Last week Gartner came out with its latest Magic Quadrant for UC. So how do things look in the cutting edge field of unified communications?

Well, it appears that everyone is either a leader or niche player.

The vendors deemed worthy enough to float on the upper-right leaders quad: Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, and Siemens Enterprise Communications.

Most of the others, designated as niche players by the ever politically correct Gartner (as opposed to “non-leaders,” “losers,” or “followers”?) in the lower-left quad, include some usual suspects like ShoreTel, Interactive Intelligence, TeleWare, Toshiba, and Aastra Technologies; but there were a couple of newbies this time: Digium and Huawei Technologies.

Between quadrants challengers (NEC and IBM) and visionaries (Mitel) were only three companies. Notice that the newcomers Digium and Huawei went straight to the niche quad instead of arriving as challengers or visionaries…

And to me that is tragic. Has the UC market place finally settled and its landscape defined?

With Microsoft leading the pack it’s clear that UC is an enterprise software application. Microsoft’s dominance in enterprise software is paying dividends in the adolescent UC market. Plus, its leadership further strengthened with the acquisition of Skype.

I wouldn’t have thought networking giant Cisco to be a close second. My #2 pick would’ve been IBM but alas, Big Blue has never quite figured out “communications” throughout its history.

Interestingly, Mitel is the only visionary in the report. The company has been making waves recently by making its products VM-friendly and exclusive — a “game changer,” according to Dave Michels of Pin Drop Soup:

Today at VMworld in Las Vegas, we learned of a new capability: virtual softphones! Mitel’s US desktop suite, UC-Advanced, includes a softphone (and presence, and IM), and it is now supported on VMware’s View virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). To my knowledge, this is the first time a softphone is truly being supported on a virtual desktop. This is a game changer.

…

So far, this is a Mitel (MCD) and VMware (View 5) exclusive. The companies have not disclosed the secret sauce that makes it work, but it will no doubt be coming to other vendors. VDI is hot! It drives down support and hardware costs while improving mobility. Allowing a softphone to tag along has huge implications, particularly for organizations embracing cloud services. Virtual desktops have the potential to turn all kinds of form factors into legitimate, secure workstations including PCs, thin client desktops, iPads, and ChromeBooks.

Thanks to Eric Krapf over at the No Jitter blog, we learn a bit about the “secret sauce“:

“In the VDI space, the reason why the math works so well is you don’t have a PC for every person in the datacenter; you oversubscribe the resource,” because you don’t have everyone using all their resources all the time, [Mitel CTO Jim Davies] explained. So “even if you solve the latency problem, which is solvable, you still have the math problem.”

Rewriting the softphone application enabled Mitel to solve the latency problem; VMWare created an API for View that lets the Mitel softphone’s media streaming function plug into the thin client on the desktop, while the remaining functions move to the datacenter.

What will the next UC Magic Quadrant look like? I hope to see more dots in the top-left and bottom-right quadrants.

As if Cisco needs any more negative publicity in light of the company’s recent developments… Reorganizing its consumer business, killing off Flip, missed earnings, layoff projections, and CEO John Chambers in the hot seat:

Now security researchers have demonstrated how easy it is to attack Cisco IP phones out-of-the-box to intercept calls or cause service disruptions via distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) methods. The vulnerability lies in the phone’s web service capabilities — a feature that Cisco recommends disabling in the user manual.

But who reads the manual in the real world, right? ITelecom administrators usually just open the box, take the phone out, and plug it into an Ethernet port. Done. That’s the beauty of the IP phone, as they’d say.

These IP phones are more prevalent in businesses now, in the office and even in the contact center where personal and often private data are handled. Such a security weakness in the phone should be taken seriously as there could be severe legal repercussions with leaked private information, or worse yet, finding out one day that all the phones in the company are out of service.

The best practice should be to harden these IP phones just as you would to a PC workstation. Things such as disabling certain services, configuring the firewall, etc. should not be overlooked.

The newswires are reporting that Alcatel-Lucent is meeting potential buyers for its enterprise unit this week in San Francisco. News of the company’s intent to sell first surfaced nearly two weeks ago. Possible suitors include Avaya, Cisco, HP, and Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEN). It’s said that SEN is considered to be the front-runner in the deal.

Some industry analysts and bloggers are picking HP to win it and arguing that a buyout from SEN wouldn’t make much sense. But there are also detractors. Dave Michels from Pin Drop Soup postulates, rather succinctly:

If It is cash then Cisco wins (who wants their stock anyway), and if it is a stock deal SEN wins. If it is not cash or stock, it is an IPO.

