Recently in Events Category

This week I was fortunate to be invited to speak at the ScanSource Communications Partner Conference, held in Memphis, TN.  The event brings together the strategic reseller and vendor partners that work with ScanSource Communications to create leading communications solutions.

Since the event was hosted in Memphis, the attendees had the unique opportunity to visit the ScanSource Distribution Center, located just outside the city limits.  Being a big fan of "How It's Made" programming on TV, I was sure to attend and soak up the noise and mass movement in the 600,000 square feet facility.

Housing close to $30M in inventory with an order fulfillment accuracy rate of 99.9% is no small task.

While at the facility, we were lucky to see a truck-load of AudioCodes media gateways in the receiving area.

The facility features a technologically advanced “picking, packing and shipping” conveyor system with 40 lanes.  The entire facility is air conditioned and protected by a 1 Megawatt generator that allows the facility to operate for over three days without power or refueling. 

We were also shown the 40,000 square feet of system integration space - where various components can be brought together, software loaded, configured and packaged ready for delivery right to the end-customer site.

Thanks to the folks at ScanSource, not only did we get an opportunity to network with many of our reseller partners, but I now have a new appreciation to the word "logistics" and the effort that goes behind prompt and accurate delivery of our media gateways and other products here in North America.

Now if they'd only tell me how to get out of here... Continue Reading...

Today I ran across an interesting article that shows many of the public companies associated with Cloud Communications have taken a bit of a bruising on the stock market.  Frankly, many of them were way over priced based on the current market situation.

What does this tell me?  That we are finally past the "Gartner Hype Cycle" and ready to get some real business done.

Many of us in the communications industry are doing just that next week at ITEXPO and the co-located Cloud Communications Summit, February 2-4th in the Miami Beach Convention Center.

I know I'll be listening and sharing my observations - will you?

Our final plans are coming together for ITExpo East 2011 in the Miami Beach Convention Center February 2-4th and there is plenty of great content on the way.


A new addition for ITExpo this year is series of partner presentations we've named "AudioCodes Connect".  The event presents a series of application partners describing new and innovative communications solutions.  The event is an ideal opportunity for reseller partners and business customers to hear about some ready-to-implement innovative and cost-saving solutions.

Event Schedule for Friday, February 4^th in Miami Beach Convention Center, Room: A106

• 10:00 AM – 11:50 AM – Skype Connect – bringing the power of Skype to businesses
• 11:00 AM – 11:50 AM – Microsoft Lync – a Unified Communications migration strategy
• 1:00 PM – 1:50 AM – Sagemcom – 21st Century Enterprise Fax – Opportunities and Solutions

You'll get more than an education from these sessions. For each session from the above schedule that an attendee participates, they’ll receive a drawing ticket and chance to win the iPad!  The more sessions you attend, the greater your chance of winning. The drawing for the iPad will occur at 2:30 PM on Friday, February 4th in front of the AudioCodes booth #507.  You must be present to win!!!

Another  ITExpo ritual we at AudioCodes have enjoyed participating in during the last few years has been the car give-away and this year it's a Jeep Wrangler.  As one of the sponsors, we have an opportunity to meet all of the entrants in their rush to secure their game-card stamps. This year the car is being awarded at 2:45 PM on the last day (Friday).  Trust me when I tell you that this is absolutely your best chance at winning a car - the odds are extremely good.

If you are headed to Miami Beach for ITExpo, plan on stopping by and good luck!



Continue Reading...

When thinking about the education market, it's easy to envision a lab full of graduate students, building "the next Google" in their labs - tirelessly coding and tweaking their invention for the masses.  Often these young fresh minds develop incredible new technologies (including much of our communications infrastructure we use every day).  However, the reality of communications infrastructure within education is often very different.  Most educational institutions are strapped for cash, being sensitive to spend the public or private funding very carefully.  It's not uncommon to find schools and universities still using 20 year old telephone equipment and beige wall phones in the class rooms.

Meanwhile, much has changed since that beige telephone was installed.  Email, instant messaging, and Unified Communications (based on SIP) have come along - improving efficiency and mobility to the hard working teaching, operations and administration staff.  To-date, implementing Unified Communications meant working with one-size-fits-all UC systems from the incumbent equipment makers that are extremely costly and frankly not well suited to the education market. 

