tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1 2008-07-16T21:13:46Z Movable Type 3.35 tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.61 2008-07-16T21:09:32Z 2008-07-16T21:13:46Z

I woke up to a press release on Convergys acquiring Intervoice. I have to say that I’m always somewhat surprised about these things, but not really, and when I look back on Intervoice for the past year the timing made...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Convergys acquiring Intervoice. I have to say that I’m always somewhat surprised about these things, but not really, and when I look back on Intervoice for the past year the timing made great sense. There had been rumors of a small shedding of people over the last few months, but a lot of companies are doing that. That wasn’t a huge clue. The biggest change, that would make them an attractive acquisition target, but not a predictor of being acquired, was that they finally completed the roadmap they had set out do when they acquired Edify. That is, they finished merging the two product lines into a single software-only platform of solutions. ]]> Whereas I always hate to see a company that I have known and worked with for so long be acquired, casting all sentiment aside, what do I like about this merger? It gives Convergys a strong multi-channel customer service platform for both CPE and service provider, and allows them to provide customers with a customer service solution that smoothly blends self service and live agent assistance. Convergys has a rich history of hosted offerings, this also gives them large and healthy installed base of CPE customers that are attuned to the Intervoice story of having choices of how to deploy customer service. This means that the Convergys base will now have premise-based as an option too. Intervoice’s service provider product set, including outbound notification services, melds in nicely with Convergys’s service provider offerings. This also gives Intervoice customers access to some pretty good Convergys products too, such as their rating, charging and billing solutions. Both companies are very service oriented and both understand the value of properly adding speech technologies to customer service solutions. In fact, both companies were earlier into the market with providing professional services for speech applications than many vendors in the market. Lastly, with a $2 bump per share, this marriage certainly should make shareholders happy too. tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.60 2008-07-10T13:50:16Z 2008-07-10T14:21:59Z

So summer is not completely as boring as I wrote in my Dog Days of Summer post this week. There is activity in the speech technologies bullpen. Late last month, newcomer, Vlingo, announced a new product, Vlingo for Blackberry, which...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Vlingo, announced a new product, Vlingo for Blackberry, which will allow users to create and send e-mails and text-messages, search the Web, work with mobile applications such as dialing their phones, look up contacts or work with their calendars - all using unconstrained speech. This speech applications works on all Blackberry devices, which I was happy about as I have a Blackberry Pearl and applications such as FaceBook, are sorely lacking in functionality on the smaller Pearl keyboard. I’m going to try out Vlingo for Blackberry. Hey, if I’m lucky they will have voice-enabled FaceBook so I can carry my social network addiction on the road. Something like Vlingo would be spot on perfect for the Blackberry Pearl, as it has a small keyboard that has dual letters for each key. FaceBook for Blackberry has a password screen that doesn’t show you the letter that you have typed in the password fields, for security reasons. The problem with this is that with the error correcting mode for typing on the Blackberry, if you can’t see your password, you have no idea what letter Blackberry has put into the password field as it tries to guess at the correct spelling of a word. It’s impossible to log on. ]]> Google announced last week that Blackberry Pearl users will now be able to use voice search on Google Maps. More cool stuff for me to try out. However, Blackberry users weren’t the only ones to benefit from speech technologies this month as Fonix released Fonix iSpeak(TM) for the Apple iPhone(TM) 3G. iSpeak allows users to use natural language commands to do things such as dial by name or number, or navigate through their music libraries to find and play a song. iSpeak stands to solve a problem with the iPhone, which is that is has no built in voice-activated dialing of its own (I haven’t seen the new iPhone, but the press says its really true, so shame on you Apple). In a different area of speech, IBM announced that they have developed audio masking technology, which uses speech analytics to identify and mask sensitive information in contact center audio recordings, such as credit card numbers, so that only authorized people can gain access to the information. In a significant adjunct function, the application uses metadata to also mask sensitive information that is captured in recordings of call center agent screens, which can be tied to contact center audio recordings. Recording and analytics are used in the contact center for compliance, quality monitoring, and agent training, and because of the breadth of uses of the data, there are multiple points at which sensitive data can be overheard or seen. I think this is an outstanding use of speech analytics as it helps eliminate a problem that is a by product of being able to capture the data in the first place. This new technology was developed in IBM’s India Research Laboratory. Finally, this morning Verizon Business announced that they are offering customers an additional deployment choice for their speech services using Verizon’s Open Hosted Speech Services (OHSS). Prior to now Verizon Business customers have been offered speech-enabled IVR applications on a hosted basis only with Verizon building and maintaining the application. But now customers can chose full hosting, they can build and maintain their own CPE version, but still use the Verizon speech platform and network for other services, or they can do a combination. Verizon Business customers can also choose to maintain just select parts of an application and have Verizon Business take care of others, which is quite handy. This new service is further validation of the customer choice that I frequently mention on being able to choose hosted, partially hosted, or on-premise depending upon need. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.59 2008-07-07T17:32:30Z 2008-07-07T17:53:15Z

