Jon Arnold's Analyst 2.0 Blog

Cisco Plus Event, Toronto

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:40:00 +0000

It's very rare for me to have back-to-back local events, but that's what's happening this week. Yesterday I attended Cisco Plus Canada 2012 here in Toronto. As Canadian telecom events go, it's pretty big, and Cisco is one of the few vendors up here who could draw a crowd like this. It's an annual showcase of all things Cisco, primarily for IT buyers, and it sure looked like all-hands-on-deck for Cisco Canada - they were everywhere.

Lots of traffic and a healthy exhibitor space filled with key partners of all kinds. The big telcos were there - Bell, TELUS and Allstream - of course - along with a good mix of vendors, integrators and technology partners, such as Dimension Data, Exony, Flexity Solutions, CBCI Telecom and Esnatech. Adjacent to the show floor was an overwhelming mix of Cisco presentations, with in-depth sessions on every variation of collaboration imaginable. I sat in on several, and while the content was geared towards buyers, I found the quality high and the audiences pretty attendant.

The highlight for me was the TELUS demo bus outside. I've seen this before with both NSN and Ericsson - it's an impressive way to take your story on the road. What I liked most about the TELUS bus was the overall concept. This is really their Trojan Horse to win business from Bell on their home turf in Quebec. The bus is all done up in French and goes around Quebec to showcase all this cool technology. I think it's a great strategy, not just for getting business there, but also to evangelize collaboration. SMBs aren't generally the most tech-savvy, so instead of waiting for them to discover it, why not bring the technology to them? Good plan. Oh, and if you think this was also a clever ploy to divert attention from the event host, I'll keep them happy by noting that most of the gear on display inside the bus is Cisco (and Tandberg). Check out the photos below!

ShoreTel/Smart IP UC demo, Toronto

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:23:00 +0000

It's been a busy week, and am catching up on postings today. On Tuesday, I attended an event here in Toronto sponsored by Smart IP, one of Canada's leading systems integrators. They have a pretty strong focus on UC, and brought out a room full of customers and prospects to get an update from ShoreTel about their UC capabilities.

Many in attendance were telephony-only ShoreTel customers, and it was interesting to see how the value proposition is presented for them to move up to UC. ShoreTel's Dan Brown did most of the talking, and his presentation emphasized the familiar simplicity theme that runs through most of their messaging. I thought Dan did a great job breaking down the core elements of UC and reviewing the trends that are leading businesses to get beyond IP telephony. A key message was how well ShoreTel works across multiple vendors, and that resonates well with Avaya/Nortel customers who are looking for simpler, less costly options.

Dan's storyline was brought to life by a customer case study presented by Claude Vezina of BDO, a national accounting firm. Claude cited many exmaples of how "ridiculously simple" ShoreTel was to deploy, and he spoke well of the system's reliability in the 5 years they've had it, as well as the consultative nature of ShoreTel's support process. The strongest message for me from Claude was his assertion that "IP telephony is an application - accept it". I liked his tone about that, and it served as a wakeup call for customers with a telecom-centric mindset that UC is much more than VoIP.

Overall, the event was nicely done. To get people in a transformational mindset, things got started with an inspirational talk from Mike "Pinball" Clemons, a CFL/Argo legend - arguably the most famous athlete in Toronto. He's good - very good, and had the audience in the palm of his hand from the get-go. After the sessions, we enjoyed the Blue Jays/Rays game at the Rogers Center - no complaints.

Pinball Clemons getting the audience in the right frame of mind for UC - sweet!

Dan Brown talking about ShoreTel's UC capabilities

Jays/Rays game. Sorry folks, but are we in Toronto or Tampa Bay? Pretty hard to tell from the crowd, huh?

My UC Summit Takeaway - It's Only UC, But I Like It

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:30:00 +0000

You know how that song goes, right? Music is my passion, and it often provides an interesting frame of reference for the telecom space, and if you enjoy the way I connect these dots, then you should like my latest post on UC Strategies.

Last week, I attended the 4th UC Summit, and it was a solid event on all levels. I had a couple of posts about that during the summit - here and here, but haven't been able to reflect on the overall experience until now. In short, I see a lot of parallels between how the Rolling Stones created their own success, and the opportunity facing the channels now in the UC space. The Summit provided a lot of guidance about how they should do that, and I'm here to add some historical perspective from another field to show how it's possible to break the rules and still come out ahead.

If that piques your interest, then give my post a read - it's on the the UCStrategies portal now - and let me know if you want to get off or on my cloud.

Jon Arnold Joins Zpryme's Smart Grid Advisory Board

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:43:00 +0000

Some of my readers know that I wear a second hat in the smart grid arena, and have been active there for a few years. Aside from co-producing the successful Smart Grid Summit with TMC for two years and driving thought leadership for their Smart Grid Portal (which peaked at over 2 million monthly page views), I have been closely aligned with Austin-based Zpryme Research.

I've always been impressed with their work, and they have a thriving practice focused on smart grid and cleantech. In a prior life, I ran a niche market research consultancy for 15 years, and have been a practitioner of both qualitative and quantitative research for almost 30 years. Given my background and smart grid activities, it's not surprising for me to have a strong affinity with Zpryme. We've worked together on several projects, and around this time last year we published our first joint report, focused on the U.S. renewable energy market (it's still available for purchase!).

Today, Zpryme announced their Smart Grid Advisory Board, and I'm very pleased to be included in that group. Five others are on the board, including Andres Carvallo and Christine Hertzog, both of whom I've enjoyed working with in this space. Zpryme has a great niche and I anticipate getting busier with them as the year goes on and gas prices remain high!

If you're planning to attend ConnectivityWeek 2012 next week in Santa Clara, Zpryme will be one of the drivers of the Energy 2.0 track, and I've had a hand in that behind the scenes. I attended last year, as I see this being a great forum to bring the worlds of smart grid, IT and communications technology closer together. It really is a first rate event, and hopefully this board announcement will help raise Zpryme's profile there.

May 15 Webinar - Choosing the Right Phone System

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:30:00 +0000

Just a quick shout-out about a webinar I'll be participating in next week. It's hosted by Ziff Davis B2B, and is sponsored by RingCentral, one of the leading cloud-based voice providers. I've worked with them before, and am looking forward to the next one, where the focus will be on choosing the right business phone system.

