Procuring a new enterprise communications system through a RFP process can be a harrowing experience, because IP telephony system design, capabilities, and attributes have undergone a series of dynamic changes the past few years. The RFP you issue will reflect how well your understanding of current generation solutions can satisfy your evolving communications requirements. This workshop will review and analyze how to prepare the core RFP requirements for your next IP telephony system by focusing on the following: * System design and topology, including hardware, network, and power requirements * Redundancy and resiliency attributes * Port interface and traffic handling * E911 and security issues * Standards support, including SIP and SOA * Voice terminals: analog, digital, and IP; desktop telephone instruments; mobile communications devices; soft client options * Generic software features * Systems management and administration * Pricing guidelines, including potential hidden fees The workshop will also address network consolidation considerations, i.e. single system solution replacing an existing network of multiple systems, and installed system upgrade options. Allan Sulkin, is President of TEQConsult Group, and is a leading industry analyst and consultant focusing on enterprise communications. He created and hosts the annual VoiceCon Orlando RFP tutorial session.
Instructor - Allan Sulkin, President, TEQConsult Group
Allan Sulkin, president and founder of TEQConsult Group (1986), is widely recognized as the industry's foremost enterprise communications market/product analyst. He is celebrating 30 years telecommunications market experience this month and has consulted for many of the industry's leading vendors participating at VoiceCon. Sulkin has been a long time Contributing Editor to Business Communications Review and its current online incarnation No Jitter, and has served as a Program Director and featured tutorial/seminar presenter for VoiceCon since its 1991 inception. Sulkin is the author of PBX Systems for IP Telephony (McGraw-Hill Professional Publications) and writer of the PBX chapter in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He can be contacted at amsulkin@aol.com
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) has become the dominant protocol for IP communications. This tutorial explains what SIP is, how it works, what the major issues for SIP deployments are, and how SIP will evolve in the future. The session focuses on the technical aspects of SIP and how it is used. It analyzes in detail the major components of SIP architecture, SIP addressing and registration, session establishment, SIP message routing and connecting SIP across the PSTN. You will learn about SIP extensions and how SIMPLE works for IM/presence. The tutorial also examines some of the challenges SIP faces, including NAT traversal (and the tools developed to cope with it: STUN, TURN and ICE) and security. The tutorial concludes with an assessment of how SIP may evolve and its role in peer-to-peer environments. You will receive an inventory of SIP resources?books, papers and organizations. David Bryan is a leading expert in SIP and P2PSIP. In addition to his role as CEO at SIPeerior Technologies, he is active in the IETF, where serves as co-chair of the P2PSIP working group. David has published numerous IETF drafts, academic papers and industry trade articles. David heads p2psip.org, the leading community site for P2PSIP. Prior to SIPeerior, David co-founded Jasomi Networks (sold to Ditech), and worked for Cisco and Vovida.
Instructor - David Bryan, Founder and CEO, SIPeerior Technologies
David is the CEO and founder of SIPeerior Technologies, Inc., a leading vendor of P2PSIP software and products. David is a recognized thought leader in P2P and VoIP, authored the first documents on P2PSIP, and is co-chair of the IETF P2PSIP Working Group. He has published numerous IETF drafts, industry trade articles, and academic papers and is active in the SIP community. Prior to founding SIPeerior, David was co-founder and CTO of Jasomi Networks, a pioneer in the SIP Session Border Controller (SBC) market, which was sold to Ditech Communications in 2005. David previously worked for Cisco Systems via its acquisition of Vovida Networks, where he led a team of developers creating the first open-source softswitch. David holds bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Physics from The Richard Stockton College of NJ, as well as a master's degree in Computer Science from The College of William and Mary.
Whether an enterprise is early in its migration to IP Telephony or further along and now evaluating the concept of Unified Communications, it's not easy to build a credible business case. IP Telephony and, in particular, UC, are complex , and involve numerous technologies, decision-makers and equipment, software and service providers. This tutorial will be divided into two segments: The first is devoted to IP Telephony businesses cases, the second will cover the UC business case. It will be based on IP Telephony cost data that has been gathered over the past five years from more than 800 companies that have implemented the technology, as well as real-world data from hundreds of IT decision makers on the newer UC products and technologies. This tutorial will cover the following questions: * How do companies build a business case around IP Telephony and Unified Communications? What are the key metrics? * What does it really cost to implement IP Telephony? What are the cost components of a UC business case? * What resources (internal and external) companies must devote to their VOIP and UC rollouts, per end-unit, per year segmented by rollout size and vendor. * What are some of the key pitfalls? Where did companies go wrong? * What are some compelling business case models for both IP Telephony and UC? Robin Gareiss is Executive Vice President and Senior Founding Partner for Nemertes Research, where she oversees research projects and direction, conducts strategic seminars, develops cost models, and advises leading enterprises, vendors, and carriers. She currently serves as chief financial officer, as well. For the past 17 years, Robin Gareiss has worked closely with hundreds of senior IT executives, analyzing their use of technology and capturing best practices. Ms. Gareiss is a widely recognized expert in voice over IP, convergence, collaboration, carrier services, IP networking, and branch-office technologies. Before joining Nemertes, Ms. Gareiss served as Senior News Editor of InformationWeek, and prior to that, she worked at Data Communications magazine. Ms. Gareiss has a BS in journalism and a minor in education, with honors, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Irwin Lazar is the Principal Analyst and Program Director for Unified Communications and Collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, develops cost models, conducts strategic seminars and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, Web 2.0 initiatives, social networking and collaboration. A Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a columnist for No Jitter and Collaboration Loop and the late Business Communications Review magazine. He is a frequent resource for the business and trade press. He is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0. Mr. Lazar serves as the conference director for FutureNet (formerly MPLScon), the chair for Network World IT Roadmap Web 2.0 track, and is on the advisory board for the Enterprise 2.0 conference.
Instructor - Robin Gareiss, Executive Vice President & Sr. Founding Partner, Nemertes Research
Robin Gareiss Executive Vice President, Senior Founding Partner Robin Gareiss is executive vice president and senior founding partner for Nemertes Research, where she oversees research analysts and direction, conducts strategic seminars, develops cost models, and advises leading enterprises, vendors and carriers. She currently serves as chief financial officer, as well. For the past 17 years, Robin Gareiss has worked closely with hundreds of senior IT executives, analyzing their use of technology and capturing best practices. Ms. Gareiss is a widely recognized expert in voice over IP, convergence, collaboration, carrier services, IP networking and branch-office technologies. She is a sought-after speaker at conferences and trade shows, including Interop, VoiceCon and Mobile Business Expo, and she is frequently quoted in publications, including Business Week, Entrepreneur magazine, ComputerWorld, and CIO magazine. She also writes the Branch Offices Best Practices column for Network World.