It’s the dog days of summer in telecom. Just what are the dog days? According to Wikipedia “The phrase Dog Days or "the dog days of summer", refers to the hottest, most sultry days of summer. They are a phenomenon...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com It’s the dog days of summer in telecom. Just what are the dog days? According to Wikipedia “The phrase Dog Days or "the dog days of summer", refers to the hottest, most sultry days of summer. They are a phenomenon of the northern hemisphere that usually falls between July and early September but the actual dates vary greatly from region to region, depending on latitude and climate. Dog Days can also define a time period or event that is very hot or stagnant.” It’s no only hot in here, since I dropped the kids off at camp and came home to my closed up house and an air conditioner that wasn’t working – and tomorrow is when the heat wave is supposed to start, it’s also that stagnant time of year in telecom. SpeechTek 2008/destinationCRM in August), and everyone is on vacation. This is good for catching up, but boring for the blogosphere. However, for the most part it’s pretty quiet. While I was pondering this I was also reminded that this whole year has been rather quiet on two other fronts too – IPOs and acquisitions. The first because of the economy, as I read last week that June was the first month in something like 30 years that there hasn’t been an IPO. The second I can only guess is in part the economy and in part less attractive acquisition targets compared to earlier years. Although I keep a list of acquisitions going back years, but I certainly don’t have all of them on. So looking at that list, the only acquisitions this year that I have noted in UC/contact center/speech technology, and related areas this year have been – Oracle buying BEA Systems in January, Nuance acquiring eScription in April, FrontRange Solutions acquiring Centennial Software in April, Syntellect acquiring Fluency Voice in June, and OnMobile acquiring Telisma last week. That is peanuts compared to previous years. For example, in 2007 when money was still flowing, we had 34 acquisitions that I recorded for the year. Don’t think I’m complaining. I relish the opportunity to catch up and the breather before fall hits and kids go back to school and the industry starts dancing again. It was just an observation. Oh, and there are only 52 days until football season too. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.58 2008-06-23T21:31:04Z 2008-06-23T21:41:58Z

Siemens Enterprise held their global analyst event last week in beautiful Vienna, Austria, and in addition to wanting to get an update on the business, possibly every analyst in attendance was eager to find out if Siemens was going to...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Siemens Enterprise held their global analyst event last week in beautiful Vienna, Austria, and in addition to wanting to get an update on the business, possibly every analyst in attendance was eager to find out if Siemens was going to announce which company would take over the enterprise business. However, as Brian Riggs of Current Analysis pointed out in his ‘Siemens Enterprise: June Wedding Postponed’ (loved that title) blog on NoJitter, there was no long awaited news on who the lucky partner would be for Siemens – yet. However, that didn’t stop many analysts at the event from trying to squeeze shreds of info out of Siemens execs as to who it might be, yet they remained strong and didn’t and couldn’t say. ]]> What was clear from the event is that the two years since Siemens announced that it was looking for a buyer has been good for the enterprise division. Rather than paralyzing them, it appears to have catalyzed them and they have revamped, rewritten, and reworked, and improved their product lines and business structure, divested themselves of pieces of the business that they didn’t need, and focused their R&D on UC solutions. During this time Siemens has made huge strides in transforming their business to a software and services business. In essence, to take Brian’s analogy a step further, if Siemens Enterprise were a person looking for a marriage partner, they are now down to their “fighting weight”. During the event we heard some pretty nice claims including that they believe that they have the world’s first truly integrated UC solution based on open standards. Their OpenScape comprehensive software suite is based on SOA, and they claim it works on any client, IT or telephony infrastructure, and has been deployed on many platforms including Cisco, Nortel, NEC, Avaya and IBM. We also heard about Siemens OpenScale Services, which help customers design, implement and support UC solutions from multiple vendors. This global offering allows customers to integrate UC solutions whether or not they are Siemens products, which is music to my ears as it is open recognition that customers rarely have products from just one vendor. Also, along the lines of global offerings, Siemens was quick to point out that they believe that they are the only vendor in the UC space that has direct sales presence on a global scale. Yet they were also clear in explaining that partners, domestically or globally, are incredibly important to them as well, and they have recently streamlined and simplified their partner program globally. Finally, I was happy to note that Siemens is really paying attention to the SMB market with the announcement recently of their SMB software product, OpenOffice UC appliance, which provides SMBs with UC and contact center functionality in a simple appliance. We are still waiting to find out who the lucky bride or groom will be, but at least I am much more comfortable knowing that Siemens is ready. tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.57 2008-06-12T02:24:38Z 2008-06-12T02:36:11Z

