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By Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President and Distinguished Research Fellow

The enterprise data center has undergone several major transformations since the introduction of computing as a corporate resource. The computing platform has evolved from main frame computing, to client server, to Internet-based computing, and now we sit on the precipice of the next major data center transition—the evolution to a fully virtualized data center. Each transition saw the cost of computing driven down and the importance of the network elevated. Each phase allowed organizations to increase the efficiency of their data center operations and improve asset utilization, ultimately leading to a better experience for end-users. This white paper provides a perspective on the rise of network value as it acts as the backplane for the virtualized data center and provides design recommendations.

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By Avaya

This White Paper discusses the benefits and applicability of the IEEE 802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) protocol, which is augmented with sophisticated Layer 3 routing capabilities. The use of SPB and the value to solve virtualization of today’s network connectivity in the enterprise campus as well as the data center are covered.

This document is intended for technically savvy network managers as well as network architects who are faced with:
• Reducing time to service requirements
• Less tolerance for network down time
• Network Virtualization requirements for Layer 2 (VLAN-extensions) and Layer 3 (VRF-extensions)
• Server Virtualization needs in data center deployments requiring a large set of Layer 2 connections (VLANs)
• Traffic separation requirements in campus deployments for security purposes as well as robustness considerations (i.e., contractors for maintenance reasons needing access to their equipment or guest access needs)
• Multi-tenant applications such as airports, governments or any other network with multiple discrete (legal) entities that require traffic separation

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Simplified and optimized service orchestration maximizes the return from a virtualized computing environment
By Avaya

This white paper discusses Avaya’s approach to Data center Networking from a fabric perspective. Virtualization within the data center is now taken for granted, with some declaring that ‘Cloud Computing’ will be the choice of most enterprises and that applications and information will become commodities. Experience has proved one thing; the data center of the future cannot be built on the technology of the past. General-purpose products, outmoded techniques, and legacy designs cannot be re-packaged as ‘data center-ready’. Ethernet is readily available, cost-effective, extensible, and – as the 40/100 Gigabit developments prove – scalable. Find out Avaya’s approach to data center networking fabric by downloading this white paper.

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By Frost & Sullivan

The world is becoming increasingly mobile, and businesses are feeling the impact of managing PCs, smart phones, desk phones and tablets. Equally important are the effects of consumer mobility trends on businesses’ IT agendas. Learn how to keep costs in check, boost user productivity, deliver a consistent experience, and maintain a single, manageable corporate identity for all end-users.

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By (IDC) 

The consumerization of IT is helping to drive a shift towards collaborative applications convergence. Employees want to plug their consumer technology experiences into their daily work lives. Particularly, IDC believes the industry is on a trend to combine key technologies, such as email, instant messaging (IM), team workspaces, video, voice, Web conferencing and social features into a single “superset” user environment. This Technology Spotlight discusses collaborative applications and explores the role that Avaya plays in this increasingly important market.

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Avaya has expanded its cloud networking product portfolio with the Virtual Services Platform or VSP 7000, a 10GbE Top of Rack (ToR) Switch and its new Virtualization Provisioning Service or VPS management software.
The VSP 7000 boasts a multi-Terabit Fabric capable of horizontally stacking many 7000s, offering a new approach to server connections. The VPS virtualization management application provides visibility and automated control of virtualized infrastructure. VPS is designed to provide NetOps and SysOps shared visibility of physical, logical and now virtual IT assets. Dan DeBacker, Director of Data Solutions Architecture at Avaya, discusses the new VSP 7000 plus VPS and the new data center design options they afford.

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In November of 2010 Avaya launched its Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture or VENA, which describes its computer networking investment strategy and technology direction. VENA was designed for virtualized data center infrastructure but has been expanded to include campus and branch office networking. Dan DeBacker, Director of Data Solutions Architecture at Avaya discusses the unique attributes VENA possesses to meet today’s enterprise networking needs and the business outcomes its customers are gaining by its deployment.

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By Evangelyze Communications, LLC

With a broad series of new Unified Communications (UC) and collaboration offerings by Avaya and Microsoft, IT organizations have been prompted to evaluate their UC strategy. Microsoft promises to lower the overall Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of a UC platform by leveraging an all-encompassing software powered communications environment integrated with its Microsoft Office™ suite through the release of Microsoft Lync, while Avaya introduces its newly released UC platform through Avaya Aura.

The purpose of this whitepaper is to clearly identify the comparisons between both provider’s UC offerings through a process of evaluating value that matter to IT organizations in selecting the right UC platform.

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By Robin Gareiss Nemertes Research

Although line shipments for IP telephony have outstripped TDM for some time, many organizations have not yet fully replaced their TDM phones. In fact, only 17% of companies have fully deployed the technology, and the bulk of those are small and midsize businesses. Larger organizations have rolled out the technology in a spotty manner where the TDM system is end-of-life, or other tactical reasons. IT organizations are evaluating the economics, plus desktop IP phones investment when people increasingly rely on mobile devices and soft clients.

Many others are re-evaluating the market as they solidify unified-communications plans and once again contemplate go-forward strategy for IPT. Will they use the same vendor(s)? Will they shift to a hosted- or managed-services model? And what is the true business case? Understanding the true costs is crucial to a successful business case—and a cost-effective implementation.

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To create a seamless collaboration environment for mobile and remote workers, Avaya has fully embraced mobile computing by integrating Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian mobile endpoints plus Windows and Mac computing into its Aura core infrastructure. In this podcast Avaya’s VP of Unified Communications Product Marketing, Nancy Maluso, discusses Avaya’s UC mobile collaboration strategy and how IT business leaders can put this technology to work in their corporation.

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To create a seamless collaboration environment for mobile and remote workers, Avaya has fully embraced mobile computing by integrating Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian mobile endpoints plus Windows and Mac computing into its Aura core infrastructure. In this podcast Avaya’s VP of Unified Communications Product Marketing, Nancy Maluso, discusses Avaya’s UC mobile collaboration strategy and how IT business leaders can put this technology to work in their corporation.

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By Gartner

This document evaluates the potential benefits and drawbacks of converging data center networks and debunks a myth about lower costs and complexity. It includes quantitative analysis, along with insights gained from discussions with Gartner clients about organizational issues that affect convergence decisions.

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By Avaya

For those who have not reviewed or seen the Avaya Flare experience, this on-demand video provides you with a view of its easy to use video conferencing environment. It’s short so press start and get ready to be wowed.

Watch the Avaya FlareTM Experience here:

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Avaya has developed a unique approach to branch office networking with the introduction of its Advanced Gateway 2330. Previous to Avaya’s acquisition of Nortel’s Enterprise Solutions business, its branch office solution was focused on communications, but now it has computer-networking capabilities that is manifesting into a powerful branch office portfolio offering. I talk with Michael Fitzgerald, Portfolio Leader of the Unified Branch at Avaya, about Avaya’s investment in branch office networking with particular focus on network designs its approach affords.

Enjoy, Nick

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By Irwin Lazar Vice President, Communications Research, Nemertes Research

SIP, the Session Initiation Protocol, offers the potential to reduce telecom operational cost and complexity, take advantage of new hosted services, and integrate disparate applications via unified communications to improve collaboration. The introduction of SIP session management offers the potential to simplify communications system and policy management by fundamentally rethinking the way organizations deploy and integrate disparate communications applications.

But implementing SIP is not without challenges. IT architects must leverage solid ROI case studies to build tangible business cases to justify investment. They must also address training and interoperability concerns to ensure a successful deployment. Those organizations that meet these challenges stand to reap the benefits of SIP via delivery of new services and/or reduced operating costs.

Find out how to use SIP by downloading this white paper.

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By GreenSpring Partners

New communications capabilities have been introduced over the past decade which permit the integration of multi-modal communications (voice, fax, email, and instant messaging, to name a few) within the fabric of modern corporations. Specifically, the opportunities for integration have come in three waves. The first, which is well under way, is the replacement of stand -alone digital voice systems with new communications systems that integrate voice traffic into the IP corporate network. The second wave is the integration of diverse communication applications into a unified communications framework. Formerly, stand -alone applications can integrate with each other and permit users to tap the productivity enhancements of staying connected no matter which device or which communication mode is being used. The third wave is to take advantage of standards based communications applications and interfaces to integrate communication applications into core business processes and applications.

This White Paper reviews the growing risks associated with staying in the digital communications environment, and the opportunities and services support available for making the migration to converged IP Network unified communications. Download it now.

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By Butler Group

The Avaya Unified Communications portfolio brings together real-time and near-time communication mechanisms in a secure, intuitive, reliable environment, which enables employees to communicate more effectively using speech, IM, video, e-mail, voicemail, mobile, and portal. Butler Group particularly likes the industry-standard approach, which is crucial in this area, along with the scalability and robustness of the solution, enabling the solution to exploit the existing IT landscape, as well as integrate with existing desktop environments and enterprise applications. Unified Communications can benefit any size of company, with the offering scaling from 20 employees upwards. A key strength is the scalability and resilience of Avaya’s products, which make them particularly suitable for organizations that require enterprise-class solutions.

To learn more, download this paper from Butler Group.

