Strategic Products and Services

TECH and health care big on Morris county job scene - Dailyrecord.com

SuperUser Account — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:26:00 GMT

TECH and health care big on Morris county job scene
Dailyrecord.com
Courtney Smolen supplemented a communications degree with additional education in web work and management to stay relevant and thriving in the contemporary workplace. She works at Strategic Products and Services in Parsippany in two of the most ...

Stay Current with Software / Firmware Updates

SuperUser Account — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Building an enterprise-class communications system is one thing; maintaining it is another. Neglecting system updates, versions, and new releases can leave you lagging in functionality, while stressing the reliability of your environment. SPS will host a technical session at the IAUG Converge 2013 conference to address the importance of implementing a strategy for firmware and software updates, and the quantifiable value that you receive by combining your SPS support relationship with the Avaya Firmware and Software Update Management (SUM) service. Part-B of this session will also include in-depth information and a live demonstration on updating Avaya Aura Communication Manager R5.2 and R6.x systems. The IAUG Converge 2013 conference takes place in Orlando FL on 3-7 June. If you haven’t yet registered, then register now! Discounted registration is available through SPS – use discount code strategic3 to register for a reduced rate of $895. Registered already? be sure to enroll in sessions # 727A and 727B: “The Why and How of Software and Firmware Updates (part 1 and 2)”. And don’t forget to visit SPS at booth# 409!

EVM Plus Now Compliant with Avaya IP Office

SuperUser Account — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:20:00 GMT

Mutare recently announced that its EVM Plus giSTT and giSTT Hosted speech-to-text applications have been certified "Avaya Compliant" with the IP Office messaging platform.

Designing Your Strategic UC Infrastructure

SuperUser Account — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

IT is under pressure to provide support for Unified Communications – and the plan must support current UC trends including mobility and “bring your own device” (BYOD); collaboration via voice, video and web; and the ability to federate UC capabilities between companies, their partners, and customers. IT organizations need to develop a balanced strategy to deliver user-friendly solutions, ensure user adoption, guarantee enterprise security, and provide the flexibility to support future trends. According to the results of an InformationWeek survey, an incredible 72% organizations stated they expect to implement BYOD – yet only 43% of companies have or are deploying a Mobile Device Management (MDM). Security is a key component of a successful BYOD and must be factored into any plan to deploy BYOD. Join SPS at the IAUG Converge 2013 conference for a 60-minute, technical session on UC infrastructure design – enroll in session# 1301: “Building an Infrastructure to Support a UC Strategy” – hosted by Mike Taylor and Bob Kent of SPS. The conference takes place 3-7 June in Orlando FL. If you haven’t registered yet, then do it today! Discounted registration is available through SPS – use discount code strategic3 to register for a reduced rate of $895. Register today, and don’t forget to visit SPS at booth# 409!

How are CIOs Boosting the ROI of Collaboration?

SuperUser Account — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 22:26:00 GMT

In the old days, you had a phone on your desk at work. It was a necessity but purely a cost. Nowadays, communications comes in many flavors. And savvy CIOs understand that it's not simply about containg costs anymore.

Today's key, said several CIOs in front of 1,000+ attendees at the Avaya Evolutions New York conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, is making sure you have an open, flexible foundation for collaboration that allows you to deliver new tactics and maximize your long-term ROI.

"The telecom system lifecycle is still pretty long," said Neil Isola, director of IT for a 440,000-member benefits and pension fund based in New York City. Yet "how you execute 1-2 years from now is vague." What companies need is an "open and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to scale upon."

For Isola, that is a virtualization-heavy architecture. 95% of the applications on the company's 1,000 servers are virtualized, including the Avaya IQ, AES and ACE applications and Avaya gateway controllers that Isola upgraded to last year. Not only does virtualization allow Isola's team to upgrade hardware more easily when needed, it also enables his team to get their large call center - it gets 4,000 inbound calls per hour - back up in case of a disaster within 13 minutes, with agents working from home.

Avoiding Being a Slave to Technology

Responding to fast-moving technology trends can be as difficult as keeping up with fashion, according to Jason Cohen, CIO for a division of the sprawling media and marketing conglomerate, the Omnicom Group.

"In my opinion, too much time is spent on the accoutrements," he said. "Pick the right foundation and then you have something that can handle almost anything you want."

When Cohen started as CIO back in 1999, there were 100+ agencies at Omnicom, all cobbled together through acquisitions, and all running different technologies.

To unify this, Cohen wanted a powerful communications platform, one that would attract individual agencies to voluntarily standardize upon it without having to strong-arm them. Yet, it had to flexible to accommodate the existing diversity. "I needed a vendor that could support us globally on multiple types of platforms, as opposed to one that says 'If you have this, then you must use that.'"

Using Avaya, Cohen now has just 4 data centers worldwide with 75% of the branches under his watch now standardized onto a single platform.

SEFCU credits its flexible communications foundation for letting it automate its call center at its own pace.

For another company, New York state-based credit union SEFCU, the challenge was accommodating fast customer growth while upgrading its technology at its own pace.

SEFCU's membership had grown at a zippy 8% a year for the past half-decade. Even better - revenue from its outbound call center agents has grown 170% in the last 3 years.

Chris Ward, vice-president for retail distribution at SEFCU, credits SEFCU's "personal service heritage...our long-term members are accustomed to a person-to-person approach," as well as its well-trained call center agents, most of whom are college educated.

So what's the problem?

SEFCU recently introduced a new, more-secure online banking platform that was raising questions among some long-time customers. As a result, the number of calls into SEFCU's 65-person call center was up 17% year-over-year in 2012, and threatening to grow another 23% this year.

"It was pretty close to exemplifying the definition of insanity," Ward said.

SEFCU had a 15-year-old Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system that was handling about 2 million calls a year, versus the 700,000 calls handled by its agents. "We had always viewed that 3:1 ratio as good," Ward said. But now, Ward wanted to divert more routine calls to the automated system, while leaving complicated inquiries to the operators. He also wanted to control the pace of deploying new features, rather than adopting a big-bang approach.

