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Microsoft and Leading Voice Providers Invite Email/IM IT to Free 'Virtual' Sessions on UM/UC Migration

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October 12, 2006

Microsoft and Leading Voice Providers Invite Email/IM IT to Free 'Virtual' Sessions on UM/UC Migration

By Art Rosenberg


As “unified communications” (UC) dominates the industry convergence of voice, text, wired, and wireless business communications, the challenge for enterprise IT organizations is a practical migration strategy for both legacy telephony and messaging technologies. Although the major IP changes will impact telephony technologies, including PBX systems and voice mail systems, the integration of SIP-based presence management, instant messaging, and wireless mobility will also require enterprise IT to prepare their email systems to become part of unified messaging (UM) and wired/wireless unified communications (UC). This is an invitation to enterprise IT to participate in three free webcasts from the annual conference of the International Association of Messaging Professionals that will have leading technology providers and users discuss the challenges of migration to UM/UC.

The Growing Role of Integrated Messaging in Business Communications

Messaging, as a practical alternative to real-time voice conversations and face-to-face meetings, has always been critical to business activities. Even with the availability of “always-on” mobile telephony, messaging fills the gap when people are not available to talk. However, integrated two-way communications must embrace all forms of contact and enable them to be used dynamically and interchangeably as the contact situation permits.

Voice/Unified Messaging, as a key component of UC, is one area that is in the midst of a challenging transition for virtualization and business process integration. Some companies are showing the ability to make messaging a valuable part of improved business processes; these companies have typically integrated voice messaging with e-mail to create unified messaging and have extended the functionality to desktop and mobile clients. Other companies have not made such transitions and find that voice messaging is usually declining in use, displaced by IM and e-mail. However, with UC, all forms of messaging are now being integrated seamlessly with IP telephony and presence management to support “click-to-call” and “instant” multi-party conferencing. These issues will be a focus during the upcoming IAMP Conference described below.

As part of the program for the annual conference of the International Association of Messaging Professionals, an independent group of enterprise organizations and technology providers, three sessions of particular interest to enterprise IT responsible for text messaging business communications will be available free of charge to enterprise registrants. They are invited to join their telecom/voice IT colleagues to learn more about practical migration issues that will confront every organization in moving to UM/UC.

Tenth Annual IAMP Conference to Highlight Free “Virtual” Sessions on Enterprise Migration to UC

The International Association of Messaging Professionals, an independent enterprise user group focused on the convergence of telephony and messaging, will again host several free webcast sessions at their annual conference taking place in Las Vegas, October 16-18. IT management responsible for telephony, and voice/text messaging technologies in their organizations are invited to participate free of charge. Check the IAMP web site for more information at: www.iampro.org/conference-info.

There are three webcasts scheduled as follows (PDT):

Monday, October 15, 2006 – 8:15 – 9:30 AM PDT
Keynote- Bern Elliot, Gartner (News - Alert) VP Research,
“Unified Communications - What is it and why you should care?”
(Webcast information will be posted on the IAMP web site above)

Tuesday, October 16, 2006 – 10:45 – 12:00 Noon PDT
“Virtual Session #1” – Provider panel discussion
“Everything you wanted to know about migrating to UM/UC but didn’t know who to ask!” – Moderated by Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View
Invited panelists from Avaya (News - Alert), Nortel (News - Alert), AVST, Microsoft (News - Alert), Interactive Intelligence (News - Alert), Cisco. (Webcast sponsored by Nortel)
Register online at: http://www2.nortel.com/go/events_detail.jsp?cat_id=-8005&oid=100205958&block=8&locale=en-US

Questions to be discussed by UC technology providers include:

--When and how should UC migration planning start in the enterprise? Who should be involved?
--What are the biggest myths about migrating to UC that enterprise organizations should avoid?
--What are the three biggest drivers for enterprise organizations to migrate to UM/UC? 
--What are the three biggest barriers for enterprise organizations to migrate to UM/UC?
--How do you migrate different end user needs?
--How important will existing text messaging technologies be in choosing UM/UC solutions and what migration changes will such existing technologies have to undergo?
--How will UM and UC integrate with automated business process applications?
--How will federated presence technology fit into UM/UC technologies for the enterprise, and what impact will that have on users and on enterprise infrastructures?
--What are the most significant changes to enterprise IT responsibilities needed for consolidating administration and end user support for UM/UC? How will this affect email, IM, voicemail, and IP telephony management and end users?
--What new communication productivity metrics and tools are needed for enterprise operational management to evaluate UC usage?
--What kind of third-party assistance will best help enterprise organizations plan their UC migration? (Consultants, current or new technology providers, channels suppliers, managed or hosted service providers)
Register now and ask your own questions!

Wednesday, October 17, 2006 – 10:15 – 12:00 Noon PDT
“Virtual Session #2” – “Messaging Migration Customer Experience Panel”
Moderated by Marty Parker, Communication Perspectives
Invited panelists are enterprise IAMP members who have already started or are planning to start migrating their messaging systems and will report on the operational impact experienced, as well as the migration challenges they have encountered.
The audio bridge number is 1-641-696-6699 with a participant code of 101806 (the mmddyy date).

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Art Rosenberg is a veteran of the computer and communications industry and formed The Unified-View to provide strategic consulting to technology and service providers, as well as to enterprise organizations, in migrating towards converged wired and wireless unified communications. He focuses on practical user requirements, implementation issues, and new benefits of multi-modal communication technologies for individual end users, both as a consumer and as a member of enterprise working groups. The latter includes identifying new responsibilities for enterprise communications management to support changing operational usage needs most cost-effectively. Copyright © 2004-2005, The Unified-View, All Rights Reserved Worldwide.







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