Everyone knows that SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) has been coming for a while. SIP started out several years ago as the IP replacement for endpoints and has now been adopted by many Service Providers for trunking. As the next offer from the Service Providers to save customers money on PBX hardware and services, SIP Trunking sounds great. Less hardware and open bandwidth for converged UC (Voice, Video and Data) are just several of the advantages of SIP Trunking. The promise of SIP trunking for both external communications and connectivity between multiple vendor technologies sounds simple and, in many cases, is. BUT, there is always a caveat and we want to make sure every customer is aware of the pitfalls that are often left out of the conversation.

When many Service Providers discuss SIP technology with customers, they claim you need nothing more than an IP Address and Router connection (many times provided for you by the Service Provider). However, there is something missing in this picture for the majority of you out there, and that is something called Session Border Control (SBC). “What’s an SBC,” you ask?

Ultimately, SBC’s allow customers to control the kinds of calls that can be placed through the networks on which they reside, fix or change protocols and protocol syntax to achieve interoperability, and also overcome some of the problems that firewalls and Network Address Translation (NATs) present for VoIP calls

In real speak what does that mean? It means that SBC’s protect you from the outside world when a new IP path into your environment has been introduced. It means that everyone should consider an SBC on premise to insure the security of your company from the outside world.

That said, I believe reality is close at hand. One of TSG’s partners, Motorola, has brought a solution to market called TEAM (That would be an FLA – a Four Letter Acronym, BTW), which is short for Total Enterprise Access and Mobility. It truly is as close as we’ve ever come to FMC Nirvana.

TEAM devices provide in-building wireless voice support, Windows Mobile O/S, Push to Talk, Text Messaging, Support for Email (the usual suspects: Microsoft and Lotus), contacts, calendar and Internet/Intranet browsing. Since they are Windows based, you can also run Line of Business Applications for different industries such as Healthcare, Manufacturing and Retail on the same device. Add all of these pieces up, and you truly have a single device that can do almost everything a customer would want TODAY. Only one piece is missing: the Wireless to Cellular handoff that will allow you to realize true FMC enlightenment.

If anyone can bring that final piece to market, it is Motorola. Stay tuned. You never know when the last piece of the puzzle -- Dual Mode handoff from Wireless to Cellular and vice versa -- will materialize. Motorola has already announced that it will deliver the solution. Regardless, feel free to contact us here at TSG to find out more details about what we believe is the best thing to hit Wireless Solutions in the last several years.

The topic of the virtual/home office or remote business user is coming up more often today. A recurring question is, "How do I stay as productive from a home office as from a traditional office?" One answer to that question is the VPN connection.  The VPN or Virtual Private Network allows the secure, encrypted extension of the corporate network to a remote location using the internet as the connection media.

Most remote workers typically have a laptop with a VPN client for computing. This has traditionally left the cell phone as the voice communications instrument. This arrangement can be very difficult to use for any extended period as well as unmanageable from a cost perspective, especially when international calling is required. Avaya has created and made available for some time, a firmware load for an IP phone that includes a VPN client to provide remote/home office, business grade communications. The IPsec VPN client is standards based and has been tested with VPN gateways from manufacturers such as Juniper, Cisco, Nortel and Check Point, to name a few. This allows the user to have the same phone and extension they would use in their traditional brick and mortar office in their remote/home office.

There are many benefits to the VPN arrangement. User satisfaction is high since there is virtually no training required. They can literally use the same type of IP phone at both locations. Administration in the switch is non-existent as it is the same extension. The user merely logs in at home or at work using a login process that is similar to logging into voice mail. All headsets that work with the Avaya IP Phone work with this as well, as it is a regular IP phone. This is helpful in today’s global society as many executive use this on a regular basis as a way to reach out to offices in other countries and time zones from a home office. 

Some of additional benefits of this technology are: business continuity planning (how do you work if you can’t get to the office), better work/life balance, and more effective cost management as all calls are from the corporate communications server allowing not only call detail recording (better records) but the use of the corporate negotiated long distance rates as well.

