Is UC actually being adopted?

[Mike England]

I have noticed a few comments about whether UC is actually being
adopted by organisations or just talked about but not really adopted.
What are the experiences of everyone with regards to current adoption
of UC related technology?

[Willem de Boer]

IDC certainly calls it a hype .......

http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/idc-voip-strong-uc-hype-cisco-gains/2008-07-
14

Willem de Boer
Management Consultant

[bple...@commfusion.com]

it's both hype and reality - there are certainly companies that have
implemented UC, but they're few and far between. Here's a piece I
wrote about some of Nortel's UC customers http://www.ucstrategies.com/detail.aspx?id=2472.
So they are out there, but there aren't too many yet.

I just did a study on UC End User Productivity and it was REALLY hard
to get vendors to cough up end users for me to speak with. But I did
speak with quite a few, and they all unanimously love their UC
capabilities and how UC makes them more productive.

On Jul 18, 9:35 am, "Willem de Boer" <wilb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> IDC certainly calls it a hype .......
>

> http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/idc-voip-strong-uc-hype-cisco-gains/2...

[Mike England]

Yes but is using the term "despite hype" fair in this case? Might IDC
have used the same term when describing a comparison of PBX Telephony
Sales Growth with IP Telephony say 10 years ago when it was IP
Telephony that was in its infancy? I am not as technically aware as
the majority of the groups members but is it true to suggest that IP
Telephony will compete against UC in a similar way to traditional pbx
competed against IP Telephony a decade ago? I could be wrong but I
don't think the competition angle is nowhere as strong.

Isn't continued growth in the adoption of IP Telephony a good thing
for the UC Vendors?

On Jul 18, 5:35 pm, "Willem de Boer" <wilb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> IDC certainly calls it a hype .......
>

> http://www.fiercevoip.com/story/idc-voip-strong-uc-hype-cisco-gains/2...

[Mike England]

The other thing to consider is the business process angle on UC which
will affect the speed of take up. Switching to IP Telephony doesn't
create any huge change for business processes within a company. The
phone sits on the desk, it rings, I pick it up. UC is different so the
takeup is bound to be slower because its has consequences for the way
people work and communicate within an organisation. However, as Blair
has stated and found in her research, those that take the plunge and
make the additional investment absolutely love it and you can bet
their employees wouldn't want to go back and that is the kind of
attitude that encourages further change.

I can invisage a slow but steady growth but in a few years time, when
a newer younger crop of business leaders moves up the corporate
ladder, I believe there will be a massive change in attitude. Thats
because those people have grown up understanding MSN Messenger and
Facebook and all those Social Web Based applications which have become
part of their daily lives.
Also when I hear about people who use UC on a daily basis talk about
it, I see the reactions of people in their presence. If they don't say
it they are all thinking "Man I wish we had that at work, how much
easier would my life be!"

At our UC show ( www.unifiedcommsexpo.com ) which we launched in
London earlier in the year , I met quite a few of the visitors. They
came from all sorts of enterprises from Public Sector to Finance to
Transportation. One comment that I heard a number of times "We are
here because we have already made an investment in our IP Telephony
Network, now we want to sweat the investment and get more from it."
The visitors felt that UC could potentially offer them something more
from their investment. Thats another reason for why I think UC will
experience great growth over the coming years.

Anyone agree/disagree??

[Sam Perchez]

Mike I agree 100%, we have deployed UC in about 20% of our clients. Some
more than others but the added benefits to the end-user is great! Just
think of going back to pressing a message button to hear your messages or
running to a fax machine again. I will never do that again now that I use
unified messaging. Unified messaging was a big part of the UC movement
before UC was cool. And it makes a difference unlike VoIP in most cases.
So I agree the end-user experience will drive the growth of UC just like
unified messaging did. And VoIP deployed responsibly will continue to grow
also.

Sam
Senior Consultant

[Seth Borus]

Gentleman,

Why don't I hear and or see Cisco's name mentioned here? (Maybe once)
As I see it and in my North East / New York experience with usually the first adapters of anything, the Banking and Insurance and Financial companies such as: Goldman, Merrill, Deutsch, WPP, Lehman, UBS, Barclay's, AXA, and many others, Cisco (The Unifier of Unified Communications) with a complete offering...along with Microsoft, and Google, are all the talk!

Avaya is strong too, and a few others in the small to medium business's, but as you have all mentioned in your consultative and methodological way, UC is and becoming the norm! IPT is a fundamental technology that has mostly and or is being deployed, UC is a hell of a lot more then that, and it's up to us the "Tangible Business Outcome"  / Services Providers to teach and educate change within their environments... I admit, I drank the cool-ade that Cisco has, (to a point) as my clients come first...In addition,I like Microsoft very much and their UC offerings, and I see Avaya (and somehow Nortel is catching up) as a major competitor, but as we all know, forgot about the product and technology, and sell the dreams of what they can accomplish! Speed, Productivity, Efficiencies...

Forget about what IDC is saying Gartner is the opposite... They both offer opinions just like us... I for one will be selling an integrated and most times Unified "Cisco Strategy" but (my opinion) they are the clear leader in the large to medium enterprises today... with Microsoft coming on like gangbusters and Google lurking in the shadows...