To me spinning off the enterprise business (which includes Genesys) would make the most sense. There are definitely growth opportunities for this part of the business, especially with Genesys’ momentum in the industry. ALU can partly own and invest in the spinoff if it wishes to continue to enjoy the fruits of the enterprise division. But the spinoff process is sometimes messy and perhaps costly, and it appears that ALU is really eyeing for a cash transaction of at least $1 billion for this sale, instead of a stock transaction.

I don’t believe any publicly-traded company whose core competency isn’t in enterprise telecom would want to touch this deal, simply because Genesys is such a big part of the equation. Cisco, having recently trimmed its consumer business in order to appease shareholders, wouldn’t dare to spend a cool billion on ALU Enterprise. Cisco shareholders want to see more sales of big iron data routers and switches, and new products to fend off cheaper competing products.

A buyout from HP may seem like a match made in heaven, but I think HP has more to gain as a mistress than the bride in this situation. It already has a good partner relationship with ALU Enterprise. HP thrives on partnerships when it comes to augmenting and supplementing its enterprise portfolio, but it will make bold moves such as the Palm acquisition in acknowledgement of its tablet computing failure (the HP Slate) and corrected the course with the Palm buyout. A lot of what ALU Enterprise offers overlap with what HP can already do, except in the contact center and IP telephony areas. With 2Q2011 earnings release coming up in less than a month, I’m not so certain that HP would stir the pot and go for it.

That leaves private equity firms and/or other private investors. Both Avaya and SEN are backed up private equity money, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Silver Lake Partners or Gores Group decides to expand their portfolio with ALU Enterprise. These equity firms have a track record of understanding and not shying away from enterprise telecom companies. However, Avaya hasn’t completely mastered the aftermath from the Nortel Enterprise buyout yet. SEN, on the other hand, is desperate for some traction especially here in the U.S. It’s no wonder SEN is reportedly the front-runner in the deal.

However this deal goes down, my hope is that it isn’t rushed. There are plenty of potential buyers and options, including for ALU to do nothing.

John Stepp, president of Free Tech Consultants, on Cisco’s recent restructuring announcement.

Cisco has always been an innovator. From networking to VOIP to telepresence, Cisco has always led the way with new technologies they continued to develop to meet the changing needs of the enterprise. The acquisition of TANDBERG last year and the announcement this year that Cisco would be video enabling all their enterprise end points are current examples of bold moves that clearly demonstrated leadership. That is why the Flip announcement is so puzzling. Why?

Sure, one can argue that the purchase of Pure Digital was a mistake to begin with. I disagree, but the point is moot. The deal was done. The costs were sunk. So why just quit? Is the R&D engine for this product so broken that there was no possible path to success? If that is the case then Cisco should be commended for ending the product. Better to do that than to sell it, spin it off or joint venture it when there is no possible path to success. But it is hard for me to believe that the Flip could not have been innovated and marketed effectively in some way shape or form. There are so many different directions this technology could have gone. Wi-Fi enablement, incorporation into an enterprise end point, 4G/LTE connectivity, better HD video features and many other innovations could have given the Flip and its’ market segment fresh legs and bolster the Cisco brand image. Killing Flip hurts the Cisco image, especially with the video-centric Flip user community.

The notion that smartphone cameras make candy bar cameras like the Flip obsolete is laughable to me, although it seems to be a theme in each article I read about the Flip’s demise. The best candy bar cameras are far superior to cell phone cameras and there is no reason that the Flip could not evolve to stay ahead of the pack. I recently bought the JVC Picsio waterproof candy bar camera, but probably would have bought the Flip had it been innovated properly. No phone or iPod nano can do what the JVC Picsio can. Flip is still the market leader, with unmatched name recognition and could have continued successfully.

So why are they just shutting Flip down? Why abandon their employees and their customers? Could they not have spun the company off to get their low margins off of their balance sheet? Could they not have done a joint venture with an established camera company like Canon or Kodak? If this is just part of a “bold” move to show that Cisco is serious about changing the company’s focus and influence investors, it seems to me there was a better way to do it. Some day we will know what has happened behind the scenes at Cisco and Pure Digital. Maybe it will make sense at that time. Today it seems like a terrible waste of talent and intellectual property.

