This article first appeared on Best in UC.

As a technology services company, our most difficult job may not be what you would expect. It’s not the installation of new products or designing effective solutions. It’s not even finding new customers.

The toughest part of our job is defining what we do. Because eventually, almost all of our potential customers get around to the same question: what – exactly – is unified communications?

Unfortunately, the answer is not a simple one. Unified communications has been defined in many different ways by various companies who sell related products and services. That has made is difficult for everyone in our industry to explain, in a simple manner, what our customers will get when we install a unified communications solution.

It’s time to create a definition that’s easy to understand. Let’s get to it, without too many confusing buzzwords or lofty, meaningless terms.

Unified communications is not a single product or service. That’s what makes it so difficult to explain. Rather, unified communications is the act of bringing together the information you need to do your job effectively. Before I blow your mind with a long list of technologies, let’s talk in terms of practicality.

Consider the average information worker at the average business. On a typical day, this person spends a great deal of time simply managing the inflow of information to various locations. He probably has an overflowing email inbox. On his desk is a phone, upon which the red “you’ve got voicemail” icon is always blinking.

Next to that office phone is another phone – a mobile one. Or perhaps two phones – one for work, and one for home. Each of these has text messages captured in its memory, as well as a separate voicemail box. But wait, there’s more. Perhaps his company encourages the use of instant messages on the computer. Or, he might still have an old-school fax machine, real or virtual. And don’t forget social media, video conferencing, and so much more!

Do you feel overwhelmed by this worker’s communications vehicles? I sure do. And that’s why I encourage companies to embrace unified communications.

With unified communications (UC), you throw out your legacy PBX phone system. In its place, you install a much less-expensive VoIP solution, through which voice and data communications can be consolidated and simplified. E-mail, voicemail and instant messaging are brought together into a single location, making workers more productive. This also create opportunities for mobility, since many UC solutions allow all communications to be accessed by PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

In short, UC streamlines communications by tying together all the disparate parts and making it much easier for everyone to do business. Even if team members work on different kinds of technologies, they can collaborate with one another more effectively.

In addition, UC greatly enhances customer service. Advanced features make it simple for customers to reach out – and receive – the information and help they need. For example, phone calls can “find” and “follow” workers, whether they are in the office or abroad with a mobile phone.

As technologies continue to expand and improve, the functionality of UC will only grow. Right now, UC solutions are being extended to accommodate video conferencing capabilities – both internally in workgroups and externally with customers.

Don’t let the technical-sounding name fool you – or scare you away. Unified communications is as simple as this: saving money, improving efficiency, and creating new and better ways to work.

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

ShoreTel has been awarded the five-star designation in CRN’s Partner Programs Guide for the second consecutive year. CRN’s Partner Programs Guide and 5-Star Partner ratings serve as the definitive list of vendors who have robust partner programs or products that solution providers offer directly to the IT channel.

ShoreTel’s channel strategy is 100 percent indirect. Within its global two-tier distribution strategy, ShoreTel’s Champion Partner Program features a reasonable cost of entry, fast return on investment and a high customer close rate to drive reseller partner profitability and success.

By providing world-class support to its partners, ShoreTel also gives its end users a better experience and ensures better service, from the buy through installation and maintenance.

“The companies listed on the 2011 Partner Programs Guide represent the best channel programs in the market today. Of those, only a few get our five-star award, based on their commitment to the channel, breadth of program offerings and services offered to their partners. We congratulate ShoreTel for earning yet another five-star honor and in driving business opportunities and revenue among their channel partners,” said Kelley Damore, vice president and editorial director for Everything Channel’s CRN.

This honor builds on several prominent awards and distinctions that ShoreTel has recently received for its ongoing commitment to the channel and reseller partners. Last month, ShoreTel’s director for worldwide channel marketing, Annette Lorenz, was named a CRN Channel Chief for her role in building a successful and profitable channel partner program. CRN also highlighted ShoreTel as one of their “2011 Need To Know: UC & VoIP Vendors” and recognized the ShoreTel Voice Switch 50 as “VoIP Product of the Year” for 2010.

“ShoreTel’s commitment to our partners provides the opportunity to build a profitable business with world-class products and customer satisfaction ratings, as well as the most competitive programs and tools available,” said Tom Hamilton, senior director of worldwide channels at ShoreTel. “We are honored to be distinguished with CRN’s five-star designation for the second year in a row and value this affirmation of our partner commitment and success.”

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

For years, we’ve been hearing about the bleeding-edge technologies that were supposedly the next great thing. They would change our businesses and transform our lives. And soon, we wouldn’t recognize the working world around us.

