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CO
NT
ENT
S
An interactive eGuide
Sponsored by
CONVERGENCE AND VoIP ALERT Tips on SIP trunking and managing virtual performance
OPEN SOURCES Mobile applications lay bare the IT/telephony divide
MAYBE IT’S TIME TO THROW OUT YOUR PBXEven if telephony scares you, it’s time to get serious about unified communications
STUDY: BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTSContention and biases among technology and business factions can derail the deploy-ment of unified communications systems, according to a Forrester Research study.
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS The education sector continues to face budget uncertainty, teacher layoffs and cuts in services.
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS Cloud computing may be the savior of true unified communications
CONVERGENCE AND VoIP ALERT
OPEN SOURCES
MAYBE IT’S TIME TO THROW OUT YOUR PBX
BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UC
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
1 OF 21
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONSAs the technology behind Unified Communications (UC) matures, products and services are proving essential to keeping employees connected and collaborating. At the same time, these technologies are helping organizations to cut costs by spanning geographical borders and time zones, while boosting productivity. Here, IT World – along with sister sites Network World, InfoWorld, Computerworld, and CIO – examine the relevance of trends such as cloud computing, mobility, and open source to UC, and the importance of IT and telephony groups in enterprises working together to achieve successful UC implementations.
AN INTERACTIVE eBOOK UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
Sponsored by
2 OF 12CONVERGENCE AND VoIP ALERT
OPEN SOURCES
MAYBE IT’S TIME TO THROW OUT YOUR PBX
BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UC
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
While we’ve focused lately
on product rollouts and trade
shows, Steve and the folks at
Webtorials have been busy
sharing some great material
our readers may find useful,
including two vendor-spon-
sored papers. These papers
focus on some tips from
Integrated Research, and are
called “Managing Multi-Vendor
UC and Collaboration in a Vir-
tual World” and from Verizon
Business and Cisco “SIP Trunk-
ing — Addressing the Hidden
Costs of Telephony Networks.”
Cisco and Verizon Business
have partnered on a white
paper discussing SIP trunk-
ing, beginning with the prem-
ise that some of the hidden
costs of traditional TDM (time
division multiplexing) phone
networks are becoming appar-
ent because these traditional
networks are location-orient-
ed, need physical provisioning,
maintenance, and manage-
ment at the site of the voice
access lines — thus making
TDM systems inefficient and
costly. A more efficient solu-
tion in the form of SIP trunking
takes advantage of IP broad-
band connectivity, combining
multiple voice circuits with
data networks.
According to the paper, a
recent study estimates com-
panies that adopt SIP trunk-
ing can save 26% compared
to what they now pay for
TDM trunks. SIP trunks offer
the advantage of deploying
multiple phone lines as they
are needed, allocating phone
capacity across various loca-
tions. SIP trunking also pro-
vides a platform and protocol
that can add a variety of
business-enhancing applica-
tions and services to boost
employee efficiency. SIP trunk-
ing has become increasingly
important as a natural part
of the evolution of VoIP net-
works. A free copy of the “SIP
Trunking” paper is available
at www.webtorials.com/con-
tent/2011/06/hidden-costs-
telephony-networks.html.
Integrated Research has
provided some advice on how
to manage unified communi-
cations and collaboration in a
virtual world with their latest
paper. They point out that
“when hardware is virtualized,
with multiple guests acting as
individual servers, it’s criti-
cal to know that it’s up to the
job. When a guest running
a continuity-critical applica-
tion makes a request in real
time it is without regard for
other host activity. Hence both
guests and hosts can come
under performance pressure.
With this type of environment
problems can exist in any one
of the layers.”
The company recommends
that problem detection needs
to be-layer, multi-vendor and
multi-technology since perfor-
EXPERT ADVICE
CONVERGENCE AND VoIP ALERTBy Larry Hettick, Network WorldTips on SIP trunking and managing virtual performance
AN INTERACTIVE eBOOK UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
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BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UC
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
mance issues can reside in the
physical hardware, the virtual
machines or the applications.
The paper looks at how the
host, guests and applications
perform metrics. It concludes
that “availability, performance
and quality assurance are as
much key performance indi-
cators in the cloud as well as
down on the ground ... and as
service level agreements for
cloud computing are service
rather than customer-based,
cloud service providers need
to manage the ability of their
infrastructure to provide the
service their customers are
paying for.”
A free copy of this resource
is available at www.webtorials.
com/content/featured/prognosis.