Solution: SEFCU hired system integrator SPS to deploy new call center software, the Avaya Aura Experience portal. Aura Experience gives SEFCU a foundation with "unparalleled reliability," says Ward, for it to connect its existing non-SIP applications and start planning for upgrades such as smart call routing (i.e. based on customer history, not just his or her current need).

"We now have the flexibility to grow over time," Ward said, without sacrificing the sort of service its customers expect. Within 2 years, SEFCU hopes to deploy Avaya Proactive Outreach manager to enhance both its sales and its bill collection. The software will allow agents that can't reach a customer on the phone to easily leave a voice mail and an e-mail instead.

You can hear more interviews with these companies, as well as the Avaya partners that helped deploy their communications architectures, on the Avaya Podcast Network.

Seven Questions to Help Pick your Managed Service Provider

SuperUser Account — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:01:55 GMT

In previous blogs we have discussed two of this year's surging trends cloud computing and self-diagnosing machine 2 machine communications from our white paper, Seven communications trends for 2013 . Let's now turn our attention to Managed Services.

Many pressures face today's CIO and IT departments. Disruptive technologies like the exploding number of mobile devices and video are impacting IT decisions. The need to support new functionality that maintains a corporate competitive advantage has out stripped IT's ability to consume the technology complexity required to deliver the new functionality. We call this the Technology Adoption Gap. This technology gap is fueling IT's need for Managed Services that can reduce the risk of deploying and supporting new as well as legacy solutions.

According to Gartner's "Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World: The 2013 CIO Agenda," a global survey of more than 2,000 CIOs representing 36 industries in 41 countries, enterprises only realize an average of 43 percent of technology's business potential from the more than $230 billion invested in CIO IT budgets. With investments and demands running so high, more is being demanded of CIOs. CIOs are turning to solution vendors for Managed Services to help them get more out of the investment they have and will make.

Adding more pressure, as stated in the white paper Communications services: Challenging the status quo by Avaya Senior Vice president and Avaya Client Services President Mike Runda, are tightening IT budgets that are forcing more out of existing IT staffs which are already under-staffed and overwhelmed.

This need for Managed Services is called out in the Seven communications trends white paper prepared by a panel of visionary Avaya experts as hitting an inflection point:

"Business conditions are changing at a breathtaking pace within most industries and, consequently, so are the requirements on organizations' communications infrastructures. In this environment, having the flexibility to add, contract and change capabilities and leverage new technologies quickly and easily has become paramount. There is also growing interest among cost-conscious businesses in foregoing the expense of in-house staff to support their communications infrastructure, as well as the capital requirements of continually investing in new technologies. At the same time, business leaders want to focus their attention on the strategic needs, decisions and directions associated with their communications infrastructure rather than the operational requirements of running it. These shifts are leading businesses to think differently about their infrastructure strategy and examine the financial goals associated with their IT organization. Do they want their IT department to be responsible for the day-to-day operations of their communications technology with the accompanying high fixed costs? Or, do they want to adopt a utility model that enables them to add and contract communications resources as needed, whether using a service provider or an in-house, self-managed utility services approach? Such decisions will be front and center in 2013."

What are CIOs and IT departments to do given these resource constraints and user demands? If Managed Services is the key it starts by selecting a service partner who understands the marketplace and appreciates the complexity of today's systems which are typically cobbled together in a multivendor environment. "Almost every enterprise client we encounter has a complex multivendor environment, with equipment of all ages and often from different manufacturers. A great Managed Services provider will offer solutions with service level agreements covering the entire communications environment," says Mike Runda in his Communications services white paper.

So, how should CIOs and IT departments take the first step to determine the right Managed Services partner for their business needs? They should ask themselves the following seven questions:

Will the proposed service partner support your business strategy now and in the future?

Do you trust them to have the necessary expertise and bandwidth to provide maintenance, deliver support services or assume Managed Services responsibilities?

Will they become trusted advisors that stay engaged and serve as an extension of your IT organization and business?

Do they provide a portfolio of offers that span the entire service continuum and have the necessary flexibility to ensure a smooth deployment of Managed Services?

What applications, diagnostics checks or analytic tools do they leverage to anticipate any problems or hidden issues?

Do they provide a single point of contact that can quickly swarm experts to resolve an issue in your network?

Do they really know you? Understand your solution?

What questions are key to you in deciding who should be providing critical IT support to your company?

Pat Patterson
Follow me on twitter Pat_Patterson_V

Avaya and Microsoft Lync – Better Together!

SuperUser Account — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:00:00 GMT

With the popularity of Microsoft collaboration technologies, many organizations are asking how to integrate systems to provide their users with seamless communication services – and Microsoft Lync is a compelling solution for many companies. But what does it take to get started? What are the “care-abouts” and “gotchas”? If this scenario describes your organization, SPS can help you get past the hype surrounding individual products and gain an understanding of how to successfully plan and integrate Avaya and Microsoft systems. Seek a partner that can address how these systems provide a return on investment, support corporate initiatives like “bring your own device” (BYOD), and how services can be transitioned to the cloud. Integration options include: Avaya Client Applications (ACA) client-side implementation Avaya Enablement Services (AES) click-to-call integration Microsoft Lync enterprise voice integration with Avaya systems Integration of Microsoft Lync conferencing and Exchange voice mail with Avaya voice servers Join SPS at the IAUG Converge 2013 conference for a pair of 60-minute sessions on Microsoft-Avaya integration. Enroll in Session# 1314: “Avaya and Microsoft: Better Together – How to Do It” Session# 1327: “Lync-ing your Microsoft and Avaya Environments: Real-world Solutions to Leverage Your Investments” Sessions will include best practices for a successful deployment, gateway services, integration with older PBX systems that lack native SIP support, SIP trunking services to providers, and time for discussion. Additional services and considerations will also be addressed, including remote workers, home and branch offices, disaster recovery, dial-plan considerations, and adjunct services like e911, contact centers, Call Detail Records (CDR), and feature parity between systems. You will leave this session with a more advanced understanding of how systems from these two manufacturers can work better together. Pushing past the hype, SPS will help you understand the realities of integration – helping you to provide additional services to your users, and provide a true return on existing investments. If you haven’t yet registered for IAUG Converge 2013 – taking place 3-7 June in Orlando FL – then do it today! Discounted registration is on us – use discount code strategic3 to register for a reduced rate of $895. Register today, and don’t forget to visit SPS at booth# 409!

