Building on Industry Momentum Webinar
On March 4, 2008, NET, Avanade and UCStrategies collaborated in the preparation and delivery of this timely webinar. It is available for replay at the direct URL Building on Industry Momentum or NET's Blog and webinar link http://www.net.com/Pages/Company.aspx?pgid=94; or from the Blogs and Webinars link of the NET homepage.
Jim Burton, of UC Strategies and CT Link began the webinar by exploring the transformation Unified Communications as a parallel to the earlier transformation of the computer business from vertical single manufacturer silos to horizontal layers populated by many players at each layer driven by software solutions. The key implications are that there will be dramatic changes in the industry, consolidations will continue and IBM and Microsoft will be key players in the space going forward as their solutions incorporate many of the elements of UC within a single solution architecture.
Jeff Zaremba of Avanade, a joint venture Systems Integrator by Microsoft and Accenture, described Avanade’s successful experience in deploying Microsoft’s OCS R2 and NET’s VX gateways across its 60 country, 8000 people, almost $1Billion operation. The Microsoft OCS R2 solution and NET gateways has allowed Avanade to have a roadmap to fully eliminate PBXes within their offices as they have done at their new US HQ near Seattle. Avande also deploys the NET VX Gateway in a mode that allows it determine, based upon the information for the user in the Microsoft Active Directory, whether the called party is on an OCS or legacy PBX endpoint and directs the call appropriately. Avanade’s OCS based solution also is providing significant cost savings over traditional solutions.
Mathew Krueger of NET rounded out the presentations highlighting how NET’s VX intelligent voice gateway can be a key component in supporting the transformation into UC by interfacing to the PSTN, OCS, legacy and non-certified IP-PBX solutions as well as enhancing OCS by providing some key capabilities such as secure communications, E911 support and branch office resiliency/disaster recovery. And, most important, the VX allows a smooth migration to UC without the need to rip and replace existing PBX equipment.