Our thanks to Cisco and
Integrated Research for spon-
soring these educational re-
sources and to Webtorials for
making them available.
Larry Hettick is a principal
analyst at Current Analysis.
AN INTERACTIVE eBOOK UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
Sponsored by
4 OF 12CONVERGENCE AND VoIP ALERT
OPEN SOURCES
MAYBE IT’S TIME TO THROW OUT YOUR PBX
BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UC
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
MARKET TREND
The growing demand for mobile
applications is set to challenge
the apprehension that enter-
prise telephony buyers have
toward open source telephony
offerings. As IT departments
strive to meet new mobile ap-
plication requirements, they
will play a role in driving open
source and cloud telephony
adoption within enterprises.
THE IT-VERSUS- TELEPHONY DIVIDE IT and telephony departments
are often separate depart-
ments, if not fiefdoms, within an
enterprise. This historical sepa-
ration has resulted in markedly
different views surrounding
open source usage. I learned of
this reality when my company
(IBM) launched the WebSphere
Application Server Feature Pack
for Communications Enabled
Applications (CEA), and I’ve
since seen this reality play out.
Open source telephony so-
lutions are not new. However,
for enterprise telephony buy-
ers, the risk of any downtime
is too great to consider open
source alternatives to Cisco,
Avaya, Siemens, and other
well-established telephony
vendors. You can hardly blame
enterprise telephony buyers:
No one thinks twice about
having to refresh a browser
if a Web application crashes.
But it’s a different story if a
conference call crashes or a
call between a customer and a
contact center representative
is terminated abruptly.
Still, although you may sym-
pathize with enterprise tele-
phony buyers’ risk aversion,
their decisions end up restrict-
ing how IT departments can
respond to user demands for
innovative applications around
communications.
NEXT-GENERATION MOBILE APPLICATIONS DEMAND COMMUNICA-TIONS ENABLEMENTAs mobile Web application
usage grows, the first step for
most businesses will be to de-
liver today’s desktop browser
application on a mobile brows-
er. But forward-thinking IT de-
partments and enterprises will
look instead to deliver a class
of applications beyond those
currently available on desktop
browsers. In time, the majority
of enterprises will follow suit.
These mobile applications
will be communications-
enabled from the start. Thus,
we’ll see a couple kinds of ap-
plications become the norm:
• A mobile CRM application
that lets a sales executive
review a sales lead, and
within the application itself,
call one of his or her direct
reports, based on presence
availability and personal-
ization information, and
jointly browse through the
OPEN SOURCES Mobile applications lay bare the IT/telephony divide By Savio Rodrigues, InfoWorld
AN INTERACTIVE eBOOK UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
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5 OF 12CONVERGENCE AND VoIP ALERT
OPEN SOURCES
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BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UC
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
sales lead data online while
speaking over the phone.
• A mobile retailer applica-
tion that lets buyers co-
shop online using desktop
and/or mobile devices, and
if required, call the toll-free
number and be routed to
the appropriate contact
center representative,
based on browsing history,
without having to traverse
automated call menus.
The challenge for IT is that
these and similar applications
require IT and telephony groups
to work more closely together.
More important, these applica-
tions will require a degree of te-
lephony flexibility that enterprise
telephony buyers aren’t likely to
be comfortable delivering based
on their risk-adverse nature.
So what’s an IT department
to do?
OPEN SOURCE AND CLOUD TELEPHONE TO THE RESCUEAn interesting solution is being
offered by open source vendor
Twilio Cloud Communications,
which recently announced
OpenVBX, an open source
telephony product in the cloud.
OpenVBX offers virtual telephone
numbers, voice transcription,
voice collaboration among users,
and a drag-and-drop approach
to building call flows and menus.
OpenVBX is offered as a hosted
service so that IT departments
don’t have to trouble themselves
with keeping a telephony infra-
structure up and running.
Most important, OpenVBX
can route calls to existing phone
numbers. This means IT can build
innovative new applications that
rely on the enterprise’s existing
telephony infrastructure without
actually having to involve the
telephony department in the ap-
plication development process.
I am not proposing that IT cir-
cumvent the telephony depart-
ment in the long run. However,
I am suggesting IT departments
consider applying the lessons
of grassroots open source
adoption: It’s much easier to
convince decision makers to
use open source when the
organization has already been
using open source.