Last week when Blair Pleasant and I had finished our UC end user benefits study we did a webinar on the findings that was sponsored by Genesys and CMP. Out of that we had a number of follow up questions...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Blair Pleasant and I had finished our UC end user benefits study we did a webinar on the findings that was sponsored by Genesys and CMP. Out of that we had a number of follow up questions from the audience, including quite a few from our colleague Art Rosenberg, who posted a review of the study on UC Strategies.com.]]> Sagem-Interstar, a provider of boardless IP-fax, about the fax industry. Users didn’t talk specifically about fax. Nor did we single out fax to ask a particular question about. The survey was quite long to begin with, so we did our best to encompass everything, and as such, many of the questions were open ended to elicit user’s views on the benefits of UC, which is one of the reasons UM and fax weren’t specifically mentioned. On the other hand, we spent thirty minutes to an hour with each user, getting a pretty good picture of which features they use and why, which were of the most benefit to them, which had helped them save time and why, and how had UC changed the way that they work. So you would think that UM and fax would be specifically talked about, if users felt they were game changing, but they weren’t. In retrospect, I suppose we should have thought to call them out, but our own familiarity with UM and fax probably also got in our way as we clamored to hear the effects of UC as a whole. This leads Blair and me to an interesting set of questions we’d like to go back and ask our respondents, as well as do some more research on those people that are implementing UC on an end user level. A few questions that come to mind, but we certainly haven’t fleshed out, are: • Are UM and fax so ubiquitous that people don’t think about them as part of UC because they aren’t new and therefore play in the background? • How are new users being trained on UC, and how are UC features being presented? Are UM and fax being talked about during training? • Every UC user that we contacted talked about voice messaging and IM because they are broadly used, but many other features, such as click to call were new to them. Yet they clearly understood these new features to be part of UC. Do they feel that UM and fax also are? Blair and I will both be gone next week, but the week after, the questioning begins anew, so if you have any questions along these lines, send them on over. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.56 2008-05-30T19:49:05Z 2008-05-30T19:51:51Z

In April, Blair Pleasant and I conducted a UC end user productivity study, under the UCStrategies.com brand. The study focuses on how end users use UC and how it impacts their productivity. Rather than targeting the IT managers who are...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com UCStrategies.com brand. The study focuses on how end users use UC and how it impacts their productivity. Rather than targeting the IT managers who are responsible for implementing and running the UC systems and asking them what they felt the impacts of UC were, we surveyed and interviewed the real end users who use UC to find out how, or even if, UC is helping them be more productive and effective in their day-to-day jobs. The study focused on four different job types – executive/management, operations (including engineering and IT), sales and marketing, and back office operations, particularly human resources. Go to my home page to click on the download. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.55 2008-05-27T20:30:54Z 2008-05-27T20:37:41Z

