This included companies from a diverse set of verticals: for example, a healthcare provider, a pharmaceutical, a retail bank, a global semiconductor tools vendor, an SI, a retailer, a food services firm. These folks get UC, because they have been doing it for years.

Why do I say this?

I would offer you three rationales for the notion that to a large extent the contact center environment is a precursor of what we are doing with UC.

1) Contact centers is a great example of aligning IT with the business. This is pre-requisite to any successful UC deployment.

2) Technically, a contact center consists of a set of specialized capabilities that we now generally associate with UC. Sure the language changes: for example, in contact centers we speak of skill-based routing.... in UC, we speak of presence and personal agents. But many of these concepts are being extended from agents to the general employee base (at by the way a considerably lower price point) and then back to the contact center in the form of UC-enabled capabilities (as we are doing in OCS-enabling our contact center offering).

3) The real value of Contact Centers comes when they are tightly integrated with customer service processes, just as the transformational values of UC come with UC is embedded in business processes, what we call communications-enabled applications.

What do you think?

Related Entries
• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• UC: Think Strategically and Deploy Tactically - Sep 02, 2008
• Two Golds, a Hat Trick and Now a Grand Slam - Aug 25, 2008

Let me look under the UC covers as to how unified communications plays in the small medium business (SMB) market?

It certainly plays in companies that are communications intensive (e.g. real estate offices), have a high proportion of information or knowledge workers (professional offices), or are highly mobile (real estate agencies). In fact, Goldsmith-Agio-Helms, a global private investment banking firm, was the first company to implement UC across its entire employee base- with just over 100 employees, clearly an SMB.

But it doesn't stop there. For example, one of our customers is a family owned business out of the northeast US, Hancock Lumber.

Unlike enterprises, SMBs typically don't ask for UC per se, but rather are looking for integrated communications solutions that solve a business problem or significantly enhance business operation. They obviously see real value in unified office-in-a-box solutions, which deliver UM, message forwarding, meet me conferencing, CTI, intelligent contact center and more.

Simplicity and demonstrated business value are table stakes.

Related Entries
• Nortel Opens Up To Pingtel - Aug 15, 2008
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• UC: Think Strategically and Deploy Tactically - Sep 02, 2008
• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008

One immediate problem they were trying to solve is how to make their management team more productive when traveling across HSBC locations. Not being able to connect in the financial industry can be traced back to loss of revenue opportunity and poor customer service. If HSBC had a single telephony vendor and was only concerned with telephony, this would be an easily addressed problem.

But what HSBC needed went well beyond single vendor telephony hot desking.

HSBC turned to Nortel with its service-powered, single number, voice and video, hot desking application, driven by a presence-enabled corporate portal. Truly cool!

Central to HSBC's unified communications strategy is the Nortel Agile Communication Environment (ACE), a very hot product judging by customer interest.

ACE is a SOA-enabled communication integration application, which delivers a number of services (e.g. click to notify, aggregated presence, context, location). It includes adaptors to Nortel and non-Nortel call managers, as well as to video systems (e.g., From Tandberg), and can integrate with Microsoft OCS and IBM Sametime desktops.

While initially targeting 1000 users, HSBC plans to expand this ACE application across the globe, a strong testament to the value proposition delivered by Nortel ACE.

Related Entries
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Cisco Webex Disconnect - Sep 26, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• UC: Think Strategically and Deploy Tactically - Sep 02, 2008
• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008

As long as you're in your cell provider's EVDO coverage area, you just power on (via an AC adaptor or maybe a DC plug for your car) and you can connect any WiFi device to the Internet.

Pretty neat idea- this one from Cradlepoint, but a number of other vendors have solutions addressing variations on this theme.

Imagine how popular you would be with your friends if you created your personal hotspot with free access!

Create your own scenario.

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• Hyperconnectivity and UC For Kicks - Aug 21, 2008
• The Two Sides of The Hyperconnectivity Coin - Jul 22, 2008

....and, given a chance, they'll box you in too!

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• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Cisco Webex Disconnect - Sep 26, 2008
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• Cisco Energy Tax No Joking Matter - Sep 04, 2008

Now Nortel has taken a significant step to broadly share its real-world IT experience in operating a global enterprise, using Nortel technology and services.

In addition to business cases and implementation guides, the 'Nortel on Nortel' site includes free downloads of software utilities used in-house by Nortel IT to better manage their network.

A couple of examples. By having one-third fewer data center rooms and 1800 fewer servers, Nortel avoided an estimated 15M kWh of energy valued at approximate $530K annually. Nortel realized over $12 million in annual savings with a 10-month return on investment through its implementation of unified communications (I have been using it for over 6 years and couldn't live without it).

