The news reports that caught my eye this week:

ShoreTel acquires M5 Networks

ShoreTel’s 2Q2012 revenue came in at +22% year-over-year (quarterly net loss of $2.5 million) — not bad for a company that hasn’t dug deep into the cloud. But that’s all about to change as it scoops up cloud communications provider M5 Networks for $146.3 million in cash and stock.

No doubt that ShoreTel was able to nip at the traditional premise voice market by being aggressive and signing on major partners (Ingram Micro, Windstream, and HP). Really, being up 22% Y0Y is impressive especially in this economy where most money is being spent on cloud solutions. The M5 Networks pickup will definitely strengthen its offerings and expand the customer base.

West Interactive releases Holly 6.0 (?!)

The acquisition of Holly Connects was announced in May 2010. For an year and a half we don’t hear a blip about it…

Then this pops up in my news feed that got me all excited. But no corresponding link to an official press release or even a blog post.

Nothing on West Interactive’s website, either. In fact, the last news listed there was dated August 11, 2011.

Hmmm, anything from @WestInteractive? Plenty of tweets but nothing about the major release of Holly 6.

I can’t wait to hear more about the TuVox acquisition, if any news ever makes it out officially…

There’s no law against putting your customers on hold while waiting for a live agent, but that doesn’t mean you should operate a contact center that way. Today’s customers are no longer just armed with a telephone line to complain, but they’ve got smartphones and social networks to make their complaints louder than ever and reaching greater number of ears.

Virtual queuing has been around for a long time, but it is still rarely implemented. This awesome feature allows a caller to keep his/her place in queue even after disconnecting — and have the system call back when an agent is available to speak.

Fonolo is one of the companies focusing on this very niche. According to CEO Shai Berger (in a comment he’d left on the blog last year):

So the big question is, why have these features been so rarely implemented? The answer, we’ve learned, is that today’s call center is very resistant to innovation. Proprietary standards, multi-site operations and outsourcing have made for a very difficult environment for anything new to be deployed. So Fonolo’s answer is to add the smarts “from the outside”. That is, we don’t require anything to be installed at the call center. I believe this approach is what’s needed to break the log-jam.

That’s certainly true and a main reason why enterprises are implementing cloud solutions. But then there’s also a fundamental reason: cost.

The old school, well-established VQ vendors will get the job done — after selling you servers, software, licenses, and professional services. However, there are thousands of companies with a decent website but a small contact center, and these folks simply cannot dish out the money to buy all those components.

Fonolo’s VQ solution is very web-centric, requiring no additional premise hardware or software. Now with its new flat rate pricing, virtual queuing is no longer out of reach for any contact center. How would you like to implement VQ at $10 per agent per month, without having to deal with any infrastructure changes?

Don’t be shy to say Hi to Shai (@ShaiBerger) at ITEXPO Miami going on right now! I’ve spoken to him and met him before — he’s never made me wait!

Press release:

TORONTO – - Feb. 2, 2012 – Fonolo (fonolo.com), the company that helps organizations reduce call center costs while improving the customer experience, announced today that virtual queuing is nowwithin reach of any call center. By offering self-serve online setup along with flat-rate pricing, Fonolo is making it effortless for companies to promise their customers, “you’ll never wait on hold again”.

Everybody Hates Being on Hold

For decades, the call center industry has been stuck with the out-dated concept of placing callers “on hold,” whereby callers grow increasingly frustrated and companies spend money unnecessarily tying up phone lines. Virtual queuing solves these problems by replacing hold time with a call-back, when an agent is available.

Though commercial systems have been available for more than a decade, adoption of virtual queuing has been slow. The complexity and expense of implementation, driven by proprietary systems, a lack of standards, and costly consulting and integration projects have all been contributing factors.

A Breakthrough

In 2009, Fonolo revolutionized the call center world by introducing the first ever cloud-based virtual queuing system, thus completely removing the integration barrier. Since then, Fonolo has handled more than one million minutes of calls for companies ranging from one of North America’s largest banks to companies with only a handful of agents.

Today, Fonolo is demolishing the expense barrier with clear and affordable pricing. Companies can now set up virtual queuing for $10 per agent per month.

