Moz@Work: Blog

Cisco Does a U-Turn on Email. D'Oh!

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:49:18 GMT

With all due respect to a great competitor of ours, I am finding extreme humor in this recent U-turn by Cisco on email. Just one year ago, on August 7th 2007, Joe Burton (Chief Technology Officer) wrote a blog entry asking "Is Your PC Just a Paperweight?". Joe stated:

"The rapidly declining importance of email and the desktop computer is not one that I would have foreseen even as few as five years ago."

Then today I read an announcement by Cisco "Cisco Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire PostPath". For those that don't know, PostPath offers a Linux-based e-mail, calendaring and collaboration solution.

"The acquisition of PostPath complements our strategy to develop an integrated collaboration platform designed for how we work today and into the future, providing real productivity gains and a more satisfying user experience", said Doug Dennerline, Cisco senior vice president, Collaboration Software Group ..... Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will pay approximately $215 million in exchange for all shares of PostPath.

$215M may not seem like much, but it is an awful lot to pay for a capability that is of "declining importance". I am wondering what changed. Maybe folks at Cisco found that actually they do spend a lot of time working on their PC, and heck, even doing email. Back in October 2007, we shared some stats on email from a research firm, Harris.

· 61% of information workers cite e-mail as their primary mode of communications at work vs. 31% phone.

· 80% of information workers are most likely to first check their computers each morning for messages vs. 14% phone and 6% cell phone or other.

· On average, e-mail comprises one-half of total business communication and consumes about 25% of a business worker’s workday.

· One in four information workers indicate that e-mail is essential to their job and that “they can’t live without it”, while one in five information workers describe e-mail as “mission critical”.

Coming from the consumer technology world, I am a big believer that the nature of communications is changing. Email on it's own is still a very important capability for most information workers, but potentially even more important is the need for seamlessly integrated communications based on presence (well articulated by Zeus in this article) where I can move from email, to IM, to voice, to video, to conferencing easily. I think this recent acquisition validates the approach but the mix of acquisitions will make it hard for Cisco to offer an integrated experience. Busy work ahead for the recently formed software group, which is playing an increasingly important role in a network company.

Fun times ahead.

Where do old phones go?

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:59:28 GMT

From: http://greenupgrader.com/2492/telephone-sheep-exhibit-by-artist-jean-luc-cornec/

The Dangers of Too Much Data on the Web

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:58:22 GMT

This is a great little video on what ordering a pizza could be like if there is no data privacy. I've always felt very nervous about the amount of data that is out there on people, and the lack of a legislative framework around use. People are very free about ticking the "I Accept" button, but data on the Internet travels much more than a piece of paper so who knows where information about you ends up.

Source: http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf

No Jitter | Presence, not VoIP is the Foundation of Unified Communications

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:14:26 GMT

Great article from Zeus Kerravala. Comments later.

No Jitter | Presence, not VoIP is the Foundation of Unified Communications

"Unified communications (UC) has been a hot topic in the vendor community for the past couple of years, particularly with the traditional communications vendors. The majority of positioning that I have seen around UC positions VoIP as the foundation and then UC being the “stuff” that gets built on top of VoIP. I do believe this was conventional thinking for quite some time but this “old school” thinking needs to stop or UC will take years to reach its potential. Also, it’s just flat out wrong. Presence, not VoIP, should be thought of as the foundation for UC."

SkyDrive to the Rescue!

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:27:26 GMT

One of the reasons Ilike being at Microsoft is that the company has a whole bunch of tools for everything, sometimes competing with each other but usually covering a pretty broad range of scenarios.

I recently purchased a report by Blair Pleasant on Unified Communications and she was trying to figure out how to get it to me before she leaves on vacation. She tried email, but Frontbridge ended up blocking the 10MB file. I wanted to use Sharepoint, but it was too combersome to make a request for an externally editable site. We could use Groove, but then she would need to download a client and trial for 90 days. We could use Office Communicator file transfer if she was federated, or maybe just Windows Live Messenger. But that can be testy with large files.

Then there is Skydrive, a free storage place on the web for exactly these scenarios. I created a shared folder with Blair and she uploaded the file. Boom, I had it.

Now, the next phase of this plethora of innovation is going to be to make it all work together. I mean, I really shouldn't have to think this hard just to share a file with someone.

Shouldn't Teleworkers Get Paid More and Not Less?

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:27:09 GMT

Interesting article stating that many workers would take a pay cut to work from home. That doesn't surprise me as there is clearly some benefit to having flexibility of working from home.

But the statement seems backward to me. Companies save a lot if someone works from home (office space, possibly higher productivity, etc). If you don't trust that someone will be productive working from home, you shouldn't let them telework. But if you do trust them usually you get increase in productivity for a lot of information worker roles. Some maybe companies should pay more to teleworkers and not less?

Many Tech Workers Would Accept Pay Cut To Telecommute

In a poll of more than 1,500 IT workers, 37% said they would be willing to take a pay cut of up to 10% to telecommute full time.

By Marin Perez; InformationWeek ; June 10, 2008 04:04 PM

Nearly 40% of U.S. information technology workers would accept a reduced salary to have the ability to telecommute, a Dice Holding survey revealed Tuesday.
In a poll of more than 1,500 IT workers, 37% of respondents said they would be willing to take "slightly less" pay to telecommute full time. The survey defined "slightly less" as up to a 10% reduction in salary.

respondents who said they wouldn't take a pay cut. But other surveys suggest that offering the ability to work from home can be a good way to attract and retain talented workers.

