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November 15th, 2010
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:
July 13th, 2010
In the Lippis Report Research Note 150, we discussed the new industry group called Unified Communications Interoperability Forum or UNIF and compared it to other industry consortium charted to deliver interoperable solutions. While interoperability is sorely needed in the UC industry, it looks like Microsoft killed its changes of broad industry success before it started. What I hear from both UCIF members and non-members is that UCIF is controlled by Microsoft, and thus, lacks a large cross section of industry players as well as major UC providers. With its current structure, UCIF will make limited headway on its charter. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we review UCIF and its’ opportunities.
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June 14th, 2010
In mid May of this year HP, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Logitech / LifeSize and Polycom established a forum to develop a set of interoperability test methodologies and certification programs along with specifications and guidelines that enable mixed vendor Unified Communications UC solutions to work with each other. In short, the UC Interoperability Forum or UCIF is trying to define what it means for multi-vendor UC implementations to interoperate. Since its establishment, membership has grown by thirteen vendors, but blaringly obvious is the omission of Cisco, Avaya, Mitel, ShoreTel and other major UC providers. This begs the question of motivation. Is the UCIF interested in interoperability or changing the market landscape to gain advantage on the established leaders? In this Lippis Report Research Note we explore this question.
June 14th, 2010
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.
May 31st, 2010
In Lippis Report 148 we reviewed the major drivers and trends that are propelling the high-end data center Ethernet switch market to well over a $1B annual run rate. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we review the major suppliers of these switches. We review Cisco, Arista Networks Force10 Networks, BLADE Network Technologies, HP/3Com/H3C, Voltaire, Avaya, Brocade, and Juniper and identify their unique positions and offerings to participants in the burgeoning market. Our focus is the high-end, high density 10GbE switches that are enabling virtualized cloud computing data centers thanks to Terabits per second of back plane switching capacity, billions of packets per second of layer 2/3 forwarding, hundreds of 10GbE port connectivity per chassis, a new two-tier architecture, microsecond level latency, low power consumption, non-stop operation and software hooks that eliminate network barriers to large scale server virtualization. The engineering in these switches should be celebrated, as they represent the state-of-the-art in computer and network design. In short, they represent the fundamental building block of a new generation of IT delivery based upon cloud computing and virtualization. This Research Note is a must read for any IT executive designing a data center.
After finishing this Research Note, it became evident that this market needs a set of industry neural 10GbE switch test to independently verify vendor claims. We hope to make such a contribution this Fall.
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May 31st, 2010
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.
May 17th, 2010
During last week’s Cisco Q3 FY10 quarterly financial conference call, John Chambers, Cisco’s CEO, said something that impressed and shocked me. The company has been quiet about the growth rates for its Nexus line of data center switches until this call. What shocked me was that the Nexus 7000 is now on an annualized run rate of $1B, yes that’s Billion with a B! I remember being interviewed by John Markoff of the NY Times in Jan ’08 about the Cisco’s Nexus and Juniper’s yet to be announced Ethernet switches. In just 27 short months, the Nexus product line including the 7000, 5000 and 2000 represents a $1.4 B run rate of revenue to Cisco. Another insight gained from this ramp up is that the data center networking trends that we’ve discussed here in various Lippis Report Research Notes are powerful demand drivers for Cisco and other companies participating in this lucrative emerging market and its just starting! Companies such as Arista Networks, Force10 Networks, Blade Network Technologies, HP/3Com/H3C, Voltaire, Avaya, Brocade, Juniper, et al, have unique positions and offerings to participants in the burgeoning market. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we review the mega trends driving high market growth. We save a product review of each of the suppliers for our next Lippis Report Research Note.
May 17th, 2010
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.
May 3rd, 2010
This past Interop in Las Vegas was one of the best I have attended, since even before the economy took a noise dive in 2008. The tone and level of excitement of the industry’s growth potential was refreshingly up beat from the hundreds of IT and vendor executives I talked with. While the size of Interop is a small fraction of what it was in the late 1990s, (70k attendees with over 600 exhibitors to ~ 15K attendees with ~ 200 exhibitors) it still provides a pulse of the networking industry. In fact, Interop has come full circle, back to being a networking event even though it has added other topics. You have to give Dan Lynch credit for creating such a long lasting venue for our industry. Congratulations to Cisco, Arista Networks, HP/3Com, Mallonx for winning best of show in their respective categories and for Arista for winning Best of Interop. In this Lippis Report Research Note I provide the key industry themes that were evident at Interop this year.
May 3rd, 2010
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.
April 19th, 2010
During a podcast with Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group, we came to the conclusion that the unified communications market is in a funk and the only way out is for suppliers to adhere to industry standards that allow interoperability. To demonstrate this achievement, UC providers would be well advised to participate in industry wide interoperability testing. In this Lippis Report, we discuss the issues that are holding back UC and video conferencing adoption.
April 19th, 2010
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.
April 18th, 2010
This is the question that Zeus Kerravala, SVP of the Yankee Group and I address in the Lippis Report podcast. Here’s a hint, lack of standards and the vendor community’s lack of interest of embracing the ones we have. Post your ideas on twitter with the following hash mark #UCINTEROP.
April 5th, 2010
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.