In April, Cisco announced a sales milestone of 500 TelePresence units ordered since the product was launched a year and a half ago. That might not sound like a lot, but we aren’t talking about cellphones or Barbie dolls, but...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Cisco announced a sales milestone of 500 TelePresence units ordered since the product was launched a year and a half ago. That might not sound like a lot, but we aren’t talking about cellphones or Barbie dolls, but really big video conferencing rooms and equipment. It also makes Cisco the current front runner in selling really big telepresence solutions, and it speaks volumes about how important this type of technology is for business. Companies are investing in video conferencing. ]]> HP's Halo, another marker for the value of video is that HP is set to quadruple the number of internal studios that it has deployed because demand is so high. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I’ll get to experience Halo in person, and will report back on my experiences and what they have to say about customer demand. Not wanting to be a mere reporter here, I’d like to pass along some details on the value of video from a research study that Blair Pleasant and I are putting the finishing touches on, to be published on this site and the UC-Strategies.com site. The study is an end user benefits study on unified communications. In the study we talked to end users about their experiences with UC and the types of benefits they are receiving. It was an enlightening experience, helping us confirm that what vendors were telling us about UC wasn’t all hype. I won’t give away the whole benefits story here, but I thought that a glimpse at what users had to say about video would be interesting. Not a lot of companies that we spoke to had deployed video yet, but for those that had implemented it, most of them saw significant productivity benefits. Some of the comments on video from the study are: • “The video was most surprising. It is better quality than I expected, easier to use, and really makes a difference in relationships.” • “Not only can remote people interact with people in the main office, we all get to see them. People joke around more and build relationships faster with remote people thanks to video conferencing. Also, all of our company meetings are recorded now so people who missed can go back and watch the meeting. (And fast forward through the dull parts!)” • “Video has made remote people seem more a part of the team and I feel closer to them.” • “Videoconferencing lets us reduce the amount of time spent on planes, and we can accomplish some of the same benefits by doing videoconferencing and save a tremendous amount of money.” • “For me the video component will be massive. Often times, especially if I’m talking with my staff, the face-to-face communications is so important to building manager-employee relationships. IMs and emails can get misconstrued, as can voice messages. Visual communication is 60% of the message. For building trust and camaraderie with my team, video will be key.” • With UC, it’s allowed my team to make decisions faster. They’ve been able to collaborate better. For example, we hired someone this year and we had him interview with other members of the company via videoconferencing. We never did this before. That saved about a month in terms of the interview cycle – we had three candidates go through the final selection using videoconferencing. On the other hand, many users commented that whereas the planned video conferencing offered up benefits such as those commented on above, on an individual level users hadn’t taken to having a camera on their desk for ad hoc video conferences as much. Not surprisingly, their reasons were personal - they wouldn’t be able to multi-task during meetings if people could see them, or they work from home and don’t want to get dressed up. I can relate. Stay tuned for the rest of the study. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.54 2008-05-20T20:21:30Z 2008-05-20T20:28:46Z

I just caught up with Syntellect to see what has gone on since I last blogged about Voiyager, Syntellect’s incredible application testing technology. I’d seen a few press releases on recent successes, including one in April on a win of...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Syntellect to see what has gone on since I last blogged about Voiyager, Syntellect’s incredible application testing technology. I’d seen a few press releases on recent successes, including one in April on a win of one of the largest dental insurance carriers (name withheld to further disappoint this analyst in her 12 days of UC wish for more referenceable accounts). Besides not revealing the customer name, the press release left out some of the jaw dropping results of the customer test. The main details of the press release were:]]> demo. I’m sure you will be amazed. Also, stay tuned for more. I got a peek at what is coming up for Voiyager and its equally amazing. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.53 2008-05-01T18:52:05Z 2008-06-30T22:16:06Z

