published: Feb 2009, Addison-Wesley Professional
ISBN: 032157995X (ISBN-13: 978-0321579959)
Pages: 288

SmartVoIP Wins 2008 Product of the Year

Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 offers enterprises a cost-effective platform for voice and unified communications that also allows them to retain their existing voice hardware whether it is traditional analog or VoIP. Another advantage that it offers is that, because it is software based, it is also extensible via software. That means that it is easier for enterprises or ISV’s (Independent Software Vendors) to create custom applications that integrate and work with OCS 2007.

Evangelyze Communications has a suite of products that do just that: SmartChat, SmartSearch, and SmartVoIP. Recently SmartVoIP, which was officially launched at VoiceCon in San Francisco this past fall, was named a 2008 Product of the Year by Internet Telephony magazine.  

One of the limitations of OCS 2007 has been the inability to interconnect remote locations. Working with audio gateway vendor NET Quintum, the Evangelyze Communications SmartVoIP solution enables businesses to use a centralized OCS 2007 and connect with Microsoft Response Point systems at remote locations. SmartVoIP enables users to dial each other by extension even at remote locations, eliminates long distance charges, and makes administering the overall solution more efficient than having separate voice systems at each remote site.

Evangelyze Communications SmartChat

Recently at VoiceCon Evangelyze Communications announced their SmartVoIP solution which enables customers to bridge Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft’s small and medium business phone system, Response Point, to deliver unified communications to remote or branch office locations. Following on the heels of that release, Evangelyze Communications is also offering SmartChat.

Mike Stacy, a Director with Evangelyze Communications, explains in his blog what separates SmartChat from other live chat type applets found on web sites. “In addition to simple chat, SmartChat has capabilities for reporting on the browser history (”I see you were looking at sweaters on our website”), enabling co-browsing (automatically navigating the web visitor’s browser), integrating with Microsoft CRM, and adding audio/video or desktop sharing to the conversation.  Best of all, you don’t need any additional software on either side of the conversation.  Flash is required for audio/video, but most people on the web already have this anyway.”

In Stacy’s blog, he also mentions that Microsoft is conducting a case study based on SmartChat and the ability to tap into the Microsoft Office Communications Server in new and innovative ways that extend its unified communications capabilities.

Evangelyze Communications Announces SmartVoIP

Many companies are exploring and implementing unified communications. One problem that has faced certain industries though is how to deal with scattered branch offices. Industries like banking, insurance, investing, real estate, and more often have a central headquarters, and several remote branch locations. With no way to bridge the unified communications solution from the headquarters to the branch, the branch offices generally fend for themselves and implement separate communications systems. That leads to a variety of issues related to administration, compliance, costs, etc.

Now there is a simple, cost-effective solution. At VoiceCon 2008 in San Francisco this week, Evangelyze Communications unveiled their new offering- SmartVoIP. Joe Schurman, Founder and CEO of Evangelyze Communications, introduced the solution which integrates Microsoft’s Response Point communications system for small and medium businesses with the more robust Office Communications Server and enterprise class unified communications.

“We are incredibly proud of this achievement and the opportunity that this solution brings to organizations with remote and branch office communications needs. Through the power of VoIP and using our joint collaborative integration service, we are now able to connect offices globally in a scalable manner, leveraging our innovative services and Quintum’s breadth of scalable gateway devices. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner who has achieved the Unified Communications competency Voice specialization, our customers are assured they are hiring a qualified vendor to deploy Microsoft’s latest unified communications voice technologies,” said Schurman.