As you may suspect, there will be a strong element in support of cloud-based telephony, which is a big trend now, especially for SMBs. The webinar will also be a good opportunity to get up to speed on how the value proposition around telephony is rapidly changing. I'll be speaking to these trends, and am working on my presentation ideas now.

I hope you'll join us - it's next Tuesday, May 15 at 1pm ET/10am PT. Just takes a minute to register, and here's the form along with the webinar abstract.

UC Summit - Day 2 Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:00:00 +0000

The day started with what I found to be the best presentation of the summit. UCStrategies Expert Phil Edholm gave a very balanced and insightful keynote on the business value of video. Phil is fairly new to the UCStrategies team, and he brings great expertise to a space that is transforming UC more than anything else. One key idea to define the video opportunity is to distinguish between three types of workers – Knowledge, Information and Service.

Phil gave great examples of each, and clarified how Knowledge workers derive the most benefit from collaborative video because they require the most engaging modes of communications to be effective. Going the other way, Phil talked about meeting tourists – employees who join meetings where attendance is optional. He showed how video will cut down on this activity considerably, and along the way provide a fast ROI by virtue of reducing the time lost by meeting tourists who could otherwise be doing their jobs.

There were other strong takeaways from Phil’s keynote, but hey, if I spent all morning writing them up here, you wouldn’t need to attend, and that doesn’t bode well for the long term survival of the summit.

Instead, I’ll move on to another interesting panel – the analyst roundtable, which I participated on. This session was led by Blair Pleasant, and joining us was Samantha Kane, Art Rosenberg and Steve Leaden. We each spoke briefly about specific trends, and my focus was on the post-PBX world, and how the channel could adapt for clients that are ready to move on from having a phone system. We covered a lot of ground in an hour, and the audience wasn’t lacking for good questions.

One of the better vendor keynotes came in the afternoon from Wayne Baines of Microsoft. He made a strong case for how well MSFT is leveraging its huge installed base around Lync and cloud based services. With 1 billion Office users, there’s a major market opportunity for them with UC, and even without mentioning Skype, Wayne painted a pretty promising picture for Microsoft’s prospects.

Finally, Jim Burton hosted a panel of consultants, and that generated some good dialog about how they could work more effectively with the channel to support them in UC. Together, these groups represented most of the people in the room, and it was a great forum for paying attendees to share ideas about how to make their business more successful.

All told, the summit fully met my expectations. I was happy to have a chance to speak, and based on comments later on, it sounds like our session was well received. It was a great chance to hear first hand about how UC is being deployed, and of course what the vendors are focusing on at present. I’m of the view the nobody really knows where the market is going, and nobody really owns it, and in my mind, these ideas were validated at the summit. At least I came away with a greater sense of confidence that my ongoing research is picking up the right vibes about the state of UC.

So, kudos to Jim Burton and his supporting cast for putting on a great show in such a relaxed setting. I think attendees got their money’s worth, and I’m pretty sure most will be back. I count myself in that circle, and if you want to share your thoughts on the event, the floor is now yours…

UC Summit 2012 - Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Tue, 08 May 2012 13:00:00 +0000

This is my first UC Summit and so far it's been great. Things started Sunday afternoon and we had a full day yesterday. There's a nice mix here of channel partners, UC vendors, IT consultants and a handful of analysts like me.

So far, the presentations have been two basic types - keynotes by vendors, and market analysis by UCStrategies Experts. The keynotes have been good, including some nice demos, especially from Cisco. It's fair to say the audience got more out of the market analysis sessions, which have covered a lot of ground already. Dave Michels and Marty Parker had a thought-provoking Show Me The Money session, where they drove home the message that disruption is coming to the channel in a big way. As Dave said, "it's been a tough millennium", and there's lots more disruption on the way. From there, Dave and Marty provided ideas for how the channel can adapt and reinvent themselves - or exit if they aren't prepared to go with the flow.

Blair Pleasant joined Marty and Dave for a great roundtable discussion of the UC vendor landscape, which provided a good counterpoint to the vendor keynotes. Also of note was Michael Finneran's colorful discussion about mobility, and the challenges around integrating it with UC.

Overall, the content has been very good, and the program is nicely paced. It's not overwhelming, and there's lot of opportunity for people to mingle, especially around the grounds, which are very zen-like. It's hard not to be relaxed here, and that makes it easy to chat with just about anyone you see.

I'll have another post tomorrow about Day 2, which is well underway as I write this post. Below are a few photos from Day 1, which are ok, but Dave Michels has a real camera, and you can check out his photo gallery here.

Marc Inderhees and Rich McLeod during their demo of how Cisco and Jabber works across multiple devices and modes.

Michael Finneran during a quiet moment of his mobility overview.

Marty Parker, Blair Pleasant and Dave Michels during the UC vendor landscape session.

Next Stop - UC Summit 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:45:00 +0000

I've had a nice run of being home, and just as the weather finally starts to get nice, I have a trip - go figure. On Sunday I'm going to La Jolla, CA for the first time, and am participating in my first UC Summit. This is the annual conference run by my colleagues at UCStrategies, and I'm really looking forward to UC Summit 2012.

If you follow me, you'll know I've been writing a series recently focused on helping the channel sell UC, and that's very much what the UC Summit is all about. The event has built a solid track record and the content is as good as it gets for the UC space.

I'll be speaking on the "Things You Need to Know" panel, which runs on Tuesday from 10-11, and otherwise I won't be hard to find. By all means, let me know if you want to meet - drop me an email or a tweet - I'll be tweeting regularly (@arnoldjon). Something tells me the wine will be very good there, and that's a good clue as to where I might be after the sessions, preferably outside in the warm California sun! Hey, I'm from Canada - can you blame me?

Using Video to Drive Growth

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:30:00 +0000

This is my second post for the current cycle focusing on the value of video for the CIO Collaboration Network. Last week's post examined how video can support innovation by better enabling collaboration, and now I'm going to look at another important business driver - growth.

