No Forklift Needed

With the ever growing interest of Microsoft’s Lync, a common question that is asked to PEI by customers and prospects is, “We’ve already invested into a different phone system, can we still use Lync?”  The good news is, yes, you can run Microsoft Lync alongside your current phone/communication infrastructure.   From its very beginnings of LCS then onto OCS and now Lync, Microsoft has understood the fact they are competing against established communication providers and that in order for them to be able to compete and win market share, they need to create a product that can “play nice” with the big guys out there.

Through a direct partnership with Microsoft, PEI’s engineering team has been able to implement Lync for many of our customers who have already made the big investments into other systems (e.g. Cisco’s Call Manager/Unity) but would like some of the features and benefits that Lync has to offer.  By utilizing a customer’s current network and server infrastructure, PEI is able to easily implement Lync to provide a customized communication platform for clients.  Whether it would be starting off with the basics of Instant Messaging and Presence, all the way to having multiple phone systems ringing a single person, PEI is able to work within your investments to give a truly unified communications platform.  For more information on how PEI can work within your current environment to give you all that your company needs, please contact sales@pei.com or 303.786.7474.

-Arash Zadeh & Jon Eyberg, PEI

Blurring the lines between video and web conferencing

I have been selling and implementing video and web communications for clients since 1996 and I can honestly say until recently there was NO comparison.  Now more than ever though there’s been a ‘blurring’ between web conferencing and video conferencing …especially when it comes to quality.  Video conferencing traditionally has been thought of as group or room based product that allows video and audio to be shared simultaneously utilizing a data connection between locations.  Web conferencing has traditionally been see as a desktop or single user application that you run on your computer allowing audio, content and sometimes video.   The marriage between the two has for most seemed lukewarm at best, sleeping in separate beds if you.  It appears that marriage is about to heat up.    

For over a decade web conferencing has been the “less than equal” and often times loathed form of communications to include audio, video and content.  Although video conferencing has had its up’s and down’s these past decades it has always been a cut above web conferencing.  At least on the video part until now.  With the advent of HD web conferencing things have gotten good… and when I say good, I mean this video is good.  We are all familiar with the bigger ‘brands’ of web conferencing (Go-To-Meeting, WebEx, Live Meeting) but did you know the race is on to improve the quality of the video inside some products to make them as good or comparable to video conferencing.  I know what you’re thinking “no way” I’ve heard, I’ve seen, I’ve lived it and it’s better without the video then with it.  Well stay tuned folks because the push for a ‘seamless’ integration of video and web conferencing is on the horizon. 

Cisco seems to be leading the way with their previous integration of the Telepresence product with WebEx …then along came the Tandberg acquisition.  These room and desktop based products round out the video portfolio for Cisco and the ‘complaints’ about WebEx or web conferencing Vs. video conferencing has not fallen on deaf ears.  If you want to know more about how web or video conference are heating up and want to see or hear more PEI can help.  Think of us as your ‘marriage counselor’ for web and video communications.      

-Jennifer Smith, PEI

Exchange 2010 and Cisco CUCM

We recently migrated our production environment over to Exchange 2010 from Exchange 2007.  During the process we hit one snag that caught us a bit by surprise.  When we were migrating our Unified Messaging Dial Plans from 2007 to 2010, we found that even though we were doing a SIP connection from CUCM to Exchange 2010 that we had to set the Dial Plan to be of the TEL URI type.  One of our voice engineers banged his head against a wall for quite a while trying to figure this out. 

In Exchange 2007, this same setup was done via SIP URI.  In Exchange 2010, the only time SIP URI (to our current knowledge) is supported is when integrating with OCS 2007 (RTM or R2) or Lync 2010.  When using another 3^rd party system, we had to go to TEL URI. 

While this turned out to be a simple solution (Occam’s Razor strikes again), it was confusing to us as we thought since we were doing pure SIP that it should be a SIP URI.  Bottom line is, if you are trying to get a 3^rd party integrated with Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging and having issues, try switching to TEL URI and see if it solves the issue.