Workers can be drawn to the flexibility of telecommuting, and thanks to improvements to personal computers, videoconferencing, and Internet speeds, many remote workers can handle almost all their tasks from a home office.
Another growing issue is the spiraling cost of gasoline, which is more than $4 a gallon. Many private and federal offices are implementing plans that let workers work remotely, or have a compressed four-day workweek to combat the pain at the pump.
In a recent USA Today story, Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA) estimated that employees who choose to telecommute can cut gas purchases by 135 gallons a year, which at $4 a gallon would save $540. Sun has 18,000 employees who have the option to telecommute.
Only 7% of respondents to Dice's survey said they are already working remotely, although many of those jobs are limited to consulting firms where telecommuting is a necessary part of the job.

Video Conferencing for Masses vs. Personal Telepresence

Thu, 22 May 2008 04:21:54 GMT

This week, Cisco introduced its personal telepresence technology to the world and announced their entry into the “market for in-person virtual communications with new endpoints for the personal office and large group meetings”.
It is great to see Cisco endorsing and supporting video conferencing for the masses, something we have long felt was critical for organizations to see real benefits. But I think there are some serious limitations to the approach they have taken.
Budget and environmental impact are just a numbers game at the end of the day. There are 100’s of information workers for every executive in the world, and the impact of any technology you can give to executives will be amplified if you can do it for everyone. To see these benefits, technology must be affordable and accessible to the masses.
High end telepresence units, costing businesses $300,000 a piece before network upgrades and annual maintenance, are out of reach for all but a privileged few in the organization. If you had that kind of telepresence system for every 50 information workers in world (an expected ratio of workers to meeting rooms), it would cost more than the GDP of Spain! But while we at Microsoft were out announcing plans for a $300 high def camera that would revolutionize the accessibility of high quality video conferencing for everyone, Cisco is announcing a stripped down version of its flagship telepresence product selling for $34,000 per unit.
I just don’t believe you get mass adoption when the price point evokes the question “should I buy this or the helicopter?”. The market is limited to literally a few hundred units. Units like the Polycom HDX 4000, for example, have been around for years at a fraction of the price. Stephen Lawson at IDG sums it up well when he says “The System 500 is not the consumer device Cisco envisions, which former Chief Development Officer Charlie Giancarlo last year predicted could be sold within two to three years for about US $1,000.”
In contrast, Microsoft RoundTable sells for $3,000-$4,000 and has already built up over 700 customers and thousands of units sold after launching in October 2007. For the price of two personal telepresence units which would enable two executives to talk to one another, customers can buy 20+ RoundTables, enabling a much larger number of people in remote offices to communicate and collaborate more effectively, while reducing travel costs.
I also don’t get the argument about personal telepresence “shortening sales cycles” or to “improve productivity”? Most information workers spend a significant portion of their time collaborating using applications and yet telepresence systems don’t have an easy way to share applications with others. Sales people are often out visiting customers or on the road and more and more workers are working from home these days, but they can’t lug around a 400 pound telepresence unit with them to stay connected. While the world is moving towards integrated collaboration and mobility, personal telepresence seems to be focused on very expensive video conferencing as the one trick pony.
At Microsoft, we have really focused on building video conferencing into common applications and user experiences to make business processes more engaging. Integration into tools such as Live Meeting and Communicator, which are compatible with many third-party audio and video devices, make it easy to use video conferencing for face to face conversation, multimedia document collaboration or telework.
Finally, to make a communication tool useful and impactful, you have to make it interoperate with common legacy equipment. This includes colleagues on Tandberg or Polycom systems, which account for over 75% of the installed base of video conferencing today. Or federated customers and partners for example. The lack of interoperability makes the system an isolated island in a customers’ broader environment. If you are going to go for a telepresence solution, you should consider systems that interop with broader installed base, such the Tandberg Experia or the Polycom RPX for example.
It’s great to see that Cisco has joined the tide of video conferencing for the masses but clearly there is a long way to go beforeGiancarlo’s vision is realized.

More Shoes=Bigger Carbon Footprint

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:46:29 GMT

Interesting post on No Jitter:

"Cisco will use its TelePresence technology to conference in Al Gore as a keynote speaker at VoiceCon. What's Cisco's VoiceCon carbon footprint as they ferry in 100+ staffers to work the booth and myriad whisper suites scattered around the hotel?"

I am here at VoiceCon and there is literally an army of Cisco people at the show, many of them just to set up the tonnage of equipment for the TelePresence demo. Al Gore is going to be joining from Nashville to participate. At over 3000 pounds of carbon per person expended in travelling, you do have to ask yourself if it wouldn't be cheaper just flying Al out here. He was willing to go to London, so I imagine 500 miles to Orlando is not a big jolt.

Let's hope common sense prevails.

Yahoo Delays Board-Nomination Date

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:58:19 GMT

I should start by saying that I am in no way involved with Yahoo deal and am not privy to any specific info. I'm just another guy reading the papers. And what I find is kind of bizarre.

This paragraph was in Wall Street Journal today: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120472835995813707.html?mod=rss_Deals_and_Deal_Makers.

• The News: Yahoo amended bylaws and moved back a looming deadline for nominating new board members.

• Background: The change reduces the chance that Microsoft next week will nominate a slate of directors who would favor Microsoft's bid for Yahoo.

• Next Moves: Yahoo buys more time to explore possible alternatives.

if this were an election and someone tried to change the law to buy more time before election, it would cause an uproar. It just seems pretty irresponsible of a Board to behave this way.

Hosted Office Communications Server

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:25:37 GMT

This is great step in our efforts to provide software and service flexibility to customers. This first release provides hosted instant messaging which solves many of the problems with businesses using public instant messaging services ... identity not being tied to corporate directory and compliance capabilities in particular. Presence can also be exposed in Outlook and Sharepoint which is an added bonus. Intermedia is slating this as $7.95/Month/User.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/012808-microsoft-partner-first-with-hosted.html

RoundTable Helps Kids

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:38:42 GMT

This was not the intended use of Microsoft RoundTable, but it's nice to see a novel and uplifting use nonetheless.