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By opusresearch

Disparate modes call for disparate measures. Avaya’s new unified communications architecture, Avaya Aura, supports self-service (based on the Voice Portal) and intelligent routing over IP and hybrid networks. Cross-channel interactions are coordinated by a new “Session Manager” function. This white paper provides an analyst view of Avaya’s Aura architecture.

Read it now by downloading this paper.

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By Forrester

History shows that small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) suffer less and recover faster from recessions than their large enterprise counterparts. This recession will prove to be no different. However, the small businesses that help catalyze the recovery this time around will be started by tech-savvy professionals who start their businesses with technology investments and a Millennial workforce that has grown up on mobile phones and social networks. Technology vendors that tap the emerging tech- savvy small-business market will come out of this recession much faster than those that follow historical patterns of relying mainly on spotty spending by large enterprise customers.

Find out how by downloading this paper.

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By Avaya

Internet and Corporate Video has become mainstream. The implications of video for your business are clear: customers, employees, and business partners accept video as a tool, and expect video as a form of communication. Real-time video collaboration in your business can tap into this growing trend, increase team effectiveness, reduce decision cycles, enhance relationship building, and of course, diminish travel costs while limiting your organization’s carbon footprint.

Find out how by downloading this white paper.

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By Yankee Group

IP communications not only helps small- and mid-size businesses (SMBs) grow their business by providing easy-to-access customer intelligence, but it also reduces the cost of operations by helping businesses uncover critical data and act upon it. This is the biggest priority for SMBs over the next year, according to Yankee Group’s Anywhere Enterprise—SMB: 2009 U.S. Transforming Infrastructure and Transforming Applications Survey. Even in difficult economic climates, SMBs recognize the value that a deeper understanding of their customers and interactions between employees and customers can provide. It is all about how actionable customer intelligence can create a positive change for their business. Consequently, when SMBs are asked to name the biggest priority for their organization over the next year, the top three responses are: operational efficiencies, more customer focus and automating business processes, in that order. These priorities demand a new way of doing business, a new way to interact with customers and a new foundation.

Find out how by downloading this white paper

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By Avaya

To succeed in a tough marketplace, small businesses must be accessible, without significant interruption, even in the most adverse situations. This kind of ongoing accessibility is an important aspect of business continuity — a critical success strategy that doesn’t just happen, but requires proactive planning. Although there are several aspects to a business continuity plan, a major component of any plan should be the SME’s communications capabilities, not just its equipment or data. This paper will explore how different kinds of interruptions can adversely affect an SME’s business continuity and illustrate how, through advanced features such as resiliency and mobility, Avaya’s IP Office can help SMEs overcome interruptions and maintain business continuity.

Find out how by downloading this paper here.

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By IDC

This IDC Flash examines Avaya’s January 19, 2010, announcement of the road map for integration of Nortel into the Avaya portfolio of products and services. Avaya’s customers, and more especially those from Nortel Enterprise Solutions, have been anxiously — and in some cases fearfully — awaiting Avaya’s integration plans of the Nortel assets it purchased. To customers’ delight, Avaya has quickly laid out a comprehensive investment protection plan for legacy Nortel customers that ensures six years of support following any end-of-sale product. Its road map is consistent and clearly defined for each of its four business units (Unified Communications [UC], Contact Center, SME, and Data) as well as its services organization. The swiftness of completing these tasks, while necessary, is commendable and demonstrates to the market that Avaya’s “Protect, Extend, Grow” strategy is not a bait and switch tactic. The three-pronged approach is open standards driven and strives to allow customers on any legacy equipment — Nortel or otherwise — to evolve at their own pace.

Download IDC’s take on the Avaya roadmaps here.

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Nick Lippis will be keynoting the AT&T and Avaya “No Pain, All Gain: Migrate to IP Telephony on Your Terms and Save Money” small business webinar on January 27th at 1:00 pm ET. You can find out more about this webinar and register for it here.

Hope to see you there and bring your questions about unified communication in the Small to Medium sized Enterprise!

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By Rony Kay, Ph.D. President/CTO cPacket Networks

Low latency networks for distributed applications have become a competitive advantage for financial institutions with algorithmic trading platforms, where delay in trades impacts profits. The latency requirements for applications like high frequency trading, derivative pricing, and latency arbitrage are much stricter than for traditional web applications, such as VoIP and network gaming. While traditional applications can tolerate more than 100 milliseconds of one-way packet latency, algorithmic trading is sensitive to milliseconds, microseconds, or less. Market demand for ultra low latency networking is growing rapidly and the time resolution scale has shifted by several orders of magnitude from milliseconds to microseconds and less. This paper describes methods for meeting these more stringent performance constraints with finer resolution and more accurate measurements of latency and jitter than ever before.

Find out how by downloading this paper.

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By IDC

Virtualization and UC application migration onto the datacenter are happening side by side and create an interesting and challenging dilemma. Virtualization today is primarily being applied to traditional server-based applications with flexible minimum response times, low utilization rates, and low input/output requirements. The requirements are quite the opposite for real-time communications where application delay is not permitted. A disadvantage of virtualization has been that application efficiencies can be lost as the virtual machine accesses the hardware indirectly. This IDC white paper addresses the question: Can virtualization support real-time communications?

Find the answer by downloading this white paper.

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Avaya Aura is being extended to the mid sized enterprise market by simplifying its packaging into a single server solution loaded with unified communications and contact center applications. The Mid Market is typically characterized as 100 to 250 employees with revenues of $50M to $1B dollars. These Line of Business (LoB) managers seek to increase revenue and improve customer experience while differentiating against larger competitors. Their IT issues include older and dead ended communication technologies, limited IT and contact center agent staff and the need to rapidly reduce cost. To make LoB and IT ends meet, the Avaya Aura solution for Mid-Size Enterprises is offered for businesses with up to 2,400 users and 250 locations. Bruce Mazza Director of Unified Communications Market Solutions for Avaya joins me to discuss the mid enterprise market challenge.

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By Avaya

There has been a growing recognition about the critical importance of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity. This is a decade marked by catastrophic natural disasters and man-made disruptions such as terrorist events. It’s also a decade where we have seen the impact on business of less publicized, yet significant disruptions such as labor disputes, broad-scale internet outages, civil disorder and threats of cyber attacks. For impacted businesses, the immediate challenge is to cope with lost or impaired communications with employees, vendors and customers. Much of the planning for new events has begun to focus on communications continuity as a key element of business.

Download this paper to see how it will help IT leaders understand how Avaya can help plan and execute a solid approach to communication continuity preparedness.

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The spring business cycle in our industry brought HP and Microsoft closer together, Avaya’s launch of Aura, Cisco’s go-to-market strategy for its unified computing system (UCS), Brocade’s 8000 FCoE switch launch, 3Com/H3C’s new 12500 data center core switch and re-emergence into the enterprise market, Voltaire’s entry into the ethernet data center market and much more. With the stocks of many networking companies trading higher than before the crash of 2008, it’s becoming clear that the efficiency gains of IT will play a major role in the fall economic up turn. With that in mind I review the major spring launches and provide my assessment.

The major spring event that is now shaping the industry was Cisco’s UCS or unified computing system announcement that has placed Cisco into the computing industry and ushered in the unified fabric market. Clearly HP and IBM were not and are still not happy with Cisco entering into their space and have started to respond. IBM has become closer to Brocade and Juniper while HP has increased its relationship with Microsoft to bolster its unified communications and collaboration offerings. I offer pros and cons to the most important spring announcements.

HP & Microsoft Team Up on UC and Collaboration:

My take with a HP TSG focus:

+ Huge announcement with HP entering into the UC & Collaboration space with MSFT; instant credibility gained

+ Excellent ProCurve pull through sales opportunity

+ HP, IBM and Cisco now compete at Datacenter and UC + Collaboration markets eliminating a major HP hole.

+ Excellent demo(s) with HP + MSFT being able to credibly focus on communications enablement of business processes

- No UC & Collaboration specific features/attributes associated with proCurve products during the announcement

- Questions of scale need to be addressed as OSC R2 is still immature from a number of end-points and multi-site reliability points of view

- HP is hostage to MSFT UC & Collaboration initiatives, i.e., HP does not control development and MSFT is fighting huge, multiple battles

Avaya’s Aura

Avaya launched Aura, which is a device that uses SIP to connect multiple vendors’ phones, PBXs, IP telephony and applications into a streamlined enterprise communications system. My assessment is:

+ Great use of SIP as a way to connect disparate communication systems into one SIP cloud

+ Simplifies mixed vendor communication environments and an excellent way to provide Nortel customers with a migration path toward Avaya

+ Cost reduction thanks to significant WAN, mobile and bridge cost elimination plus centralized communication management yielding operational dividend.