Instructor - Irwin Lazar, Principal Research Analyst and Program Director, Unified Communications and Collaboration, Nemertes Research
Irwin Lazar is a Principal Analyst & Program Director, Convergence & Collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, conducts strategic seminars, and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, and collaboration. Since 1992 Mr. Lazar has been a consultant and analyst, serving a variety of global enterprises and government agencies. Mr. Lazar led efforts to develop security architectures and convergence road-maps, as well as enterprise network architectures, for numerous clients in the health care, pharmaceuticals, banking & finance, energy, government, and retail sectors. Mr. Lazar has led teams of consultants in requirements-gathering and strategy development. He also has evaluated emerging IT trends and analyzed their impact on organizations. A sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a columnist for Business Communications Review magazine, provides topics for Network World, and is a frequent resource for the business and trade press. He is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0. Mr. Lazar holds a bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems from Radford University in Radford, VA, and a Master's of Business Administration (MBA) from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve Ordnance Corps as an officer from 1992-2001. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).
This tutorial is designed to help company CXOs/decision makers, IT and communications managers and technicians gain a good understanding of the architecture and functionality of both Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) and IBM Lotus Sametime, two Unified Communications solutions expected to see widespread deployment. Attendees will gain key insights into the significant differences in how IBM and Microsoft approach the UC market, where their solutions are similar and where they diverge. The tutorial covers telephony call-control capabilities within Sametime and Office Communications Server, describing the unique mechanisms each uses for integrating with enterprise telephony systems. You will leave this tutorial with a thorough overview of Microsoft Office Communications Server, IBM Lotus Sametime, and a foundation to know whether to pursue either or both of these products as part of your enterprise unified communications solution. Brent Kelly has written numerous articles and reports on unified communications and collaboration, focusing on Microsoft, IBM, and telephony vendors layering UC solutions on top of their PBXs. He has spoken and taught seminars on unified communications and on implementing IP Rich Media Communications in North America, Europe, Australia and South America. He leads the Unified Communications practice group at Wainhouse Research.
Instructor - Brent Kelly, Senior Analyst & Partner, Wainhouse Research
Brent Kelly has written numerous articles and reports on unified communications and collaboration, focusing on Microsoft, IBM, and telephony vendors layering UC solutions on top of their PBXs. He has spoken and taught seminars on unified communications and on implementing IP Rich Media Communications in North America, Europe, Australia and South America. He leads the Unified Communications practice group at Wainhouse Research.
The cost of power and cooling the data center and communications closets is escalating, and Gartner predicts that by 2009, power and cooling costs will be second to salaries in the IT budget. This tutorial looks at the practical ways the enterprise can reduce electrical power and cooling costs. It won't try to solve global climate change, but focuses instead on the energy conservation solutions now available and their impact on the enterprise bottom line. Methods for reducing the energy bill by controlling IT devices will be explored, and incentives from the government and power utilities will be presented. Quantitative information will be provided with additional resource websites for the attendee to learn how to calculate the energy cost reduction and cooling requirements. The session provides recommendations on how the lower the costs to support VoIP/IPT servers, PoE for the LAN, AC vs. DC powered devices, UPS and class 2 vs. class 3 phones. Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies.
Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies.
Legacy PBX systems are being retired and new functionality is essentially only available with IP-based systems. Migrating to Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP Telephony (IPT) has moved from "if" to "when." But despite the growth of these new technologies, many enterprises have limited experience with IP Telephony and VoIP, and once the decision to migrate is made, there are a host of tough challenges to face - from inventorying the readiness of LANs and wiring closets, to WAN performance, IT organizational and staffing issues, security, utility costs and software support, patching and version control. This tutorial analyzes these issues with recommended actions and best practices that will lead to successful VoIP/IPT deployments. It cuts through the hype to the real advantages and presents how VoIP/IPT works and operates. This session will also guide the attendee through the rest of the Voicecon conference with suggested sessions, exhibits and other resources that will make the conference attendance experience as valuable as possible. Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies.
Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks, and VoIP and IP converged networks all around the world, and he advises venture capital and investment bankers in communications technologies.
As SIP moves from the Intranet to the Internet, security has gone from being a nice-to-have feature to a fundamental requirement. This session focuses on communications security aspects of SIP: How do you know you're actually talking to the person you meant to call? How do you know who's called you? How do you make sure that other people aren't listening into your conversation? The IETF has developed (and is still developing) a variety of SIP and RTP-based protocol tools for providing these security services. Topics covered include: * Introduction to communications security * Security for signaling traffic * User authentication * TLS * S/MIME * SIP Identity * Security for media * SRTP * SRTP key management (MIKEY, SDESCRIPTIONS, DTLS-SRTP, ZRTP) * Privacy and anonymity The current state of the work at the IETF and other standards bodies is covered, as is the state of SIP Security implementations across the industry. Solutions for simultaneously providing identity and knowing who is calling, dealing with spam, allowing anonymous calls and providing appropriate wiretap access are described. The instructors will not only describe the various protocol components but explain how these work together as an integrated system that provides security for both signaling and media traffic. This session assumes some familiarity with SIP but no familiarity with cryptography or communications security. Dr. Cullen Jennings currently serves as IETF Real Time Applications Area Director. In that capacity, he has responsibility for the IETF's activities in voice, video and instant messaging. At Cisco, Cullen focuses on conferencing, security and firewall and NAT traversal. He is responsible for helping set the direction for the technology that will make up the next generation of Cisco's voice products, especially in conferencing, presence and rich media systems. Cullen is also a key contributor to all the SIP security work at IETF. He was the original designer of SIP certificate management system and the SIP Identity RFC. In addition, he has served as a chair and core member of the IETF IP Telephony (IPTEL), NAT Traversal (BEHAVE), and Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WEBDAV) working groups.
Dr. Cullen Jennings currently serves as IETF Real Time Applications Area Director. In that capacity, he has responsibility for the IETF's activities in voice, video, and instant messaging. Cullen is a Distinguished Engineer in the Voice Technology Group at Cisco Systems, Inc., where he focuses on conferencing, security, and firewall and NAT traversal. He is responsible for helping set the direction for the technology that will make up the next generation of Cisco's voice products, especially in conferencing, presence and rich media systems. In addition to serving as Area Director, Cullen is a key contributor to all the SIP security work at IETF. He was the original designer SIP's certificate management system and most recently was responsible for the SIP Identity RFC. In addition to his work on security, Cullen has served as a chair and core member of the IETF IP Telephony (IPTEL), NAT Traversal (BEHAVE), and Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WEBDAV) working groups. Cullen came to Cisco from Vovida Networks, which developed an open source toolkit for Voice-over-IP. Cullen has remained involved in the open source community and was one of the founders of the reSIProcate project, which developed and maintains the leading open source SIP stack, to which he contributed the security implementation. He is a regular participant of at the SIPit interoperability event and has tested the SIP security systems of all the major vendors. Cullen is an author of Practical VoIP, published by O'Reilly and is a frequent speaker at major Voice and Security Conferences.