Ailing children interact with teachers, students during recovery

BOISE, Idaho - Garrett Schram would rather be with his classmates at Meridian's Sawtooth Middle School.

Since August, when he was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor on his hip, the 12-year-old has been largely confined to a bed at St. Luke's Children's Hospital instead of playing football, skateboarding and joking with friends at school.

"Just the hallways between classes," he told the Idaho Statesman. "Especially now, trying not to be down."

"He'd go right now except for his blood counts," Garrett's father, Joe Schram said.

Since Feb. 1, he's been able to interact with his classmates because of new video conferencing technology linking students at St. Luke's with their teachers and peers in Boise-area schools.

Since 2004, St. Luke's hospital school has allowed seriously ill children to continue class work in their beds, or in a special classroom in the pediatric department.

A re-entry program helps children at the end of treatment make their way back into school with the understanding and support of their peers.

But until now, they had little or no contact with teachers and students. Web camera technology only allowed the St. Luke's students to see the teacher in a limited area, and sound and viewing quality were choppy, said Hayley Welch, St. Luke's Children's Hospital School teacher.

Garrett was the first St. Luke's student to use the Microsoft RoundTable System for a 360-degree view of Kathleen Christensen's seventh-grade writing class at Sawtooth Middle School.

Telepresence: Expensive Proprietary Solutions Don't Save the Planet

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:23:51 GMT

There has been a lot of hype recently about telepresence as a future driver of collaboration, reduced costs and saving the planet. There is even a conference called Telepresence World with Al Gore espousing the eco-friendly benefits. A recent article in Information Week (Cisco's Emerging Collaboration Strategy) provides a neutral analysis of the topic, albeit with some glorifications. But this comment from the article really stood out for me:

The system weighs in at just over a ton and requires a room at least 15 by 19 feet. It uses the Cisco MCS 7800 series server and the 7970G IP phone, running SIP over a 6-Mbps or better connection for the ultrahigh-def, 1080p version. There are three 65-inch HD plasma displays and an internal Gigabit Ethernet switch, which means if you look behind the curtain, as it were, you'll see that the whole thing runs through a single Ethernet cable. It's a superb chunk of technology.
It's also damned expensive. A single-room Cisco TelePresence 3000 unit goes for about $300,000, and since having one telepresence room is like rowing half a canoe, a full dual-room system, including furniture and other overhead, runs in the range of three-quarters of a million bucks. Which raises the obvious question: Who's going to buy these things?
The short answer: C-level execs who want to demonstrate their techno-progressivism--and their deep pockets. "Telepresence is not going to be purchased by the same people as traditional videoconferencing," says Ira Weinstein, a senior analyst at Wainhouse Research. "Telepresence is an executive purchase that comes down from the C-level and is pushed down through the ranks." Think of it as the corporate Lear Jet for a new sensibility.

I have no doubt that video conferencing can be a powerful tool for communicating on a more emotional level to colleagues and business partners in a dispersed world of work. It has the potential to eliminate the need for some business travel and do it’s bit to saving the world. It’s also an eye catching toy in the often mundane world of enterprise technology. As a result, many people have been getting excited about the technology rather than stopping to contemplate the real value to the bottom line.

Let’s say you purchased a $300,000 telepresence set up that was physically located in one place and an annual operating cost of $150,000 which included dedicated bandwidth and support. That place was accessible by 10 people who typically rack up $500,000 of travel costs per year. If these people reduced their travel by 20%, the company could save $1M per year, you have a pay back of 5-6 months and an ROI of 80%+. Great huh? Not necessarily.

First, this is an expensive hardware solution. Video conferencing technology is progressing rapidly and investing in a physical piece of equipment where you are locked down to the technology does not necessarily allow you to take advantage of future innovation. Some vendors require pretty expensive underlying network investments to make the solution work which hides the true costs of the system.

Second, this can be difficult to use. Anything that requires a managed service is probably not “easy to use” and can drive up total cost of ownership over time. You either get locked into ongoing service contracts, or actual usage peters out over time.

Third, this is an isolated solution. You’ve added another isolated solution to your infrastructure that only shares the network in common. You can’t manage it centrally using the tools your IT folks generally use. You need specialist services. This can build a heterogeneous system that can actually increase costs within your company. Often times the expensive solutions don’t integrate with the rest of your communications or applications infrastructure, reducing their potential.

Fourth, there is a lack of interoperability. The users of the system may need to communicate with folks who do not have the same system, which may usually be the case. If your business has a lot of meetings between a few fixed branches, it may make sense. But if it has many branches or if you want to talk to outsiders, you need to interoperate with their system. As soon as you do this the quality becomes the lowest common denominator and your investment value is reduced to what everyone else is paying.

Fifth, you are ignoring the masses. If your company has more than 10 people chances are you would save more money by reducing their travel. Even if an average executive racks up 10 times as much in travel costs as his average traveling worker, there would have to just 10 times more traveling workers than executives to tip the balance. So let’s say you have 10,000 employees and 1000 of them travel often, racking up $50,000 in costs. If you could reduce their travel by 10% you would save $5M. Five times the executive savings with a lower reduction effort.

Sixth and most importantly, there are limited productivity gains. The real benefit in these technology is not just the travel cost savings but the incremental ability to reduce sales cycles, improve customer satisfaction, improve time to market and so on. These are often called “soft costs” because they don’t have immediate bottom line savings. But the benefits are real and can be critical in a competitive and more demanding business context.