Nor am I suggesting that
telephony departments migrate
away from their existing enter-
prise telephony products; that
would be a fool’s errand. But I
am suggesting that telephony
departments evaluate how open
source and cloud offerings can
augment the existing enterprise
telephony environment to deliver
application innovation.
A mobile communications-
enabled application generating
revenue for the enterprise will
go a long way toward convinc-
ing telephony departments to
augment their telephony infra-
structures with open source and
cloud offerings. As a user, I can
hardly wait.
This column doesn’t necessarily
represent IBM’s positions,
strategies, or opinions.
AN INTERACTIVE eBOOK UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
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OPEN SOURCES
MAYBE IT’S TIME TO THROW OUT YOUR PBX
BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UC
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
I’m a huge fan of unified
messaging, which is built into
Exchange Server 2007 and
2010. This feature takes your
inbox and transforms it so
that it can receive not only
email, but incoming faxes
and voicemail. The voicemail
aspect is intriguing; with so
many incredible features —
especially built into Exchange
2010 and Outlook 2010 — it’s
worth considering, even if it
means purchasing additional
telephony hardware.
However, going to the next
level beyond unified messag-
ing and into unified commu-
nications involves deploying
Microsoft Communications
Server.
Gurdeep Singh Pall, corpo-
rate vice president of Micro-
soft’s Unified Communications
Group, made some predictions
about the future of communi-
cations software: “In the next
three years, we predict that
[unified communications] will
become the norm in business
communications, more than
half of VoIP calls at work will
include more than just voice,
and your communications cli-
ent will enable [unified com-
munications] with more than 1
billion people.”
It’s hard for folks to break
with traditional hardware-
based phone systems that
include desktop phones and
legacy PBXes. Plus, many IT
administrators are leery of
implementing new communi-
cation technologies when they
aren’t comfortable with the te-
lephony side. I always encour-
age Exchange administrators
to seek out their telephony
guru or team of gurus before
implementing unified messag-
ing, and the same holds true
for Office Communications
Server. Still, I believe we need
to move forward on these
new communication tools and
drop the past. I agree with
Gurdeep, who says “many
of today’s PBXes belong in
a museum; they are already
artifacts of the past.”
When you think about the
purpose of Communications
Server (and Microsoft Com-
municator, for that matter),
perhaps you are stuck in the
past a bit. You see, Exchange
2000 included an instant mes-
saging app that was dropped
in 2003 and moved into a
separate product called Live
Communications Server. Thus,
ENTERPRISE WINDOWS: MAYBE IT’S TIME TO THROW OUT YOUR PBX
Even if telephony scares you, it’s time to get serious about unified communications
EXPERT ADVICE
By J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld
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BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UC
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
you might think of Commu-
nicator and Communications
Server as an IM-only tool with
presence functionality. You
might even regard it as an in-
house Skype solution. How-
ever, its feature set is evolv-
ing to include full enterprise
telephony.
Communicator is a “soft”
phone that’s becoming sleek-
er with each release, but it
isn’t the only way to work with
Communications Server. There
are a ton of great IP-based
phones that bring you into the
21st century.
Presence awareness is
a big topic with IM-oriented
products. Being able to locate
a colleague and see her avail-
ability status is an important
part of collaboration. To sup-
port that, the new features
in Communications Server
include a new skill search
where you can find colleagues
based on a certain level of
expertise. There is also a new
location-awareness feature
where a user’s whereabouts
can be automatically detected
from the subnet to which the
user is connected or from the
nearest wireless access point.
(Users can establish custom-
ized locations and control
the publishing of this informa-
tion, so there is a modicum
of privacy.)
Gurdeep predicts the rise
of more connected commu-
nications, saying that in three
years, 75 percent of new busi-
ness applications will include
natively embedded commu-
nications. Obviously, decision
makers and IT personnel need
to keep that in mind. Three
years ago, Microsoft shared its
vision for the future of busi-
ness communications with
desire to establish a unified-
communication-, software-
centric solution. Given how
that future is shaping up, I
have no doubt that Gurdeep’s
prediction will come true.
What do you think? Are you
ready to donate your PBX to
a local museum? Or do you
believe that too much con-
nectivity will hurt, rather than
enhance, collaboration within
your environment?
“In three years, 75 percent of new business applications will include natively embedded communications.”—Gurdeep Singh Pall, vice president Unified Communications Group, Microsoft
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
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BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UC
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
Contention and biases among
technology and business fac-
tions can derail the deploy-
ment of unified communica-
tions (UC) systems that are
efficient, cost-effective and
simple enough to use so they
actually get adopted by end
users, according to a Forrester
Research study.
