This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

Microsoft users now will have more flexibility to use LifeSize HD video conferencing systems, thanks to new interoperability between the two companies’ products.

LifeSize Team 220 was qualified within the Microsoft Office Communications Server platform. This is the first of many qualifications LifeSize is pursuing with Microsoft. Later this year, the company expects to win approval for its Passport, Room 220 and Express 220 products as well.

This further strengthens the ties between the two companies. Recently, Skype qualified the LifeSize Passport HD video conference product to be the first room-based, business-class video conferencing solution to be plugged into Skype. Weeks later, Microsoft acquired Skype with the intention of integrating its products into desktop computing and other applications.

With the new qualification, Microsoft customers can now experience seamless video calling across the enterprise by connecting LifeSize video systems in conference rooms and meeting spaces to the PC, and vice versa, delivering a unified communications (UC) experience.

Today, customers are able to make calls between Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 desktops and LifeSize endpoints, ensuring genuine, face-to-face interaction within their existing Microsoft environment and workflow. Later in 2011, LifeSize will seek qualification to interoperate with Microsoft Lync. This flexible interoperability will also enable customers to upgrade from Microsoft Office Communications Server to Lync on their terms.

Moreover, LifeSize has licensed the Microsoft RTVideo codec and is planning a future server-based product to enable high-definition interoperability between Microsoft Lync and LifeSize video systems. Later in 2011, LifeSize will seek Microsoft Lync qualification with true HD interoperability.

“LifeSize delivered the first HD video conferencing system in 2005, the first sub-$2,500 HD video product in 2009, and our commitment to innovation is realized today in yet another first – delivering on our promise to reach true interoperability across UC platforms,” said Craig Malloy, chief executive officer of LifeSize and Logitech senior vice president. “Through LifeSize and Logitech’s relationship with Microsoft and deep dedication to UC, we’re delivering on our vision to extend high quality communication capabilities to anyone, anywhere.”

LifeSize solution qualification for Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 includes support for:

• Authentication and encryption (TLS/SRTP) for secure, reliable communications
• Firewall/NAT Traversal via Microsoft Edge Services to ensure issue-free calling outside organizations
• Auto-configuration of systems as they are registered to Microsoft Office Communications Server, helping simplify deployment to users
• Unified presence status with the ability to place and receive calls from one Office Communications Server account between multiple devices (PC or a LifeSize system)
• Addition of LifeSize systems to contact lists in the Microsoft Office Communicator view and vice versa
• Easy placement of calls from LifeSize systems to third-party systems within the Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 environment, using commonly supported video and audio codecs

“Microsoft is pleased to be working with Logitech and LifeSize as a qualified partner to offer customers more comprehensive UC solutions through interoperability with Microsoft Office Communications Server and soon, Microsoft Lync,” said Yancey Smith, director of product management for Lync at Microsoft Corp. “The combination of LifeSize technology with Microsoft UC platforms will enable customers to extend their video conferencing ecosystems from the desktop to the boardroom, and everywhere in between.”

This blog originally appeared on Best in UC.

At every industry conference, manufacturers and service providers have been preaching the benefits of the growing cloud computing phenomenon. It will be the preferred way for corporate America to operate, they have crowed.

And then, there was Amazon. The Internet retailing giant also provides cloud computing services to a large number of clients. And in April, Amazon Web Services went down for four long days.

The cause? A configuration error was made during a network upgrade. In other words, a seemingly minor human error led to outages for several well-known web sites including Quora, Foursquare and Reddit. Unlike many web server issues, this was not a slowdown in service or occasional 404 message. Instead, entire companies were taken down over an entire weekend.

Almost immediately, the naysayers of the cloud computing concept began coming out of the woodwork. They began arguing that the idea of off-site hosting, storage and applications just doesn’t make sense for the enterprise.

Instead of this knee-jerk reaction, it would do IT professionals good to analyze the situation and see what can be learned – and how cloud computing can be safer, better and more reliable in the future.

For its part, Amazon published a highly transparent post-mortem of the entire situation.