I'll start from the basic premise that video has a lot of value on its own, and even more so when part of a UC platform. Video is collaborative by nature, but is even more so when integrated with the other modes found in most UC offerings. Of course, with webcams built into PCs now, plus the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, video is very much becoming an any time, any place tool.

This foundation may not be universal yet, but it's fast becoming the norm, and with that comes heightened expectations. End users expect more, simply because it works. IT expects more because video is becoming easier to deploy and support on the LAN. Most of all, though, management expects more because they see video's potential to make not just employees, but the organization as a whole more productive. When productivity goes up, growth should follow, so for management, video is more than just another mode for employees to communicate with each other.

Collaboration plays a key role here, and works on two levels. First is the idea that employees need to work together, among themselves to get things done. You don't need UC to collaborate for simple tasks, but it definitely brings value for more complex or longer-term projects. Within a UC solution, video is the real secret sauce when teams are decentralized and need to meet on a regular basis. This is amplified even further when the project has a strong visual element such as product design or an interactive process.

The second level of collaboration comes not from working among, but working between. First and foremost, there's an implicit degree of collaboration required between employees as end users and IT as enablers. When both work together, management is happy - IT is earning its keep and fulfilling the UC vision, and employees are working more effectively. Extending this further, employees also need to collaborate between themselves and external stakeholder groups - customers, suppliers and technology partners. Each requires a distinct collaborative effort, and all can benefit from video.

As such, IT has a lot at stake to make collaboration work, and I've already cited why video is now at the heart of this imperative. Let's tie this now to the main storyline of my post - driving growth. IT can certainly stay with the familiar and focus on metrics that show how video-based collaboration drives traditional growth - namely increased revenues and profits (via decreased costs). Nobody gets fired for meeting those objectives, and they're certainly achievable with today's UC deployments.

Fair enough, but we can think a little bigger too. Reducing costs is a great way for IT to shine, but it's really just table stakes. Increasingly, management views IT and communications as strategic differentiators, and true market leaders expect more. They need IT to be innovators; not just in getting more for less, but in leveraging their technology investment into competitive advantage.

One way to do that is to introduce new growth metrics that add value to the business and reflect the outcomes enabled by collaboration. For example, I believe that IT can build a strong case for a growth metric built around the concept of human capital. In today's post-industrial, knowledge-based economy, human capital is becoming the real asset of a business. Outside of traditional manufacturing operations, bricks and mortar assets have limited value now, and forward-thinking management teams know this.

Building on that premise, communications is the primary enabler for building human capital; employees can get mundane tasks done on their own, but the real work that drives the business forward can only come from teamwork, aka collaboration. People must communicate to work together, and UC provides the richest palette of tools for enterprises to support their employees.

When those dots are connected together, IT can bring some innovative thinking to the boardroom and show management how UC - and video in particular - can drive growth from the company's greatest asset, its employees. With the right metrics, IT should be able to define a baseline value of human capital for each employee, and as employees adopt collaborative tools like video, show how that value is growing. This isn't the place to define those metrics - I'm just trying to seed the idea that IT can raise their standing by showing how video-based collaboration can do more than just drive traditional growth drivers. Are you with me?

This post sponsored by the CIO Collaboration Network and Avaya.

Aculab Cloud – Executive Q&A

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Tue, 01 May 2012 12:41:00 +0000

Over the past few months, Aculab has been a sponsor here, and to support their recent cloud-based offering, I have produced a monthly post highlighting their progress. Aside from shining some light on Aculab, my broader intent was to show how the cloud is impacting vendors from all ends of the communications spectrum.

This is my final post in that series, and features an executive Q&A interview with Faye McClenahan, Aculab’s Head of Strategic Marketing. I felt it would good for readers to hear directly from Aculab about how they view the cloud, not just as an evolution for their offerings, but how it provides new value for their customers. I hope you enjoy our conversation, and by all means, your comments are welcome.

JA Let’s start with the most basic question – briefly explain Aculab Cloud, and tell us a bit about what’s behind your move in this direction?

FM If you are familiar with Cloud jargon, the best way to describe Aculab Cloud in the first instance is as a platform-as-as-service (PaaS). Our service is the availability of telephony resources (such as play, record, conferencing, live speaker detection, etc.) presenting the capability to deploy telephony applications that can make, receive and interact with calls, without having to purchase the telephony hardware or software typically required.

The application can remain premise-based, as can the data. Aculab Cloud is there to execute the telephony functions and to ensure the calls are handled as required, and that there are enough telephony resources to accommodate fluctuating call volumes. When the application isn’t in use – there is nothing to pay.

Whilst renowned for our hardware, Aculab has always been about telephony software. Over the years, that has seen us add a whole range of telephony resources to our portfolio. In addition, we have looked for alternative ways in which our technology could be used – from different card form factors, to software packaged for use on a host processor, to our latest venture whereby the resources are made available for use in the cloud.

JA The cloud trend seems almost de rigueur for vendors in the communications space now. Having such a strong legacy pedigree, what particular challenges did you face doing this, and conversely, what particular advantages does this confer on you compared to entries with little or no legacy history?

FM Some interesting challenges included the management of the Aculab Development team as a ‘customer’ of one of our more traditional telephony platforms – Prosody S. In addition, there is an element of restructuring required to offer a service rather than a product that you ship; however as mentioned previously, Aculab has always been about the telephony software – whether it is loaded onto cards, available to download onto a host processor, or through the cloud. We know telephony, we know how businesses want to use the telephony, the challenges they face and the resources they require in order to achieve the call flows desired – that’s what sets us apart.

JA Other companies in this space have cloud-based offerings; what is distinct about your architecture?

FM Greater flexibility and greater choice. In terms of your application, you are free to run it on a server on your own premises, your customer’s premises or indeed, you could choose to run it in the cloud (e.g., on Amazon or Rackspace). In addition, we allow you to select, according to region, which Aculab Cloud you wish to use to maximize QoS and to provide an additional redundancy measure.

JA Aculab talks about being a “true” cloud offering. To help our readers better understand how the cloud is a step forward in your business, how would you characterize that? Also, how is this different from a hosted or managed offering?

FM Simply put, cloud should equate to a significant reduction in the CAPEX required to run a telephony application as well as for the telephony resources needed to scale on-demand. These two factors combined, make the creation and deployment of telephony applications not only cheaper for small development houses, but it also reduces the costs for large providers who can handle fluctuating call volumes without having to purchase the capacity to handle the peaks.

