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.

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.

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.

The biggest buzz in the communications industry today is centered around two words: "Unified Communications." So what is in a name? According to the International Engineering Consortium, unified communications is an industry term used to describe all forms of call and multimedia/cross-media message-management functions controlled by an individual user for both business and social purposes. This includes any enterprise informational or transactional application process that emulates a human user and uses a single, content-independent personal messaging channel (mailbox) for contact access.

The essence of communication is breaking down barriers. In its simplest form, the telephone breaks distance and time barriers so that people can communicate in real time or near real time when they are not together. There are now many other barriers to be overcome. People can use many different devices to communicate (wireless phones, personal digital assistants, personal computers [PC], thin clients, etc.), and there are now new forms of communication as well, such as instant messaging. The goal of unified communications involves breaking down these barriers so that people using different modes of communication, different media, and different devices can still communicate to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Unified Communications (UC) encompasses several communication systems or models including unified messaging, collaboration, and interaction systems; real-time and near real-time communications; and transactional applications.

• Unified messaging focuses on allowing users to access voice, e-mail, fax and other mixed media from a single mailbox independent of the access device.
• Multimedia services include messages of mixed media types such as video, sound clips, and pictures, and include communication via short message services (SMS).
• Collaboration and interaction systems focus on applications such as calendaring, scheduling, workflow, integrated voice response (IVR), and other enterprise applications that help individuals and workgroups communicate efficiently.
• Real-time and near real-time communications systems focus on fundamental communication between individuals using applications or systems such as conferencing, instant messaging, traditional and next-generation private branch exchanges (PBX), and paging.
• Transactional and informational systems focus on providing access to m-commerce, e-commerce, voice Web-browsing, weather, stock-information, and other enterprise applications.

To sum it up though, Unified Communications is different for every company since no two are ever exactly the same. My goal is to answer any questions you might have in regards to: Unified Communications from Avaya, Juniper, Extreme, Meru and other solutions you might be looking at  to help impact your business.