Telepresence can be a great tool as part of your overall video conferencing strategy. But you should look for systems that are flexible to meet your future needs, are integrated into your IT infrastructure, are interoperable with your existing investments, can benefit your broader worker base and can deliver real improvements in productivity. Otherwise you may have an expensive shiny new toy that is left on the shelves in a few years.

Microsoft RoundTable Rolled Out in Europe

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 23:46:28 GMT

Today we opened up sales of Microsoft RoundTable to seven new European markets and will have more markets coming soon. It's a great device retailing at around $3000 that allows plug and play ease of use for room based video conferencing. It's optimized for use with Office Communicator but you can still get active speaker detection with pretty much any PC solution. Great work by Huat for getting this out!

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/technology/article/microsoft-brings-roundtable-videoconferencing-seven-additional-countries_461070_12.html

Election Quiz: Find Out Who Shares Your Views

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:59:17 GMT

This was sent to me by a friend. It's a simple quiz that compares your views to the leading candidates. Saves watching all those cliched debates.

http://glassbooth.org/

Miercom Review of Office Communications Server

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:49:12 GMT

What a great way to start the year! A recent article published in No Jitter (the online rendition of what used to be Business Communications Review) highlights an evaluation of Office Communications Server 2007 by Miercom (a privately held network consultancy, specializing in networking and communications-related product testing and analysis). Miercom is a respected telephony outfit known for its rigor in testing. They set up a basic implementation of OCS for 15,000 users and put a high volume of calls through it and still got availability of 5 9s! This is one area I get questions all the time, but it is a validation of the great strides Microsoft is making in the way it architects server topologies for availability and scalability. The article is a good short read and gives an excellent overview of the main pieces of the product.

Lab Test: Microsoft OCS 2007--Voice Communication for the Next Generation?

Top VOIP Innovation of 2007

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 04:39:23 GMT

2007 seems so far away now, but I wanted to end the year by flagging two great reviews that are an endorsement to Microsoft's approach to voice over IP. The first is a top ranking by VOIP-News in their review of VOIP innovations for 2007.

Top 25 VOIP Innovations of 2007

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007: Though far from surprising, the official October launch of Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 was a huge step forward simply because it made real the possibility that voice will someday become just another application running on corporate networks. As such, the announcement forced enterprises and vendors alike to get serious about their responses to a game-changing question: whether stand-alone PBXes will even be necessary in the future.

...The second is a review by CMP (part of CRN) that calls out the simple but powerful affect of presence in voice communications.

Review: Microsoft OCS 2007 Heightens Awareness

With the introduction of a single point of communication and unified messaging, Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS), along with Exchange integration, is revolutionizing the communication space. OCS is able to achieve a high level of transparency as to a person's presence at work and method of accessibility by maintaining a single identity that drives all avenues of communication.

Kudos to Jamie Stark on my team for being able to explain the complexities of the product in a language the telephony world understands!

Too Cute to Resist

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 06:16:22 GMT

Nothing to do with unified communications or social networking, but this experience was too precious not to share. Armaan is now 19 months old and it is incredible how quickly he picks up everything! He has difficulty pronouncing some things (my favorite is when he misses the "r" in "fork") but is having full blown conversations with us at this stage. I love being a Dad!

South Africa Launch Event

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 08:54:56 GMT

Just getting back from an exciting Unified Communications launch event in Johannesburg, South Africa, as part of the rolling global launch modeled on San Francisco event. I keynoted this event and had some great conversations with our customers, field teams and partners. I'll write more about this later, but had to share some pictures in the meantime:-). Danie Gordon and the South African team put on a great show packed with content and entertainment (complete with belly dancers and a rowdy comedian named Barry Hilton). The theme was Moroccan, so many people were lounging on the floor when I presented, so that was a first for me! Anand Lakshminarayanan (who presented a number of the breakout sessions and drove the demo) and I had a great time. Thanks Danie and team!

Microsoft-Facebook: 'A True Bubble Deal'

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:55:31 GMT

There is a lot of talk about the recent Microsoft investment in Facebook. While an outright acquisition at that price might have been a little crazy, a partial stake has many more benefits. Let's see if the illuminati start talking about those instead.

Microsoft-Facebook: 'A True Bubble Deal'

After the software giant struck a deal valuing the social networking site at $15 billion, commentators from around the Web are weighing the implications

It didn't take long after Microsoft (MSFT) agreed to take a stake in the social networking site Facebook (BusinessWeek, 10/25/07) for the comments from readers to start pouring in. Most of them focused on the price the software giant paid, a $240 million investment that values the fledgling company run by the 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg at an astonishing $15 billion.
"Can anyone else feel the '.com-Bust' coming again? Sell you idiot!" one person wrote on BusinessWeek.com, under the screen name Allison.

Source: Microsoft-Facebook: 'A True Bubble Deal'

Unified Communications Launch in San Francisco

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:59:50 GMT

I am officially super excited. Tuesday October 16th was the worldwide launch of Microsoft's Unified Communications products. Over a year ago, we held a strategy day announcing our intention to bet big in this space, and this week we backed it up with a ton of momentum.

It's been about two months since I joined the Unified Communications Group to lead the product management for Office Communications Server enterprise voice and conferencing, Microsoft RoundTable and end point devices workloads. I joined at a time when everybody was 150% focused on launching our solution and I got to watch and learn, and jump in to help in a few areas. I've been blown away by the level of orchestration that the team put in place to line up this launch ... and the reception from customers, partners and media was even more impressive.

