First, let’s clarify that there are situations where phones are mandatory for public safety reasons – school class rooms, elevators, emergency call stations, hotel pools and other spaces that are required by either building or fire codes.  Phones are “expected” items in conference rooms, shared office space locations, un-staffed lobbies and similar locations. 

Given that, all those involved in the discussion agreed that for some business roles, it is clearly now possible to work in a Lync-client and headset-only mode, freeing up desk space that would otherwise be consumed by a desk phone.  However the conversation got interesting when the question of costs got engaged “Is it less expensive to eliminate the phone?”

So we did a set of back-of-the-cocktail-napkin computations for a desktop phone and wired headset, calculating both the CAPEX and the annual OPEX, assuming the phone would last 5 years and the wired headset would need to be replaced every six months (they do break and wear out):

If instead, we buy every employee a Lync-compatible wired headset only (no IP Phone) and assume the headset would need to be replaced every six months:

Things get more interesting if you add a Bluetooth headset to the mix – as personal experience has taught me that they get lost, left at home, batteries die and accidentally get worn in the shower (don’t ask).  Expect two Bluetooth headsets/person/year.  Also, because of the life battery issue, a Bluetooth headset cannot be your only headset, so we assumed each user would also get one wired headset for the desk that would be replaced once a year.

What does this tell us? 

Over the long-haul, an IP phone with a wired headset is the most cost effective due to lower OPEX costs.  It also says that today, the convenience of a hands-free Bluetooth office is expensive. Surely the costs for Lync-compatible headsets will come down over time, but for the near-term, Lync compatibility will make them more expensive than the more-popular RJ-11 run-of-the-mill phone-only headsets.

What’s a reasonable compromise that businesses can follow?

There is a reasonable expectation to provide employees with the most cost effective solution (an IP Phone and wired headset), but enables employees to BYOD for the Bluetooth headsets.  This ensures the employee has what is needed to do their work (a phone and headset), but puts the expensive part that gets lost/broken/left at home/worn in the shower (the Bluetooth headset) is on their dime – encouraging that they keep track of it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my Bluetooth headset(s), and worth every dime, but I need to get into the habit of checking my ear before jumping in the shower….

The “phone or no-phone” debate will go on for some time, until then, do share your thoughts and feedback.  

You can reach Alan at:  alan.percy@audiocodes.com

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Now that the dust has settled after Enterprise Connect 2013, and I’ve had a chance to both reflect on what I heard and download the slides (to make sure my memory was correct), it’s time to talk about the looming “Battle over TCO”.

During the conference Robin Gareiss, EVP and Founder of Nemertes Research presented an eye-opening session titled “Making the Business Case for IP Telephony and Unified Communications”, which included some analytical research they had done on the actual cost of Unified Communications systems from a number of different vendors.  Robin presented the results of a Nemertes survey, finding that NEC and ShoreTel had the lowest total first year costs for IP Telephony, while Microsoft had significantly higher first year costs.  How much higher?  According to the survey, Microsoft users reported almost three times the costs that ShoreTel users reported.

The increased costs reported in the survey were predominately in the operational side of the equation – the capital and implementation costs between the various vendors were not far off.  Operational costs include the staff time, equipment maintenance, 3^rd party maintenance, training and certification.

While I’m sure the data presented was accurately collected, computed and shared, it just doesn’t match up with what our customers are telling us.    Something is missing, so I took it upon myself to get to the bottom of this mystery….

So, like any good speaker at Enterprise Connect, I tossed the problem out to the audience at my next break-out session (and frankly to anyone else that would listen).   “Why is Nemertes reporting that the operational costs are so high for Microsoft vs. others?”

A Sr. Network Engineer for a health care provider in Tennessee was first to jump on the question – prefacing that the report did not match their experience and he surmised that one of the issues was accurately measuring the staff time needed to implement Lync.  One of the issues measuring the costs of Lync is that there is no IT vs. Telephony split in the organization anymore.  In the past, distinct separate staff took care of the data and voice networks, so it was easy to measure.  Now, the IT staff takes care of the network and Lync is just another application for that group to manage.