Frequently in IP Telephony conversation the subject of 911, or E-911 (Enhanced 911), and emergency response needs addressed. Many questions arise:  What happens when a caller dials 911 from their IP telephone? How do the emergency responders physically locate the caller? How are records updated if a user relocates their IP telephone? How is 911 supported in IP soft-phone environments? Is the accuracy of this information difficult to manage? While IP telephony offers many benefits in terms of mobility, it may also create challenges when attempting to locate phones. Coupled with legislation in many states requiring E-911 compliance, these challenges can cause customers concern.

Avaya Communication Manager (CM) offers many 911 / E-911 capabilities at no additional cost.  Avaya CM can automatically track IP telephones as they move between different locations, even when users log out of one telephone and log in to another one without physically moving the phone. Location changes are detected and updated the moment the telephone or user registers to the system. Since the Avaya solution does not depend on proprietary network protocols or hardware, E-911 features will work on any vendor’s network infrastructure. Even in the event of an IP WAN failure, the Avaya survivable remote gateways can route 911 requests through the PSTN. Avaya also offers additional capabilities for 911 / E-911 such as automatic call recording and alerting to consoles, stations or digital pagers. Avaya also offers a feature to have designated personnel, such as security guards, listen in on emergency calls to offer assistance while emergency responders are in transit.

For larger and more complex telephony networks, Avaya has a partnership with Redsky Technologies Inc. Redsky offers an E-911 solution that allows customers to more efficiently manage their E-911 configuration. These features include tracking IP telephones based on MAC address and updating Avaya Communication Manager with the telephone’s location for 911 calls, and administering alerts for IP phones and IP Soft Phones without location associations so that corrective actions can be taken. Redsky solutions can also interface with major ALI (Automatic Location Identification) database providers to update station location information for both traditional and IP telephones. A single E-911 server can support multiple locations and multiple call servers meaning that E-911 services in the workplace do not need to be a financial or administrative burden.

Contact TSG today for more information about integrating E-911 solutions in your enterprise.

What is the hardest part of managing any technology? Buying, installing, managing or maintaining? In today’s world, our customers consistently tell us is that the managing and maintaining is the hardest part. We all are so busy struggling with the “do more with less” mentality that we often do not have time to keep up with the status of our own technology. Here at TSG, we're often asked, "What is the end of sale or support date?" Or more importantly, "How do we keep up with that information in a timely manner so we can make business decisions as far out as possible for budgeting purposes in the tough economic times we face?"

At least in the Avaya world which has many moving parts and a vast selection of technologies that as a customer you might have in your environment, there is an answer to some of those questions and issues: sign up for the Avaya E-Notification Process from support.avaya.com. This link gets you right to the subscription page.

If you select one of the five radio buttons on the top portion of the page, you will receive e-mail notifications when new content is added or revised for all Avaya products under the following content areas:

• Product Correction Notices
• Security Advisories
• Product Support Notices – High Priority
• End of Sale Notices
• Services Support Notices

Hopefully, this will make everyone more knowledgeable and aware of what is happening in your Avaya world.

What is the single interface common to all telephony? Speech, obviously! No matter what telephone system from what manufacturer, what cell phone or PDA/Smart Device you have in your pocket with one to a zillion features, it all boils down to talking. A number of new technologies have come out over the past number of years that have focused on leveraging speech to increase efficiency, and in today’s tough economic environment, anything that makes us more productive is an improvement.

Some of these include the Nuance Employee Enhancement Suite, a speech-based attendant that allows users to find who they are looking for by speaking their name (no more dialing off an auto-attendant and not spelling the name correctly!) and Avaya’s one-X Speech that works in tandem with all of Avaya’s messaging platforms (Intuity, Octel and the newest Modular Messaging) allowing you to access Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. You can use speech commands to access email, contacts, appointments and make calls hands free. In today’s environment, where many states are enacting hands free laws around use of a cell phone in your car, this feature is a welcome chance to make more productive use of our ever-increasing windshield time.

Finally, on the other side of the equation, the most recent entry into the speech space is a joint effort from Avaya, Mutare and Spinvox, which will take the first 30 seconds of a voice mail left for you on your Avaya voice mail and convert it to text, so you can see it on your PDA or in your email without having to access your voicemail.

No matter what direction we go with technology, the spoken and written word will always be intertwined and someone will always develop a technology to make our lives easier and doing business more productive. To learn more, give us a call or send us an email. We’re flexible. We’ll get back to you one way or the other.

