Kane-MacKay & Associates Blog

It’s a Thin Line

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:57 GMT

On life, joy and sorrow...

This weekend was a weekend of extremes that reminded us that our daily lives are a thin line. Dear friends of ours that live in Ottawa have a bonus daughter, a daughter that they love, have cared for and nurtured for a number of years. She is expecting her first baby and as their daughter lives in our home town, we offered our home to host a baby shower for her.

There was much laughter and celebration as gifts were presented, family heirlooms to be passed on to the next generation given, lots of pictures taken…some with the new video camera that will capture forever, images to be cherished. Everyone that attended the baby shower had shared one of those special moments in time…the expectation that surrounds the beginning of a new life.

After the guests had left and the house cleaned, we had an opportunity to relax. Around 8:30 pm we received a phone call from a member of our extended family. Her partner, that we knew had terminal cancer, passed away quietly at home while watching her favourite movie. Knowing that she was receiving hospice supportive care at home, had precious few days left, makes the news no easier.

Then, in this morning’s email and another phone call, the news that another friend and a business colleague, who also had terminal cancer and was also receiving palliative care, passed away the same day...Saturday.

To both families that are grieving, please accept our heartfelt sympathies on the passing of your loved one. Kibran in his book The Prophet wrote “When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”

It’s a thin line…

“Learnings” from the 7th Annual Real Time Communications Conference

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:13 GMT

Last week’s Blog provided an overview of the 7th Annual Real-Time Communications Conference and Expo held at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s School of Applied Technology and the Next Generation 911 program. This week I wanted to share some of my “Learnings”.

Several years ago I had the opportunity of attending a marketing program at Cornell that was presented by Professor Chekitan Dev. Each day would start with “Learnings” from the previous day. There was not a time allotment to limit discussion, just an opportunity to review and discuss the learnings. So in no particular order some “Learnings”…

Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet)

The ESInet will deliver the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) vision of Next Generation 9-1-1; “A system comprised of Emergency Services IP networks (ESInets), IP-based Software Services and Applications, Databases and Data Management processes that are interconnected to Public Safety Answering Point premise equipment.” ¹ (From the NENA.org/ng911 project web site)

The ESInet has set as a deliverable, “Any Device, Anywhere, Anytime”. This means that in addition to voice, the ESInet will also carry text, photo and video, and data only messages and at the same time, incorporate the flexibility to add new capabilities as they are developed. That will pose some unique challenges. The ESInet is intended to utilize SIP as a standard protocol.

ESInet and its implementation are facing a number of key issues. There was much discussion around funding issues and regulatory issues (more on that later). Like any new public safety initiative, how it gets paid for was first and foremost. There are some jurisdictions where E911/NG911 fund diversion is an on-going issue while others cited the out-dated land-line funding model. There is a need to overhaul the funding model, so that all jurisdictions will be able to get fair and equal access to monies being made available.

During a panel discussion one member noted that there will be a change in the data ownership and that there will also be the creation and storage of data that doesn’t currently exist. It’s an interesting perspective, as the ESInet will provide a Real Time open exchange.

There will be a significant amount of data generated in an ESInet environment, but we didn’t hear a great deal on where the information will be stored, who will have access rights, what storage format will be used, security issues, etc.

One comment made by Barbara Kemp of Assure911 Inc. during her presentation was, “When you plan for new technology, include a plan for its demise.” The NG911 ESInet is a new technology and yes, we should be including a replacement plan at some point in time. The timelines involved in getting to this stage of NG911 date back to some early meetings held in 2002/03, and we are just getting to an “almost good to go.” There is still much work to be accomplished, but at some point in time it will be very appropriate to consider “What’s next?”

During the conference there was an article that @kanemackay had tweeted on regarding Smartphones and Tablets and the apps that have been designed for Health Care. To quote the article, entitled Hold the Phone for Vital Signs is the following: “Ki Chon, professor and head of biomedical engineering at WPI, has developed a smart phone application that can measure not only heart rate, but also heart rhythm, respiration rate and blood oxygen saturation using the phone's built-in video camera. The new app yields vital signs as accurate as standard medical monitors now in clinical use.”

This type of app and others that will follow will have a significant impact on the provision of Emergency Services and will need to be included as part of an ESInet design.

For more on this article please follow: http://www.cellular-news.com/story/51225.php

Regulatory

To quote Richard Hird, a NG911 panel member speaking on Legal and Regulatory Policy, “Regulatory change for NG911 is taking just way too long”. From the panel discussion on Legal and Regulatory, not only is it taking too long, it doesn’t appear capable of keeping up.