Some of its customers are being quite public and forthcoming with their own experiences as well. For example, Netflix published a report on its experiences over the outage weekend. Netflix’s customers ran into more errors than usual, but the company’s web site and services generally remained live. This has only reinforced, however, Netflix’s decision to remain in the cloud.

“We set out to build a highly available Netflix service on AWS and this outage was a major test of that decision,” Netflix said in a published statement. “While we do have some lessons learned and some improvements to make, we continue to be confident that this is the right strategy for us.”

Like Netflix, I believe that companies who are considering or already rely on cloud-based computing services could ultimately become stronger based on the lessons learned from Amazon’s failure. First and foremost is this: every company needs a disaster recovery plan that extends to its unified communications system, data storage, servers and more.

Most firms that keep their servers for data and apps on-premise also rely on some kind of off-site backup. And those who don’t should start this practice today. Similarly, when a company chooses to operate in the cloud, IT personnel must have a complete understanding of potential failures and weaknesses in this strategies. Redundancy, backup and fail-safes are the key.

This isn’t the end of cloud computing. It’s just a growing pain. And over time, the same advantages that have made cloud computing a technology buzzword of 2011 will prompt its development into a stable, reliable platform for corporate America.

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

When it comes to bandwidth, corporate America can’t seem to get enough. Everything from email attachments to video conferencing is demanding that companies have increased ability to send and receive huge streams of information.

Thanks to some new technologies demonstrated last month at the Optical Fiber Communications Conference, a tremendous amount of new bandwidth could come online in the future. Two separate research groups set a world record by each sending more than 100 terabits of information per second through just one optical fiber.

“That’s enough to deliver three solid months of HD video- or the contents of 250 double-sided Blu-ray discs,” writes Jeff Hecht of New Scientist.

One team was an alliance between AT&T, NEC Corporation and Corning Incorporated. A research team put together by these three companies used emerging network technologies to transmit data at 114 Gigabits per second over each of 320 separate optical channels on a single, 580-kilometer optically amplified link.

The results? A total bandwidth capacity of 32 terabits per second, which exceeded the previous record by 25 percent and was transmitted over more than twice the distance. This advances the companies’ development of 100 gigabit technologies, which are expected to be ready for deployment within the next few years.

“IP traffic on the AT&T network is growing at about 45 percent year over year, so groundbreaking research efforts like this are critical to our ongoing efforts to stay ahead of our customers’ rapidly evolving and expanding needs,” said Peter Magill, executive director of optical systems research, AT&T Labs. “In setting this new bandwidth capacity record, we used a transmission method that enables better management of the interference that can result from operating 320 wavelengths over a single fiber-optic link. To do so, we used a new way to generate such signals and a new signal-processing algorithm to receive them again. We’re looking forward to further testing of these techniques and the additional bandwidth advances that may come from it.”

The laboratory link was composed of seven spans, each containing a single-stage Erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) for both the C- and L-band and a section of Corning^® SMF-28^® ULL fiber, an ITU G.652 compliant ultra-low-loss optical fiber.

“NEC has been relentless in pushing forward-looking research and development of advanced optical networking technology to help carriers meet the growth in network traffic,” said Ting Wang, department head, Optical Networking, NEC Labs America. “This exciting achievement demonstrates the feasibility of packing 320 channels on one fiber with 25GHz spacing.”

“There are still several challenges, including maturity and cost efficiency, to overcome before the deployment of such a high transmission rate over a single fiber, but we are definitely closer,” added Milorad Cvijetic, vice president and chief technology strategist, Optical Network Systems Division, NEC Corporation of America.

“As the foundation of telecommunications networks, optical fiber innovation can help enable carriers to cost effectively keep up with ever-growing traffic demands”, said Barry Linchuck, director of marketing, Corning Optical Fiber, Corning Incorporated. “Corning’s recent innovation of ultra low-loss, high-performance fiber enables network operators to achieve higher capacities per fiber at the operating distances they need.”

How many of you out there use Skype in some form or fashion? Known for years as a low-cost (or no-cost) way to conduct audio point-to-point communications, Skype has evolved into a video communications medium in the last couple of years as well. I am a frequent user of both capabilities to reach far-away family and friends, but have not considered it a business tool. Until now.

