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Avaya's Huge Unified Communications Push
March 16, 2008
Avaya has certainly made unified communications history today with a suite of announcements that will certainly rattle the competitive landscape. UC will never be the same in my opinion.The New Jersey-based company's biggest news had to do with affordable unified communications… For a paltry $99/user you can get full-featured UC for your workers. This is in my opinion beyond inexpensive for UC solutions from such a premium name in the business.
And we aren't talking about bare bones solutions here… You get a thick or thin client, integration with Microsoft and IBM and best of all you get access to about 700 or so Avaya communications features via your UC client. The thin client support means your new MacBook Air will be allowed to join the Avaya low-cost UC party. You can also use your mobile device… All in all there are 500 supported devices.
If you want to add video it will cost $0.45/day/user for a year or $165/year/user.
The solutions are divided into a few categories, teleworkers, mobile workers, home agent and SMB. In each case the solutions are tailored to meet the needs of the specific environment.
The company also has solutions focused on two vertical markets - branch office/retail and banking branches. As I mentioned a few weeks back, TMC has been seeing tremendous interest from communications companies targeting vertical communities.
Normally, this sort of news would be enough to keep the markets satiated for some time but in this case, Avaya apparently had time to create even more important news. For example, they have developed a system whereby they can present intelligent presence to its customers. Avaya's Intelligent Presence Server aggregates information from Microsoft, IBM, a variety of software applications and standard protocols like SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP. The goal of this offering is to ensure presence is more accurate and to be honest this is exactly what the industry needs.
The company will also work with mobile operators to enhance the presence status of users… This assumes the mobile operators agree of course.
In addition, the system has been tuned for sub-second state changes ensuring this solution can be of great use to contact centers looking bring the appropriate resources to bear in any situation.
The solution also takes into account that people can have presence information from a number of sources and instead of displaying each type of presence from each service/application, a person's presences is displayed just once.
Avaya Intelligent Presence will be available in May and included within the Unified Communications Standard Edition and supported with Avaya one-X clients and endpoints, including one-X Portal, one-X Communicator and one-X Deskphones. There will also be an SDK that allows Avaya DevConnect members and customers to build and integrate solutions to the Avaya Intelligent Presence Server.
As you may not have expected, Intelligent Presence is included in the $100 price.
The company also released a new desktop client which integrates with Microsoft and IBM solutions and furthermore now offers a UC services offering which is more of an SI play.
It is "corporate malpractice" to not explore Avaya's UC offerings at these prices. The payback from integrating these systems into your company should be less than one year and the flexibility afforded by such solutions should not be underestimated.
My only concern is this news could start a UC price war. This would be bad news for all as it would reduce the amount of money left for R&D and future improvements. At $99/user I consider the value of UC to be great and a must buy on virtually all budgets.
See also:
- Voicecon News
- IBM To Invest $1Billion in Unified Communications Initiatives
- IBM Sees 2008 as Banner Year for Unified Communications and Collaboration
- Aspect Brings Unified Communications to the Contact Center
- Microsoft’s Big Unified Communications Launch
- IBM's Big Unified Communications News
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IBM's Big Unified Communications News
March 16, 2008
Recently I spent a good number of hours at the sprawling Somers, NY campus of IBM where the company announced to the media their intention to spend a billion dollars in unified communications development over the next three years. IBM is a major player in the UC space but the company has been getting beaten up in the marketing department by Microsoft. Microsoft is late to the UC game in fact and some of their products are behind IBM. You wouldn't know any of this from the blitz of a campaign Microsoft is running however.Simply stated, while spending on R&D is essential, the company will likely have to soon respond to the Microsoft PR and marketing onslaught. This meeting was a very positive first step in my opinion.
In addition, while Microsoft has really done a good job reaching out to the media about their UC offerings, IBM has been quiet. That is until now. The company must have realized what was happening in the market and decided to respond.
During the many meetings I had at IBM, I learned a great deal about the company's UC strategy. They believe collaborative communities, presence and IM will continue to change the way business operates and moreover they see a real trend towards green business - meaning the virtual workplace will become more real.