Bill Gates kicked of the day with a keynote, talking about how the telephony industry has seen very little innovation, held back by the vertically structured hardware based solutions that have been around for years. With the move into voice over IP, there is an opportunity to reinvent this industry with the power of software. I've seen the deck a hundred times and will be presenting it myself when I keynote in South Africa next month, but somehow Bill just sounds more convincing when he says he wants to turn an entire industry 90 degrees. He described the shift about to happen as "profound as the shift from the type writer to word processing". Words can't do it justice, check out the streaming video of the talk here.

Jeff Raikes then came in with a polished run through the value unified communications brings to our customers and partners. I saw Jeff rehearse the night before although he flipped through a lot of the slides quickly. But he delivered with some choice stats and soundbites. The average worker received just under a 100 messages in 7 different locations in one day. They spend 37 minutes a day making calls to people who aren't there. This is all about to change with unified communications ... "The era of dialing blind; the era of playing phone tag; the era of voice mail jail; the era of disconnected communications – that era is ending"

Jeff brought in my manager, Eric Swift, to do the demo showcasing Outlook Voice Access, Microsoft Exchange, Outlook Mobile, Communicator Mobile, Office Communications Server, Live Meeting, Microsoft RoundTable, a Polycom USB device internally called "Catalina", an IP phone by LG Nortel we call the Tanjay and Office Communicator and how all these solutions fit together to make communications streamlined for information workers. I played the role of the Finance Manager in the demo, but props go to Manish Sharma on our team who put the whole thing together. We had a couple of minor hiccups, but overall it went very well.

Jeff also brought in a customer who had deployed our solution to talk about the benefits, the CIO of L'Occitane in France (women usually know the company!). We have a Technology Adopter Program and Rapid Deployment Program that allows early adopter customers to deploy our solutions before mainstream release and Microsoft get's to create a case study. We have over a hundred of these customer case studies showing the real benefits of unified communications with what we have today.

Over lunch I met one of our training partners who explained how over the last 17 years, Microsoft had helped him make his fortune in helping enterprises make the most of new technology. He was planning on betting big on unified communications and saw huge potential. "Microsoft's done well for me" he said. I am really proud of that about Microsoft. We couldn't be successful with the systems integrators, consultants, hardware vendors and trainers out there that form our ecosystem, and it certainly is true for the hundreds of unified communications partners.

And the media reception has been pretty phenomenal. This CNN video features Renee Lo in the background and all the folks on her IM list are on our extended team. We have seen dozens of original articles already and love it or hate it, you can't ignore Microsoft investing in this category in this way. And having Bill Gates personally front it as potentially the last big launch during his time at Microsoft makes it even more compelling.

I am really excited to be part of this. Already, my team is working with engineering and business development teams on the next generation of audio/video/web conferencing, enterprise voice solutions, end user devices that don't come packed with a hundred dumb buttons and more. I am presenting to five customers from three continents next week at our Executive Briefing Center, all eager to start realizing the benefits of unified communications. Can't wait!

Microsoft launching Evite-type event site

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:28:20 GMT

Woohoo! It's great to see this launching so that finally I don't have to go to three different sites to find my contacts, send out an invitation/manage RSVPs and trash talk or share photos after an event. I still remember when we first talked about creating an Events service and can't wait to start using. Great work team and good quote from Jay below:

Link to Microsoft launching Evite-type event site

"The service, which will be at events.live.com, is expected to roll out gradually over the next few days. It's part of a broader attempt by Microsoft to fill out its lineup of Windows Live online services.

Jay Fluegel, Windows Live Events product manager, said he doesn't think people will need to choose the service to the exclusion of other social networking and photo-sharing sites. For example, people will be able to embed photo albums from Windows Live Events into third-party sites, such as Facebook.

"Our goal with Windows Live is just to offer an integrated suite of services," he said. "In many cases, because of the number of Hotmail, Spaces and Messenger users we have, people have stored a lot of their contacts and relationships with us. That makes it easy when it comes to invitation scenarios and other entry points within Windows Live.""

Unified Communications Videos

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:01:22 GMT

Haven't written in a while and will do when things calm down. For now, here are some videos posted on web around our Unified Communications story.

At I.B.M., a Vacation Anytime, or Maybe None - New York Times

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:32:58 GMT

Interesting article in NYT on vacation policy at IBM .... apparently they are doing away with formal time reporting and instead managing the whole away from work thing informally. I can definitely see pros and cons here. Reporting time off is at best an art for information workers that end up working late or on weekends, so is taking Friday off really a vacation day? But at the same time, I actually think it's in companies interest to enforce time off for employees. With this kind of model, I can easily see things spiraling out of control unless management leads by example.

I am still shocked by the number of people that tell me they have not taken a holiday for 2-3 years. Are you crazy .... NO ONE is that indispensable, and if you are, your management has not done a good at job at succession planning and business continuity. Take time off, relax and get jazzed up for another round. It's good for you and ultimately your employer.

Link to At I.B.M., a Vacation Anytime, or Maybe None - New York Times

Hey Nielsen! Another "Social Network"

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:38:24 GMT

Another "social network" joins the fray. Today I got an email from Nielsen announcing the launch of Hey! Nielsen, a web-based social networking site that will allow consumers to share their opinions about all aspects of entertainment. The public “beta” for the site is scheduled to launch on September 24th as it's currently restricted to just employees.

Social networking is well on it's way to becoming a must have feature of any trafficked website. This provides a great opportunity for platform providers (do these websites really know how or want to build the infrastructure from scratch) but different response models for existing horizontal sites. Some will pursue aggregation, others will ignore. It will be interesting to see over the next year how these adapt and whether it will lead to a fragmentation of social networking, at least as we know it today.

Link to Hey Nielsen!

Devices That Work With Office Communications Server 2007

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 07:10:09 GMT

Working at Microsoft, I always feel like the guy that doesn't have enough devices and new gadgets to play with. Luckily in my new role, I get to play with a whole bunch of new gadgets! I wanted to talk about a few that I find incredibly useful ... many of these have been talked about before.