“Our success over the past few years has allowed us to build infrastructure at the scale necessary to support this breakthrough flat-rate pricing. We’ve known for a long time that many companies would love to offer virtual queuing to their customers, but have simply found the process – and the pricing – daunting,” said Fonolo Co-founder and CEO Shai Berger.

“Our customers have more important things to do than to sit on the phone listening to hold music. Now Fonolo will wait on hold for them and call them back when an agent is on the line. This is a fantastic value. You can’t put a price tag on a happy customer,” said Jeremy Watkin, director of customer service for Phone.com.

Companies that deploy Fonolo can offer their customers visual navigation, integrated directly into their web or smartphone properties, in addition to other innovative customer experience enhancements.
Learn more at fonolo.com.

# # #

About Fonolo

Fonolo’s cloud-based call center solutions provide companies with visual dialing and virtual queuing services, improving customer satisfaction and lowering call center costs. Callers simply click on the phone menu option they want from the company’s website or mobile application, and Fonolo connects them to the right agent – every time.

A growing list of organizations, including the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Sirius Satellite Radio Canada and VoIP Supply have discovered the value of using Fonolo to connect their call centers with their web sites. The privately-held Toronto-based company has received numerous awards, including “Best Contact Center Solution” from ITEXPO Conference, “50 Best Websites” from Time.com, “Best New Product” from Emerging Communications Conference, “Judges’ Choice” from GigaOm’s Mobilize Conference and “Top Telecom Idea” from Springwise.

When I was on the phone recently with my website provider, I really would have liked to have had a video connection. I am certain that I could have gotten more out of the call if it was video. At least it was a real time call and not through e-mail. The voice inflections gave me enough doubt to go ahead and pursue an alternate provider. Then again, video might have given my web site provider the ability to instill the confidence necessary for me not to pursue and alternative provider. And that is the point. Sometimes the best way to communicate is through video.

Someday our one on one communications will be mostly video. Pinpointing that exact time is difficult, but my proposition is that it will be sooner rather than later. Once the transition is in full swing, contact centers will already be fully video operable. Even today, there are some trends that will make video communications between callers and agents viable for many. Some of the trends are:

• Inexpensive Video Services Available on any Computer
• Smartphones and Tablets with Front and Rear Cameras
• Push Technologies to Computers and Mobile devices
• A Growing Comfort Level with Video Communications
• The Greater Collaborative Experience with Video

Inexpensive Video Services Available on any Computer

With free, freemium and low cost access to video communications, more and more people are taking the plunge and communicating with friends and family over video. The new adoption of video within social media makes video calling extremely easy, eliminating the need for users to download and configure software. So just about anyone that wants to can join a service and start seeing the person on the other side. It might not be the “immersive” HD experience that expensive telepresence units have, but it sure beats voice only. And many of the “immersive” HD providers are beginning to offer extremely low cost personal clients for the home and office which could be expanded to handle video sessions for contact centers and important clients.

Smartphones with Front and Rear Cameras

Do you ever with you could just show someone your problem versus trying to describe it over the phone? This is where the smartphone can be your anytime, anywhere portal to your balky device, or stalled lawnmower or your impossible to understand assembly instructions. The shortage of strong reliable 3G and 4G/LTE signals plus the growing bandwidth charges and the throttling of bandwidth by mobility providers are potential roadblocks. But video from mobile devices is already happening and will grow to the point that it is as inexpensive as today’s voice only charges. If I can show you what is going on or what I want by pulling a smartphone out of my pocket, it just makes things easier for everybody. Customer satisfaction, first call resolution rates and speed of resolution will all be enhanced as mobile video integrates into the contact center.

Push Technologies to Computers and Mobile Devices

Mobile Push is already being used by contact centers for a variety of needs. Callers can download apps for specific contact center applications and the contact center agents can push interactive screens to the caller. Applications such as technical assistance for high end automotive mechanics and wholesale to retail product help are just two of the many applications that mobile push is doing right now. Interactive screens are easier for callers to deal with than traditional IVR’s and agents can provide greater interaction with the caller enabling them to solve issues quicker. Videos for a variety of purposes like instructional videos can be sent to mobile devices with or without agent interaction.