One panel member provided some insight by describing an incident where a government agency recognized an opportunity to improve the quality of service, for less money, with the implementation of some new technology. The new product was installed, however invoices continued to be delivered for the older, out-dated, re-placed product. The reason? Until legislation was passed, there was a regulatory obligation to use the replaced technology as it was prescribed by legislation and that the invoices will for this old equipment would also be required to be paid until the law is changed.

Regulations that were introduced in the 1960’s and 70’s have not been changed or have not been addressed and now, somehow, need to be retrofitted to reflect current market conditions. There is also the issue of individual state legislation that may be an obstruction or protectionist that will need to be addressed. Does the FCC have a role to play here?

The Lab

The IIT has a lab that allows students to work on a wide variety of technologies and various platforms from different manufacturers. During our tour, we were with one a representative of a manufacturer who noted the quantity and type of equipment currently in use. They wanted to ensure that “The Lab” is given an opportunity to work with the very latest release of equipment available. This type of response is exactly what is needed as the learning doesn’t stop.

During our tour of the lab we had the opportunity of learning more about the design and structure of the ESInet, as some of the technical design was white boarded as part of the current curriculum. An upcoming phase for the lab is a new piece of equipment intended to test the design of the ESInet. The purpose is to determine if the ESInet could be broken and if so, what broke it and how could the design be improved on. It was evident that the students are looking forward to working on this phase.

etc

If I were to consider one potential addition to the conference, it would be the addition of a Near Field Communications (NFC) track. NFC, in a recent article, was suggested to be the next billion dollar industry and the potential replacement for plastic money. A number of Smartphones are already NFC enabled, which leads me to believe that the all current tracks at this conference, (VoIP, Mobility, Unified Communications, Web, NG911) will be impacted and based on the current pace of change, likely much sooner than later.

We certainly enjoyed the exchange of information, from a peer group that was most impressive. The level of expertise was outstanding and we were pleased to have asked to contribute to this Conference and hope that we have the opportunity again next year.

We would recommend that you look for Blair Pleasant’s article regarding the UC Track that can be found on the UC Strategies web site. See http://blog.ucstrategies.com/

The 7th Annual Real-Time Communications Conference and Expo

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 19:28 GMT

This week, Kane-MacKay & Associates attended the 7th Annual Real-Time Communications Conference and Expo and had the opportunity of chairing a Next Generation 911 session. This annual event is planned and hosted by the Illinois Institute of Technology’s School of Applied Technology just outside of Chicago.

The conference brings together technical professionals, academia, government agencies as well as the business community to discuss and participate in leading edge discussions on VoIP, Video, Mobility, Web, Next Generation 9-1-1 and more.

Our panel members for the Next Generation 911 session included Theresa Stockton from 911ETC, Hadriel Kaplan from Acme Packet, Mark Fletcher from Avaya, and Alan Schunemann from eTelemetry. Samantha Kane and I acted as the moderators.

We asked the panel the following questions:

As a manufacturer of E911/NG911 product or service, what would you suggest to all PSAP’s is an important lesson and that they should seriously adopt to make it better for an enterprise and them as well?
As a major component of the registration of VOIP into E911/NG911 today and the addition of important information to the PSAP, what do you see as the most important additions you will need to add to your product to service NG 911
What experiences have you noted with enterprise organizations that have surprised you with their non-compliance situation? Lack of legislation? Cable situation, documentation, lack of overall understanding of the required process?
The NENA NG911 summary definition suggests that a NG911 system is comprised of hardware, software, data and operational policies and procedures. From your perspective what operational policies and procedures should an enterprise take into consideration and how should they be prioritized?
What should PSAPs and the Enterprise be doing to prepare to be able to process all types of emergency calls including non-voice?
What’s involved in providing a secure environment for emergency communications from your perspective? What’s the difference for the PSAP and the Enterprise?
What do you believe (with your particular product) and how it fits into NG911 space, will be the biggest Game Changer.

The discussions that surrounded these questions generated a great deal of interest for our session and we received many favorable comments.

We also had the opportunity of attending other NG911 sessions including:

NG911 Deployment: What is going on, Where are we with the FCC? with Brian Rosen from Neustar
Navigating the Waters: Legal and Regulatory Policy on NG911 with moderator Trey Forgety from NENA
ESInet Implementation moderated by Bart Lovett from NG911 Inc.
Reliability after Design of NG911 presented by David Staub of Assure911
Priority Access for Public Safety in Shared Commercial Networks presented by Dr. Suresh Borkar
NG911 Real World Design Opportunities presented by Barbara Kemp from Assure911

Wrapping up the NG911 track was a panel presentation on Location and Accessibility with moderator Glenn Richards.