Nortel CIO Steven Bandrowczak knows that, if the business case for using Nortel technology doesn't make sense for us, it will not make sense for our enterprise customers.

Related Entries
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• UC: Think Strategically and Deploy Tactically - Sep 02, 2008
• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008
• Two Golds, a Hat Trick and Now a Grand Slam - Aug 25, 2008

Something called Wireless Resonant Energy Link (WREL), a concept championed by MIT.

Intel Corp. recently demonstrated this technology at their Developer Forum. WREL can power various mobility devices without wires.

You still need batteries but you could leave your cables behind. Your handheld would get recharged when you are in a resonant energy hot spot. This could be as simple as putting your device on a table with an embedded transmit resonator.

It's all done through magnetic induction between an antenna (transmitter) operating at a specific frequency and a device tuned to that frequency. It's sort of similar to an opera singer hitting a note and shattering a glass. The demonstration actually lit a light bulb from a few feet away.

When might we see products? Some time after the next summer Olympics!

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• Two Golds, a Hat Trick and Now a Grand Slam - Aug 25, 2008
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"Last night I tried to attend the Cisco Collaboration Summit. Just to be clear, this was a Web conference run by one of the world's biggest conferencing vendor using their own in-house Webex conferencing service to announce enhancements to their UC and conference offerings. We had to pre-register so you would think that they could plan for it to go smoothly. Well, when I first tried to join I got a message saying "Close your browser" (what, all of my sessions?) "and restart in 1 min 23 secs" (...and counting). So I did and got server error messages several times which indicated that the servers were overloaded (or under-spec'd as we server guys say). After 30 minutes of retrying I finally got a screen saying 'webex.' and 'waiting for video.webexlivestream.com' but no video."

His closing message to me was "Don't bet your conferencing solution on these people".

My read is that Cisco's plan to use this 'platform to integrate UC into business applications', puts enterprises at risk and doesn't meet their primary needs.

CXO's tell us that, while there is a place for SaaS (and it better be reliable), communications-enabled applications must be deliverable on secure and reliable platforms they can deploy in their own data centers.

The Nortel SOA-based Agile Communication Environment enables communications enablement of business processes, is vendor agnostic and spans both enterprise and hosted environments.

Related Entries
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Cisco Energy Tax No Joking Matter - Sep 04, 2008
• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008
• WebSphere at 10 Gives Nortel ACE A Boost - Jul 17, 2008
• Cisco Energy Tax Collector Goes Home Empty-handed - Jul 08, 2008

Comments on this Entry:

(https://me.yahoo.com/a/s0MG6dphl.Rp36czgK5lMWWfBj4YC9.T#370a1 on Sep 26, 2008 10:40 PM) Tony - good post! I have experienced some rough edges with larger conferences on Webex as well and your friend's feedback also has been confirmed by others - one common thread is there is usually and international element of the poorer quality sessions.

(Svetlana Gladkova on Sep 27, 2008 7:29 AM) Hm, that's very interesting and really too bad to hear that. After all, WebEx is supposed to be one of the leaders in web conferencing and their event was largely advertised so they should have prepared for it better. Too bad it was like this.

So here we have Cisco spending your contributions (remember the Cisco Energy Tax) to acquire Jabber to give them IM for their un-unified UC story. Does this result in a 41st server to deliver UC?

UC has to unify both the end user experience AND the underlying infrastructure, and I don't see Jabber moving Cisco towards the latter objective.

Related Entries
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• EnergySmart Hospitals Don't Pay The Cisco Energy Tax - Sep 22, 2008
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• Opening Up Secure Network Access - Sep 10, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• UC: Think Strategically and Deploy Tactically - Sep 02, 2008

Comments on this Entry:

(Dan on Sep 25, 2008 4:52 PM) Like Microsoft doesn't use alot of servers for their "UC" solution? Cisco is a cakewalk compared to other products. TonyRyb responds: Server count is one dimension. Managing multiple systems is another. Both contribute to TCO.

(Another Nortel Watcher on Sep 25, 2008 11:15 PM) You think a Jabber acquisition is a bad move? Interesting. Explain to me Nortel's alternative for what Jabber delivers.

Part of that saving can be achieved by switching to Nortel healthcare solutions, which use 40% less energy, while delivering 7x the resilience of those from Cisco.

This is a win-win for energy conscious hospitals who also demand clinical-grade networks.

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• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• Opening Up Secure Network Access - Sep 10, 2008
• Save Twice on the Cisco Energy Tax - Aug 11, 2008
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• Cisco IT faced with $10M bill due to corporate procurement policy - Jun 26, 2008

What John failed to mention is that the primary network behind CERN is not based on core routers, as is done in the Internet at large and in conventional research and education networks. Networking researchers concluded that core routers just couldn't meet the latency demands for the huge files that needed to be shipped around and for the grid computing applications (i.e. packet segmentation was one major culprit).