Can educational institutions adopt Unified Communications and be careful stewards of the funding?

I'll be addressing this and many other questions during a joint webinar titled "Experience Unified Communications Made for EDU by EDU" hosted by eZuce, Ronco Communications and AudioCodes on Thursday, December 9th at 10 AM ET.   To learn more about this event and register, visit the Information and Registration Page.
Continue Reading...

Earlier this month I was happy to meet with Jeff Heibert, CEO of ROI Networks to LA for ITExpo for a discussion on a case study customer of theirs using Skype Connect in an Avaya environment using the AudioCodes Mediant 1000 E-SBC.  The E-SBC plays a key role to integrate the two systems and provide security to protect the Avaya SIP Enablement Server (SES) from attack via the public internet.  After some nudging, I got Jeff to sit with Erin to do a video interview of what we think is a fascinating case study.


Click on the thumbnail to view the video.

A key attribute of this case study is the end customer was able to leverage Skype Connect without expensive and disruptive upgrades to their Avaya Communications Manager.

A written copy of the case study is also available.

Continue Reading...

Yesterday I was fortunate to participate in one of the regional Contact Center Networking Group (CCNG) meetings here in Buffalo, NY.  The core theme of the event was a discussion on Avaya's roadmap and how it effects users of ex-Nortel systems.

The meeting kicked off with a presentation by the host company, American Coradius International (ACI) and Elaine Alvord, Director of IT.  ACI is a third-party collection agency, working for the major banks and finance companies to "educate" their customers on the value of repaying their loans.  Tough business to be in, but someone has to do it.

Anyhow, Elaine described how a few years ago ACI was limping along on an old Nortel Option 11 and ran into a number of compliance issues that would have limited the kind of work they would be able to perform for the major banks.  The biggest issue was an inability to do 100% recording, but their business reporting and efficiency was falling behind "state-of-the-art".  Elaine then continued to describe their search for a new SIP-based communications system and the eventual selection of CIC by Interactive Intelligence for their two sites.  As part of this purchase, they also selected two AudioCodes media gateways for their TDM trunking and e911 connectivity.  (Now you know why I was interested in the event.)

After Elaine's presentation, we took a quick tour of their Hamburg, NY site and got to watch and hear their agents "work the phones".  Reaching the debtor was surprisingly difficult - you can't just keep calling their home telephone and "hope they answer".  It takes real detective work to find when and where you can reach them for a live discussion. 

Yesterday's tour and discussion with some of the other contact center managers at the event gave me a new perspective on priorities in their business.  Certainly employee motivation and policies to maintain compliance are fundamental, but the technology used to build a contact center has a huge impact on their efficiency.  Their adoption of a state-of-the-art contact center software suite and quality equipment as a foundation has dramatically improved their business productivity and ability to land new business with the major banks.

It was a well spent morning and a fresh perspective of our business.

Oh by the way - it was good to meet the gang at ACI, but I hope they never need to call me!  (at least not to collect a debt)




Continue Reading...

Over the last few weeks, I've spent quite a bit of time talking with a variety of partners about leveraging SIP in large enterprise deployments and specifically the architectures used to support branch offices.  When I first starting working on this problem, my original reaction was "Simple, just put in a softswitch and connect all the sites together via SIP - Done".  

It turns out it's not that easy.  From listening to our partners and their customers, I have learned there are a few real challenges they deal with when deploying communications systems into distributed branch office situations:

First you need to get good quality broadband to every one of your branch offices, which is hard to do once you leave the urban/suburban rings of most cities.  Getting voice-grade  broadband to remote offices in rural America can be very expensive and wipe out any potential cost savings.  Consumer grade broadband is easier to get, but even then not predictable enough for commercial applications.

Second is the question of reliability, which was recently demonstrated by the massive Internet outage in San Jose. What will happen to your business if the broadband connection to the site is cut?  Do you just close for the day and kiss off the revenue?

Third is network traffic optimization - does every call really need tie up your broadband service?  Is there a more efficient way to leverage the expensive and shared broadband that services the branch offices?

The solutions seems to be in an architecture that fits somewhere between the two extremes of fully centralized and fully distributed, but exactly where depends on the individual business.

