IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

While visiting with several individuals a few weeks ago at the Ziff Davis Unified Communications Summit in Seattle, WA I noticed that some people hadn't yet realized the power of one aspect to the overall value of unified communications which relates to presence awareness. That is leveraging presence not just in instant messaging but in other communication vehicles can play an important role in transforming your business impact as an IT organization. As a result I thought I would dedicate this post to help create ideas around things that can be done to assist in helping IT in leading the way.

Here at Global Crossing in an attempt to leverage this core components of Unified Communications in an ongoing effort to incorporate the advantages of collaborative, converged services within our enterprise we've transformed internal applications from static non presence aware to anticipatory engaged communication tools that are supporting contextual collaboration with presence-awareness throughout the enterprise. In this instance presence-awareness (whether someone is available in simple terms and how to contact) is utilizing capabilities including chat, computer-based telephony, conferencing, IP video, and e-mail across tools that leveraged across the enterprise drive in principle more efficacy from consumption and corresponding execution. In fact it is my opinion that since presence has been embedded into our application infrastructure to enhance our collaborative capabilities it is natural to see transformational improvements occur around our "quality of experience" associated to the overall user experience. This is so because enabling enhanced customer experience truly enables the IT organization to drive one more component to our IT organizations transformational success in enabling the business to not only "react" but be proactive by achieving extensibility required within the distribution transparency model required for execution. Said another way the fact that presence awareness has been integrated into our application infrastructure means this action will further enhance our agility to enhance operational efficiency by allowing application "pivots" to be present thus accelerating communication by eliminating in some instances serial cognitive task execution.

As the industry landscape continues to evolve there are a few constants that will remain the same: (1) increasing business demands require more innovative, transformational capabilities between employees, partners and customers and (2) continually driving operational velocity reductions around the cost basis of delivering information technology services is imperative. It is commonly believed by many vendors such as Avaya, Cisco, Intel, Nortel and Siemens as well as software developers such as IBM and Microsoft that presence technology will continue to become an increasingly important tool at driving traditional costs out by attacking the serial nature of traditional work execution thus increasing operational efficiency.

So why is presence so important to Unified Communication services? Presence is important because it can become the intelligent communication application for converged IP communication services such as those demonstrated by our IT organization at Global Crossing. Determining where a user is and how best to reach them in our case by leveraging presence enabled applications that have been integrated into our infrastructure with the "glue" to increase the overall value of our converged IP services brought to the table and help realize substantial business transformation value.Said another way presence-aware applications offered on a converged IP communication service help evolve traditional serial actions of quickly determining and thus engaging with employees regardless of location, modality or scheduling which allows our globally dispersed users to communicate and collaborate in real time providing productivity in a truly global and mobile workforce environment. Combined converged IP communication services with presence technology provide for accelerated collaboration between our employees, partners and customers by knocking down the walls of traditional serial communications and by accelerating communication through anticipatory engagement.

Presence is the value.

Time and time again I meet with technology leaders who ask a similar question - that is "How do we continue to cut costs while increasing productivity?" I know it sounds somewhat like an age old question that has been solved several times but I think its important to look deeper at the answers since they are as important as ever. Revisiting prior days as an IT leader whether at Global Crossing or my prior days at Kodak in their IT organization it can be stated that we were faced with many of the same challenges faced by most enterprise IT organizations leading to the above questions. That is "How can we continue to cut costs while increasing productivity....." or variants of that such as "driving operational efficiency while lowering the velocity of spend all the while increasing functionality by offering new and innovative services."

Such questions are based essentially on a few key areas:

1) Cost reduction - there is a need to continuously evaluate how services are delivered, while reducing costs without impacting performance, function and availability. Eliminate unnecessary costs ..... always!

2) Infrastructure Simplification  - always evaluate how IT operations are delivered to find faster and more effective delivery mechanisms, while reducing administration and, thus, overhead.