Who is Foursquare's Biggest Mayor? Hint: He's at Avaya Evolutions New York

SuperUser Account — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 02:08:29 GMT

In the 1970s, Coca-Cola wanted to teach the world how to sing (in perfect harmony). Today, Foursquare wants to teach the world how to check-in with your smartphone at your favorite shops and restaurants.

Checking-in may seem like something only for young people with too much time on their hands. But consider these numbers: 30 million users, 5 million check-ins a day, 3 billion total check-ins since Foursquare was launched 3 years ago. Sounds pretty mainstream to me.

The app is appealing partly because it's also a game: the person who checks in the most at a certain location is declared Mayor. In our irony-heavy age, being mayor is obviously a fake title, though it can result in real perks like free drinks and other discounts awarded to loyal customers. And on the flip side, many companies are using Foursquare, including, ironically, Coca-Cola, to lure customers and boost revenue.

So who is the most active Foursquare user in the the world? That's unclear (though see this interesting heat map of Foursquare check-ins worldwide). But the most active Foursquare user in technology-mad Silicon Valley, according to Wired.com, appears to be Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak. He is the mayor of 24 places in the Valley alone, most of them retailers in the southern suburbs of the Valley near his Los Gatos home.

"This is a man building a Foursquare empire," according to Wired. "With 4,183 check-ins, Mayor Woz shows no signs of slowing down and could become the mayor of every building, landmark and prison in the Silicon Valley -- probably while riding his Segway."

: Credit: TheDigitalStory.com

Kinda like this.

You can check out Woz and his impressive, near-obsessive check-in habit via his Twitter account @SteveWoz. Indeed, by the time you read this, Woz should have checked into the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan, where he will be the featured speaker at the Avaya Evolutions New York conference on Tuesday, April 8th.

Evolutions is Avaya's traveling North and South American roadshow, where we bring our technology, products and experts to you the user, rather than force you to fly hours to Orlando or Vegas. Besides top Avaya executives such as Brett Shockley, Pierre-Paul Allard, Gary Barnett, John DiLullo, Jean Turgeon, John Geary, Forrester analyst Henry Dewing will talk about collaboration, while customers such as SPS, DJJ Technologies and CTI Technologies will give their first-hand experience.

And of course, Woz will reminisce about Apple and share his thoughts about the future of technology at the afternoon keynote, as he did at the Avaya Evolutions Bay Area last fall.

About 2,000 people are registered to attend Avaya Evolutions New York. If you can't check-in and attend, you can follow the news and see the pictures via my blog or on Twitter @EricYLai, or also via the @Avaya Twitter account.

Engaging Customers on Their Terms

SuperUser Account — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:29:02 GMT

Attracting and retaining customers today, especially younger generations, is all about giving them more choices for when and how to interact with your organization. An Avaya survey of contact center clients showed that "new" communications channels, such as mobile apps, Web, text, video and social media, are growing rapidly while use of traditional voice channels is waning. In a Frost and Sullivan survey, 75 percent of respondents cited "provides better customer service" as the top benefit of social media customer interactions, while another 58 percent of respondents said they "drive more sales."2

This trend of consumers preferring new interaction channels over voice suggests that businesses could fall behind if they don't respond. Yet at the same time, that trend could lead to opportunities for cost savings and agent efficiency improvement that help fund investment in the new channels. For example, the cost of interaction via chat, e-mail and self-service can be 50 percent, 30 percent and 10 percent less, respectively, than the cost of voice interaction.1 If those alternate channels can help generate such savings, then migration to the new channels could be self-funding over time. Consider how leading customer service organizations in the following two industries are taking advantage of these opportunities, not only for day-to-day customer contact, but also for proactive communication with customers based on other events.

Healthcare industry. Healthcare providers can remind patients of appointments and offer instructions for necessary preparations. So the number of patient no-shows is reduced, and visits are more productive when patients are more effectively prepared for the visit. For example, a large integrated health services organization, serving more than 2.6 million residents, implemented a self-service and proactive contact solution for appointment scheduling, reminders and payments. Based on information provided by the organization, it reduced calls to agents by 44 percent while improving patient service levels by 34 percent.

Financial services industry. A credit union faced increasing delinquencies in its $4 billion loan portfolio, along with declining customer satisfaction ratings. The credit union deployed a proactive multimedia contact solution that enabled it to automatically flag delinquent customers and notify them of delay and collect payments. Ultimately, the credit union reports that the solution enabled it to reduce its delinquencies by more than $35 million in eight months; in addition, it allowed the organization to move agents from collections activity to other, more value-added tasks, thereby improving agent productivity metrics.

Even personally, I am accessible at all time via email/SMS even when I may not be able to take phone calls (while in a meeting for example). So if the doctor's office/son's school/Bank wants to get hold of me in the middle of a busy working day, they need to SMS/Email me !

Regards
Sanjeev

Digging Deeper Into Customer Experience Management

SuperUser Account — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:19:17 GMT

Today you'll be hearing from a guest blogger who I had the pleasure of introducing a few months ago. John Quaglietta has extensive hands-on learning and teaching in the realm of Customer Experience Management (CEM). He has over 20 years of experience as an accomplished leader, customer service & contact center consultant, and as a customer experience visionary. He has worked with the world's largest organizations in solving some of the most challenging and thought provoking business challenges around customer-centricity, and the effect customer and employee engaged organizations have on both top and bottom line financial success.

I was fortunate enough to attend an IMT (Instituto Mexico de Teleservices) event in Mexico City. The event was focused on improving customer engagement and experience, and the people, technology, and processes that connect to make it all possible. I was impressed with both the presentations at the event, and the discussions around the topic that took place in the hallways. Everyone was interested and excited about the possibilities.