A video client compatible with the contact center could be utilized as a future offering for contact centers using mobile push technology. Video conference providers are beginning to offer low cost licenses for use by individuals beyond the enterprise network that are dynamic. These licenses can be used and reused repeatedly as long as you have enough to satisfy demand for them. In the future, agents may be able to send links to callers that integrate with video cloud providers to speed up the process of converting a voice only call to a collaborative video call.

A Growing Comfort Level with Video Communications

One of the factors slowing the adoption of video is the fact that many people are naturally camera shy. It is easy to meet with people and engage in a dialogue, but stick a camera in the mix and it gets to be daunting. This applies to contact center agents as well as the general public. With a little training, though, everyone can get over the first time video jitters and begin to work the camera like a pro. Plus, so many people are taking the plunge at home and in company conference rooms, that it is beginning to become second nature for a lot of people. As evidenced by the popularity of video sharing services, there is no shortage of people that are willing to use video to communicate. And the numbers are growing rapidly.

Evidence of video going mainstream is abundant in popular culture as well. Even Wendy’s encouraged people to shoot videos about Wendy’s sweet potato fries for their commercials. I must admit, I am more comfortable with video than with sweet potato fries. Then again, I have not tried sweet potato fries yet. Of course, product placements of desktop video and telepresence systems have been around for years. But, Lisa Kudrow’s hit Web Therapy takes it to a new level. Web Therapy is ninety percent shown as a computer screen video conference. And the show’s popularity as a web only offering prompted Showtime to pick it up and broadcast it with additional content. These are just a few examples of the growing acceptance of video communications.

The Greater Collaborative Experience with Video

A video call to the contact center can make a dramatic difference in customer and agent satisfaction. For the caller, you can see who you are talking to and get a better sense that your need is being addressed properly. If a caller is video enabled they can show a video enabled agent the reason they are calling and give an indication of what might need to be done for call resolution. The agent can benefit by quickly resolving issues and could gauge the possibility of up selling their caller. Plus, it is harder to yell at someone that you are looking at than it is on a voice only call. Instances of rudeness would be dramatically cut using video.
The millennial generation and upscale consumers of all generations have been using video for years now. These same demographics are also demanding quick resolution to their questions and issues. Many, perhaps most will change their buying habits after one poor experience with a contact center. So if you are company “A” and you have the capability to upgrade your contact center to include video to gain a competitive advantage against company “B”, it makes sense to do so before company “B” does it.

Final Thoughts

Some might argue that contact centers are not equipped to handle video because there is no current way to queue video callers and that there are few people that really want to communicate through video. This is much the same positioning used relative to social media integration into the contact center just a short time ago. Now that more and more contact center providers have the capability to effectively integrate social media into the contact center, the tune has changed. Now, social media integration is a “must have” for any company wanting to protect their image and effectively communicate with the public. Amazing how that perception has changed almost overnight, isn’t it?

So if you hear from contact center manufacturers or their pundits that video is not that important or too expensive or impractical or technologically unfeasible, rest assured that the R&D labs are currently working on it with breakneck speed. And when someone is ready to introduce video integration for the contact center, it will be important, inexpensive, practical, technologically feasible and a “must have” for any company wanting to effectively communicate with the public. And they will be right. After all, except for face to face contact, there is no better way to communicate than with video.

Isn’t this intriguing… Hosted/cloud contact center provider Telax made an announcement about the release of an HTML5-based agent desktop software, Call Center Agent (CCA), with an emphasis on its ability to run on Apple Macs.

Of course, if it’s HTML5 then it can really run on any modern browser, including those found on mobile devices based on Google Android and Apple iOS. According to the press release, the technology behind CCA is Websocket which provides bidirectional full-duplex communications over one single socket. Users can enjoy this technological wonder on the latest browsers such as Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox.

Has anyone seen this in action?

Traditionally, contact centers (and enterprises in general) have shun Macs because of unfamiliarity and cost, but recently IT has been more receptive to Macs, especially now that they’re all Intel-based and can run Windows natively or virtualized. The popularity of Web-based enterprise apps also makes moot the argument about operating systems.

Have a look at the press release:

Telax Hosted Call Center, a leader in cloud contact center solutions, announced the release of its HTML5-based Call Center Agent (CCA) today.  Key to the development of the browser-based CCA was Websocket, a component of HTML5 that provides a bi-directional, full-duplex communication channel over a single Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket. Websocket is currently supported by the latest versions of Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Firefox, making Telax’s new CCA compatible with the most popular browsers in Mac environments.