Whether a service is hosted or cloud-based is probably of more interest to the hosted service provider than to the end ‘consumer’ of the service. To the end user, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell much difference (if any). However, for the solution provider, they will have some service limitations in pursuing a hosted strategy rather than a cloud one.

Offering a hosted service means that the solution provider will need to buy servers and telephony equipment, and have specialist staff programming, managing and supporting that equipment, power costs, the running costs of a data centre, etc. Those costs will undoubtedly need to be passed onto/shared with the end user.

In addition, it won’t be as flexible or scalable. To offer a hosted service again means you have made an upfront investment into a set number of servers (and therefore capacity). This may result in either underutilised resources or having to turn away business because the capacity is not available. The knock-on effect on customers is that the capacity may not be available when they need it, or they will have to book capacity in advance or they will simply have limitations placed on them as to how many concurrent calls can be made. With Cloud based-deployments, there are no such issues.

JA For your core served market, what are you finding to be the real value drivers and advantages? Is this different from what you expected prior to launching?

FM Speed of development has been a big advantage – Aculab Cloud supports high-level programming languages (Python and .NET). That, coupled with the corresponding telephony APIs, has enabled developers with limited telephony expertise to write applications that meet their business requirements in a matter of weeks. We always spoke in terms of users being able to reduce development time by orders of magnitude and to see real-world evidence of that is gratifying.

JA From the customer’s perspective, what are they gaining over legacy, and how quickly are the benefits being realized? Conversely, are they making any notable compromises with the cloud?

FM To summarize, the main benefits include scalability of telephony resources (so they don’t have to provision for peaks), quick development times (no specialist telephony or low-level programming language expertise required), cost savings (pay for what they need, when they need it - OPEX not CAPEX). Furthermore, customers can capitalise on these benefits pretty much from day one – cloud telephony is all about making it inexpensive and quick to develop and deploy.

The only drawbacks I can see concern the limitations of high-level programming languages, by nature they restrict capability in comparison to the use of low-level languages such as C, but complete control comes at a price – complexity, lots of code and the need for expertise. The other compromise relates to ownership, not having anything physical to ‘sell’. But personally I think this is a cloud with a silver lining (excuse the pun) – as with ownership comes responsibility and undoubtedly costs.

JA Serving existing customers is one thing, but what about growth opportunities? Where does the cloud take you in terms of new applications to extend your customer’s capabilities? How about new areas – either in terms of gaining new customers or entering markets you could not serve previously?

FM For a long time, telephony has been somewhat restricted to the realm of C programmers and telephony experts. In turn, telephony applications have been very complex and taken many months to write. With Aculab Cloud, we took the opportunity to provide higher-level programming languages, wrapping a number of tasks into simple call functions. Not just to speed up the development time of existing customers, but also to allow a wider range of developers to add telephony to their toolkit. That step means a new market, encompassing, for example, vendors of broader-based business applications, rather than just telephony applications – the realm of existing customers – has opened up. The idea of telephony being inclusive to business processes through integration, similar to the concept of unified communications, is attractive on a wide market sense.

JA You’ve been doing a number of things to educate the market about the cloud and its value proposition. In what regards have you been successful so far, and where do you see the biggest knowledge gaps or misconceptions?

FM The biggest misconception for me is the idea that buying your own telephony equipment will be cheaper in the long run than a pay-as-you-go service. Consider the comparison between renting and buying a car. The argument goes that for short-term use, a car rental is cost-effective, because you only pay for what you consume. The clincher seems to be the statement that if you drive frequently and/or for longer, owning a vehicle makes better financial sense. Does it, indeed?

To buy the analogous car, you first need a deposit, typically thirty percent of the purchase price, which is a non-trivial investment, assuming you don’t have to borrow the cash in the first place, in which case the proposition becomes even less attractive. To retain ownership of the car, you are then committed to paying the balance of the price of the vehicle, in monthly instalments, over an extended period of time, not atypically several years.

During that hire purchase contract term, you are also likely to take up a maintenance or service package, which may or may not include provision for consumables e.g., tyres, and you may even extend the warranty for an extra monthly cost. All that sounds like pay-as-you-go masquerading as CAPEX, does it not.

At the end of the term, you own a car. However, the car is worth far less than you paid for it and probably no longer ideal for the task for which it was first procured. So you buy a new car and if you’re lucky, the residual value will suffice for the deposit on the new one. It’s exactly the same when it comes to telephony deployment choices – when looking at costs, you have to consider the true OPEX for the equipment/service you have purchased.

JA Voice is at the core what you do, and the cloud does hold promise for exciting innovation. As your cloud offering matures, where do you envision the breakthroughs that will take voice in new directions?

FM Voice is often portrayed as inferior, the poor relation, if you will, to other modes of communication – outdated perhaps. Certainly, we have all become accustomed to and embraced SMS, IM, chat, even social media channels as an alternative, in some ways preferred, method of communicating. But even with all these new forms of communication, there is no escaping the pre-eminent position voice enjoys when wishing to fully and properly convey meaning or to understand a nuanced message. VoIP and Skype were breakthroughs as was virtualisation, which led to cloud, but in terms of voice, the common element is people talking to each other, which is unlikely to change. We may use voice less, for some of the more mundane activities and where it’s socially acceptable to use other means, but ultimately, people will always want/need to talk. Future breakthroughs are likely to be in the realms of user devices and transport, with, perhaps, revolutionary set up times and call quality issues coming to the fore after years of suffering from poor quality cell-phone calls.

JA What about the bigger picture; namely your vision for Aculab’s cloud roadmap? How much are you focusing on making the development of today’s applications faster and cheaper, as opposed to being more transformational, and pushing into new areas that legacy solutions simply cannot address?

FM We have already pushed into new areas by providing high-level APIs – it has allowed a whole new generation of developers to add telephony to their tool kits. Making it easier for people to add telephony or use telephony to aid their business work flows will always be an objective. Easier means faster and faster means cheaper, and, in terms of ROI, the result is wholly satisfactory for the developer.