+ Great application integration environment enabling facebook, google, et al., screen pops throughout an organization

+ Mobile and office phone integration

++ Reduces short term facilities cost and provides long term application integration/business productivity advantage

+/- Integration into LiveMeeting, SameTime, Adobe Connect Professional and Avaya Web Conferencing, but needs stronger collaboration & social networking offering

- Requires IT staff to be proficient in SIP & application integration

- Multi-vendor management is sparse

- Needs better UC client support

3Com/H3C Re-Enters The Enterprise Market

3Com under its H3C global brand and new executive management, which includes Ron Sege, President & COO, Alan Kessler, President Tipping Point, Eric A. Benhamou, Chairman, among others, are rebuilding its distribution and partner channels to move its full portfolio of switching, routing, UC, security and mobility solutions to the enterprise market. H3C sees a behavior change in enterprise IT spending that values green, cost efficiency and high performance networking and seeks to be a major supplier to this market. My assessment is:

+ $1.3B of review with operations around the globe

+ Experienced executive management who knows how to execute

+ Full portfolio of switching, routing, UC, mobility and security products for enterprise and data center solutions

+ Low cost basis thanks to Huawei JV

+ New high-end core switch 12500 for data center with 6.6 Tbs of backplane bandwidth, 512 10 GB port density, non-blocking architecture that was designed to support FCoE, 40 and 100 Gbs

+ Brand new approach to network management H3C Intelligent Management Center with a single point of access to configure and manage the entire portfolio of products

+/- Industry needs to fully vent, discuss and evaluate the new 3Com/H3C to discover its value proposition and measure how well it resonates with the new enterprise market realities

- Needs to build credibility and trust in the enterprise market

- Needs to communicate execution plan and roll out customer testimonials

Voltaire Announces the Vantage 8500 Switch

Voltaire announced a high-end ethernet switch called the Vantage 8500 available in the 2nd half of 2009 that touts 288 non-blocking 10 GB Ethernet ports and 11.5Tbs backplane bandwidth. Key features are Layer 2, CEE, FCoE, Virtualized I/O port, low latency of less than a microsecond and low power of less than 10 W per port. My assessment is:

+ High-end switch from a company that understands high performance with its engineering roots buried in infiniBand

+High density 1 and 10 GB Ethernet with key data center logical features such as CEE and its Voltaire scale out capability, which allows two tiers versus three tiers data center constructs to be deployed

+ Touts $1.2K per 10G port, unique design features that deliver linear scale of performance as the number of ports increase

+ Has been focused in high-end data center market addressing need for high-end core layer 2 switching

+/- Unclear how Vantage’s logical features would connect with existing network vendors, storage and CNA equipment

- A relatively unknown company with $62M of revenues

- Above product claims need independent testing and customer testimonials

Brocade 8000 FCoE Switch

Brocade launched its 8000 ToR (Top of Rack) switch with integrated Fiber Channel switch and 8 ports of FCoE support plus 24 10G Ethernet ports. This is an important announcement as it offers a unified fabric solution from Brocade, albeit a limited approach. My assessment is:

+ Impressed with packaging, FC & Ethernet switching plus 2 CNA adaptors

+ Consistent FC and switch management

+ Non-blocking switch fabric; however this needs to be independently confirmed

+/- 8 GB FC a hedge until 10 GB FC

- Brocade manufactured CNAs and no support for 3rd party CNA adaptors

- FC ports on 8000 means still two cable runs to EoR ethernet switch and FC switch

- Lack of a scalable solution

Cisco’s Non-Stop Innovation

In addition to the above Cisco has been introducing innovations non-stop during the downturn as it prepares its customers for the up turn. For example, it put its channel muscle behind UCS with a major go-to-market strategy at its Partners conference here in Boston last week, launched WebEx Node for ASR 1000 that won Interop Best of Show, launched EnergyWise to reduce IT and non-IT electrical consumption, launched Cisco Unified Communications System Release 7.1 bolstering its video services, offered new phones and UC features, and launched Global Correlation for the ISR and ASA and the Nexus 1K soft switch for virtualized data center environments. Cisco has been relentless in their product expansion aimed at making the Network the next business platform. Close to Cisco and a UCS enabler is VMware’s vSphere 4.0, which promises to usher in large-scale virtualization by providing features previously lacking to virtualize most corporate data center applications.

The crash of 2008 has left its mark not only on the financial systems but also on corporate and personal behavior. It’s becoming clear that corporate behavior will continue to be frugal well after the up turn; in short IT justifications will be rooted in cost avoidance, reduction and productivity improvements. The above IT supplier announcements all focus on new and cost effective methods to either design data centers or deliver collaboration. These two IT projects in particular are high priority on lists of projects from IT leaders as they both offer cost reduction and productivity improvement, which many are planning to exploit as they get ready for the fall economic up turn.

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By Miercom

Avaya Aura Branch Edition (formerly known as Avaya Distributed Office) delivers rich communication, collaboration and mobility capabilities to customer-facing branch offices. Miercom was engaged to conduct a review of the Avaya Aura Branch Edition, which is the next release of the Avaya Distributed Office, R1.2. We focused on the new advanced features, enhancements and functionality available within this release, prior to the launch of the Branch Edition solution. Some of the information contained in this report is based on the previous Avaya Distributed Office evaluation.

To download the test results click here

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By Avaya & EDS

Contact center decision-makers are focused on helping their company increase operational efficiencies and customer satisfaction. New contact center technologies, labor and market uncertainties are leading organizations to transition to an IP-based, or virtualized, model. This new paradigm removes significant operating expense from an enterprise, vastly simplifies the application and network infrastructure, and facilitates new contact center operating models such as agent off-shoring. These new architectures and operating models can dramatically reduce costs and improve an organization’s responsiveness to marketplace changes. This white paper is based upon years of real-world experience afforded by the Avaya/EDS partnership.

To find out about virtualization and how your company can benefit from it download this white paper.

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By Avaya

There is no single strategy to ensure that enterprises will move forward with unified communications since each customer has a unique set of needs and existing infrastructure. Avaya understands this and moves customers toward unified communications to support complex and flexible work environments. The consultative process begins with a business assessment to understand the communication patterns within the organization, and to identify where business processes slow or bog down. To identify opportunities for unified communications, business processes should be evaluated to identify where latencies exist due to human interaction and communication.

This white paper offers proven strategies for UC implementation that are business process driven. Find out how by downloading this paper.

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Unified Communications (UC) as an integrated launch point to multiple communications applications will swiftly fade as UC is integrated into corporate social networking and collaboration applications. This is the impression I walked away with after the Orlando VoiceCon industry event. The implication of this is systemic, sending change throughout the industry from suppliers, buyers, and even industry event organizers. What I mean is that UC as a standalone desktop application has limited value. IT and business leaders are pressing suppliers to improve user experience and in the process productivity.

It wasn’t too long ago that UC was touted as a better way to access a broad range of communication applications such as voice, IM, video, email, etc. Vendors such as Microsoft’s Office Communicator, Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator, Avaya’s One-X, Siemens OpenScape Desktop Client et al., will be of increasingly little use as standalone products. Even as these UC clients go mobile they will fall short of user experience expectations. As communications is now firmly in the grips of Moore’s Law and software economics, the rate of change and level of integration is accelerating at a frantic pace.

There are multiple trends building upon each other with such force as to morph UC into social networking and collaboration Web 2.0 applications. Social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter have jumped from consumer internet services to business tools. There is a cottage industry of start-ups that are creating innovative approaches to capturing an individual’s social grid and interface it into contact centers so as to better up- and cross-sell. Yes there are interesting Facebook, Google and/or LinkedIn pop-ups that extend caller ID to a screen pop, complete with a caller’s profile and even search your email for relevant past exchanges with the caller, all aimed at increasing user experience.

Then there are corporate-based social networking platforms such as SocialText which add security and journaling to social media tools. Whether UC is added to consumer social and collaboration tools or to enterprise grade applications is irrelevant; both are occurring and both activities will only accelerate. The growth and level of communications enabled by social networking and collaboration tools is unparalleled and represents a new approach to human interaction that needs to be captured and put to work within enterprises. We are in the midst of a great experimental phase of how best to achieve this integration. The meeting at VoiceCon offered only a glimpse of this progress.

Collaboration platforms such as IBM Lotus Sametime is very popular and its growth has not waned during the economic downturn. In fact IBM’s LotusLive cloud collaboration for inter-company collaboration is one of the fastest growing IBM products. Sametime is a great example of how a UC has been integrated into a collaboration suite and improves the user experience. IBM’s mash-up hub application lets users create their own mash-ups with a Sametime call widget, again increasing the user experience and control over that experience.

Siemens is in an interesting position as its OpenScape is an integral part of IBM’s Sametime. Siemens introduced its Cloud UC service built upon Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to offer the SMB market UC in a SaaS model. One can imagine that with OpenScape and Sametime in the Amazon cloud a SMB would have access to the same tools and user experience that only large firms could once afford. Therein lies the beauty of UC being integrated into collaboration suites and offered as a cloud service. Price points are smashed along with a total disruption of the SMB channel to market.

Cisco has been busy integrating UC into a wide range of collaboration tools too. It has integrated its unified personal communicator client into its Unified MeetingPlace and WebEx platforms. I expect to see UC integrated into its recently acquired Jabber IM service and Telepresence platform too.

Avaya introduced its Aura™ platform, which seeks to clean up and rationalize legacy voice and VoIP communications into a SIP platform. Two important aspects of Aura™ are that 1) it’s a new design that takes cost out of communications by reducing WAN, equipment and operational spend; and 2) it offers a UC integration into applications platforms. In short Aura™ should pay for itself within twelve months and pay dividends as communications is embedded into applications, especially social networking and collaboration applications.

But the above examples are just snapshots of a broader and bigger vision of how UC will be integrated into Web 2.0-based social and collaboration tools.

