The Lippis Report

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.