To discuss these challenges and some potential solutions, I've invited Bruce Mazza, Director of Branch Office Solutions for Avaya to join me in a live webinar on Tuesday, April 14th at 2 PM.  I encourage you to Click here to register for the live event or listen to an on-demand recording of the event. Continue Reading...

Yesterday's big news here at VoiceCon Orlando 2009 was the launch of Avaya Aura, a new SIP-based architecture and strategy from Avaya that  "simplifies complex communications networks, reduces infrastructure costs and quickly delivers voice, video, messaging, presence, Web applications and more to employees anywhere."

As Kevin Kennedy, president and CEO, Avaya noted in both his keynote address and press materials:  "We've seen some organizations use SIP routing to reduce trunking costs by 20 percent to 60 percent. With this new architecture, for the first time, the way we communicate is defined by the applications and the user, not the network."

Bruce Mazza, Director of Branch Office Solutions and Alon Waks, Solutions and Product Marketing for Avaya gave me a quick tour and demo of the Remote Branch portion of the solution showing how branch offices leverage  AudioCodes MediaPack analog gateways to provide survivability in situations where the wide-area-network were to fail or become unavailable.

In addition to survivability, the AudioCodes MediaPack gateways can provide connectivity to analog phones, fax machines and other legacy devices in remote branches.

This announcement highlights one of my key strategic visions of the power of SIP, connecting diverse and distributed businesses together at far lower costs than using the PSTN to call inter-branch.  

I'll be joined by Bruce Mazza to discuss the new Avaya Aura strategy and branch office survivability in an upcoming webinar that I'll be hosting.  Click here to register for the event.  Continue Reading...

AudioCodes has been working closely with Avaya for a number of years and as part of our exhibition at VoiceCon Orlando next week, I've invited Bruce Mazza, Director of Branch Solutions at Avaya to present during our AudioCodes / ScanSource Solutions Theater.  Avaya's Branch Office solution leverages SIP to connect remote branch offices to regional offices, which reduces operating costs for banks, insurance, retail and government customers that frequently have dispersed remote offices.

AP :Where would someone learn more about the Avaya Branch Office solution?    

BM: We'll have information at both the Avaya and AudioCodes booths with live demonstrations that can be seen by attendees.

Bruce's presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, March 31st at 2:00 PM EDT in the AudioCodes / ScanSource Solutions Theater within booth #931.

Did I mention that by attending you can win one of 14 iPod Touch PM3 players that we are giving away?

Continue Reading...

Another interesting presenter and topic that I am looking forward to at the AudioCodes / ScanSource Solutions Theater at VoiceCon Orlando is Rick Q. Chin from Interactive Intelligence.  AudioCodes has been working with Interactive Intelligence since the very earliest days of their Customer Interaction Center, one of the premier SIP-based contact center solutions on the market.

AP: Rick, what's the title/topic of your presentation? 

RC: The presentation I'll be bringing is 'Improving the Customer Experience with CIC' and it discusses how to help companies win and keep customers

AP: How does Interactive Intelligence CIC help enterprises in this difficult economy? 

RC: Increases efficiency, effectiveness, and utilization of resources, improves customer service and increases customer satisfaction, provides lower operating and ownership costs

AP: Is there an opportunity for Value Added Resellers (VARs) that would be at the event to leverage with your solution? 

RC: Absolutely, Yes they would get a lot from my presentation.

 AP: What about the Interactive Intelligence strategy is different from before the economy went sour? 

RC: Focusing on communicating the value and high ROI of our completely line of applications, unique truly all-in-one product, and the higher productivity and effectiveness it provides vs. higher ownership and overhead and piecemeal solutions from the competitors.

AP: Who would get the most out of listening to your presentation? 

RC: A range of executives, Call Center Managers, Disaster Recovery Officers would get the most from the presentation, but we hope others will stop by to hear about improving customer care.

AP: Where would someone learn more about your solution?

RC: They can visit www.inin.com or give us a call at 800-267-1364

Rick's presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, April 1st at 2:30 EDT in the AudioCodes / ScanSource Solutions Theater in Booth #931.  Stop by and you could win an iPod Touch!
 

Continue Reading...