UC Summit 2013 Day Two

29 Apr 2013

The UC Summit is an unusual mix of education, networking, and wine. Here's a brief recap of the past 24 hours.

Lots of keynotes. Starting with Sonus, a vendor that few UC dealers and consultants heard of a year ago has rapidly emerged as an SBC leader with products that serve SMB to large carriers (64k sessions). Avaya delivered a thought provoking keynote on the need for presence to evolve. Most presence systems are triggered by keyboard activity which is somewhat counter-intuitive as a representation of one's availability. HP's keynote was very broad as the firm's approach to UC includes endpoints, headsets, webcams, servers, storage, professional services, and networking. HP is on the forefront of SDN's, and it received considerable attention recently with its Lync proof of concept demonstration.

The sessions have included a variety of subjects. Dale Johnson, of Technology Assurance Group, presented to the SI's best practices regarding business strategies including big fish tactics on surviving industry consolidation. Our UCStrategies Experts Blair, Art, and Don presented emerging opportunities in the modern contact center. Blair focused on the social agenda including the hierarchy of social awareness (ignore, monitor, listen, act). Art presented the opportunities stemming from revised customer expectations around mobility and self-service. Don focused on emerging UC tools and the channel opportunity to assist organizations in rethinking (and modernizing) customer interaction strategies.

There was a very interesting panel discussion on how traditional VARs are implementing cloud services. This remains a hot topic as most resellers have been operating on business models built around large single-purchase transactions rather than smaller recurring sales. Different providers offered different approaches -NEC focused on "partner enablement" tools. Thinking Phone Networks encouraged resellers to customize solutions via provided APIs. It is important to evaluate cloud partners for their full capabilities rather than simply providing hosted dialtone.

There was a fascinating afternoon session of UC success stories. Here multiple vendors and partners shared recent case studies to highlight examples of UC transformations. It was reassuring that such huge victories are being accomplished from such a wide array of UC components including platforms, applications, and carriers. The cost savings were significant, as were productivity gains with both qualitative and quantitative case studies.

I'd like to share more, but it's time for the pre-dinner reception. The day's high point is still yet to come with the expert wine and chocolate pairings.