Reducing the cost of utilising telephony is also a key focus, where we understand that our volume customers are under price pressure from their competitors, which filters all the way through to the demands of their users and/or subscribers. At present, we are focusing on a number of typically expensive and resource hungry technologies, such as TTS, ASR and Fax. When you place these in a cloud context, where resources can be pooled, shared and utilised on demand, suddenly technology that may have been limited to large corporations becomes accessible – both viable and affordable – to SMBs.

The End User Experience - What Else Really Matters for UC?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:49:00 +0000

This is the fnal post in my series to support the UCSummit 2012, which starts next Sunday in La Jolla, CA. Am really looking forward to that - it will be my first UCSummit, and I've never been to La Jolla, but I'm told it's really nice.

If you've been following this series, you'll know it's focused on the channel and helping them bring UC to market. UC is a different world than traditional phone systems, and there's a lot of learning needed on both sides of the business equation - buyers and sellers. I'm of the view that the end user experience is the real value driver for UC, and if channels don't buy into that, they're going to have a tough time transitioning in this market.

Enough said - my post is running now on the portal, and as always, your comments are welcome.

Podcast - UC, the channel and the cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:37:00 +0000

This week's UCStrategies podcast addressed some big issues that any VAR or system integrator faces with UC - what to do about the cloud? The topic was put together by Steve Leaden, and he did a great job facilitating the discussion with several other UCS colleagues. A number have hands-on experience working with channels, and it was a good validation about how big these changes are, and how quickly they are coming. I added some thoughts at the end, mainly around the opportunity the cloud presents for channels to pursue new markets and customers.

Most of the conversation to that point was around managing existing customers, but that only addresses the defensive nature of what the cloud represents. I think net revenues with these customers will shrink with the cloud, and for that reason I wanted to emphasize how they can leverage the cloud to find new business. Regular readers of my blog will know the storyline I've been advocating for some time around Apple and how the iPad can be their Trojan Horse into the business market. I think there's a business just waiting to happen around an Apple UC ecosystem, and I'm sure many channel players are thinking the same thing.

Enough banter - the podcast is up on the UCStrategies portal now, along with a transcript. Give it a listen - and/or a read - and drop us a line to share your thoughts - we'd love to hear from you.

How Video Drives Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:00:00 +0000

This post kicks off my current cycle for the CIO Collaboration Network, where the focus is on video. I've been writing about video a fair bit lately, and for this series, it will be in the context of business value and collaboration. To start off, this post ties these ideas to innovation, a magical characteristic that defines all successful companies.

Innovation is a subjective, loaded term – just like collaboration. For both, we know it when we see it, but each is difficult to clearly define. Both are also positive forces and highly valued by business on their own merits. However, the two are highly intertwined and can be enabled by a common technology – video.

There are certainly several aspects of collaboration that can be easily measured, especially around streamlining operations and business processes. These are the attributes that define ROI and support the business case that IT needs to sell upwards to management. Conversely, by the way, there could be a top-down mandate where management deems that collaboration is the new imperative. In this scenario, management may also define the collaboration metrics, and then it becomes IT’s job to meet them – or risk losing budget and staff.

Collaboration, of course, means many things, and things get interesting when you want this to drive innovation. Most businesses would hold that innovation is the product of teamwork and from that, collaboration is the process by which new ideas get put into action and commercialized to help grow the business.

So, where does video fit in? Let’s work backwards from the desired result first. The end product is innovation, which can be both inward and outward-facing. Internal innovation is about finding new or better ways for the organization to perform, reduce costs or increase revenues. There are predictable efficiencies that come from applications such as UC which can drive these results, but that’s not true innovation. Working smarter is great, but innovation is about breakthroughs and thinking outside conventional rules. In that regard, innovation usually comes from unexpected sources, and that’s what makes collaboration so powerful.

The same holds for outward-facing innovation, which takes the form of new products/services, or better ways of dealing with customers, suppliers and partners. I could go on at length about how this can happen, but not in this post. My main idea here is that both inward and outward-facing innovation depends on collaboration, and now it’s time to bring video into the picture.

Measuring the costs and the benefits of innovation is difficult, and if organizations become too dogmatic about this, they’re more likely to stifle innovation rather than nurture it. The musician in me understands the creative process, and the best results always come from an environment that supports the free flow of ideas. For companies that want great innovation, they need to support it with a fine balance of fiscal accountability and openness. Technology plays a key role, but ultimately you need the right culture.

Innovation isn’t in a box that sits on a shelf in the lab; it’s in all of us, and can be drawn out when properly supported. In short, the more we can collaborate – and the more easily we can collaborate – the more likely those conditions will exist to generate innovative ideas. Video has a central role to play given the decentralized nature of work today. Sitting at your cubicle all day is no longer the norm, and with the globalization of business, teamwork almost always has a virtual element. This trend is only going to continue, and it is becoming the exception rather than the rule for teams to work on projects face-to-face from start to finish.

By now it shouldn’t be too hard to connect the dots to see the value of video to support collaboration in an atomized workplace. Whether working from home, auto, airport, hotel, client or branch office, video – especially as part of UC – is the great enabler for collaboration. This actually holds true on two levels. First is technology – today’s video experience is powerful, intuitive, economical and nearly ubiquitous. Video is the most engaging communications mode, making it ideal for collaboration. For collaboration to drive innovation, the process must involve the senses. Great ideas don’t come from talking on the phone or swapping emails. You need richer communication – talking, seeing, watching, showing, listening, reading, sharing, etc. – and today’s video delivers that.

Second is generational. For many businesses, innovation is about using technology to make their products/services better or finding better ways of bringing them to market. Increasingly, this is becoming the domain of Millennials – workers who have grown up their whole lives with the Internet. Not only do they have a highly attuned understanding of technology, but they’re also very comfortable with video as a means of communicating. This is no small consideration, given that a key holdback for video adoption has been the low comfort level many people have for using it.

As such, the business value of video becomes quite strong when the people who are most comfortable using it are also the most at home with the technology upon which innovation will largely be based. This demographic is also accustomed to the virtual organization and the need to collaborate with disparate team members.

