Conversationware

When I first understood what a blog was, about 10 months ago, I immediately searched ‘unified communications’ on google.

One of the first blogs I found and subscribed to was “the realtime unified communications blog” from Ken Camp. I immediately added and was kept abreast of many developments in the UC world.

Gratifying then that Ken should notice me back. More than that, a gentleman with some kind words to boot.

I mulled it over as to the right response. Obviously, it’s nice to link back so that other readers can verify their own taste of course. But it seems quite indulgent to do so.

I’ve scanned around, and it doesn’t seem like there is a protocol about these things to help me in my response.

To me - it’s quite similar to when your wife tells you she loves you. What do you do? It’s so difficult to know.

If you instantly tell her you love her back, well then you’re only saying it to return the compliment, and you can’t possibly mean it…….Of course, I refer to my imaginary wife, and not the real one (hello my love)

It’s been a few days now, so Ken will know I mean it if I say that you should keep up with what he is commenting on - for some rounded and unbiased opinions. Mostly, like the rest of us.

Hey Ewan

A neat post on the joys of using OCS for the first time. Thanks for the insight.

Only a small point, but I wondered why you would need to call your voicemail system? Surely you would have a voicemail within email, and you’d just click to listen?

It’s late, so I may have missed something simple.

Matt

Surely the news should be that people are using Unified Communications at all.

However, Wainhouse Research release a survey around Rich Media Metrics (2007) for:

• Both large and small companies
• Companies using any element of UC, (so anything from IM to Phones then)

I sat for quite a while trying to understand something, anything, about the value of this report (without buying it). And then it struck - a marketing exercise, although I’m still a bit confused about who it could be for.

There are a great many things around this survey to poke fun at, or generally make cheap points about, but here is my attempt…

There were 160 companies in the survey. From a pool of 160 of anything, could there be meaningful global extrapolation I wonder?

I also liked this quote particularly, “One surprising statistic is the huge mindshare Microsoft has generated over all other unified communications solutions.”

I’m not sure it’s that surprising.

If you were going to buy something, might you consider buying from a company that you’d bought from before?…… I wonder how many of these customers had bought from Microsoft in the past.

If you thought you might use Unified Communications, you might consider your phone people, and your email people. So, lets be conservative and say that Microsoft had supplied email to 50% of the companies, it follows that perhaps 50% might be considering looking at Microsoft for UC. 

Which is exactly the number looking at OCS 2007 in the survey. The bleeding obvious, QED.

Prospects may probably also be considering one of the other 12 PBX suppliers they may have bought from, which is also what the survey seems to show.

And another thing, both large and small companies are included - now there’s a hole to drive your truck through. If you excluded small companies, how would the figures look, probably very Notes heavy?

I also wonder how many of the 160 companies asked could define Unified Communications?

You’ll need to pay $2.5K to find out if that’s in the survey. That’s just enough to get me to France for the next couple of weeks for that desperately needed holiday. Although it probably won’t be enough to cover the wine bill.

The business case for Unified Communications usually centres around individual productivity and time savings. But generally ROI for UC is thought to be quite hard.

Yet, there is definitely a wider case to be made.

Yes, we can save individuals time, but that rarely impresses the people with the cheque books. Although, if those wallets are fat enough and the industry competitive enough, then small advantages count towards communications companies getting orders.

An important string to the ROI bow has been ‘on premise’ conferencing.

Companies are increasingly spending substantial amounts on conferencing, and even more when there is a web element involved. Outsourced Audio conferencing is an easy target for a new GUI driven system.

But, in terms of ROI, there’s more to Web conferencing equipment than meets the eye.

Because of the pressured nature of Webinars to customers, plus peaky traffic often meaning a big system for sporadic requirements, and not forgetting costs of critical support and failover, it can make this a tough pitch at premises level.

For large organisations, one of the best returns for Unified Communications is the promise of reduction in premises overhead.

Technology makes it possible. For as the PC (Laptop) swallows yet another device, the phone, the desktop footprint of an employee is shrinking, and becoming ever more portable.