This tutorial is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the options available for Unified Communications (UC). It is intended for enterprise CXOs, decision makers, IT and Communications technical managers, and business managers, who are planning to install UC solutions -- either via a new UC system or by adding UC to existing PBX and email systems and business applications. The session information will be based on a template that includes the major types of UC solutions -- desktop/mobile productivity tools, audio/web/video conferencing, mobility support;, and communication-enabled business processes. The template, which will be easily adaptable to your enterprise procurements, bids and RFPs, includes: * Diagrams of the required UC software and hardware. * Estimates of the professional services required. * Estimates of the total price for each solution. Marty Parker is principal of UniComm Consulting, offering Unified Communications (UC) consulting services to enterprises. Marty is an active leader in the Unified Communications community. He contributes to the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly and blogs on No Jitter in addition to helping develop UC sessions at VoiceCon. Marty is a co-founder of UCStrategies.com, a UC industry resource site, and is the author and instructor of the BCR Training course, "Planning and Implementing VoIP Unified Communications."
Marty Parker provides Unified Communications consulting support to both private sector and public sector enterprises. As a Principal of UniComm Consulting and as co-founder of UCStrategies.com, Marty is part of a network of talent and ideas to assure clients of the best and latest information about Unified Communications (UC). Marty's focus is on the applications for UC and how those applications optimize business processes to deliver hard-dollar ROI. This focus is the basis for his BCR Training course, "Planning and Implementing VoIP Unified Communications"; for his articles in BCR Magazine and on NoJitter.com (see "Top UC Applications Now Apparent", June 2007); and for his on-line UC Resources Center available at UCStrategies.com. Marty is a regular moderator and presenter at InterOp, VoiceCon and in other UC industry venues. His applications and industry-oriented perspectives on UC are based on his roles in sales, marketing, product management and executive positions with IBM and ATT/Lucent/Avaya as well as with a major Telecom VAR, and as founder and CEO of venture-funded startups in the early phases of the voice messaging industry.
The migration to IP Telephony and converged networks has already had major impacts on how IT organizations are structured, as staff with backgrounds in voice and data have been brought together into integrated work groups. Now, with Unified Communications, just having voice and data people work together isn't enough - applications, messaging and security professionals need to become actively involved. This creates challenges in terms of overcoming long-held stereotypes, and opportunities to create a much more dynamic and responsive IT organization. This tutorial will present case studies of different approaches that enterprises are taking to deal with this issue. In addition, the instructors will present a methodology for project management and recommend processes for procurement, integration, security and reliability. Attendees will gain a better understanding of their options for organizational restructuring, and concrete advice on how to achieve more effective implementation of IP Telephony, Unified Communications and Converged Network projects. Mark Berg is a senior consultant with PlanNet Consulting. He has 15 years of communication technology experience, primarily in higher education. He has set IT strategy, designed voice and data physical infrastructure, managed cost-recovery initiatives, and overseen IP telephony projects. Previous posts include senior management positions, including CIO, at two Southern California universities in telecommunications and networking. Mr. Berg received his degree in journalism from Biola University in La Mirada, California. David Stein is a principal with PlanNet Consulting and Director of Operations. He has more than 25 years of consulting, information systems and telecommunications experience, with a primary emphasis on voice, data and video communications and technology infrastructure projects. He has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences, and has authored several articles on IP Telephony that have been published in Business Communications Review and HIMSS. Mr. Stein graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Computer Science.
Instructor - Mark Berg, Senior Consultant, PlanNet Consulting
Mark Berg is a senior consultant with PlanNet Consulting. He has 15 years of communication technology experience, primarily in higher education. He has set IT strategy, designed voice and data physical infrastructure, managed cost-recovery initiatives, and overseen IP telephony projects. Previous posts include senior management positions, including CIO, at two Southern California universities in telecommunications and networking. Mr. Berg received his degree in journalism from Biola University in La Mirada, California.
Instructor - David Stein, Principal, PlanNet Consulting
Mr. Stein is a principal with PlanNet Consulting and Director of Operations. He has more than 25 years of consulting, information systems and telecommunications experience, with a primary emphasis on voice, data and video communications and technology infrastructure projects. PlanNet Consulting assists enterprises with the entire technology lifecycle. His experience includes traditional voice (PBX, TDM), data and video communications as well as all aspects of their convergence (IP Telephony, Video over IP). He has been a featured speaker at numerous conferences including American Library Association, Interop, ACUTA, CoreNet, BICSI, CISOA and VoiceCon. He has also authored several articles on IP Telephony that have been published in Business Communications Review and HIMSS. Mr. Stein graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a degree in Computer Science.
Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) can reduce energy, travel and related expenses for the entire enterprise through the judicious use of conferencing - audio, video, telepresence and web -- and the emerging tools and technologies for collaboration. This tutorial the new products and services for video, telepresence and collaboration, and explores your options for enabling remote and mobile workers. It will be organized around four frames of reference: * Global Enterprise: Wants to reduce travel and increase efficiency (Telepresence, video, web conferencing). * Enterprise: Wants to tightly connect to customers/partners (Telepresence, video, VPN, presence federation) * Small/remote offices and teleworkers (Video, desktop video, web conferencing, VPN, VoIP, presence) * Road Warriors (desktop video, web conferencing, VPN, VoIP, presence) It will also address the networking requirements for these applications, with an emphasis on managing bandwidth and maintaining quality of service. John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network solutions. John has 29 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering.
John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video, telepresence, and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments. John has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering.
Wireless LANs are becoming an essential element in the enterprise infrastructure, and as the market matures, buyers face a growing number of choices. In terms of AP architectures, there are centralized versus distributed versus virtual options to consider, and a raft of security options -- the pre-standard Draft 2.0 802.11n radio link, WPA2 and 802.1x, Now that voice is moving onto the WLAN, security takes on new importance. This session will bring you up-to-date on the important WLAN developments and provide guidance for selecting your WLAN infrastructure. KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the trade-offs between centralized versus distributed WLAN switching architectures, and why should I care? * Has Cisco's new Motion Architecture really altered the WLAN landscape? * Is it wise to deploy the set of 802.11n Draft 2.0 products when the final standard will not be released until 2009? * Under what conditions do stand-alone access points make sense? * What are the new security threats and what steps can we take to mitigate them?
Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled "Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide" (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Even as enterprises continue to grapple with implementing Quality of Service (QOS), especially for applications over the wide area, we're now hearing about a new metric: Quality of Experience, or QOE. What's the difference between QOS and QOE metrics, and can you have one without the other? In this session, you'll learn what you'll have to do to ensure that wide-area voice traffic meets network-level QOS requirements, and also provides the user-level Quality of Experience required to make communications effective. KEY QUESTIONS: * What's the best way to guarantee that real-time multimedia traffic will get the treatment it requires in order to sound best?especially when traversing the WAN? * What are the concrete metrics you should use to determine whether your end users are actually getting acceptable-quality voice? * How is QOE defined, and from whom do these definitions come? * How is QOE different from QOS, and what's the importance of this distinction?
John Bartlett is a leading authority on real-time traffic, application performance and Quality of Service (QoS) techniques. He specializes in helping enterprises manage voice, video, telepresence, and data application performance. John has engaged with over 50 enterprises and over 20 network vendors to analyze network performance problems, design network solutions, and support network deployments. John has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor, computer and communications fields in marketing, sales, engineering, manufacturing and consulting roles. He has contributed to microprocessor, computer and network equipment design for over 40 products. He has been consulting since 1996. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, and Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering.