“We’re pleased that Mac infrastructures are growing so strongly in business environments. It allows us to develop contact center tools that have capabilities beyond what they’ve traditionally had,” said Vladimir Pereira chief architect at Telax. “The adoption of Websocket by most major browsers is a huge step towards scalable real-time web applications. Our ultimate goal is to provide reliable and scalable solutions that are both easy to use and easy to deploy. This one is as easy as pointing a Mac browser to a url.”

Before HTML5, real-time unified communication software was better served as a client because its browser-based counterparts were unable to deliver an acceptable user experience. Some browser-based clients use 3^rd party software such as Adobe Flash or Sliverlight to operate adequately, but both solutions require software installation and are not mobile friendly.

Telax Hosted Call Center for Mac OS contact centers is the first web-based application that allows contact center agents to work from any location without needing to install software or suffer with an application that provides only partial functionality and unstable connectivity. This advancement in contact center software gives IT staff in Mac environments the opportunity to concentrate core competencies while significantly improving the customer experience.

About Telax Hosted Call Center:

Telax Hosted Call Center is North America’s leader in hosted call center solutions. Based in Toronto, Canada, Telax has been providing cloud-based business solutions to prominent public and private sector organizations since 1999. The simplicity delivered by Telax services enables clients like Best Buy, Northrop Grumman, Johnson & Johnson, CI Investments, the Globalive Group of Companies, Health Canada and the GSA, to reduce costs and improve efficiency, so that they can do more with their most critical resource: people. For more information, visit http://www.telax.com. For the latest Telax news, visit http://www.telax.com/category/news

Dave Michels is an UC nut. And I mean that in the most complimentary way. That’s why he’s capable of writing these very comprehensive research reports on UC vendors (Mitel Networks and NEC reports are currently available), and I’m grateful that he gave me a courtesy copy to read over. (Disclosure: I do not receive any compensation for this pseudo-review blog post; neither do I receive any sales commission or collect any fees from the sale of TalkingPointz reports.)

I don’t know about you, but in reading most industry analyst research reports I often find myself skipping through a lot, primarily because a lot of the parts read like marketing material from the vendors, plus sometimes I simply want more specifics pertaining to one or two vendors instead of seeing quadrants and waves of leaders and losers (yes, there I said it). Granted, these papers are useful when comparing vendors at a cursory level, and managers stretched for time would appreciate them, but what about for the rest of us information junkies?

What’s good about the TalkingPointz reports? I like how it (in the case of the Mitel Networks Report) starts off with a “Recent Performance” section right after the “Executive Summary.” The reader will understand the currency of the information contained in the report, as well as a peek into the recent financial performance of the vendor. For publicly-traded companies financial data can be obtained quite easily but Michels made it a point to present this upfront. After all, a vendor could be a market leader but running on fumes — and that’s important information to know for any potential customer.

Obviously, the report covers the vendor’s existing product portfolio in detail, SWOT analysis, as well as an interesting “Common Sales Objections” section that any salesperson would find valuable.

But the coolest thing to come out of these reports is Michels’ own TalkingPointz UC Web diagram. Undoubtedly a spark of analyst genius!

Have I got you all excited about TalkingPointz reports? Even though I have permission to post a few sections of the reports I am not going to do it. You’ll have to purchase a copy like everyone else (or obtain a courtesy copy from Michels somehow, such as flying to Denver and twisting his arm). Enterprises and UC vendors alike will find the reports insightful and informative.

According to Michels, TalkingPointz reports on Aastra and Lync are slated to be released in the coming months. Personally, I cannot wait for the Lync report – woohoo!

In an interview with the French daily Les Echos ALU CEO Ben Verwaayen ruled out deep job cuts similar to the scale of Nokia Siemens which in November announced eliminating 17,000 positions. According to Verwaayen:

“There’s no way we are cutting our staff by 25 percent. We are in a different situation because we have quickly turned towards the network technologies of the future.”

So like any proper CEO he left himself some wiggle room: it could be anywhere between zero and 24%.