The first is the phone on left hand side below. Your company needs to have Office Communications Server 2007 and you need to be enabled on it. After that, you can take it anywhere (yes, anywhere) and just plug it into an ethernet connection. After that it connects to your enterprise, upgrades itself to the latest software and allows you to log in (either using the touchscreen display or your finger print) to a lightweight version of Office Communicator 2007. Now it's your office phone, with access to the corporate directory and one touch calling. The sound quality is awesome as it uses the latest codecs built as part of our media stack for Office Communications Server. It makes working from home so easy.

The second is the device on the right. I now take this whenever I am traveling. The dongle plugs into your laptop and detects Office Communicator 2007 on your machine. To make a call, simply dial the number on Communicator and the dongle transmits using Bluetooth to your headset. Now you have a "phone" that you can wonder around the room with and still have a great high quality audio conversation. The talk time is about 6 hours on the headset which is pretty amazing. I would love to see voice recognition in this device down the road for an even better utility factor.

While I love these devices, what I love the most are the possibilities. The software centric approach to voice that Microsoft is taking really allows us to innovate on devices for a particular need that integrate seamlessly into a common business process application and the likes of Texas Instruments, AudioCodes, Dialogic, LG Nortel and Polycom have already licensed the RT Audio Codec to develop these devices. Expect me to have many more devices to play with over the coming months.

Telepresence - Hype or the New Virtual Reality

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:31:47 GMT

At VoiceCon San Francisco last week, there was a lot of talk about video conferencing so it was interesting to see the article below in The Economist continue to fuel the hype. I attended a couple of sessions where the main proponents of large scale telepresence systems were either expensive hardware makers or bandwidth and data network equipment providers, so I had to take everything with a grain of salt. That said, video conferencing is clearly an underutilized communication mechanism today and there is ample room for both innovation and market growth.

Far away yet strangely personal

Aug 23rd 2007 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

The despised business of videoconferencing is about to get a new lease on life ....

Videoconferencing was supposed to put an end to corporate travel. But positioning people in front of a camera, fiddling endlessly with controls and then either giving up or proceeding to stare at a tiny picture of a blurry face often seems less satisfactory than the humble telephone. Such “conversations” are often a sequence of time-delayed interruptions and missed social signals. Just as the technologies that were supposed to deliver “the paperless office” actually deluged it in print-outs, videoconferencing sometimes works so badly that it leaves users feeling alienated, and so keener to meet face-to-face than they had been in the first place, say Andrew Davis and Ira Weinstein at Wainhouse Research, a consultancy .......

Consumer "video calling" is a very compelling proposition. I regularly use it using Windows Live Messenger to keep in touch with my folks back in the UK so they can see the latest shenanigans of their grandson. The teary look of happiness on my Mums face demonstrates the power of this technology in serving a basic human need .... people communicating face to face. There is no doubt that we communicate with facial expressions and that video conferencing helps foster this in a fragmented world. But the truth is that I arrange to have a video call. I am not comfortable talking to anyone on video and I find it difficult to multi task (as many of the Millennial generation do) while on video. I am just not sure that individuals are culturally ready to embrace video conferencing en masse.

One of the stated benefits of video conferencing is reducing travel and the benefits may well be huge. If a large company spends $12,000 per employee per year on travel and 50% of employees travel, for a 50,000 person company that amounts to $300 million per year! Reducing even some of this cost can easily justify costs ... but only if you can realize them. But therein lies the problem. Will you just end up using video conferencing for those meetings where employees wouldn't have traveled anyway. Worse still, will the initial interest in the systems die down and they sit around gathering dust. If you purchase expensive systems for the CXO suite, as this article refers to, do you end up cutting travel for the 10 least price sensitive people in your company. There are just too many unknown factors to make a call on pure cost savings.

So where could you find the answer? I think you have to look at more than just cost savings, although that is certainly a factor. First, I think you have to make video conferencing plug-and-play simple to use for anyone. The barriers must be low so that people use it more and more, become comfortable with and eventually do use it to replace travel. That may not happen initially, but an easy to use device can help change culture. Second, I think you need to offer different tiers of experiences, that help the users feel like "they are there". Big expensive systems could do that, but then you really don't get that much in savings as it is not available for the average employee. It needs to balance quality of experience with cost. Finally, being able to do things like record integrated meeting sessions incorporating presentations, audio and video help make video conferencing more of a reality.

One product that Microsoft is introducing with Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007 is Microsoft RoundTable. It's an eyecatching device that a user simply plugs into their laptop and can start instantly using with Communicator or Live Meeting. The device captures a panoramic view of the meeting room and detects the active speaker to focus in on them. The experience is really very very simple, and yet really powerful. At less than $5,000 (final price available soon), it is easily affordable compared to other telepresence units and offers a good step up compared to web cams for minimal price increase. RoundTable also allows you to record meetings for training purposes. Click on the image below for a great review on the device.

I think there is a lot more to come both in innovation around immersive high quality video conferencing technology to make business travel less necessary, and integration with business processes or communication tools to make it more relevant. But I don't think the answer to realizing benefits of video conferencing, partly driven by adoption by a critical mass of users, lies in a limited number of high cost units. It has to be about making it widely available and usable. That said, telepresence has a role to play in demonstrating the technology and I look forward to seeing more advances there.