Dr. Mike Hollier is a technical and commercial pioneer in perceptual engineering. He directed BT's research into audio, video and multimedia performance assessment for nearly a decade before leading the incubation of Psytechnics Ltd. in 2000. He left BT to become Psytechnics' CEO and since October 2002 has served as its CTO. Psytechnics is the global leader in delivering Quality of Experience (QoE) management products for Voice over IP, Video Conferencing, Unified Communications and IPTV in fixed, mobile and converged environments.
Panelist - Jim McQuaid, Director of Product Management, NetQoS, Inc.
Jim McQuaid drives strategic product initiatives at NetQoS. Most recently, he spearheaded the development and launch of the NetQoS VoIP Monitor product. A graduate of the University of Michigan, McQuaid has worked in network performance analysis, digital signal processing and measurement and control for a variety of established and startup companies including Analog Devices, Bay Networks, Ganymede, NetIQ and NetQoS. McQuaid is the co-author of RFC 1944 and 2544 and was the Chair of the IETF Benchmarking Methodologies Working Group from 1995 to 1998. In recent years McQuaid has focused primarily on application and network performance.
Some vendors and industry experts talk about Unified Communications as if it's "the next new thing," while others say it's already a "done deal." But how big is the market today, and which vendors are emerging as the major players? In this session, a leading UC analyst will present the findings of a recent study that takes a comprehensive look at the market's size, players and prospects. KEY QUESTIONS: * Who are the principal players, and how are they positioning themselves? * What are the current and likely future patterns of adoption?e.g., by job type, mobile work, business process? * How much of the vendors' reported "UC" sales represent traditional IP-PBX and related gear versus "true" UC products that are actually being implemented as part of an enterprise UC vision? * What variables affect adoption of UC products and technologies?
Speaker - Blair Pleasant, Principal Analyst, COMMfusion LLC
Blair Pleasant is President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and a co-founder of ucstrategies.com, an industry resource on the growing UC arena. She provides consulting and market research analysis on voice/data convergence markets, applications, and technologies, aimed at helping end-user and vendor clients both strategically and tactically. Prior to COMMfusion, Ms. Pleasant was Director of Communications Analysis for The PELORUS Group, a market research and consulting firm, and President of Lower Falls Consulting. With 20 years experience, her primary areas of focus are convergence applications, including Unified Communications, Unified Messaging, the contact center, computer telephony integration (CTI), and voice processing. Blair has authored many highly acclaimed multi-client market studies and white papers, as well as custom research reports, and provides market research analysis and consulting services to both end user and vendor clients. Ms. Pleasant received a BA degree in Communications from Albany State University, and an MBA in marketing and an MS in Broadcast Administration from Boston University.
As contact centers migrate to IP-based platforms and as Unified Communications evolves from a concept into a set of real-world products and capabilities, the contact center market is being shaken up. This session will help you understand the dynamics of the vendors, their product offerings and market positioning. A top market analyst discusses the key factors you can use to evaluate your options. KEY QUESTIONS: * Which vendors are winning and which are losing in the contact center market battles? * Will new players like Microsoft and IBM be successful using Unified Communications as their entry point into the contact center market? * What are the vendors' relative strengths and weaknesses? How to they compare on price? What new features and functions are becoming available? * What role should SIP play in planning for next-generation contact centers? * What new developments can we expect from the vendors in the coming 12 months, and how should this affect your current procurement plans?
Sheila McGee-Smith, the founder of McGee-Smith Analytics, is a leading communications industry analyst and strategic consultant focused on the contact center and unified communications markets. She has a proven track record of accomplishment in new product development, competitive assessment, market research, and sales strategies for communications solutions and services. Ms. McGee-Smith works on a daily basis with both solution providers and enterprises. Her insight helps them develop strategies to meet the escalating demands of today's consumer and business customers. Ms. McGee-Smith has spent over twenty years in the telecommunications industry, including 12 years with analyst firm The PELORUS Group. Prior to her career as an industry analyst, Ms. McGee-Smith held sales management, market research and product management positions at AT&T, Timeplex and Dun & Bradstreet. Ms. McGee-Smith was awarded a bachelor's degree from Barnard College, Columbia University, majoring in psychology and an MBA with majors in marketing and management information systems from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Sheila is a regular blogger on CMP's information portal No Jitter at www.nojitter.com.
Unified Communications (UC) cuts across a wide range of media (voice, text, messaging and video), endpoints (desktop telephone instruments, PCs, mobile communications devices) and applications. As a result, the User Interface will play a critical role - it is the user's entry point into this complex environment. Today, no single vendor dominates UC, and while you might prefer to have a single user interface, that's not a viable option, at least not yet. This session will examine your options for creating smooth access and operations among the interfaces currently available. It will give you an understanding of the role intelligent signaling links play between disparate UC components. KEY QUESTIONS: * What are the realistic options available for presenting the elements of a UC solution to end users in an efficient and useful way? * What are the trade-offs associated each of the various options? * What should you look for in the signaling capabilities presented by the various vendors? * What are reasonable objectives to set for having a unified user interface?
Speaker - Allan Sulkin, President, TEQConsult Group
Allan Sulkin, president and founder of TEQConsult Group (1986), is widely recognized as the industry's foremost enterprise communications market/product analyst. He is celebrating 30 years telecommunications market experience this month and has consulted for many of the industry's leading vendors participating at VoiceCon. Sulkin has been a long time Contributing Editor to Business Communications Review and its current online incarnation No Jitter, and has served as a Program Director and featured tutorial/seminar presenter for VoiceCon since its 1991 inception. Sulkin is the author of PBX Systems for IP Telephony (McGraw-Hill Professional Publications) and writer of the PBX chapter in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He can be contacted at amsulkin@aol.com
Diane Shariff is global director of Unified Communications Solutions, Avaya. Shariff has held leadership positions in product management and marketing at Avaya, driving solutions in self service speech, contact center and communication-enabled business applications supported by next generation SIP/SOA architectures. Shariff has over 20 years experience in enterprise software and telephony with repeated success building product lines in emerging markets supporting next-generation technologies, including product strategy and leadership positions at Quintus and Clarify, and marketing, engineering and operations positions at DSC Communications (Alcatel-Lucent) and Ameritech (SBC, AT&T). Shariff has a B.S. in engineering from the University of Illinois Champaign - Urbana and an M.B.A from Depaul University.
Charles Giancarlo is acting Chief Executive Officer of Avaya, a position he assumed in June 2008, and he has over 25 years of experience in the communications industry. In 2007, he joined Silver Lake - the leader in private investment in technology and related growth industries -- as a Managing Director. From 1993-2007, he was a senior executive at Cisco Systems, serving most recently as Executive Vice President and Chief Development, leading the company's overall product development and management activities. As Chief Development Officer, he directed the activities of over half of all Cisco's employees and was directly responsible for Cisco's expansion into a large number of new markets and technologies. Charles was also responsible for all of Cisco's divisions including Linksys, Scientific Atlanta and WebEx. His first position at Cisco was Vice President of Business Development, where he developed Cisco's merger and acquisition strategy and practice. Prior to joining Cisco, he founded four communications equipment companies and successfully sold two of them to larger companies. Charles holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.
