In the current economic climate, business cases rule. Whether your enterprise is early in its migration to IP Telephony or , further along and evaluating how to deploy Unified Communications, it's not easy to build a credible case. IP Telephony and, in particular, Unified Communications, are complex and involve numerous technologies, decision-makers and equipment, software and service providers. This Deep Dive session will share business cases for both IP Telephony and Unified Communications, based on IP Telephony cost data gathered over the past several years from more than 800 companies that have implemented the technology. It will draw on real-world data from hundreds of IT decision makers on the newer Unified Communications products and technologies.
KEY QUESTIONS:
• What are the key metrics in a business case for IP Telephony and Unified Communications?
• What does it really cost to implement IP Telephony? What are the cost components of a Unified Communications business case?
• What resources (internal and external) companies must devote to their VOIP and Unified Communications rollouts, per end-unit, per year segmented by rollout size and vendor?
• What are some of the key pitfalls? Where did companies go wrong?
• What are some compelling business case models for both IP Telephony and Unified Communications?
Speaker - Robin Gareiss, Executive Vice President & Sr. Founding Partner, Nemertes Research
Robin Gareiss is Executive Vice President and Senior Founding Partner for Nemertes Research, where she oversees research product development, conducts primary research, develops cost models, and advises leading enterprises, vendors, and carriers. She serves as chief financial officer, as well.
For the past 20 years, Robin has advised and worked with hundreds of senior IT executives, ranging in size from Fortune 100 to Fortune 2000, analyzing their use of technology and capturing best practices. She also has developed industry-leading, interactive cost models for some of the world's largest enterprises and vendors.
Robin is a widely recognized expert in Voice over IP, convergence, collaboration, advanced communications services, mobility, services, and branch-office technologies. She is a sought-after speaker at conferences and trade shows, presenting at IT Roadmap, VoiceCon, Citrix Synergy, AT&T Technical Leader Forums, Interop, Mobile Business Expo, Supercomm, Telecom, and CeBit. She also writes the IT Transformation column for No Jitter, and the Borderless Networks blog for Network World.
Robin also has personal experience managing operations and developing new product offerings. Her entrepreneurial experience includes co-founding and overseeing marketing and business development for The OnBoard Group, a water-purification business in Illinois. She also served as president of Living Hope Lutheran Church, and ran several successful fundraisers for children's cancer and other charities.
Before joining Nemertes, Robin shaped technology and business coverage as Senior News Editor of InformationWeek, a leading business-technology publication with 440,000 readers. Prior to joining InformationWeek, Robin served in a variety of capacities at Data Communications magazine, where helped set strategic direction, oversaw reader surveys, and provided quantitative and statistical analysis. At these organizations Robin also helped develop, organize, and operate Web sites, TV, and print coverage of major trade shows. She has won numerous, prestigious awards for her in-depth analyses of business-technology issues.
Robin also taught ethics at the Poynter Institute for Advanced Media Studies. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, and American Medical News. Robin has a Bachelor of Science in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana. She lives in Illinois with her husband and four daughters.
Unified Communication projects are complex and require integration into other parts of IT, business processes, and the culture of the organization. This session outlines an architectural framework for UC that integrates into other frameworks such as TOGAF & IMS. A solid UC architecture enables an organization to easily adapt to changes that occur in business requirements, technology, and vendor products.
The majority of UC implementations use a "best of breed" approach which requires a strong architecture in order to make sure all the pieces work well together. Attendees of this session will walk away with a methodology on creating a UC architecture that is vendor independent and that takes advantage of SIP.
KEY QUESTIONS
• UC has many elements, so can a single architecture really encompass everything UC?
• Best of breed isn’t new, but it’s often characterized as too costly in terms of inventory and training requirements. What’s really changed?
• With so much communications and collaboration going mobile, is mobility a core feature of this new architecture or just one of several important elements?
• Is SIP Trunking more than a pure cost play?
Speaker - Sorell Slaymaker, Communications Architect, Unified IT Systems
Sorell Slaymaker has 20 years of experience designing, building, and operating networks and the communication services that run across them. Particular areas of expertise include; unified communications, contact centers, CRM, and tele-medicine. An example of Sorell's experience, he was the chief architect for a 25,000 seat virtual contact center and moving it to IP/SIP. He has been a member of the Cisco and Avaya technical advisory boards. He graduated from Texas A&M with a B.S. in Telecom Engineering, and went through the M.E. Telecom program at the University of Colorado.