I was asked to present on best practices & trends in Customer Experience Management (CEM) for the event. Instead of just compiling the usual industry data on CEM, I decided to share what I have been working on the past few years with the audience in Mexico City. I was interested in getting feedback and testing some of my thoughts, and I will say the feedback was very positive.

The last few years have been interesting for me. I have spent time meeting with large, global organizations focused on improving their customers' experiences. I have listened to their strategies and approaches, pouring over the various definitions of CEM put forth by analysts and others in the industry I have also spent time inspecting the role of various organizations in the CEM discussion(like the contact center for example), and finally, digging deeper into the economics behind what CEM is all about. I have come to a few conclusions that formed the basis for my presentation, and truthfully, a new way of thinking about what this topic is all about. I will blog about each of these individually in the coming weeks. For now, I just want to share with you the construct.

CEM Definition; Everywhere you look, the definition of CEM is all from the customer's point of view. And rightfully so, after all it is called, "Customer Experience Management". The various definitions include pieces about the sum of all interactions and experiences a customer has with an organization as they move through the customer journey. I agree. But, what about the organization's point of view? Why should an organization care about CEM, and how should they think about it? After all, there are 2 sides to this story. I have put forth a supplemental definition for CEM, looking at it from the organization's point of view. It actually compliments existing definitions which tend to consider it from the customer's perspective. CEM is the discipline of managing and treating customer relationships as assets, with the goal of moving satisfied customers to loyal customers, and loyal customers to advocates of your brand. In doing so, CEM is ultimately about improving the lifetime value of a single customer or segment of customers, and increasing the duration of the customer relationship as it affects a customer's lifetime value.
What is CEM all about for organizations? Why should they invest?; It's actually very simple. As mentioned above, CEM is all about improving the profitability of a customer or segment of customers over the duration of their relationship with an organization. There are 2 dimensions here that matter most. Profitability & duration of relationship. Profitability can be measured in a single year and over the lifetime of a customer using customer lifetime value (CLV). Duration can be measured using retention. As the dimensions increase, a very dramatic and positive effect to an organization's top line can be seen. There are 4 revenue & cost dimensions that affect customer profitability. Again, more on this in a subsequent blog, and we'll discuss how to move these levers to positively impact customer profitability & lifetime value using the contact center for example.
A model to manage CEM economics; Given my definition above, and thinking about terms like "discipline" and "manage", it would seem logical that a framework must be developed to insure organizations stay on the right path and are able to link CEM investment back to top line growth. Over the past 3 years, I have compiled such a model. I call it the CLV framework. This model links technical KPI's (% application availability as an example), operational KPI's (Average Hold Time, First Call Resolution, Transfers, as examples) and strategic KPI's (NPS, Retention Rate as examples) to CLV. The model illustrates how making subtle improvements in technical, operational and strategic KPI's affect customer profitability. It also provides a means for linking CEM investment to CLV improvement. The model is valuable for many reasons. Probably the most understated value is that it provides people in the organization an understanding of how what they do every day, the things they are measured on, affect customer profitability & growth. It brings everyone along on the CEM journey. Again, we'll cover this in a lot more detail in an upcoming blog.
The role of the Contact Center; This may upset some people in the contact center industry, but it is my point of view. The contact center is NOT about delivering service or saving a company's money. At least not when looked at through the lens of CEM. The contact center's role in CEM is more about "growing & protecting assets", those assets being customers. In this context, service delivery is a means to an end. Contact centers are thus in the business of asset management, not service management. Furthermore, all of the focus on efficiency & reducing cost is good, but only if it is in the pursuit of efficiently "growing & protecting assets" while improving the experience for customers. If you believe this like I do, then the way contact centers operate and are measured requires further inspection. Stay tuned for more on this point as well.

I'm excited about the future of Customer Experience Management and the role the contact center should play in this revolution. We'll dive into more depth in upcoming blogs around each of these 4 topics in the CEM construct.

UC Virtualization: Avaya Aura on VMware

SuperUser Account — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Avaya recently announced the virtual version of its Avaya Aura® platform, designated as “VMware Ready” by the leading provider of server virtualization, VMware. The Avaya Aura Virtualized Environment is essentially an Avaya toolkit to facilitate management of Avaya Aura components in a standardized, VMware virtualization environment. Virtualization is not new territory for Avaya. The late-2009 launch of the Avaya Aura Midsize Solution basically split the difference between an open versus proprietary approach. It was “open” because the Linux Xen hypervisor was an open-standards tool, distributed under the GPL license; but it was “proprietary” since the Avaya Aura System Platform “owned” the server, with virtualization limited to a half-dozen Avaya Aura-branded components, including Communication Manager, Voice Messaging, SIP Enablement, and Application Enablement Services (AES). At that time, a couple of concerns prevented running Avaya Aura on a non-Avaya virtualization platform. First, in 2009 the VMware environment was less prevalent than it is today. Second, servers that could handle the high input/output and real-time processing requirements for applications like voice were a recent innovation, with the 2009 launch of the “Nehalem” processor architecture. Virtualizing real-time voice is more demanding than most applications, since minor delays in voice packet handling can result in dropouts and jitter, compromising the quality of the service. Because virtualization involves a technology known as Hardware Abstraction, which presents client applications with a standardized view of the hardware and operating system, processing power can be impacted by the additional processor cycles needed to do this. Hence, Avaya was likely being conservative about the requirements placed on the CM server by keeping virtualization semi-proprietary in the 2009 release. (For a primer on virtualization, see Wikipedia on Virtualization and Hardware Abstraction.) Virtualizing non-real-time applications like voicemail is relatively easy; no one notices voicemail playback is delayed by a few hundredths of a second by translation for hardware-abstraction. Thus the 2009 AA Midsize Solution allowed voicemail and other non-real time applications to “hitch a ride” on a server dedicated to Communication Manager, provided CM maintained priority. So the big news with this 2013 release is that Avaya is now confident that enterprise-grade voice quality can be assured within non-dedicated, non-Avaya, VMware environment. The key is the Avaya Virtualization Provisioning Service (AVPS), a new component of the Avaya Virtual Network Architecture. Acting as a plug-in of Avaya Configuration and Orchestration Management, AVPS automates provision and configuration of “edge port” network resources used for voice, and monitors these ports to ensure quality. By Chris Stelacio, Director of Systems Engineering