Moderator - Fred Knight, GM/Co-chair, VoiceCon, Publisher, No Jitter
Fred Knight is GM/Co-Chair of VoiceCon, and the publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications. Fred led the evolution of VoiceCon from an annual conference into a 12-month per year operation, comprising two major conferences: VoiceCon Orlando and VoiceCon San Francisco: the VoiceCon Webinar series and two e-newsletters: VoiceCon eNews and VoiceCon UC eWeekly. From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. During that period, he covered the ensuing tumultuous changes that dramatically changed the industry. Under his stewardship, BCR received numerous awards from industry and publishing groups and associations. In December 2007, BCR ceased publication and the editorial product shifted to the Web with the creation of a new website: NoJittier.com. Fred has managed the organization's migration from print to electronic publishing and serves as publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred earned his BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota and a Master's Degree in public administration from The Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
10:30 am–11:30 am
Keynotes
Keynote Presentation: Microsoft (Location: Room 134)
Speaker - Betsy Frost Webb, General Manager, Unified Communications Marketing, Microsoft
In her role as general manager of Unified Communications Marketing, Betsy Frost Webb leads Microsoft Corp.'s marketing and business strategy for unified communications including the company's e-mail, instant messaging, presence, voice and conferencing solutions. Frost Webb started her career at Microsoft in 1997 and has held product management and global business leadership roles across the company. Before joining Microsoft, she was a consultant with Bain & Company and spent nearly five years at Sprint in a variety of product management and business development roles. Frost Webb holds bachelor of arts and bachelor of science degrees in economics from the Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She lives in the Seattle area with her family.
Moderator - Fred Knight, GM/Co-chair, VoiceCon, Publisher, No Jitter
Fred Knight is GM/Co-Chair of VoiceCon, and the publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications. Fred led the evolution of VoiceCon from an annual conference into a 12-month per year operation, comprising two major conferences: VoiceCon Orlando and VoiceCon San Francisco: the VoiceCon Webinar series and two e-newsletters: VoiceCon eNews and VoiceCon UC eWeekly. From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. During that period, he covered the ensuing tumultuous changes that dramatically changed the industry. Under his stewardship, BCR received numerous awards from industry and publishing groups and associations. In December 2007, BCR ceased publication and the editorial product shifted to the Web with the creation of a new website: NoJittier.com. Fred has managed the organization's migration from print to electronic publishing and serves as publisher of NoJitter.com. Fred earned his BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota and a Master's Degree in public administration from The Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
Fixed mobile convergence is coming, but there are still a wide array of options that range from a simple simultaneous ring feature to solutions that extend presence-enabled directories and visual voicemail to mobile devices worldwide. The cellular carriers are also hinting at plans to introduce their own FMC services based on either Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) or the more comprehensive IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). Meanwhile, IP-PBX vendors, technology partners and now WLAN switch vendors are all proposing their own solutions. This session will provide an overview of FMC and mobile unified communications and a description of the various strategies now being proposed. KEY QUESTIONS: * To what extent is FMC really ready for prime time? * Will FMC allow you to reduce your cellular costs? * What are the advantages of rooting an FMC solution in an IP PBX, a WLAN Switch, or an adjunct appliance? * Which of the solutions require dual mode cellular handsets, and will those handsets require special software to operate? * How will the picture change when and if the cellular carriers finally embrace FMC?
Michael Finneran is an independent consultant and industry analyst specializing in wireless technologies, mobile unified communications, and fixed-mobile convergence. With over 30-years in the networking and wide range of experience, he is a widely recognized expert in the field. He has recently published his first book titled "Voice Over Wireless LANs- The Complete Guide" (Elsevier, 2008), though his expertise spans the full range of wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, 3G/4G Cellular, WiMAX, and RFID. A lively and informative speaker, Michael has appeared at hundreds of trade shows and industry conferences including VoiceCon and InterOp; he now serves as the program chair for Wireless and Mobility at VoiceCon. In the consulting area, Mr. Finneran has provided assistance to carriers, equipment vendors, end users, and investment firms in the US and overseas. For twenty-three years he wrote the Networking Intelligence column for Business Communications Review. He now contributes on wireless and mobility to NoJitter as well as UC Strategies. He has published numerous articles and white papers and has contributed to Computerworld, Data Communications, The Ticker, and The ACUTA Journal. A long-time member of the IEEE and the Society of Telecommunications Consultants, Mr. Finneran holds a Masters Degree in Marketing and Management Information Systems from the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Panelist - Imran Akbar, Vice President and GM of Converged Enterprise Communications, Motorola, Inc.
Imran Akbar is the Vice President and General Manager of Converged Enterprise Communications at Motorola. Currently, he is leading Motorola's initiative into converged communications, which includes bringing forth the single (WiFi) and dual (WiFi and Cellular) mode solutions with voice services like Dispatch (PTT) and PBX mobilization. He also played a key role in the acquisition of Symbol Technologies and its integration into Motorola. Akbar has more than 15 years of experience in the Telecom and IT industries. His responsibilities have included general management, strategy and business development, and corporate finance at Motorola, Unisys and Sprint. Akbar has been with Motorola since 2000.
Dan Jacobson is Senior Portfolio Manager for Converged Voice Services at Sprint Nextel. He leads a dynamic team of individuals responsible for the technical development and life cycle management of integrated wireline and wireless services. His team launched Sprint Wireless Integration, a product which extends the PBX functionality to a mobile handset. Dan has over 20 years of industry experience across a diverse set of disciplines including VoIP, FMC and TDM product development, network, information technology, business development, operations, marketing, regulatory and customer service. Dan received his Masters in Business Administration from Baker University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Panelist - Pejman Roshan, VP of Marketing and Co-Founder , Agito Networks
Mr. Pejman Roshan is the Vice President of Marketing and a founder of Agito Networks, responsible for outbound marketing and product management. He brings more than 16 years of wireless expertise and an extensive track record to the company. Prior to founding Agito, Mr. Roshan was Product Line Manager in the Cisco Systems Wireless Networking Business Unit, responsible for software, security, voice and WLAN management products. Roshan joined Cisco's Wireless Networking Business Unit just after its acquisition of Aironet in 2000, helping drive Cisco into its wireless market leadership position. Prior to his product role at Cisco, Mr. Roshan spent eight years as a network engineer and architect. Mr. Roshan designed and deployed large-scale networks for companies such as Cisco Systems and Automatic Data Processing (ADP). Mr. Roshan's accomplishments include participation in the IEEE 802.11 task groups responsible for security (802.11i) and QoS (802.11e); co-authoring the Cisco Press book 802.11 Wireless LAN Fundamentals, published by Cisco Systems in 2004; as well as publishing numerous wireless security and wireless voice white papers. Mr. Roshan earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from California Polytechnic (Cal Poly) University.
