The Lippis Report

February 14th, 2012

The Unified Communications market has twisted and turned over the past eighteen months, thanks to mobile and cloud computing plus the huge uptick in web plus video collaboration. This market has recovered from the 2009/2010 downturn with a gusto as providers expand UC to include collaboration and mobile platforms while targeting the red hot Small- to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) market that consist of some seven million employees. With only a third of SMEs having a communication strategy plus less than a quarter with a deployed UC solution, the SME market is huge and wide open. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we take a look at Avaya’s and Siemens’ new UC offering for the SME market from a traditional voice vendor perspective and explore non-traditional SME offerings from Apple, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Microsoft, et al.

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April 11th, 2011

The UC market is rapidly moving toward a cloud service for the small to medium business (SMB) market, thanks to Siemens Enterprise Communications and others offering powerful communications and office productivity software delivered as a service. Cloud services offer the SMB market with some of the same IT services that large enterprises enjoy, but without the complexity and cost. For example, Siemens has been working with Google to offer its OpenScape Cloud Service that integrates features into Google applications, like click to call/conference, etc. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, about the SMB market and how its OpenScape Cloud Services is offering new, innovative solutions that allows these firms to be more competitive and agile.

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.

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June 14th, 2010

The Unified Communications (UC) market is changing significantly in terms of how solutions are deployed, services are packaged and systems procured. Siemens addressed all of these areas in one fell swoop with the recently released OpenScape UC Server 2010. Siemens announced new licensing options for endpoints and integrated UC endpoint services in packaged solutions including social media plug-ins such as Twitter. Kathy Heilmann, Director, Large Enterprise Voice and UC Solutions Marketing at Siemens Enterprise Communications joined me to talk about the new rules of UC procurement and its value to IT business leaders.

May 31st, 2010

By Aberdeen Group

With so many potential points of contact: desk phones, soft phones, voice messaging, e-mail, video conferencing, texting, social media, mobile devices etc., how can we ever actually be reached within a reasonable timeframe? How does UC transform an organization’s communications infrastructure, improve efficiency, optimize work processes, and provide for business continuity and compliance? To find out, in February and March 2010, Aberdeen Group surveyed 184 organizations in more then 28 countries around the world. This paper is the result of that effort.

Find out what Aberdeen learned by downloading this whitepaper.

May 31st, 2010

In their recently released OpenScape UC Server 2010, Siemens has incorporated application virtualization allowing UC applications such as OpenScape Voice, OpenScape Branch, OpenScape Media Server etc., to load on standard compute hardware avoiding the installation, configuration and maintenance of running multiple complex software stacks, operating systems and applications. Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, joins me to talk about what virtualization in a UC environment delivers to IT business leaders as we dive into the details of UC Server 2010.
Find out by listening to this podcast.

May 17th, 2010

By Siemens Enterprise Communications

This White Paper provides a comprehensive overview of the Virtualization plans for the Siemens Enterprise Communications OpenScape UC Server 2010 and for OpenScape UC Suite. Virtualization takes yet another step in our evolution to a pure software architecture and to match current and emerging strategies in the IT industry.
Siemens Enterprise continues to pursue Open Solutions for our customers and is using Open Virtualization Format  (OVF) and Virtual-Appliance software-solution approach for platform-independent virtualization of all the products, and to deliver on our message of Open Communications. Siemens Enterprise continues to lead the evolution of real-time UC-based communications by delivering innovative and customer-centric solutions with measurable financial benefits.

Find out how by downloading this Siemens whitepaper.

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.

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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.

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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.