The good news for Cisco is that the rest of their video story is very positive. The Cisco TANDBERG product line is already providing synergy that is attracting an ever growing number of customers. The video revolution in the enterprise continues to be led by Cisco. Margins that have eroded in their networking product line will soon be bolstered as the video revolution begins to explode during the next decade. Their stock is a good long term play in my opinion, but then again, I thought the Flip was, too.

Networking behemoth Cisco has been in the news lately, but for reasons of disappointing financials and lackluster shareholder returns. Cisco is truly a world renowned global tech giant, another American entrepreneurial success story with deep roots in Silicon Valley. Its name, after all, paid homage to the City By the Bay, and its founders came from the computer operations staff at Stanford University.

The company has grown a lot and weathered tremendous hardships such as the dot-com bust. It’s a component in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NASDAQ 100 Index. This tech giant obviously has sound products and effective executives for the company to become an important part of the Internet Age. Without its heavyweight data routers and switches in the Internet backbone, all of us would have trouble sending emails, browsing the Web, and conducting online meetings.

But being a public company meant that ultimately Cisco has to report to its shareholders, and they are far from pleased. It has grown with many acquisitions, including several in the consumer market in hopes of better revenues, yet its recent financial guidances continue to disappoint. Even more worrisome is the news that Cisco actually lost market share in the enterprise networking market, an area which it dominated for years.

So, what would John (Chambers) do?

The CEO has realized that something drastic is required to turn Cisco around. This reminds me of what happened to Nokia recently, except Cisco isn’t in that bad of a shape (yet). First, of course, Cisco released a memo from Chambers to employees — his “guiding principles” in excerpt:

We now need to prepare ourselves for what’s next, as you will see Cisco make a number of targeted moves in the coming weeks and as we move into FY12.   These actions will be based on uncompromising integrity and will represent a very simple set of guiding principles:

1. We will not fix what’s not broken. There are numerous areas where we’re executing incredibly well for our customers and partners.  In these areas, you will see no disruption and you will see nothing less than support and empowerment.  Simply put, we will not get in the way of our success.  Our five company priorities are established:  leadership in core routing, switching and services; collaboration; data center virtualization and cloud; architectures; and video.  The importance of delivery to market through our partners is also clear – and we will do nothing but reinforce this.
2. We will take bold steps and we will make tough decisions.    With change comes disruption, and you will see this necessary and healthy disruption as we make meaningful decisions in a timely, targeted and measureable way.   We will address with surgical precision what we need to fix in our portfolio and what we need to better enable.
3. We will accelerate our leadership across our five priorities and compete to win in the core. Again, our strategy to extend the role of the network will not change.   Our approach to leadership in the core amidst this transition will change.  In switching we understand that our customers are buying across broader segments and specific needs in this market.   We understand that our competitors in this area are fierce, with different business models and architectures.  We will not be defined by them.  Most important, we understand that our customers want to stay and grow with Cisco.  They know we will partner with them to make their business successful and their technology investment sound.  They know us well and understand that we will not leave or devalue this business.  We need to give them the right reasons to make this transition with us, and we will.
4. We will make it easier for you to work at Cisco, as we make it easier for our customers and partners to work with Cisco.   We will simplify the way we work and how we focus our attention and resources.  We will significantly rework our systems, tools and funding models to do this.  We will reshape the operational foundation in order to empower our teams, integrate our major functions, and allow our people to focus on inspiring and important work.  We created the role of COO to expedite this effort and Gary Moore and I will drive these changes with the leadership team.

And quickly within a week of the memo and 30 days from its third quarter earnings call, Cisco restructures its consumer business, starting with closing down Flip (from Pure Digital Technologies) which was acquired for $590 million two years ago. Other products possibly to be affected include Linksys networking gear and Umi telepresence (not that anybody cares).

Would anything happen to its contact center business? Gartner in a 2010 report cautioned against Cisco’s Contact Center Enterprise and Express products as “under-featured,” “less feature-rich,” and no “all-in-one contact center applications suite capable of scaling to large enterprise size.” Essentially, its contact center products “sell strictly into environments using [Cisco's] data communications network and telephony solutions.”

There’s little doubt that Cisco mastered data networking. But contact center applications? Some would say that’s debatable. If Chambers is really serious about returning to Cisco’s roots, then losing the contact center portfolio would be fair game.

The term “post-PC” had been used by Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself in the iPad debut (reiterated in the iPad 2 announcement), and this year at Enterprise Connect the catchphrase was mentioned in a keynote and in a few breakout sessions. Mobility was definitely a hot topic this year, and one can certainly sense the interest among attendees wanting to learn more about mobile devices fitting into the overall enterprise communications scheme.