Envision a corporate Facebook-like user interface that is self populated with an employee’s profile, complete with past and current projects, their skills and relationships to both internal and external resources. Employees can join groups modeled after traditional organizational lines of command such as finance, HR, manufacturing, engineering, sales, etc. But more importantly, imagine these groups being cross-functional and based upon projects or product development where sales, engineering, marketing, manufacturing, etc., collaborate to move a product through its phase review process. Employees would populate the groups with work product, placing a huge body of work or information into the collaboration space. So imagine that over time three entities would emerge: people, groups and information, all cross-referenced through TAGs. All IT offers is the collaboration and social networking platform; profiles, group membership and information are populated by employees. The collaboration between these entities of people, information and groups would enable work to move faster throughout an organization and employees to self-organize around projects. Now inject real-time UC and video into this platform and you have the basis for a new approach to how work gets done.

The above scenario is not just my vision; it’s the direction our industry is heading after numerous NDA briefings with a wide range of IT suppliers. The intersection between social networking, collaboration and UC, thanks to Web 2.0 techniques will usher in a new model for productivity improvement through improved user experience and in its wake will change the IT industry and IT organizational design. This new collaboration model will emerge as the global economy recovers. As capital spending recovers it’s becoming clear that IT and business leaders will not fund the same old projects but will invest their capital spend into new innovative approaches to corporate productivity such as the UC and social collaboration platform discussed above.

For IT organizations a re-design is needed. UC has been sold to networking and telecom professionals while social networking and collaboration tools are sold to those who manage applications. These two groups are clearly stakeholders in the solution they eventually deploy and thus need to work together. Here too the economic downturn has a positive effect in that many of the past organizational barriers have fallen as IT is focused on operational cost reduction and project delivery.

As the application and networking groups seek a new working relationship so too do IT suppliers. For example, Adobe, Citrix, HP, et al who have for the most part been absent in social networking, collaboration or UC will partner up or acquire others to engage in this new industry sector. Look for one of the above to make a huge announcement at Interop.

Just as IT organizations and suppliers re-align and position for the Web 2.0-enabled collaboration market so too will the industry venues. VoiceCon for example attracts the telecom manager, but not the networking, application, or collaboration buyer. At the same time VoiceCon was taking place so too was Web 2.0 expo. Look for a new venue to emerge that is virtual and uses the tools of social, collaboration and UC to address this new market.

UC as a standalone desktop application has limited value. IT and business leaders should focus on collaboration platforms that are Web 2.0-based, and incorporate social media and UC as the path toward greater use experience and productivity.

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By Zeus Kerravala, Yankee Group

The communications industry has touted Voice Over IP (VoIP) and unified communications (UC) as technologies that can transform the way workers collaborate and raise the bar on workers’ productivity. However, despite much industry hype, the majority of UC applications deployed revolves around basic conferencing services and unified messaging. More strategic UC applications, such as presence and mobile integration, remain near the bottom of the list of already-deployed UC applications. This raises the question: If UC has so much corporate value, why has technology adoption struggled?

The answer lies in the underlying architecture used to support UC. To meet the needs of today’s work force and support many of today’s business challenges, a new architecture for communications is required. This report defines UC and the business needs that drive UC, raise awareness of the challenges associated with UC deployment, and then defines what a new architecture should look like. Finally, it will provide the reader with insight into how to choose a solutions vendor and pursue the next steps in UC deployment.

Learn about UC architecture by downloading this white paper.

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Kerravala and Blanco record a video on Avaya’s new Aura™ product. The video provides a good overview and assessment at the end. Links to additional Aura™ information are provided.

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Avaya has launched a new architecture for Unified Communications (UC) with its new software product Avaya Aura™. This enterprise-wide SIP architecture connects users, UC devices, disparate legacy voice and IP systems plus UC applications, creating a holistic UC services delivery system. That is, a centrally managed Avaya Aura™ can disseminate common UC services to every corner of the enterprise independent of locations and multivendor systems, across all kinds of SIP endpoint. Avaya Aura™ promises to significantly reduce communications and management costs, using a single multivendor dial-plan, common user profiles and by simplifying SIP trunking, while offering federated presence and application integration software to integrate UC into enterprise applications. To understand Avaya Aura™ and what’s next for UC, Lawrence Byrd, Director of Unified Communications Architecture for Avaya, is my guest.

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By Wainhouse Research sponsored by Avaya

This white paper describes a four-step framework for moving unified communications from an ad hoc, deployment scenario, which has resulted in many of the companies interviewed having a siloed implementation, to a managed process, tying the technology to an organization’s people, processes, and business objectives.

Find out how by downloading this white paper.

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By Avaya

A guide that takes you through the latest contact center technologies, and how they can help you develop brand differentiation, elevate customer loyalty, and keep costs low — even when everyone is tightening their budgets. A must-read in today’s economic climate.

Find out how to thrive in today’s turbulent economy by downloading this white paper.

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By Avaya

Unified Communications is the convergence of real-time and non-real-time business communication applications. These applications include voice and video telephony, conferencing, collaboration, voice and video mail, instant messaging, email, calendaring and contacts. Users access these capabilities using multiple modalities including voice, data, and speech access, as well as through multiple devices – from mobile phones to PCs. Ultimately, these communications services will be embedded into a wide variety of core business processes. This executive brief first discusses the business benefits of UC, then ends with a set of recommended approaches to help companies ensure smooth and successful UC deployments that optimize application performance according to each business’s unique needs.

Find out how by downloading this white paper.

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Clearly the economic news over the past five months has been disturbing and at many times scary. So the question we ask is why invest in Unified Communications (UC) now and not wait until the recovery? The answer is straightforward, as UC not only pays for itself with a rapid payback measured in months, and at times as short as six weeks, but most importantly it reduces corporate operational cost by streamlining business processes. Steve Hardy Director Global Product and Solutions Marketing for Avaya joins me to discuss investing in UC now during a challenging macro economic climate. For any executive seeking both IT and corporate cost cutting projects, you need to listen to this podcast.

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This paper provides an overview of the business value related to the joint Unified Communications solutions offered by Avaya and Microsoft. Readers will understand the elements and steps involved in making a Unified Communications deployment decision and cover success factors. Also included is a section covering the factors IT leaders should consider when calculating a return on investment (ROI) of their Unified Communications solution.

Find out how by downloading this white paper.

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By Avaya

Unified Communications (UC) is now delivering consistently positive results through targeted implementations. Applications and benefits are documented in both User Productivity (UC-U) and Business Process (UC-B) categories. The secret of these successes is to change something in the business to eliminate communication hot spots. The secret ingredient to ensure success is the engagement of professional services to identify, design and implement the changes. This white paper describes the types of changes to look for, the professional services activities to engage, and examples of successes and returns that other companies are already achieving.

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Avaya just hired Kevin Kennedy as its new CEO. Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group and I comment on Avaya’s pick and review the recent Avaya analyst conference with an eye toward which Enterprise Communication companies will survive the downturn. Enjoy, Nick

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Avaya just hired Kevin Kennedy as its new CEO. Zeus Kerravala of The Yankee Group and I comment on Avaya’s pick and review the recent Avaya analyst conference with an eye toward which Enterprise Communication companies will survive the downturn. Enjoy, Nick

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Unified Communications (UC) suppliers have been busy extending their software to work on mobile endpoints, such as the Apple Iphone, blackberry, smartphones etc. But there has been little focus on solutions that extend UC to address in-building roaming applications. This is a huge area that has been overlooked with requirements in nearly every industry such as gaming, education, retail, financial services, transportation, etc. Most business and IT leaders look toward a few technologies to solve the in-building UC roaming problem including Voice Over WLAN, IP DECT, Dual Mode endpoints, reliance on the cellular network and, in the extreme, deploying their own cellular antenna to improve coverage. To sort this all out, I invited Shane Yu Director of Unified Communications Consulting at Avaya where we’ll review these options and provide guidance as to which approach may work best for your corporation. If you’re looking to extend UC to in-building nomads, then you need to listen to this podcast

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Many business thought leaders are exploring strategies to leverage their branch assets to increase revenues and improve the branch office customer experience by mitigating branch office constraints. These thought leaders are collectively thinking in terms of Branch 2.0, which from a real estate and staffing point of view is a smaller footprint but rich in information technology (IT). Branch 2.0 offers a solution to the business challenges of staff skill levels, right here, right now customer transaction requirements, broad lack of loyalty thanks to increased competition and using the large branch office footprint to up- and cross-sell customers while gaining new ones. The communications industry is driving new value in branch offices with Branch 2.0, which leverages communications and IT to remove the above branch office constraints and improve corporate performance. The combination of business and communication technology trends is creating the next generation branch office. The Branch Office 2.0 concept and its associated business value are developed in white paper available for download at http://lippisreport.com/2008/08/business-value-creation-through-branch-20/ which contains industry recommendations so that business and IT leaders may exploit it for corporate advantage. We use retail and financial services as examples, but Branch 2.0 may be applied to any branch or store facility in any geographic theater.

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By Avaya

Teleworking is on the rise—transforming the way companies do business and delivering benefits that can lead to competitive differentiation. But are organizations making as much of their telework initiatives as they could? This is a critical question as the number of teleworkers continues to grow. Unfortunately, many companies are unable to fully realize teleworking benefits as teleworking initiatives tend to be a patchwork arrangement involving multiple devices, contact points, and communications links, which negates the advantages companies are seeking. What’s needed is a way to ensure the ability of teleworkers to communicate quickly, reliably, and accurately at all times. A comprehensive, unified approach comprising products, services, and partners can answer this need—helping organizations maximize the business benefits of teleworking while reducing IT management complexity.