On the weekends, Sorell enjoys the outdoors – bicycling, camping, and gardening.
The market for IP Telephony systems and services continues to face challenges from the rough economy, but there’s a silver lining for buyers who can enjoy lower prices, increased system performance, and no/low interest financing as buying incentives.
Cisco continues to run strong in this market, which is also continuing to adjust to the absence of Nortel and competition abounds for that customer base. Meanwhile Microsoft’s Lync is making inroads, challenging traditional notions of architecture – and market leadership. And the trends towards Cloud-based communications, social networking and mobile communications each create new options for how enterprises communicate internally and externally.
This session will include updated telephony system market forecasts and supplier share estimates; a discussion of which enterprise communications system features and applications are hot and which are not; a review of major market trends, such as Cloud Computing and hosted solutions and virtualization; and a critical analysis of the leading system suppliers and their flagship offerings.
Key Questions:
• Which vendors are hot and which are not in the enterprise communications market?
• Are Cloud-based solutions taking business away from hardware equipment and software vendors?
• How are the traditional system suppliers adjusting to changing market conditions and who may not be around when the smoke clears?
• Are customers actually buying and implementing Unified Communications offerings or is it still all hype?
• Will tablets make desktop telephone instruments obsolete?
Peter joined MZA in 1997 after having previously worked for one of the major market research companies in the UK, the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB).
On joining MZA, Peter gained initial experience in the cellular terminals area before moving onto work within the enterprise solutions area of MZA’s annual multiclient study. For the past 10 years Peter has specialised in the enterprise communications applications space and now has overall responsibility for all of MZA’s Unified Communications studies including IP PBX/PBX, Contact Centre, Messaging, Cordless, and Conferencing. In addition to the multiclient study work, Peter has also worked on an extensive number of ad hoc research projects and has spoken at both industry and vendor conferences.
Peter has been instrumental in developing the forecasting model used in MZA’s annual multiclient study.
Peter has an Honours Degree in Business Studies. During his degree course, he specialised in business forecasting and strategic marketing.
Speaker - Jeremiah Caron, Vice President of Analysis, Current Analysis / IT Connection
Jerry brings more than 20 years of experience to Current Analysis as a market watcher and influential voice in the telecom and information technology industries. As Vice President, Analysis, he is responsible for overall management and content direction for the company’s CurrentCompete services.
Jerry was previously Current Analysis Research Director, IT Infrastructure, and originally joined the company in 2002 to provide coverage of the European enterprise telephony market. Before joining Current Analysis, Jerry was Publisher of CMP Media's tele.com, a business magazine for telecom and Internet service provider executives. As Publisher, he managed overall operations, including editorial, circulation, research, sales and marketing, during a period when the magazine significantly increased marketshare.
Before joining tele.com, Jerry was Editor-in-Chief of CMP Media's LAN Times magazine, a bi-weekly publication focused on enterprise networking and client-server computing strategies. In that position, he was responsible for overall management of the magazine’s content, which included news, feature and product testing departments.
Jerry began his career at the analyst firm Faulkner Information Services, where he directed the analysis of the PC, networking and telecoms industries. He has been a featured speaker at major industry events, including Interop and Supercomm, as well as numerous, specialised events and seminars. Jerry graduated with a B.A. from St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
Can the once proud-to-be-an-outlier go mainstream? Skype came into enterprises via the back door – subscribers simply loaded clients onto their PCs and soon they were no longer using Skype to call family and friends, but also colleagues and business associates. Then video via Skype came on the scene and soon business conference calls were running over the once-free service, with consequences for traffic planning and bandwidth requirements.
Now, Skype’s part of Microsoft and could ride deep and wide inroads into enterprise IT. But for that to happen, what does Skype need to do? And, perhaps more importantly, what does enterprise IT need to do?
KEY QUESTIONS
• Skype made earned its reputation as being a free service, but if that’s the case, why was it worth $8 billion to Microsoft? How much will it cost an enterprise to use Skype and what will it get for its money?
