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In late March of 2009 Siemens Enterprise Communication announced a UC cloud service where it has placed its OpenScape Voice and UC applications on Amazon’s EC2 cloud infrastructure. This is significant and important as it’s the first time that a UC application is available in the cloud and offered in a SaaS model. This represents a new and fundamentally different channel to address the SMB market. The hope is that UC delivered as a SaaS offers a radically different delivery and price model and may very well be the model enterprises have been waiting for to consume UC on a massive scale. Paul McMillan Director of UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Communications is my guest as we talk about UC in the cloud and offered as a SaaS.

There are multiple business and technology trends that are now interacting and forcing IT planners to rethink their wide area network (WAN) design. The macroeconomic downturn has proven once and for all that business and its processes are global. With economic globalization and the current turbulence people are required to collaborate more closely, more frequently and across greater distances, more so than at any other point in time. At the same time IT leaders have been consolidating IT service delivery into data centers as well as consolidating their number of data centers. Data center consolidation offers large economic efficiency but places greater distance between data, applications and end-users, putting great strain on application performance. Corporate green initiatives have driven up the number of home and mobile workers to the point that 15% of traffic flows to and from mobile workers and data centers. Adding more pressure, WANs have historically been designed in a piecemeal fashion with little to no regard for delivering consistent WAN Services among sites.

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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.

By Mainstay Partners

In 2007 Siemens Enterprise Communications deployed its OpenScape UC Server at its own offices to both reap its benefits and measure costs. Siemens commissioned an internal business case analysis, which concluded that the project could cut communications costs by up to 30%, saving millions each year. In less than six months Siemens deployed OpenScape UC Server at its North American operations, linking 21 offices and connecting more than 1,900 employees, including some 500 home-based teleworkers. To quantify the benefits post deployment, Siemens asked independent advisory firm Mainstay Partners to conduct a financial assessment of the project.

This white paper contains Mainstay’s findings of $35.5m in cost savings and productivity gain. Download it now.

By Nick Lippis, Lippis Consulting

Along with a turbulent macroeconomic cycle comes business rationalization and in networking the wide area offers a unique opportunity to deliver value both in terms of operational efficiency and business initiative alignment. Advances in network-embedded, software-based WAN Services such as security, unified communications (UC) and WAN optimization are starting to deliver the same type of application experience and management tools to control application performance that was once only available over the LAN. But the wide area network has been pieced together usually site by site without a comprehensive plan. This lack of planning is most acute in branch-office-to-WAN and data center connections as geographically distributed branches are connected with inconsistent WAN Services and indigenous WAN transport. IT planners are being offered an opportunity to implement a common set of WAN Services embedded within routers such as UC, WAN optimization, security etc., between branch, headquarter and data center sites which promises to lower operational spend, align business initiatives and policy while delivering Local Area Networks (LANs) like application performance. This paper presents a strategy for common WAN Services embedded in routers connecting branch offices to data centers and larger corporate sites that speed up workflow and business process for all employees independent of geographic location.

Learn about UC architecture by downloading this white paper.

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.

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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.

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.

It’s been over a week since Cisco launched its Unified Computing System (UCS) initiative. I’ve reviewed all the presentations, documents, financial analyst research notes, twitter and Facebook chatter as well as talked to a dozen or so IT leaders and in this Lippis Report Research Note I provide my assessment. There’s so much to consider with the UCS launch, the technology, the data center value, go to market strategy, competitive responses, etc. But I have a one important observation. This is the first time in the history of IT that a networking company has entered the computing industry. My first job in 1984 was at Digital Equipment Corporation, where networking was always an accessory, or stepchild, to computing. And yes, a lot has transpired since then but the sheer fact that a networking company has grown to the size of Cisco and that it can stand up and say “Hey IBM and HP, I’m entering your core market and there’s nothing you can do about it” is a remarkable occurrence. Anyone who has spent his or her career in networking and has worked within DEC, IBM or HP networking groups knows how it feels to be tangential to corporate strategy. For this group, UCS was a moment that tipped networking technology and networking professionals to a higher level of importance and influence in the IT industry. In this Lippis Report Research Note we review UCS and Cisco’s opportunities and challenges.

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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.

By Cisco Systems

Virtualization has created a market transition in which IT departments are trying to reduce costs and increase flexibility. Despite this, IT organizations are constantly working against existing rigid, inflexible hardware platforms. As a consequence, data center administrators have had to spend significant time on manual procedures for basic tasks instead of focusing on more strategic, proactive initiatives. This document highlights crucial issues in today’s data center and introduces Cisco’s vision for resolving existing challenges and setting data center operating practices on a more scalable and sustainable path: a unified computing system.

Learn about Cisco’s Unified Computing System by downloading this white paper.

By Cisco Systems

This flash-based presentation delivers an overview of Cisco’s recently announced Unified Computing System. The presentation discusses the value of united data center technologies with the Cisco Unified Computing System. Follow the link above to see the presentation.

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.

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.