It’s been a quarter since I blogged my industry wish list for unified communications, so I figured I would revisit the list to see how we are doing. I don’t want to make this a beauty contest as there have...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com It’s been a quarter since I blogged my industry wish list for unified communications, so I figured I would revisit the list to see how we are doing. I don’t want to make this a beauty contest as there have been so many announcements, big and small, particularly as we had a number of voice shows last quarter, but here are some highlights. One caveat; just because we have had a lot of announcements this quarter doesn’t mean we have marked anything off of the list. It just means we have made progress in several categories. Here is a recap of my December “wish list” song, and the category each line represents: Voicemail Market One just has to assume that the voicemail market is in the midst of a makeover, I just don’t have the numbers to prove it yet. However, recently there have been a lot of end-of-life announcements for legacy (some of us prefer to think of them as “classic”) voicemail systems, including support for the Octel 300’s this year, and other versions of Octel, Intuity Audix, PhoneMail, Centigram, and Meridian Mail, in 2009 and beyond. This just has to mean churn and if not a movement to UC adoption, then at a minimum probably UM. Some vendors have taken advantage of this (who wouldn’t with such a big pond to fish out of) by beefing up their voice messaging and unified messaging products with such things as new IP integrations, or plain re-emergence of voicemail as part of a UC suite. As one example, AVST introduced a new release of CallXpress with a new Nortel Meridian Mail Telephone User Interface (TUI) emulation, and redesigned Digital Networking, among other features. Interoperability Last month I blogged I posted a blog about IMTC, on the UC-Strategies site, on a meeting I had at the VON conference with the President of IMTC on how this organization is pushing for interoperability of UC solutions. I consider this a statement move on pushing for interoperability. As their efforts progress I’ll be blogging about it more. Also in March, NextPoint Networks, a provider of global, fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) border platforms and secure interconnectivity solutions that enable mobile and fixed-line operators to interoperate, announced availability of its Unified Communications Exchange (UCX) solution. NextPoint claims UCX has the ability to provide end-to-end integration between different vendors products, including IP-PBXs and IP-Centrex, voice messaging, unified messaging, audio, video and web conferencing, and IM platforms. UCX also supports presence. Naturally, we also continued to see announcements from vendors on partnerships and integrations. For example, ShoreTel announced their integration plans between ShoreTel's unified communications solutions and IBM Lotus Sametime. Value of Video Video – where to start? There is a lot going on in video right now. For example, Avaya, as part of their spring one-X Communicator announcement showed off embedded desktop video conferencing, adding to their existing video conferencing solutions. If I had to pick out just one announcement about video and the desktop it would probably be the one-X Communicator (don’t everyone else scream) because Avaya has crammed a lot into one user interface with all the normal telephony features, along with both the desktop video and visual voicemail, IM, email, rich presence (although some of us are still pining for poor presence), conferencing, directories and contacts. On the Telepresence front, Nortel launched a new videoconferencing service called Nortel Telepresence Services, with life-size, full-motion videoconferencing. Cisco and HP, both competitors in the life-sized telepresence game were not quiet either this quarter. While Cisco continued to install TelePresence systems at a rapid clip (their 4/20/08 press release said that 500 units had been ordered since its launch 18 months ago), they also made a splash at VoiceCon through a TelePresence-driven keynote address. HP also announced a key Halo win that I found heartening; an agreement with Marriott International to make Halo telepresence solutions available for the public to use at certain Marriott locations in major business centers around the world. Cisco has in the past talked about one or more of their TelePresence customers that are, or will be, doing the same thing with strategically placed business centers, but this is the first time I remember (I could be wrong) that a hotel chain has jumped on the telepresence bandwagon. I also could be wrong here too, but my gut feel is that given the push for reducing carbon footprint, and the growing issues with world economies, that we will soon be seeing a lot more of this. I find the whole concept of being able to rent a telepresence meeting room invaluable. If I’ve missed a vendor