Wainhouse Research Positive on Microsoft in Unified Communications

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:37:10 GMT

Wainhouse Research published a report recently showing the interest among businesses in the various unified communications solutions out there. The results look good for Microsoft, which is impressive given the latest version of the solution only RTM'd last week and isn't widely available yet! In early September, we will be making available for general sale a server (Office Communications Server 2007), two clients (Office Communicator 2007 and Live Meeting 2007) and a range of device peripherals solution that offers a massive improvement to the existing Live Communications Server experience. As someone joining the group, I have had fun playing with the new features and devices for the last few weeks and now don't know how I worked without it. Bit like email ... you really have to think back to when email wasn't part of everyday work.

I'll write up some thoughts on my favorite features next week. But for now, check out the article at: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=758716.

Public Water Source: And We Pay for It?

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:36:35 GMT

When I was in the UK, people bought bottled water that was from "natural springs" and was labeled "bottled at source". It was good to have the original nutrients and substances at the springs left in. I'm not sure what the trend is now in Europe, but it's funny how bottled water in the USA is marketed as having all these substances removed!

Pepsi's Aquafina will soon carry the words “public water source”, instead of simply the innocent looking “P.W.S.”. How much do we pay for tap water again?

Gurdeep Pall Keynote at VoiceCon San Francisco

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:19:31 GMT

Eric Krapf from VoiceCon wrote up a great summary of Gurdeeps keynote at VoiceCon earlier today. There has already been some great demos of the user experience and deployment scenarios for Office Communications Server 2007, but we have not as yet addressed a few of the hot buttons for telecoms managers. Gurdeep remedied this today by looking at one specific hot button - monitoring quality of voice calls. Typically, one needs a network agent to help keep track of call quality, but there is limited flexibility in real time tracking with this option. A software based product allows for much richer diagnostics in real time, the analysis tools to understand what is happening and opportunities to create mash ups for specific needs. There is a great document on OCS QoE here that explains more.

How serious is Microsoft about the voice market? Serious enough that their keynote speaker this morning spent about half his time talking about that most mundane of topics, voice management--even giving attendees a peek at Bill Gates's MOS score.

Granted, this was just a demo and we surely weren't seeing the Microsoft founder's actual call log. But the point was to demonstrate that Microsoft's new product, announced at the show, tries to hit voice managers where they live, by providing them information on how individual calls are actually behaving in the system.

The product is called Quality of Experience Monitoring Server, and it'll be released in a few months and folded into OCS, according to Gurdeep Singh Pall, the keynoter. I noted in yesterday's daily update that network management is starting to get some real attention in the VOIP space, as implementers reach the pain points caused by trying to manage large-scale deployments. The new Microsoft management product attacks the same pain point; it collects more than 35 parameters and deposits in SQL Server a 2 KB file for each call as soon as that call is completed. Managers can import the data into Excel or any other program to slice and dice the data.

The catch, of course, is that you only collect this data on connections between OCS endpoints--either two OCS clients, or an OCS client and an OCS Mediation Server, which is the system's gateway to the non-OCS telephony world. So you balance this limited view against the fact that you don't need to deploy sniffers or other agents on the network to check on network devices.

So the Quality of Experience Monitoring Server is really just another Microsoft entry in the company's battle with Cisco over where voice's center of gravity should reside: In software or the network. Asked in the Q&A period about yesterday's New York event in which Steve Ballmer and John Chambers sat down to talk publicly about the companies' relationship, Gurdeep Singh Pall told the VoiceCon crowd that it's in both vendors' interest to work together for customers where each has a discrete role to play in serving those customers. But when it comes to unified communications, "It's important for the customers and the industry that we compete fiercely," Gurdeep said.

He concluded by announcing that Microsoft is going to officially release OCS 2007 on October 17, with a coming-out event that will feature Bill Gates and Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's business division. Given Gates's iconic and nearly-retired status, Gates's presence is another sign of how seriously Microsoft takes this market.

Four Years at Microsoft

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 06:35:56 GMT

This week marks my fourth year at Microsoft and time continues to fly by! I saw some big changes in our organization, learned a lot about the broader Microsoft machine, made a move from the consumer to business side of Microsoft and tried to figure out the whole work life balance thing.

At the start of the year, the team was reorganized under Steven Sinofsky heading up the "front end" for Windows and Windows Live; Blake Irving (who left recently) heading up the "back end"; and Steve Berkowitz heading up the "business". We had Martin Taylor, the Corporate Vice President in my reporting line summarily depart at the start of the year, leaving a void for many of us. Mark Young, who had headed up Marketing departed mid year and many in his team were absorbed into ours. Brian Hall took the reigns for Windows Live Consumer business soon after that and continued some minor reorgs to align the team to the evolving strategy. And I dare say it's not over yet. Throughout this, I was fortunate to have had the same manager for the entire year, a first at Microsoft for me! And for the most part, my engineering counterparts have remained the same too.

The organizational changes reinforced two key learnings for me. First, reorgs are a matter of fact at Microsoft. Many always intend to keep things constant so that teams can learn to work together, but it just never happens. To survive, let alone succeed, in Microsoft you have to be comfortable with the ambiguity that reorgs bring. Second, the new people being brought into the leadership of Windows Live are usually "company men" (and an occasional woman) who have largely grown up in the Office, Windows, Server or Sales/Field Marketing org. For most of my time at Windows Live/MSN, we have been pretty isolated from the rest of the broader Microsoft business. That is clearly changing as more and more traditional Microsoft leaders are stepping in. This has some implications on the vibe within Windows Live as well as the ties to the rest of the company. The vibe is much more "productivity" focused and there is less of the opportunistic tapping into consumer trends. We are also much more closely involved with the online services and marketing strategy in other divisions. These aren't necessarily bad things, in fact, the potential for Microsoft when we act in unison is incredible. It's just very very different.