Enabling Self Administration on Extension to Cellular

SuperUser Account — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

In the first installment of this three-part blog, we reviewed Extension to Cellular as a built-in mobility feature in Avaya Aura Communication Manager, for which you may already have the licenses. In the second we covered Feature Name Extension (FNE) codes, and how they enable enhanced functionality using the one-X Mobile Lite clients for iOS and Android phones. In this final installment, we will discuss Self Administration Feature access codes (SAFE). Assuming that SAFE has been enabled by your CM administrator, you can use it to enter and change your own cellular number in Extension to Cellular, without submitting a request to your administrator. Here’s how it works: Dial the Extension to Cellular access number. You hear a dial tone. Enter the SAFE access code. You hear a dial tone. Enter your station extension, followed by #. Enter your station-security code followed by #. You hear a dial tone. Press the # button again on your phone. You hear a confirmation tone. Your cell phone is now mapped to your office extension through Extension to Cellular! Entering numbers on a mobile device is not my favorite thing to do, but since you only need to do this once to enable turning Extension to Cellular on and off with a single key press, these five steps really are worth it! Using SAFE as described above does have some requirements: Verify that your mobile device is listed as a supported device on the product listings for one-X Mobile Lite on the Apple Store, or one-X Mobile with Basic Features on Google Play. Your CM administrator must set up Extension for EC500 and SAFE. Your CM administrator must set up and assign extensions to the FNEs listed in the second part of this blog series. Extension to Cellular has been around for a while, and can be very useful and convenient when correctly configured. But plenty of customers have implemented Avaya Aura Communication Manager without setting it up. There are fancier ways to implement Unified Communications Mobility, but Extension to Cellular provides a lot of bang for the buck, and should not be taken for granted!

Using Extension to Cellular with one-X Mobile Lite

SuperUser Account — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:00:00 GMT

In the first installment of this blog, we covered the benefits of Extension to Cellular, a built-in mobility feature in Avaya Aura Communication Manager R5.2.1+, included with the Enterprise Edition (EE) or Mobility Suite license. Extension to Cellular can also be used in conjunction with free software applications available for iPhone and Android devices. The free application is called one-X Mobile Lite in the Apple Store and one-X Mobile with Basic Features in the Google Play store. Apple Store for one-X Mobile Lite Google Play store for one-X Mobile with basic features (also known as “Lite” features) Either version of this application allows you to easily access Extension to Cellular features to by pressing a button on the client device. Many current users of Extension to Cellular are unaware of its full feature set. Features are activated by dialing DID numbers set up by your administrator. These are called Feature Named Extensions (FNE): 9xx-8xx-5z10 – Active Appearance Select 9xx-8xx-5z11 – Call Park 9xx-8xx-5z12 – Call Park Answer Back 9xx-8xx-5z13 – Conference on Answer 9xx-8xx-5z14 – Drop Last Added Party 9xx-8xx-5z15 – Held Appearance Select 9xx-8xx-5z16 – Idle Appearance Select 9xx-8xx-5z17 – Off-PBX Call Enable 9xx-8xx-5z18 – Off-PBC Call Disable 9xx-8xx-5z19 – Send All Calls 9xx-8xx-5z20 – Send All Calls Cancel 9xx-8xx-5z21 – Transfer on Hang-Up 9xx-8xx-5z22 – Transfer to Voice Mail You set up your one-X Mobile Lite application to access these features by entering the DID numbers, as configured by your CM administrator. That’s it. The Enable and Disable buttons allow you to turn the application on and off. Ordinarily, usage of Extension to Cellular requires your mobile number to be entered into CM by an administrator. But that can also be done by users if Self Administration Feature access codes (SAFE) are enabled. In the final installment of this blog on Wednesday 3 April, we will look at SAFE so you’ll have all the available tools to maximize self-administration on Extension to Cellular. By Anne Jones, UC Solution Architect

How can I trust you? CIOs are turning to this answer

SuperUser Account — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:08:02 GMT

Last week I had the opportunity to meet over 25 CIOs and key IT decision makers to discuss collaboration and mobility in the enterprise. It was an engaging meeting, with fluid conversation and open sharing about the collaboration experience across industries as diverse as banking, health care, trans-oceanic transportation, and even flavors and fragrances manufacturers, just to name a few.

Flying back to California, I was reflecting on what I really had learned from these experts.

We did discuss the rapid advancement of BYOD, the broad adoption of video and the many creative ways to use mobile apps to solve practical problems in the enterprise.

But what really struck me was that, underlying all of these cool solutions, there was a basic need: to trust each other. Without trust there is no collaboration, without collaboration there is no execution; and without execution there is no sustainable business.

But what does trust mean for a CIO?

When it comes to trust nothing beats a face to face dialogue. But in a globally connected world, with companies leveraging talent and labor rates in different countries while serving customers around the world, trust needs to be cultivated on a day to day basis. This requires video-enabled collaboration solutions to effectively span timezones and cultural differences. And it requires that these solutions run on the devices now used by everyone - PCs and mobile devices.

Real Life, In Real Time

One executive, Mark, shared that he allows his marketing team to work from home to avoid them a very wasteful commute time; this has increased their productivity and their morale since his marketing managers across the Bay feel trusted and empowered. Mark has deployed a video solution integrated with document sharing so that they can easily review marketing presentations and programs.

Another IT executive, Gene, is adopting mobile video so field technicians can actually show engineers what's happening live, and making sure the installations are accurately performed. Aric said that one of video's greatest benefits is simply enabling him to look someone in the eye when asking them for commitment. Whether discussing the forecast during their weekly sales commit calls or when reviewing a proposal with their customers, reading the body language significantly increases the reliability of communication.

As Forrester Research puts it, video "helps to put a face and mannerism to a name and voice, enabling remote and distributed teams to feel more connected and more committed to shared goals."