Panelist - Vivek Khuller, President and CEO, DiVitas Networks
Vivek Khuller is the CEO and founder of DiVitas Networks. Prior to founding DiVitas, Vivek held the position of Venture Partner at Clearstone Venture Partners, where he incubated DiVitas. Vivek also was Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Matrix Partners. Before Matrix, he worked at Sycamore Networks in business development, leading strategic sales for the tier-1 carrier market and managing software business development worth several million dollars. Vivek worked at Verizon Communications in various roles, including Manager of the Internet Center of Excellence as well as in Network Systems Engineering.
New shipments of IP end stations outnumber new TDM end stations, and Cisco now outpaces the legacy TDM vendors in annual station shipments. At the same time, consolidation and private-equity buyouts are beginning to change the vendor landscape, while new players with strong balance sheets have recently entered the market. In this session, Allan Sulkin will present system market forecasts and assessments of IP-based applications, handicap the market competitors, and discuss potential realignments among the market-leading equipment suppliers. KEY QUESTIONS: * Which market segments in IP Telephony are hot, and which are not? * Which vendors are moving up in market share, and at whose expense? * Is anyone buying IP applications? Which applications? * How Microsoft and IBM change the dynamics of the enterprise communications market? How might consolidation among vendors further change it? * How are the traditional vendors evolving amid the transition to IP Telephony and Unified Communications?
Speaker - Allan Sulkin, President, TEQConsult Group
Allan Sulkin, president and founder of TEQConsult Group (1986), is widely recognized as the industry's foremost enterprise communications market/product analyst. He is celebrating 30 years telecommunications market experience this month and has consulted for many of the industry's leading vendors participating at VoiceCon. Sulkin has been a long time Contributing Editor to Business Communications Review and its current online incarnation No Jitter, and has served as a Program Director and featured tutorial/seminar presenter for VoiceCon since its 1991 inception. Sulkin is the author of PBX Systems for IP Telephony (McGraw-Hill Professional Publications) and writer of the PBX chapter in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. He can be contacted at amsulkin@aol.com
In the first generation of IP Telephony, the "voice" and "data" folks within IT had to figure out new ways of working together to build the new structures that would send voice over the "data" network. With Unified Communications, many more stakeholders are brought into the equation: Applications developers, datacenter managers, staff in charge of directories and email, just to name a few. In this session, you'll hear from enterprise executives that have confronted the organizational challenges of both IPT and UC. KEY QUESTIONS: * What processes are needed to open up and maintain the lines of communications among voice, data network, applications developers and messaging/email IT specialists? * What are the most common obstacles and gaps among the various organizations and their requirements/perspectives? How are these obstacles being overcome? * As enterprise communications changes, what parts of IT are taking the lead over which parts of the process? * What role are business unit leaders playing in these scenarios? What role is likely in the future?
Speaker - Mark McMath, VP/CIO, Bloomington Hospital
Mark McMath joined Bloomington Hospital as Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) in 2003. McMath began his career with IBM in 1981 and has held leadership roles with both for-profit and not-for-profit health care providers. Under McMath's leadership, Bloomington Hospital has completed a five-year strategic information technology plan for the hospital, and the management and oversight of the selection process, contract negotiations and board approval for a new enterprise-wide system that will give Bloomington Hospital the most current, state-of-the-art information technology. Also under McMath's leadership, in 2008, Bloomington Hospital was named one American Hospital Association's 100 Most Wired Hospitals in the Nation. McMath came to Bloomington from Hartford, Conn. where he served as Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Clinical Laboratory Partners, a provider of diagnostic testing, and information and laboratory management services. He has also held the titles of Chief Information Officer for the Hamilton Health Care System in Dalton, Ga., Senior Account Executive at the Gerber Alley Healthcare Corporation in Chicago, and Director of Information Systems at the Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton, Ga. McMath holds a Bachelors of Science degree in management science from Purdue University, and is a member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, and the American College of Healthcare Executives. Active in the community, McMath is currently serving as treasurer for Martha's House, an emergency shelter for adults. He also serves on the City of Bloomington's Digital Underground Advisory Committee.
Speaker - Steven Schafer, Director Global IS, Global Crossing
Steven Schafer is Director of GIS Collaboration and Network services at Global Crossing, including Enterprise Messaging, Telephony Services, Platform Services (Active Directory, SharePoint, DNS), and Media Services (Video Conferencing, Streaming). As a Microsoft Technology Adoption Partner, Mr. Shaffer managed the deployment of Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 to the entire company, approximately 5600 user objects prior to OCS October 16, 2007 launch. Mr. Schafer currently directs Unified Communications deployments within Global Crossing and is focusing on several areas, including deployment of OCS as the primary telephony service within Latin America and integration of OCS into internal and customer facing applications.
Jamie Libow is an Engineering Director at Travelers, where he leads the Unified Communications group. In this role, he is responsible for setting the strategy, implementing and supporting Unified Communications, Unified Messaging and Electronic Fax technologies. Jamie joined Travelers in 1996 as a participant in the Information Technology Leadership Development Program (ITLDP) and has worked in many departments including Data Network Engineering, Data Network Operations, Distributed/Server Operations, Call Center Technologies, and Voice Engineering. Jamie has a BA in Psychology from Queens College, a BE in Electrical Engineering from Stony Brook University, and an MS in Computer Science from Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Hartford, CT.
Moderator - Marty Parker, Principal, UniComm Consulting
Marty Parker provides Unified Communications consulting support to both private sector and public sector enterprises. As a Principal of UniComm Consulting and as co-founder of UCStrategies.com, Marty is part of a network of talent and ideas to assure clients of the best and latest information about Unified Communications (UC). Marty's focus is on the applications for UC and how those applications optimize business processes to deliver hard-dollar ROI. This focus is the basis for his BCR Training course, "Planning and Implementing VoIP Unified Communications"; for his articles in BCR Magazine and on NoJitter.com (see "Top UC Applications Now Apparent", June 2007); and for his on-line UC Resources Center available at UCStrategies.com. Marty is a regular moderator and presenter at InterOp, VoiceCon and in other UC industry venues. His applications and industry-oriented perspectives on UC are based on his roles in sales, marketing, product management and executive positions with IBM and ATT/Lucent/Avaya as well as with a major Telecom VAR, and as founder and CEO of venture-funded startups in the early phases of the voice messaging industry.
In this session, executives from the leading vendors offer their assessment of Unified Communications' evolution to date: What's available now and what's coming over the next 12 months. This session also will analyze the barriers and issues that must be overcome for UC to fulfill its potential - with a special focus on interoperability. KEY QUESTIONS: * * What are the key indications of UC adoption and market success? * What are the top UC applications in terms of actual implementation? * How much progress has been made on UC interoperability? * What changes are likely to the UC cost architecture over the next 12 months?