Regards and good selling!
Seth

UC Evangelist

[Sam Perchez]

Gents,

I’m going to throw the NEC name around a bit sorry!  In the conversation that led to this new discussion you did see Cisco and Microsoft mentioned.  But I hate to hear that NEC is being left out so much.  NEC, AT&T and Nortel are the three original communications companies; they all where a part of Western Electric when it split.  NEC is the world’s largest communications equipment provider currently ranking #1 in the world and #2 in America.  Now in the VoIP world they won’t be ranked that high, but that is only because they have hung on to their hybrid systems for so long.  NEC knows that the real value of VoIP doesn’t always mean you deploy an IP phone at every desktop it means you deploy VoIP when and were it makes sense.  And NEC has been partnering with companies like Microsoft before we knew who Cisco was.

 

Same with UC; NEC is a world leader in Unified Communications take a minute and visit the largest technology shows in America and the world and you will see NEC right there with Cisco and the other major players.  NEC helped Cisco get where they are today and they are still strong partners.  NEC was using VoIP technology before Cisco and so were Nortel and AT&T they just didn’t call it VoIP at that time.  NEC has done one thing wrong in the eyes of all that drink the Cisco cool-ade they did not give up their TDM strengths they only added their IP strengths.  NEC has had pure VoIP solutions for about 7 years but they where rarely sold do the strengths of their hybrid solutions.  But due to the work of great companies like Cisco and others; networks are getting stronger QOS and VLAN tagging are becoming normal LAN and WAN must haves and now it is easier to deploy VoIP.  Now NEC’s whole Univerge suite are VoIP solutions that add TDM when needed not the other way around.  

 

Cisco is the greatest networking company there is today and they are truly innovators; but they are not the greatest communications company.  They are good at VoIP but watch out NEC is coming for that #1 spot also!

 

Fire at will Cisco lovers!

 

Sam Perchez

Senior Consultant

 

 

 

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[Mike England]

Both Cisco and NEC are many others important players in the
marketplace but trying to get the discussion back on track, I wanted
to focus on current deployments and activity. Are there many trials
going on at the moment?

[martijn....@gmail.com]

Hi Mike,

We have it running Nortel CS and Hyper-V setupf for OCS. all works
fine except for some dualforking conbinations. It's a powerfull
combination I must say. But it took a while to set it all up.

First Exchange 2007 x64 Hyper-v on windos 2008
Then OCS hyper-v but Windows 2003 x86 (won't install in windows 2008
yet)
Nortel CS 1000 + signaling server
Exchange UM and OCS routes.

We have Nortel 8540 and 8501 + Nortel 1140.

But we are loving it and it's getting better each week.

Martijn van Halen
CTO
Payvision

[christopher...@hotmail.com]

Hi,

I agree 100% on the take up of UC. Exactly on your comment regarding
things to consider is the business process angle on UC which will
affect the speed of take up. UC is different and is a process and
journey to enhance the way people communicate. I always tend to tell
cusotmers that the road to UC is a journey and takes time. The
technology is only one aspect to think of. There are also other major
areas that need to be incorporated within an organization for a
successful UC deployment - these are Organisational Culture, user
teaining and adoption, security, ongoing support and process
integration. I have seen many UC project fail because they did not
consider the other aspects.
I also see that some customers are moving faster than others with
regard to accomodating the younger generation. I have had customers
ask for enterprise IM solutions. Other customers go one step further
in extending the solution to have virtual social groups within the
organization and sometimes these are extended over the web to reach
out to the public networks.
UC is growing and will continue to grow and its only going to get get
better. we have seen a massive demand and uptake of UC solutions.

Regards
Anesh

> At our UC show (www.unifiedcommsexpo.com) which we launched in

> London earlier in the year , I met quite a few of the visitors. They
> came from all sorts of enterprises from Public Sector to Finance to
> Transportation. One comment that I heard a number of times "We are
> here because we have already made an investment in our IP Telephony
> Network, now we want to sweat the investment and get more from it."
> The visitors felt that UC could potentially offer them something more
> from their investment. Thats another reason for why I think UC will
> experience great growth over the coming years.
>

> Anyone agree/disagree??- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Mike England]

Hi Christopher

Thanks for your comments, you mentioned that

"Other customers go one step further
in extending the solution to have virtual social groups within the
organization and sometimes these are extended over the web to reach
out to the public networks."

Can you tell us a bit more about this or give us some specific
examples.

I am also interested to discover whether UC and Web 2.0 type
technologies are being used in conjunction with each other.

Perhaps some other members have some comments on this

[Christopher Ramauthar]

Hi,
 
I have seen at a customer site the extension where for example with some add-on .net development extending the IM tool to a web interface and this is linked to interest groups. This was done using the API's available from the tool. Hopefully a generic example will do - take a company where a specific department that is customer facing and provides some service and information to customers. The department members subscribe to a specific discussion or topic group that they can create. This group is extended to included customers from the public networks as well. Although not limited to public networks, using the API's the contacts and presence can be integrated to other applications. All members of the group are notified of the current status and tracks the status. So this virtual group can be for example a UC group like this one with the additional options on IM and presence included over a web interface. This conversation can be persistent so that it is searchable as well.

Hopefully  the above explains a little more.
 
Kind Regards
 

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> Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:18:54 -0700

> Subject: Re: Is UC actually being adopted?

> From: mike.e...@imago-group.com
> To: unife...@googlegroups.com