-Adam Ball, PEI

To The Cloud or not to the Cloud that is The Question

In my industry (sales within IT Consulting), I have come to run up against many challenges in the sales cycle.  I’m constantly faced with objections ranging from cost, to competitors, to doing nothing but one objection that is coming up more and more is “going to the cloud”.  While the concept of a “cloud” based IT architecture is appealing for many companies, it’s important to remember that going to the public “cloud” is not for everyone and not for every situation.  One instance of this is if your business handles sensitive information over email and if your company is looking for a fully integrated Unified Communication solution.  While the security and reliability is there, for example Microsoft’s BPOS, its important to remember that if your clients are emailing you sensitive information, they may require that you own the data and it’s kept in house.  Additionally, if your company is looking to integrate an UC solution, including Unified Messaging, then a public “cloud” solution may not support all functionality that your company is after.  While I’m not looking to completely discredit the public “cloud”, in fact, I think it is a great solution for the right company type, when one approaches this idea, it is important to look at all aspects of the “cloud”.  Many times, the best solution is a combination of public “cloud and private “cloud” (virtual environment held on premise).

-Arash Zadeh, PEI

Looking back to know what is up ahead

Do you remember what life was like just ten years ago?  Gmail?  This was made public in ’04.  Facebook? Nope, that wasn’t even around until ’04.  How about twitter?  Nope, that was in ’06.  Wikipedia?  Yup, that was here 10 years ago, but it had just started.  Sure we had email, the browser, pagers, clunky cell phones and .v90 or .v92 modems.  Do you miss those days?  I know that I sometimes do since it meant that I wasn’t always on/always available.

What is next?  Are you ready for a world where no matter where you are friends can know your location, how long you have been there, what you purchased or did there?  I hope so because that world already exists.  Both Microsoft and Cisco are helping us move business to an always connected, always available world with their Unified Communications suites.

Lync is Microsoft’s updated Unified Communications platform which I have been playing with for the past couple of weeks simply as an end user.  The user interface is clean, intuitive and easy to customize so that those contacts that I often interact with are easily found.  Co-workers can also find me and ask questions and get answers much more quickly since they already know my status and don’t have to wait like we used to with e-mail.  Call quality is great, as is the ability do all of this off of my laptop no matter where I am.

What do you see coming?  What do you use now on a daily basis that you didn’t 10 years ago?

-Josh Sidwell, PEI

Currently Running Cisco’s Unity, Call Manager or Express 4.x – 7.x?

Cisco is making it very easy to upgrade your licensing and software to Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) & Express (CUCME) 8.x. 

Why should I consider upgrading to 8.x when 4.x is running perfectly and why should I complete the project by July, 31st, 2011? 

End of Life & End of Service (E.O.L & E.O.S.)

• Keep an eye on your Cisco UCS Servers.  If they are not end of life yet, they may soon be.

Virtualization

• Eliminate paying for new Cisco UCS hardware, plus hardware support contracts by considering Virtualization.
• Leverage your existing Virtualization architecture and add CUCM & Unity to your VM’s. (In depth discussions with your Cisco VoIP expert is a must)

SIP

• Excellent time to consider utilizing the SIP features bundled into 8.x.
• Excellent time to consider dropping your expensive and contractual obligations with your T1 provider and take advantage of a PEI recommended SIP provider and business grade Internet provider.

Cisco Upgrade Programs

• Take advantage of programs like the 3”x3” that end on July 31st, 2011.
• Excellent per seat upgrade pricing and no additional costs for 3-years.
• Make sure your quote has ESW & UCSS for 3-years.
• Take advantage of Cisco’s financial offers around these programs.

ESW & UCSS

• ESW is an annual support contract providing minor upgrades and UCSS is for major upgrades.
• Perhaps your Cisco support contracts have expired. Great time to get current and bundle it into one budgetary proposal.

- Marty Deger, PEI

Upgrading Cisco’s ASA to v 8.3

Cisco released version 8.3 for the Cisco ASA 5500 Series on March 8^th, 2010 and it is considerably different than previous versions.  Many long time PIX & ASA techies were upset and confused.  Others believed Cisco was improving on a solid foundation.   NAT in 8.3 is the most significant change and forget everything you knew about statics, globals and nat 0, as they don’t exist in 8.3. 