And now, this long-promised technology-enabled wonderland may actually be within our reach. I couldn’t help but be excited by the possibilities when I attended the UC Strategies Summit in La Jolla, Calif.

This gathering of national vendors, system integrators and consultants in the unified communications (UC) space received fascinating and eye-opening presentations from the biggest names in UC, including Avaya, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, NEC America, and Siemens Enterprise Communications. NET, AudioCodes, Acme Packet, Empirix and Interactive Intelligence also made presentations.

The talks covered collaboration, social media, mobility, and the cloud. These thought leaders gave insights that included:

• In UC, mobility is of the utmost importance. The business world expects to move and work freely, regardless of location. Products and services will need to fit this more flexible operations model if they want to succeed.
• Video is being integrated into everything, from consumer technologies to business applications.
• Similarly, social media is being integrated into all aspects of communications.
• Call center technologies are incorporating video, social media and data mining.
• Tablet technologies will play a major role in UC. The iPad will get more and more competition in the coming years. Some new tablets in development revolve almost entirely around video and chat.
• Work is becoming increasingly virtual. Rather than owning equipment on the premise, an increasing number of companies will have their applications sitting out in the cloud. Because most new applications will be web-based, companies will make smaller and smaller hardware and software investments, which will lower the barriers to trying new technologies.
• On-premise equipment will serve as backup, while off-premise equipment and applications in the cloud will become the standard. That’s the exact opposite of most computing environments today.
• The line between work and home is beginning to evaporate. Employees are being expected to be available at any time. Ultimately, each organization will have to develop its own culture with guidelines about this increased intensity.
• Over the next three years, significant changes in these and other UC areas will be made. Those who don’t adapt will be left in the dark – in a hurry.

With increased reliance on the cloud and remote applications, we expect a more critical focus on network remote performance management (RPM) going forward. For companies that rely on UC and hosted applications, RPM services will ensure that uptime remains high. Even more importantly, when there is a problem with a device or application sitting outside the premise, RPM solutions can locate the problem and help remediate them.

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

In 1977, the number 4.3 billion looked big enough to Internet pioneer Vint Cerf. It was Cerf who decided to create IP addresses that were 32 bits in length, which meant that only 4.3 billion addresses would be available.

Today, that fateful decision has created an impasse on the Internet. Thanks to new computers, servers and mobile devices coming online every day around the world, the Internet is about to run out of IP addresses. Some news outlets are, of course, greeting this news with doomsday predictions.

But have no fear. These “old” IP addresses, created under a protocol called IPv4, are being replaced by IPv6. The new protocol uses four 32-bit numbers, for 128 bits in total. Under this scheme, IP addresses would seemingly never run out, since there will be 340 undecillion of them. (Fun fact: there are 39 digits in the number 340 undecillion.)

Deployment of IPv6 is still in its infancy, and it will take several years before a majority of traffic is taking place on the upgraded network. The IPV6Forum was founded way back in 1999 to drive worldwide implementation. Yet as of the end of 2010, only about 5 percent of network addresses had moved to the IPv6 standard.

Over time, however, the entire Internet eventually will be upgraded to IPv6. This includes home equipment such as gateways, gaming systems and smartphones. At the office, phone systems, servers and more will need to comply with the new standard. Most of these changes, however, can be made gradually as electronics wear out and need to be replaced. A slow transition should be fine in most cases.

In the unified communications industry, most equipment is already IPv6 compatible. And over time, you will see better performance as devices move to the IPv6 standard. With so many IP addresses available, each piece of personal and business equipment can be assigned its own number. This means better and easier communication between devices, and without going through a network. Speaking of networks, they should become easier to manage as well, and peer-to-peer communications will improve.

Faster. Cheaper. Better. And for UC customers, a smooth transition.

This blog first appeared on Best in UC.

ShoreTel once again proved its leadership in the unified communications (UC) space, winning a 2010 Product of the Year award from Internet Telephony magazine, which covers the IP communications industry.

The awards, in their 13^th year, recognize the industry’s most innovative new products, as well as companies that demonstrate vision, leadership and thoroughness.

ShoreTel was recognized for its ShoreTel Mobility Router, an innovative and highly scalable network appliance that fuses enterprise wireless LANs, carrier cellular networks, IP telephony and location technology to extend voice and UC to mobile devices.

The router lets users make and receive calls from both the enterprise and personal mobile phone numbers by automatically selecting the best network (Wi-Fi or cellular) with fast and automatic network handover, to optimize cost, call quality and battery life.

