I just read a CNET News Blog, by Steve Tobak, on what he considers to be the Top 10 Technology Flops, where he has placed speech recognition in the middle of the pack, with the words “This has to be the biggest disappointment of all, especially for Star Trek fans. But here we are, still banging away on our keyboards. At least biometrics is starting to gain some traction.” My first thought was “obviously this guy hasn’t done his research”, and then maybe, “he just didn’t define the scope of where he thought speech recognition was supposed to do in 40 years.” I think I’m leaning towards the first.

It’s December. I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, plus I’m not a unified communications vendor, so I don’t have a New Year’s resolution list for how I can help further the development of unified communications. I also don’t care to blog about my UC predictions for 2008, as there are plenty of others out there who will probably do that. However, I’m capable of believing in Santa, and as one of my friend’s tells her children when they ask her about Santa - “You have to believe to receive.” So, I thought I would put together my wish list for the Twelve Days of Unified Communications, with some help from my friends in the industry. I talked to a dozen or so vendors on what they would like to see happen in UC in 2008, and whether they had any input as to how they are helping further these wishes. Not surprisingly, in many cases these wishes reflected their own ongoing initiatives or pet peeves (attributions of which I have left off for reasons of anonymity). However, for the most part they tended to have a lot of commonality in what they wish for.

On the second day of UC the industry gave to me what SMB loves,
and a clear definition of UC.

My second day of UC wish is a particular interest of mine. What SMB loves is to be the center of attention. Don’t we all enjoy that? But its my opinion that when it comes to unified communications the industry hasn’t done enough to educate small and mid-sized businesses on the impact that UC applications can have on their networks, nor have we done a good job of educating SMBs as to the possible pitfalls of blindly adding on applications without proper network assessment and planning. Then there is the issue of security. SMBs may not want vendors to muck with their data, but its not uncommon for someone selling into those businesses to have to educate them on the value of backing that data up, let alone what the impact would be on the security of that data if new applications are added that might create security holes. Therefore, wish number two is a stronger focus on the SMB market.

On the third day of UC the industry gave to me an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.

This wish is all about putting a microscopic lens or focus on the assistive technology (AT) side of “any time, any place, anywhere, through the device of choice”, or other catch phrases the industry has used over the years. I was inspired to add this as one of my wishes because of discussions with my blind friend, Karen Parsegian, who started to go blind about seven years ago, and had the lights go completely out on Christmas morning five years ago. Some Christmas present that was. Since then, she and I have had many discussions about what I am working on, with me (probably) boring her about unified communications and speech technologies. Now she is a veteran speech technology user herself, as a good proportion of her communications life revolves around having text-to-speech as her personal reading assistant, (and bar code and digital thermometer reader) and speech recognition as her phone navigation aid. Karen is adamant that “people in my business world” think about incorporating assistive technology design into their products.

On the fourth day of UC the industry gave to me
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.

Girds you say. Yes girds. It’s my fervent wish, and some others, that the voicemail market girds itself for a huge installed base churn, and what better to replace it with than new messaging as a part of unified communications? Major churn in voice messaging has already happened more than once before. The most recent big churn occurred around 2000, due in part to the infamous Y2K as companies hurried to upgrade their voicemail systems for two reasons. The most visible reason was Y2K and fear that the older systems hard-coded software wouldn’t be able to handle the change in century dates. This was pushed further by companies seeking to replace PBXs for the same reason, and typically when they choose to replace the PBX it drags voicemail along with it. The second was pure age. Voice messaging started in the early 80’s and with many releases under our belts, many of those old Audix, PhoneMail, Octel, MeridianMail, CallXpress, and other voicemail systems just needed to be replaced. We were no longer selling voicemail by the pound, and they just needed to go. Plus, new functionality, such as unified messaging, was starting to make waves, which just contributed to the movement to replace.

On the fifth day of UC the industry gave to me five phone rings
voicemail industry girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
and a clear definition of UC.

Five phone rings. What is that all about? In the unified communications world, five phones ringing represents the next generation of find-me-follow-me. But in this world, its not so much about five phones ringing in a row trying to track you down, or a chorus of all five devices going off at the same time, its about access and choice and mobility.

On the sixth day of UC the industry gave to me applications plug ‘n playing,
five phone rings
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
and a clear definition of UC.