3) Increase productivity by leveraging investments in key areas such as convergence technology - converged communications over a secure, reliable network in order to meet the demands of the business needs can and will provide increased value while maintaining or reducing costs. The key here is to make strategic investments that further extend and continuously enable services at or reduced costs.

4) Continuous Innovation - Chose to focus on innovation in customer experience where improved application performance and real-time interactive applications to improve users quality of experience can be realized. That is - make investments that will pay back dividends by focusing on customers and overall care management.

With these similar challenges Global Crossing's IT organization needed to drive change by delivering on infrastructure services that were not only forward-looking, but also eased our business transformation in a way that helped us meet the demands of the business, as well as prepared us for what was coming next. Fast forward now a few years and when technology leaders ponder solutions to those questions I like to point them down the direction of solving the problems by embracing technology that will not only help them change their business delivery model but also keep them  aligned to some core tenants and objectives:

� Information technology and business leaders should align IT strategic plans with corporate and business vision/goals. Don't just have a plan, be sure to align with the corporations goals.
� Provide IT architecture foundations and fundamentals that will facilitate corporate transformation or be the catalyst for it. IT shouldn't be viewed as a cost center rather as something that can be transformational. That said its important that IT leaders lead and be able to see around corners to adapt and be ready for the business needs not just wait for the business to come to them.
� Maximize IT operational efficiencies by investing in key targeted technology areas enabling the future of services. You should be continually assessing whether or not technology investments (old or new) are adding value and returning on investments. If they are not then its time to pull the plug ... but be sure to only do so after you have secured support from business functional leaders otherwise your plan might not make it past the proposal.

In closing don't be afraid to answer the question on how to save money and still provide value. As noted above IT organizations should transform themselves so that they are truly leading not just following.

Today the web site The Inquirer published a story that an undersea cable with 1.28Tbps of capacity has just received approval connecting the US to China. As the story indicates this appears to be the first direct undersea fiber system to receive regulatory approval connecting both countries and although i wouldn't know whether or not thats true it does suggest the tremendous and unbelievable market opportunity within the telecommunications industry.

The most obvious and notable thing to take away from this story other than the system capability is the fact that the consortium that led the activity has not only won the approval but is likely paving the way for other carriers to do the same. This says something not only about the market and industry viability but also about under sea cable systems and the ability to connect different continents - those that have such systems are strategically positioned with respect to not just the market but also serving those customers who leverage those systems.

Although I am sure the regulatory hurdles were numerous the intrinsic value this type of development presents tremendous potential not just from the telecommunication market but also economic development on an aggregate basis across multiple service industries (cable system deployment companies, fiber manufacturers, hardware manufacturers, telecommunication providers, etc).

This is just the beginning my friends ....

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When I was asked a few months ago by a customer who was also a CIO what all the fuss about TelePresence was I thought long and hard about my response … not because I was concerned that a competitor was trying to sell into the customer an alternative solution but rather I was thinking differently as to what the potential customer was really asking – that is, what were the main issues or challenges in not only deploying a fully immersed panoramic video solution but also how he or she would eventually support it to their internal customers while achieving some cost velocity reductions along the way.

Before we go there a few interesting tidbits about the TelePresence space … according to a few research firms sales associated to TelePresence opportunities were expected to nearly triple in 2007 to $169 million from just $64 million in 2006 and these same research firms see sales of possibly $1 billion by 2011. Wow, that’s an impressive CAGR ! According to John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, he noted “TelePresence systems orders grew from the prior quarter by over 300%. In Q4 (ended July 28), the number of TelePresence systems grew by over 400% from Q3." That is pretty impressive if one thinks about what goes into a TelePresence offer from a service diameter perspective and in fact the actual revenue tied to the TelePresence service industry could be higher engineering, consulting, installation, etc  are factored in above and beyond equipment.