When the Avaya Flare, Cisco Cius, and RIM PlayBook were announced, I begged them to stop pouring money into these “enterprise tablet” projects. Instead, I proposed that such resources be allocated to developing apps for existing tablets — Android- or iOS-based — because developing mobile computing hardware just isn’t a core competency among these communications firms.

But I’m only a n00b blogger occupying a dusty corner of the industry blogosphere — who am I to say, right? Avaya had half a dozen Avaya Flare tablets at its pavilion, and Cisco had a few Ciuses on deck for the buzz counteroffensive. Heck, even Polycom showed me its telepresence app on a Samsung Galaxy Tab…

It’s obvious that Avaya, Cisco, and Polycom each has a very different philosophy when it comes to developing an “enterprise tablet”…

Avaya Flare Experience

Watch me light up the room

I will be the first to admit: Avaya did a tremendous job designing the Flare user interface, or as the company likes to put it, “experience.” It’s evident that Avaya R&D started from scratch and came out with a whole new UI tailored to enterprise communications. Although the device (Avaya Desktop Video Device, or ADVD — yes, quite a buzzkill product moniker) runs on Android, the UI is far from the typical screen full of scattered apps.

Perhaps Avaya is carving itself a niche for this tablet to be a pure mobile communications workhorse and nothing more. It has Android DNA, but Avaya hasn’t positioned the Flare AVDV as an all-purpose tablet. I believe the selling target is the executive behind a mahogany desk who cares less about playing games or writing documents on a mobile device. That’s why it’s priced at around $2,000?

The pricing may be its downfall, but I like how it makes a bold statement by slapping on an 11.6-inch display. (Maybe it wanted a 10″ but Apple’s gobbled up all the supply for iPads?)

Cisco Cius

See me, see you, Cius

The Cisco Cius, on the other hand, is significantly smaller than the Avaya Flare, and feels somewhat cheaper in terms of material. Also running the Android operating system, it’s apparent that Cisco wants the everyday worker to have one of these things at his (or her) disposal to boost productivity and enhance collaboration. It’s meant to be docked to a desk phone/station when not out and about, but then something magical happens when it’s in docked mode: the ability to work in a virtual desktop.

Cisco knows that nobody in their right mind would want to do serious office work (e.g. typing documents, populating spreadsheets, etc.) on this 7-inch tablet running on an Intel Atom CPU (as I was told). So once the Cius is docked, the user can use a virtual desktop client to work as if s/he is in front of a real PC. Better yet, files can reside on the device if need be when connectivity is an issue or simply because of a business requirement.

During Barry O’Sullivan’s keynote he mentioned that the price for a Cius is expected to drop to around $700 because of projected demand. I still think that price point is kind of high in the face of consumer tablets like the Apple iPad and Motorola Xoom, not to mention the Dell Streak and Samsung Galaxy Tab…

Polycom Telepresence

Speaking of the Samsung Galaxy Tab… Polycom’s philosophy is clearly to stay away from designing a spanking new UI or to make some new tablet hardware. The company partnered with Samsung to have a Polycom Telepresence app loaded on the Galaxy Tab. By the way, that tablet retails for around $250.

When the telepresence app was demoed to me we ran into a few glitches at first. But in the end the Polycom folks got it working, and I was able to capture a clip of it in action. As you can see in the video, not only can you video conference but also share screens. I can see this app being useful for workers who already got one of these Samsung tablets.

If Polycom can work through the stability issues with the telepresence app, then this could become a runaway hit among enterprise users, especially at the sub-$300 unit price.

So there is hope for an enterprise tablet

Uh, not really. I believe what the user desires is the experience of the Flare, the features of the Cius, and the price of Polycom’s solution bundle.

That device arrived in April 2010, even before any of these came to exist. A 10-inch screen, smooth UI, wide selection of apps, and for $500.

It’s the Apple iPad, of course, a consumer tablet that’s making inroads into the enterprise. Apple understood all three philosophies and that’s why the iPad was such a huge success. Polycom has the right idea to partner with Samsung, which is well versed in the consumer electronics arena, to create an app instead, but Avaya and Cisco may want to reconsider their approach.