Coming back to the idea that innovation lies within all of us, it stands to reason that the easier it is to collaborate, the better able to business will be to draw ideas and inspiration from as broad a pool as possible. Innovation is just as likely to come from a happy accident as from a structured process, and if that’s the end result, why limit yourself? Putting a price tag on this seems futile, and given the affordable options with video today, there really is no excuse for businesses to let that get in the way of collaboration to drive innovation that creates competitive differentiation.

This post sponsored by the CIO Collaboration Network and Avaya.

Can you monetize video? Should you?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:14:00 +0000

These are the pressing question I'm asking of the channel in my last post for UCStrategies. This is a series I'm writing in support of the upcoming UC Summit 2012, which I'll be attending May 6-9 in La Jolla, CA. Can't wait!

I have no doubt that video is a driving force for UC, but I'm not sure the channel can really monetize it. However, by effectively supporting/enabling video, the channel can position themselves for bigger things with a full-featured UC solutions. That's what I have in mind for my post, and it's running now on the UCStrategies portal. As always, comments are welcome.

State of the Cloud - Snapshot Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 14:09:00 +0000

Independent analysts and consultants are hard to come by here in Canada, but long-time colleague Henry Dortmans is one of the best. He's from the technology consulting world, and has a deep reach into both the end user/IT community as well as the consultants and vendors on the solutions side.

Like me, he's got an endless curiousity about the bigger picture, and occasionally puts together a survey to take the temperature of the market on current trends. He just did one on the cloud, and I wanted to share the key takeaways with you here.

The survey audience was a mix of IT consultants, vendors and end users (mostly end users). He polled about 400 in total, and got a very respectable 25% response rate, so there's a credible basis for the findings.

He asked 3 simple questions:

1. Has the industry done a good job explaining cloud?
2. How difficult do you think it will be to implement cloud services in the coming year?
3. Is this an area where you think independent advice can help buyers?

Question 1 - explaining the cloud...

For this one, consultants and end users felt roughly the same - about half for each said NO. Suppliers feel a bit differently - only 25% said NO, and the rest said either YES or PARTLY. It's not a huge sample, but interesting to note that the vendors see this as less of problem than everyone else. Depending how you see things, perhaps this may be part of the problem - ?

Question 2 - difficulty implementing cloud

End users were definitely more apprehensive than either consultants or vendors - 45% said the difficultly level would be HIGH. For the other two communities, only 15% felt that way - and 25% of vendors felt it would be LOW. Again, there seems to be a disconnect between buyers and sellers, but we've heard that before.

Question 3 - can independent advice help buyers?

You'd think this would be a no-brainer, but hey, that's why we do research! Well, consultants sure thought this would be a great idea - 90% said YES - no surprise, right? Vendors were onside, just not as strongly - 60% said YES. However, the buyers - for whom this question was targeted - were the least supportive - only 30% said YES, and 60% said MAYBE. I was hoping the comments from respondents would explain their logic, but there weren't too many clues.

Sure makes you wonder, though. The sample isn't big enough to be conclusive, but it's too small to ignore, so I do think there's some credence to the basic findings. Regarding what buyers are saying, I'm thinking they're not sold on the idea of independent advice simply because they don't trust it. If so, there's a basic credibility issue that the consultants and vendors will have to overcome, especially since the cloud is so touchy-feely. For buyers used to dealing in hardware and physical network equipment, the cloud is all in their head - it's just so ethereal.

Another factor, of course, is the cost-benefit analysis. That independent advice won't be free, and cloud economics doesn't have much of a track record in our space. So, it's not hard to see how this added cost just might wipe out any ROI or TCO advantage that cloud could bring.

To wrap up, I've passed on most of the data highlights, but Henry's summary includes respondent comments for each community. The market researcher in me finds these the most interesting parts of the study, and if this is catching your interest, you'll feel the same. Henry will be happy to share this, so just drop him a line - dortmans@henrydortmans.com - and tell him I sent ya.

Are your clients ready for video? Are you?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:15:00 +0000

I've been on a video theme lately when writing about UC, and this one is my latest post for the series I'm doing on the channel for UCStrategies. Video poses all kinds of questions for businesses, and for VARs and integrators that are ahead of the curve, this is a great opportunity to add value.

My post is running now on the UCS portal, and once there, you're find lots of other fresh content focused on the channel. This effort is part of the lead-up to the 2012 UC Summit, being held a few weeks from now in La Jolla, CA. If you can imagine all the brainpower associated with UCStrategies in one place, that's what the summit is about, and you won't find a better place to immerse yourself in the UC of Things. It's invitation-only, but there's still time to be involved.

Ready, Willing and Able - Keeping Up as UC Evolves

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:23:00 +0000

This is my latest UCStrategies post in a series focused on helping the channel sell UC. To sell UC, they need to know where the market is going, and how best to support the client. Easier said than done, especially if your forte is legacy voice. Things are changing quickly with UC, and if you don't keep pace, it's hard to add value and earn your client's business.

My post looks at three ways to keep the value proposition strong with clients, and you can read it here now. The series continues next week.

Adding Value - Don't Become Sanford and Son!

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:41:00 +0000

Just a quick shout-out for my latest post on the UCStrategies portal. This is part of a series I'm doing now that focuses on the channel and the challenges they face getting their clients to deploy unified communications.

Am sure you're wondering about the title of this post, so you'll just have to read it to find out. Let's just say that the "post-PBX" world will give rise to all kinds of new opportunities - some more glamorous than others.

How you can add value in a "post-PBX" world

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:32:00 +0000

The term "post-PBX" world carries a lot of weight these days, and it's right up there with the "post-PC" world that Apple is leading us into. Change can be disruptive, and in the communications space, the thought of leaving the PBX behind is about as good/bad as it gets.

This topic has been on my mind for a while, and I just posted some thoughts about what this means for the channels who are trying to sell UC. Definitely a lot of challenges there, but I see a pretty exciting opportunity, and for that, you need to hop over to the UCStrategies site, where my latest contribution is running now. Go!

Mobility and UC – the Power of Any Place, Any Time

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:14:00 +0000

If you've been following me closely, you'll know I've got some new writing gigs going. One of these is for the CIO Collaboration Network, which just got started. I'm writing two posts a month for them, with the first couple done now - here and here - along with one post that runs exclusively on their portal.

