UC analytics is an emerging category worth paying attention to because it truly combines all of the information available to a company about their customers, customer interactions, history etc., along with everything going on in the contact center and back office. Why? To improve customer relationships, the contact center and back office. Sure we have talked about this before, but this time we are bringing UC applications and tools into the picture as well.

Want to hear more. Pop over to UCStrategies.com and read the UCViews article that I wrote about it, as well as one that Blair Pleasant wrote on a different aspect of UC analytics. You can find my article here, and Blair’s article here.

In furthering Alcatel-Lucent’s theme of the dynamic engagement, the company announced the Alcatel-Lucent OmniTouch™ 8082 My IC Phone at VoiceCon in Orlando. In a pre-briefing on the product Alcatel-Lucent said “Alcatel-Lucent is making an announcement which will dramatically change the employee, developer and customer experiences and will redefine the notion of engagement”.

To start off, this is one nice looking desktop phone, with a 7” wide capacitive touch screen, that is LED backlit, and provides connectivity to Bluetooth and USB devices. Functionally, ALU paid attention to both the form (adjustable base) and audio components of the phone. It provides full duplex wide-band communications, and has a large loudspeaker built in. The phone provides for seamless transfer between the desk phone and mobile devices.

ALU put a lot of work into creating a new user interface to make the phone far more functional, and in line with providing users access to information, and unified communications capabilities. For example, the phone gives users screen access to instant messaging, presence, contextual applications, and email, and allows the user to play MP3 music for personal ring tones as well. ALU is keenly aware of the user experience, building business context across the user interaction, taking into account presence, location, social networks, and what the user’s business needs are.

Additionally, new applications for the phone will be available when the phone is generally available (year-end) that will be developed by ALU and their developer community. Companies are always talking about “rich user experience”, and Alcatel-Lucent is no different. We still have a few months until the phone ships, but the company spoke of a tailored set of applications for financial services, such as real-time video and twitter feeds from traders, as examples of what could be provided through the phone.

As for this added application development, ALU is using its Developer Application portal, which already has more than 10,000 active developers, to create applications for the new phone. The new phone serves as an application pod that has an open API developer platform, and will be integrated with ALU’s next generation of unified communications services (stay tuned for more announcements during the year). The Developer portal will be accessible to developers starting in Q2. All applications

Finally, besides the look of the phone, I was completely pleased when I asked ALU a question about power consumption, because green is a big point with me. Alcatel-Lucent has gone above and beyond on that score, as this is the first desk phone product to comply with the European Code of Conduct, which forces companies to be green, by requiring a limit of one watt of consumption when the screen is off and less than two watts when the screen is on – and this is a seven inch screen! Nice. In addition, ALU designed the product for long life, and went for minimal packaging, with no paper being delivered with the product – instead they provide an online manual.

I would say that the bulk of attention in the industry is paid to the handful of big vendors and multitudes of smaller ones that create products and solutions, and then sell them direct or through partners, and systems integrators. We talk about “the channel”, but don’t talk a lot about the channel, typically because of the vast amount of announcements that require our attention from the big manufacturers, such as the Cisco’s, Avaya’s and IBM’s of the world. The same holds true for technology vendors that supply adjunct or peripheral technology to those same vendors, such as speech technologies, for example. We tend to talk less about them, and often their contribution is hidden in products delivered by the big guys. I’ll save this last group for a different blog, and instead today focus on a couple of examples of how systems integrators work and the contribution they play in getting solutions to the market.

Systems integrators are a valuable group of partners that supplement a company’s direct sales and support staff. More importantly, for the customer, they understand how to successfully integrate the systems and applications not just from one vendor, but multiple vendors, which more often than not is the reality of any company’s business infrastructure. They also provide continuous systems and application improvement, maintenance and support over time. Long term they develop deep expertise across a wide range of platforms, products and applications, which is something that the bigger vendors often don’t do as well. In essence they act as a trusted arm of a bigger vendor.

Let’s look at two of these vendors, and one vertical – mobility – to show how this works. Acclaim Telecom Services, Inc., while not billed as a classic systems integrator, acts in some capacity as a systems integrator in that they have broad knowledge across multiple platforms, act as a systems integrator for some of them, such as delivering self-service (IVR) applications on Microsoft Speech Server, and develop and deliver applications on multiple platforms as well.

For example, in the case of mobility solutions, Acclaim has launched the company’s Smartphone Mobile Solutions Division, powered by one of those platforms; Unwired Nation. Acclaim launched this as a hosted service to provide diverse mobile applications for companies wanting to take advantage of the growing use of mobile applications as a customer channel. The Unwired Mobile Platform (UMP) provides access to multiple device platforms through a single integration API, which means that an application can be developed once and deployed across multiple mobile devices, without regard to operating system or device manufacturer. This solves a problem that I touch on briefly in my upcoming April Voice Value column in Speech Technology Magazine. Despite the proliferation of mobile applications, having to write to different devices and operating systems is a deterrent to growth.

As another example, SOFTEL Communications, is a classic systems integrator/reseller in that they have very broad expertise in integrating products and solutions across multiple vendor platforms, such as Genesys, Avaya and Cisco, along with third-party application providers, such as CRM, workforce management, VoIP, etc. SOFTEL also creates complimentary products and solutions to supplement those offered by such vendors.

In the case of mobility, for example, SOFTEL provides location-based services (LBS) to companies, such as Telco’s for their end customers, such as downtown business districts or mall owners. They create the solution and partner with Telco’s to deliver to end user customers.

In both cases these companies partner with other vendors, integrate platforms and products together, and then provide their “value-add”, on top to round out and improve the offering.

If you are a customer looking for a solution it is well worth checking out the third party providers that work with the big vendors. It works well in the past, and as a proof point, more and more of the bigger vendors are radically changing the mix of direct and indirect sales that they use to a more indirect model.  It shouldn’t be hard to find one that has the right mix of expertise for the solutions that you might have or be moving towards.