I am always amazed by the vast amount of management tools and capabilities that come with today’s IP Telephony systems, yet never make it off the shelf and into everyday use. Many of these software applications come as entitlements. The only costs to deploy are the physical servers they run on and the professional services to install and train customers on their use. Some can even run in a Virtual Machine environment out of the box. One such set of tools that fall into this category are the Avaya Converged Network Analyzer (CNA) and Avaya Integrated Management (AIM) suite of applications.

CNA is a monitoring, reporting and analysis tool that delivers real-time visibility into the performance of IP telephony and other application traffic traversing the enterprise IP network.

Adaptive Path Controller for Enterprise provides the ability to dynamically reroute enterprise IP telephony and data application traffic should a WAN link become congested, unstable or fail.

Adaptive Path Controller for Internet can help enterprises dynamically reroute internet traffic across multiple links to multiple Internet Service Providers as well as monitor the Service Level Agreements that they may have in place.

AIM includes, but is not limited to:

Avaya MultiSite Administration that helps network administration teams centrally manage large, complex voice networks consisting of multiple Avaya S8XXX servers and media gateways. Graphical station and administration screens combined with wizards enable system administrators to rapidly learn and perform tasks that were previously difficult and time-consuming. To help global support organizations control access, up to 13 custom management privilege levels can be defined to map groups of administrators and their defined access rights to groups of voice systems. For additional security, an advanced logging feature provides management with transaction records of each administrator.

Avaya Network Management Console with VoIP System View is the central launching point for Avaya administration tools, device managers and network management and provisioning applications. It serves as the main management console for device discovery, SNMP-based fault monitoring, and network display. For enterprises deploying IP telephony, the VoIP System View feature within the Console displays a hierarchical and logical view of the VoIP network, ranging from the Avaya voice server level down to individual resource components, gateways, and IP phones. With this end-to-end view, administrators can quickly and easily locate users anywhere in the enterprise and identify their logical VoIP connection path through the converged network as well as their physical connectivity to the network.                

Avaya Software Update Manager, a component of the Network Management Console, simplifies maintenance operations by helping administrators analyze and update software/firmware of Avaya media gateways (G150/G250/G350/IG550) and associated media modules, Avaya S8XXX Servers running Communication Manager, Avaya TN-boards, wireless devices, and network LAN switches. It automatically retrieves the latest software updates from the Avaya support site, highlights devices running outdated versions, and schedules updates that can be distributed to multiple devices at a time.

Avaya VoIP Monitoring Manager is a VoIP QoS monitoring and feedback tool offering a detailed graphical visualization of VoIP network health. For enterprises with a distributed network of gateways, VoIP Monitoring Manager can identify and monitor calls between endpoints through a particular media gateway, as well as VoIP traffic between gateways. VoIP Monitoring Manager also provides detailed historical performance information that can be used to baseline performance and validate Service Level Agreements (SLA). Beyond trouble-shooting and monitoring, VoIP Monitoring Manager is also a pro-active notification solution that warns the network manager of potential degradation of voice quality in their network – providing valuable time to identify, localize, and fix issues in the network as they arise. In this scenario, VoIP Monitoring Manager can be configured to automatically send SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) traps to a Network Management System (NMS) based on a number of QoS threshold policies.

Many Avaya customers have been getting bombarded from many directions recently about PKI’s (and I am not talking about Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)). In this case the PKI’s at issue are Digital Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) security certificates, which are used for data encryption on secure communication links in several Avaya products.

By design, security certificates expire after a period of time, requiring system administrators to update them periodically. This advisory from Avaya was intended to notify customers and Avaya Business Partners that many Communication Manager systems worldwide have PKI certificates with an expiration date of March 11, 2009.  A very small number of Application Enablement Services and Modular Messaging systems also have certificates that expire on this same date.

But rather than reaching out to only those customers who had issues, every customer has been getting emails, newsletters and warnings that the sky is falling on March 11th. So hopefully, if you happen to catch this post, you will see that for MOST customers who have Communication Manager, Modular Messaging or AES (Application Enablement Services), this is not an issue.