So, I'm posting here for two reasons. First is to let you know that my first post is running now on the portal, and second is to steer you there to become familiar with the community they're building now. It's pretty good, and colleague Dave Michels is the Community Manager, so we're in good company.

If you're not there yet, my post is about the value that UC brings to making mobility a rich enabler for collaboration. That's a lot of ideas is one space, so give my post a read to see how I pull them together.

What's an End-User Experience Anyway?

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:10:00 +0000

This is one of my favorite topics, and it's a theme I'm exploring lately in a series of posts for the UCStrategies portal. I think the end-user experience - EUE - means different things to different people - just like UC, and that's where I see a lot of challenges. I also think delivering a good EUE is much harder to do than it looks, and I see this as an area that might not get enough attention when deploying UC.

Enough - that's the hook. For the rest, you're invited to read my post, and from there my previous post that launched this series. The current post is running now on the UCStrategies portal, and here's the link. Enjoy!

The Business Value of Mobility for Collaboration

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:58:00 +0000

I’m continuing the mobility theme here for my series of posts to support the CIO Collaboration Network. My last post served as an introduction to my role in this program, and to explain that while Avaya is the sponsor, I won’t be writing about them, or any other vendor for that matter. These posts are just thought leadership about trends I’m seeing in the collaboration space.

This month my focus is on mobility, and each post looks at a specific aspect of that topic. Last week’s post addressed some issues around the impact of consumerization, and now I’m going to shift over to the business value of mobility.

In terms of improving our ability to collaborate, the business value that mobility brings should be obvious. Fair enough, but let’s look beyond that, since business value can mean many things. The financial impact is the logical starting point, but this is actually a bit complicated. In most businesses, the financial challenge around mobility is managing costs. Unlike fixed telephony, where IP is bringing costs down, mobility costs can easily spiral out of control, especially for global travelers.

Of course, with smartphones and tablets, mobility costs have two main components – voice and data. Until 4G and LTE become the norm, telephony costs will remain high with mobility, and we just have to accept that as a fact of business life. Data costs are driven by bandwidth consumption rather than minutes and connectivity, and deliver a wider range of collaboration capabilities. Enterprises have more leverage here to negotiate volume deals with carriers, and for the most part, bandwidth costs are coming down. As such, the cost of supporting mobility is not that straightforward to calculate, let alone manage.

To get a more complete picture, you also need to factor in various other costs to support mobility as well as extend PBX-based features/functions to those devices. I’m thinking here about network-related costs to address things like FMC integration, data backup, storage, security, privacy, bandwidth prioritization, etc. Conversely, the associated costs here can be offset by BYOD, whereby employees are bearing the cost to acquire these devices. This will likely become a fluid area, as enterprises evolve policies around the cost and ownership of smartphones and tablets. There is much more to consider here, but this will suffice for purposes of my post.

Cost is one side of the business value equation, and however you define what’s being spent on mobility, the “value” is all relative to the benefits that accrue in return. I would need many posts to explore all the benefits that mobility brings to collaboration, and for now, I’ll just cite a couple to illustrate the scope of what’s possible. First would be the immediate benefits, and then there are the longer-term results to consider.

The initial benefits are more evident for smaller scale forms of collaboration, either for 1-to-1 situations or addressing imminent needs. In these cases, voice-based collaboration will usually get the job done, and the business value of mobility comes from basic things like higher availability, accessibility and responsiveness. The underlying benefit comes from the fact that employees are increasingly not tethered to their desks, and mobility allows them to be equally productive away from the office.

I view the longer term benefits as having far greater business value to enterprises. By longer term, I mean the normalization of mobility as a productive work mode. Collaboration aside, mobility has many other benefits for the enterprise, especially for remote or even outsourced employees. In this broader context, the key to collaboration is the ability to replicate all the desktop tools using a mobile device.

We’re not there yet, but as operators upgrade to 4G and LTE, and as mobile applications mature, employees will go well beyond voice to collaborate. Full-featured, multimodal UC will soon become mobile-ready, and help make full use of what smartphones and tablets can offer in a business environment. That’s a much richer form of business value than voice alone, and no matter how you measure it, the price will be worth it.

This post sponsored by the CIO Collaboration Network and Avaya.

Ontario IT Buyers Forum - Toronto and Ottawa - Up, Up and Away

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:08:00 +0000

Earlier this week I posted about a mini road show I was about to go on, with events in Toronto and Ottawa. Well, am back now, and I'd say it was pretty successful all around. This was the 2012 IT Buyers Forum, sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, with some help from the Export Development Corporation and Invest Ottawa.

It's a good example of a government program designed to support local tech companies and bring international buyers to their doorstep. So, in both cities, there was a group of representatives from five countries - China, Japan, Mexico, Brazil and Turkey. The speakers were from various operators, private companies and industry groups, and all told, we got a solid overview of what's happening in those markets in terms of carrier deployments, tech adoption and the growing role of IT.

On the local side, there was a wide range of Ontario-based vendors who would love to do business in these markets, and we had a good mix of small companies and more established players who are already selling internationally.

My role in all this was to set the table and provide an overview of key trends I'm seeing in telecom and IT, and from all the feedback so far, my commentary was well received. I certainly made my share of new contacts with both local tech companies and the international contingent, so I have some promising follow ups to make now. I also have some intriguing overseas opportunities now that need exploration, so who knows where that could go? All in a day's work.

Waving the Canadian flag, I'll just leave you with this thought. We need programs like this to help companies grow, especially globally. Most of the companies here were pretty small, but seem to have good technology. This is pretty typical, especially for Canadian companies, and there's a host of reasons why most stay small, despite bigger aspirations.

After a lot of hallway and table-talk, there's no doubt these companies aspire to be on a big stage, but there's a cautionary tale here. Canada hasn't had much success creating Tier 1 world beaters in the tech/telecom space. We had Nortel for a while, and it wouldn't be impossible for RIM could slip away. That's not the plan, but they have a pretty big hole to dig out from.