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by Avaya

The negative drumbeat in the financial media has been increasing in intensity over the last several quarters. The bursting of the housing market bubble and the subsequent seizing up of the credit markets in the US and across the globe have been the lead stories. The failure of Bear Sterns and the Federal Reserve and Treasury Departments brokering of shotgun mergers seems to have marked a turn away from the abyss of a total collapse of the financial markets. Yet the impact of the housing and financial market crisis seems to be spreading to other sectors of the US economy and is likely to begin affecting a wide range of businesses. In a recent Fuqua School of Management Survey of CFOs, 54% of CFOs said that the US is now in recession with another 24% of the remaining CFOs expecting a recession this year. Furthermore, this same group of CFOs expected capital spending to slow to a 3.3% rise with inflation of nearly 3% eating up this increase, with recovery not expected until late 2009. For the next 12 to 18 months, we are likely to see a tightening of capital and expense budgets with a significant impact on IT projects and staffing. This paper is intended to explore some of the implications of the emerging economic downturn and to lay out prudent IT management strategies for proactively navigating through the downturn.

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Teleworking with unified communications is now a major contributor to green initiatives. The thinking is simple, reduce the amount of cars commuting and carbon emissions will decline. On average there are 0.45 Tons of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere for every 1,000 miles driven while a typical commuter travels 7,000 miles per year. Assuming that in the US telecommuters work at home at least one day a week results is some 22.6 million Tons of CO2 that will not be emitted into the atmosphere. That’s just in the US and other countries are more aggressive in their telecommuting initiatives. But to make telecommuting realistic it needs to support multiple endpoints, communication services and all of the conveniences of enterprise communication systems including presence, directory, the corporate dial plan, etc. Combining unified communications with teleworking is delivering on this level of usefulness. Andrey Kuzyk, Senior Marketing Manager Unified Communications at Avaya joins me to discuss teleworking solutions, which helps to support a greener corporation.

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By University of Arizona

In this paper, we report research results that specifically address two aspects of inbound retail telephony. First, how successful are inbound customer calls to retailers across different retail categories? Second, what are the potential consequences to retailers of these outcomes? To
implement this investigation, we report on several series of call studies to different categories of retail chain stores, including grocery (including full-service grocery), department stores, restaurant and specialty retailers.

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By Avaya

Lowering the cost of raising the customer experience is a major imperative for most, if not all, businesses today. As a result, enterprises of all sizes are investing in multi-site contact centers to improve the customer experience and reduce operating costs while addressing redundancy and business continuity.

This paper explores how Internet Protocol (IP) can be leveraged to lower the cost of enhancing customer service via the contact center, whether H.323 or SIP. IP is a critical enabler for multi-site contact centers, providing the underlying technology that enables enterprises to cost-effectively extend their contact centers to locations anywhere around the world "” from regional satellite and branch offices to offshore outsourcers, hosted solutions and at-home agents "” and deliver consistent, high-quality service.

For companies such as ebookers.com and Delta Airlines, contact center migration from a traditional TDM-based environment to IP has had tangible benefits "” typically resulting in enhancements to contact center management, financial management and IT management. In addition to providing a look at how ebookers.com and Delta have successfully leveraged IP in their contact centers, this paper offers a checklist that can help other enterprises determine if IP is a viable solution for their contact centers. Finally, the paper offers insight into the some of the advantages that Avaya brings to the table when an enterprise is considering migrating to or expanding its use of IP in the multi-site contact center environment.

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It's a fact that the global economy has slowed, prompting contact center managers and IT leaders to explore strategies for maintaining efficiency and meeting revenue targets with fewer resources and constrained budgets. But within a contact center environment, there are many opportunities, sometimes hidden, to actually maximize efficiency and still control and possibly reduce costs. With an expert, holistic examination of operations and identification of areas of improvement, management can be proactive in identifying and implementing strategies that not only help their businesses navigate through a potential economic downturn, but accomplish business results that remain beneficial after the economy recovers. Eddie Jenkins, Vice President, Customer Service Practice for the Professional Services business at Avaya, joins me to discuss leveraging contact centers for strategic corporate value, which means increasing revenues, corporate productivity and gaining market share during down markets.

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By Hurwirtz and Associates

Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) is an important innovation in the automation of human communications within business applications. Until now, such automation has largely been confined to providing Call Center systems and to unified communications products that target the productivity of individual users by integrating the use of voice communications, instant messaging, email and other collaborative capabilities.

CEBP goes much further than this, enabling the communications and workflow aspects of a business process to be integrated with the underlying software applications that serve the business process. The importance of CEBP is in its ability to automate and manage the many ad hoc activities that are part and parcel of a business process.

In this paper we discuss CEBP from a business applications perspective, focusing on three distinct evolutionary steps for business software:

• The traditional environment of legacy business applications
• The more modern and increasingly popular Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) environment
• The newly emergent Event Driven Architecture (EDA) environment

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By Avaya

How do I keep my branches operating at peak efficiency while simultaneously ensuring that they are providing premium services and a branded customer experience? Avaya has worked with leading financial institutions around the world who have addressed this challenge by focusing on three major business imperatives:

• Redefining the role of the branch for revenue generation.
• Improving employee productivity throughout the distributed branch environment for maximized operational efficiency.
• Delivering a personalized customer experience for competitive differentiation.

This paper explores the role of Intelligent Communications as an enabler in helping banks and their branches achieve revenue growth, operational optimization and a differentiated customer experience.

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By Microsoft and Avaya

To realize the value of unified communications, most IT leaders will have to integrate new communications solutions within existing infrastructures. In doing so, business and IT leaders will want to assess the breadth of integration options and the depth of integration. Options should encompass all communications applications that can be unified: telephony, messaging, mobility, presence and conferencing. Microsoft and Avaya have leveraged their considerable individual technologies, platforms and roadmaps to create a combined vision to make real-time and non-real-time collaboration a reality for enterprises. The mantra of anytime-and-anywhere communications is now being united with "œany-way". Learn how IT leaders can now increase productivity in measurable ways by allowing:

“click-to-communicate” from familiar desktop interfaces; integration of in-house audio and Web conferencing to reduce expense and make meetings more effective; integration of e-mail, voice mail and calendars into a single client; reduction in total cost of ownership on server management; extension of functionality to mobile and remote workers;

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By Avaya

Today’s global economy coupled with business and market trends are changing the way we work. At the same time our generation is witness to a new era in communications that reduces human and system delay in business process, hastening workflow and making corporations more competitive. This paper by Avaya is the best example I have read of bringing into focus communications-enabled business processes and how business and IT leaders are exploiting them for corporate gain. The paper details excellent examples of Whirlpool, MMG Insurance, Commerce Bank, Pacific Urology, Bury Metropolitan Government Agency and Nextel.

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Retail business executives are measured on customer experience, revenue and productivity. Retail IT executives are expected to lower TCO while being integral to addressing the most pressing retail issues, that being customer brand loyalty and creating an environment which delivers an excellent experience. The communications industry is driving new value in retail stores with what I call Retail Store 2.0 (RS 2.0). RS 2.0 addresses retail executive concerns including creating brand loyalty, delivering good to excellent service, lowering TCO, simplifying communications, and delivering improved visibility, security and control of communications. Bruce Mazza, Director of Branch Solutions and Leslie Levy, Senior Manager of Retail Solutions, both from Avaya discuss value creation in retail and multi-site environments through Intelligent Store Architecture.

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By Zeus Kerravala, Yankee Group

The combination of IP networks and ubiquitous connectivity has created a world that seems much smaller today than it did in the past. As the world continues to shrink, the concept of place and time is no longer a barrier to corporate communications. Additionally, our extended enterprise continues to grow. It's not just internal employees that rely on corporate information; it is also customers, suppliers, vendors, partners and anyone else in a company's demand-through supply chain.

To truly harness the power of the extended enterprise, companies need to deploy an intelligent communications strategy that combines traditional communications and collaboration tools with business applications. In this white paper Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group details a Road Map to Intelligent Communications and its business value backed up with case study examples.

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Customers demand personalized and relevant brand interaction at every touch point be it on the web, call centers, online and particularly in-branch. The brand experience must flow consistently across these channels. Smart multi-channel retailers "“ especially those with traditional branch marketers like department stores, home improvement, retail banking services – even branch-delivered healthcare are realizing the value creation possible by investing in communications innovation of their core brick and mortar investments. This alignment of the customer experience across channels ensures consistently good customer interaction, increased productivity and ultimately – brand loyalty and increased revenues. Avaya's Craig Wilson, Principle Business Communications consultant and Bruce Mazza, Intelligent Branch Solutions Manager join me to discuss discuss value creation within Branch Offices though intelligent communication solutions.

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Many business thought leaders in financial services and retail are exploring how best to leverage their branch assets to up and cross sell customers while improving the branch office experience. These thought leaders are collectively thinking in terms of Intelligent Branch solutons , which from a real estate and staffing point of view is a smaller footprint but rich in IT.

