Conference: VoIP and Unified Communications Track
The VoIP and Unified Communications track will help you understand the technologies of UC and IP telephony, and how these can be implemented to benefit business processes and user productivity. You will learn how to ensure that the network infrastructure can support the new real-time applications with the required performance levels, and how communications systems are enabling the next generation of collaboration.
| Tuesday, April 27 | |
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Open Source PBXs have become a force in the enterprise communication market, with some estimates showing as much as 18% of stations shipped (for all size segments) may be open source. Clearly, this is an option that many enterprises are taking much more seriously than they might have expected to a few years ago. But does that mean open source should be a part of your next procurement, or at least included in RFIs and RFPs? This session will look at the technical aspects of Open Source PBX/communications systems. You’ll come away with an understanding of what open source can do for your enterprise’s communications infrastructure, and the true nature of the investment you’ll have to make to procure, customize, install and support Open Source PBXs. Moderator - Eric Krapf, Editor, NoJitter.com, Co-Chair, Enterprise Connect Eric Krapf is co-chair of the VoiceCon events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Unified Communications marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, TechWeb’s online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Unified Communications industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters. From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine's editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America's Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas. Speaker - Steve Sokol, Marketing Director for Asterisk, Digium Steve Sokol is the Marketing Director for Asterisk at Digium. Steve's primary function is spreading the word about the limitless capabilities and incredible value of the Asterisk communications engine. Steve's experience with the revolutionary open source platform dates to 2003. In 2004 he co-founded AstriCon, the official Asterisk community conference and exhibition. Shortly thereafter he launched a highly successful Asterisk training venture. In 2007 both the training program and the conference were acquired by Digium. Steve has worked in the telecommunications software industry since the early 1990s. Prior to his discovery of Asterisk, he worked as a communications consultant and solutions architect. His client list included Sprint, Sprint PCS, Computer Instruments, TWA and Stream International (now Stream Global Services). He was the chief architect of the award winning eIVR platform and of Stream International's innovative Q-View management information system. Originally from the Kansas City, Missouri area, Steve now lives in Tulsa, OK. He is married to Amy, a brilliant health care attorney and the father of Katie, a brilliant 4th grader. | |
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Presence is the heart of unified communications and, some would argue, of all next-generation enterprise communications. But presence loses much of its value if it's implemented within discrete systems that can't exchange information with each other - between different systems within an enterprise, between partner companies, with customers, and between public and private networks. In addition to exchange issues, there are important trends in providing richer presence content, automating status, and in the development of rules and policy engines that govern who is accessible to whom and under what conditions. This session will explore these topics and examine progress on these important functionality issues. Moderator - Eric Krapf, Editor, NoJitter.com, Co-Chair, Enterprise Connect Eric Krapf is co-chair of the VoiceCon events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Unified Communications marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, TechWeb’s online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Unified Communications industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters. From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine's editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America's Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas. Speaker - Christian Anschuetz, Senior VP and Chief Information Officer, Underwriters Laboratories Inc. Speaker - Bruce Mazza, Director, UC Market Solutions, Unified Communications Group, Avaya Bruce Mazza is a Director in the Unified Communications Solutions Marketing group at Avaya. His current role focused on enabling new offers for customers and channel partners that enable their businesses to excel. During his 13 year career at Avaya he has played major roles in delivering market leading communications solutions to enterprises. His past roles at Avaya have included Senior Product Manager for Communication Manager, Industry Manager for Government Solutions, and Senior Solutions Manager for Branch Solutions. Bruce has a Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration from Colorado State University. Bruce is married and has two children and resides in Denver, Colorado. Speaker - Jack Jachner, Vice President, Cloud Communication Solutions, Alcatel-Lucent Speaker - Tom Wesselman, Principal Engineer, Enterprise, Commercial & Small Business Group, Cisco Tom Wesselman is a senior manager in the office of the CTO responsible for the long-term strategy for Cisco's Communication and Collaboration products - building on the foundation of Unified, IP-based communication to add social networking, collaboration, and web 2.0 interfaces and applications. Before that he ran engineering for Cisco Unified Personal Communicator, partnerships for the initial release of Cisco Network Admission Control, and engineering for Cisco Unity Unified Messaging. | |
| Wednesday, April 28 | |
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This two-part session is designed to help enterprises chart their course through UC adoption and deployment. The first hour will provide a comprehensive overview of the options available for Unified Communications, along with an assessment of suppliers for each option. It is intended for enterprise CXOs, decision-makers, IT managers, communications managers, and business managers who are planning to install UC -- either via a new system or by adding UC to existing PBXs, email systems and business applications. The session will highlight the five most popular Unified Communications enterprise deployment options. Top-ranking vendors for each option will be compared and evaluated, and estimated pricing of each approach will be included in the analysis. The second hour will provide you with the details you need to make your UC decisions, to select the best vendors, and to plan your implementation. This section will show the specific UC configurations and investments that are required for the most common cases for UC investments. In each case, we