Know Your Alternatives Recap - State of UC in Canada

Last month was the 3rd Know Your Alternatives conference here in Toronto. There aren't many events with this focus in Canada, and it was a pretty  good barometer for how the market is taking for Unified Communications. In short, it has a ways to go, but heading in the right direction. If you're new to this event, my wrapup post is a good place to start.

I enjoyed the event - both as a speaker and attendee - and have been putting in my two cents with the KYA host, Emily Nielsen to make it bigger and even better next time around. Emily is definitely picking up the cues, and as with all events, the content is your best calling card.

Her team has just posted a series of short video clips highlighting key takeaways as well as interviews with various speakers. If you couldn't make the event, these are a good set of touchpoints for how the UC space is shaping up in Canada.

To set the stage, here's the event summary - it's just 3.5 minutes. You'll probably recognize the speakers - and even me - and if you have any comments about the event, Emily would love to hear from you. Even better, come join us next year!

Social Networking for Business - is it Just Social?

Here's a topic I'm sure your business is struggling with these days. If not, either nobody there uses social media - highly unlikely - or you've simply banned it outright - bad idea. Or, you've figured it out and have a healthy balance for both work and play use - but that's not the norm quite yet.

Wherever you're at on that spectrum, I think you'll enjoy my latest article for TMC's Internet Telephony magazine. This is part of my monthly column titled Rethinking Communications, and is now running in both the print and digital editions for March 2013. Here's the link to the article, and if you like to get your media in print form, let the folks at TMCnet know, and they'll be happy to add you to their mailing list.

UCS Podcast - Surround Sound - Taking Voice up a Notch

It's Thursday, so this must be blog-post day. Apologies, but lately I seem to be posting only on Thursdays, but trust me, there's no big plan here. I really would like to be blogging more regularly, but projects and writing commitments are keeping my slate plenty full, and that's a good thing. For those of you who like my posts, I'll quickly reiterate that a lot of my work is publicly available. I share a lot of this via my tweets (@arnoldjon), but you can also follow my other posts from this page from my JAA website.

Enough about me - let's talk about this week's UCStrategies podcast, on which I was a participant. This one had a twist, as it was part product demo and part roundtable analysis. Joining us were representatives from Dolby Voice and BT Conferencing, and we got an advance look - or listen, really - at a conferencing solution they'll be showing off next week at Enterprise Connect in Orlando.

In short, Dolby is taking audio up a notch with Surround Sound spatial audio. It's a very cool experience that has its roots in the gaming world where these type of effects really matter. Dolby and BT have teamed up, believing this can really enhance the conferencing experience along with the quality of calls in the contact center. It's a bit abstract, but like seeing HD TV for the first time, you don't want to go back with spatial audio. We're all familiar with the shortcomings of audio conferencing, especially when everyone starts talking at once. So, there are definitely some problems that Surround Sound can address, but it's all about the experience, and to do that, you need a few things, including a headset that supports spatial audio.

You'll just have to take my word that it's good, and better than whatever you're using now. I did have some technical issues, but can vouch first hand for the experience. The next best thing you can do for now is to listen to the podcast, where I'm sure all your questions will be answered. We usually have a transcript to accompany the audio, but given the topic at hand, there really wasn't any point. If you're going to Enterprise Connect, this will be a great primer, and hopefully you'll get your own demo there next week. Until then, here's the link, and happy listening!

Podcast - Remote Workers - is Yahoo Right?

Hot topic lately, and time will tell if old school work-at-your-desk policies will save Yahoo. Personally, I think remote working is great for certain types of people and situations, but for the masses, bad idea. Gee, can you tell that I work from home?

I could host my own podcast on that ornery topic, but you're much better served with a diversity of views, and that's exactly what come out on this week's UCStrategies podcast, moderated by Phil Edholm. We had voices on both sides of the issue, but the general sentiment was positive. As I noted, nothing drives the need for UC like remote working, so this shouldn't be surprising given our collective focus on this space.

While a lot of people talk about the merits of technology as a driver for remote working, it's all about trust to me. I don't care how many tools you throw at remote workers - some people are cut out for this, but a lot are not. Companies will get great productivity out of some employees from home, but if you're laissez faire about it, you end up on a slippery slope downhill. They work you, right? Not the other way around.

