discussUC

Authors: Jennifer Carole

Authors: Doron Aronson

Authors: Barry O'Sullivan

Authors: Julia White

The new year is starting off with a bang – a great new set of Notes customers decided to Exchange and SharePoint.  At this rate, 2011 could be one of our biggest Notes “switcher” years, yet.    With IBM’s annual Lotusphere conference starting next week, it means that Notes customers...

Authors: Julia White

Exchange is fortunate to have a strong Partner community that helps our customers plan, deploy, and manage their Exchange environments.  Our Notes migration Partners have added an extra dimension by providing services and tools to move customers’ data and resources from complex and long-standing Notes

Today, we are excited to announce that the Department of Education in the Commonwealth of Kentucky has gone live with Microsoft's Live@edu solution.  With more than 700,000 people, this is one of the largest cloud deployments in the world!  Schools in the Bluegrass state are 'All In' for the cloud.

Rob Preston, VP and Editor in Chief of InformationWeek offers an interesting assessment of Microsoft’s cloud capability and closes by saying

Microsoft won't dominate the cloud -- no company will ... it's just too big a place -- but it will be the preeminent, most profitable player there in no time.

Bold words. Rob took time to go to Redmond and see if the claims of Microsoft being “all in” were true and he seems to have left being convinced. As regular readers will know, I’ve been working on this cloud gig for over 2 years and back in 2007 Steve Ballmer said this of “cloud” at our Financial Analyst Meeting

Now, when I talk about it I talk about it quite broadly. I'm not talking just about consumer stuff, or just about advertising. I'm literally I literally believe that every piece of software, the basic core value, and the way software gets created will change over the next three, five, ten years. So every piece of software will have a client component, a server component, and service component from the cloud, that all gets managed and orchestrated out of that cloud infrastructure.

I thought that was a pretty bold statement back then – that everything we do would have a cloud component – yet we now have a version of Exchange, SharePoint, SQL, Windows Server, CRM, Office and more in the cloud. I’m genuinely impressed by the execution, in particular with Azure and with hundreds of thousands of server in our datacenters already delivering cloud services to customers like Coca Cola, Domino’s, Aviva, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Royal Mail and many more. The cloud Microsoft isn’t coming. It’s here.

Thanks Rob for looking a little deeper and shining a light on this.

Authors: IBM

Authors: Avaya Insights

Before I get into my post, let me offer Avaya's heartfelt empathy and concern to the millions so directly affected by the devastation in Japan. The pictures and videos that have emerged over the last few days from the destruction and tsunami have been scary and captivating. Personally, they have brought back a flood of...

Among the most critically important functions of government is the communications interface between the organizations that provide public safety services and the civilian population. Predominantly this function is served by the Public Safety Answering Point. The PSAP is the call answering center that receives incoming 9-1-1 calls and either coordinates directly or functions as the communications lynchpin between the public and the dispatch and command and control of police, fire and emergency medical services.

As citizens we might think that this particular function of government would be on the top of the list of priorities for the allocation of government resources. After all it is truly of first line of defense against all manner of disruption to our society and most of us pay specific taxes to support 9-1-1.

The fact is that although this critical government function has served our society well for most of the over 30 years since the 9-1-1 system's inception, in recent years 9-1-1 in North America has atrophied. The system has suffered from decreased investments while at the same time the rapid evolution of communications technologies used by the public has outstripped the ages old system's ability to function. Even though dramatic new technologies for the communication of information have evolved, the 9-1-1 system today remains almost exclusively voice oriented and primarily based on analog technologies.

This is all about to change. Led by organizations including the National Emergency Number Association and the US Department of Transportation a roadmap to Next Generation 9-1-1 (NG9-1-1) has been developed. This visionary future is based on modern communications protocols and a rich environment for potential innovation. Money is beginning to flow and the industry is seeing new Requests for Proposals based on the NG9-1-1 vision emerging all across the country.

Now the hard part: making it real.

One of the key challenges for the 9-1-1 industry is not only that it has fallen behind in technology investment but that it has also fallen out of pace with the many innovations that have swept the commercial world. I have nothing but the highest level of respect for the people and vendors who have created this system and who through many years of challenges have kept it running. The plain fact, however, is that in some ways this is an industry that has been trapped in time. The lack of public investment in the 9-1-1 system has meant that the tremendous innovations we have seen in the commercial world, have in many cases, skipped over the 9-1-1 industry.

Innovation in the 9-1-1 industry had become Balkanized and prior to a recent spate of industry consolidations dominated by niche firms who have solved point problems in serial fashion. An example of the impact of this innovation gap is that basic telephony concepts that drive operational efficiency in linking resources to problems such as Automatic Call Distribution are absent from all but the largest and most sophisticated of operations. The average commercial contact center agent even in the most distant geography has far superior problem solving tools at his or her disposal than the person who is responsible for making sure the ambulance arrives expediently at our home if one of our loved ones is in dire need of emergency services.

Next Generation 9-1-1 is a significant challenge. Much great thought and collaboration between the Public Safety community and vendors both traditional as well as new innovators has been put into the design. I don't mean to say that there is any deficiency there. What I do mean is that sometimes we don't know - what we don't know. There are additional layers of value that if applied, will help to create the emergency safety net of the future that our society deserves.

This is not just a challenge for those most familiar with public safety. We all have a stake in this transition. The change that is coming to the world of public safety communications will only include the best practices that have been developed outside the 9-1-1 industry to link resources to problems if those of us who understand these technologies, operational concepts and implementation of modern contact centers insert ourselves into the public dialog during this time of significant new official interest and investment in 9-1-1.

Avaya has begun to make our voice heard. Will you join the chorus? Please visit the Avaya.com to learn more: http://www.avaya.com/usa/solution/public-safety