The report even identifies
the vendors that six factions
within corporations might
favor based on their job tasks
and past experience, accord-
ing to “The Unified Communi-
cations Civil War,” by Forrester
analyst Art Schoeller.
Many businesses fragment
the decision making for the
components that make up UC
— voice, video, conferencing,
messaging, email — and so
wind up with less than optimal
systems, Schoeller says. “This
has resulted in an installed
base of best-of-breed solu-
tions, with each deployment
having unique sets of ineffi-
ciencies,” he says in the report.
He describes six factions
that enter into UC decisions
and names their vendor bias-
es, with Cisco benefitting from
bias in three of the six areas:
Telecom workers: Avaya,
Alcaltel-Lucent, Cisco,
other IP PBX vendors.
Data networking teams:
Cisco.
Facilities managers (for
outfitting teleconference
rooms): Polycom, Cisco
(Tandberg).
Collaboration profession-
als: IBM, Microsoft.
End users employing
consumer conferencing:
Skype, GoToMeeting.
To get around this problem,
he recommends an overarch-
ing team that sets a unified
roadmap for the project and
that includes representatives
of business units. Schoeller
outlines a seven-step checklist
for successfully carrying out
a UC project:
Assign a diverse UC proj-
ect team.
Inventory current UC assets.
Assess relevant in-house
skills.
Develop a comprehensive
management plan including
personnel and platforms.
Create templates of what
UC features are needed by
defined categories of users.
Draw up a three- to five-
year roadmap that will
streamline critical integra-
tion points and reduce SIP
session managers.
Enlist UC champions to
identify and herald UC suc-
cesses.
STUDY: BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTSMARKET STUDY
Contention and biases among technology and business factions can derail the deployment of unified communications systems, according to a study. By Tim Greene, Network World
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BIAS, RIVALRIES CAN THREATEN UC DEPLOYMENTS
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UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
In the current economic
climate, the education sector
continues to face budget un-
certainty, teacher layoffs and
cuts in services.
In my home state, California,
the situation is quite dire. School
administrators face unprec-
edented pressures to increase
efficiency, cut costs, yet still
deliver educational services that
prepare the next generation for
the modern, global workplace.
To meet the challenges of
our changing world and to
ensure the successful deliv-
ery of a modern curriculum
across an institution, teachers
and staff must be able to col-
laborate effectively with peers,
students, and parents.
The methods for collecting
and distributing information
have changed dramatically
since I was in school. For in-
stance, alerts and updates to
schedules or curricula can be
quickly disseminated across
entire communities on mobile
devices; classes can be taught
remotely as extension programs
in strip malls; and virtual cours-
es now exist using online and
Web conferencing technology.
Unified communications not
only supports all these chang-
es, but drive their success,
helping schools improve ser-
vices across remote locations,
reduce costs through cheaper
calls and become more effi-
cient by streamlining outreach.
They also foster an edu-
cational environment where
students can explore the use
of modern technology tools
to interact with teachers and
staff: instantly turn a study
call into a document sharing
session for instance, or use
self-service features to quickly
apply for tuition assistance.
Furthermore, innovations
in the classroom lead to in-
novations in the outside world.
Students who know how to col-
laborate and communicate ef-
fectively are better positioned to
be productive in the workplace.
In addition to budget cuts,
however, schools face a num-
ber of challenges in adopting
new IP-based communications.
Deploying and managing
unified communications in
education institutions has to
be easy. Many schools lack
the resources required to
manage complex IT systems,
and need technology that will
easily integrate with what they
already have simply because
they don’t have the budget
for a costly rip and replace.
Schools should not be spend-
ing more to empower and
manage communications than
they spend on empowering
and managing our kids.
Unified communications also
must be intuitive for teachers,
staff, students and even par-
ents to understand and use.
When I was in school, leaving
a note or hanging around a
TEACHABLE MOMENTS WITH UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONSINDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
The education sector continues to face budget uncertainty, teacher layoffs and cuts in services. By Dale Tonogai, Computerworld
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UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
crowded corridor were the only
ways of talking to a teacher
outside the classroom.
Modern, IP-based systems
mean that teachers can have
voicemail and even have it
linked to their email. Few
teachers will set up this useful
feature, however, if they have
spend hours pouring over a
massive manual.
Unified communications also
offers many important efficien-
cy benefits to school adminis-
tration processes.