Recently, I was pleased to see one of the top-tier videoconferencing vendors step up to provide Skype connectivity to the business community. LifeSize Communications, a division of Logitech, is first in to this potentially gigantic portion of the video space.

This is not surprising. LifeSize has always been an innovator, even before it was acquired by Logitech. As a solution provider, we are constantly polling our client base and asking how we can deliver better and more valuable solutions. In the time since LifeSize launched its HD videoconferencing solutions several years ago, we have been able to provide business-class HD video capability to a broader base of corporations, as well as an extended group of user communities within those companies.

The much bigger Cisco and Avaya are busy trying to maximize their return at the top of the market, while LifeSize has the courage to embrace a relationship with Skype to meld the consumer side of video conferencing with enterprise-class video communications. Yes, the initial connections are not HD; rather, they are limited to a 640X480 standard-definition experience. But Skype is the limiting factor here, not the LifeSize equipment. The world will get nothing but clearer and more focused as time marches on, and my clients’ long-term investment protection is assured.

The true advantage of the marriage between LifeSize and Skype is the half-billion-user directory of Skype users, who can now call business destinations for business purposes. We have dozens of clients with remote sales, support, and executives that need to connect from far away and bandwidth-limited venues. We have provided a Skype-to-ShoreTel connectivity for years utilizing IP voice to its best advantage. But now, our clients can extend that capability to video, one of the most in-demand technologies delivered today. Kudos to LifeSize for delivering top value once again.

Buying a unified communications (UC) system can be incredibly confusing. But what if you could simply plug some variables into a piece of software and suddenly be comparing apples to apples?

You can, with the ShoreTel Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) tool.

TCO calculations include costs that may not turn up in initial budgets or statements of work, but may still have a significant impact on future business operations. Because of this, the solution with the lowest up-front purchase price ultimately may not have the lowest TCO. In fact, according to ShoreTel, up-front costs represent only 25 percent of TCO.

Based on third-party data, the TCO tool computes a UC system’s costs based on your company’s specific configuration requirements. And yes, the tool is accurate. It has been validated by third-party, independent industry experts. Variables you can feed into the tool include:

• Hardware replacement
• Training
• Support
• Software upgrades
• Moves, adds and changes
• System management
• Energy consumption
• Network and long distance charges
• Up-front capital
• Implementation costs

Once the TCO tool has been configured for your specific circumstances, you can calculate and compare the TCO of multiple UC systems over several years. Comparisons can be made between ShoreTel, Mitel, Avaya, Microsoft, Cisco and TDM.

The tool creates cash flow projections for each solution, including assessments of key financial ratios such as payback period, return on investment, internal rate of return and net present value.

ShoreTel is betting that its unique architecture will help it come out on top of these calculations for most potential customers. With its simple approach to UC, ShoreTel typically offers lower costs for network upgrades, implementation, training, maintenance, system management, long distance charges and energy consumption.

For small customers with under 100 phones, the percentage difference may not be large. But once a company reaches 300 phones or more, the TCO for ShoreTel is clearly superior. Consider an analysis of a company with 1,500 users over 10 years. It shows that ShoreTel has a payback period of 16 months, compared to 46 months for Cisco. The net present value for ShoreTel was $13.378 million for ShoreTel, compared to just over $8 million for Mitel and about $7 million for Avaya.

Still skeptical? ShoreTel offers a guarantee that is unmatched in the industry. The company guarantees the lowest TCO, so you can be confident you are purchasing the right UC solution for your business. If the ShoreTel TCO Tool and/or additional independent data determine that ShoreTel’s TCO is higher than a competing solution, ShoreTel will lower its price to beat the competition.

Is your network access policy up to date?

At the vast majority of companies, the answer to this question is probably a resounding, “No!” But this shortcoming is not the result of inexperience, inattentiveness or ineptitude. In most cases, the paradigm of protecting the network simply has not kept up with the times.

Think back several years, to when the network was largely enclosed and encapsulated within the four walls of your business. Network security was focused on the physical network, including PCs and servers.

Next, with the advent of the Internet age, the firewall was born. Security efforts focused on preventing the wrong information from getting into – or out of – your network from the Web.

