The UCStrategies Experts share their expertise in bylined articles, opinion pieces, blogs, and podcasts, to define unified communications, educate you about unified communications technologies, and help you make informed decisions about unified communications solutions.
UCStrategies.com defines unified communications as “Communications integrated to optimize business processes.” The definition of unified communications narrows significantly when you can read and hear about real-world examples that other companies are implementing right now—and apply them to your situation.
This section offers learning tools to help you plan your unified communications implementation.
This section provides a practical, vendor-independent service to any Enterprise that is seeking the benefits of Unified Communications. How do you pull everything together to implement unified communications? Use the tools in this sequence to define unified communications for your business.
The Unified Communications industry changes daily. We keep track of it for you.
UCStrategies is an industry resource for unified communications enterprises, communications vendors, system integrators, and anyone interested in the growing unified communications arena.
A supplier of objective information on unified communications, UCStrategies is supported by an alliance of leading communication industry advisors, analysts, and consultants who have worked in the various segments of unified communications since its inception.
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Today, the very definition of “corporate content” today has changed – it’s no longer just a list of .xls and .pdf files in a folder called “Marketing Materials.” Content for real knowledge workers is varied. In addition to files, it includes HTML5 mini apps, cached web links, AJAX forms, animated PowerPoint files, RSS feeds, Twitter #tags, corporate Facebook pages, and lots more. At the beginning of November bigtincan (BTC) unveiled BTC hub – an enterprise content and productivity solution for mobile devices that links with advanced server side control with built in content intelligence that users leverage to get the highest value content at the right time and in the correct context, unlocking the value of the social enterprise while helping the content author to understand its use and be able to improve it in real time.
Zeacom, a provider of multimedia contact center and business process automation software has just announced the release of the version 6.2 of its Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC 6.2). A mature and feature-rich software-only product, ZCC 6.2 continues Zeacom’s investment in Microsoft Lync integration while also including a hybrid environment that lets organizations trial Lync while maintaining their existing telephony infrastructure.
Acme Packet (APKT) just reported that its Net Net Enterprise Session Director (ESD) enterprise session border controllers (E SBC) have been certified as the first to work with Verizon’s IP Trunking Services and Microsoft Lync Server 2010.
NextPlane has just announced that eZuce openUC has been added to NextPlane UC Exchange as a Certified UC Platform. eZuce openUC has demonstrated full IM/P federation with Microsoft Lync during initial Phase I certification in which users are able to share not only standard presence on UC clients, but also custom status messages and enhanced presence states with federated colleagues.
Mobile users require high bandwidth network access and a consistent user experience wherever they are located within the enterprise, including complete accessibility to all applications that increasingly have real-time traffic and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. While just about every networking device has a wireless interface, many of them still have a wired interface that users can access when working from their desk. This presents the IT staff with the challenge of creating a fully integrated, easily managed and secure access layer network that provides mobile, transparent and always-on wired-to-wireless edge services. The Enterasys OneFabric Edge provides a unified application delivery architecture that extends the network fabric from the datacenter to the network edge.
Gartner has recently designated Sonus as a market “Leader” in its Magic Quadrant for SBCs (October 9, 2012). This Magic Quadrant focuses on incumbent SBC vendors and those that have developed competing products for communications service providers in the past two years.
Useful business analytics tools must provide the ability to quickly, intelligently and automatically create integrated analysis reports as often as needed, regardless of the employee’s background. Having the ability to present this kind of information through a single view can give an organization a distinct advantage. If this intelligence is available from mobile devices, it can speed decision-making even further, giving the organization an increased competitive edge. In support of this business need, Empirix has announced an enhanced version of Empirix xCentrix for detecting issues in mobile, fixed line and VoIP networks as they emerge and automatically triggers advanced analytics to immediately scope and diagnose problems.
For the past two years LifeSize has been focused on moving away from the more traditional video collaboration infrastructure consisting primarily of fixed configuration hardware appliances or fixed configuration software towards a configuration that offers the customer a flexible, simple
Following on the heels of its UC One press release BroadSoft announced the addition of Rich Communications Services (RCS) to its BroadCloud Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. BroadCloud is a white label component of UC One – a core
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for SBCs (October 9, 2012) focuses on incumbent SBC vendors and those that have developed competing products for communications service providers in the past two years. According to that report Acme Packet’s Net-Net Session Director was recognized in the Leaders Quadrant, and arguably the top player there, based on the company’s ability to execute and completeness of vision in the SBC market.
BT just announced the availability of BT One Cloud for Microsoft Lync (BT One Lync), a cloud service based on Microsoft Lync 2010, providing instant messaging, presence, audio, video and web conferencing, and enterprise voice. The new BT One Lync has 100 percent feature parity with a Microsoft Lync on-premise deployment, but packaged as a cloud-based service offered on a monthly "pay-per-user" basis.
NEC recently announced launch of its NEC Cloud solutions for enterprise applications that are hosted, monitored and managed in the cloud, leveraging NEC infrastructure and managed professional services. This portfolio includes four core solutions Private Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
According to Infonetics Research, Cisco captured the lead in the enterprise session border controller (SBC) market, taking 26 percent revenue market share in the first half of 2012. Worldwide revenue for enterprise SBCs is estimated to have hit about $82.5 million in the first half of 2012 and is forecasted to top $430 million by 2016. In their report, Infonetics credited Cisco’s differentiated model for delivering SIP trunking service.
Earlier this month, NextPlane announced UC Exchange, its next step in the development of real-time collaborative business communities for UC platforms.
BroadSoft has just announced UC One – a comprehensive, open UC platform that combines all of the critical elements a telecommunications service provider (SP) requires to ensure rapid delivery of their UC solutions to the market segments they serve –
Interactive Intelligence (Interactive) just announced general availability of its Interaction Dialerversion 4.0 (Dialer 4.0). Customer Interaction Center’s (CIC) Interaction Dialer is a complete SIP-based "all software" architecture (no predictive dialer hardware required) and available as a premise-based solution, a cloud-based hosted contact center solution (Communications as a Service) at a fixed monthly cost, and as an Interactive Intelligence managed service.
Thinking Phone Networks just announced that Bridgepointe Technologies has joined its cloud channel partner program as a master partner and will now offer Thinking Phone Networks’ wide variety of UCaaS solutions to its enterprise clients.
At the Gartner Symposium and ITExpo 2012 being held this week in Orlando, FL, Vidyo will be demonstrating what it is heralding as product and technology industry firsts: virtualized open standards-based multi-protocol conferencing platform, $750 executive desktop system, web browser telepresence quality experience, and scalable HEVC (H.265) codec for video conferencing.
West IP Communications (West), a provider of cloud-based communication applications and services, recently announced significant upgrades to its ControlMaxx cloud-based contact center solution. ControlMaxx delivers a set of call routing, queue management, performance monitoring, recording and reporting functionality providing enterprises with the capability to meet the expectations of their most demanding customers.
IntelePeer has just introduced its CoreCloud UC SIP Trunking 3.0 service for UC systems and Contact Centers that combines the HD voice quality with Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Realtime Transport Protocol (SRTP) using high strength four kilobyte public key encryption to protect signaling and multimedia content and ensure the privacy and integrity of communications media.