The SIP Invite - Events Archives

Microsoft Lync Sessions at Enterprise Connect

2013-03-13T20:28:19Z

We’ve got a lot to look forward to at the upcoming Enterprise Connect – surely Microsoft Lync will be a big focus of attention at this ever-growing meeting of communications professionals. A few events we’ve been coordinating with Microsoft, Verizon, Plantronics and ScanSource Communications during the event:

Join Verizon, AudioCodes and ScanSource Communications for a lunch buffet session titled “SIP Trunking and UC – Better together?”. Enjoy lunch and engage in a discussion about Lync in managed service deployments with SIP Trunking. Lunch is Tuesday, March 19th from 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM.
Enjoy a drink and hors d’oeuvres after a long day on Tuesday at the “One Voice for Lync Launch Party” – hosted by AudioCodes – it starts at 6:30 PM and will give you an opportunity to network with other Lync users, partners and industry leaders in Unified Communications.
On Wednesday morning, join Marty Parker from UC Strategies and Joseph Donald from Microsoft for a breakfast session titled “Lync 2013 – Where can it take you now?”. In addition to a fabulous breakfast buffet, we’ll be discussing the future of Unified Communications with Microsoft Lync, deployment strategies and successes. Breakfast is Wednesday, March 20th from 7:30 AM – 9:00 AM

All three sessions are being held in St. Georges 108 (in the atrium of the Gaylord Palms)

Pre-registration is requested – Register Me!

Lync Conference 2013 - A Look Back

2013-03-07T13:57:56Z

Now that the first-ever Lync Conference is behind us, some reflective thoughts and observations:

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

Lync at TechEd - Coming out of the Shadows

2012-06-14T19:34:27Z

Today wraps up Microsoft Tech 2012 in Orlando, the major education conference targeted at IT professionals using Microsoft products and related technologies. Microsoft Lync was featured in the Office Pavilion within Microsoft’s central area. In addition to the Microsoft stand, the usual collection of device and gateway vendors were exhibiting including AudioCodes, Polycom, Plantronics, Jabra, Juniper and others.

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:

The voice and video payload varies tremendously – from RTA-NB to full frame-rate HD video, network designers have to use policies to prevent Lync calls/collaboration from crushing their networks.
There are a couple cool features that I’ll call “hunt group lite” to allow groups of people to answer incoming calls. While not a replacement for even the most basic contact center, I can envision the feature being handy.
With virtualization, you can stuff the entire Lync server pool into one server (not recommended, but would come in handy for pilots and demos) Normally, Lync requires some serious silicon.
You can even virtualize the desktop client, allowing the use of thin clients along with a USB-enabled IP Phone.
I was also surprised how little the Lync Mobile Client was discussed – not sure if that was deliberate, but it did seem odd. While it has its limitations and quirky operation – it is handy.

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.

A Tour of the ScanSource Distribution Center

2011-10-07T17:33:25Z

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...

Cloud Communications - Are We Past the Hype Cycle Yet?

2011-01-25T18:53:25Z

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.

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?

Plans for ITExpo East 2011

2011-01-17T15:28:37Z

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^thin 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!

Education and UC - Is it time?

2010-12-01T12:40:54Z

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.

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.

Skype Connect and Avaya Integration Case Study Video

2010-10-22T20:02:24Z

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.

A New Perspective on the Contact Center

2010-08-12T20:03:55Z

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)

Distributed Enterprises - Can they save money and be reliable?

2009-04-13T13:11:23Z

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.

Avaya Aura Launch - Leveraging SIP

2009-04-01T12:33:20Z

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.

Discussion with Bruce Mazza on SIP-enabled Distributed Enterprises

2009-03-23T19:43:14Z

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: Bruce, thanks again for joining us in Orlando. What's the title/topic of your presentation?

BM: "Distributed Enterprises -Reduce Operating Costs and Maintain Reliability"

AP: How does the Avaya application help enterprises in this difficult economy?

BM: The joint solution from Avaya and AudioCodes will help medium and large businesses with many small branch office locations to reduce the cost of deploying and managing communications by centralizing trunking access and reducing monthly fees, reducing inter-enterprise long-distance fees by running voice over the customers WAN, centralizing management to reduce overhead costs, all while increasing branch user productivity through value-added UC applications. Since the solution is survivable with the AudioCodes SAS capability matched with Avaya's SIP 96xx phones, branch office users can have the assurance of business continuity.

AP: What will this solution mean to VARs that service companies with remote branches?

BM: VARs will enjoy the opportunity to address medium and large enterprises with a full complement of branch solutions from Avaya, and to address the very small branches that are so prevalent with the survivable SIP branch solution from AudioCodes and Avaya. Opportunities exist for product sales in Data Centers, and Branches, as well as services to design, build, and deploy customers branch networks.