This conference also featured session tracks that included the Web and Emerging Technologies, Mobility, Cloud Communication, Security, Unified Communication, Policy and Regulatory and Customer Experience Management.

What impressed us most is the level of expertise, dedication and the sharing of information, from all presenters. This type of exchange will have significant benefit for NG911 industry as well as all other areas of interest addressed by the sessions and we look forward to next year’s conference.

Social Media Analytics

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:35 GMT

What's being said about your brand?

For some, the concept of Social Media and the need to be engaged online is difficult to grasp. For that group, the idea behind Social Media Analytics must be incomprehensible. However, as an industry, Social Media Analytics is experiencing growth and that industry is the analytics what is being said about your brand.

An entry level to Social Media Analytics could something like Google Alerts or Social Mention, where search terms are entered like a company name for example. Options are provided to search news, blogs, video, discussions or everything and results can then be delivered to an email address. This will provide some basic information of mentions but there are other solutions available that get very sophisticated.

That sophistication will vary from vendor to vendor, however there will be some commonalities. At a minimum it will include the capture of data from social media channels, some offering hundreds of channels. Some will offer the ability to score what’s being said to make the data more meaningful. A brand could also determine key influencers to keep track of the buzz surrounding your brand and perhaps influence or correct perceptions. Radian6, Alterian, Dialogix, Collective Intellect, RightNow, Post Rank and Buzzient are all examples of Social Media Analytic providers. A quick search using Social Media Analytics will provide over one hundred such products.

Only a few analytic offerings will provide some history of what has been said about your brand for the last few years and that’s where some real value can be obtained.

For example, if two years ago a new product or service was offered, a brand could determine what buzz was generated at that time, whether the product or service offering was well received or not and what could be done to make potential changes or avoid making the same mistakes when launching the next gen.

To take that level of sophistication a step further, Interactive Intelligence recently announced integration with Buzzient that delivers social media data operationally to the contact center. This allows the brand to uncover posts about service issues, or dissatisfaction allowing the brand to catch and resolve issues before they result re-tweets or additional real timesharing. Increased sales could also be driven by using analytics to identify potential interest in a product or service.

The phenomenon of Social Media had changed the landscape of business forever. Social Media users are spending more time on line and are sharing more information about experiences with brands than ever before. The challenge is to find out what’s being said about your brand and then be able to have the business intelligence to better manage your brand.

What Every UC Call Center Should Know About Session Border Controllers

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:39 GMT

Call centers need to think about Session Border Controllers (SBCs). SBCs view all the end points, transactions and applications as individual unique sessions, making it easier to identify measure and track multiple UC touch points found in most call centers today.

The Call Center/Contact Center has been evolving since the first center in 1976 at Continental Airlines. Many things have changed over that 34-year period to where we are today with the migration to Voice over IP (VoIP). VoIP delivers significantly lower recurring costs and is a key enabler of contact center virtualization, allowing agents to work anywhere they have IP network access, including at home and while mobile. New Unified Communications capabilities help contact centers evolve, taking advantage of presence-enabled audio and videoconferencing, chat/instant messaging (IM), multimedia collaboration and communications-enabled business applications. Many contact centers are adding these services as integrated suites of UC applications.

For more on this white paper written for Acme Packet and posted on the UC Strategies web site see http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/what-every-uc-call-center-should-know-about-session-border-controllers.aspx

UC Analytics: Is this the Real Human Centric Data Model?

Wed, 26 May 2010 16:26 GMT

In today’s era of customer relationship management, businesses must strategically invest in tools that will improve the customer experience and maximize customer lifetime value. Best-in-class organizations are increasingly deploying powerful tools for customer analytics—including tools for automated modeling, real-time scoring, interaction optimization, and incremental response modeling.

So what does this have to do with Unified Communications? Everything! Achieving customer centricity requires a holistic, enterprise-wide view of the customer experience.

Organizations need to take a broader view of information, a more effective process to analyze data to understand what is happening and why, and determine a way to improve workflow across and within departments, including external stakeholders.