announcement on this, please speak up. Interface Enhancing How can I not talk about speech technologies when talking about enhancing interfaces? As just one example, Nuance announced that its speech solutions are now available on the Kyocera Wireless Tempo E2000 phone, and they renewed and expanded their agreement with Samsung to continue to enhance the speech capabilities of Samsung’s line of wireless devices. Here is a bridge between enhancing the user interface with speech and the SMB market. It’s not an announcement in Q1, but Q’4 of last year. In a prior blog I wrote that I felt ShoreTel needed to beef up its use of speech technologies. Recently I found out that Incendonet SpeechBridge product had completed ShoreTel’s Technology Partner Program certification. SpeechBridge SMB is a VoIP network appliance that provides speech-driven auto-attendant, IVR, and web services applications for the SMB market. Due to its tight integration with MS Exchange, SpeechBridge gives users speech access to their email and calendars. SpeechBridge uses LumenVox speech technologies. SMB Market The SMB market certainly garnered its share of announcements in Q1. For example, NEC’s UC for Business announcement was targeted directly at the SMB market with a single server UC solution that provides desktop UC applications, a fully functional contact center, attendant console and single point of administration. In January, Nortel announced the rollout of its suite of new features for its SMB IP Telephony solution – Business Communication Manager (BCM) 50, to Africa, the Middle East and Europe, including new SMB-centric IP phones, announced in December in North America. One of the hottest requirements in the SMB market is ease of installation, as a high percentage of SMBs don’t have an IT department. In this regards there were a number of great announcements, including the aforementioned Incendonet, that has patent-pending self provisioning technology for really fast implementation. In a similar vein, in the IP market Aastra Telecom, announced the launch of AastraLink Pro – Model 160, a cost-effective IP PBX created specifically for the small business market. The AastraLink Pro was about as plug n’ play as they get. I watched one set up and it was quick, nicely thought out, and easy. The AastraLink Pro also integrates with Aastra’s existing portfolio of SIP phones (including a couple of new ones that they also introduced last quarter). On another note, Microsoft announced that its small-business-oriented Response Point product will soon have full VoIP via SIP trunking. As for speech technologies and contact centers, we also saw a number of SMB announcements. Squeaking in at the end of Q1, Metaphor launched its Plug & Play Speech IVR On-Demand product, which coming from 20 years in the IVR market, I think is pretty slick. Aimed at the mid, not really small market, this product takes advantage of 55 pre-packaged applications, is extremely easy to configure, and doesn’t require someone who understands VoiceXML, just C#. Going Green You can’t open the paper, get on the Internet or watch the news without hearing about Green these days. It’s become a major focus of many of the companies I blog about here. For an example, just go check out the Going Green display on Nortel’s home page. However, beyond what any one vendor has done in this regard, there is a push in the general public media that is driving consumer and business customer awareness. There have been product announcements too. For example, Mitel Inc. and Sun Microsystems jointly announced the Sun Ray Unified IP Client from Mitel; a Sun Ray thin client combined with a desktop phone accessed through a Java-based smart card. This green approach helps in two ways. Because thin clients access data and computer programs from a central server, it allows the phone to be used in shared work environments accessing data that previously would have been stored on a workers PC, thereby cutting down on physical work space requirements and the associated energy costs. Second, it lowers power usage to about 9 watts total for both the phone and thin client, which is a lot less than the typical PC (80 watts) or laptop (60 watts). Assistive Technology Whereas I could probably talk at length about incorporating speech technologies into phones, the one announcement that caught my eye on the assistive technology front was K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc. premiering its Reader Mobile product line on Nokia's new N82 telephone that incorporates a scanner into its footprint. Whoa Nelly! Except for the price tag, which is probably out of reach for a lot of the sight-impaired community, the idea of being able to scan anything, a document, your snail mail, the side of a box of cornflakes, and have the text read back to you is spectacular. That’s it for now. In April there was a lot more, so I’ll be back at the end of Q2 for another round up. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.52 2008-05-01T17:21:04Z 2008-06-30T22:16:06Z