That was echoed by Carson, who says video provides his team with a level of alignment you just can't get over the phone. When his product management team reviews and passionately debates the specs for a new product proposal with their overseas R&D teams he knows that at the end of the video meeting all the participants have "bought" into the plan and they will carry it out as their own.

The Advantage Of Mobile

Patrick not only streamlined the claim process in his insurance company using video, but also increased the level of trust with his customers since their claims examiners can show the damage to a car with a live video feed to his supervisor directly from his iPad.

Dan talked about a "collaboration first, mobility second" approach, focusing on building a trust framework and streamlining processes to facilitate collaboration across teams. Anne, who works in the "safety and security first" realm of nuclear power plants, is also focused less on mobility and more on enabling collaboration with a high level of security. Such examples will grow quickly, as tablets outsell desktop PCs this year, according to IDC, and notebooks next year.

In some settings, video is making possible things that simply couldn't happen before because of limited time or resources. For example, hospice nurses bring the doctor or family members to a patient's bedside via video conference; a school contracts teachers from another county to teach remotely; and children are able to take a virtual field trip to NASA when a physical field trip is impractical due to lack of time, funding or other resources.

As I mentioned earlier, the type of video matters. A couple of people mentioned that their expensive video conference or telepresence rooms are gathering dust. Simple-to-use desktop video is picking up steam, but a complete solution needs to have rich video running on the device of the employee's choice: from Android to iPad, iPhone, Mac, etc.

Practicing What We Preach

I had the opportunity to describe Avaya's own internal use of video that has skyrocketed since the introduction of Scopia® since last summer. Within the first six months, more than 100,000 meetings had been held with Scopia, with over 310,000 attendees participating in point-to-point and multipoint video calls. This will only increase when we complete the worldwide roll-out of Scopia across our 15,000 employees.

We first started using Scopia during the due diligence process of acquiring Radvision. Because Radvision has such a globally dispersed organization with development locations in Israel, China, Italy and the US, it quickly became apparent how valuable Scopia was. It not only allowed very productive meetings without the need to travel, it also spanned timezones and cultural differences. As a result of this we decided to deploy Scopia across the company. Since then Scopia has literally changed how we collaborate in Avaya.

Why? Because the soft-client runs on all the most popular devices our employees use, it can be launched very quickly after a very easy download, it securely connects through the company firewall, and it provides a low-bandwidth high-quality of experience even over lossy Internet connections. The results? We now communicate with our customers and channel partners every day and conduct staff meetings and work groups over video, bringing team members from multiple locations together that had only known each other voices for many years.

The ironic thing about most collaboration technology today is that they sacrifice intimacy for speed. The miracle of video is that it gives us back the gift of sight. That's why CIOs see video as a key way to strengthen trust, deepen collaboration and therefore accelerate execution in their business. That's Business at Light Speed.

Economically Deliver Avaya Mobility to Smartphones

SuperUser Account — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:00:00 GMT

It’s surprising that so many organizations are unaware of the powerful Mobility capabilities that are built in to their Avaya communications solution. Extension to Cellular is a feature of Avaya Aura Communication Manager (CM) – and it’s a simple software solution that requires no additional hardware to deploy. Avaya Aura customers with CM Enterprise Edition software have this capability today. Avaya Aura customers moving to the new Mobility Suite will have this feature as well. Extension to Cellular provides a way to simultaneously ring your CM extension and your mobile number. No additional servers are needed. Users can turn this feature on and off simply by pressing a button on their deskphone, or by dialing a DID number from their mobile and entering a few touch tone commands. (To make things even easier, these commands can be set up as a contact number on the mobile device!) Then, if a call is answered on the mobile device, the user can simply pick the call when they reach their deskphone, and disconnect their mobile. Likewise, a call on their deskphone can be extended to their mobile with a button push. (Who hasn’t been caught on a call when they really need to leave their desk and continue the call?) As always, there are administrative details and requirements: When a call rings your mobile device, it may end up in your cellular voice mail before you can answer the call, or before CM pulls the call back to deliver it to your corporate voice mail system. To avoid having business voice mails in two mailboxes… Work with your CM administrator to ensure that Extension to Cellular calls ring fewer times before pulling the call back to corporate voice mail – and/or Increase the number of rings before voicemail on your mobile device Verify that your systems meet these release levels: Avaya Aura Communication Manager at software release R5.2.1+ Software/Features: Extension to Cellular (EC500) R9+ Purchased per-user, OR Included with the Enterprise Edition (EE) or Mobility Suite license Clients supported: Apple iPhone with iOS 3.2+ Google Android 2.3+ (specific device support may vary) Before you rush out to set up Extension to Cellular, you’ll want to check out the remaining installments of this blog, in which we will look at Feature Name Extensions (FNE, Monday 1 April) and Self Administration Feature access codes (SAFE, Wednesday 3 April). By Anne Jones, UC Solution Architect

How To Optimize Your Private Cloud For The Collaboration Era

SuperUser Account — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:51:58 GMT

(Note: This is an excerpt from Avaya's recently-published e-book, The 2013 Guide To Collaboration Trends. Download the full 160-page PDF here.)

OPTIMIZING YOUR PRIVATE CLOUD FOR THE COLLABORATION ERA

By Marc Randall, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Avaya and Parag Patel, Vice President of Global Alliances, VMware

A private cloud is a great choice to host collaboration solutions--if you plan upfront. Here's how not to get bit by security, integration, performance, or other common challenges.

Collaboration in the cloud is a genius idea. Massively scalable and low-cost infrastructure is just what businesses need to bring seamless communication back to a mobile, global workforce. But the way that cloud has taken hold in most enterprises, via software-as-a-service (SaaS), may be too fast and loose for some of today's enterprise data, which is highly regulated and thus must be highly secured.

Private clouds are growing in popularity as a result. A private cloud provides scalability while slashing IT costs and complexity, all without compromising security. For many organizations, it offers the best blend of public and private network.

As organizations plan their private cloud deployment, they should be aware of the typical issues that they may face. According to a June 2012 Forrester survey of U.S. IT decision-makers that had deployed private clouds at their enterprise, 62 percent encountered problems with security and compliance, while 52 percent faced trouble integrating the cloud with existing tools and apps. Meeting service-level agreements with customers and end users was a problem for nearly four out of 10 users, while nearly a third of IT buyers faced problems with software licensing or creating self-service access for users. The likelihood of these issues arising increases if your organization is running high-bandwidth applications such as video collaboration.