Panelist - David Marshak, Senior Product Manager, Unified Communications & Collaboration , IBM
David Marshak leads Real-time Collaboration and Unified Communications product strategy and planning for IBM Lotus Software, including Instant Messaging, Web Conferencing, VoIP, telephony, and video. He is the product manager of Sametime Unified Telephony. Prior to joining IBM in January 2005, Marshak was an internationally known industry analyst and consultant with Patricia Seybold Group for 18 years. Marshak has spoken worldwide to audiences, large and small, on emerging technologies and future trends. He is often called upon to be a featured speaker and panel moderator at numerous industry conferences such as VoiceCon, Collaboration Technologies Conference, Burton Group Catalyst Conference, COMDEX, InternetWorld, Groupware, VON, NetWorld, and Lotusphere, among others. He has appeared as an expert commentator on PBS, CNBC, and on National Public Radio and has lectured on collaboration at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Babson College. Marshak has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, New York Times, Business Week, and Investor's Business Daily as well as the technical press. Marshak is the author of Understanding and Leveraging Lotus Notes, the Notes Strategist Series, as well as Mission Critical Lotus Notes (Prentice Hall, 1996).
Panelist - Peter Greco, Director, Solution Management, Siemens Enterprise Communications
Peter Greco: Solution Management Director - OpenScape Unified Communications Peter Greco is Solution Management Director of Unified Communications for Siemens Enterprise Communications in the US. His responsibilities include assessing the business and solution requirements of custoemrs in the US and incorporating them into Product development plans, building the business case for unified communications for customers, developing staff skills for supporting UC, and overall US product management. Mr. Greco has served a variety of roles in Sales, Service, and Marketng with Siemens, IBM, and ROLM Communications. He is a graduate of West Chester University.
As senior director of product management in the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft, Eric Swift is responsible for managing customer and industry requirements, product positioning, and marketing strategies for the next generation of Microsoft Unified Communications products and services, including Microsoft Office Communicator, Microsoft Office Communications Server, and Microsoft RoundTable. Swift has been with Microsoft for six years. Previous to his current position with the Unified Communications Group, he was director of product management in Microsoft's Application Platform group. Prior to joining Microsoft, Swift held vice president positions at enterprise application integration and CRM software vendors where responsibilities included product management, CRM and Data Warehouse implementations, and technical support operations. Swift has an MBA from Columbia University in New York, NY.
Douglas Michaelides was appointed VP Global Marketing, Mitel Networks Corporation, effective January 1, 2006, with responsibility for marketing Mitel's industry-leading portfolio of unified communications products and services worldwide. Prior to joining Mitel, he was Senior Vice-President, Marketing at MTS-Allstream, Canada's largest Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) and one of the largest telecommunications providers in the country, where he moved the Enterprise division to a segment-driven, solution-marketing model driving brand awareness and market share growth. Before this, Mr. Michaelides had a distinguished 20-year career at Nortel Networks, in Sales, Marketing and Business Unit leadership roles in the Enterprise, Wireless and Carrier divisions, culminating in his most recent position as Vice President and General Manager of Global Network Services. Mr. Michaelides graduated with a Masters of Business Administration from York University in Toronto. He also holds a bachelor of applied science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto. He is located at Mitel's headquarters in Ottawa, Canada.
Panelist - Ross Daniels, Director of Solutions Marketing for Unified Communications, Cisco
Ross Daniels is a Director of Solutions Marketing for Unified Communications. In this capacity, Mr. Daniels is responsible for product positioning, solution messaging, and go-to-market activities for various aspects of Cisco's Unified Communications portfolio, with primary emphasis on Cisco Unified Contact Center, Messaging, Web and Audio Conferencing, and Presence solutions. Mr. Daniels joined Cisco as part of its November 1999 acquisition of WebLine Communications. While at WebLine, he held a variety of technical sales and marketing roles. Previous positions at Cisco include CTI Product Manager, Product Marketing Manager, and Manager of Product Management for Cisco's enterprise and hosted contact center solutions. Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. Daniels spent several years in the business-to-business advertising industry. A regular speaker at industry events, Cisco events, and customer briefings, Mr. Daniels has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Harvard University and a Masters in Business Administration from Babson College.
Panelist - Dilshad Simons, VP, UC, Avaya
Moderator - Jim Burton, CXO, CT Link/UCStrategies.com
Jim Burton is Founder and CEO of CT Link, LLC. Burton founded the consulting firm in 1989 to help clients in the converging voice, data and networking industries with strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, strategic alliances and distribution issues. In the early 1990s, Burton recognized the challenges vendors and the channel faced as they developed and installed integrated voice/data products. He became the leading authority in the voice/data integration industry and is credited with "coining" the term computer-telephone integration (CTI). Burton helped companies including Microsoft and Intel enter the voice market and helped AT&T (now Avaya), Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Siemens and Toshiba with their CTI strategies. In the late 1990s, venture capitalists turned to Burton for help in evaluating potential investments in IP PBX start-ups. He went on to help these and other companies with strategic planning and partnering, including NBX (acquired by 3Com, Selsius (acquired by Cisco), ShoreTel (IPO 2007) and Sphere Communications (acquired by NEC). In 1998 Burton recognized the telecommunications industry was on the verge of a major shift, from circuit switch to packet switch (IP) technology and cofounded Circa Communications to develop IP phones to address the emerging market. Polycom acquired Circa in 2000. The Circa acquisition has been a major contributor to Polycom's growth during the past several years. In the early 2000s, Burton began focusing on wireless services and technologies. In 2005 Burton started helping vendors with their Unified Communications strategy and in 2006, along with several colleagues, created a web site, UCStrategies.com, to provide information for enterprise customers and vendors.
Open source PBX software packages, most notably Asterisk, continue to grow, but mostly in smaller installations. And even though some large-system vendors now are OEMing Asterisk, is open source voice ready for prime time? In this session, you'll learn whether open source PBX software's growing appeal will spread and, eventually, become mainstream within the enterprise. KEY QUESTIONS: * What level of market share and acceptance has open source PBX software attained? What is expected? * Which products use open source PBX software? * What are the most compelling reasons for choosing open source PBX software? What are the greatest areas of concern in making this choice? * Is open source voice feature-comparable with proprietary systems? * What are the technical challenges of an open source PBX deployment, and how are these overcome?
Speaker - Irwin Lazar, Principal Research Analyst and Program Director, Unified Communications and Collaboration, Nemertes Research
Irwin Lazar is a Principal Analyst & Program Director, Convergence & Collaboration at Nemertes Research, where he develops and manages research projects, conducts strategic seminars, and advises clients. His background is in network operations, network engineering, voice-data convergence, and IP telephony. Mr. Lazar is responsible for benchmarking the adoption and use of emerging technologies in the enterprise in areas including VOIP, unified communications, and collaboration. Since 1992 Mr. Lazar has been a consultant and analyst, serving a variety of global enterprises and government agencies. Mr. Lazar led efforts to develop security architectures and convergence road-maps, as well as enterprise network architectures, for numerous clients in the health care, pharmaceuticals, banking & finance, energy, government, and retail sectors. Mr. Lazar has led teams of consultants in requirements-gathering and strategy development. He also has evaluated emerging IT trends and analyzed their impact on organizations. A sought-after speaker and author, Mr. Lazar is a columnist for Business Communications Review magazine, provides topics for Network World, and is a frequent resource for the business and trade press. He is regular speaker at events such as Interop, VoiceCon, and Enterprise 2.0. Mr. Lazar holds a bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems from Radford University in Radford, VA, and a Master's of Business Administration (MBA) from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. He served in the U.S. Army Reserve Ordnance Corps as an officer from 1992-2001. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).
