Alan Percy : The SIP Invite
Alan Percy
| Observations by Alan D. Percy on VoIP enabling technology, industry and our personal reach for success.

July 2011

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8 Steps to Unified Communications - Step 8

July 22, 2011

Going mobile

So far, we’ve unlocked the power of Microsoft Lync for unified communications in your customer’s head office and branch offices – now there’s only one frontier left to tackle before we can call this solution complete: mobility.

While many businesses today leverage mobility to provide access, communications and connectivity to their highly-mobile employees, many of them do so without integrating it into their unified communications environment. That means that mobile workers are missing out on the many advantages enjoyed by their office-bound counterparts, including presence and instant messaging. Not only are they working blind, they’re paying more for the ability to do so – using up minutes from their expensive monthly allotment and almost inevitably being driven into fees for overages.

8 Steps to Unified Communications - Step 7

July 22, 2011

Survivable Branch Appliances

So far, we’ve brought your entire customer’s organization into the unified communications world.

But what about businesses that have many branch or remote offices – retail locations, bank, insurance companies and others that are spread out over the country or even the world?

In this penultimate step, we bring those remote offices into the scope of the solution. What these remote locations need is the ability to get through to Lync and use SIP phones and trunking, but with some back-up survivable trunking to make sure they’re not taken down by outages.

8 Steps to Unified Communications - Step 6

July 14, 2011

Moving to SIP Trunking

Over the last few step in our eight-step guide to unified communications, we’ve introduce da lot of new capabilities and functionality that will not only make sure the deployment is a success, it will drive end users to demand access to the new tools.

Now it’s time to start making this deployment just as exciting to management – and if there’s one thing the C-suite can behind, it’s the idea of saving serious money. To make that happen, it’s time to introduce SIP trunking and downsizing or eliminating traditional PSTN trunks. In reality, this is a step you can take at an earlier point, should you choose to do so, or should getting those cost savings on the table earlier be of prime importance for customers.


8 Steps to Unified Communications - Step 5

July 14, 2011

Moving off the PBX

In any big project – and let’s face it, going from a traditional telephony system to a fully-integrated unified communications system is a big project! – there’s a step at which the point of no return is past – where the hardest work is done, the old system is just about retired, and everything you do from there on in will add more and more value to the overall solution.

In step five, we cross that Rubicon. It’s time to get rid of the PBX.

8 Steps to Unified Communications - Step 4

July 14, 2011

Adding SIP Phones

At this point, we’ve addressed voicemail via Exchange, IM, presence and collaboration and voice and video, and structured your client’s network for the new converged workload through the first three steps of our journey towards complete unified communications.

You may notice that we haven’t touched phones yet. Now, with the trunk line connected to the AudioCodes Mediant media gateway, it’s a good time to think about phones. Because although the hype around unified communications is all about communicating via softphones and using just about any device an end user wants to use to stay connected --- there are still are a lot of people that want to or have to use a phone, whether it’s some of the time or all of the time.



8 Steps to Unified Communications - Step 3

July 13, 2011

Adding Voice and Video There’s no getting around it – this a big step. In our first step towards a true unified communications solution for your customer, we moved voicemail over to Exchange UM. In the second step, we made the significant change of bringing in Microsoft Lync, giving your customers access to great instant messaging, collaboration and presence, all under IT’s control.

Now, we’re going to add a whole lot more value to Lync by getting voice and video flowing over the network.

8 Steps to Unified Communications - Step 2

July 12, 2011

Step 2: Introducing Microsoft Lync

In step one of our eight-step approach to helping your customer get to true unified communications, we covered off the small but important step of getting voicemail linked up through Exchange Server UM, using an AudioCodes Mediant 1000 media gateway to translate from TDM to SIP.

In step two, we start to really introduce exciting new features and functionality for your customer – it’s time to introduce Microsoft Lync, Microsoft’s all-in-one corporate instant messaging, collaboration and presence system.

The key to success with a Lync implementation is to make sure it gets used. Metcalfe’s Law (the value of the network goes up exponentially as the number of nodes on the network increases) applies here, so it’s best to get as much of your customer’s organization up and running as quickly as possible.

8 Steps to Unified Communications - Step 1

July 12, 2011

As I mentioned in my first blog from here at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles, over the next four days, I’ll be walking you through best practices for eight steps to take your customer from a traditional PBX to a full unified communications solution based on Microsoft Lync, highlighting the cost savings and benefits your customers will enjoy as well as your opportunities to make the journey successful and profitable for all involved.

In most cases, you'll be starting with two disconnected networks - one for the legacy PBX with phones and voicemail, the other is the web and email network operating on the corporate LAN. 

Migrating from this point to a full-UC solution may seem like a huge and monolithic process, a complex process that will transform your customer’s business, but will also take some time and expertise to complete. So now what?

Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011

July 11, 2011

Hello from beautiful Los Angeles, California, where we’re just getting done setting up the AudioCodes booth at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference.

Held from July 11th to 14th  at the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown L.A., Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) is a event, drawing more than 10,000 Microsoft solution providers from around the world to discuss and learn about the latest and greatest technology opportunities around Microsoft’s software and cloud-based technologies. And we’ve got a great story to tell them this year!

We work with a lot of Microsoft partners, helping them unlock the potential of unified communications through complete connectivity for Microsoft Lync. Alone, Lync is a great tool for presence, instant messaging and collaboration, but we’re excited about the opportunities Microsoft partners will find in taking Lync from a standalone technology to the center of a truly integrated unified communications technology.

Microsoft Lync Migration - A Case Study

July 8, 2011

One of the really great parts of my job is occasionally talking to end-customers, hearing about how we helped change their business communications.  One such story came to me this last month from Drago Totev, AVP of Telecommunications and Networking at Georgia Military College.  Drago met with me at Microsoft TechEd in Atlanta and shared his story about how using Microsoft Lync, SIP Trunking from Broadvox and AudioCodes E-SBCs, he was able to cut the monthly telecommunications costs for the college by 80%.  Drago publishes details of his Lync experience on his blog at www.lynclog.com

The College

Established in 1879 in Milledgeville, Georgia Military College (GMC) includes a liberal arts junior college, a high school, and a middle school.



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