Bruce Mazza , Director of Branch Solutions and Tony Kleckner Practice Leader for Financial Services both of Avaya join me to discuss what I call Branch 2.0 and how it addresses and solves the main concerns of retail and banking executives.

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By Avaya

Avaya explores the retail banking trends and best practices in interactive digital merchandising with Charles Ansley, CEO of Symon Communications. With thousands of installations worldwide and more than two-thirds of the Fortune 100 as valued clients, Symon Communications has set the standard in digital signage and real-time data display solutions for more than 25 years. Symon Communications is a long-standing Avaya Platinum DeveloperConnection partner.

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By Avaya

Have you ever wondered why the sound quality on your phone seemed so poor after listening to your iPod? The reason? Limited bandwidth thanks to 20th century compromises between cost and quality resulting in narrowband audio. Today’s network infrastructure is not limited to these old constraints and much higher audio bandwidth is available. This paper explores the possibilities for better sound quality within IP telephony through the introduction of Wideband Audio technology and the business implications for improved productivity that the new wave of sound can offer. It will also explore how Avaya, one of the leaders in IP Telephony, has chosen to exploit the productivity potential for Wideband Audio in its new line of telephones. With all the time spent on communications in a typical day, improving audio quality makes for an improved work experience.

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By Avaya

The communications industry has changed more over the past five years than in its 100-year history. With all this change to converged networks and IP telephony the doorway to increased communications functionality, i.e. the telephone and its user interface, has not generally been viewed as a critical factor. That emphasis is about to change. The origins of the change are based upon a growing realization that the productivity increases that had been expected with the conversion to new IP telephony systems have not been fully realized.

This paper will explore the importance of the telephone user interface and the integration of the interface into telephone design in achieving full productivity potential inherent in IP telephony. It will address the challenges faced by users with conventional telephony interfaces in accessing advanced telephony features and the productivity drag that has occurred. The paper will also discuss some recent research findings that underscore the negative impact of interface complexity. It will explore the potential possible for enhanced productivity with a re-thinking of the user experience designed to achieve greater simplicity and confidence in advanced feature use. Finally, the paper will explore how Avaya has stepped up to the productivity lag challenge with the introduction of new phone designs and interface paradigms.

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By Avaya

With four regional campuses and a presence in almost every county in Virginia, Marshall University serves an estimated 16,000 students annually. Marshall University competes to attract the best and the brightest students, it also is striving to manage its costs by creating a scaleable communications infrastructure to bridge its growth into the future. Communications technology is also critical to providing the campus security and emergency preparedness that a 21st Century Marshall University demands. Arnold Miller, assistant vice president of information technology, explains that attracting the best students with innovative courses that are delivered online as well as in classrooms is only part of the equation. Marshall needs to ensure that its telecommunications and infrastructure methodology “is as up to date as its course structure too.” In this white paper, Marshall University demonstrates how it lowered cost, increased services and tied communications tightly into strategic university initiatives.

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By Insignia for Siemens Communications

Unified Communications (UC) is a relatively new technology solution category with a lot of different definitions. This research summary describes several categories of latent cost that are unnecessarily borne by businesses of every industry and size each year. Insignia Research, a global marketing research firm headquartered in Toronto, set out to objectively and comprehensively measure the nature and impact of communications friction, latency and overload — based on the real-world experience of those who know best — knowledge workers. The study clearly identifies, prioritizes, validates and quantifies the pain, frustration and costs (both monetary and customer satisfaction) that is endured in the typical organization today.

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By Mirage Networks

IP telephony imposes specific requirements on Network Access Control solutions. IT leaders who have or are planning to deploy IP telephony should ensure that the requirements to support and protect the voice environment are included in their search for a strategic NAC vendor. They should seek products from those available today that protect IP telephony and data infrastructure equally, and allow traffic to pass without added latency.

This paper identifies three main challenges posed by IP telephony and details how the Mirage NAC solutions resolve the problems. The paper concludes that NAC vendors should leverage their visibility model to provide additional value to enterprises with IP telephony environments in play. In conjunction with Avaya’s DevConnect program, Mirage Networks engineered and tested a set of IP telephony policies designed to provide base level protection for any IP telephony environment. These policies are available out of the box to any Mirage customer, and provide a valuable starting point to truly securing enterprise voice-over environments.

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By Quintum Technologies, Inc.

VoIP can offer significant telecom cost savings, the convenience of managing one network instead of two, simplified provisioning of services to remote locations, and the ability to deploy a new generation of converged applications. But it can also create all kinds of problems for IT project teams, especially as they extend VoIP to remote offices. Quintum’s Tenor switching solutions prevent these problems simply and economically, and enable businesses to reap maximum returns on their convergence investments and avoid the hassles that have plagued enterprise VoIP roll-outs.

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By SyncVoice Communications, Inc.

Establishing a plan to transition voice communications to the data network is a complex process with many uncertainties. To ensure a successful transition to IP telephony, businesses are turning to products that analyze the current voice communication environment and the readiness of the data network to support real-time voice applications. Beyond simple data gathering and reporting, analytics identify and present useful information to aid in the decision making process. This paper will examine some of the challenges businesses face when planning their transition to IP telephony and will reveal the many advantages of using analytics before, during and after the convergence process.

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By Avaya Global Services

As business communications technology becomes increasingly sophisticated and complex, the challenges – and benefits – of ensuring a tight linkage between investments and strategic business imperatives have never been greater.

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Nick Lippis will be delivering a keynote presentation at the Avaya DevConnect Developer conference taking place on November 27th and 28th. The conference is open to all developers including corporate IT staff and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs).

Day 1 of the conference will be held at the Sheraton Eatontown Hotel, Eatontown, New Jersey.

Day 2 of the conference will be held at Avaya Labs, in Lincroft, New Jersey.

Follow the link above to register.

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By Avaya

Unified Communications is the convergence of real-time and non-real-time business communication applications accessible from devices and modalities. The real significance of Unified Communications is its ability to enhance the quality of the interactive experiences across the entire enterprise. As the speed and efficiency of communications between employees, clients, partners and suppliers is enhanced, the benefits to the business show up in multiple ways — improved customer experiences, increased productivity, more frequent collaboration, reduced costs, and ultimately, competitive advantage.

Unified Communications represents an extremely powerful set of converged network applications that can directly enhance a company’s market advantage. For business leaders that are interested in taking advantage of these new applications to gain a competitive edge, this executive brief first discusses the hallmarks and business benefits of Unified Communications, then ends with a set of recommended approaches to help companies ensure smooth and successful UC deployments that optimize application performance according to the unique needs of each business.

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Ajay Kapoor, Director Enterprise Communications in the Consulting and Systems Integration group for Avaya joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss unified communications operations. Along with UC vendor selection are elements of integration and on-going solution management. Selecting a communications partner who has proven expertise and capabilities to take a holistic view of your business needs and work along side you to ensure optimal solution success will result in a competitive advantage. The key is to not just design a perfect symphony but to make sure that all of the pieces in the orchestra are playing seamlessly together and harmonizing to meet the required result.

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By Avaya

It’s well known that wireless headsets make office and mobile professionals more productive. Technology advances have made wireless headsets practical and increased product choices. A manager responsible for

the smooth functioning of a business needs to select wisely to get the full convenience, compatibility, and productivity benefits of wireless headsets. Choices of radio technology, range, user density, security, cell phone and Wi-Fi compatibility can be confusing. This paper reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the technologies available today: analog, DECTTM (Digital Enhanced Cordless Technology) and Bluetooth®.

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by Avaya

Avaya has recently introduced three wireless headset systems for professional use, and all three are built on the DECT 6.0 technology. DECT 6.0 products, which operate in the 1.9GHz radio band, offer the best audio quality and best range/battery life balance on the market. The AWH65, an evolution of the AWH55 wireless headset system, is the first headset in the US to take advantage of the newly available DECT 6.0 technology. The AWH65 was followed by two additional systems for office and contact center use: Supra Elite Wireless and AWH75. Avaya headsets complement the existing family of office products, and take audio quality to the next level with DECT 6.0

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by Avaya

Decision makers in the enterprise are increasingly faced with more choices regarding their phone systems and associated equipment. IT professionals must make critical decisions about their company’s equipment, yet have less time to evaluate various options. The purpose of this white paper is to provide specific information regarding wireless headsets to ensure the purchase of the equipment that best fits the needs of your organization.

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By Avaya

Because increased productivity means additional profit, well-managed companies are always looking for ways to improve employees´ speed and efficiency. Accenture´s Institute for Strategic Change found that top managers consider ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨improving knowledge worker productivity" to be the most critical issue of the year. For employees who spend 10 percent or more of their time on the telephone, using an Avaya headset is a quick, cost-effective way to increase productivity. An independent, carefully controlled study was commissioned to measure, objectively and quantitatively, how using headsets affects user productivity within businesses. The study results show clearly that, in a real-world business environment, using Avaya headsets can significantly increase productivity.

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David Butler, Avaya´s Director of Business Solutions and Partners in Emerging Technologies and Julien Courbe, BearingPoint´s Managing Director of Financial Services Technology join the Lippis Report podcast to discuss the emerging communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) market. CEBP promises to deliver a new kind of agile and competitive organization that can respond to business events quickly, satisfy customers more deeply and in the process create competitive barriers of entry. But how will CEBP be brought to market? Is CEBP customized for every corporation or will there be packaged or partially pre-defined and integrated solutions? Find out by listening to this podcast.