As noted in my podcast with Doug Green recorded during the show discussed, the open, multi-vendor approach of “best of breed” UC seems to be another area that affects operational costs for Lync.  If the software, servers, phones, headsets and network elements all come from different vendors, the training and certifications required for a Lync deployment can get daunting.  That training often never gets completed and as a result, little problems take a long time to solve, causing the time/cost of operations to further increase.  One vendor and reducing the number of vendors improves operational costs.

The maturity of Lync seems to be a contributing factor too - during Robin’s session, she did note that there was a correlation between the maturity of the platform and the operational costs – Microsoft being one of the new kids on the block, doesn’t benefit from a well-educated customer base.  Other more mature platforms (ShoreTel, Cisco, Avaya) had well trained partners and channels.

I also felt that the Nemertes survey should have included experiential results from the cost savings the various platforms – how was your travel budget affected by implementing UC?   How much did your costs of conference calling change?  What was the impact on time-to-resolution for your helpdesk?   All are very hard costs that can be measured and should have been included in the report.

My biggest concern from Enterprise Connect 2013 and this one report is that the vendors of the UC systems will start a “my TCO is lower” war in their marketing messages – which will further confuse those CIOs that are still on the fence.  The reality is that our customers are telling us (one after another), their migration to UC has transformed their businesses, reduced costs and improved productivity.  What’s not to love?

Looking forward to EC14 next year, but until then, do share your thoughts and feedback.

You can reach Alan at:  alan.percy@audiocodes.com

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Skype and Microsoft - What to expect when the streams cross? - May 10, 2011

FAQ: SIP Trunking and Unified Communications - What is the role of an Enterprise SBC? - May 05, 2011

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• 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!

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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

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By now you've all heard about all the cool techno-gizmos at CES - yeah, been there done that. When I go to CES, I try to find the weirdest and most unusual product for my annual "What in the world is that?" award.

This year, the 2013 award goes to PTP Licensing, who was showing a "Plasmic Transition Process Engine".

Plasma Transition Engine prototype at CES

The mad-scientist-looking gentleman working the booth explained that the engine works using inert gases in a opposed configuration two piston engine (like most Subarus have), with sparks from four spark plugs in each cylinder causing a plasma "gas burst" inside the cyclinders to drive the engine. The plasma is contained using strong magnetic fields and does not release any radiation or other emissions to the air (other than the inert gas).

The engine reportedly runs cool, uses little gas to operate and is very efficient.

Only issue is, I couldn't figure out how it would fit in my time travel DeLorean ?



www.ptplicensing.com

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By Alan D. Percy, Senior Director of Marketing NA, AudioCodes

Many resellers have seen success with Voice-enabled Microsoft Lync 2010, selling equipment and services into the mid-market and enterprises where businesses tend to have their own data centers or private cloud infrastructure.  Meanwhile, deploying voice-enabled Lync to the small business market (under 250 seats) has been difficult, requiring dedicated server pool infrastructure for each business, resulting in high overhead costs.

During a recent AudioCodes-hosted webinar, Roy King, Business Planner at Microsoft and Larry Clarkson, CTO, AudioCodes addressed this challenge and walked us through the new hosting options available with the recently released Lync 2013.

For enterprises or mid-market, the existing Lync edition would continue to be deployed in either a customer-premise data center or a private cloud data center.   A reseller partner could host Lync for a customer in a “hosted dedicated” architecture.  Not much has changed here as reseller partners provide the equipment, installation, configuration and maintenance of the Lync server pool and related devices.  Customization and business process integration are excellent ways for resellers to differentiate themselves and deepen their relationship with the enterprise.  This is by far the most common deployment model for Lync to date.

The significant change in Lync 2013 is the new cloud-friendly version in the “Lync Hosting Pack”, enabling multi-tenant operation of Lync – ideal for servicing multiple smaller businesses that don’t want their own on-site Lync installation.  As noted by Roy King during the webinar “small businesses don’t have the same requirements as enterprises, but do need customization or other features”.  The Lync Hosting Pack opens up a whole new range of opportunities for resellers, allowing them to offer cloud-based voice-enabled Lync to smaller businesses, hosting it in a cloud data center of their own, or from a cloud computing provider.