Sophisticated contact center
capabilities can help increase
efficiency with separate menus
that route calls appropriately,
and optimize call queues. For
impacted colleges this can
mean more students enrolled
faster, and free up time spent
on the telephone.
Campus safety can also be
greatly enhanced with so-
phisticated applications for
emergency notification and
preparedness, directing first re-
sponders to the exact scene of
an event, and notifying multiple
personnel at once.
As communication channels
continue to merge with media
channels, and tools such as
video, instant messaging and
Web conferencing bring impor-
tant learning opportunities into
the classroom, schools need
flexible and affordable UC solu-
tions that give them, and our
children, a powerful connec-
tion to the future.
Unified communications is not
a panacea for the budget woes
faced by many educational insti-
tutes today, but it can help.
Dale Tonogai is VP of Engineer-
ing at ShoreTel.
As communication channels continue to merge with media channels, schools need flexible and affordable UC solutions that give them, and our children, a powerful connection to the future.
UNIFYING THE FUTURE AND THE NOW
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UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
While telephony is, of course,
a core component of any busi-
ness communications system,
one of the biggest drivers for
unified communications (UC)
adoption to date has been
the promise of high resolution
video communications. With
high definition video play-
ing an increasingly important
role in corporate UC projects,
the issue of network capacity
takes centre stage.
“There are more than 2 mil-
lion Aussies with less than a
2Mbps broadband connection;
those users frankly can’t join a
high definition video call,” says
Microsoft Australia Lync mar-
keting manager, Jaron Cohen.
“UC is quite mature. At the
moment it is waiting for the
network.”
Graham Williams, CEO
of Australian Cisco partner
and UC specialists, iVision,
feels that Australia’s National
Broadband Network (NBN) will
act as a catalyst for greater UC
deployment in Australia.
“The NBN is helping to
create certainty around UC
deployments in Australia,” he
says. “Higher bandwidth avail-
ability, reach and better pric-
ing is going to make the [UC]
market more competitive.”
iVision recently completed
a detailed survey of its exist-
ing clients’ experiences and
future plans around UC, re-
porting that most had realized
tangible benefits and were
therefore keen to make further
investments in the technology,
especially around video con-
ferencing.
Cisco predicts that by 2014,
some 90 percent of all net-
work traffic will be video.
According to Cisco chief
technology officer for Australia
and New Zealand, Kevin Bloch,
organizations will need more
than just bandwidth to man-
age the transition.
“To support 1080p video on
the fly you need decent soft-
ware as well as hardware,” he
says, stressing that organiza-
tions will need “a richness of
intelligence” to handle high
resolution video content.
In the early days of UC de-
ployment it was accepted that
key to a successful solution
were detailed session initiated
protocol (SIP) libraries in order
for people to be tracked and
contacted over the network.
However, in another, al-
beit subtle, example of how
the cloud is influencing UC,
this function is increasingly
expected to be provided by
social networking sites such
as LinkedIn and Facebook.
Over the next few years, UC
solutions will inevitably be-
come increasingly commod-
itized, predicts Gartner Aus-
tralia research vice-president,
Geoff Johnson.
“Most big companies are
scared because they’ve spent
UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS MARKET TREND
Cloud computing may be the savior of true unified communications By David Binning, CIO
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UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS
capex, and here’s the big
names offering to do this as
opex for cheap,” he says.
Fonality Australia managing
director Marc Englaro agrees,
noting that many organizations
are now beginning to view
instant messaging (IM), of the
kind which is freely available
via services such as Yahoo!,
Windows Live, Google Talk and
Skype, as a core component of
their overall UC strategy.
“We are starting to see the
value of IM in the corporate en-
vironment, whereby the tech-
nology is actually ‘endorsed’,
rather than merely ‘tolerated’,”
he says, adding that “IM and
presence in particular are
emerging as two of the most
salient parts of UC”.
And the harsh reality for or-
ganizations that have invested
heavily in upgrading their PBX
and other communication sys-
tems, is that this stuff is virtu-
ally free.
“The piece of plastic on your
desktop will probably one day
go away altogether,” Englaro
predicts. “It’s certainly the
iVision chief executive officer,
Graham Williams direction we
see things going.”
“We are starting to see the value of IM in the corporate environment, where-by the technology is actually ‘endorsed’, rather than merely ‘tolerated’.”
— Marc Englaro, managing director, Fonality Australia
TEXTING BY ANOTHER NAME