It also emphasizes for me how important it is to get to know the "other side" of Microsoft. If you want to stay in the company I am realizing you have to deeply understand the business strategy and processes for the "core business". Even if you don't stay in Microsoft, it's important to understand the process by which Microsoft goes to market and develops enterprise products, as that is such a key strength for the company. That has been the motivator for my move into the Unified Communications Group, one of the most exciting areas (for me at least) of our core business growth opportunities.

My team changed a lot throughout the year too. I started off with just Ali and Heejin, but added Analisa, Niranjan, Pooja, Joost, Charlotte, Chris, Mary, Marty, Jay and of course Arik, Ashley and Arthur. Heejin, Analisa and Niranjan left the company for various reasons. It was hard to maintain a team environment through these changes but we managed to stick together and have some fun. My new team is smaller and more technical, but very strong in their areas which I am psyched about. I hope through the year I can get to know them as well.

The year started for Spaces with or inclusion in Rockstar SuperNova where Brooke Burke mentioned Windows Live Spaces on several of the shows. But we saw some issues with performance as the scale of Spaces grew. The team has been very focused on making performance better and we have seen substantial improvements around the world. We hit a high of 150M unique monthly visitors which is phenomenal but we fell short of our expectations. I learned a lot about how dependencies are managed by more experienced Microsofties in my leadership chain.

Meanwhile, the company continues to deliver some pretty breathtaking results. Our FY07 revenues were $51 billion, that's 15% growth! We returned some $31 billion in cash (175% of operating cash flow) to shareholders. But our stock price has fallen from around $29.50 to $28.50 in the couple of months since that announcement. It's interesting that share buy backs and dividends are the two big factors that improve our stock price as opposed to the underlying growth story of the business. Steve Ballmer recently talked about our long term investment horizon and I truly applaud that. The tech industry is generating some transformations that could take a decade or more to bear fruit, and the players with the tenacity to see it through will be able to take a slice of that pie. It is shame that the markets don't have ten year DCF forecast models and may never reward us for that thinking. I still wonder if we would be better off with a more leveraged structure or as a private company.

On the personal side, I am loving family life in the Northwest and even Lisa (the die hard New Yorker) is now a Northwest fan. It would take a lot for us to leave the lifestyle we have here. Armaan is now 17 months old and is a bundle of fun, absorbing everything like a sponge. He starts in a new school next month that we are very excited about. Lisa and I have a work schedule that allows us both to spend a good chunk of time with Armaan every day and all weekend and I can honestly say that life feels pretty full. I don't know what the next year will bring, but I am looking forward to it!

Microsoft on Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:51:03 GMT

Every year, Gartner evaluates the various players in the unified communications market and ranks them in a grid showing ability to execute and completeness of vision (definitions below). This year Microsoft actually moved in to the top of the Leader quadrant and Cisco moved down to the Challenger quadrant. This is a great endorsement of a software centric approach to solving the issues faced in unified communications.

Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute

Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor that compete in/serve the defined market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills, and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.Overall Viability (Business Unit, Financial, Strategy, Organization): Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood of the individual business unit to continue investing in the product, to continue offering the product and to advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products.Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor’s capabilities in all pre-sales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, pre-sales support and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.Market Responsiveness and Track Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional, thought leadership, word-of-mouth and sales activities.Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements, and so onOperations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.

Completeness of Vision

Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with their added vision.Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the Web site, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements. Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling product that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base. Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature set as they map to current and future requirements. Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition. Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including verticals. Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes. Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.

Blake Irving Retirement Bash

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:33:34 GMT

One of my favorite leaders at Microsoft, Blake Irving (Corp Vice President for Live Platform), had his retirement bash today. Blake's an avid golf player and holds an annual golf tournament, so it was fitting that his party was at the Newcastle Golf Club (incredible views over Bellevue and Seattle) where we played an 18 hole round of "best ball" in teams. My team score of 18 over par was not one to be proud off, but it was great fun nonetheless. Blake will be leaving officially next month and then set off for a round the world trip with his wife and two sons. One of the reasons Blake says he is leaving is to spend more time with his family who live in California.

I first met Blake when I worked in business development, working on deals ranging from Yahoo/MSN IM interoperability to closure of MSN Adult Groups. When I moved on to Spaces, I got to see more of Blake in strategy and business reviews and as his in house go-to-person for Spaces business and marketing questions. When we re-organized and Blake stopped being in my reporting chain, I kept in touch with Blake as an informal mentor. He really had an impact on me as an employee and I started to think why.

I think it's because Blake is one of those rare leaders that maintains a truly human touch, deeply caring for the people around him, even as he progressed throug the corporate ranks. He is one of those guys that makes you feel like you are important and I appreciated that a lot as someone new starting in MSN. Blake was also able to get much deeper into understanding details of the business and product than many other leaders I have seen. I don't expect senior execs to know every aspect of a product in detail, but generally Blake showed more of an aptitude for understanding the product than most. That made it easier for him to get respect from his organization who saw him as more than just a title. The other and may be most important thing is his desire to maintain work-life balance. Blake commuted from California every week but still managed to run his organization effectively. He struggled to find enough time to give to his kids as they grew older and ultimately, always put his family first. I really respect that and it's a factor that I know is going to be important in my life.

I wish Blake all the best in the future, hope to emulate many of his great traits and to meet other leaders like him that I can work with and learn from.

Interesting Article on Naming at Microsoft

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 16:15:30 GMT

There is often a tension between more fuzzy marketers coming wanting to launch names like PopFly, Silverlight and Surface and the more platform centric view that tries to consolidate around single brands. It's a healthy tension with the right motives in mind but is an interesting problem to think about. How do you balance "brand" proliferation with shared bets when it comes to naming. This article touches on some of these issues.

Quote

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+looks+to+improve+its+name+game/2100-1024_3-6196967.html?tag=cd.lede