My first VoiceCon in 2010 was so much fun (oh yeah, I also learned a lot and made quite a few new acquaintances) that I knew I had to plan for Enterprise Connect 2011. It was also my first live on-site coverage for insideCTI (I’d just started the blog a month earlier), so I really didn’t know what to expect. In 2010 my family tagged along for the 8-hour road trip to Orlando to provide moral support (in the form of “We get to visit Mickey!”) and endured a few days of hotel stay with me, away from the comfort of our TV, sofas, and beds. I would go to the conference during the day, return to the hotel for a “home” cooked supper, then start organizing my notes in order to start burning the midnight oil on the blog. Thankfully the hotel WiFi offered decent speeds.

This year I flied solo, road trip and all. Driving myself for eight hours down Interstate 75 was rough — the various segments of road work made it worse — and again I was reminded that I’m not in college anymore. Still, I think eight hours was about the threshold before I’d gladly subject myself to TSA groping. Had the conference been held in Miami then the TSA would’ve had me by my… Well, you get the idea.

The Gaylord Palms Resort (commonly known as the “biodome” to returning conference goers) hadn’t changed much: the same lush plants, the humidity, the bored alligators, and lots of Avaya banners. Yep, no doubt I had arrived at the right conference when I walked in early Monday morning to pick up my media badge.

Before the trip I’d thought that Skype would be the most talked about exhibitor (and David Gurle, VP Skype Enterprise, also a featured keynote speaker). After all, everybody Skypes these days. And that’s both at home and in the office, both audio and video. Skype’s intention of moving into the enterprise market is also well known now. Some may even say that Skype’s one of the first unified communication applications.

But frankly Skype Enterprise didn’t have anything spectacular for this conference. A partnership with Citrix GoToMeeting, a pitch of 24/7 support tied to SLAs, and a closer relationship with Avaya (a sibling company also sharing Silver Lake Partners as an investor). Disappointedly, nothing too exciting, especially when details were hard to come by too. Was it being overly conservative and cautious because of the planned IPO this year?

The debut of the Innovation Showcase was awesome. Not only did I get to learn about new companies (ProtonMedia, Radish Systems, harmon.ie), but Fonolo was one of the winners and I got to catch up with CEO Shai Berger. I hope the showcase becomes a regular part of Enterprise Connect (and winning companies granted better booth locales).

Speaking of innovation, I was introduced to Hookflash CEO Trent Johnsen whose company came in second in the recent StartupCamp 3 in Miami. Always a pleasure to meet a tech entrepreneur outside of Silicon Valley (he’s from Calgary, Canada).

The always professionally dressed and equally professionally equipped Dan York, Director of Communications at Voxeo, was kind enough to meet with me to chat about his company and the conference in general. Too bad he didn’t divulge any juicy news about possible acquisitions, but he did touch upon some things such as Voxeo’s new office, growth in its Beijing office, and a new data center in Asia. He also wondered why Google or Apple — two companies representing Android and iOS, respectively — weren’t represented at any of the sessions discussing UC mobility. I shared that same sentiment. I eagerly await the year when either of those companies shows up at Enterprise Connect…

Data networking giant Cisco proved it’s not just a one trick pony with SocialMiner winning Best of Enterprise Connect 2011. This social customer care solution monitors social media networks and lets a company effectively respond to customers. (Side note: Avaya also has a similar product called the Social Media Manager, and compared to SocialMiner the UX was night and day.)

The highlight of the trip was probably the invitation-only media dinner hosted by Verizon on Monday, at a steakhouse inside the biodome. The dinner was great (had the buffalo steak and bread pudding for dessert), but even better was the opportunity to chat with folks from Verizon and Cisco, not just about UCCaaS but really having regular conversations at the dinner table. Alas, it’s good to know that marketing people are humans too and not androids programmed to divulge only corporate press releases.

Was there a low point? Unfortunately, yes. If anyone found a VirginMobile MiFi hotspot, please return it to me. It’s a blogger’s best friend and I’d lost it sometime on Tuesday, March 1.

But overall, I had a blast this year. Although I didn’t do much liveblogging (I do love liveblogging though) this time, my tweet stream was fairly consistent during the events I attended. And kudos to the good WiFi coverage at the venue this year, most of the time my iPhone 4 was able to last till the end of the day even with heavy tweeting. In fact, lots of people participated in #enterprisecon (I hope Dan’s thumbs are okay) and it made the conference even better!