Instead, the network is based on lightpaths, 10Gbps lambdas and SONET/SDH pipes, between computing facilities.

The network currently spans Europe and North America, and extends to Taipei and Mumbai.

The plan is to allow these lightpaths to be established dynamically by the applications themselves (a case of communications enabled applications).

Nortel has collaborated for many years with leading networking research institutions such as Northwestern University in Chicago (StarLight in the US, SURFnet in the Netherlands (including Netherlight), and CANARIE in Canada.

This type of out-of-box thinking is also behind Nortel's leadership in 40 and 100 Gbps optical systems and optical Ethernet networking, including technologies such as Provider Backbone Transport (PBT).

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So what should you do?

Well a couple of months ago, I set out to answer the question. I spoke to customers, listened to what analysts had to say, explored how Nortel IT was approaching the challenge and defined five high level calls to action.

I then captured the information in a white paper, aptly called "The Hyperconnected Enterprise- a CIO's Survival Guide".

Is the term 'survival' too strong. Frankly, it wasn't my first choice, preferring terms such as 'strategic imperatives'. But I went along with this suggestion, since the job expectancy of CIOs these days is based less on operational metrics (though still table stake) and more on delivering enhanced business value to the business, whether the business is a bank, a not-for-profit hospital or government agency.

There's more. Check out some video podcasts (I personally liked the animation-enhanced YouTube video) and an article by Joel Hackney, the President of Nortel Enterprise.

Related Entries
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
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• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008
• Two Golds, a Hat Trick and Now a Grand Slam - Aug 25, 2008

Watching these athletes is inspirational to say the least, but it can be tiring on the body, since your PC may not be where your couch is.

How about this ergonomically designed chair from which to watch wheel chair basketball? You could even shoot some stationary baskets!

Good to see the Paralympics is accessible to the Hyperconnected!

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Secure network access authenticates users wanting to access the network, performs endpoint health checks, and authorizes network and application access based on role-based policies.

Network access control tied to one vendor's switching platform has been used as part of a lock-in strategy by network vendors. In a hyperconnected world, the last thing you want is a 'closed' access control strategy.

We, at Nortel, are taking a very different 'open' approach, which has been recognized with a Gold Award from SecureNetworking.com.

Our approach, just released as Nortel SNA 2.0,
• provides a common architecture across environments (LAN, WLAN, VPN),
• supports Nortel and non-Nortel switches (including those from Cisco and HP),
• works across desktop platforms including Windows, Linux and MacOS, IP phones and printers,
• seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Network Access Protection on both the client and server sides, and
• adheres to the Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Connect specifications.

So enhance your security while opening up to multi-vendor solutions.

Almost forgot! Did I mention that independent testing has also found the energy consumption of the Nortel SNA 4050 is 63% less than that of the Cisco solution (Clean Access 3310 Manager and Server)? Why am I not surprised? The Cisco energy tax is pervasive.

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It is targeted at IT professionals and decision makers in organizations considering UC deployments. It focuses on how UC deployments must be designed from a business process perspective, rather than as driven from a technology perspective.

The information provided is generic and applies to whatever supplier you have or are considering

You can review the first three chapters on-line, including a Forward by Nora Freedman of IDC.

If you go down the UC certification path, you will tangibly show increased value as an IT professional.

Related Entries
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• UC: Think Strategically and Deploy Tactically - Sep 02, 2008
• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008
• Two Golds, a Hat Trick and Now a Grand Slam - Aug 25, 2008

Nicknamed the 'Nortel Piles' and 'Nortel Holes' commercials, these ads talk to the piles of money enterprises are wasting on the Cisco Energy Tax, and on the leakage of IT budget through the holes created by the Cisco Energy Tax.

They are clever and get the message across: You can save 40% on your energy bill by moving from Cisco to Nortel.

The commercials are not just clever marketing, but reflect the facts as verified by the Tolly Group.

In fact, enterprises around the world have collectively spent an estimated $6.1 billion more on energy expenses in the last five years than they needed to. And the environmental impacts are huge.

So how much are you paying? You can now work it out yourself.

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• Save Twice on the Cisco Energy Tax - Aug 11, 2008

Two ways of reading this.

One is that when viewed solely from the perspective of raising personal productivity, then, UC is no more strategic than unified messaging was.

The other is that CXOs have business problems to solve and technology alone is seldom the answer. A key challenge for CXOs is how to improve and/or innovate new business processes, which implicitly drives a closer alignment between IT investments and business objectives.

The notion that UC is communications integrated to optimize business processes, elevates UC to being a strategic opportunity: improving customer service, accelerating business process, enhancing collaboration across the virtual enterprises, even contributing to Green initiatives through travel reduction.