Lately, security seems focused largely on the air. Employees, vendors and customers want network access when they visit your offices. A wide range of wireless devices are pinging your servers, asking for a gateway to the Internet. At the same time, however, another level of security has been all but forgotten. Visitors and employees with laptops can plug into wired connections, which enable them to tap into the Internet – and perhaps much more.

Consider this example from a local school district. The school wanted to be able to authenticate machines hitting both wireless access points and wired ports. For example, a student in the classroom who used the school’s wireless access on his laptop would be provided only with access to the Internet. But if he saw a data jack in the wall, he could easily plug into it. Where would that take him? Would he be limited to seeing the school’s own web site, or would he have access to the entire network and its servers? And, if he had a virus on his laptop, could it take the school’s network down?

Today’s users alternate seamlessly between wired and wireless access, making it critical that companies move to a comprehensive access policy. This is one reason I am so excited about the latest offerings from Aruba Networks, which has products that offer world-class management of both wired and wireless connections from a central interface.

The AirWave Management Platform supports mobile users who connect via the wireless LAN, as well as wired Ethernet ports. With its easy-to-use interface and user-centric approach, AirWave Management Platform offers a simpler way to enforce policies and actionable information that lets you plan for the future. This saves time and money, improves service quality, and contributes to better decisions about network management and expansion.

If your network isn’t governed by a broad, consistent network access policy, take action today. The health of your network – and the ease of use for your employees, partners and visitors – is at stake.

The at-home executive and home-office salesperson are about to experience video conferencing quality – and simplicity – they never thought possible. Skype has qualified the LifeSize Passport HD video conference product to be the first room-based, business-class video conferencing solution to be plugged into Skype.

Currently, when a home-based executive jumps on a video conference, they are probably using Skype on a PC with a Logitech camera. The quality is serviceable, but it certainly doesn’t create a top-notch impression.

The new integration between LifeSize and Skype pushes the quality up several levels, with high-definition video, excellent compression capabilities and more – while still leveraging that free Skype account. LifeSize Passport connects directly to the monitor of the user’s PC. When the Skype account rings, the user can simply answer to have video immediately pop up.

The click-to-call features of Skype also make the technology easier to operate for outbound calls, since users dial a typical phone number rather than using an IP address to connect to a corporate LifeSize system. In addition, users can rely on the same LifeSize hardware to call someone across the country or overseas who has a Skype account, but doesn’t use LifeSize or other room-based systems.

“LifeSize is known for its HD telepresence-quality solutions in the enterprise. Now, LifeSize Passport users can easily connect using face-to-face video conferencing with other Skype users worldwide,” said David Gurle, vice president and general manager of Skype Enterprise.

At under $2,500, LifeSize Passport is the ideal solution for small meeting rooms, individual offices, teleworkers and small to medium-sized businesses to easily and cost-effectively implement video wherever they need to stay connected.

To enable Skype video calling from LifeSize Passport, a customer must first be a registered Skype user. Upon logging into LifeSize Passport using their Skype log in credentials, their Skype contacts are automatically populated into the LifeSize directory. To make a call, users simply click on a contact name in the directory. 

In addition to Skype video calling, the LifeSize Passport user is able to make calls to landlines and mobile phones through Skype.

“The qualification of LifeSize Passport to enable Skype video calling is an incredibly significant milestone in the video communications industry,” said Craig Malloy, chief executive officer of LifeSize and Logitech senior vice president. “We’ve been working closely with Skype over the last two years, helping us deliver on our shared vision to make video communication truly accessible to anyone, anywhere.”

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

The buzz at this week’s LifeSize Americas Partner Conference was around the company’s announcement of the LifeSize Learning Exchange.  Wayne McCulloch, global director of education services, received an enthusiastic round of applause after his demo of the company’s new social platform to learn, collaborate and share knowledge via video.

McCulloch and Kevin Buechler, program manager of sales enablement, told Best in UC how LifeSize partners and their clients can use Learning Exchange to receive training, solve problems, and enhance their results with LifeSize Learning Exchange.

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

Your potential integrator is walking slowly through his presentation. He shows a slide with logos of his clients. He flips to another page that lists capabilities. Finally, he flashes you the awards.