Enterprise Connect 2012 is March 26-29 at the same biodome. What will next year’s hot topics be? (Please, not interoperability…)

The Cisco pavilion at Enterprise Connect also featured a few smaller booths to showcase the company’s prominent partners. This was a great gesture by Cisco to give exposure to several of these smaller but value-adding companies. I got to visit two of them: San Jose-based Netformx and Minneapolis-based Calabrio (previously covered at VoiceCon and SpeechTEK 2010).

Netformx turns imagined networks into reality, quickly

Netformx likes to tell its customers to “imagine your network.” If you can think it, Netformx can make it happen with the help of its product portfolio. And it’s not just for engineers, either. Netformx has software to help with the whole sales-to-implementation cycle, from discovery and requirements gathering all the way to printing a detailed order with all the necessary items in place. The time savings are enormous considering the elimination of managing Visio documents, Excel spreadsheets, wikis, or any other method of sharing project collateral.

The solution consists of three main parts: Software Engines, Knowledge Base, and Integration and Collaboration. John Trembley, Director of Product Marketing, spent a few minutes to show me an example of what the software can do, and I can tell you that it will blow your mind (especially if you’ve ever used Visio to draw pages and pages of network diagrams). From discovery to design to validate to quote generation, thanks to the comprehensive storage of design rules and templates in the Knowledge Base, the Netformx solution can spit out everything your project needs with a 99% rate of design accuracy and achieving a 70% productivity gain.

Just imagine: no need to keep revising Visio documents, swapping them with colleagues, and repeat. Even then you may not have gotten it right. Remember the time when you first stepped up from dial-up access to a broadband connection? You’ll never go back to miss that modem handshake whistle. Once you see how effective Netformx is for a network designer/engineer, you’ll never consider going back to using Visio and Excel.

Cisco is the world leader in data networking hardware, so it’s not surprising that Netformx has a very close relationship with the company. However, Trembley stated that the partnership is definitely not exclusive as Netformx also supports equipment from other major vendors like Avaya, Juniper Networks, and Polycom.

Netformx clearly carved a profitable niche in the network design space, and with over 300 customers it’ll be tough for any competitor to catch up anytime soon.

Calabrio rethinks user experience, boldly overhauls flagship product

When I saw Calabrio CEO Tom Goodmanson last year at VoiceCon, he was clearly excited to tell me about the advances his team had made to produce Calabrio ONE, its contact center suite with a unified framework. Back then his team focused a lot of the user interface of the product, and the results were pretty good.

Apparently not good enough to Goodmanson, and it’s only been a year. At Enterprise Connect he shared with me about the rich, personal UX seen in today’s computing environments, particularly in mobile devices like the iPad, and made a bold executive decision — a vision — for his company: we need to be more like Apple when designing software.

That meant Calabrio ONE absolutely needs to have a consistent UI, precise actions, and seamless integration among all its components. Throw away layers of menus (the target he’d set for his developers was 50% on the first iteration, 20% desired subsequently) and rethink the effectiveness of each visual element on the screens.

When the demo was shown to me I was a bit shocked — it looked like a completely different product. The Dashboard took on a Web homepage motif with colorful and easily identifiable widgets. Important and useful data was automatically displayed on the screen without the need for the user to drill down. Most information was obtainable with no more than one or two clicks.

Before the show the new design had been tested on an iPad as well as the Motorola Xoom. The Web-based overhaul proved to be a good direction because of the flexibility and portability of the code, and the consistency of the UX across all devices.

Goodmanson was clearly proud of what his team had achieved in such a short time, and from the twinkle I saw in his eye I believe we can expect even greater improvements to Calabrio ONE in the months to come.

Cisco on the rocks, please

For more photos and videos of Cisco products please visit the album on Facebook.

This year it’s Cisco’s Barry O’Sullivan, SVP Voice Technology Group, who got to lead off Tuesday keynotes. The presentation videos and slides were well done, and the message continued to be about video taking over business interactions. The “video is the new voice” mantra echoed throughout the room. (Interestingly, some may disagree.)

More video means more data. More data means more (or bigger) routers. More routers mean more money for Cisco. Video does have its place in the enterprise, but it’s debatable whether most companies share Cisco’s urgency of addressing the infrastructure needs of video right now. No matter, the bottom line is “when” not “if” video applications will explode in our faces.

I don’t blame Cisco for that marketing message (heck, almost every major exhibitor at the show does it) and O’Sullivan did make some interesting announcements, starting with Cisco Jabber.