As part of the cloud-based deployment architectures, AudioCodes media gateways and E-SBCs continue to play an important role in either the customer premise or the cloud data center, providing connectivity between the hosted Lync software and the public network.  In addition, AudioCodes Survivable Branch Appliances continue to play an important role in providing voice quality monitoring, local trunking access and continued operation in cases where connectivity to the cloud data center is lost.

It seems that the new cloud-friendly Lync 2013 is something that resellers should take a close look at, helping refine a cloud strategy and offer.

If you’d like to learn more about Lync 2013 and the architectures supported by the Microsoft Lync Hosted Pack, you can view the recently recorded webinar “Microsoft Lync Hosting Strategy and Voice”.  Access to the recording via the following link:  http://bit.ly/VBVlAQ

Alan Percy is Senior Director of Strategic Marketing for North America at AudioCodes, a leading provider of Voice over IP networking products and enabling technology.

Alan.percy@audiocodes.com
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By Alan Percy, Senior Director of Marketing for AudioCodes

I spent part of this last week reading and listening in to some of the post-conference comments about WebRTC.   For those of you that haven’t caught the bug yet, WebRTC is about building a unified media capability into web browsers, the goal being to eliminate the existing dozens of incompatible specialized client software packages (like Skype).

After wading through all the technical bits, the bigger picture came into focus – this is real trouble for hosted VoIP application and traditional TDM service providers.  Like with Skype, WebRTC will allow users to initiate end-to-end collaboration sessions using IP to interconnect the two end points.  I can envision further weakening of the centralized control and application model that service providers have been depending on for revenue.  Like Skype, a user only needs is IP connectivity and a registrar/directory service to find the other party.  This furthers the prediction that the value to the consumer/business for service providers is in the last mile (wireline or wireless) IP connectivity, making their offering merely a “dumb pipe”.

Stay tuned – this could get interesting.

Contact Alan at:
Email: alan.percy@audiocodes.com
Twitter: @AlanDPercy
Web: www.audiocodes.com

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As I weave my way through the Atlanta Airport, thoughts of this week’s Astricon begin to sink in.  Astricon is the annual Mecca for upwards of 800 developers, enterprises and service providers that have built (or planning to build) solutions based on the popular Asterisk open source software. 

Mark Spencer, the original developer of Asterisk has made quite a career out of his IP-PBX-like donation to the open source community – feeding untold developers that have built creative applications and business solutions.   I’m always grateful that Mark makes an effort to stop by and talk to virtually everyone at the event – he personally connects with those that share his passion.  (I would be nice if all founders and CEOs felt as connected to their customers and didn’t hide behind their handlers)

Other regulars make the week a great networking event.  I always enjoy the endless needling about fax from David Duffett, the Asterisk Community Leader and trainer/entertainer.  Who can resist hearing about the latest project from the “voice” of Asterisk - Allison Smith and her rock-star-like status among the sea of men?

One of the benefits for me in attending Astricon is the steady stream of visitors to our booth that start their discussion with “hey, we use AudioCodes in our….” and then describe some very creative solution that uses our gateways, E-SBCs or IP Phones.  From a hospital using our MP-124s to drive the bed-side phones, to hospitality, and a few large contact centers – it’s always great to see the sparkle in the developers eye.  (Now if I could just catch that sparkle in a video case study)

This year I made an effort to attend some of the sessions, clearing my schedule to listen into both keynote addresses.  Wednesday’s presentation from  Clint Oram, CTO at SugarCRM was an interesting perspective on how to take open source solutions to market, building a software solution that would stand the test of time and survive potential legal challenges. 

Thursday’s keynote from Chris Gatch, EVP and CTO from Cbeyond was particularly interesting to me, as he explained some of the challenges that his ITSP and SIP trunking provider faces in growing in a fractured and difficult broadband access market.  I hadn’t realized how dependent these providers were on the ILECs and last mile access.  Going so far as target specific buildings and business parks that have access to fiber or DS3 facilities, Cbeyond sales people have to target locations that have the infrastructure needed for their services to be profitable.  He also shared some thought on what Cbeyond sees in hosting cloud applications in their data centers – finishing his presentation with a quote-worthy comment “Commit to the Cloud”.  But I wondered, “will the cloud commit to me?”

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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.

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