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Loading ...I caught up with Russ Kirk of Grey Convergence at IP08 last week to talk about Unified Communications in the enterprise. Grey has made a name for itself over the last few years, with its specialist team of Microsoft OCS gurus. They are one of around 8 certified Microsoft voice partners in the UK (although many of the others call on Grey’s skills).
Russ Kirk of Grey Convergence
There are very few people who know Microsoft’s OCS product well, and even fewer with real life experience of using it. Grey’s skills cover Unified Communications, collaboration and identity management. These are not such odd bed fellows, since OCS delivers collaboration, and none of this stuff works without a decent user store (hence the requirement for identity skills).
Grey were an Parlano partner before Microsoft purchased that outfit, to flesh out their persistent messaging portfolio. Talking with Russ, it was clear that Grey position themselves as IP telephony agnostic, working with Cisco, Nortel, Mitel and Ericsson.
They see a strong ROI-based deployment model of unified communications, but one that isn’t limited to softphones. Russ was quick to point out that Microsoft do a hard phone as well as their software client. Many businesses want to remove their reliance on the phone handset - a notoriously high cost item - but more importantly, HR departments want to get users away from a fixed desk mindset. UC somes as part of a later HR-driven change agenda, moving away from the traditional fixed desk, complete with family photo.
Taking that a stage further, and thinking about road warriors, UC is competing on the handset (in Windows Mobile devices), and also with mobile voice quality. Microsoft are careful to position the two types of voice as complementary, and Grey follow that line. As a side note, research shows a strong relationship between utility, convenience and voice quality. Get the first two right, and quality is less of an issue, or visa versa.
Road warriors are the easy win for UC, says Russ, but the 9-5 desk folks benefit from integration too (click to call):
“There is enough benefit there to justify deployments, without even looking to road warriors”
With a built in directory (hence Grey’s focus on ID management), user’s workflow is improved. Future applications can build on that too. There is a word of caution in this area from Russ:
“people want to run before they can walk… they want to do all of the application integration and get the benefits as soon as they have done their first deployment… …You need to take a busines consultancy, change management approach. Get the infrastrcture right and build from there…”
Very valid opinion, especially considering that many businesses don’t even have a remote working policy in place. Grey focus on mid-size financials, accountants and lawyers, government and education. Typical deployments have 10,000s of thousands of users. Microsoft OCS still makes sense for businesses with 50 users and up, but more so in the mid-hundreds of users.
I asked Russ why a business should think about a third party like Grey, rather than managing the deployment in house. He pointed out that for 500 or so users they have a quick start package. This gives a fixed price, from install onwards, and is most cost effective than working with a traditional systems integrator. They hand hold the migration, based on expertise gained with 8 years of doing IPT deployments. The migration is the tricky bit, and uses one-time skills. Making the go live a success is essential, especially when it comes to telephony.
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