Back in February I blogged about my mediocre customer service story with CapitolOne, and their egregiously bad use of speech recognition, coupled with lack of CTI into their contact center. However, things aren’t all bad in contact center land as...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com CapitolOne, and their egregiously bad use of speech recognition, coupled with lack of CTI into their contact center. However, things aren’t all bad in contact center land as I just had a quite opposite and stellar experience when I called Replacements Ltd. ]]> Interactive Intelligence. If so, good job with this customer! ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.51 2008-04-19T18:42:57Z 2008-06-18T17:27:07Z

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of attending an analyst briefing on Dimension Data. For whatever reason, prior to Cisco’s UC summit last fall I hadn’t paid much attention to Dimension Data, but since sitting in on that presentation,...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Dimension Data. For whatever reason, prior to Cisco’s UC summit last fall I hadn’t paid much attention to Dimension Data, but since sitting in on that presentation, I’ve been keenly interested in what they do and their business model. ]]> Microsoft and Cisco solutions, but Dimension is right in the thick of it. For example, they are Cisco’s largest IPT partner globally (they say they have deployed over one million IP phones worldwide), and they were Microsoft’s Global Partner of the Year, Exchange Migration and Deployment, Innovation Award for Dynamic Desktop Deployment solution. They were chartered by Cisco to build the UC interoperability labs and showcase between Microsoft LCS in 2006 and LCS in 2007. These are just a few of their Cisco and Microsoft accolades; the list is long. They have also developed a UC Development Model (UCDM) to help customers prioritize their investment in UC, help them understand the impacts and create a roadmap for implementing UC functions where they make sense. Even though UC is currently a small part of their business – but small in a company that size is big to me – it is a major focal point for them, with tremendous upside both for them as a business and for growing the UC market. Finally, although it was done five months ago, you can listen to the podcast that I did with Andrew Briggs, Dimension’s Managing Director of Converged Communications & Customer Interactive Solutions, to get a flavor of how they position UC. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.50 2008-04-16T16:44:18Z 2008-06-15T13:32:00Z

We have speech-enabled solutions for the SMB market out there already. In fact, I will be writing about some of them in a Q1 update of my 12 days of UC blog, probably next week. But Active Voice, who have...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Active Voice, who have been in the voice/unified messaging market for more than a decade, has finally cracked the code on providing an affordable, single-digit IQ (SDIQ ) installation, speech-enabled auto-attendant for the SMB market. That would be the many people are starting to pay attention to, but still much underserved SMB market. ]]> Nuance technology as the speech engine. So why do another? Active Voice, and the SMB market, needed a simpler, easier to use and cheaper offering - plain and simple. I think they have done it. Here are the details: Simplicity and Ease of Use • SPEAK is an appliance-based offering, with plug ‘n play installation • SPEAK is self-configuring. Customers only need to deal with two web pages to upload names from a CSV file or Active Directory • SPEAK requires no IT support Cost • SPEAK uses LumenVox as the speech engine, driving down the cost • SPEAK uses Digium rather than relying on a board or gateway, plummeting the cost of hardware. SPEAK provides users with some pretty nifty mobility features. Besides being the traditional auto-attendant for calls coming into a business, it acts as one internally as well, enabling employees to pick up the phone and dial by voice, but also enabling them to dial into their own speech portal to get to emails and calendar information too, from their desks or while out of the office. SPEAK isn’t a replacement for SEVEN, however, even though it can scale up to thousands of users too. SEVEN has some attractive attributes of its own that “speak” to some customers in the SMB market, and certainly larger customers, such as the 44 languages that it supports. At first release SPEAK only supports three. There you have it; a very agreeable SMB auto-attendant solution, with a lot of function for the price. I think this is spot on with what the SMB market needs. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.49 2008-04-10T20:18:47Z 2008-06-09T17:30:22Z

It took a long time, but Intervoice has finally merged their enterprise and network platforms into one, both from a solutions and philosophy standpoint. That is one of the key takeaways that I got from having attended the Intervoice industry...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Intervoice has finally merged their enterprise and network platforms into one, both from a solutions and philosophy standpoint. That is one of the key takeaways that I got from having attended the Intervoice industry analyst event in DC this week. That doesn’t sound like such a big deal but it is when you consider that it completes a transition born out of a) moving to a software and services company from one that a decade ago was proprietary down to the board level, b) melding two very different businesses – service provider and enterprise, c) completing the integration of some big acquisitions – namely Brite, Edify, and Nuasis d) blending together contact center, self-service (IVR), messaging and notification onto the same platform. ]]> This doesn’t mean that they still aren’t selling into two markets. They are. Their service provider sales for messaging, etc. are very strong, particularly internationally. It also isn’t that enterprise customers can’t buy voice portal (IVR) separate from the contact center either. It is that they aren’t developing to two platforms anymore. Now its same development tools, same code base, service orchestration layer, etc. This also allows them to add applications on more seamlessly whether it’s a Telco adding notification or messaging or a contact center adding self-service. It’s also the same whether a customer chooses to buy their own Intervoice solution or have Intervoice host all or part of it. Another highlight of the conference was the repackaging of their self-service to live agent options on the enterprise side. The complete end-to-end solution combines Intervoice Voice Portal (IVP) with Intervoice IP Contact Center (IPCC) and new outbound services with the Intervoice Advanced Notification Gateway for email, SMS and voice alerts. This combined solution is now called Contact Portal. (One note, although the same platform, Media Exchange is still the name for their network offering.) Last month at VoiceCon Intervoice unveiled Version 4 of its SIP-based, IPCC solution. IPCC – now part of Contact Portal - has integrated CTI capabilities which enable data collected from any self-service interaction to be seamlessly passed to an agent, and available to be collectively reported on later. IPCC is now available as a stand alone, or integrated with Intervoice Voice Portal (which is called Contact Portal) and either on-premise or hosted. That is only a peek at what they are doing. As with any conference, there was a lot to digest in two days, but I hope it whets your appetite for finding out more. tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.48 2008-04-03T15:27:13Z 2008-06-02T13:22:02Z

