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

Longview IoT Boosts Energy and Wireless Efficiency

Some of the biggest challenges slowing down the adoption of IoT are security, efficient battery usage and optimized wireless communications.One company has...

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Hallmark's Simple, Inexpensive Way to Boost Customer Satisfaction

In an effort to boost margins, companies often push more users to automated solutions such as FAQs, chatbots, voice bots and anything...

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Huawei Places the World's First 5G VoNR Video Call

Huawei recently completed the world's first voice over NR (VoNR) call. The voice and video call service was made using two Huawei...

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IGEL Advances Future of Work

IGEL is a provider of a next-gen edge OS for cloud workspaces. The company’s software products include IGEL OS, IGEL UD Pocket (UDP) and Universal...

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Tata Communications and Cisco Collaborate on SD-WAN

Tata Communications and Cisco have extended their partnership to enable enterprises to transform their legacy network to a customized and secure multi-cloud...

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How to Win the 50-Year-Old China Trade War

Today and this week in-fact is historic - the left and right in the U.S. agree that we have a major trade...

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Extreme Elements Enables The Autonomous Enterprise

Extreme Networks just announced Extreme Elements which in-turn enables the autonomous network and subsequently the autonomous enterprise. In a dynamic webinar, Dan...

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When is Placing Third Good?

May 3, 2012

This last week, we at AudioCodes were pleased to announce that we had been ranked by Infonetics Research in their overall market analysis of the Enterprise Session Border Controller.  While our share was a small 5%, putting us in third place and well behind Acme Packet and Cisco, we pondered what this meant and how to share the news with the market.

After thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclusion that this was indeed good news.  Being ranked third puts us on the podium, next to some good company and competition. Not unlike our initial entry into the Media Gateway market in 2002, you have to start somewhere. 

Social Media v Corporate Culture

April 25, 2012

Earlier today, I sat through a webinar titled "Social Media and the Law", a discussion on the laws that effect social media.  Much of it was pretty predictable - stories of employees leaking information, brokers

Image via CrunchBase

promoting stocks, sexual harassment, etc.  As with email and instant messaging, people seem to have a tendency to type first, then think.

An article in today's USA Today also discusses the hazards of Tweeting first, then doing the fact checking second.  

Back to the webinar:  the event was hosted by a company that offers "social media management" software, allowing companies to review, approve and track virtually all social media postings by employees. 



Is it You or Your Answering Machine?

April 16, 2012

As humans, we can tell the difference right away - usually.  I'm not sure about you, but more than once I've called someone, then started chatting with what turns out to be their voice mail or answering machine.  Feeling fooled, I usually stammer through leaving a message, often forgetting why I called in the first place.

If you think about it, what are the tips that we hear when calling someone that tell us that they answered and said "hello" vs. voice mail? 

Why are we talking about UC Video?

April 12, 2012

Having just returned from Enterprise Connect and seeing display after display showing large video "immersion" experiences, I am impressed with the technology.

However, earlier in February I visited an end-customer of ours for a case study interview. During our tour, the interviewee was very insistent that we stop and see his new video conference room. Was it an integrated Tanberg, Polycom or other video solution?

UC Migration - Moving off the PBX?

April 9, 2012


This last week, I spent quite a bit of time getting ready for this month's webinars titled "Moving off the PBX?", part of our UC Migration series.  In preparing, we've had many internal discussions about the criteria and goal of moving to a pure Lync environment and unplugging the PBX.

While no one set of rules can encompass all the criteria needed to make the decision, a few common issues come to mind:

What is the current investment in the existing PBX?  Is it under contract?  Paid for and ammortized?
Is the PBX relatively current or is it far behind on software versions?
Are there any special applications that organization is using? 






Emergency Calling and E911 with Lync

April 4, 2012

During this last week, I did an interview with my friend Doug Green for his Lync Special Report.  Here's a "trimmed" transcript of our discussion:

DG: What new solutions from AudioCodes should we expect to see for Microsoft Lync and other Unified Communications efforts?

AP: A new area that we’ve recently introduced solves E-911 emergency response challenges for enterprises with support for Emergency Location Identifier Number (ELIN).

DG: What are the challenges with E-911 in enterprises?

"Dumb Pipes"? Lessons from the Electric Company

March 5, 2012

Much has been discussed during my recent travels about whether Internet access is a basic human necessity - reinforced by a recent survey and report from Cisco.   Frankly it doesn't surprise me - access to the Internet has clearly become a core utility enabling business and our economy to move forward.

As the Internet becomes a core utility, a related question is will the Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs), wireless providers and cable operators will have to settle on a role in the market as a "dumb pipe"  (meaning delivering IP connectivity as their primary offer) vs. content and applications.

If history is any lesson, new utilities (like the founding of General Electric by Thomas Edison in 1890), create a product looking for an application and customers.  To get the market started, utilities will often manufacture and sell products that create demand for the utility services. 



Launch of Microsoft Lync Migration Webinar Series

February 8, 2012


AudioCodes and Microsoft to present
“Migrate to UC with Microsoft Lync” educational webinar series Monthly webinar series to feature presenters
from Microsoft and industry-expert guest speakers  

One of the projects I've been working on this last month is a eight-part monthly educational webinar series focused on enterprise  migration paths to Unified Communications (UC) with Microsoft Lync. 

My goal of the eight-part webinar series is to educate businesses and the partner community on various Lync deployment options, best practices and technical “tips” on how to effectively make the migration to a full Unified Communications environment with Microsoft Lync.  I've worked dilligently to secure a group of industry experts,  VSPs, VARs, and Microsoft as presenters for the series, responding to feedback from previous event attendees who continue to ask for more in-depth  sessions with greater technical detail, more “how to” content and additional customer case studies.

Guest Speakers

The UC Migration webinar series will feature presentations from:

  • Thomas Binder, Architect Voice CoE,  Microsoft
  • Michael Nelson, Vice President of Integrated Access Solutions (IAS)
  • Pascal Menezes, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft
  • François van Hemert, Architect Voice CoE, Microsoft
  • Tarek Radi, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft
  • Jon Morrow, Senior Program Manager – Unified Communications, Microsoft
  • Chris Sheridan, Solutions Architect, Sentri and a vTSP for Microsoft

…and others to be announced

Webinar series abstract: Unified Communications with Microsoft Lync offers to dramatically improve employee efficiency and reduce communications costs. 


E-SBC Panel at ITExpo East - Thoughts from the Panel

February 1, 2012



I'm here at ITExpo East 2012 in the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami Beach, FL (yes, someone has to pull this duty) and we just finished up the opening panel titled:

E-SBCs: Handling Users, Applications and Enterprise Networks"



Joining me on the panel was a group of esteemed group of competitors, sharing our respective thoughts on Enterprise Session Border Controllers, their role in today's network and the future. Here's a quick summary of what we discussed:

What are the barriers that have held back further SIP implementations and E-SBCs? - education, awareness and organizational issues between the telecommunications and networking expertise within businesses.





What drives the adoption of E-SBCs? 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of 2011

December 31, 2011


It's that time of the year for both a look back at 2011 and a look ahead at 2012.  Here's my personal list of the Telecommunications Industry's Good, Bad and Ugly:

The Good 

Unified Communications has finally hit critical mass this year.  As evidence, 2011 marked the one year anniversary for Microsoft Lync, scoring some significant customer wins. Avaya, Cisco, Shoretel, IBM and other vendors are seeing the conversation change from "if" to "when" Unified Communications is adopted in businesses.  




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