It’s tempting to ignore those medals that boast excellence. After all, can’t any integrator find a way to win some kind of award from a friendly association or desperate equipment manufacturer?

That may be so. But in some cases, awards really do matter.

Consider this example from our industry. Among small and mid-sized businesses, ShoreTel is a vendor of choice that manufactures unified communications solutions. ShoreTel does not sell these systems directly, instead relying on a network of integrators to install them for customers.

Each year, ShoreTel presents 10 of its integrators with the Circle of Excellence Award. These partners are chosen based on two factors:

• Revenue success, meaning that the integrator is installing a significant number of ShoreTel systems
• Customer satisfaction of 90 percent or better, as measured by an independent third party

This provides a prime example of when an award is an excellent indicator of vendor quality. First, ShoreTel ensures that these vendors are working at a high volume, demonstrating they have extensive experience installing its solutions. Then, it uses an objective organization to determine customer satisfaction levels.

In fact, ShoreTel’s customer satisfaction scores are particularly challenging to keep at an elevated level. Customers rate their happiness on a scale of 1 to 4. While a rating of 4 is 100 percent, a 3 is only 75 percent. It takes only one or two mostly satisfied customers who rate the integrator with a 3 to quickly bring their rating down to a number under the required 90 percent threshold.

In addition to awards, vendor certifications are an often-ignored sales point that can be a good indicator of integrator success. For example, we ensure that our technicians and engineers earn the highest certifications offered by our key partners. Rather than relying on team members with general telecommunications experience, we provide our customers with ShoreTel Certified Installers and ShoreTel Certified Engineers.

How can you decide whether awards and certifications matter? In short, awards and certifications are important when they affect how your implementation and ongoing support will be performed. To help you choose a high-quality integrator, ask these questions when you are shopping around:

• Have you earned any recognition or awards from this UC manufacturer (ShoreTel, Avaya, Cisco, etc.)?
• What specific qualifications does the manufacturer use when handing out these awards? Is it based on revenue alone, or does service quality come into play as well?
• What is your customer satisfaction number, and how did you arrive at that number? Was it determined by an independent third party?
• Does your team have certifications for this manufacturer’s products, or just general industry experience?

First, companies were obsessed with protecting wired connections to their networks. Then, the focus shifted almost exclusively to wireless connections. And now, users are hammering the network with more diverse devices than ever, looking for a network connection.

What’s the solution? Aruba Networks has developed several new technologies to ensure that network access is easy for users, no matter their technology, while corporate infrastructure remains secure.

Recently, the company launched a new series of Power over Ethernet (PoE) switches designed to provide secure, role-based network access for users, no matter their location, device or application. The Aruba S3500 Mobility Access Switch is a wired access switch, which authenticates users and their devices the same way wireless access points already do in thousands of organizations. As a result, there is no need to manage and provision separate policies for wireless and wired access.

These wired access switches are especially useful for companies that need to manage the safety and security of every single connection, whether wired or wireless. These might include military offices, medical offices and brokerage houses. When a user plugs into a wired jack on site, they can be recognized as a guest and only allowed a connection to the Internet – and not inside the network.

In addition, Aruba is greatly enhancing the number of wireless gadgets it supports. When a user’s device reaches out to the network, Aruba can validate the device type, ask for user login information, and authenticate the user. It can even determine the user’s location.

All of this is accomplished with Aruba’s Mobile Virtual Enterprise (MOVE) architecture. MOVE makes access privileges available based on user, device, application and location. All of these factors are examined to decide what kind of network access the user is entitled to have.

As a result, the entire mobile enterprise workforce has consistent, secure access to the appropriate network resources based on who they are – no matter where they are, what device they’re using or how they’re connected.

Aruba has embraced the handheld world, allowing for each authentication of iPhones, Blackberries, Droids, iPads and other mobile devices. This offers several benefits for devices whose knowledge workers rely on smartphones and tablets. For example, in a medical office, doctors with easy network access are more likely to perform medical coding on-the-fly during patient exams. The upside? Studies have shown that physicians do a dramatically better job than a clerk coding various medical procedures, which speeds the billing and collections process along with insurance companies.