At CTIA Wireless yesterday Yahoo Inc. announced a collaboration with speech start-up Vlingo in which Vlingo will provide the speech recognition to compliment Yahoo’s oneSearch search technology for mobile phone applications. Marco Boerries, EVP of Yahoo’s Connected life division; the...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Yahoo Inc. announced a collaboration with speech start-up Vlingo in which Vlingo will provide the speech recognition to compliment Yahoo’s oneSearch search technology for mobile phone applications. Marco Boerries, EVP of Yahoo’s Connected life division; the one that focuses on mobile products, did a demo of the new Yahoo! oneSearch at CTIA, by asking the application where is the best play to play craps in Las Vegas. ]]> http://m.yahoo.com/voice. Although, when I tried that link it didn’t give me a chance, just said that it wasn’t available for my phone, before I even found a place to enter my phone type. My Blackberry took offense at that! I’ll try back later. ]]> tag:jamison-consulting.com,2008:/blog//1.47 2008-03-20T20:05:04Z 2008-05-19T17:26:27Z

This really is a story about audio conferencing and a meeting I had with Wyde Voice at the VON conference in San Jose yesterday. Unfortunately, its not about Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, although that is pretty much what I had...

Nancy Jamison http://jamison-consulting.com Wyde Voice at the VON conference in San Jose yesterday. Unfortunately, its not about Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, although that is pretty much what I had for lunch at the show with back to back vendor meetings (bless those vendor candy bowls). In any case, there were a number of great technical tidbits that Wyde offered up about their new wideband audio conferencing technology, but the one that grabbed me the most, that I’ll talk about first, is that they will be offering voice verification as part of audio conferencing, and this is something I haven’t seen or heard about before. Being the speech girl that I am, I like it. It’s like combining peanut butter and chocolate. ]]> Porticus Technology, Inc’s voice verification as a server plug in alongside their audio conferencing application, which opens up a different aspect of security in conferencing. Granted if you are doing conferencing with large variable groups of people, as in one time conferences, briefings, etc., punching in the access code for the conference will remain the status quo. But think of the possibilities that being able to create voice prints for employees in companies that regularly use audio conferencing, or special groups such as classes, network marketing entrepreneurs, committees, etc. The groups that could use verification instead of access codes to quickly jump on a conference call can improve speed and reduce frustration, particularly if someone is calling in on a mobile phone. Add to this the security of knowing someone else can’t enter the conference unknown, sounds pretty cool to me. However, verification isn’t where we started our discussion, but I thought it was the most interesting. Where we started our chat was on who Wyde Voice is and what they are announcing. Wyde voice is a start up company that is backed by Free Conferencing Corporations’ founder and CEO, David Erickson. It’s the result of one of their engineers getting the idea at the VON show two years ago, that they could create a voice conferencing appliance that would support 16-bit, 16 kHz voice quality for conferencing calls, an industry first, at an affordable price. Two years later they had their coming out party at this VON conference. The new Wyde voice appliances utilize the Asterisk platform, and bridge the gap between PSTN and VoIP environments providing a conference bridge for up to 7000 concurrent users over PSTN networks and up to 3000 on VoIP. Pricing for their VM1000 model is $160 a port and $140 for their VM3000, which provides conference for a great price. In addition to providing high voice quality to begin with, they designed their codec to compensate for current network conditions, such as heavy network traffic, so that quality of the conference doesn’t deteriorate. Wyde is marketing their products to both service provider and enterprise customers. They see, and I agree, a market opportunity in targeting different groups for conferencing, such as distance learning and social networking sites. The VM3000 and VM1000 are offered as turnkey appliances, which are customizable. ]]>