The Many Voices of VoiceCon
The Many Voices of VoiceCon by Dave Michels
VoiceCon is probably the single largest enterprise voice event. As a result, the Blogosphere was afire with analysis and reviews of the event. It is also a big event for UCStrategies.com. Not only was nearly the entire team there, but we were heavily involved with the panels, sessions, and even Best of VoiceCon judging. Additionally, it is an important event for face time with many of our clients as well as briefing updates. Our Michael Finneran and Marty Parker were judges on the best of VoiceCon award - Congratulations to Siemens Enterprise Group.
By all accounts, the event was a major success. Attendance was up, the vendor community was reasonably upbeat about business conditions, customers were shopping, and the media was afire with announcements. This post will take a look at some of the recent coverage of the event.
In addition to the following posts, there were 1436 #VoiceCon tweets during the show.
Starting with real voices, check out the UCStrategies.com team
Podcast on
VoiceCon impressions. The podcast was recorded on the Monday after VoiceCon with the team's observations and take-aways.
Blair Pleasant (UCstrategies.com/Commfusion)
It was clear that social software integrated with UC is becoming a reality. All I can say is it's about time. Most of the keynotes highlighted social software capabilities and/or integration of the vendors' UC capabilities with public or enterprise social software... If you didn’t think Microsoft was serious about voice communications before, you better believe it now....Best line of the conference: Avaya's Phil Edholm: "If you can't be with the device you love, love the device you’re with." First runner up: Alcatel-Lucent's Jack Jachner (in response to Microsoft and IBM discussing their UC offerings): "If you’re going to choose a communication solution, choose it from a communication vendor." Second runner up: Microsoft's Gurdeep Singh Pall and Moz Hussein, noting "UC in the future will be like a belly button--everyone will have it and you don’t need to see it, but some people want to show it off."
While I'm sad to say goodbye to VoiceCon, I'm eagerly looking forward to the next Enterprise Connect.
VoiceCon Orlando: What a Show!
Social software is becoming an integral part of enterprise communications, and is increasingly being integrated with UC and contact center applications. We saw some great demos from Siemens, Cisco, Avaya, and others, showing the integration with public social software services like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. While the demand isn’t quite there yet, these companies are getting ready for the eventual need to route tweets just like another contact center channel. Siemens demonstrated how tweets can be sent to contact center queues and agents who can best handle the request. Contact center agents can have a “social pad” on their agent desktop that displays tweets that came into their agent desktop based on key words and phrases...In the few years that UC has been a central focus of VoiceCon, now rebranded Enterprise Connect, the industry has come a long way.
Dave Michels (UCStrategies.com/PinDropSoup.com)
I am realizing that there was something missing at VoiceCon: Android...Android cell phones are now available on every major US carrier. I thought Android would make a lot of sense as a desktop IP phone, but evidently I am alone. I didn't see any (new) Android devices on the VoiceCon show floor... [device makers] could leverage a network of developers and applications to further their value proposition. Combine it with other technologies such as RFID and barcode scanners and there is the potential for a very powerful handheld device."
VoiceCon Conclusions
The show was busy and upbeat. Attendance and morale was up over a year ago. Now that the show is over, it's time for deep reflective thoughts about the industry, telecom, and unified communications...Virtualization is real. Several vendors have cracked the virtualization code and the operational and economic benefits are significant...The world is flat and VoIP is a big reason why. It was almost humorous, it seemed like 90% of the people I met worked out of home or a small branch office thousands of miles away from their "office"...Regarding the name change: Keeping voice as its linchpin kept VoiceCon unique.
Presenting the VoiceCon Disconnects
Movies have Oscars, Music has Grammys - I am launching the VoiceCon Disconnects. These are my awards for the disconnects between reality and the show...the mobility offerings were largely unchanged from last year. No one had an 802.11N phone. Motorola had a new SIP based WiFi phone, but none of the "voice" vendors had any new (WiFi or Dect) wireless offerings...I would like to thank my mother and so many others, but I hear the music on-hold playing and that's my queue to go.