In the end of 2011 The Motley Fool happened to publish an year-end review of the stock. If you had spent $1,000 to buy ALU stocks in the beginning of 2011, by December 30 (the last trading day in the U.S.) your ALU position would only be worth $520. Or as the Fool says, 2011 was the year Alcatel-Lucent lost its mojo. The company’s revenue also declined by 1.3% in the year.

It did sell off Genesys for over a billion dollars so after that transaction completes ALU would have a bit of financial cushion. But historically ALU’s operating expenses pretty much erase what it makes in revenues. And with today’s worldwide — especially in North America and Europe — depressed economic condition, it’s harder to increase revenue but a bit easier to trim operating costs.

There’s no doubt that Verwaayen and the ALU board face tremendous pressure from shareholders going into the new year. Let’s hope the company can be turned around without having to go down the Nokia Siemens route…

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support and readership. InsideCTI will soon be two years old — an eternity for any (niche) blog! I’ve come to realize that a great number of you share the same passion for contact center news and customer service principles.

This is evident as the blog saw a 2x increase in visitors and pageviews year-over-year. Okay, maybe I should thank those of you who fell asleep at the keyboard reading the blog and your nose happened to repeatedly hit Reload? I’ll still count those as valid page hits!

Allow me to share some statistics (something we love in dealing with contact centers, no?):

Top 3 Browsers: Internet Explorer (39%), Firefox (26%), Chrome (24%). Google Chrome has really caught on! Interestingly, Android Browser appeared on the list this year with 0.05%.

Top 3 Operating Systems: Windows (79%), Macs (15%), and iPad (3.5%). How amazing is that? The iPad made it to the top three beating out Linux (2%). In fact, the iPad took away some iPhone numbers (0.08% in 2011, 1.6% in 2010) too!

Top 3 Mobile Operating Systems: iPad (96%), iPhone (2%), and Android (2%). The Apple iPad continue to dominate the mobile browsing experience. The sad news? BlackBerry devices registered zero hits in 2011, but actually had 3.44% in 2010.

Top Referrals: Both Facebook and Twitter refer almost equally at 15%, and LinkedIn around 8%. An year ago Twitter dominated Facebook in terms of referrals.

In terms of articles, there was a lot of interest surrounding the award-winning Groupama iPhone customer service app; then there was the drama from the Alcatel-Lucent sale of its Enterprise business (alas only Genesys was sold to Permira for $1.3 billion). Top 5 Articles:

1. Groupama iPhone app is customer self-service in the smartphone era
2. Alcatel-Lucent inches closer to selling enterprise business
3. Four simple rules for new technology evaluation (guest post)
4. New front runner in Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise sale
5. Enterprise Connect: NEC UC&C architecture targets IT managers and connected workforce (guest post)

So there you have it, a brief 2011 year in review.

What developments can we anticipate in 2012? Here are my thoughts:

• Depending on how soon Apple takes Siri out of beta and how open it makes the APIs, we may start to see the beginnings of a mobile speech-enabled customer service app. Much like the innovative Groupama app, except now with speech capabilities.
• Avaya will finally IPO, but the reception from investors will be dismal because PBXs and communications equipment are boring in the age of social-, mobile-, and location-aware products from young companies.
• Enterprise video will continue to be hyped, primarily by vendors in order to push their gears. Most workers are content with just something like Skype and Google Hangout.
• The financial uncertainty in Europe and sociopolitical unrest in countries like Egypt will impact contact center outsourcers and the BPO market. Asia and Latin America will be where these businesses flow.
• Bella Swan becomes the vampire next door.

Happy New Year and I look forward to bringing you informative and entertaining contact center content in 2012!

Major breaking news in speech tech: Nuance announced today that it will scoop up Vlingo. Oh, and happy Hanukkah (not in the press release).

Supposedly Vlingo was the other company that Apple was evaluating when developing Siri on the iPhone 4S. Here’s a bit of backstory between Vlingo and Nuance. It’s not pretty, but now it’s over. TechCrunch also chimes in.

This would be the gazillionth company that Nuance has acquired in recent years. In fact, there are hardly any other competitors left, so I predict that the speech giant may enter a new market soon. I’m thinking a wearable device for pets which will translate barks and meows into synthesized human speech. It’ll need a lot of animal test subjects in such case, therefore don’t be surprised if it starts buying pet stores (chains and mom-and-pops) as well as operate zoos.

