Smart Grid Webinar - Critical Infrastructure Protection

It's time again to put on my smart grid hat with Zpryme and tell you about our next webinar. Just as the phones and Internet represent critical infrastructure that must be protected, the same applies to energy and the power grid. Actually more so - a lot more so. Until we become self-sufficient with renewable or stored energy - not likely - we will need to rely on the broader power grid, so protecting this is pretty important.

That's what we'll be talking about on the next Zpryme webinar on Thursday, November 21 at 1pm ET. Joining me will be speakers from ViaSat and Southern California Edison; as usual, the webinar is free, and all the details you need are here. Hope to have you on the call.

The Upside of Personalization for UC

Regular followers will know that I write a monthly column for TMC's Internet Telephony Magazine; it's called Rethinking Communications, and you can probably guess the types of things I focus on there.

Last month, I wrote about the downside of personalization in terms of being a hinderance to the adoption of Unified Communications. There's a lot of psychology at play here (my undergrad major is speaking now!), and I don't think businesses give this much thought in terms of what UC has to do to make an emotional connection among end users. Without that, adoption simply doesn't happen.

Well, now let's look on the bright side and the good things that personalization brings. It's all a matter of how you spin ideas, and in this month's column, I explore the upside. If you believe that giving people what they want matters, then by understanding what it is they actually want, your odds of success with UC are a lot higher.

If you're wondering what that might look like, please head over to the digital edition of the latest Internet Telephony Magazine, and give my post a read. Comments, as always, are welcome.

My AudioCodes Visit / Quick Thoughts on Israel

Finally back to blogging now that I've returned from Israel and gotten more or less caught up from being off sched the better part of two weeks.

Covered a lot of ground in Israel, and managed to work in a productive site visit to AudioCodes. They're based in Airport City, and as the name implies, their offices are right by the airport, making this a convenient stop for visitors on a short trip. As I learned, Airport City is a cluster of office buildings with a lot of tech, but once you get off that island, it's almost like being in the desert. Israel has a lot of contrasts, so this didn't come as a surprise in the least. It was a 2+ hour journey by bus from Jerusalem, but the visit was definitely worthwhile.

I had a series of meetings there, and it was a great opportunity for in-person briefings to get updates across the board, namely UC, SBC, gateways and contact center. I've always thought highly of AudioCodes, and this was actually my second time seeing them in Israel. Those impressions were certainly validated during my visit, and the company looks to have clear focus on where they fit in this space.

In basic terms, AudioCodes provides a lot of options for any partner competing against Cisco. I've written before about how the telecom/UC market is coming down to two simple choices, at least for North American enterprises. Head-to-head, it's Cisco vs. Avaya, but on a broader scale, it's Cisco vs. Microsoft. Most partners need to go with one or the other now to get ongoing traction, and this duopoly is a far cry from a few years back when there was more choice among vendors of all sizes.

AudioCodes has always had solid technology, but they've also done a great job of evolving their products and expanding capabilities, especially in the gateway/SBC area. They know their strengths - namely voice - and you won't see them dabbling much in video. That's better left to partners like Polycom. I also like how they've built up their contact center reach, and from I was shown, they are currently supporting a number of global, large scale deployments.

Since they're not in the PBX business, you don't normally associate them with UC, but they provide a lot of critcal network elements for both carriers and enterprises. Outside of the telecom vendors - and Cisco - I really can't think of any other vendor who can provide such a complete range of products that enable UC and voice communications in general. Maybe Sonus or Genband, but if so, not by much. AudioCodes may not own the customer the way Microsoft or Cisco does, but it's clear to me they bring a lot to enhance any vendor's solution.

As an aside, in light of today's merger between Mitel and Aastra, it's worth noting how important scale is becoming to survive in this market. Of course, in this case, we're talking about two telecom vendors, and this is the second time Mitel has done a deal like this to get bigger. With Acme Packet now folded into Oracle, AudioCodes is already one of the biggest players in their pond, but I don't see them doing anything comparable to Mitel to get to the next level.