Fortunately our security engineers embraced 8.3 early and we are experiencing great success partnering with our clients and assisting with their upgrades.  Planning and performing the upgrade is important, but the training, knowledge transfer and “2^nd day” phone support has proven to be the most appreciated aspect of our professional services.

Cisco’s Web site has ample reading on the features and benefits.  Please allow me to share some notes I have accumulated.

• Be prepared to purchase memory upgrade kit(s). 
• Be careful about buying 3^rd party DRAM & Flash memory and voiding your TAC support.
• If you purchased your ASA’s after February in 2010 you may have the minimum Flash & DRAM required to run v8.3.
• Don’t buy the DRAM & Flash upgrade kit(s) until you are prepared to do the upgrade shortly afterward.
• If you have a failover configuration the two units must have the same amount of DRAM. 
• You do not have to have the same amount of Flash memory. 
• If you use two units with different flash memory sizes, make sure the unit with the smaller flash memory has enough space for the software images and configuration files. 
• Licensing between the two ASAs needs to be the same (Licensing is confusing).
• Consider adding the subscription based ASA Botnet Traffic Filter.
  • Botnet Traffic Filter monitors network ports for rogue activity and detecting infected internal endpoints sending commands and control traffic back to the host on the Internet. 
• Consider adding IPS/IDS (Intrusion Prevention and Intrusion Detection).
• Smart Tunnels with tunnel policies and improvements to UC-IME made my engineers happy.

Security requires a rational, defense-in-depth approach, using joint solutions to satisfy evolving security requirements.  IT organizations are always asked to do more with less.  Striving for a centralized management & regulatory compliance reporting architecture is fundamental to avoiding failed audits, fines and legal liability.  

-Marty Deger, PEI

Unified Communications Collaboration Webinar

November 16, 2010

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. MST

The way people are working is changing rapidly.  Technological, societal, competitive, legal, and financials are all factors playing into this change.  It is becoming increasingly crucial to please everyone in the company including; employees, partners, customers, and the business leaders.  They are constantly demanding new technologies to create efficiency, increase productivity and cut costs.  Join us as we walk through how a Unified Solution can bring culture, process, and technology all together to create unified collaboration.

REGISTER NOW

Cisco’s Voice Messaging

Cisco Unity (Unity) is Cisco’s voice messaging platform.  There are different flavors of Unity (Unity Express, Unity Connection, and Unity) but this is not what I am writing about today.  Today I would like to write about the different types of voice messaging available from Cisco. 

1. Voicemail only – this is the basic voicemail delivery system.  Users must use the Telephony User Interface (TUI) to access their voicemails.  The users may, or may not, have the ability to retrieve their voicemails remotely by dialing in to an access number or by manipulating the call flows to gain access to a sign-in prompt.
2. Unified Messaging – this is the integration of your voice messaging platform with your email platform.  In Cisco’s case, Domino or Exchange.  This type of messaging gives the users access to their voicemails via their Exchange account or via the TUI.  Some organizations have found this integration to be the way they want to move their environment, others have found that the dependencies between Exchange, Unity and Active Directory to be cumbersome and a chore to deal with.  This is due to the administrators of Exchange and Unity are usually not the same people and therefore you do not have the overlapping skill set to work both efficiently.
3. Integrated Messaging – this is the “middle ground” between voicemail only and Unified Messaging.  This provides the users with the TUI access and with IMAP access to their voicemails.  The delivery of the voicemails will be in a separate account in Outlook instead of delivering directly to the users email inbox.  This keeps the separation between voicemail and email in both the perspective of the users and to the administrators.  No longer does Unity need to tie in to Exchange and/or Active Directory in order to deliver voicemails to your mail client.

As you can see from the above, there are multiple ways to implement Cisco’s Unity platforms.  The question is – what is your preferred method and why?

-Emilio Rivera, PEI

Look for Special Events Coming this Fall!

Please check back for more information on Lunch & Learns and Webinars that will be held from October- December!  If you have a topic that you would like to see discussed at a live event or in a webinar please e-mail us at info@pei.com