The center of this model will be UC and collaboration according to the company once known primarily for its mainframes. They further think they will be a huge part of this market shift by providing a unified user experience and truly open systems. One differentiator IBM is counting on is their integration services division which allows it to truly integrate UC into a multi-platform organization. This integration actually incorporates with business process providing true communications enabled business processes (CEBP). In one example, IBM's integration solutions allowed a hospital to communicate more effectively, giving patients better and more rapid care.
The company has and will continue to upgrade its collaboration software including Sametime, while concentrating on deploying mobile clients and developing a broad ecosystem of partners.
Some upgrades to Sametime were notable, including persistent chat rooms. In addition, the company now offers something called skills-based presence, allowing interaction with a set of individuals with a specific skill group, not just an individual. This is quite similar to Aspect's Unified Communications announcement this same week where they too will have skills-based presence built-in.
In addition, we can expect swarming tools allowing people to set notifications if people are discussing a specific topic or if a number of people talking about any topic.
Another differentiator IBM brings to the table is an internal database of router locations allowing your location to be discerned without you having to do anything in particular. Apparently, over the years, the company and its customers seem to have tagged many of the routers which exist in hotels and hotspots.
While sitting in a conference room in IBM's office, we also got to see an interesting demo of a 3-D environment similar to Second Life where US Intelligence agencies will be gathering to collaborate more effectively.
I did bring up Microsoft as I was looking to learn more about how IBM will differentiate itself and to this the company responded that they are more open than Microsoft. They went on to say Microsoft has stated they want to replace the PBX. They added that IBM does not deliver telephony or multipoint video. I should mention these comments are really aimed at partners as these companies are probably not too thrilled to work with companies looking to take their business away.
IBM itself is a virtual company in that so many of its workers stay at home and as such they have become a great incubator for developing tools which all companies can rely on.
In fact Michael Rhodin, General Manager Lotus Software explained that today, IM is more important to the company than e-mail. He further explained that what the company is doing with UC - allowing it to be an open ecosystem where developers are fee to come up with new applications, is exactly what was done with Lotus Notes.
Rhodin went on to say, "IBM is the world's greatest petri dish for collaboration software: occurring at CIO, research and Lotus Software Group development team levels."
While there is no need to predict a winner, I should contrast my UC meetings with Microsoft and IBM. Both have similar offerings but IBM is ahead in the SI area while Microsoft is focusing more on things like client devices and wideband codecs. Both companies have solid products according to customers but IBM has a lead in collaboration tools while Microsoft has a huge lead in mindshare.
With a billion dollars in the budget, it seems IBM will be coming out with a host of new and compelling communications products and services over the upcoming years. These new developments should be truly worthy of future writing so stay tuned.
See Also:
- IBM To Invest $1Billion in Unified Communications Initiatives
- IBM Sees 2008 as Banner Year for Unified Communications and Collaboration
- Aspect Brings Unified Communications to the Contact Center
- Microsoft’s Big Unified Communications Launch
- Voicecon News
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Will Backing up Music Soon Be Illegal?
March 16, 2008
Some of you may remember that MP3.com was a dot-com era company allowing people to upload CDs they owned and then stream this music to various devices. It was a service ahead of its time and in fact Webot does something similar but it keeps the files on the user's computer.
Fast forward eight years and Michael Robertson the man behind MP3.com is behind MP3Tunes.com, a company supplying a service which does almost the same thing as MP3.com.
Amazingly, MP3.com was sued into nonexistence by the RIAA, and now the RIAA is after MP3Tunes. Same person, different company, same or similar lawsuit.
While I understand why the RIAA doesn't want a vast library of music on the Internet I also see why Michael Robertson's attempt to allow us to store our music online is good for consumers. As Michael states, his company is personally defending the rights of all Internet users to back up their music.
I feel for the record labels... I really do. The thing is, record execs seem to always make the wrong move when it comes to the digital era and music.
They seem to have a sue first, ask questions later mentality that has hurt them. The classic
example is suing Napster into oblivion and subsequently sending illegal file sharing users to dozens of competitive services which is far more difficult to police.As Robertson points out, if MP3Tunes loses this case, we may not be allowed to store MP3s on any hosted service at all.
Somehow, this lawsuit leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I hope consumers realize what's at stake and get involved in letting record labels know they have the right to back up their own music wherever and however they like.