“The editors of Internet Telephony have verified that ShoreTel displays quality and innovation, plus provides real needs in the marketplace,” said Rich Tehrani, chief executive officer for TMC, the parent company of Internet Telephony magazine. “I would like to congratulate ShoreTel for its commitment to advancing IP communication technologies.”

As a partner of ShoreTel since 2003, Eastern Datacomm can attest to the superior design and functionality of ShoreTel products. ShoreTel helps keep our clients’ UC strategy simple, with a streamlined design that offers sophisticated features without complexity.

In the case of the ShoreTel Mobility Router, companies can lower their costs while making it easier to manage and understand cellular usage. For example, the router uses policy-based, least-cost routing to reduce the costs of mobile calls. The router leverages a company’s network when callers are in the building, further reducing the price of mobile usage. Coverage can even be extended to home and public Wi-Fi through a secure TLS/SSL-based connection.

Finally, the router provides great visibility and data about cellular usage, as well as the status and availability of mobile users. If information is power, this provides the tools for companies to gain unprecedented control of their UC budgets, while still providing superior functionality and services.

Congratulations to ShoreTel. We look forward to more innovative products in the near future.

In a January post, we introduced you to PathView, a new monitoring tool from Apparent Networks that we provide for our clients. PathView is an affordable hosted solution that enables close monitoring of network performance to ensure stable, high-quality network performance.

In the previous post, we shared the story of Princeton Consulting, a real EDC client that illustrates the real-world application of PathView and highlights the efficiency businesses can realize when PathView is implemented.

Here’s an excerpt detailing Princeton Consulting’s experience with PathView:

“Princeton…had been experiencing drops in service from their Internet service provider in New York. PathView allowed Princeton to verify that the disruption in service they were experiencing was coming from their service provider, not from their own equipment…Princeton also uses PathView to monitor voice quality of their existing ShoreTel VoIP system. The visualization of voice calling PathView provides allows Princeton to continually monitor problems in the system and know exactly when and where they occur.”

Princeton is an IT consulting company, but the value of PathView is not relegated to the IT industry. We are now beginning to see an interest in this service in the education industry.

Last week we published an interview with our CEO Al Harnisch that raised awareness about the efficiencies classrooms are experiencing when they implement IP telephony. In order for these schools to get the true value of these technologies, they must do their due diligence and monitor the performance to limit the occurrence of network threats.

When it comes to managing student databases, IT professionals at schools are impressed with the amount of data they are able to pull using PathView. They are able to pinpoint the entire path their data takes and if there are any problems during the delivery, PathView identifies them. They’re also impressed with the low price point and the fact that since it’s a hosted solution provided off-site by Eastern Datacomm, it doesn’t require additional staff or on-site equipment, which is good for their budget.

To jump right in and see a live demo of PathView now, click here.

In this episode of BestinUC TV, Scott Strochak of Xtelesis states the case for evaluating the user interface of unified communication solutions.

Strochak argues that in order  for employees to get the best experience out of a unified communications solution, they have to understand how to use that technology.

Watch him explain why the use interface is so important here:

In Part 1 of BestinUC TV’s interview with our CEO, Al Harnisch explains the affect IP telephony has on today’s classroom. Now, in Part 2, he and BestinUC host Heather Clancy reveal how mobile devices fit into the IP telephony mix.

We’re pleased to announce that Eastern Datacomm will be participating in the NJ GMIS 2011 Technology Education Conference being held in Somerset, NJ April 6^th.

For those of you who haven’t heard of GMIS: GMIS is the nation’s largest association of government IT leaders. This is the 2^nd annual event and we’re excited to be among the vendors exhibiting our solutions to top IT execs in the government sector.

If you’re attending NJ GMIS, be sure to visit our booth—it’ll be fully stocked with plenty of the latest Lifesize and ShoreTel products for you to experience firsthand to see the real potential for efficiency and cost savings these tools can provide.

These products are gaining constant recognition, especially in the government sector and more specifically, at the education level. The increase in productivity and cost savings these unified communications solutions bring to the classroom is remarkable.

Watch our CEO Al Harnisch in this interview with BestinUC TV to find out the capabilities some classrooms are already experiencing with these tools and be sure to visit us at NJGMIS in April so that we can explore solutions to meet your needs and let you experience them firsthand!

For more information about NJ GMIS, visit: http://www.njgmis.org/conference.html.

When it comes to technology deployment in the classroom, efficiency is important. Technology has to be reliable and also affordable enough to satisfy budget-conscious decision-makers, which is why we’re seeing increased adoption of IP telephones in schools across the country.

In Part 1 of BestinUC TV’s latest show, pur CEO, Al Harnisch, explains the benefits of IP telephones in the classroom.

Watch it now!