UCStrategies - Our Take on ITExpo and Lotusphere

This week's UCStrategies podcast focused on two recent telecom events - TMC's ITExpo and IBM's Lotusphere. Both are important, long-running events that go well beyond telecom, and are relevant to the UCS audience. Some of us attended ITExpo, some attended Lotusphere, and David Michels attended both (that's ambitious!).

I was at ITExpo last week, but only saw it in passing, since I was running my smart grid event. However, I saw enough and have been to enough ITExpo's that I could add to the conversation. So, if you want to know the key takeaways from both events - esp from a UCS perspective - have a listen to our podcast.

It's running now on the UCS portal, and you can open the link here, as well as read the transcript. If you attended either event, by all means, share your thought with us!

Smart Grid Summit - Day 1 Highlights

I don't blog here much about smart grid, but wanted to follow up on the photos I posted yesterday. My first recap article is running now on the Smart Grid Portal, and I'll have another one coming tomorrow - stay tuned!

New Forum to Follow - Exony and Hosted Contact Centers

I've been shifting my workload a bit lately - let's just say I'm right-sizing and aligning myself with some new opportunities. One of those is with Exony, an up and coming vendor in the hosted contact center area. They're U.K.-based, but have strong traction with an impresssive client base - not just over there, but over here in Canada and the U.S. as well.

We've recently launched an initiative where I'll be producing an ongoing series of research and thought leadership articles about this space. These articles will be featured on their website in a section called The Jon Arnold Blog. Perhaps that title could use a bit of work, but you get the idea! Anyhow, my first article - "Redefining the Contact Center in 2011 -What's Your Plan?" - is posted there now, and I'm about to get busy with the next one. I hope you follow along, and would love to hear your thoughts.

Siemens OpenScape UC Suite 2011 - Making UC Work

I've been working with Siemens under the UCStrategies banner, and wrote an article about some recent deployments to showcase the diverse capabilities of their latest iteration of OpenScape.

The article was published late last week on UCStrategies.com, but with the smart grid summit last week, I wasn't able to get to this until now. So, if this is still news and you're interested in Siemens and/or Unified Communications, you should find this a good read.

Smart Grid Summit - Photo Highlights

I've been on vacation the past few days and wasn't planning to post these til tomorrow. However, there's a flight delay and with free WiFi, I've got a window here to share some photos. I'll have a recap article about the summit on the portal in the next day or so, but until then, here are a few photos...





Larry Karisny leading the opening panel on cybersecurity. Larry was a huge help, not just with his industry knowledege, but also for moderating and speaking on a few sessions.


Dr. Massoud Amin from U of Minnesota. The "father of the smart grid" did not disappoint - just wish the lighting was better for a picture!


Maureen Harris and Orjiakor Isiogu on the NARUC smart grid working group update


Joy Rychlik (also from Toronto), moderating the Green IT/Data Centers panels, along with Henry Bailey (SAP), Kyle McNamara (Verizon) and Charles O'Donnell (Liebert AC Power)


Ken Rowen's keynote about what PAETEC Energy is doing in this market


Sandra Manning, City of Tallahassee - very engaging, and great to have some local presence for the Florida market


Dr. Mo Shakouri (Alvarion) on the Rural Smart Grid Opportunity panel


SAP's Henry Bailey on the Electric Vehicle session - yes, they are very busy in this space!


Olivier Pauzet (Sierra Wireless) on the Public vs. Private Networks session, along moderator Larry Karisny, Andy Balaschak (Tropos) and Jeff Dygert (AT&T)

Five Best Practices for Hosted Services - M5 Shows the Way

My latest Focus Brief is running now on Focus.com. Last week, I attended M5's launch event around their Geckotech acquisition from last November. A number of things struck me there as best practices that help explain why M5 has been successful with hosted VoIP for SMBs. This business is harder to do than it looks, and my Brief shares some thoughts on what it takes for success. Comments are welcome!

Next Stop - Miami and the Smart Grid Summit

For a Northerner, it's pretty hard to beat Miami in February, and that's where I'll be the rest of this week. Seems like yesterday when we had our last Smart Grid Summit in Los Angeles. This time around, it's a much shorter time between events, and we have another strong program in place.

I've done enough talking about it on the Smart Grid Portal, so that's where you need to go to get the latest on the summit, which runs this Wednesday and Thursday.

The summit will keep me pretty busy, and aside from stealing some time to walk through the ITExpo show floor, you won't likely see me around that show, or any other of the sub-events running under TMC's big tent.

For now, there's just one exception I can tell you about, and that's on Tuesday night. Interactive Intelligence is hosting a special ITExpo event on cloud communications, and I'm one of the panelists. Should be fun, and I'm looking forward to wearing my telecom hat for a topic I really enjoy following.