• What levels of service guarantees does Skype provide?
• Is Skype a viable competitor to AT&T, Verizon and other traditional service providers, or is it specialized for niche applications?
• What are the implications for network design and management when Skype is introduced into the enterprise?
• What are likely scenarios for Skype’s network evolution and service capabilities?
Kevin Kieller is a partner with enableUC, a company that helps measure, monitor and improve Unified Communications and collaboration usage and adoption. He also currently holds the role as the Lead Unified Communications Strategist at Bell Canada.
Kevin possesses over twenty-five years of consulting and software development expertise and has conceived, designed and overseen the development of software products and hosted services in the business, educational and recreational areas which have been used by millions of people in over 17 countries worldwide. He is an accomplished speaker and frequent presenter at various technical conferences and events where he prides himself on clear and direct messaging in a world filled with too many acronyms, adjectives and too much "marketing speak".
Kevin’s initial interest in technology was cultivated by the Commodore Pet; shortly thereafter he began creating videogames for the Commodore 64, including Jack Attack which was nominated for game of the year.
While ensuring effective communications is no “game”, Kevin believes that through a structured, methodical process, implementing technology that truly matches real user requirements can be lots of fun. He regularly shares his unique perspective with the readers of No Jitter.
All the key trends in communications and collaboration, from Unified Communications to the use of Social Networking tools , come together in modern contact centers. While traditional calling still dominates, most contact centers now operate with email and chat, some are beginning to incorporate video.
So, with all the new tools, systems and services available, what’s the state of contact center market? Which tools are actually being deployed and which are still in hype phase? And which vendors and solutions are winning and which are fading?
This session will provide you with a clear understanding of the dynamics in today’s contact center market and with the data you need to proceed to enhance, enlarge or migrate your contact center to the next plateau.
KEY QUESTIONS:
• How has the economic downturn affected the migration to IP? What percentage of the new contact center systems being deployed is now SIP-based?
• Where do the vendors stand in terms of market share and technology leadership?
• How are media such as text/instant messaging, video and social networking applications being incorporated into leading-edge contact centers, and what are the challenges and benefits of these new media types?
• The trend toward contact center consolidation continues, but are more companies establishing contact centers? Is the overall market growing, shrinking or staying constant? And what does that mean in terms of the development of new products and services for the market?
Speaker - Sheila McGee-Smith, President & Principal Analyst, McGee-Smith Analytics, LLC
Sheila McGee-Smith, the founder and principal analyst at McGee-Smith Analytics, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant with a proven track record in new product development, competitive assessment, market research, and sales strategies for communications solutions and services. Her insight helps enterprises and solution providers develop strategies to meet the escalating demands of today's consumer and business customers.
Ms. McGee-Smith has more than two decades of experience in the telecommunications industry, including 12 years with The PELORUS Group,
Prior to joining The PELORUS Group, McGee-Smith held sales management, market research and product management positions at AT&T, Timeplex and Dun & Bradstreet.
She earned her bachelors degree, cum laude, from Barnard College, Columbia University, with a major in psychology, and her masters of business administration (MBA), awarded with distinction, with majors in marketing and management information systems from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Ms. McGee-Smith is a regular contributor to No Jitter and she can be followed on Twitter at mcgeesmith.
Panelist - Christine Viera, VP Product Management, Contact Center, Avaya
Christine Viera serves as Vice President, Product Management for Contact Center Solutions at Avaya. Included in this flagship business unit are products including Contact Center Applications, Contact Center Solution, Analytics, Automated Contact Center Platforms and Applications, and core integration technologies. Christine brings more than a decade of experience in building enterprise and midmarket software at Siebel Systems, and Oracle. Christine brings a record of innovation and leadership in products including CRM Contact Center & Service, CRM Analytics, user interface and integration technologies for traditional and SaaS products. Christine holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Business, and an undergraduate degree from Cornell University.