Zeus Kerravala (The Yankee Group) Standards and Interoperability and Open, Oh My!
Themes of interoperability, standards and openness was a theme in many of the sessions as well as a point of concern from many of the attendees ... It continues to be a big problem and will be one of the main reasons our industry crawls instead of runs...Sure, all of the vendors claim to be open and standards based but designing a proprietary protocol and then throwing it into a standards body and trying to force everyone to adhere to it doesn't exactly count as being "open and standards based"...It needs to be solved by a commitment from all the UC vendors.
I had the opportunity to host two sessions, one on hosted/managed UC and the other on the use of social media in the enterprise...The use of social media in the enterprise requires clear policies...Certainly, the next generation's use of technology will change how they interact, and what tools they expect to have at their disposal in the workplace...Youthful indiscretion is nothing new. With age comes maturity, and a shrinking sense of urgency. Hopefully, that's true for all of us, and this new technology.
If you want to stay connected to the Enterprise communications market, VoiceCon Orlando is it... I put on jeans-- Mistake. Within two hours of not spotting one other measly pair, I did a b-line back to my room to fix the wardrobe malfunction... Good show, plenty of people, sheets of announcements and a general feeling that good days are ahead. Especially for those in visual communications... VoiceCon is now Enterprise Connect. Wonder what that will mean for the dress code....
Moz Hussain (Microsoft) Microsoft's Unified Communications Blog
I personally was new to the enterprise voice space and Microsoft was only just painting a vision of the world to come. Roll forward two and a half years, and we are clearly seen as a major player in the communications industry with anticipation from customers and competitors of the impact we will have...I think we came out top in the show...All in all a great event. Thanks to all who worked with us, including customers and partners for their passion and commitment. We haven’t disclosed even half the capabilities of Communications Server “14” and I think the full product will bring even more value to customers.
Mike Dolan (FierceVoip)VoiceCon: A view from the show floor
While cruising the show floor and meeting with a bunch of our industry's leading companies, I got to see a few unified communications offerings, video deployments and application development tools each with their own style and quirks as well as their shared capabilities that seem to be coming standard...Cisco had a conference room on the show floor showing off their TelePresence system that puts life size people on a screen across the table from you as well as a shared video whiteboard.
If I were to summarize the main themes from the show, I think I would pick the need for interoperability and standardization; along with the move from vertical one-company mainframe-style silos towards open horizontal platforms, and open application-development ecosystems. In addition to this, I think virtualization, business-value and video-deployments were also hot topics... the big change from previous years was that the news is no longer just about the new widgets & technology; and we've moving into discussions about how to use the technology, and increase user-acceptance. HP agrees, and that's why we announced a number of services addressing the business value of UC&C.
Kevin Obrien (Seamless Enterprise) VoiceCon – Never Again - NEVER!
I attended my last VoiceCon event this week. Good riddance – the whole concept of a voice-centric, telephony show was so last decade. They actually had a general session titled “How many phones does your enterprise need?” They should have put a sign up on the stage that said “NONE” ...My IP connectivity just sets up the sessions with a quick click, and we are all joined in a virtual world – if I let you join, you’re just an avatar in my immediate world. Misbehave and you’re gone with a click. Calls, dial plans … they no longer exist in my work environment. That is now – what’s next? ...Bye bye VoiceCon, hello Enterprise Connect.
Irwin Lazar (Network World) Getting to Interoperable Video Conferencing
While there were lots of interesting announcements at last week’s VoiceCon event, I found a great deal of attendee and vendor focus on interoperability, especially around video conferencing. Vendors including Cisco, Polycom, Tandberg, and Vidtel delivered announcements around their ability to interoperate with competitive or partner systems.
As of March 2010, VoiceCon's name will be changed to Enterprise Connect, with the tagline, "Communications Transforming Business."
Chad Berndtson (ChannelWeb)VoiceCon Notes: Siemens, Tandberg, Cisco And Others Make Channel Waves
Eugene Liu (Inside CTI) Multiple VoiceCon Posts