All three sessions are being held in St. Georges 108 (in the atrium of the Gaylord Palms)
Pre-registration is requested – Register Me!
]]>Far exceeding the organizer’s expectations, the Lync Conference sold out weeks before the event with over 1,000 paid attendees. (Based on the badge swapping in the hotel foyer, there must have been another 300 people “around the fringes”.) The event was an interesting mix of roughly 1/3 end-customers, another 1/3 resellers/partners and 1/3 vendors, analysts and press - all mixed into hours of great sessions, keynotes and exposition space. What does this mean? Lync has arrived and it is HOT.
We at AudioCodes used the event to kick-off our One Voice for Microsoft Lync branding campaign, featuring a new informational video that was hard to miss on our giant video screen. Feedback from the analysts and customers was very positive – the value of one source for the network elements, services and support is clear.
The AudioCodes 420HD, 430HD and 440HD IP phones were quite the hit with the attendees. Most notably was a “phone premonition” by the popular blogger Matt Landis foreseeing the arrival our 440HD phone. (I’m personally pitching to our executives that we informally call our 440HD “the Landis Phone” going forward.)
My session titled “Avoiding the Pilot Trap” was a hit at the show. Featuring an end-customer presentation from Jeff Bryngelson, Network Manager at American Axle & Manufacturing and a partner perspective from Benjamin Tosado, Principle at Conquest Technology Services, the session discussed some of the challenges that IT Managers and Administrators run into when their Lync pilot projects run into troubles and some first-hand tips on how to avoid a similar fate. Even the critical consultant Sheila McGee-Smith gave us a “best session of the conference” twitter nod for including real customers to share their stories. You can view a recording of the session on YouTube.
AudioCodes, Plantronics, Intelepeer and ScanSource Communications collaborated to organize the first ever “Voice LyncUP”, a social event that cruised the San Diego harbor on Tuesday evening. The event brought together close to 300 end-customer, partners and sponsors out on a cool and windy evening for an opportunity to socialize and share their Lync experiences. We’re looking forward to a bigger and better event next year with more sponsors and attendees.
And most importantly, the event gave us an opportunity to meet, collaborate and listen to a number of our current and prospective customers. Having real eye-to-eye discussions about the needs and wants for business adoption of Lync is impossible to put into words. We left with a new appreciation of what has been accomplished and what is to come from some of the early adopters and highly innovative community that makes up the Lync ecosystem.
One final thought – for those of us that attended this first-ever Lync Conference event, I suspect there will be a day in the future when we say “I was there when….” Looking forward to next year.
You can reach Alan at: alan.percy@audiocodes.com
]]>During this week, I made an extra effort to roughly half of the 12 educational sessions on Microsoft Lync. Here’s a summary of what I learned this week:
In addition to the technical facets of Lync, I was also surprised by the number of attendees that already had started their pilots and/or done a full roll-out of Lync. This was great hunting ground for some future end-customer case studies.
While not anywhere near the wide adoption as Exchange or SharePoint, it sure seemed that Lync has come out from the shadows and is gaining significant awareness by the IT professionals in attendance.]]>Image by sclopit via Flickr
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.Event Schedule for Friday, February 4th in Miami Beach Convention Center, Room: A106
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!!!
Image via Wikipedia
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.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!