As with most IT-related challenges, the key to making your deployment as smooth as possible is to arm yourself in advance. Once you know the likely causes of troubles, you can forge a strategy to mitigate or avoid them.

What follows are best practices to combat each of these potential complications.

Issue: Increased security and compliance risk.

Strategy: Holistic evaluation of your security policies.

Over time, security policies tend to stack up. It's a lot easier to add new policies on top of old than it is to go back and eliminate ones that are no longer needed. To combat this, many organizations have made it a best practice to re-evaluate all policies every year. The purpose is to identify and cull older policies that could be an impediment to agility and growth.

When adding a private cloud, a security review is more important than ever. Get rid of policies that do not add value to the business and conflict with cloud use. If new policies need to be added, make sure they are fully automated and non-intrusive so as not to impede employee collaboration and workflows-- regardless of cloud use.

Issue: Integration challenges.

Strategy: Prepare and train IT staff for intervention.

Few technologies stand alone in today's data center. Collaboration tools, in particular, can involve a matrix of protocols and codecs that can make interoperability challenging.

Moreover, most organizations will be using a mix of outsourced software services in combination with internally hosted services, and these will need to connect and interact with one another. As cloud technology matures, standards will emerge to make this task easier. But for the time being, you may need to manually intervene. The sooner you prepare and train your IT staff for this hurdle, the more efficient you will be in responding to demands.

Issue: Unpredictable performance.

Strategy: Protect mission-critical workloads.

The point of cloud is to push up utilization rates to achieve greater efficiency. But adding heavy, unpredictable network traffic such as video can put SLAs (service-level agreements) and mission-critical workloads in danger.

Protect mission-critical workloads from performance degradation by isolating new rollouts. This way you can test the performance of applications that are new to your cloud without jeopardizing mission-critical workloads. You can add more applications to this environment over time, once you have a performance baseline.

Issue: Licensing that isn't designed for the cloud.

Strategy: Delay deployment or isolate to one physical server.

Not every application is built for the cloud; applications that require dedicated hardware are usually licensed by the number of physical servers used. Many software vendors have been slow to modify their licensing to make it affordable to run in the cloud, where multiple physical servers share the workload of many virtual machines. Moving these applications to the cloud can turn out to be costly.

To avoid a costly licensing hike, identify cloud-unfriendly licenses early on in your planning. Talk to vendors to see if they will renegotiate your license terms. If not, you'll have two options. First, it may make sense to defer cloud deployment for these applications, concentrating instead on software that works well atop an abstracted middleware layer or that observes dynamic resource consumption patterns. Alternatively, you can attempt to isolate the workload, dedicating the specific VMs (virtual machines) on one physical server to the application.

Clearing the Haze

Greater collaboration is a huge gift to your workers. Greater security and control over your applications are key for IT. A private cloud aligns these objectives together, making it possible for you to scale back SaaS use and still deliver the services your employees need to innovate and succeed.

While provisioning a private cloud is not always simple, the challenges are predictable. With the proper attention and planning you can flag your trouble areas early, and get down to the business of delivering efficient, affordable collaboration and other software services to your eager workforce.

Marc Randall is Senior Vice President and General Manager, Avaya Networking. He has held senior executive positions at several networking vendors, including Cisco Systems, Force10 networks and Brocade Communications.

Parag Patel is Vice President for Global Strategic Alliances for VMware, managing VMware's partner ecosystem. Avaya and VMware collaborate on a number of products, including Avaya Aura® on VMware, and Avaya Collaboration Pods, a portfolio of cloud-ready, turnkey virtualized server platforms. Visit Avaya.com to learn more.

Insight Services Traffic Study Promotion!

SuperUser Account — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

An SPS Traffic Study provides a detailed technical analysis of traffic on your system – enabling you to right-size your communication resources, maximize your managed IT services, and make the most of your budget dollars. A survey of over 10,000 systems since 2009 found that 70% of communication systems are over-trunked by a 2:1 ratio. Do the math – how much would your business save if you could eliminate up to 50% of your trunk line costs? To introduce our customers to the value provided by SPS Insight Services, we’re offering a Traffic Study at a discounted rate of $499. Every Traffic Study includes a free 45-minute traffic consultation webinar to review the results. We’re betting that, once you’ve sampled our Traffic Study service, you’ll want to learn more about the value provided by our complete Insight Services offer as well! The Insight Services package includes the following four services to help Avaya-platform customers (Avaya Aura, Nortel CS-1000, etc.) track and manage their communications system infrastructure: Site Survey: System update analysis Sourcebook: Configuration documentation management Traffic Study: In-depth automated usage snapshot Remote System Back-up: Quarterly backup of system programming and translations In addition, an 85-point Security Audit can be added to the Insight Services Package, or purchased separately. Proactively assessing the health of your communications network helps you save time, money and valuable assets by optimizing your communications infrastructure and minimizing risk. The complete Insight Services Package includes a quarterly review with an SPS engineer to help you interpret results and plan corrective action. The insights, data, and savings that you identify can help your organization make further technology and infrastructure decisions. If you think it’s worth $499 to find out just how much you can save, then contact your SPS Account Executive immediately, or fill out the online form to request a Traffic Study today. Learn more: View replay of a recent webcast on Insight Services and the benefits of conducting a Traffic Study. Learn more about Traffic Study and Insight Services package on our website.

Avaya Boosts Security for Enterprise Mobile Collaboration

SuperUser Account — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:00:00 GMT

CallCopy Hosting The Ohio State University Engineering Students Participating in Annual Job Shadow Program

SuperUser Account — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

CallCopy is hosting students from The Ohio State University for the school’s 7th Annual Engineering Job Shadow Program. The event will be held today, Tuesday, March 12th at CallCopy’s Columbus headquarters.