Jabber was acquired by Cisco in 2008 — yes, a long time ago. Finally the company is leveraging Jabber to be part of its UC portfolio. In the ol’ days Jabber was used to just do IM, but thanks to standards like XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) Cisco Jabber features video, conferencing, voice, and mobility capabilities. It’s the “buddy list” to end all buddy lists.

Of course, this being the Year of the Tablet everyone was most curious about the progress of the Cius. Well, there was good news and bad news. First, the good news: Cisco aims to reduce the street price from the original $1,000 to $700. The bad news: Cisco has to reduce the street price from the original $1,000 to $700. After all, Apple has set the bar high with iPad (and iPad 2 to come out March 11), both in design and pricing.

O’Sullivan claimed that the company was seeing “unbelievable demand for the device” and said the tablet will become the company’s hottest selling product within a year. That’s quite a bold statement considering Cisco’s product portfolio of mainly routers and switches.

Can I hold it too?

As much as I don’t believe in an “enterprise tablet market,” the Cius does have a couple of differentiators. It has a dock to extend its use as a desktop video phone and also to provide a virtualized PC environment. The tablet runs on Android (not sure which version) and an Intel Atom CPU (commonly found on netbooks), and the demo unit at the booth was still in beta. According to a Cisco representative, work is still progressing to improve stability and optimize battery power.

However, I think the announcement that has the most impact was its new appliances for the SMB segment. Let’s be honest — Cisco products and solutions are often considered too expensive for SMBs. For a good number of years Cisco only paid attention to the large enterprises, but recently it’s shifted its market focus to include small- and mid-tiered businesses. Now Cisco is getting serious about this segment by introducing three products that give business owners a lot of bang for their bucks.

The Cisco UC 320W (under 25 users) looks like a router (even has two antennas sticking up), acts like a router, but is capable of so much more. WiFi (802.11a/g/n), VOIP, unified communications. Setup and administration tasks are easily done via the browser. This appliance can enable UC/IP of a business in 20 minutes or less.

For the slightly bigger enterprise there’s the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Business Edition 3000 for 300 users across 10 sites. Again, simple to setup and administer. Something like this could last a long time for a business that’s just starting to grow.

These products, if marketed effectively (for example, reshaping Cisco’s image to be more SMB friendly), could give heartburn to competitors in the SMB space. Make it known to SMB owners that they are also “Welcome to the Human Network.”

Who’s Caas and what’s she doing with Cisco?! Who knows! But Verizon today unveiled an interesting cloud-based offering with a dash of Cisco goodness: unified communications and collaboration-as-a-service, or UCCaaS.

Big Red is most proud of its high-IQ network infrastructure, the pipes that carry bits and bytes of voice, video, IM, etc. And together with applications from the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, or “Chocos” (okay, I made that up), Verizon aims to help enterprises in search of implementing UC&C save on cost and deployment time as well as offer flexibility.

Together with mobile UC clients from Cisco (Nokia and iPhone) or Verizon (Android with dock) to complete the UCCaaS offering, Verizon is welcoming enterprises with open arms to adopt this cloud service from end to end.

The benefits of cloud services are well researched and documented, but Verizon is well aware of the business reality: it’s rare that an enterprise elects to go fully cloud. More often than not, it makes no sense for a company to scrap all its on-premise gear in favor of a complete cloud migration. That’s when Verizon’s UCCaaS can offer the greatest potential because of its hybrid capabilities, according to Tom Daniel, Group Manager, UC&C Product Development and Management.

Verizon has even had to rethink its pricing strategy for this cloud service. With an all-cloud package it’s easy to just throw out a big number as the final price. But to allow companies to take advantage of a cost-effective hybrid architecture, Verizon came up with a fee schedule with a la carte features and pricing. Mix and match based on your favorite dishes at the cloud UC buffet!

With all the noise about cloud services, why haven’t we heard more about the hybrid reality? Tom Dalrymple, Jr., Director of Voice Product Management and Development, thinks that virtualization is a key factor. UCCaaS uses virtualization technology from industry leader VMWare, also a close partner with Cisco. With virtualization the UCCaaS implementation can reign in costs with shared hardware and resources, yet offer enough flexibility with customization with dedicated application instances.

To me this announcement is also about two major players — one from a data-centric heritage, the other from voice — combining forces to create a unique product to meet the UC demands of today. Granted, the distinction between voice and data has faded, but the relationship between Cisco and Verizon looks to be stronger than ever.

UCCaaS, can you hear me now?