Panelist - Martin Steinmann, Leader, Next Generation SMB , Nortel
Martin J. Steinmann has had a successful career in the technology industry for over 20 years as a marketer, technologist, business leader and venture capitalist on two continents. As part of the Vesbridge Partners' team his focus as an investor was mainly concentrated on early stage opportunities and recaps in the enterprise software and IT industry including enterprise productivity software, storage solutions, IT security management, unified communications and voice over IP (VoIP) as well as new media and social networking. Martin is also an accomplished marketer and strategic business leader where he served as vice president of marketing for several technology startup companies. He took operational roles with portfolio companies of Vesbridge Partners initiating and executing strategic company repositioning, management team building, business turn-around, and refinancing and M&A activity. He is also the founder and a member of the board at SIPfoundry, the industry's leading open source community dedicated to VoIP technology and solutions and he gained a lot of experience with open source business models. Prior to joining Vesbridge, Martin was General Partner of Calivia, a strategy consulting and marketing advisory company focused on software startup companies in the telecommunications and IT sectors. Martin also served in various executive roles at Lucent Technologies and at Switzerland based Ascom AG. While at Lucent he was responsible for Lucent's OEM agreement and subsequent acquisition of Yurie Systems Inc., a deal worth more than $1 billion in cash. Martin earned a BSc and MSc degree in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and a PhD in Physics from the Danish Technical University in Copenhagen. During his PhD work he conducted critical research in tunable multi-section DFB/DBR semiconductor lasers, a vital component for today's DWDM optical transmission systems.
Panelist - Bill Miller, VP, Product Management, Digium
Bill Miller / Vice President, Product Management Bill Miller brings over 20 years of telecommunication experience to his role as vice president of product management. Miller joined Digium in June 2006, heading up both marketing and product management. Today, Miller is responsible for managing Digium's expanding product lines including all hardware, software and appliance families, technology partners and expanding Digium's open source Asterisk Community. Prior to joining Digium, Miller led 3Com's voice product management team where he led voice product line revenue growth while re-positioning the enterprise voice products and driving new strategies for the future. Miller has held senior positions in Product Management, Marketing, Strategic Alliances and Business Development for Andes Networks, Fujitsu Business Communications Systems, General DataComm, Rockwell International and Prime Computer. Miller holds a BS in Computer Engineering Technology from Northeastern University.
Panelist - Kerry Garrison, trixbox Community Director, Fonality
Kerry Garrison is the Community Director for Fonality. In this position he guides the development of the trixbox CE open source telephony project and handles interactions with major vendors as well as the forums. He is the publisher of the popular VOIP blog site VoipSpeak.net and the creator of the video tutorials site asterisktutorials.com. He has been in the IT industry for over 20 years with positions ranging from IT Director of a large multi-site distribution company to developing a large hosted web server platform for a major ISP, to finally running his own IT consulting business in Southern California. Kerry was introduced to the world of Asterisk by a friend and began running his own business on it. After about a year of working with it and writing some articles that became extremely popular on the net, he felt it was time to start putting clients onto Asterisk-based systems. After writing a book on trixbox, he eventually joined the Fonality team in 2006.
In the mobile UC environment, users will be provided with presence-enabled directories, visual voicemail, and the full range of desktop UC capabilities on their mobile device. But getting from where we are today to that mobile UC future is going to require investment by all parts of the industry - carriers, enterprises, equipment and software vendors. In this session, a panel of wireless carriers, VOIP and desktop application vendors, and consultants will describe their best solutions for mobile employees, and how to integrate those with our wired communication systems. KEY QUESTIONS: * What UC capabilities are available on mobile devices/services today? Can these integrate with the IP Telephony and UC infrastructures, and do they need to? * What are the key impediments (such as bandwidth or battery life) to end users' enjoying the same functionality on a wireless UC application as its wired counterpart? * Can wireless UC solutions be implemented in conjunction with the enterprise infrastructure, or will service providers only offer these as their own standalone services? Do we have to wait for FMC to become widely available? * Are video and collaboration solutions viable UC applications for mobile users today? * What does the picture look like for operations and service workers versus office workers?
Speaker - David Leach, Senior Marketing Manager, Siemens Enterprise Communications
David has been one of the chief creative forces behind Siemens emergence as a leader in the presence-based, unified communications landscape over the past six years. Holding various positions within Siemens over the past 20 years, David has spent the last six plus years building the marketing vision and driving the success of OpenScape. Now he is focused on building broad market awareness of the benefits presence offers for business communications in the next decade.
As a senior manager, Isabelle Guis is responsible for the marketing strategy of Cisco Mobility Solutions with a heavy emphasis on developing marketing activities for Context Aware Mobility, Fixed Mobile Convergence (including Mobile Unified Communications), and Mobility solutions for Healthcare and Manufacturing. Isabelle was instrumental in the launch of Cisco Motion, Cisco vision and associated strategy to empower IT to meet and exceed business mobility demands. She leads the efforts to grow Cisco mobility eco-system so technology partners can integrate with the Cisco Motion open architecture and API. Her team also drives messaging and tools on products and solutions to help enable sales and partners to promote the vast potential business opportunities offered by Cisco Mobility solutions. Prior to Cisco, Isabelle served at Nortel Networks for seven years in a variety of roles in the Enterprise and Service Provider divisions from R&D engineer, to product line pricing, product manager and product marketing manager. As a senior product marketing manager for Nortel, Isabelle was responsible for the Wireless LAN 2200 series portfolio. She also has strong international wireless experience, having launched 3G technologies in Europe and North America, and was instrumental in the company's involvement in WLAN technologies for both Hot Spots and Enterprises. Isabelle holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Supelec in France and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Speaker - Eran Shtiegman, Principal Group Manager, Office Communications Group, Microsoft
As Group Manager for mobility within the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft, Eran Shtiegman is responsible for the roadmap, feature set and execution of mobility related efforts within UCG including Office Communicator Mobile. Previous to his current position Eran was the Group Program Manager for Office Communicator where he was responsible for both the release of Office Communicator 2005 and 2007. Eran has been with the UCG team since joining Microsoft 6 years ago. Prior to joining Microsoft Eran worked at a variety of companies in the VoIP space including Vocaltec Communications where we was Director of Product Management. Eran has a Bachelor in Computer Science from the University of Rochester.
Speaker - Sean McManus, Manager, Voice Solutions, Software Product Management Group, Research In Motion
Sean McManus is a Manager for Voice Solutions, Software Product Management at Research In Motion (RIM), makers of the BlackBerry® smartphone. Sean is responsible for articulating RIM's Enterprise Voice Strategy to large global accounts. Sean has over 17 years experience selling and marketing advanced voice solutions, including c
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