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By Avaya

Avaya and IBM have leveraged their considerable individual technologies and platforms and roadmaps to create a combined vision to make real-time and non-real-time collaboration a reality for enterprises.

Integrating the powerful communications applications from Avaya with market-leading IBM Lotus software for business applications results in unity of communications. This unity removes the barriers of time, geography, isolated applications, messaging formats, communication modes, and choice of device. Information and communications are then liberated from virtually any access limitation. The mantra of anytime-and-anywhere communications is now being united with any way.

Learn how enterprises can now increase productivity in measurable ways by allowing:

• “click-to-communicate” from familiar desktop interfaces;
• integrate in-house audio and Web conferencing to reduce expense and make meetings more effective;
• integrate e-mail, voice mail and calendars into a single client;
• reduce total cost of ownership on server management;
• extend functionality to mobile and remote workers

Also learn when and how to make integration decisions as well as the unique capabilities afforded by the powerful combination of Avaya/IBM by downloading this white paper.

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by Avaya, case study

With continuing growth and separate telephone systems across 26 locations, Grene Vision Group was unable to operate effectively as a single company. It deployed Avaya Media Servers, Avaya Media Gateways, and Avaya telephony applications in a networked IP telephony architecture to gain interoperability, mobility, scalability, and availability.

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By Avaya, case study

Providing mobility services and tools for its highly mobile workforce would not only help the company meet its business goals but would also create an in-house model for Avaya customers who were implementing mobility strategies in their own businesses. With a focus on the same mobility strategies prescribed to its customers, Avaya implemented IP Telephony-enabled mobility applications to equip its employees with wired and wireless mobility solutions, allowing them to conduct business seamlessly whether in the office, in a remote location or on the road.

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By Avaya

An account representative working from a customer site. A shipping supervisor roaming the warehouse floor. A salesperson living in airport lounges and hotel rooms. Business has seen the future, and it´s mobile. According to the Yankee Group´s December 2006 Report, Enterprises Strive to Better Connect the Mobile Workforce, in the US more than 50 million workers will be mobile in 2007. This represents 42% of the workforce ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ an increase of 31% since 2002. Many companies now spend more on wireless than wireline ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ‚Äö√Ñ√∫ in some cases, without even knowing it. And the trend towards a fully mobile workforce is expected to accelerate. Mobility provides convenience, flexibility and efficiency and is also a key component of both business continuity planning and a Unified Communications strategy.

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Nick Lippis delivers the keynote address at Avaya’s Developer Day at the TMCnet Communications Developer Conference heald on May 14th in San Jose. Late last summer the IP telephony industry accelerated its software focus with unified communications and communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) initiatives and offerings from all major suppliers. CEBP injects communications into business process to reduce human and system delay, thus speeding up workflow and increasing an organization?√ᬨ?s response to business events. CEBP promises to increase corporate productivity and change the global economy much like the Internet did. How will CEBP be brought to market? Will CEBP be implemented at the pace of a consulting engagement at a time or are there pre-packaged solutions that will speed its deployment and economic benefits. In his keynote address Nick Lippis, Publisher of the Lippis Report, shares his views and opinion on this emerging new era of increased corporate productivity through the convergence of applications and communications.

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By Avaya and Extreme Networks

Often, the first consideration for implementing a converged voice, data and video network using Internet Protocol (IP) technology is its ability to help contain operational costs and deliver significant savings through toll bypass. However, from a strategic perspective, IP telephony and its underlying converged network can act as an enabling technology, facilitating more responsive customer relations through next-generation contact centers and making employees more productive with applications like collaborative computing. The advantages of convergence are truly open-ended and the boundaries around the ways that progressive organizations exploit IP technology continue to be pushed.

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By Peter H. Gregory, CISA, CISSP

This book shows you how to protect the communications and business application assets that you rely on to run your business. Find out how Avaya Strategic Alliance partners Juniper Networks and Extreme Networks provide multi-layered, industry-leading security infrastructures : and how Avaya Security Services can help you assess, deploy, and ultimately protect your networks. As an IT manager or decision-maker, you´ll appreciate the way that these converged network security solutions protect your corporate assets and infrastructure not only from external threats but also from threats within the ever-more-mobile business environment.

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By Extreme Networks

Extreme Networks® products have the features it takes to protect an enterprise network from the inside-out. This paper discusses the advanced security features that Extreme Networks builds into its switches and routers. Extreme Networks offers a rich portfolio of network infrastructure and security devices, ranging from 1U appliances to gigantic enterprise switches. Extreme Networks products provide connectivity, and protect converged networks from security threats using network access control, network segmentation and threat mitigation.

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By Ingate Systems

This is a great paper that dives into the firewall/NAT traversal issue. The paper provides solid alternatives and solutions to the problem so that Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) sessions can be supported throughout an enterprise. For background on the firewall/NAT traversal issue: SIP-based communication does not reach users on a LAN behind firewalls and Network Address Translation (NAT) routers automatically. Firewalls are designed to prevent inbound unknown communications and NAT stops users on a LAN from being addressed. Firewalls are almost always combined with NAT and typically do not support SIP properly.

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By Juniper Networks

Geographically dispersed workers and consolidation of network resources are some of the trends fueling the growth of IP telephony in today´s enterprises. Yet to reap the benefits of IP telephony, enterprises must be able to support its unique requirements. This white paper discusses Juniper´s unique ability to provide the security, availability, and performance demanded by IP telephony applications. The white paper also looks at real-world examples of the needs of IP telephony users in the enterprise, including the headquarters-based campus worker, branch office user, tele-worker, and mobile worker.

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As wireless LANS become more prevalent in enterprises, however, legitimate concerns about security and reliable service must be addressed. Today more than ever, it is crucial that key mobile business applications are delivered securely and scaleably to employees and business partners. As a result, for the wireless, as well as for the wired LAN, IT administrators need to establish and implement security and application availability policies that facilitate these productivity-enhancing networks.

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Mark your calendar. On May 14th at 12:30 pm at the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, CA; Nick Lippis will deliver a keynote presentation on:

Communications-Enabled Business Processes: The Convergence of Applications and Communications.

Late last summer the IP telephony industry accelerated its software focus with unified communications and communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) initiatives and offerings from all major suppliers. CEBP injects communications into business process to reduce human and system delay, thus speeding up workflow and increasing an organization?Ǭ?s response to business events. CEBP promises to increase corporate productivity and change the global economy much like the Internet did. How will CEBP be brought to market? Will CEBP be implemented at the pace of a consulting engagement at a time or are there pre-packaged solutions that will speed its deployment and economic benefits. In his keynote address Nick Lippis, Publisher of the Lippis Report, shares his views and opinion on this emerging new era of increased corporate productivity through the convergence of applications and communications.

Click here for registration and logistic information.

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By Avaya

Avaya is a recognized leader in mobile enterprise communications. They have helped thousands of organizations develop strategies to successfully meet the challenges presented by a rapidly changing work environment. Avaya´s professional services organization has developed enterprise mobility strategy best practices, which are documented in this 35-page white paper and provide a wide range of options and strategies for developing a mobility strategy for your organization.

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By Avaya

The adoption of Internet Protocol-based telephony (IPT) for branch locations has increased markedly in recent years with quality and reliability better than TDM telephony. IPT offers many business benefits such as lower costs, simplified management and greater flexibility to add communications applications that enable enterprises to better serve their customers, improve the productivity of their workers and operate more efficiently.

IPT systems often lower trunking costs, reduce or eliminate conferencing costs, and lower cabling costs. This paper presents a TCO framework analyzing an IPT solution for branch offices, and provides real life examples of how companies and institutions are taking advantage of Avaya IPT solutions to lower their branch communications costs.

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Denzil Samuels, VP & GM of Global Managed Services for Avaya joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss managed communication applications. As contact centers move toward IP and unified communications plus communications-enabled business applications start to be implemented, many firms are seeking approaches to mitigate risk and manage total cost of ownership. Denzil and I discuss the expertise, tools, and knowledge to consult, design, build and manage a converged environment in a way that will deliver a competitive advantage for enterprises. We end the discussion by introducing Avaya’s services value chain approach. If you are experiencing gaps in the required skills to manage a converged network, then listen up. Enjoy Nick

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By Avaya

This white paper provides Avaya´s view, vision and investment in unified communications, communications-enabled business processes and its intelligent communications strategy. Since the mid ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ√Ä√∫90s, Avaya has been enabling customers to leverage the performance, reliability and functionality of traditional voice solutions onto pervasive IP networks providing ubiquitous communications applications, reduced costs and operational efficiencies. It is through exacting focus on reliability, security, and interoperability that Avaya has accomplished this. Avaya is leading the industry with intelligent communications where Business Communications Applications and Business Applications start to blur. Web Services and an architectural approach known as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are allowing for this integration across traditionally separate application domains. Applications and services are able to ?¬¢‚Äö√ᬮ?√¨discover" and communicate with each other more holistically across the network.