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

BM: Frankly, we had planned to introduce this solution before the economy went sour. Now customers will be even more compelled to implement the solution to gain the OPEX savings.

AP: Share with us who would get the most out of your presentation at VoiceCon?

BM: I believe IT Manager, Telecom Directors and CIOs of companies that numerous remote branches would find the session very helpful.

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?

Interview with Rick Q. Chin @ Interactive Intelligence

2009-03-19T21:56:58Z

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!

Interview with Bill Miller at Digium

2009-03-18T12:58:34Z

I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming Solutions Theater and iPod Give-away we are hosting at VoiceCon later this month. As part of this series of presentations on SIP applications, we'll be joined by Bill Miller, Vice President of Product Management for Digium. Bill brings a wealth of experience and knowledge on both IP-PBX solutions and open source to the stage. Bill was kind enough to share with me some thoughts on his upcoming session:

AP: Thanks again for presenting in the upcoming Solutions Theater at VoiceCon. Can you give us a sneak peek at the topic of your presentation?

BM: My session is titled "Open Source Alternatives in a down economy"

AP: Please share with us how Digium|Asterisk and open source solutions help enterprises in this difficult economy?

BM: The business case for open source and open source based solutions is compelling for both business and technical reasons. We will explore why the momentum is not just building daily, but there are proven solutions, case studies and growing list of enterprise class solutions.

AP: How can Value Added Resellers (VARS) best leverage Digium|Asterisk?

BM: VARs are adopting alternatives to traditional telecom solutions at alarming rates. The ability to leverage experience already gained from traditional telephony solutions, the new emerging models provides new channels of revenues, new pipelines of opportunities and many alternatives to build custom telephony solutions to grow faster than the market. price conscious users want to kick the tires and understand open source today.

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

BM: Resellers and enterprises or all sizes

AP: Bill, where would someone learn more about your Digium Open Source solutions?

BM: The Digium booth is #1328 here at VoiceCon and our web site is www.digium.com. To learn more about the open source asterisk project, visit www.asterisk.org.

Bill's presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, March 31st at 4:00 PM EDT in booth #931 - see you there and good luck winning the iPod Touch!

Interview with Joel Maloff @ BandTel

2009-03-11T12:54:42Z

As noted in yesterday's post about VoiceCon, our opening speaker in the AudioCodes / ScanSource Solutions Theater will be Joel Maloff, Vice President of Marketing for BandTel. BandTel is a pure SIP Trunking service provider that utilizes AudioCodes gateways to connect their services to end-customer TDM PBXs or other equipment. Joel was kind enough to spend a few minutes with me yesterday, providing a preview of what to expect in his presentation at VoiceCon.

AP: Can you share with us the title and topic of your presentation?

JM: Sure, the title is 'SIP Trunking - Ready for Prime Time '

AP: How does SIP Trunking help enterprises in this difficult economy?

JM: SIP trunking has two immediate benefits for enterprises, especially in light of economic conditions. The first is the ability to broaden an enterprise's reach via the use of remote local telephone numbers. For example, an enterprise that is forced to consolidate and close down physical locations can retain those telephone numbers and have them ring into one or more centralized facilities. In this way, local identification is retained, operations are consolidated, and costs can be dramatically reduced. In addition, new locations can be opened throughout North America and internationally with those calls received by an enterprise call center. The second benefit is the ability to reduce reliance on dedicated telephone circuits for voice and reduce the cost of incoming and outgoing telephone calls. This includes both domestic and international. Our research indicates that savings of 25% to 70% of the annual telecommunications budget is achievable. In difficult economic times, those savings go directly to the bottom line and can be reused to the benefit of the business.

AP: How will value added resellers (VARs) benefit from reselling SIP Trunking from BandTel?

JM: BandTel offers a percentage of monthly recurring revenues brought to us for the life of the service. As long as the customer remains with BandTel, our partners will receive the benefit of their efforts.

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

JM: Our strategy has not changed. We believe that businesses want to do more for their operating expenditures, and to find new ways of serving their markets. What has changed is the mindset of our customers. They are no longer content to pay high prices to traditional communications carriers without considering new and different ways to accomplish the same results for less money.

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

JM: Anyone who is responsible for finding ways to lower communications costs without sacrificing value will find the presentation valuable. This includes information technology and telecommunications staff organizations, financial personnel responsible for scrutinizing budgets, and value-added resellers seeking an additional profit center to the benefit of their customers and clients.

AP: Where would someone learn more about your solution?

JM: BandTel's website - www.bandtel.com - offers a wealth of information including white papers, FAQs, and case studies.

Joel's presentation is scheduled in the AudioCodes / ScanSource Solutions Theater in Booth #931 at 4:00 PM EDT on Monday, March 30th.