To sum up, both contact center and UC are huge, horizontal opportunities, and I think AudioCodes has the right focus here for long-term growth. Voice still very much matters, and while the telecom vendors are struggling to see where they fit as trends like mobility and cloud are re-defining their place in the value chain, AudioCodes is squarely in the middle of what everyone needs to do well to make voice worth paying for. I hope to get further validation as my post-visit follow ups progress, and will share what I can then.

Otherwise, Israel itself is a whole other topic. This isn't the place for that, but it was a wonderful visit, and until you've been there, it's hard to understand how layered their world is. As much as Israel is a modern democracy, the price for freedom is very high, and as much as we felt safe and welcome wandering about Jersusalem, you just never know what could come around the corner or on the next bus you board. I'm not one to share my personal life online, but we took lots of photos and will just share a couple here. Am happy to chat more any time and who knows, I might write about it further another time - or place.

Amazon's "Mayday" Button - Contact Center Implications - Webinar

Amazon's "Mayday" feature is getting a lot of attention, and while the vast majority of businesses lack the scale to offer this service promise, it sure raises a lot of questions for contact centers. One of those is "just because you can, does it mean you should?", and from there many other implications pop up. It's too early to tell if this will be a passing blip or a new stage in delivering JIT customer service, but people are talking about it now, so the webinar is definitely timely.

Thanks to the Internet, our attention span is now measured in seconds, and if you take this level of instant gratification seriously, then you need to think about what Mayday could mean for your business and how you support your customers.

If this is on your mind, then you'll want to join us on Thursday, November 11 at 2pm ET. I'm part of a panel that will be discussing the various ramifications, and will be joined by well-known consultants Neal Shact and Dennis Goodhart. TMC is hosting the event, which is being sponsored by SAP, a company that certainly wants to know where this could take things as the pathway between customers and agents gets shorter.

We're still fine-tuning the agenda, but all the pertinent details are here, including a link to the registration page. I'll have more updates as we get closer to the date.

UCStrategies Podcast - State of SBCs with UC

Alphabet soup comes with the territory in our space, and the most recent UCStrategies podcast focused on SBCs - session border controllers - and their impact on UC. I've followed SBCs since this category emerged in 2004, and not being a technical analyst, I focus on the business-level issues. However, even among the analysts steeped in IT, SBCs have always been difficult to understand. On some levels, you can ignore them with UC, but as many deployments are calling for SIP trunking, SBCs become unavoidable. I've learned that SBCs are fairly new and somewhat foreign to the UC space, so this podcast was a long time coming.

Stephen Leaden did a great job moderating, and I was happy to say my piece along with the other UCS Experts on the call. Since Acme Packet scored close to $2 billion being acquired by Oracle, everyone is wondering what all the fuss is about. Well, our podcast has been posted now, so to find out, you'd better head over to the portal now, where you'll find both the download and the transcript.

My Next Webinar - VoIP Adoption for SMBs - November 15

It's time for another webinar with Ziff Davis. I regularly contribute content there, and build on some of that with webinars when the stars line up.

This time around, I'll be presenting on adoption trends for VoIP among SMBs - a topic I follow pretty closely. Registration is already quite strong, and I hope that keeps trending as the promotion efforts continue. As always, participation is free, and here's the link with the details as well as the webinar abstract.

I'll do a few more shout-outs along the way, and I hope you can join us - Thursday, November 15 at 2pm ET.

Next Stop - Florida - Cisco Collab Summit

Travel has been fairly light for me lately, and am totally fine with that. That said, I'm always glad to attend Cisco's Collaboration Summit, being held this year in Boca Raton, FL. No complaints going to someplace warm, especially in the same time zone.

Collaboration is by nature a moving target, and it sure will be interesting to see what Cisco's 2013/2014 take is going to look like. The more all-encompassing these collaboration platforms/solutions/ecosystems become, the higher the stakes get with customers, especially the big-spending enterprises.

Over the last week or so, we've seen some big moves by Avaya and Siemens - now Unify - to give us their flavor of collaboration, and now it's Cisco's turn. I've also had a few in-depths recently with Microsoft and their visions for Lync, so there's no shortage of end-to-end paths businesses can take for collaboration.

Cisco always does a great job with this event, and I'll be blogging/tweeting as time allows. For reference, the event hashtag is #csummit, and my handle is @arnoldjon.