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Two events which have had the largest impact on business this century are the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and corporate scandals/bankruptcies of Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Adelphia, et al. These two events ushered in sweeping changes in disaster preparedness and corporate governance. Often preparedness plus regulatory/legislative/presidential orders are linked and managed under an umbrella term of ?¢‚Ǩ?ìcompliance" and ?¢‚Ǩ?ìbusiness continuity". Most if not all public concerns have a compliance officer who is tasked with planning, budgeting and implementing business continuity. Depending on the size of the firm, a compliance budget can be huge, measured in the tens of millions of dollars or more. In the networking industry business continuity is being addressed as network architecture attributes.

One of the first projects I did as a young engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation in the mid 1980s was to design and implement a 400-mile private fiber optic network. This was unheard of at the time; a company building its own fiber optic network. But the ROI was strong with savings of 10s of millions of dollars and unlimited bandwidth available between 90 buildings. After the project was completed my manager´s boss was concerned about an outage or disaster hitting, which would wipe out communications for an unknown about of time. I was tasked with a vulnerability identification and disaster plan. I analyzed all the fiber routes and identified single points of failure. The topology was a distributed star with approximately 30 buildings being homed to three major sites. To avoid loosing communications to one of these major sites I proposed a back up microwave system, redundant fiber and equipment, special contract clauses and cost with contractors to increase fiber restoration priority for Digital, and changing the physical topology from star to ring to assure two paths to every building. In the end, the topology was changed to a ring, a new contractor contract was signed and spare equipment and fiber was housed on Digital property. The business continuity plan cost the project a few million dollars but was justified on the cost of lost business and productivity to Digital.

Today network architects can leverage key attributes associated with their corporate networks to deliver business continuity without incurring huge cost as I had to back in the 1980s. I identify a few of these network attributes here.

Mobility

Mobility is being added to corporate networks. Smartphones and PDAs offer access to e-mail and voice communications independent of a physical building. As explored in Lippis Report Issue 72, the mobile industry is quickly moving to connect mobile end-points to enterprise IT services such as IP telephony features and functions, calendar synchronization, presence, data bases, etc. The barriers for mobile devices to access enterprise data will be eliminated. In addition to smartphones and PDAs, WLANs offer mobility to laptop and desktop users. Most important is the fact that network administrators can deploy a WLAN solution quickly, offering network access to knowledge workers in short order, assuming that internet access is available. In short, the combination of mobile service providers and WLANs offer network architects redundant network access to corporate infrastructure. In addition WLANs can be constructed quickly for operations located in an alternative facility.

IP Telephony

One of the key network attributes of IP telephony is that it´s based on IP. That is, end-point addresses are assigned by a DHCP server eliminating the time and cost associated with moves, adds and changes. So, IP telephony users can plug their soft or hard IP phone into a network jack and be presented with connectivity, which includes their preferences and settings. No operator needs to be available. This was a key network attribute for many in the financial services industry in NY during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. These firms were able to bring their network and communications operations back on-line one day after the attacks thanks to IP telephony´s mobility features.

Network Access Control

Stratifying, segmenting and controlling user access to conform to regulatory compliance requirements is a business continuity requirement. Controlling guest, contractor and user access to network segments, applications, data, work product and services with visibility into a user´s behavior and use of IT resources provides a level of flexibility network and IT departments have not had in LAN systems. Network Access Control or NAC solutions are helping compliance managers meet regulatory requirements. To comply with various regulations, organizations need a means to segment users so that only authorized users can access sensitive data and demonstrate compliance to auditors. For example, some organizations need to restrict access to credit card data to comply with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard. Hospitals and medical facilities must protect patient records to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Enterprises need the ability to restrict access to critical information based on a user´s role. In addition, to prove they have effective controls in place, organizations need a means to audit data and application usage and to document that access is indeed restricted. A NAC solution will protect sensitive data, limit the scope of an audit to a subset of user and server systems subject to the regulation and provide reports and views, which are friendly to auditors.

NACs are being funded with compliance budgets if they provide the following key services: policy-based access controls which track all user activity and traffic flows on the network; application access control at layer 7 limits whose applications a user can run on the network; documented polices that allow IT to document what control policies are in place and to whom they apply. This is a key auditing tool for demonstrating that users excluded by a policy cannot reach sensitive data. Further controls include activity reports for both users and application/services; user reports including every application, server, and resource a user touched in a given timeframe; application/service reports providing details about all users who ran a particular application or accessed a particular resource during a given period.

Network Management

Network management systems have taken on a new role beyond element management to compliance management. Compliance auditors have influence and when they tell a Board of Directors (BoD) to audit the network for compliance, the network needs to be audited. Network management systems are enforcing regulatory requirements and demonstrating compliance. For example, when configuring network change orders on a router, the approval process needs to be documented. If a router configuration change is made a corporation needs to show who did it and when.

CIOs are getting pressure from their BoD to audit their networks. If a node in the network goes down, is the network still in compliance? Does a configuration change bring the network out of compliance? Whom do you trust to do the configuration changes knowing that they have to be documented and journaled? If you have an encrypted link and a node goes down are you still encrypted?

A centralized change entitlement system can control configuration changes and provide tools to produce reports and compliance validation. New rules such as HIPAA, encryption, safety of information, encrypted medical data at point of access, etc., are required by most today. These regulatory requirements can be configured and its changes tracked at the physical layer of the network and network management can now support regulation auditors with reports in a form they understand. Some network management systems such as Cisco Works include templates for customers to configure compliance tracking for requirement such as HIPAA, PCI, etc.

WAN Bandwidth

Some of my high-end clients are able to cost justify gigabit links across the country and into Europe. Gigabit Ethernet over the wide area fundamentally changes corporate asset placement decisions as LAN-like performance is now available over the WAN. This means that shadow data centers can be placed on different continents. Business continuity can be assured for data centers and major IT resources as single geographic points of failure/disaster can be eliminated. Also placement of employees can be reviewed and analyzed too; as application performance becomes independent of geography, so too can employees.

Other important network architecture attributes are broadband access to home and remote offices, IP addressing and the role of highly available DHCP servers and Communications-Enabled Business Process. We´ll get to these topics in future Lippis Reports.

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Nick Lippis, of the Lippis Report and Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President of The Yankee Group´s Enterprise Research join the Lippis Report podcast to discuss the state of Unified Communications. This term has received a renaissance with many companies using it to describe their approach to IP telephony applications. Kerravala and Lippis define unified communications, discuss the problems it solves and its associated benefits to both end-user and corporate productivity.

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I am happy to offer our subscribers a book for the first time. Your workforce is changing, and you need to come up with a strategy for meeting their communications needs : one that reflects well on your leadership and the competitive posture of your organization. This book will provide you with solid information to create your own mobile communications strategy : or help you through the befuddlement caused by all the jargon and hype surrounding mobile technology. Regardless of where you stand, this book can provide the answers you need to make confident decisions, helping to steer your organization through this rapidly changing world of mobile communications.

To get started, download the Mobile Workforce for Dummies book by clicking the link above.

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Jorge Blanco, Avaya’s Vice President of Solutions & Software Portfolio Management joined me on the Lippis Report podcast to discuss Avaya’s Unified Communications (UC) portfolio. Many companies are using the term Unified Communication to describe different things. Some companies use UC to describe the integration of a desktop launch point for communications. Some use UC to describe communications enabled business process. Some use UC to describe both. In this podcast we talk to the man at Avaya in charge of it all and get the scoop on how Avaya defines the term and what’s included in their Unified Communications offering. This is one of our best podcasts with a fresh off the cuff discussion on UC. So listen up.

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By Avaya

This paper provides a roadmap to break down the communication silos that dominate the industry and push it toward a new service-oriented communications architecture approach. The paper defines service oriented architecture or SOA and its new role in creating communications-enabled business process. The paper addresses Session Initiation Protocol or SIP as the new industry standard linking multiple end-point devices and how SIP fits into a new framework of service-oriented communications. The paper does a great job at using sports metaphors to communicate key ideas and concepts. This is one of the best papers on SIP and SOA, download it now using the link above.

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By Avaya

Over the past three years, the discussion of IP telephony has transitioned from ?¢‚Ǩ?ìwhat is it?" and ?¢‚Ǩ?ìhow does it work?" toward ?¢‚Ǩ?ìwhy should I use it?" The purpose of this paper is to answer the more specific question, ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhy should I use VoIP and IP telephony in the contact center?" The compelling value of IP telephony is not just about creating converged networks with its toll (long-distance) call avoidance and simpler Moves, Adds, and Changes (MACs). The significant business value is in a continuum of contact center solutions that include: Voice Server Consolidation, Virtual Site Consolidation, Enterprise Resource Optimization and Contact Center Globalization.
All of these solutions cost justify themselves in stand-alone implementations. However, the true power to alter business fundamentals is unleashed when these solutions are deployed in combination across the solution continuum. Find out how by downloading this white paper.

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With heavy reliance on audio conferencing provided by external service providers, a major IT company needed to reduce costs and gain control over its enterprise audio conferencing expenses. In deploying Avaya Managed Services for Meeting Exchange, the company reduced costs and leveraged its existing IP network. This firm reduced monthly conferencing costs by US $1 million by bringing audio conferencing in-house. They deployed a standards-based audio conferencing solution based on SIP technology that resides on their IP network and is integrated into business applications. They also expanded reporting functionality and billing services with customized options and were provided functional services assistance for reservation less conference calls. See how they did this by downloading this case study.

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