I know its obvious, but 25 years ago, if you wanted to work at home, you might have needed

• Typewriter
• Copier
• Fax machine
• Mobile Phone (measuring about a foot square)
• Your own franking machine
• Calculator (measuring about a foot square)

More than that, your telephone extension was practically nailed to your desk, and you couldn’t transfer calls out of the building. Your terminal definitely not!

Being able to plug in anywhere, in or out of the building, and maintaining consistent high rates of productivity is enabling shared work spaces and driving down property costs, for both growing organisations, and yes, even the old school.

One public sector organisation (a UK council) recently stated their decision to reduce their property portfolio by 30%, would comfortably provide the means to pay for all the new technology to make anywhere working a dramatic possibility. A UK Council leading the charge towards communications technology is news indeed. But, this is by no means isolated.

Even small companies are enabled by UC, probably most very small service companies (2-5) could now work without any premises at all.

Unified Communications is just one element, alongside broadband and networking, but it is an important one.

This isn’t new, but Presence and Conferencing become more useful when people are not in the same room.

The demise of any technology is probably inevitable, apart from the PC, which seems to be responsible for most of the carnage. The PBX is being lined up as the next ‘mainframe’ to disappear.

My own thoughts are that A single interface for whatever it is you may want to do is just too powerful to resist, starting with the typewriter, and who knows where it will end

Alasdair Ford writes an excellent piece plotting the rise, and predicting the ‘possible’ eventual fall of the PBX.

It started me thinking about whether there are good reasons the traditional PBX will survive OCS and Asterisk.

I know my telephony friends will probably look at me with scorn for putting it like that But when speaking to a technical chap yesterday, and he told me he was considering downloading and running Asterisk telephony on his ADSL router for a home PBX, it kind of stopped me in my tracks.If the only reason for PBX is survival were to be “you wouldn’t run a business on that, would you?” then I don’t think there’d be a decade left in it:

But surely that’s not the case?

1. Call Centre - this is a nailed on survival strategy as the ‘niche’ is completely arcane. It is also the one reason most companies will keep some sort of PBX imho. It may split buying decisions between callcentre and back office, but that’s always been ‘common’.

2. Call handling - related to the first point, routing calls through reception consoles, and all the little foibles that users in ad-hoc groups need. After 5 rings, can we ring the bell in the delivery bay, for example, and how about Manager Secretary working.

3. New Technology projects are not always about all the new facilities, it’s about the little stuff you took away. Replacement solutions have to be very extensive in functionality.

4. Unless it is a greenfield site, it will always be less expensive to just carry on with what you have and add a few bells. The business case for UC hasn’t been proven for example, but then, is there a business case for email….who has to make that these days? And it amazes me how much kit out there has gone well beyond the 7 year cycle. The long tail indeed.

Fax is still a growing technology for us, lets not forget the proven stuff will find a market for time to come, although suppliers will probably consolidate. Do you fancy buying a telephony from someone who will be merging with one of the dominant players?

Ok, I’m stuck for ideas now, 4 reasons isn’t that great is it - what else is there?

I thought I’d do an experiment and see if anyone could either recommend, or perhaps works for a telecoms hosting company. An interesting use for a blog if this works out.

We’re…now what is the right phrase….’putting the business case together’ for a hosted service to complement an on premise solution. The applications already exist, with tenancy, billing and failover facilities, everything we need in fact apart from the hosting space and interconnects, which may or may not include the following

E1 or SIP connection for voice application, but also bandwidth for web based user interface. There will be break out to the PSTN, and also dial in requirement. There’s also a fair amount of VOIP being mentioned in corridors.

Because we’ve not done hosted service like this before, we’re starting somewhat a position of being very open to advice. I have an idea of how these things work from some time back, but it was quite a while.

Anyhow, if you would care to leave a note, or email me at matt dot lambert at converstionware, I’ll be picking up on this in the next few days. I’ll stand the cost of a round for anyone who points me in the eventual right direction. Many thanks.