Avaya Unveils New Tools for Understanding the Customer Experience and Managing Multichannel Interactions

SuperUser Account — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:00:00 GMT

Determining the Strategic Value of Communications Systems

SuperUser Account — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:30:00 GMT

Companies can follow a four-step process to determine if their communications systems are providing strategic value: What is the true TCO of the solution? Without understanding all the expenses that aggregate – and there can be multiple components, such as hardware costs, software costs, software maintenance costs, training and support, among others – it is difficult to calculate the value-add that a particular solution offers. Did the solution deliver the expected value? Have the devices paid for themselves as expected? Is the solution still needed? Does it need to be upgraded? Can it be replaced with a more cost-effective or efficient solution? Finally – and this is the strategic part of the analysis – is this solution integral to the business, and, if so, in what way? Does it save money in a way that contributes to overall profitability? Does it take better care of customers? Does it allow you to scale effortlessly in a volatile market? What strategic value would be lost if the function were outsourced? Businesses that understand the specific value proposition of a system are much better positioned to choose the solution that meets their needs most effectively and delivers optimal results. No deep-dive cost and architectural analysis would be complete without considering the future direction of the technology and the solution’s marketplace. Today, it is hard to imagine putting a strategic road map in place for a telecom plan that doesn’t encompass an enterprise-wide SIP architecture. Such an architecture should consider automatic detection of user presence across devices and applications to allow services to be implemented just once and deployed across the entire organization; a simpler deployment model; and reduced training and support requirements. Additionally, most organizations today are looking at next-generation systems that unify voice, messaging, e-mail, voice mail and more in a single platform without detracting from the quality, reliability and security of the overall solution. Articulating a business strategy and comprehensive implementation plan is paramount in today’s dynamic enterprise environment. One way to jump-start this process is to engage SPS consultants for an objective analysis of where you are today and whether your current communications assets and processes are still delivering value at the lowest possible cost. (This concludes a series of four topics on assessing your communications assets and expenses. The series started with Reviewing your Communication Assets and Strategy; continued with The Five Year Test and last week’s Add Process Improvement to Create More Value.)

Create More Value with Process Improvements

SuperUser Account — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 14:30:00 GMT

Once a company has passed the five-year hurdle and understands the costs of operations, it is time to move on to the truly strategic part of the process: finding new ways to enable the workforce through process improvements. For many companies that operate call centers for sales and customer support, this largely involves identifying and eliminating wasteful activities. For example, a manufacturer of industrial equipment discovered through a process review that its call center technicians were spending 22,000 hours a year answering a single question over and over – a question that arose from a misprint in its product catalog years earlier. With each call costing a total of $20, that added up to $440,000 a year – nearly half a million dollars in excess costs that were completely eliminated by sending a single e-mail message to the marketing department dictating a fix to the catalog. If the firm had been tracking metrics on the types and frequencies of calls coming into its call center – and had been on top of process inefficiencies – it wouldn’t have been literally leaking revenues for all those years. The real challenge when making process improvements? Understanding the cost and benefits of modern systems compared to systems deployed years ago. Only after this comparison can a company truly comprehend the potential value-add of a new process and determine whether it is worth keeping. The issue of measurable value-add is critical, as corporate functions that truly do not add any value are usually outsourced at the lowest possible cost. (This is the third in a series of four topics on assessing your communications assets and expenses. The series started with Reviewing your Communication Assets and Strategy. Last week, we introduced The Five Year Test. This series will conclude with next week’s blog, “Determining the Strategic Value of Communications Systems”.)

The Five Year Test

SuperUser Account — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:30:00 GMT

Given the speed of innovation, communications systems three or more years old are candidates for reevaluation. However, given the advances in technology, a routine checklist is not sufficient for this effort. Instead, companies would be better served by developing a strategic plan to assess the total cost of their systems; examine whether the original assumptions for value and ROI still apply; and evaluate whether an upgrade or replacement would cut costs today and drive value for tomorrow. Many organizations do not understand the full cost burden of their communications solutions. Although the incremental cost of adding an additional server for a TDM system can seem negligible, studies show that the true cost of owning that server is significantly higher. For example, IDC estimates that the cost of acquiring the hardware is just 20 percent of the total cost of ownership (TCO), which leaves 80 percent of costs attributable to setting up, operating and supporting the hardware. Indeed, the ratio of capital to operating expenses keeps shrinking. The cost of a server over a 36- to 48-month period for many companies is close to $65,000. Despite this, capital appropriations are what most organizations focus on when they talk about reducing budgets and containing costs. After considering cost burdens, the next question should be: Are the cost assumptions that were made four, six, eight or even 10 years ago still valid? Too often the answer is no. Take voice. Long-distance rates have declined 90 to 95 percent over the past decade, yet many businesses have not analyzed how they route calls or the effects of that approach on their operating expenses. For example, an organization with 60 or 70 servers dedicated to routing enterprise call traffic may spend upwards of $1 million a year on such devices. However, when asked if route analysis has been considered, the answer may be “we’ve always done it this way,” despite the fact that performing a deep architectural review from the ground up could result in dramatic cost savings. Indeed, it would seem that with the cost advantages that can be achieved by virtualization alone, few organizations can afford not to do this type of review. The fact is, many enterprises are too busy or there is inertia based on an operational “comfort zone.” Although that operational comfort zone may “feel good” for human beings, it may have a negative effect on profit margins. Taking a more strategic approach to asset management and driving rigorous cost and technology analyses positions companies to grow their top lines and margins without linear costs associated with that growth (i.e., pumping the same amount or more traffic into less infrastructure). (This is the second in a series of four topics on assessing your communications assets and expenses. Last week, we introduced this topic with Reviewing your Communication Assets and Strategy. In next week’s blog, we’ll address “Adding Process Improvement to Create More Value”.)

Will Personal Video Actually Help Room Systems Grow?

SuperUser Account — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:30:00 GMT

By Eric Krapf
Will there just be more video everywhere?

BYOD Recommendations

SuperUser Account — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:00:23 GMT

by Gary Audin, Angela Wyant, Wayne Shumate

The use of a mobile device management solution will help effectively provision, deploy and manage multi-platforms. It will …