So what’s all the fuss about TelePresence? It’s like deploying any other real time sensitive application on the network isn’t it? In some ways yes and in some ways no …. First lets start with why its different … the amount of work that goes into the room engineering to ensure the immersive nature and performance associated to customer experience is at the highest quality is significant. Not only do normal electrical, network and physical build out aspects play a role but so to does acoustic balancing, lighting, video performance analysis and engineering needs to occur. Without a properly engineered room (or rooms depending upon how many systems you deploy) you may not achieve the level of visual and acoustic quality desired or intended driving higher consumption experience. More common to core telecommunication and equally important is the criticality that the underlying network achieve the best possible engineering principles in order to achieve optimal video and acoustic performance from a data delivery perspective. It goes without saying that the level of traffic engineering associated to QoS (classification, policing and shaping) and the corresponding core network behavioral network attributes and principles need to be defined such that the end users who are leveraging TelePresence capabilities see value and drive consumption while ultimately eliminating costs.

In the end TelePresence isn’t a “do it yourself” job for everyone but rather should be approached much in the same way you would approach packetizing your voice communications infrastructure – following well though out, well defined architectural and engineering principles in order to achieve success.  What goes into this well defined architectural and engineering design is choosing equipment suppliers and service providers who can live up to the demands of the underlying  service diameter needs. You do this and you are on your way to a quality, immersive video experience increasing employee productivity through engaged collaboration while reducing the overall cost velocity associated doing business across the globe.

What I see as taking unified from good to great and where truly exciting work is happening is where software and network architects alike focus not on the “features” alone (although continuous improvement is important) but rather on making unified communications seamlessly integrate into existing IT environments thus allowing IT organizations to drive further value from legacy / existing investments and hopefully simplifying their operations experiences. An example of how this might occur is in and around identity management and enhanced directory services where a users identity can be defined within a unified communications model that not only allows that identity to transcend one modality to another but also might be the same identity that is used for all application access requirements. This my friends is where some of the real magic and exciting stuff appears to be occurring and what is going to make unified communications go from good today to great tomorrow when mainstream adoption across IT organizations occur so long as business justifications and associated ROI necessary for the investments are realized.

That said many vendors today offer unified communications with heavy emphasis on SIP and SIMPLE for obvious reasons – to drive market penetration for current or future products as well as to protect the cannibalization of their installed base through next generation service expansion. What will be interesting to see unfold is not what service or features come next but how many of those vendors look to attack a core and longstanding issue of IT pain points – enabling unified communications while seamlessly integrating into existing back office infrastructures. The key to success in my opinion and those who are positioned for success will be how vendors use a single identity to authenticate and gain access to different modalities such as email, voicemail, enterprise instant messaging and collaboration software or web based tools thus allowing the ability to transcend multiple modalities seamlessly and transparently while affording productivity improvements that every CIO is asking and requiring. In my opinion unified communication can’t be yet another off the shelf solution that requires more work to integrate into an environment to become productive but rather it is about enhancing the bottom line – getting something more for very little and driving tremendous productivity gains. So to be effective and win market share such companies that offer unified communications must invest heavily on seamless integration to the back office and thus driving a core fundamental of productivity that unified communications anchor on.

So no new user names, no new user accounts, rather a single yet pervasive identity in order to make unified communications become great. You could say that the argument or requirement for a single identity isn’t new – rather its been around for a while. In fact there are companies that make identity management software and have been doing so for quite some time. What you can’t say or know and for which I am most excited about is watching how those companies map their current positions in delivering such capabilities into facilitating mainstream unified communications and its adoption further. Food for thought in case you’re not yet following me - watch what IBM and its Tivoli solution, Microsoft with its Active Directory as well as others do with their software around unified communications and how they enable further business communications. Heck, one never knows what Google might do to improve their recent moves into mobile wireless communications since they may see IBM and or Microsofts current positions in this space as a threat to their continued dominance around maintaining their velocity as a formidable competitor whose deep research capabilities rival all but IBM and Microsoft in an industry moving at light speed.

From this former IT guy some real exciting stuff around unified communications is happening … taking it from good to great. Watch how a single, enhanced identity will be mapped transparently to core IT infrastructure services and driving future unified communication services thus making it possible.