Telecommunications

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

Dissent In The ‘Unified’ Ranks

Less than a month ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Cisco CEO John Chambers held a joint press conference announcing their intent to cooperate and collaborate more in a team effort to bring to market the kinds of unified communication technologies that consumers and enterprises need. Apparently they still have some work to do on being “team players” and sharing the sandbox nicely with each other. Continued »

Microsoft To Launch Unified Communications in October

Microsoft has set an October 16 launch date for their Unified Communications initiative. Unified Communications are products and services that- as the name implies- are designed to bring various forms of communication together and allow them to work in conjunction with each other. The live webcast on October 16, co-hosted by Bill Gates, will roll out Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007, and Office LiveMeeting. You can get more information about the Unified Communications initiative and the October 16 rollout from this Computerworld.com article.

BT Undertakes Massive Global Network Overhaul

One of the downsides to being a dominant provider of telecommunications around the world is that it also makes you the owner of legacy telecommunications hardware and networking equipment around the world. Even dominant global providers have to upgrade though. BT has begun a project dubbed 21CN (21st Century Network) estimated at $21 billion and projected to be completed in 2009. The focus of the rollout is to upgrade customers from legacy telecommunications networks to a new, all-IP communications network. Alcatel-Lucent is a key supplier, as is Cisco, Fujitsu, and Huawei Technologies. You can learn more in this article from Computerworld.com.