Panelist - Chris Botting, Senior Director Product Management, Cisco
Panelist - Joe Staples, Sr. VP Worldwide Marketing, Interactive Intelligence
Desktop phones are not going away, but they are evolving. New features and functions are being added—everything from high-end video screens to touch-screen keypads. And in the area of basic functionality, vendors continue to strive to deliver enterprise telephony in affordable, cost-efficient form factors. At the same time, the battle continues to rage between proprietary protocols and SIP—which is, itself, implemented in proprietary ways by most vendors. The bottom line, though, is that the vendors say their desk phone sales hit all-time highs last year, so someone must still be buying. If you’re one of these, and you expect phones to be a part of your procurements for at least the near term future, you should attend
KEY QUESTIONS:
* What are the hottest new features for desktop phones—and is anyone really buying these phones for these features, or are they all sizzle?
* Has the cost of a basic desktop phone fallen significantly since the IP/SIP transition hit critical mass? If so, how much; and if not, why not?
* Should you go with your vendor’s line of phones, or should you investigate third-party SIP phones? Can all SIP phones talk to all SIP-based IP-PBXs? Do you have to make sure a SIP phone is certified to work with your vendor’s SIP PBX?
* What is the realistic expectation for enterprises’ continued investment in desktop telephones?
* If you have to buy desk phones today, how do you think about investment protection?
Stephen Leaden is founder and President of Leaden Associates, Inc., an independent Telecommunications consulting firm providing specialized support in leading technologies. Mr. Leaden has been in the Telecommunications field over 25 years, with 20 of those with his own firm. Mr. Leaden focuses as an extension of IT staff to facilitate the design, procurement, and project implementation, and ongoing support for converged voice and data solutions. During their engagement, Mr. Leaden proactively adds value via ROI strategies integrated into the projects he serves serve on.
Mr. Leaden has lectured on significant industry topics, including VoIP and UC – Basics to Best Practices; Hardphones, Softphones, and NextGen Systems; How Many Phones Do I Really Need?; Leveraging Cost Saving Strategies Migrating to VOIP; Optimizing Your Wireless Spend, State and Local Government Networks: A Question of Priorities for national AT&T user group; Bringing Up Your Lines with VoIP (or Getting Your Company Ready for VoIP); IT Trends in Higher Education; the Real ROI of VoIP; CTI Standards; Internet/Intranet Applications In Healthcare; An Idiot’s Guide To ATM among others. Mr. Leaden has also been quoted in Information Week and Computer World, and interviewed by CFO magazine.
Panelist - Mike Storella, Chief Operating Officer, snom
As the Director of Business Development for the United States, Mike Storella is responsible for building and expanding the existing sales and support channels for snom’s family of IP telephone products in the Americas. Mike Storella ensures that customers and partners receive the highest quality sales, customer service and support. With 30 years of experience in the global technology sector, Storella has expertise in business development, channel operations, customer service, and strategic planning. Storella has held executive posts at RNK Telecom, Pingtel Corporation, Priority Call Management, IBM/Rolm Corp., Lightstream, Cisco Systems, New England Telephone and ITT-CS. His duties have ranged from P & L management and rapid market development, customer care and hardware installation to OEM support, quality metrics, training and tactical planning. Storella has consistently delivered bold deployments of emerging technology products coupled with customer-support initiatives.
Panelist - Stefan Karapetkov, Emerging Technologies Director, Polycom Inc.
Stefan Karapetkov is Emerging Technologies Director at Polycom, where he focuses on the audio and visual communication markets and technologies. He has an MBA from Santa Clara University (USA) and an MS degree in Engineering from the University of Chemnitz (Germany). Stefan has spent more than 15 years in the communication industry, and currently serves on the Internet2 Applications, Middleware, and Services Advisory Council. His blog http://videonetworker.blogspot.com/ focuses on HD voice, HD video, unified communication and collaboration. He has authored series of white papers and articles in trade publications, and has been a frequent speaker at industry events.
Panelist - Gary Mading, Senior Product Manager, Aastra
Gary Mading is Senior Product Manager at Aastra USA, a leading provider of open-standards voice communications solutions for enterprises of all sizes. Gary manages the product strategy for Aastra USA’s IP-PBXs for enterprise customers. Gary has over 20 years of experience developing and marketing communication products, including carrier systems, transmission equipment, broadband access products and enterprise communication systems. Gary holds a B.S. Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Texas and an M.S. in Business Management from the University of Texas at Dallas.