Anyhow, the Ontario government is doing the right thing here, and am glad they're not overselling the future. It must be hard for small companies to set a realistic growth goal - we just can't seem to create really big ones here. Of course, the Ottawa event was right in the shadow of Mitel's offices, and in my books, they'd be the biggest fish in our pond if RIM were to fall. I really like Mitel, and maybe that's about as big we as we can make them these days. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and for now let's just focus on getting some deals done with the participants who came from so away. At least we gave them some balmy weather, and that just might fool them into thinking it's like that all year round.

Well, probably not, but as per the title of this post, up, up and away is still the vibe I got from the experience. So, kudos to the hosts, and I hope the international visitors came away with some great relationships that will help put some of our homegrown companies on a bigger map.

Coda - this was a private event, so I couldn't take photos of the sessions. Instead, I have another take on the up, up and away theme that came from an unusual confluence of events that took place over the past couple of day. Hope you like it...

8am, Tuesday - looking up AT the CN Tower from the 35th floor, shrouded in the Toronto morning fog

7pm, Tuesday - looking down FROM the top of the CN Tower, the highest observation point you can get to in North America. It's not a skyscraper, but tops out at 1,815', well ahead of the Willis Tower (nee Sears Tower) in Chicago, at 1,450'. Both will be surpassed by the new World Trade Center in NYC, but for now, Toronto is tops.

4pm, Wednesday - I'm not done yet going up. Now I'm flying to Ottawa for part 2 of the trip. Not sure of my elevation here, but am definitely higher up than the CN Tower. Really tried to get a shot from here looking down on the CN Tower, but couldn't get the right view - dang.

Collaboration, mobility and a whole lot more - posting for the CIO Collaboration Network

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:42:00 +0000

I’m pleased to be joining this community, which appropriately is focused on the power of collaboration. This has become a powerful word in the communications lexicon lately, and on a basic level, my writing here is part of a broader collaborative effort to provide some objective thought leadership around the topic.

This is my first post in support of the CIO Collaboration Network initiative sponsored by Avaya, and some housekeeping is in order. First off, you won’t see me talking much here about Avaya or their specific offerings. For that matter, I won’t be citing other vendors in the collaboration space either. I’m here to talk about the trends I see that pertain to collaboration; some enrich or enable collaboration, while other trends benefit the other way by virtue of association.

Second, this is not new for me, and is totally in my comfort zone. For those who follow me, you’ll know I post in other places under similar conditions with sponsors. I’ve been doing this long enough, and know how to keep my analysis objective, and vendor-neutral. Finally, for this particular initiative, most of my posts will be here on my blog, but I’ll also be submitting posts that will run solely on the CIO Collaboration Network. The setting doesn’t matter, though, and my analysis will always be independent.

I should add that I'm in good company here, as colleagues Dave Michels and Art Rosenberg will both be regular contributors. Furthermore, Dave serves as the Community Manager here, so along with his posts, he'll be vetting my writing to make sure it's on-target for this audience.

With that out of the way, I’m going to start with the big topic of mobility, which will be explored over the next few posts. For collaboration to be truly effective, the tools need to be accessible where the people are. Up until recently, that wasn’t much of a problem in the workplace since most employees were desk-bound. When you needed to reach someone, a call to their desk phone would do the job, and failing that, an email would get them engaged to work with you.

Mobility has completely changed the dynamics of where we work, and after adding broadband to that, everything else changes, namely how we work and when we work. Not only are employees spending less time at their desks, but they’re spending less time in the office, and increasingly working from remote locations. Without mobile broadband, these trends would not be welcome developments for businesses.

The value of collaboration continues to increase, and never before has the need to share knowledge and expertise been greater. With globalization, business becomes more complex and we live in a world of specialization. Knowledge generalists remain valuable, but very few people have enough broad expertise to help a business grow on their own. This is where collaboration becomes a strategic differentiator, as businesses can perform at a higher level by pooling the expertise of specialists to work on tasks with a common goal.

In that context, mobility is a key driver for collaboration, since specialized knowledge or expertise will not readily be found at a workstation. Not only does mobility allow you to find people when you need them - wherever they are - but it also helps the collaboration process move faster. This is another key factor as the speed of doing business keeps accelerating, and by extension, agility becomes a source of competitive advantage.

So, how should enterprises leverage mobility to collaborate more effectively? I’ll explore this over the next few posts, but let’s start in an unexpected place – our home life. As much as mobility is becoming a lifeline at work, its impact is even greater for personal use, especially among Millennials. The “consumerization of IT” is very real, and employees are increasingly asking IT why they cannot deploy the applications they use back at home here in the office. This is particularly true with mobility, which is where most of the energy from application developers is focused.

The explosion of applications for smartphones and tablets has given consumers many options for collaborating on a personal or social level. These needs may not be as complex as the workplace, but that’s beside the point. Consumer-friendly mobile applications are easy to access and easy to use, and as a matter of course, we’re collaborating without really thinking about it. This may be a user-defined form of collaboration, but the process is no different than in the workplace. In these settings, people are sharing content, using multimodal communication, and reaching consensus around a common goal.

This sure sounds like workplace collaboration to me, and the good news is that consumer-based collaboration helps get people familiar and comfortable with using these tools in the office. I think of this as an unintended consequence, and it’s certainly a benefit so long as IT can make workplace collaboration as easy to do as at home. Not only does this help employees collaborate in the office, but when adding mobility to the equation, they can do this anyplace, anytime. In that regard, mobility and consumerization have an additive effect to collaboration that’s pretty hard to beat, and if IT isn’t thinking along these lines, they should be.

This post sponsored by the CIO Collaboration Network and Avaya

New post series - helping channels sell UC

noreply@blogger.com (Jon Arnold) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:06:00 +0000

Am on a good run right now, writing in a variety of places, and got a couple others coming you haven't seen yet. This is a shout-out about a series we just got going today on the UCStrategies portal, something my regular readers will know about.

In addition to my regular contributions there, I'm writing a series of posts over the next few weeks about channel-related issues/challenges for selling UC. Perhaps "selling" is too strong of a word, but ultimately that's their business, and it's clear that UC is not a simple sale.

To provide some clarity on this, I'm posting my thoughts in this series. The first post is running now, and asks the fundamental question around selling UC - "what business are you really in?". If you're dying to find - and of course you are! - click here, read away, and share your thoughts.