Enough rose-colored wishful thinking. Every business has its own comfort level with the leash they keep on employees, and that's the way it should be. Now its time to hear what everyone else thinks - here's the link, where you can also read the transcript if you don't have the time to listen to the podcast.

Start Me Up Innovation Campaign - Calling Canadian Tech Entrepreneurs!

This marks Year 2 for the Start Me Up Innovation Campaign, an initiative run by Toronto-based Backbone magazine. I was cited in their current issue, and the pub is a great barometer for the domestic tech scene.

Their campaign is well-supported with private and public sector sponsors, and seeks to attract entries from startups with sales under $2 million. They're offering a range of prizes for winners, including seed capital, incubator space and professional services. Applications can be taken up til March 30, judging runs the first two weeks of April, and the pitch-off to produce the winners is on May 6.

Sounds like a good idea to me, but I'm not a startup, so I'll just put this out there for my followers. If you fit the bill and could use some industry cred, here's where you need to go next.

Backbone200 - Best of Canadian Tech

Been over a week since I last blogged, but the world is still intact, right? Paid work always trumps blogging, and business has been good lately, but I've got a window now for a quick post.

Backbone magazine does a nice job tracking the Canadian tech scene, and the current issue is especially noteworthy. This is their big state of the market overview, presented as a series of short "best" lists for a whole bunch of topics and trends. It's a great way to quickly gauge what's hot - people, companies, technologies, resources etc., and they compiled this by speaking to a lot of different people, including myself.

I commented mainly on the VoIP space, where I cited 5 vendors to watch - Avaya, Microsoft, Metaswitch, Mitel and ShoreTel. Pretty hard to do justice to this market with a sound byte, but am happy to take things further if anyone is interested.

Otherwise, this feature is an informative, breezy read, and without further ado, here's the link.

Microsoft Canada - Lync Updates

Yesterday I attended the first meeting of Microsoft Canada's Insiders of Lync group at their Toronto-area country HQ. I'm glad to be included in this group, which is made up of analysts, market researchers and IT consultants. While I like the moniker better as the name of an alt/indie band, it reflects this group as being an informal advisory body, and that's a good thing.

We were set up as end users with dummy employee profiles, and they spent the morning walking us through the various UC features and how they work in typical collaborative settings. Overall, it was a good way to experience Lync, and it set the stage for the Lync team to get to know us better. This will allow us to provide  ongoing  feedback on the Lync experience as well as their go-to-market plans.

As we tried the various applications, you can see how convenient it is to run all your applications from the desktop and from a single interface. No need to close out programs or switch to new programs - it's pretty seamless from the point of searching for who you want to contact, then through the various stages of contact and collaboration.

I've been writing about Lync recently on the VoIP News portal, and there were no surprises here. Ease of use is great, and so is the quality of experience - both voice and video were clear. It's easy to see how this could quickly become your default UC environment - all the apps are there and the integration is pretty smooth.

The big outlier, of course, is the phone and without dwelling on this too much, they made it easy to see that you wouldn't even miss it. As the first photo below shows, our basic setup included a simple desk phone, but we never needed to pick up the handset or use the keypad to dial. Old habits die hard, but with all the desktop options for reaching people being just a mouse click away, the concept of dialing a phone number will soon seem archaic.

To me, the key thing that drove this home was the discussion about peripherals, namely the Jabra headset and speakerphone, and the LifeCam line of webcams. Being Lync certified, they're fully plug and play, and being high quality devices, they enhance the overall Lync experience. Microsoft understands that to make people comfortable moving on from the PBX, you need more than just a notebook, which simply can't compete with audio quality. The Jabra endpoints make Lync feel like a more complete voice solution, and the LifeCams do the same for video. Without this, I think the notebook on its own becomes a weaker case for building a UC solution around. 

Time will tell, but I think Lync is on to a good thing, and we certainly heard some validation of that from the channel community, who ultimately must sell it. Pairing Lync with SIP trunking sounds like a pretty complete package, and shows just how far software has come to support communications.

I should also add that Skype was mentioned a few times, and is still a work in progress for the business market. As Lync federates with more customers, it will be easier to find ways to integrate Skype, and I think they'll eventually figure this out. There's certainly more to come, and I'll provide updates after our next get together.

Mark Hickson walking us through some demos