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Hot News: Ixia, VPI, Wyde Voice, Google, Spirent, Sangoma, LifeSize, Aculab and more
March 16, 2008
I try not to play favorites with the news and instead of giving you my picks of the week, I defer to TMC editors who picked the following stories as some of the week's best. This week, we have a truly diverse group of stories that range from the economy to open source and even SIP trunking.Hopefully you will find them interesting as well and if you don't - please don't get mad
at me as I am just the messenger. 
---
- Ixia Intros Quality of Experience and Service Validation Platform for Triple Play
- The Right Tools for Making Bandwidth Management Work for You
- VPI's Activ! Voice Recording Solution Rated Avaya Compliant
- Ethernet Extenders: Key Benefits and What to Look For
- WYDE Voice Launches Wideband Audio Conferencing Appliances
- BT Partners with RingCentral to Launch Small Business Hosted Phone Service
- Converging Networks, Converging Channels
- Hosted PBX: The Next Step in Voice Communications
- Google Completes Acquisition of DoubleClick
- Atlas Telecom Leading the IP PBX Charge
- Broadvox Achieves Interoperability Certification with AdvanceIP
- LifeSize Software Version 3.5
- VoIP Usage Pattern Differs from Legacy Telephony
- Analyst: CEOs Should Remain Steadfast in the Face of Economic Downturn
- Spirent Picks Telchemy's VQmon for IPTV Analysis
- VanillaSoft Adds New Features to its Web-based Lead Management System.
- When Will Telcos Deploy VoIP?
- Getting the Most Out of
- Sangoma Expands its Presence in Europe and the
- Phone System Choices: The Importance of End-User Feedback
- A Primer on SIP and VoIP CODECs
- Two BlueNote Networks SOA Products Win 2007 Unified Communications Product of the Year Award
- Telecom Expense Management Solutions Provider Tangoe Wins UC Product of the Year Award
- Esnatech Intros Telephony Office-LinX 7.1 with Disaster Recovery Enhancements
- MOBIVOX's New Say It and Save It Feature
- Brasil Telecom GlobeNet Hires Nokia Siemens Networks to Expand in
- AOTMP's 2008 Wireless Mobility Market Landscape Now Available
- Webcasting Helps Companies Save Money, Be Green
- What the ApplianX Gateway from Aculab Has to Do With Pizza
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Solar Keychain
March 16, 2008
I wonder if the future of conservation will include a strong focus on charging devices on our own. There are people with their own generators for example who actually supply energy back to electric companies. Now, at the opposite end of the spectrum is the key chain solar battery that basically allows you to keep your devices charged.
This little wonder is probably too small to help you charge your laptop but it could certainly add time to the battery life of a mobile phone or even a portable music player.
I should mention it can also be charged via a typical power outlet or USB if you happen to need to power it up at night or its an excessively cloudy day.
[GADGET.BRANDO.COM.HK via GeekAlerts]
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Russell Shaw and Frank Macari will be Missed
March 16, 2008
This morning I woke to horrible news as I just learned Russell Shaw has passed away. Apparently he died in his hotel room on a business trip. I cannot be sadder. Russell was a fantastic guy… And he seemed to enjoy his work more than just about anyone I know. And he produced lots of it. He had a regulation blog on TMCnet and on ZDnet he had a VoIP and Blackberry blog.Russell was not content to just write about subjects he loved, he also spoke at shows. He was a great moderator and also met with countless vendors at events he participated at.
Russell also seemed to perform his tasks with an absence of ego. Although he had a great following, he didn't ever let it go to his head. The TMCnet team will certainly miss Russell and his fantastic contributions.
Unfortunately about a month ago, we also lost a member of our accounting team. Frank Macari worked for TMC for about 18 years and he was the ultimate gentleman, respectful and proper and an all around fantastic person.
I would like to take this opportunity to say TMC and the world will miss both Russell and Frank… You were both great people to work with and our lives were better for having known you.
See Also:
Rest in peace Russell Shaw; We’ll miss you
We'll miss Russell Shaw
Thanks for all the good times Russell, we’ll miss you
Russell Shaw RIP
Goodbye old friend! Russell Shaw, RIP
RIP, Russell Shaw, VoIP blogger for ZDnet
Another Loss - RIP Russell Shaw
Portland Loses a Blogger: Russell Shaw RIP
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