Enterprise Technology By Phil Edholm

The first UC market is for collaboration. It is about how we converge the desktop productivity environment that supports our Informal Personal Business processes (calendaring, email, etc.) with easy to use tools that combine communications, information, and business process.

The key is the value that comes from having interactions happen sooner with the right tools. UC for Collaboration is primarily about people interacting with other people based on their agendas and personal work requirements. The value accrues to the company in enhancing the way people work, rather than changing the underlying formal business processes. In most business decisions, 70-90% of the time to make a decision is wait time with ...

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Well, I think Kermit (the Frog) was wrong.......it is easy bein' green.....for Nortel customers anyway. And especially when bein' green comes with great financial dividends as well.

The last couple of months have seen a swirling of points and counterpoints about what it means to be green in networking... it all started with some strong points by Nortel back at InterOp that the Nortel data products were much more energy efficient than some key competitors. While I have been looking at other areas, the information keeps piling up that Nortel is really a much better solution than Cisco.

In fact, a NEW TOLLY REPORT of a complete converged network including VoIP under different loads shows Nortel uses 40% less ...

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Over the past month I have been working on directions in UC and have come to a few key conclusions about this transformation.   I thought a series of blog entires around this subject would be interesting. I will probably do three or four fairly quickly, starting with definitions, moving into market opportunity, and closing with how Nortel sees it's role moving forward.

First, UC is not just about communications, but rather is focused to how communications integrates with applications. While we have been talking about this, I think we should stop talking about "unifying" different communications modalities and rather focus on the application integration component. The key reason is that this is the next big ...

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I flew out Sunday for the Global Connect event in Dallas. This is the huge Nortel User event that is the opportunity to interact with our customers, partners and a fairly large group of analysts and press.

If you are coming to Global Connect, look me up. I will be at many of the events and look forward to meeting any of you that are there.

I will do a couple of blogs next week from Global Connect. I am doing a session with Bob Hafner of Gartner that is discussing the opportunities in UC with our partners and I think it will create some exciting discussion. I also am talking about Hyperconnectivity and the recent IDC ...

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I found the recent study IDC IDC did with Nortel sponsorship of the emergence of the Hyperconnected worked to be very interesting, it confirmed what many of us know to be true; we are increasingly living in a Hyperconnected world and are ourselves connected everywhere, all the time.

The following is the link to the white paper and the associated materials, I encourage everyone to take some time to review it. IDC Hyperconnectivity Report The report offers some great insights about how individuals view the emerging transformation. It is based on almost 2,400 interviews globally and is the most comprehensive view I have seen of defining the transformation coming.

What I ...

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Nortel has added a new blog to the Nortel Blogshere; the Nortel Hyperconnectivity Blog. It is at www.hyperconnectivity.com and will focus on posts about the events driving and being driven by the Hyperconnectivity phenomenon.

The blog will look at the Hyperconnectivity revolution from the view of Nortel's key initiatives addressing the Hyperconnectivity challenge - UC, WiMAX, 40G and Telepresence. The intent of this blog is to introduce a variety of topics that center around Hyperconnectivity and will enable the dialog to be much faster.

For example, recent posts discuss the challenge of working (and playing/living) in the Hyperconnected world and whether the business value of telepresence is real or not. Also, the ...

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I started to reference the issue about the question whether the Internet bandwidth was going to become an issue in a post response last year. At the time I referenced a report issued by the Nemertes group that predicted that the capacity of the Internet would become an issue between 2010 and 2012. The post I did about Microhoo and Google competing to introduce new services and capabilities began to highlight this issue in my mind as well. Then last week I had a meeting with a key technology executive from a major North American service provider who indicated their bandwidth is growing 40% per year and they have begun the migration to 40 Gbps in their ...

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I was intrigued by the announcement of a Creative Technology Video Conferencing System called InPerson recently. The announcement of this system was of interest on two levels, first that it is essentially a small video player with a camera and the necessary internals to do video conferencing, and second that some \ continue to mis-understand the value of video in a business setting. While most video systems are going upscale in terms of size and bandwidth to more directly equal the face-to-face experience, this is a move down below the PC. While it is larger than the Nortel video phones, it still lacks the size and capability to meet the needs of ...

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I decided to wait a while before posting on this topic as there is so much noise on the topic. And I waited long enough that Yahoo turned down the first effort, but I thought a post was still appropriate as Microsoft seems to be undeterred in it's pursuit. Especially as this is the first in potentially multiple consolidations in the space.

I believe this is the logical transition of Microsoft from a "product" company into a services company. While Microsoft has continued to lead in the "product" space, it has not gained significant share in the "services" side of the business. As we all know, technologies and products tend to move down in value over ...

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I continue to be intrigued by the concept of virtual worlds and the ability of them to simulate/replace the physical environment. I find the concept of integrating virtual and real conference rooms (Sun has a demo of this) to be interesting. Much as a play is transformed when the actors "break" the 4th wall between them and the audience, this concept has the capability of radically changing both the virtual world (the play) and the real world (the audience). How could the unique relationship between the audience and Ferris Buehler have been achieved absent his initial dialog about; "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you ...

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