Information on this page is designed to help determine whether or not the PKI certificate needs to be updated some time before March 11, 2009 and to provide customers, Avaya Business Partners and Avaya Services personnel access to resources and tools to perform any needed updates. (If you do need assistance in determining whether your systems are impacted, feel free to reach out to us and we will help). More information can be found at: http://support.avaya.com/japple/css/japple?PAGE=OpenPage&temp.template.name=PKI_Home.

When I talk to customers about SIP, Presence and Federation of Presence, “How do I gain this presence capability?” and more importantly “What does it mean to my business?” are the questions I get asked most. There are a number of answers to these questions and each answer brings more questions, too many for one blog in fact, but here are some quick examples: Presence is commonplace in Unified Communications solutions, but has the potential of driving new levels of customer care in the contact center by making expert resources readily available to respond to a customer issue. Presence powers Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), which can use rich presence to ensure that the right resources are available before the system reaches out to them to resolve a business problem.

A presence server can collect and disseminate rich presence from many third party sources that also support presence. By leveraging a set of collectors, which link the core presence capabilities with these other presence sources, Avaya, one of TSG’s strategic partners, is able to bridge presence information across a diverse set of business environments.

The Intelligent Presence Server works in concert with other presence-enabling capabilities provided by Avaya. In addition to showing presence in Avaya desktop clients and IP phones, Avaya presence solutions extend to a wide array of business communications applications.

On-the-phone status can be seen in Microsoft Office Communicator and applications like Outlook and SharePoint that use Smart Tags. Phone status is also viewable in IBM Lotus Sametime and applications using Live Names, such as Lotus Notes and Jabber instant messaging, making the decision of how and when to communicate much more effective.

When client software from Avaya, Microsoft, IBM Lotus and Adobe is integrated with Avaya Meeting Exchange for an audio-only or web conference call, a roster of call participants and the speaker is shown. Video applications utilize presence to show continuous presence (the ability to see multiple video participants at the same time) or the active speaker in a video call. In today’s tough economic climate and with travel and hotel costs rising dramatically, video and distance learning will become increasingly important as well.

Many of you have been waiting as long as I have been for a truly unified client for the PC to enable more effective communications in your organization. Enterprise workers today are bombarded with too many meetings, calls, emails, IM, voicemails, and fax from customers, co-workers, suppliers, partners, and even family. On the best day it can be a challenge to ensure that all the highest priority tasks are completed on time. The day may finally arrive in the very near future where this issue is addressed with Avaya’s latest soft client offering. 

Avaya one-X™ Communicator, which was announced in March and appears to be ready for prime time in August of this year, is the next generation Unified Communications desktop application that provides enterprise users with simpler, more intuitive access to all their everyday communications tools. With Avaya one-X Communicator, users can better manage communications tasks, making them more productive, responsive, and collaborative regardless of where they are working on any given day.

The client combines softphone, intelligent presence (Avaya, Microsoft and many others over the next 12-18 months using Avaya Intelligent Presence Server if you need a 3^rd party presence engine, which I will discuss in my next blog), voice/video calling, visual voicemail integration with Avaya Modular Messaging, visual voice/video conferencing, as well as access to corporate directories and call logs which allows improved workforce productivity across your enterprise. Organizations can deploy one-X Communicator either as a standalone client or as an integrated part of leading desktop productivity tools like Microsoft® Office Communicator and Citrix Presentation Server.

One-X Communicator brings together multiple product options into a truly unified client that supports both H.323 and SIP, which allows organizations to standardize on one solution that can be used both today and tomorrow with the changing IP/SIP telephony landscape. The solution can be used in the office with your office phone, in Telecommuter/Teleworker mode at home/on the road with a cell phone or in Road Warrior (VoIP through a PC) mode with a headset to provide ultimate flexibility.

The product will also be included in the Avaya UC Standard Edition Bundle which provides an additional suite of UC (Mobility Solutions) solutions including cellular connectivity, VPN phone capabilities, Avaya Presence capabilities, Microsoft integration for presence, Click to Dial and Call applications and Portal based Softphone capabilities.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the need for a single client like Avaya one-X™ Communicator as a single solution, or the need for the UC Bundle to provide choices based on different needs in your business.