The survey said that although only 15% of companies have done a UC needs assessment, almost 50% are well on the path to selecting their vendor. Not the right balance.

UC decisions should be made with an eye to establishing a supplier partnership and UC foundation for communications enabling their business processes. Specifically, going with a vendor that promotes a network-centric vertically integrated approach may actually be a bottleneck for application innovation. Going with an open SOA environment does just the opposite and creates opportunities for application innovation

The mantra might be: think strategically and deploy tactically.

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• WebSphere at 10 Gives Nortel ACE A Boost - Jul 17, 2008
• 78% of Nortel Users: UC by 2010 - Jul 02, 2008
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008

This is not inconsequential for "Microsoft shops' looking for UC solutions.

Cisco has been telling enterprises to buy their UC now, and that interoperability with Exchange/OCS environments will come later.

The relationship between Cisco and Microsoft is already pretty precarious on the UC front with competing UC solutions. Given that Exchange is very tightly linked to Microsoft's UC strategy, the likelihood of any meaningful interoperability is increasingly doubtful.

Contrast that with the alliance between Nortel and Microsoft. The Nortel Converged Office for the Communications Server 1000 is the first and only fully qualified IP PBX for integration with Microsoft OCS 2007.

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• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Cisco Webex Disconnect - Sep 26, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• Cisco Energy Tax No Joking Matter - Sep 04, 2008

Just plug in your Nortel Secure Portable Office USB key into your Windows PC, and
...... your user identity is authenticated using Aladdin Knowledge Systems eToken strong authentication and password management,
...... a secure VPN connection is established,
...... your PC is virus scanned, and
...... you are presented with a menu of authorized network applications you can access.

No pre-installed software, no URLs to remember, and your corporate policy moves from paper to the field while incurring a very low TCO.

Check it out yourself and let Nortel Global Services do the rest.

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One ... and then two golds.

Then General Motors Place in Vancouver, the home of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team, decided to go with Nortel to deliver a UC experience to their fans.

That's a hat trick.

Now the New York Mets baseball club is loading up the bases in their new 42000-seat Citi Field stadium with Nortel technology , making it a technology showpiece.

That's a grand slam for Nortel and our customers.

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• Olympic Fever Hits Beijing - Aug 08, 2008
• Banking on the Olympics - Jul 30, 2008
• Leading the World: Towards a One Planet Olympics - Jul 31, 2008
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Wireless To Power Hyperconnectivity - Sep 29, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008

Do these cover all aspects of how work is done? I would suggest no.

Think about the last time you had an on-site team meeting with your virtual team. Surely you had a kick off by the team leader, maybe some workshops (typically split between presentation and dialog modes) and lots of side discussions (in the back of the room, in the hallway, over coffee).

Where did the value come from? Some from the kickoff and workshop presentations... lots from the workshop dialogs, coffee breaks and side discussions. And what about the value of bumping into someone with the critical knowledge you need?

Does UC address these capabilities? Only partially. For group discussions, UC unifies audio or video conferencing, but these turn to noise during coffee breaks! Side discussions can be done in a limited way via IMs- a poor substitute for having a rich verbal interaction with a peer.

So what's the answer?

Enterprise-grade virtual reality solutions that incorporate avatars tagged with employee directory information (name, photo, role), integrated with UC and other business-oriented collaboration tools, and with business processes. This environment supports presentation, group discussions and ad hoc side meeting, the latter two enhanced by 3D audio, which allows two or more people in close virtual proximity to have private side discussions... just like real life.

Is virtual reality a reality for business? It soon will be from Nortel. We just announced our development of web.alive (part of our CTO Innovation Program), and our acquisition of 3D audio expertise and technology from DiamondWare. Web.alive is a software application accessible from a standard browser. You invoke its capabilities when it makes sense to better get the job done.

I've used web.alive and it delivers on our vision for unified communications and beyond. Very neat, simple and effective.

Related Entries
• Contact Centers As Precursors of UC - Oct 10, 2008
• Nortel BCM: Big Presence in the SMB Market - Oct 08, 2008
• Nortel ACE is Hot- ACE Applications are Cool - Oct 06, 2008
• Un-unified Communications From Cisco - Oct 01, 2008
• Nortel Brings IT on - Oct 01, 2008
• Jabber Acquisition Highlights Cisco Shortfalls in UC - Sep 24, 2008
• Transforming Hyperconnectivity Challenges Into Opportunities - Sep 16, 2008
• UC: You Can Be Booked - Sep 08, 2008
• UC: Think Strategically and Deploy Tactically - Sep 02, 2008
• Cisco-Microsoft Meaningful UC Interop Increasingly Unlikely - Aug 29, 2008