General consumers and techies alike have raised concerns over AT&T buying T-Mobile (deal is now off) for fear of an anti-competitive carrier marketplace. Yet nobody thinks about the speech marketplace whenever they ask Siri to perform a task.

The press release:

Burlington, Mass. – December 20, 2011 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Vlingo, Inc. Fueled by unprecedented demand for intelligent voice interfaces that combine voice, language understanding and semantic processing, Nuance and Vlingo will combine their deep innovation and R&D expertise to deliver next-generation natural language interfaces across numerous markets and industries.

Consumer interest and demand for virtual assistant and voice-enabled capabilities have exploded in recent months, creating a $5 billion market opportunity that spans phones, tablets, cars, televisions, navigation devices, music players, PCs and more. Both Nuance and Vlingo see an unprecedented appetite for intelligent devices that understand the spoken word and deliver outcomes for consumers and professionals.

“Inspired by the introduction of services such as Apple’s Siri and our own Dragon Go!, virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet is looking for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications, and services,” said Mike Thompson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Nuance Mobile.  “By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand.”

“Vlingo and Nuance have long shared a similar vision for the power and global proliferation of mobile voice and language understanding. As a result of our complementary research and development efforts, our companies are stronger together than alone. Our combined resources afford us the opportunity to better compete, and offer a powerful proposition to customers, partners and developers,” said Dave Grannan, CEO, Vlingo.

By harnessing the combined expertise in voice, language and multilingual capabilities, Nuance will be able to take advantage of the adoption of intelligent mobile assistants, where consumers, businesses, doctors and patients can engage in more human, natural interactions with devices and systems all over the world.

Vlingo is a Virtual Assistant that turns your words into action by combining voice to text technology, natural language processing, and Vlingo’s Intent Engine to understand the user’s intent and take the appropriate action. Founded in 2006, Vlingo is backed by Charles River Ventures, Sigma Partners, Yahoo! and AT&T and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, go to www.vlingo.com.

Nuance is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: nuance.com.

Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Statements in this press release regarding the proposed transaction between Nuance and Vlingo, the market opportunity, the pace of innovation, increased customer demand in the mobile market, future product offerings by the combined company, and any other statements about Nuance managements’ future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects constitute forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that are not statements of historical fact (including statements containing the words “believes,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “expects,” estimates and similar expressions) should also be considered to be forward looking statements. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward looking statements, including the ability to consummate the transaction; the ability of Nuance to successfully integrate Vlingo’s operations and employees; the ability to realize anticipated synergies and cost savings; the failure to retain customers; and the other factors described in the ability of Nuance to integrate the product offerings of the combined companies and other the factors described in Nuance’s Annual Report on Form 10 K for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2011 and other filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Nuance disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release.

What’s on the new year resolution list of Siemens Enterprise Communications?

Start referring to itself as SEC and not SEN? Wow businesses in both North America and Europe with cloud solutions? Make Siemens a household name among American contact centers?

Probably all of the above and then some. Adweek reports that the company will dish out $90 million in the coming year to spend on media projects in the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Brazil:

Horizon Media has won a global media review that began with six agencies before narrowing to three and then two.

Siemens Enterprise Communications selected Horizon to handle the planning and buying of media in the company’s four core markets: the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Brazil, said Mike Drexler of Drexler Fajen & Partners, the New York-based consultancy that managed the search. Annual media spending is projected at $90 million.

Congratulations to Horizon Media! It’ll be quite a challenge facing off the well-oiled media machines representing the likes of Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, and Alcatel-Lucent, but Siemens is a very renowned brand as well. A global relaunch and rebranding may be just what the technology decision makers need to see SEN (SEC?) in a different light.

Is this your favorite time of the year? Christmas is just a few days away!

Well, I hope you enjoy the Christmas holiday with family and friends. And if your contact center is outsourced to the Philippines, halfway across the world, I don’t think they’re working as hard, as shown on this video of 7,000 partying agents (no embedding allowed but it’s worth a jump — trust me).

I have no idea what the reporter is saying but I think these agents deserve a good party!

Merry Christmas, y’all.