will review the system configurations, the added software and hardware elements, and the systems integration scope of work likely to be required to achieve the desired outcome. Speaker - Marty Parker, Principal Consultant, UniComm Consulting Marty Parker is committed to advancement of Unified Communications (UC) to produce new benefits and efficiencies in enterprise communications and to stimulate and justify innovation in the business communications industry. Marty sees Unified Communications as transforming the highly manual, unmeasured, and relatively unpredictable world of telephony-based and e-mail-based communications into a software-assisted, coordinated, simplified, predictable process that will deliver high-value benefits to customers, to employees, and to the relevant enterprises. With even moderate attention to implementation and change management, UC can deliver the cost-saving and process-accelerating changes that deliver real, compelling, hard-dollar ROI. Marty is co-founder of UniComm Consulting, the industry's premier independent consulting firm providing strategy, planning and implementation support for enterprises in all industry segments. Marty is also co-founder of UCStrategies.com, the industry's leading forum for UC information and dialog. Marty created the workshop, Planning and Implementing Unified Communications, offered though BCR Training since 2006 and now available through Telecom + UC Training. Involved providing UC sessions at VoiceCon since 2006, Marty will be delivering the industry review, "UC Options: Who's Offering What?" as well as leading the deep-dive session, "Unified Communications Implementation." As a student of UC successes and case studies, Marty will moderate the important session, "Communications Enabled Apps in Action: Case Studies" at which customer executives will highlight their actual UC experiences. Marty bases is UC activities on his experience in sales, strategic planning, product line management, financial management and general management positions in both computing (IBM) and communications (ATT/Lucent/Avaya) firms, as well as with two venture funded firms and with a very large west-coast telecom interconnect firm in the 1980s. Speaker - Don Van Doren, Principal, UniComm Consulting Don Van Doren brings 25 years of experience as the founder and president of Vanguard Communications, a leading independent consulting firm in call center, contact center, and interactive voice response technologies and solutions. Don and Vanguard are known throughout the communications industry for consistently high quality engagements and for ongoing contributions to industry development through speaking engagements, news articles and publication of books, white papers and other reference materials. Don is one of four co-founders of UCStrategies.com. Don sees Unified Communications as an area that will build on the learning and experience of the contact center industry. Though UC solutions will touch many other business processes than those served by contact centers, the principles of integrating communications into the business processes are consistent between contact centers and UC. Just as contact centers enriched customer service and lowered cost by managing and informing the communications events with business process information though both customer self-service and personalized agent interactions, UC will accelerate and enhance the many other business processes by linking information and software assistance into the communications for those processes and the related employee jobs. | |
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The recession economy has taken its toll on market demand for enterprise communications systems and solutions. It may be bad time for suppliers, but a good time for buyers who can enjoy lower prices, increased system performance, and no/low interest financing as buying incentives. The crowded competitive field is preparing for the next OCS release from Microsoft that is likely to affect major market equilibrium changes while more than a few long time system suppliers, such as Nortel, struggle to survive. In addition, the trends towards cloud-based computing and greater reliance on mobile communications each threaten to bring a new paradigm shift in the way enterprises communicate internally and externally. This session will include updated telephony system market forecasts and supplier share estimates; a discussion of which enterprise communications system features and applications are hot (selling) or cold (stagnating); a review of major market trends, such as cloud computing, hosted solutions, and Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC); and a critical analysis of the leading system suppliers and their flagship offerings. Speaker - Eric Krapf, Editor, NoJitter.com, Co-Chair, Enterprise Connect Eric Krapf is co-chair of the VoiceCon events, helping to set program content and direction for the leading conference events in the enterprise IP-telephony/convergence/Unified Communications marketplace. In addition, Krapf serves as editor & lead blogger for the website No Jitter, TechWeb’s online community for news and analysis of the enterprise convergence/Unified Communications industry. He is also responsible for electronic content including webcasts and e-newsletters. From 1996 to 2004, Krapf was managing editor of Business Communications Review magazine, and from 2004 to 2007, he was the magazine's editor. BCR was a highly respected journal of the business technology and communications industry. Before coming to BCR, he was managing editor and senior editor of America's Network magazine, covering the public telecommunications industry. Prior to working in high-tech journalism, he was a reporter and editor at newspapers in Connecticut and Texas. Speaker - Don Van Doren, Principal, UniComm Consulting Don Van Doren brings 25 years of experience as the founder and president of Vanguard Communications, a leading independent consulting firm in call center, contact center, and interactive voice response technologies and solutions. Don and Vanguard are known throughout the communications industry for consistently high quality engagements and for ongoing contributions to industry development through speaking engagements, news articles and publication of books, white papers and other reference materials. Don is one of four co-founders of UCStrategies.com. Don sees Unified Communications as an area that will build on the learning and experience of the contact center industry. Though UC solutions will touch many other business processes than those served by contact centers, the principles of integrating communications into the business processes are consistent between contact centers and UC. Just as contact centers enriched customer service and lowered cost by managing and informing the communications events with business process information though both customer self-service and personalized agent interactions, UC will accelerate and enhance the many other business processes by linking information and software assistance into the communications for those processes and the related employee jobs. | |