Here is the press release:

NEW YORK – With today’s workforce becoming more global and mobile, the need for employees to remain connected to corporate resources and to each other has never been greater. To help meet this need, Verizon is introducing innovative capabilities that enhance and advance unified communications and collaboration solutions for businesses and government agencies.

The new capabilities are:

• Unified Communications & Collaboration-as-a-Service, one of the industry’s first cloud-based commercial UC&C offerings. It enables businesses and government agencies to facilitate enterprise adoption of UC&C in a fixed or mobile environment with predictable per-seat pricing. New capabilities include seamless call transfers from fixed to mobile phones and the use of “presence” technology, such as instant messaging, to initiate audio, Web and intra-company video conference calls both in and out of the office.
• Mobile UC Client, which is designed to extend business telephony solutions to mobile handsets. It is available with a docking station that enables workers to replace their traditional desk phone with a single mobile device that can access advanced UC&C features, whether workers are in or away the office.

“We’re putting our leadership in cloud, UC&C and mobility to work for our customers,” said Farooq Muzaffar, vice president of enterprise network and communications solutions with Verizon. “It’s all part of our ‘everything-as-a-service’ strategy to help our customers achieve better business outcomes by making information and collaboration available virtually anywhere, anytime.”

The new offerings, available to U.S. customers this spring, will be able to work together to deliver a comprehensive cloud-based UC&C solution, or they can be purchased separately to meet specific business requirements. Visitors to the Enterprise Connect Show, taking place this week in Orlando, Fla., will be able to view demonstrations of Verizon’s new Unified Communications-as-a-Service offering, featuring the Mobile UC client, which has been named a finalist in the Best of Enterprise Connect competition at the trade show.

Cloud-Based UC&C Takes Flight

Verizon Unified Communications & Collaboration-as-a-Service combines popular applications from the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution within Verizon’s high-IQ network and data center infrastructure to quickly and cost-effectively provide UC&C capabilities to multiple employees across an enterprise. Since the dedicated enterprise applications reside in the cloud, organizations can activate employee subscriptions to some or all of the available services, as needed, and pay for the services on a per-user basis.

The state of West Virginia is among the first customers to test-drive an early version of the solution, helping Verizon to determine the specifications for the version that will be commercially available.

According to Eric Schoch, Cisco’s group director, Voice Technology Group, “Through the Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution, Cisco is enabling Verizon to provide cloud-based solutions that offer unmatched levels of deployment flexibility without compromising capabilities. By working with Verizon, we’re able to help them quickly and cost-effectively offer comprehensive unified communications and collaboration solutions to their customers.”

Later this year, Verizon will roll out a hybrid offering – also based on a per-seat subscription model — for customers that still require a fully dedicated environment and want both a cloud- and premises-based solution. A December 2010 Gartner report, UC ‘in the Cloud’ and On-Premises: Examples of Hybrid Solutions notes, “Many enterprise planners think of cloud and on-premises options as mutually exclusive; however, increasingly, enterprises are deploying elements of a UC solution functionality as a blended hybrid of these two options.”

UC&C to Go

Verizon’s Mobile UC Client solution provides a fixed and mobile, single-device solution, and offers a variety of features including single reach and voice mail numbers. In addition, the other new offering, Unified Communications-as-a-Service, can be accessed on a variety of smart phones and tablet devices from other providers to support a wide range of business requirements.

Verizon also offers a suite of Managed Mobility solutions and professional consulting services to help customers develop and employ the best strategy and path to UC&C and mobility for their specific organization. Specifically, Verizon can assist enterprises in the transformation from their current environment, and support integration with existing capabilities in addition to customization.

Verizon is a global leader in driving better business outcomes for mid-sized and large enterprises and government agencies. Verizon combines integrated communications and IT solutions and professional services expertise with high-IQ global IP and mobility networks to enable businesses to securely access information, share content and communicate. Verizon is rapidly transforming to a cloud-based “everything-as-a-service” delivery model that will put the power of enterprise-grade solutions within the reach of every business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers. Verizon Wireless operates America’s most reliable wireless network, serving 94.1 million customers nationwide. Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America’s most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers innovative, seamless business solutions to customers around the world. A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of more than 194,000 and last year generated consolidated revenues of $106.6 billion. For more information, visit www.verizon.com.

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Media Contacts:

Maria Montenegro

+1-703-886-6063

maria.montenegro@verizon.com

Debbie Lewis

+1 610-257-7974

debbie.lewis@verizon.com