The rest of this White Paper can be found at http://www.ucstrategies.com/unified-communications-expert-views/uc-analytics-is-this-the-real-human-centric-data-model-where-organizations-can-connect-all-the-dots.aspx

Coppin State University Inducted for the Fifth Time in Four Years

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:00 GMT

Coppin State University Inducted for the Fifth Time in Four Years as a Laureate of the Computerworld Honors Program

Kane-MacKay & Associates are proud to have been involved in this project and provided much of the expertise and consulting services for Avaya Professional Services working with the teams from Coppin State, Presidio, eTelemetry and the local PSAP. http://www.coppin.edu/OUR/News.aspx?author=shwilliams&story=20100326111050

For project details see http://www.coppin.edu/e911/

How do the UCStrategies Experts use Social Networking?

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:46 GMT

In this podcast, the UCStrategies.com Experts discuss the value of social networking in the workplace: how do they use social networking in their jobs, what apps do they use, and how can unified communications add value to social networking?

The expert panel includes Jim Burton (@ucstrategies), Blair Pleasant (@blairplez), Jay Brandstadter, Nancy Jamison, Jon Arnold, Samantha Kane, Pam Avila (@pwavila), Don Van Doren, and Dave Michels (@davemichels).

http://www.ucstrategies.com/industry-buzz/how-do-the-ucstrategies-experts-use-social-networking.aspx

AARM Executive Intelligence Alerts

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:15 GMT

• IWCO Direct Agrees To Acquire Transcontinental Direct US Operations • Long-Term Brand Relationships Sacrificed For Short Term Efficiency • Professional Certification in CRM

This months copy of Executive Intelligence Alerts is sponsored by Kane-MacKay and Associates.

AARM is a worldwide network of business associates and executives who are deeply involved in Marketing, CRM and related subject areas.

Originating in 1996 as The Association for the Advancement of Relationship Marketing/Relationship Management; AARM for short; AARM today taps into over 15,000 individuals in the Relationship Marketing arena worldwide with major representation of 58% in the Senior Executive category and 42% middle management.

AARM created the original CRM Professional Certification Program and industry designation (P.CRM) to which major organizations send their key personnel for Professional Training and Certification in CRM.

Over the years, the term CRM has become synonymous with Customer Relationship Marketing and Customer Relationship Management. Both are true. The marketing to, and the management of customers or clients and the ensuing relationships, is crucial to success in virtually any company today. It’s been proven time and time again. AARM gives people everywhere the opportunity to network, gain knowledge into Best Practices in relationship marketing and to be recognized via the unique P.CRM certification program for their experience and practice of all things CRM.

For your copy sign up at http://www.aarm.org/CM/

UCStrategies Experts Preview VoiceCon Orlando 2010

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:38 GMT

VoiceCon Orlando 2010 is March 22-25 in Orlando.

VoiceCon Orlando 2010 is March 22-25 in Orlando. The UCStrategies.com Experts will be well-represented, from general session keynotes on day 1, to the Locknote which closes the event. In this podcast, the experts discuss each of the sessions in which they will participate, and what makes VoiceCon "the premier event for our industry."

Jim Burton
- General Session - Summit: Unified Communications Executive Forum
- Breakout Session - Unified Communications Leadership Roundtable: How Far Have We Come? What’s Next?
Blair Pleasant
- Breakout Session - Unified Communications Market Update
- Breakout Session - How Much Voice Mail Do You Really Need?
Marty Parker
- Breakout Session - How Much Voice Mail Do You Really Need?
- Deep Dive - Implementation Options: Unified Communications
- Workshop - Comparing Unified Communications Options: Who's Offering What?
Don Van Doren
- Breakout Session - Presence: Preferences and Rules Drive Communications Effectiveness
Michael Finneran
- Coffee Talk - Mobility and Unified Communications
- Breakout Session - Choosing the Right Mobile Device Ecosystem
- Coffee Talk - Options for Local Mobility
- Workshop - Integrating Mobility and Unified Communications: Comparing the Vendors' Solutions
- Workshop - QoS and Network Design for Converged Networks
- Deep Dive - Optimizing Enterprise Mobility
- General Session - Summit: How Many Phones Does Your Enterprise Need?
Dave Michels
- General Session - Summit: Role of Cloud in Enterprise Communications
- General Session - Summit: How Many Phones Does Your Enterprise Need?
- Locknote
David Yedwab
- Breakout Session - Administration Tools for Unified Communications

The expert panel includes Jim Burton, Blair Pleasant, Don Van Doren, David Yedwab, Michael Finneran, Dave Michels, and Samantha Kane. To download the podcast go to:

http://www.ucstrategies.com/uploadedFiles/UC_Views/Industry_Buzz/UCStrategies%20Experts%20VoiceCon%20Orlando%202010%20Podcast.mp3