The true value of UC is in integration. UC is about integration of business applications and communications within the office and in mobility applications. In unified communications, it shouldn’t matter what the client is, as long as you can get to the information and applications that you want and need. Further, just like the proverbial duck sitting calmly on the water and paddling furiously underneath, that integration all happens underneath and users shouldn’t know about it. My day six wish is for UC applications to be as plug and play as email, in that we all have our own favorite email client, but we don’t care what our friends and colleagues have as long as when we hit send, they get the message. Of course, it would be nice if they all sent and received messages the same way so that everyone gets embedded pictures and you don’t have to click through eight forwarded envelopes to get to the joke (my own personal rant about my friends use of AOL).

On the seventh day of UC the industry gave to me overuse of power dimming,
applications plug ‘n playing,
five phone rings,
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
and a clear definition of UC.

This is all about going green. How could anyone that reads a paper or goes onto the Internet not see the issue of green initiatives as a hot topic? My day seven wish is the second, along with assistive technology, that is about companies doing more to promote what they have or are doing. Day seven is that companies talk more about their green initiatives because we don’t hear enough about them. If we don’t hear about it, then customers don’t hear about it, and in order to go green customers need to be able to make intelligent choices when choosing vendors. In fact, Siemens recently held a webinar, entitled “The Green Contact Center – Making “Green” Work for you”. In it they held a poll with the question “Do you believe that a significant number of customers would be positively inclined to buy from vendors who publicly demonstrate a commitment to the Green initiatives?” Approximately 95% responded yes. Therefore, day seven is a wish to hear about green.

On the eighth day of UC the industry gave to me eight CFOs bilking,
overuse of power dimming,
applications plug ‘n playing,
five phone rings,
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.

OK, so I really don’t want to see eight CFO’s bilking investors, although we really haven’t had much of a good financial scandal to talk about since the last days of Lernout & Hauspie. But you try finding anything in unified communications that rhymes with milking. It’s really hard, and I said up front that you had to forgive me for my poetic license in rhyming with the original 12 days song.

On the ninth day of UC the industry gave to me interface enhancing,
eight CFOs bilking,
overuse of power dimming,
applications plug ‘n playing,
five phone rings,
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.

It’s all about the user experience, and what is closer to the user than the application or device user interface. In UC one of the sexier technologies used in user interface design is speech recognition. As one of my primary research focal points I’m a big fan. In fact, I finally caved and bought a Blackberry Pearl this year just for voice-activated dialing (VAD) (I know. I’m a little slow on these things sometimes. It’s like the shoemaker not having any shoes). So, when one of the vendors that I talked to about unified communications wishes, wished for better speech recognition as an interface in mobile devices I jumped on it. Therefore, wish number nine is that ASR and UC vendors continue to overcome reliability issues for ASR used in unified communications applications, make them even simpler, and find even more useful ways to incorporate both ASR and TTS into UC application design.

On the tenth day of UC the industry gave to me no more pagers beeping,
interface enhancing,
eight CFOs bilking,
overuse of power dimming,
applications plug ‘n playing,
five phone rings,
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.

My day 10 wish for the twelve days of unified communications is short and sweet. On day ten I wish that we no longer have much need for pagers beeping because UC works and companies are buying it. If this were the case, then pagers would be superfluous because people trying to contact, and business events that would require a notification be sent to you would know where you were and if you were available, and would know the best way to get a hold of you. You in turn, could control when and how you were reached – one of the key goals of UC. Blissfully, the rest of us wouldn’t hear “If you would like to page this person, press 5” anymore, or be subjected to an overhead page. Sigh.

On the Eleventh day of UC the industry gave to me, the value of video, not hyping,
no more pagers beeping,
interface enhancing
CFOs bilking,
overuse of power dimming,
applications plug ‘n playing
five phone rings
the voicemail market girds
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.

Its not that we don’t have video out there; we sure do and it’s a mind boggling amount. At Cisco’s C-Scape I believe the figure that was mentioned was something like 250 billion videos were produced in 2007. That is mind boggling. That includes videos incorporated into Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube, and social networking sites etc. Some estimates have Internet video increasing four fold by 2011. However, my day eleven wish is certainly not for that number to increase, although it will undoubtedly hit some mind numbing figure by the end of 2008. No, I’m wishing for businesses to “get” the value of video too, not just consumers, and for vendors to help them “get it” without the hype.

On the Twelfth day of UC the industry gave to me, figuring out the plumbing,
the value of video, not hyping,
no more pagers beeping,
interface enhancing,
CFOs bilking,
overuse of power dimming,
applications plug ‘n playing,
five phone rings,
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.

Darn. It’s Christmas and I woke up this morning and there was no Cisco TelePresence system under the tree. Sigh. I didn’t have any place to put it anyway, so it’s on to the twelfth day of unified communications.